The Autobiography of Henry 8

by Margaret George

  Ioth eautiful, beautiful son—no puny Arthur, but destined to be the tallest, strongest King that England had ever had. They said that Edward III was a giant, and my grandfather’s height of six feet four was verified by men who yet lived. But Henry IX would be a Sun-God, a Helios for England.

  Trumpets sounded their silver notes, and the procession made its long, slow way down the nave and out of the church, like a jewelled and languid snake. Outside, in the courtyard, it coiled round itself and waited—waited to pass into the Great Hall of Westminster Palace, where the christening feast was spread.

  Did I imply earlier that Westminster was an outmoded palace? So it is, but its Great Hall is a treasure I must be careful not to let Time loot from me. Its dimensions are enormous, so that mounted knights can joust inside, should they so desire. Most arresting of all, the roof is a single span: the ceiling soars overhead in a graceful dance of supporting hammerbeams, scorning any supporting pillars. It was put up in 1395, just in time for the wedding feast of Richard II and Isabella of France. It was the king of its kind; none has surpassed it in size even to this day. Now this marvel welcomed us, with places set for a hundred. Upon the fair white linen the rows of golden platters looked like bright coins in a field of snow.

  The dais would include not only the Queen and myself, but my blood relatives. Even those not at court had come to attend the christening of their royal cousin.

  There are those—and I know who they are—who have claimed that I “killed off” anyone with any touch of royal blood, because I was so fearful of rival claimants to the throne. I can expose this nonsense for what it is by the very list of those I invited to sit at the royal table with me on this occasion. There was Henry Courtenay, my first cousin, the son of Catherine Plantagenet, my aunt on my mother’s side. There was Margaret Plantagenet Pole, a cousin of my mother’s, and her sons Reginald, Henry, and Geoffrey, my second cousins. There were my St. Leger second cousins, and the Stafford cousins and Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex, more distant yet. I was happy and wanted to share my joy with all my family, like any normal man.

  The prelates had a table of their own, the one farthest to the right. The Archbishop of Canterbury sat at its head, with the other ranking bishops, like Ruthal of Durham and Fox of Winchester, next to him. The rest of the length of table comprised almost the entire membership of Convocation, the “Parliament” of the Church. Wolsey was not at the table. His rank was too low, for at this time he was only an almoner and a lowly canon of Windsor.

  The long middle table held the peers of the realm and their ladies. There was only one duke in England left now (except the imprisoned Duke of Suffolk): the Duke of Buckingham, Edward Stafford. There had been other dukes, of course, but they had lost their titles, or their lives, or both, fighting for or against Richard III. Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, had fought my father at the battle of Bosworth Field, and lost. He was then demoted to an earl. His partisans put out a tale that after the battle he went to my father and said, “Richard was King, and as such I fought for him. If Parliament would make a post King I would fight for it, too, as would be my duty.” This is absurd, for Parliament does not make kings. And besides that, it is insulting to compare a king to a deaf-and-dumb post, and Howard was more clever than that. Now I was keeping him in the kenna-journey. An impossible wish. “In the meantime you are the Lady Willoughby, and an ornament to your husband,” I said pompously. I sensed even then how pompous I sounded.

  A change in tempo: time to break, again. This time I chose a young maiden, blond and soft. She did not dance well.

  “Are you new to court?” I asked. There were many come for the festivities, cousins and relatives of those already in residence.

  “Yes, Your Grace. I have come at the invitation of my uncle, Lord Mountjoy.” She nodded toward the man Katherine was now dancing with. He was the chamberlain of her household.

  “Ah, yes. A Yorkshire man,” I said.

  “Lincolnshire, Your Grace.” She stumbled against me. Her body felt tender.

  “You do not dance in Lincolnshire?”

  My teasing fell flat. She tried to pull away, thinking I scolded her. I pulled her back. “I will teach you,” I said. “Here at court we all dance. You will need to learn, if you stay, Mistress—what is your name?”

  “Bessie Blount,” she mumbled. Still she tried to pull away, and then stumbled over her feet again. In embarrassment, she stopped dancing entirely. I held her and danced the steps for her, the way a child does its doll. She was as limp and unmoving as any doll. “I shall not stay,” she whispered.

  “Nonsense,” I said. “Do not spend your beauty in Yorkshire. We need you here.”

  “Lincolnshire, Your Grace.”

  The beat changed; the drum thumped. She quickly slid away, and not to another partner, but to shadows.

  When all the company (excepting only the old and infirm) were at last part of the dance, we went on to other steps and other rhythms. The French ambassador was easily persuaded to demonstrate “la Volta,” which he had learned in Louis XII’s court only last summer. Everyone danced there, except Louis himself, who was too aged and fragile to bend his knees.

  Whilst the company was engrossed in the dances, I slipped away to oversee the preparations for the masquing to follow. As I moved along the high walkway connecting the Great Hall with the antechamber, I could see the huge crowd gathered outside, waiting to be let in, as they had been promised. Beyond them, on the hills surrounding the city, the bonfires blazed yellow, red, pink, ordering the skies themselves to rejoice with us.

  “Your Grace.”

  I turned quickly to see Don Luis Caroz, the Spanish ambassador.

  “A word with you, por favor.”

  “Indeed.” I smiled, giving permission for him to proceed.

  “I have not had the opportunity to wish you, in person, my congratulations. It is a great day for Spain, as well.”

  “The daughters of Spain are fair,” I said, “and bring Ferdinand fine grandsons.” Katherine’s older sister Juana had a ten-year-old son, Charles, who was said to be clever, and was likely to become Holy Roman Emperor someday. That is, if he had not int>

  “Ummm. Yes. I believe I had promised”—a glance out the window, at the dancing bonfires, the happy crowd—“fifteen hundred archers. With longbow, of course.” There was no limit; I could do anything now, and I would. Something sang within me, something that had never been there before. “But I think three thousand would be more helpful. With”—go on, do it, you want to—“new cannon as well. We can test them in the field.”

  “Oh! Your Grace!”

  Had I not promised Father on his deathbed to fight the Infidel? Could I do less, now that God had so clearly shown his favour to me? “It is my privilege to fight the enemies of Christ,” I assured him.

  Outside the crowd moved, like scales of a snake. Snake. I must see to the masque. I nodded to Caroz and indicated that the exchange was over. Still he stood staring at me, his eyes wide and almost fixed. “Your Grace ...” he said, “your cloak ... it is magnificent. It blinds me!”

  It was a full-circled cape of cloth-of-gold, weighing almost ten pounds. I pictured with amusement the little Spaniard decked with it. Common men think only of the glow of gold, never of its weight. “It is yours,” I said, unfastening it, and draping it over his shoulders. He almost buckled, with both the weight and astonishment. O, his face!

  Before he could utter a word, I was past him and opening the door to the antechamber, which served as a rehearsal room in which the players were already costumed and speaking.

  “Continue, continue!” I ordered them. I could hardly wait to see this idea of mine enacted: the story of the baby Hercules strangling the serpents sent by jealous Juno to destroy him in his crib. I had needed a large child to play the part of the mighty infant; Sir John Seymour’s six-year-old son Edward was now wearing an infant’s robe and practising throttling the “snakes”—long tubes of multicoloured velvet that had young ferret
s inside, so they would move and writhe on their own.

  “I hate the infant!” “Juno” proclaimed, pointing toward the crib. “Jupiter has sinned, and this child is the product of this sin. He must die!”

  Of course the infant prevailed over the serpents, and the happy conclusion was announced by “Britannia”: “Thus perish all the enemies of the King’s babe, who seek to harm him. Jealousy, envy, spite cannot stand against the will of the gods, and their protection gives our prince supernatural strength.” The company then gathered round the crib, raised their arms, and began an elaborate set-dance. I, as Jupiter, would appear in their midst, bringing the masque to a happy conclusion.

  Then we would all come forward, leaving the stage, and present ourselves to Katherine. For it was she I was honouring; she, as the goddess who had brought forth an heir. And if they said it was unseemly for a king to “present himself” to anyone, no matter who ... well, I would do as I pleased.

  The order had been given, and the commoneas past usual consumption time. My father stuck a large piece in his mouth. “Harry would have had himself naked,” he said, his words slurred because of his chewing.

  My mother tore off a piece of bread from a stale loaf and soaked it in the rabbit juice. “We could have had a gold letter,” she said wistfully. “Then our lives would have changed.”

  “Only for a year,” replied Father. “And then what? Back to foul rabbit stew?” He made a face as he chewed up a semi-rancid piece.

  Neither of them questioned the fact that the King lived in such wealth that the loss of the gold letters meant nothing to him. On the contrary, they were proud of having such a wealthy King. They did not connect their poor eating with the elaborate court masques designed by the revels-master.

  As well they should not, in spite of the current idea held by some that dividing up the Royal Treasury would enable everyone to dine on dainties for the rest of their lives. A mathematician friend of mine has calculated that if the Queen’s wealth were distributed equally throughout the kingdom, each person would receive exactly enough to purchase five loaves of bread, shoe one horse, and purchase one blanket. Hardly a luxurious life.

  But I digress. I speak now as a man, whereas I was then but a child, and as awed by the story of the King’s gold letters as anyone else. I lay in bed that night, imagining myself to be the young Prince. What would my life be like? I would lie beneath soft coverlets (I thought this as I scratched myself against the irritating rough wool), never have to do schoolwork, and have horses and hawks—in short, all the things an ignorant ten-year-old imagines when constructing the perfect life of another child.

  Over the next week I thought of the young Prince Henry constantly. When I awakened I immediately thought, “Now his nurse is taking him up and dressing him in fine linen.” When I went out to play I thought, “They are readying rooms of toys for him.”

  In truth, I was not far wrong. Upon birth, the infant Prince had been assigned his own household staff. He had his clerk of the signet, his serjeant of arms, and three chaplains, as well as a carver, a cellarman, and a baker—for his entertaining. He even had a special room set aside at Westminster for his future Council Chamber.

  I was playing near my house in the muddy main street when my fantasy world was shattered.

  “The Prince is dead,” Rob said, wiping his nose in the raw weather. Rob was an outsized boy who lived three houses away from me. I remember that the tip of his nose was bright red and his cheeks blotched.

  “What?” I said, forgetting to kick the leather-covered ball.

  “I said he’s dead. The new Prince.” Rob quickly took advantage of my pause to capture the ball for himself.

  “What?” I broke up the game by trailing after him, demanding, “What?” over and over.

  “I said he’s dead. What’s the matter? Are you deaf?” Rob planted his stocky legs in the mud and glared at me. I noticed that his hands had chilblains. There was red oozing between the cracks of his fingerjoints as well.

  “Why?”

  It was a fine answer—the very one that haunted the King himself, I was to learn years later.

  The King gave his son a funeral that stinted nothing. The hearse alone was bedecked with a thousand pounds of candles. Prince Henry, aged fifty-two days, was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey—where the shouts from the nearby celebratory tournaments had rung against the stones only nine days earlier.

  Curiously, Henry records the death in an almost Roman, stoic fashion, as if he confused the mood of the masque with the real event. It was most uncharacteristic of him, who was usually so vocal in his outrage.

  XIX

  HENRY VIII:

  But the next morning I had no thoughts for the people or what they would do with the pieces of my clothes, nor did I care. The next morning I had to make funeral arrangements; for Prince Henry had died in his crib even while the play was being enacted. My Hercules had not been able to overcome the serpents (sent by whom?—for we do not believe in Juno) that sought to take his breath.

  If he had lived, he would be thirty-five today.

  It was here the split began between Katherine and myself. Her grieving took the form of submission, of prostrating herself before the will of God, of devoting herself to His demands, in the form of prayer life and observances. She joined the Third Order of St. Francis, a branch of that discipline for those still in “the world.” But it enjoined the wearing of a coarse habit beneath one’s regular clothes, as well as rigorous fasting and long hours of prayer. Although its adherents remained physically in “the world,” in spirit they began to dwell elsewhere.

  I, on the other hand, turned outward. I looked into that inward-turning funnel of spiritual exercises that Katherine had flung herself into, and it frightened and repelled me. It was actions I understood—clean, precise, compelling actions—and it was here I must lose myself ... or find myself and, in so doing, restore myself to God’s favour. I had not been perfect enough in my deeds; I had not gone to war in person against Christ’s (and England’s) enemies.

  Wolsey aided me, here when I most needed him. Despite his office as a priest, it was actions that he, too, understood best: the world of men, not of the spirit. And what was the world of men that was spread out before us, like a box of sweetmeats with its top flipped open?

  The Holy League—the Pope’s alliance against the French—waited to welcome England into it. His Holiness had drawn up a document recognizing me as rightful King of France, once I had vanquished Paris. Maximilian, the Holy Roman Emperor, stood ready to serve in the field beside me.

  I would take my place on the Continental stage, to pursue England’s lost dream of conquering France in its entirety. Perhaps that was what God truly required of me; perhaps it was here that I had failed Him. As King, there were certain tasks I must undertake, as sd huge chunks of French territory. Henry VI had even been crowned King of France in Paris. But that was nearly a hundred years ago, in 1431. Since then the French had rallied, had pushed us back little by little, while we Englishmen fought ourselves on our own land, until nothing remained of our holdings in France but little Calais and a pitifully small area surrounding it—some nine miles deep and twelve miles wide.

  Perhaps, when I conquered France, God would turn His face toward me. I became more and more convinced of it.

  My advisors and Council, by and large, were not convinced. Of my desire to redeem myself with God they were unaware; but they were against war with France. Father had spoiled them with his lack of involvement in foreign entanglements, and like any privileged state, they had got used to it. After all, it was Father’s leftover councillors who had renewed the peace treaty with France, behind my back. These churchmen—Ruthal, Fox, and Warham—a pacifist trio, continued to thwart me and preach endlessly of the uselessness, the expense, the evil of war. The nobles on the Council—Howard, Earl of Surrey, and de Vere, Earl of Oxford and Lord High Admiral, whose raison d’être was making war—were in favour of it. But the Church was not, a
nd even the intellectuals (so carefully imported and cultivated to give a humanist polish to my court!) were not. Erasmus, Vives, Colet—they blathered and wrote such nonsense as “anyone who went to war because of ambition or hatred, he fought under the banner of the Devil.”

  Disgruntled, at one point I asked Wolsey to ascertain the exact cost of provisioning and equipping a force of thirty thousand men, so I would have true figures with which to argue. I made no muster rolls or correspondence available to Wolsey. By now I knew he was so industrious and resourceful he did not need any direction from me other than a vaguely worded request.

  However, as days passed without my seeing him, and as need arose to consult with him about a rumour that the fierce Pope Julius lay deathly ill, I made inquiries as to his whereabouts. At that time he lived in a small suite of rooms in the palace, adjoining the Chapel Royal, with only one manservant and one secretary. I did the unusual thing of going to his quarters myself. But Jonathan, his manservant, told me that his master was “moved to an inn in Kent, thereby to keep counsel with himself for a time.” I glanced into the plain, sparsely furnished room. All the table surfaces were bare; he had taken all his papers with him.

  “And where is that?”

  “At Master Lark’s, Your Grace. He has an inn called the ...” The fellow twisted his face in remembering. “... Lark’s Morning. Near Chilham.”