The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers

by Margaret George

  “Do not condescend to me, Your Grace.”

  He was right; that was what I had been doing. I began again. “Our goal is that you replace the Pope as the highest spiritual authority in England. Thus, a decision made by you cannot be appealed over your head to the Pope. To do that, we must sever certain connections with Rome. Parliament is doing just that.”

  “How? By what authority?”

  “By its own authority. By what authority, after all, did Rome first assert her jurisdiction here in England? By her own. Yes! This whole intricate structure of the Church that you see in England-the cathedrals, the abbeys, the parish priests, the wandering, preaching friars, the monasteries—all rest on such a flimsy base of authority. Rome’s say-so! Which Parliament will now examine and repudiate.”

  “With what specific laws?”

  Ah! His mind now quickened to the legal, canonical subtleties of the issue. Good. Let him lose himself there. I smiled. “Two.” He looked surprised. “Only two. The first: the Act Forbidding Appeals to Rome. The second: an act providing for the nomination and consecration of bishops without consulting Rome first. I have not thought of a name for this one yet-something innocuous, I hope.”

  “I see. Rome will not have the power to name the clergy in England, nor to pass judgment on its subsequent actions. Rome will be impotent.”

  Why must he use that word? “Just so.”

  “Why should Parliament agree to pass such laws?” he asked blandly.

  “Because I have lulled them into believing the laws are as innocuous as their titles. I have gone to great lengths to paint a picture of myself hand-in-glove with Clement. Would such a loyal son do anything to harm his spiritual father? Of course not. These laws are but trifling mae window-seat and rubbed his forehead. “You are making a mistake,” he said, with great sadness.

  Now I must listen to yet another “warning.” I was beginning to accept it as one of the occupational hazards of kingship. I sighed and waited.

  “To use Parliament thus is to grant them a power you will regret. If they have the power to confer a right, they also have the power to take it away. Should they decide to do so later, and by your own will the Pope is divested of moral, ecclesiastical, and legal authority in England, to whom will you turn for support? You are making Parliament King in England. I fear that, Your Grace. You are taking away a distant, inconsistent, but morally based ruling partner and replacing it with a nearby secular one.”

  Was that all? “I can manage Parliament,” I scoffed. “It is a child in my hands.”

  “Children grow up, Your Grace. And when your son is but a child, Parliament will be his elder brother. Who will rule then?”

  “I do not intend to let Parliament grow out of bounds. I shall trim it back after the break with Rome is complete.”

  “Trimmed hedges grow back fast, as any palace gardener will affirm. And in human beings, a taste for power is seldom lost.” He looked at me oddly, as if about to add something, then thought better of it.

  “It is all I have to use at the moment. Would you have me dispense with it entirely and rule by my own decree, like Nero? By heaven, what a lovely thought!” I smiled. “But I fear the people would never tolerate that. And I work and live with what is, not with what would be, should be, or could be.”

  I looked out the window at the muddy Thames sliding by, bleak and March-dismal.

  “Nevertheless, your warning is well taken.” I reached over and patted his shoulder. “I do believe you have some political instincts after all, Thomas. That’s a relief!”

  He smiled wanly.

  “Now to more pleasant things. Your consecration. It is a lovely ceremony....”

  So it was. But more lovely, to my ears, was the simple one preceding it in a private chamber in Westminster. There Thomas Cranmer, in the presence of myself and discreet witnesses, solemnly protested that he did not intend to keep any oath of obedience to the Pope if it involved going against the law of the land, the will of the King, or the law of God. The first two were my creatures, and the third was certainly open to royal interpretation.

  The transition had begun.

  XLVIII

  Now it was Holy Week, which the new Archbishop prepared to celebrate in grand fashion, under my orders.

  “Must we have it all, Your Grace?” Cranmer looked as distressed as he dared. He indeed leaned toward the Reformers, but dared not openly show it.

  “Aye.”

  “Even ... ?”

  “Even creeping to the cross on Good Friday. I myself will lead the procession uldeping to the cross’?” laughed Anne. “That ancient relic! My love, you will rub your knees raw.”

  “I intend to. It is necessary that I observe all the old forms, even the ‘ancient relics,’ to reassure the people that the break with Rome does not mean we are abandoning the True Faith. And after Good Friday comes Easter.”

  “When your new Queen is paraded out.”

  We were standing near a large window in the King’s chamber at Westminster, whence we had come to spend Holy Week. Young priests were going in and out of the Abbey below like a line of ants, carrying sheaves of willows for Palm Sunday on the morrow.

  “Yes. It is our own time of rejoicing; we have certainly spent more than forty days in preparation for this day.”

  She laughed, and the early April sunlight struck her face-all youth and hope she was, and I felt my heart sing within me. “We shall not wait until the sun rises on Easter. No, you shall come out with me on the first Mass of Easter—Easter Eve at midnight.”

  Her eyes danced. “My new gown is cloth-of-silver. It will look best by torchlight!”

  “Like a faerie queen,” I said.

  The entire court was to celebrate Palm Sunday together. I had made it clear that that was my wish, and although they could not know why it was important to me, they naturally acceded. Some hundred of them assembled in the Great Hall of Westminster Palace just prior to the High Mass in the Abbey adjoining. Colours were drab; they were saving their best and newest for Easter Eve. Oh, what a blaze of colour there would be that night!

  Anne was with her ladies; officially she was still but a lady of the court, serving a Queen who was no longer Queen but merely Dowager Princess of Wales; and no longer at court, either. Just so are appearances honoured which are absurd and fool no one, yet we are fond of them.

  She stood, Anne the secret Queen, surrounded by her own lady-servers, who were casting flirtatious looks toward the gentlemen of my Privy Chamber. These were generally young and well-favoured men from leading families. Norris, as my personal attendant, was the oldest, near my own age. The others ranged in age as low as Francis Weston, who was twenty-two.

  I thought back to the handsome young men who had crowded round my Privy Chamber when I first became King. Where were they now? William Compton, Edward Guildford, Edward Poyntz-all dead. Those remaining, like Carew and Neville, were aging boys, grown stout, with sagging jowls, yet with no more matter in their heads than twenty years ago.

  Fleetingly I wondered how Weston would look in twenty years. He was so pretty he looked almost like a she-man, and such did not age well; at forty they resembled over-experienced courtesans whose best experiences were past. He had best marry quickly, and well. Even then I noticed how solicitous Anne was of him. It was one of those things one takes in without being aware of it—like whether a certain tree has lost its leaves.

  Now Cranmer appeared before us, all stately in his glittering new robes of episcopal estate. He held up his hands and conferred a blessing upon us.

  A priest walked up and down, shaking holy water upon us from a silver vessel. Behind him came two servers, their purple penitential robes gleaming, handing out willow branches to each “pilgrim."1em">Cranmer blessed them. “As men long ago welcomed Our Lord into Jerusalem by honouring Him with palms, let us do the same in our lives. Keep and use these humble branches to the glory of God, and to aid you upon your spiritual journey.”

  Then he turned, slo
wly and gravely, and led us in measured steps into the Abbey, where he celebrated the Triumphal Procession into Jerusalem with a Mass so grand and so complete that no Papalist, no matter how ardent, could accuse us of leaning toward Lutheranism or abandoning the True Faith.

  Spy Wednesday. The day, traditionally, when Judas spied on Jesus, asking him questions, prying to find out where he would be the next day—so he could inform Caiaphas and the others and earn his thirty pieces of silver. All that day, most likely, Judas was asking softly worded questions: “My Lord and my Master-with whom shall you share the Passover meal?” Then must he wait awhile before asking offhandedly, “And on what street is the house where we must gather before sundown?”

  Spies. I hated spies. I could not imagine what a man must feel who spies. Nor a man who employs spies. It seemed to me that once a man began relying on spies, he put himself in their power. At first the information they feed him is true, but it is a bait to catch him, and then nothing is as it seems. I preferred to base my actions on what was obvious and could be seen with my own eyes.

  Night was falling, and it was time to go to the Spy Wednesday Mass-the public chanting of Tenebrae. In the great Abbey, all candles would be extinguished one by one-to reenact Jesus’ abandonment by everyone, down to the last disciple.

  The day itself had been one of gloom, and so the mood of despair and loss was already in the air. But it was intensified by the dirgelike chanting of the priests and the snuffing of all light in the great Abbey nave.

  It felt like a tomb—all cold and dark and enclosed by stone. I tried hard to imagine the mind of Our Lord as He found Himself alone on the earth. There was an awesome period stretching between the fellowship of the Last Supper and the glory of the Resurrection; theologians called this time Satan’s Hour. It was a time when Christ experienced all human desolation, felt Himself to be abandoned by God.

  I shivered in my cloak. How quickly they ran to abandon Him! How soon the Passover wine and candles and warmth faded away. Our attempts to keep Satan at bay are so weak and pitiful. He always runs us to ground and we must stand and face him-alone.

  I looked around me, but saw nothing. I could hear coughs and body movements, but all the men about me were hidden from my sight, and separate one from the other.

  This is how Satan rules—by separating us.

  But nothing can separate us from the love of God, Saint Paul says.

  Nothing save despair.

  Despair, then, is Satan’s handmaiden.

  Holy Thursday. Following the Last Supper, Christ washed the feet of the disciples, saying, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.” Now, as Kings of England had done time out of mind before me, I must wash the feet of beggars-as many beggars as I am yloning around them in wonder. They are barefoot, not because they have removed their shoes, but because they have no shoes to remove....

  I kneel before the first man, representing the first year of my life. He is old, scrawny like a diseased fowl, and his feet are callused and hard as claws. I pour the warm, rose-scented water over them, dry them gently with a new linen towel.

  The next man has festering sores all over his feet. The greenish pus runs into the water, clouding it in its silver basin. I beckon to Norris to bring a clean basin for the next man. It takes over an hour until the last man’s feet are washed.

  During all this, I do not feel a thing. Except shame that I feel nothing.

  Good Friday. Fasting all day, shut up in our smallest, plainest room. No one at court is allowed to speak to anyone else, to smile, to sing, to eat, to wear anything but black. Even the church bells’ metal clappers are replaced by wooden ones, to make dull, muffled sounds. A single piece of meat is left out on the table to grow maggoty and remind us of the corruption that awaits us all.

  Three o’clock-the Hour of Death, the Hour of Satan. The Temple veil is rent in half, and we are given over to the power of darkness.

  And then I felt it—felt its cold hand gripping me. And what had been pretence, form, play-acting, became real. I felt the power of the Devil, felt him in my very bowels. And God was far away, and the ceremonies did nothing to recall Him. Powerless, powerless ...

  All in the Abbey again, huddled together, a flock of black crows. Now Cranmer unveiled the great crucifix in three stages, chanting sorrowfully, “Behold the wood of the Cross, on which hung the Salvation of the World.”

  We knelt and answered, “Come, let us adore!”

  The cross was placed reverently upon a cushion on the altar steps. Cranmer crept toward it on his knees, then kissed it and prostrated himself on the flagstones before it.

  Now I must follow. I was frightened, frightened at my presumption and arrogance. I had meant to use this ceremony for political show, to reassure people of my innocence of any wrongdoing in appointing Cranmer Archbishop. Now I trembled at the implications of approaching the altar of God for such reasons. Would He strike me down, as He had done other rulers who had mocked Him in His very house?

  I began the crawl up the cold stones to the altar steps. My hands were shaking.

  “Mercy,” I heard my voice whispering. “Mercy, 0 God! Forgive me.” Closer and closer I came. My heart was pounding so rapidly I felt myself go dizzy. He would wait until I presumed to touch the sacred cross itself before He struck me.

  Now! I reached out and grasped the wood, clinging to it like a rock. I felt strength, power surge through it to me, fill me with peace, dazzling peace.

  I breathed out. Peace. I had always thought peace was the absence of fear, the absence of pain or sorrow. Now I knew peace was a thing in itself, a presence that had its own shape, that displaced all other feelings.

  I laid my forehead on the holy wood, pressing it hard as if that would bwidth="1em">“He is risen!”

  The silver trumpets blared, the candles blazed into light all over the Abbey.

  “Bestow the kiss of peace!” commanded Cranmer.

  Everyone stirred as faces were turned toward neighbours and the cheek-kiss was given.

  Then the traditional Mass of the Resurrection began. Nothing was omitted—from the procession of newly baptized Christians in their white robes to the public renunciation of the Devil and all his works and all his ways. Let anyone dare to challenge my Church, I thought smugly, to say everything was not intact!

  Now the solemn part began, the sacred mysteries of the Canon: the Offering, the Consecration, and the Communion, followed by the commemoration of the living ... “that it may please Thee to keep and strengthen Thy servant Anne, our most gracious Queen; that it may please Thee to be her defender and keeper, giving her the victory over all her enemies, we beseech Thee—”

  There was a scraping and movement in the back, which grew louder and made Cranmer halt in his chanting.

  People were leaving.

  I turned and stared. It could not be. But it was. And not just a few recalcitrants, but row upon row. They turned, looked mournfully up toward the altar where Cranmer stood, then filed out through the great Abbey doors.

  They refused to pray for Anne as Queen, or even to remain in a building where others did so!

  I stood, stunned, unable to believe what I had just seen-the spontaneous public rejection of Anne. Such a thing I had never even considered. I had seen the Pope and the Emperor and some conservative Northern lords, like the Earl of Derby, Lord Darcy, Lord Hussey, the great Marcher lords, Katherine’s partisans, as Anne’s enemies. But the common people! She was one of them. How could they reject her?

  Katherine must have paid these people! Her sneaking little monkey of an ambassador, Chapuys, was behind this insulting display. Well, I would have him brought before me and punished.

  In the meantime, there was this interminable Mass to endure—this Mass, so long awaited, now so ruinous. Beside me, Anne was still. I could feel her anger; it had a shape of its own.

  Alone in our royal apartments that night, she screamed with fury. It was past two in the morning, and by this time I had thought to be drift
ing off into a sleep of paradise—in Anne’s arms, feeling her kisses and murmurs of endearments and pretty thanks for all the dangers I had braved to make her Queen, to have brought her to this moment.

  But this moment had turned, like so much else in our lives, into an experience of pain and sorrow, of humiliation and frustration.

  “I hate them!” she shrieked for the tenth time. “I shall be revenged on them!” Then, to me: “Why did you not stop them? Why did you stand there like a ploughboy?”

  “I was as stunned as one,” I muttered.

  “You should have rounded them up and had them questioned!”

  Rem">ont size="3">Was it then that the unbidden thought exploded inside my head, past the barriers of desire and obsession? This is the behaviour of a commoner, not a Queen. Common she was born, common she remains. She is not the stuff of royalty. Immediately my love for her intercepted the thought, wrestled it to the ground, and deprived it of its liberty.

  “They are long since asleep in their beds. We could not find out who they were, even if we wanted. Forget it.” I myself intended to question Chapuys, but privately. “There is always a stir at a change. Even spring brings sadness of a sort.”

  I patted the bed, for which I still had hopes. “Come to bed, sweetheart. Let me make love to my Queen.”

  But I was as useless with her as I had been that other time, and I slept not at all the rest of that evil night.

  Were we cursed? Side by side we lay, each pretending to sleep, while those words ran like rats through our brains.

  XLIX

  It had happened all over the land. In church after church, when the prayer naming Anne as Queen had been read, people either fell silent or left the Mass. They spoke as loudly as the madman who had run about the streets the previous summer, yelling, “We’ll no Nan Bullen!”; as forcibly as the crowd who had pursued Anne and tried to stone her; as angrily as the Ahabpreaching friar.