Once again Henry intended to deal with the threat to his rule aggressively. He levied huge taxes to fund a massive retaliatory assault on Scotland; but then something unexpected happened. Far from the threat of Scottish invasion the impoverished inhabitants of Cornwall, resentful of the taxes, rebelled against Henry. They swept eastwards and had reached Blackheath, only two and a half miles from the royal palace at Greenwich, before Henry at last defeated them on 17 June 1497. The rebel leader ‘Lord Audley was drawn from Newgate to the Tower Hill in a coat of his own arms, painted upon paper reversed and all to torn’.15 Other rebels were sold into slavery, their lands confiscated, or huge fines imposed, and the west still seethed with resentment when, on 3 September, two Italian ambassadors were granted an audience with Henry at Woodstock in Oxfordshire.
Henry had a reputation in Europe as a king who had acquired huge riches and the Italians were anxious to meet him. They were escorted deep into the palace, through ever more richly decorated rooms, until they reached ‘a small hall’ hung with the tapestries sewn with thread made of pure gold, known as Arras. At the far end stood the king, his hand resting on a gilded chair. Henry was wearing a black cap pinned with ‘a large diamond and a most beautiful pearl’. A violet cloak, lined with cloth of gold, fell to the ground, and around his neck he wore a collar with four rows of precious stones and pearls. Standing alongside him was Prince Arthur. A month from his eleventh birthday, Arthur was tall for his age, and of ‘singular beauty and grace’. He chatted fluently to the ambassadors in Latin, confirming the view held in diplomatic circles that he was ‘a most distinguished’ future son-in-law for Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain – Henry had signed a treaty of friendship with the Spanish monarchs which was to be sealed with a marriage between Arthur and their daughter, Katherine of Aragon. Henry too was judged ‘gracious’ and ‘grave’, and they admired his clear and exquisite French.16
Following a private meeting with Henry after dinner the ambassadors were invited to meet the queen. They found Elizabeth of York in another small room looking most ‘handsome’, in her stiff cloth of gold. It was best to stand in these royal fabrics, which were made with gold beaten into long strips and wound around a silk core before being woven, sometimes with green, red or white, to give it a particular colour. If you sat, the metal bent, which could leave deep creases. Elizabeth of York was beside her small, energetic mother-in-law, and her boisterous second son, the six-year-old Harry, Duke of York.17 A terracotta figure of a laughing, red-haired boy dressed in a jacket of green cloth of gold, is believed to be of the future Henry VIII at around this time. The cheeks are round and pink, the narrow eyes look away from the viewer, and the teeth flash white. The Italians were informed that there was famine in the rebel heartlands of the west, a sign ‘that the king is under the protection of God eternal’.18 His sons also advertised the security of succession and Henry seemed to them calm and confident, which was exactly the image he wished to project.
It was a front. Henry was anxiously waiting to see what Perkin would do next and the answer was not long coming. Only four days later Perkin landed at Whitesand Bay in Cornwall. Within weeks he had raised 8,000 men under his standard, which depicted a boy emerging from a tomb, and Exeter was put under siege.19 But when the king’s superior forces moved south, Perkin’s lack of military training was again evident. He tried to flee the country, but was soon captured with his wife. Henry treated Lady Catherine Gordon as a victim of Perkin’s duplicity, and she was found an honourable place in the queen’s household. Once again Elizabeth of York’s feelings were not considered, and for a time she was obliged to see the man who had posed as her dead brother at court, where he was expected to admit repeatedly his humble origins in Tournai.20
Rumours continued to circulate that Perkin was a Plantagenet, and as they did so his situation became increasingly grim. A deliberately engineered ‘escape’ attempt saw him sent to the misery and humiliation of the stocks, and then to a dungeon in the Tower. With Perkin placed out of sight, and mind, Henry had a glamorous official history of his own life and accession read at court.21 Entitled ‘The Twelve Triumphs of Henry VII’, the story mimicked the myth of the Labours of Hercules, and described how God had helped Henry survive the machinations of the Duchess of Burgundy, who was cast as Juno, Hercules’ relentless enemy.22
Perkin was to appear at court once more. When a Burgundian bishop requested an interview with him in August 1498, Henry agreed to bring him out of the Tower, and suggested that the Spanish ambassador also see him. Henry hoped to reassure Ferdinand and Isabella that Perkin no longer posed any threat. Perkin was duly brought from the Tower where, the Spanish ambassador was assured, ‘he sees neither sun nor moon’. He appeared frail, and ‘so much changed’ the ambassador judged that he did not have long to live.23 Henry asked Perkin why he had pretended to be Richard, Duke of York. Perkin dutifully blamed Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy. A previously unnoticed detail in the Great Wardrobe Accounts reveals Henry was so happy with Perkin’s performance that in November he rewarded him with a smart new doublet of black damask as well as new shirts and hose to wear in the Tower.24 However, an incident just a few months later left the Spanish still doubtful the Tudor dynasty had a long-term future.
Shut away in the Tower, along with Perkin, was the genuine last male heir of the House of York: Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, who after a few brief months in the care of Margaret Beaufort had been imprisoned in 1486 aged eleven, following the first stirring of Yorkist dissent. In February 1499 a new impostor claiming to be Edward Plantagenet was caught. He was soon hanged, but the Spanish were now aware that there was a royal prisoner in the Tower who remained a possible focus for future anti-Tudor feeling. The Spanish sent Henry a message implying strongly that if Arthur’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon was to go ahead, Edward Plantagenet’s life was a luxury Henry could not afford. Henry was devastated by this threat. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had reconquered Granada, expelled the Muslim invaders, and taken a united Spain to the front rank of European powers. Arthur’s marriage to their daughter would announce to the world that the Tudors were fit to be embraced by the great monarchies of Europe. Yet Henry shrank from the price now demanded of him. In March he was so troubled that a visitor thought he aged twenty years in a month.
Henry had regular, even daily ‘private conversations’ with his Franciscan confessors, and still sent expensive gifts to the cathedral in Vannes where St Vincent Ferrer, the messenger of penance, was buried.25 He was genuinely torn between the requirements of the confessional, with its demand for an honest examination of conscience, and the brutal necessities of rule. As he struggled with his decision Henry heard a sermon every day that Lent, ‘and continued for the rest of the day at his devotions’.26 Eventually, he convinced himself that he would be justified in testing Edward Plantagenet’s loyalty, and that if his prisoner proved willing to commit treason, then executing him would be an honest decision, and not plain murder.
Henry chose Perkin to act as his agent provocateur. The new black damask suit Perkin wore had inspired his hope of the king’s favour, and this was reinforced when Perkin was transferred to comfortable rooms beneath those of Edward Plantagenet. Perkin duly made contact and the royal prisoner did not prove difficult to fool. Modern forensic psychologists observe that those imprisoned as children remain childlike into adulthood.27 This was very evident with this long-term inmate of the Tower. Aged twenty-four he was querulous and so under-educated it was said he didn’t even know the difference between a chicken and a goose.
In the summer of 1499 Perkin convinced his naive victim that he had a plan that would free them both and place one of them on the throne. Edward Plantagenet listened, rarely making any comment, but in failing to call a halt to the plans he had committed treason. On 3 August the ‘conspiracy’ was betrayed to the king. Perkin was tried and, after a final confession that he was no Plantagenet, hanged at Tyburn as a common criminal on 23 November. Whatever his hopes of favour had
been, he embraced his death ‘quietly’. The following Thursday afternoon the bewildered Edward was escorted to Tower Hill, and there the last male Plantagenet was beheaded. The Spanish ambassador crowed: ‘there does not remain a drop of doubtful royal blood; the only royal blood being the true blood of the king, the queen and, above all, of the Prince of Wales’.28 The marriage between Katherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur could now go ahead: a marriage which the bride later commented unhappily was ‘made in blood’.29
Henry had Edward Plantagenet buried in a family vault alongside his maternal grandfather, Warwick the Kingmaker.30 But nothing could disguise the brutality of his action. Even the Tudor apologist Polydore Vergil recorded how ‘The entire population mourned the death’ of the last son of the House of York; ‘Why indeed the unhappy boy should have been committed to prison, not for any fault of his own, but only because of his family’s offences, why he was retained so long in prison and what, lastly, the worthy youth could have done in prison which could merit his death – all these things could obviously not be comprehended by many.’31 Vergil went on, however, to supply the answer: ‘Earl Edward had to perish in this fashion in order that there should be no surviving male heir to his family.’32 The House of York was now as defunct as that of Lancaster.
12
PUNISHMENT
‘THIS DAY’, MARGARET BEAUFORT WROTE, ‘I DID BRING YOU INTO this world my good and gracious prince, king and only beloved son.’ It was 1501, forty-four years since she had given birth to Henry at Pembroke Castle, and he was losing his most trusted councillors to old age, amongst them his uncle Jasper. Margaret Beaufort was in constant pain from arthritis, while Henry, only thirteen years younger and aged by a hard life, was also suffering physical decline. He complained to his ‘beloved lady and mother’, ‘my sight is nothing so perfect as it has been, and I know well it will impair daily’.1 Others noticed that his teeth were ‘few, poor and blackish’ and that he suffered recurring throat infections. In May, when Henry became seriously ill at a royal hunting lodge in Essex, courtiers began to discuss the succession.
Henry’s eldest son, Arthur, aged fourteen, was the apple of his father’s eye, studious and reserved. As Prince of Wales he already had his own carefully vetted council and household based at Ludlow Castle. His younger brother, the ten-year-old Harry, Duke of York, still luxuriating in the care of his mother and grandmother, was a livelier, more easy-going child. The previous year he had teased the famous scholar Desiderius Erasmus when he came to dinner, sending a note down the table challenging him to match the poetry the young courtier Thomas More had brought as a gift. The great man was sent into a spin of anxiety, yet he also saw in the boy ‘a certain dignity, combined with singular courtesy’. They were sons Henry VII could be proud of, and the king ‘was full of paternal affection, careful of their education, aspiring to their high advancement, regular to see that they should not want of any due honour and respect’.2 Nevertheless, an official at Calais reported that, as the king lay ill, his young sons were not mentioned as possible candidates for the throne.
After the instability of the recent past, an adult was preferred as the next king, and ‘many divers and great personages’ put forward the claims of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham and Edmund de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk. The first of these was the son of the duke who had turned against Richard III and rebelled in 1483. Buckingham had attended Henry VII’s coronation procession as a boy, riding on a horse with a red velvet saddle. Now, he was a large athletic twenty-three-year old, and in Calais it was said he was ‘a noble man and would be a royal ruler’.3 He would be long remembered by poets who called him ‘the beautiful swan’, after the heraldic device of his Bohun ancestors, and as a prince descended from John of Gaunt’s brother, Thomas of Woodstock.4 The other candidate, Edmund de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, had been younger brother of the late Earl of Lincoln, who had led the Irish invasion against Henry with the boy pretender Lambert Simnel in 1487. Suffolk had worked hard to prove his loyalty since then, but Henry could never quite trust him.
To outsiders Henry’s self-control gave the impression of ‘most quiet spirit’, but beneath the surface his suspicious mind was ever at work. Henry had taken advantage of Buckingham’s minority to nibble away at the duke’s vast estates, and since then had deprived him of important office. Suffolk, perceived as the greater threat, was kept still more tightly bound, laden with humiliating debts, while being deprived of honours and income. It was fortunate that Henry had recovered his health by August 1501 when Suffolk finally lost patience and left England to claim the sobriquet of ‘the White Rose’. It was also a relief to Henry that Arthur’s long-planned marriage to Katherine of Aragon was poised to take place.
The king sent orders to every gentleman of substance in England, asking them to prepare to attend on the Spanish princess when she arrived. Margaret Beaufort recorded the great day, 2 October, in her Book of Hours, when, after a difficult sea voyage, ‘my lady princess landed’ at Plymouth harbour. The English greeted a pretty fifteen-year-old with almond-shaped eyes and red auburn hair. She had been named after her great-grandmother, Katherine of Lancaster, the daughter of John of Gaunt, and if she did not as yet speak any English, this did nothing to dampen public enthusiasm for the marriage. A Spanish attendant wrote home, observing merrily that she ‘could not have been received with greater rejoicings if she had been the Saviour of the world’.5
Katherine had arrived from the light and heat of Spain as the chill of an English autumn set in. Nevertheless she found there was much for her to admire in her new homeland. The land produced excellent beef, lamb and venison, its waters plentiful fish, seabirds and young swan, and they nurtured a tall, fair, good-looking race. The English were judged ‘pious’ by an Italian visitor and he noted they put their money where their hearts were, with ‘Their riches . . . displayed in the churches treasurers’, the buildings well maintained, with painted walls, exquisite stained-glass windows, and masterpieces of carved oak. Often this included a magnificent rood screen. These structures were solid to waist height with open arches above, and across the top a beam that supported the ‘rood’. Here were displayed the figures of Christ on the Cross along with his mother, the Virgin Mary, and his friend, St John.6 They were used to divide the central section of the church between the area where the priest conducted Mass to the east, and where the congregation stood to the west.
In contrast to today, the priest said Mass in Latin facing away from the congregation, who would pray or read privately on the other side of the rood screen. Many attended Mass daily, and the Italian visitor described women ‘carrying long rosaries in their hands’, reciting the Creed, the Our Father and the Hail Mary in Latin, and also reading prayers in English (or being read to by a friend) ‘in a low voice after the manner of churchmen’. For Katherine, whose mother had fought to defend Christian Spain by expelling the Muslim invaders, this was pleasing to watch.
Yet if the church was part of the rhythm of daily life, the English were also interested in ideas. Unity on discipline under the Pope was not matched by unanimity of thought in the late medieval church. There were as many as nine identifiable ‘schools’, and debates could be fierce. These often took place across dinner tables, for the English loved entertaining. Europeans were astonished by the freedom given to women in this regard: they could come and go to see their friends without their menfolk, and there was a high degree of physical familiarity. Erasmus described it as a ‘world of kisses’ where your hostess would greet you lip to lip and girls expected to dance while held in a man’s arms. With all this warmth and passion around her, the teenage Katherine of Aragon, who was by nature romantic, was surely all the more keen to meet her prince, and when she reached Hampshire she was assured she would do so soon. First, however, she had to meet his father.
It was the afternoon and Katherine was resting when King Henry arrived. Her ladies insisted she was on siesta, but Henry, ever controlling, was determined to ensure she was all he had hop
ed for his son. Katherine took this in good part, greeting him with ‘great joy and gladness’. She seemed to Henry the perfect princess: attractive, collected and gracious. An hour later Katherine was introduced to Arthur. Only just fifteen, he was formal and self-deprecating, of above average height though slightly built, very like his father as a boy. He greeted her in perfect Latin, before she returned the compliment. He ‘had never felt so much joy in his life’, he wrote to her parents, as when he saw her ‘sweet face’.7 Then they parted, to meet again at their wedding.
It was Friday 12 November by the time Katherine reached London, and prepared for her formal entry into the capital. The city walls were judged very ‘handsome’ and foreign visitors were struck in particular by the magnificence of the Tower, and ‘a convenient and beautiful bridge over the Thames, of many marble arches, which has on it many shops built of stone, and mansions, and even a church of considerable size’.8
The women of the Tudor family watched the procession together from a high room, ‘not in very open sight’. Margaret Beaufort, married from the age of twelve and never by choice, had used her power as the king’s mother to take a vow of celibacy and insist on an amicable separation from her husband, something that was, given his lack of say in the matter, probably unique.9 She now wanted to focus on her charitable and educative works and was about to embark on translations of religious works in French, achievements that would be followed by later royal women.10 Alongside her stood Elizabeth of York. The queen had grown plump with the years, but happier. The tension evident in the early days of her marriage, when her husband was so sensitive about their relative status, was gone: Henry had come to love her deeply and her influence on her husband had grown to match that of her mother-in-law.11 The queen’s daughters were also watching: Margaret Tudor, a tomboyish child of almost twelve, was dressed in cloth of gold, while the pretty golden-haired Mary, aged five, was in red velvet, a favourite colour.
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