Henry VIII

by Alison Weir

  The Pope thanked God for raising up such a prince to be the champion of the Church, and expressed astonishment that Henry had found time to write a book, which was a very unusual thing for a king to do. In gratitude, he asked the royal author what title he would like. After some discussion, in which “Most Orthodox” and, incongruously, “Angelic” were suggested, Henry chose “Fidei Defensor” (Defender of the Faith), and this was conferred on him by papal bull on 11 October 1521. 23

  In England, and abroad, the King’s book was a best-seller, going through twenty editions in the sixteenth century. In February 1522 a papal legation came to England and formally presented the bull to Henry, whose title was then proclaimed at Greenwich. The King then went in procession to high mass as the trumpets sounded a joyous fanfare.24

  But Luther was not the man to be cowed by a mere king. He responded with a fierce diatribe accusing Henry of raving “like a strumpet in a tantrum,” writing “If the King of England arrogates to himself the right to spew out falsehoods, he gives me the right to stuff them back down his throat!”25 Later, he suggested that the Assertio had not been written by the King at all, but Henry replied, “However much you may pretend to believe that the book is not mine but forged in my name by cunning Sophists, yet many far more worthy of credence than your un-trusty witnesses know it to be mine, and I myself acknowledge it.” 26

  He would not stoop to answer Luther’s other scurrilous assertions, but delegated the task to More, Fisher, and the Queen’s confessor, Fray Alfonso de Villa Sancta, who all very ably refuted the reformer’s arguments. In 1525, Luther, who mistakenly thought that Henry’s attitude had softened, wrote him a long letter of apology, but was humiliatingly rebuffed.27

  Perhaps in recognition of his assistance with the Assertio, Henry knighted Thomas More and appointed him Under Treasurer of the Exchequer. In 1523, More was chosen as Speaker of the Commons, and in 1525 was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. It seemed that Henry could not do enough for him. Sir Thomas, however, had already perceived that there was more to the King than most people realised, and warned Thomas Cromwell, an up-and-coming young man in Wolsey’s service, to handle their master with caution, “for if the lion knew his strength, hard were it to rule him.”

  More was now a wealthy man and able to buy a fine house at Chelsea. 28 The King, “for the pleasure he took in his company,” would sometimes arrive there unannounced “to be merry with him.” Once, he came to dinner, and “after, in a fair garden of his, walked with him for the space of an hour, holding his arm about his neck.” After Henry had left, Sir Thomas’s son-in-law, William Roper, who had married his erudite daughter Margaret, told More “how happy he was, whom the King had so familiarly entertained, as I had never seen him do to any other except Cardinal Wolsey.” His father-in-law, although touched, replied with asperity, “Son Roper, I may tell thee that I have no cause to be proud thereof, for if my head could win him a castle in France, it shall not fail to go.”29 He had no illusions as to the fickleness of the King’s favour.

  That year, “no great giests were appointed” for a progress, 30 but the King is known to have visited Oxford. In December, Wolsey acquired yet more offices and wealth when he was appointed abbot of St. Albans, the richest abbey in England. Earlier in the year, Robert Fairfax, the celebrated musician, had been buried there at the King’s expense, although his memorial brass is sadly lost. Wolsey’s abbacy brought him two substantial properties, The More and Tittenhager, which he immediately set about refurbishing.

  Yet not everything was going Wolsey’s way. Henry had veered away from the French alliance the Cardinal had worked so hard to promote, and was negotiating a treaty with the Emperor. Wolsey was nevertheless content to go along with this, because Charles had promised to help make him Pope, and when Leo X died in December 1521, his hopes soared. But they were to be rapidly dashed, for instead of supporting Wolsey, the Emperor put forward his former tutor, who was elected Pope as Adrian VI. When Adrian died two years later, Wolsey was still confident of success, but again Charles failed him: the imperial candidate this time was Giulio de’ Medici, who became Pope Clement VII. No one voted for Wolsey. The Cardinal never forgave Charles for his double betrayal, and thereafter became more ardently Francophile than ever.

  28

  “A Proud Horse Tamed and Bridled”

  The Emperor, desperate for an ally, had finally weaned Henry away from Francis I with promises of a joint invasion of France, the partition of any conquests, and the recognition of Henry as King of France. The new Anglo-Imperial alliance was to be sealed with the betrothal of the twenty-two-year-old Charles to the Princess Mary, now six. On 2 Mar 1522, the King held jousts in honour of Charles’s ambassadors, in which he himself rode a horse trapped in silver caparisons embroidered with a wounded heart and the motto “Elle mon coeur a navera” (She has wounded my heart).1 The lady likeliest to have been the object of such overt yet mysterious symbolism was Mary Boleyn, although given the ramifications of the game of courtly love, it could have been anyone.

  Two days later, on the night of Shrove Tuesday, the envoys were Wolsey’s guests at York Place, where was staged a pageant of some significance entitled The Château Vert. The “château” was a green castle with three towers. On each flew a banner: “one of three broken hearts, one showing a lady’s hand holding a man’s heart, the third depicting a lady’s hand turning a man’s heart. The castle was occupied by ladies with strange names: Beauty, Honour, Perseverence, Kindness, Constancy, Bounty, Mercy and Pity. All eight ladies wore Milan-point lace gowns made of white satin, and each had her name embroidered in gold on her head gear, and Milan bonnets of gold encrusted with jewels. Underneath the fortress were more ladies whose names were Danger, Disdain, Jealousy, Unkindness, Scorn, Sharp Tongue and Strangeness, dressed like Indian women” in black bonnets.

  “Then eight lords entered, wearing cloth of gold hats and great cloaks made of blue satin. They were named Love, Nobleness, Youth, Devotion, Loyalty, Pleasure, Gentleness and Liberty. This group, one member of which was the King himself, was led in by the man dressed in crimson satin with burning flames of gold. His name was Ardent Desire, and the ladies were so moved by his appearance that they might have given up the castle, but Scorn and Disdain said they would hold the fort.” 2 There followed the usual mock siege: “The lords ran to the castle, at which point there was a great sound of gunfire, and the ladies defended it with rose water and comfits. The lords replied with dates, oranges and other pleasurable fruits, and eventually the castle was taken. Lady Scorn and her companions fled. Then the lords took the ladies by the hands and led them out as prisoners, bringing them down to floor level and dancing with them, which pleased the foreign guests immensely. When they had danced their fill, everyone unmasked themselves. After this, there was an extravagant banquet.”3

  It was probably William Cornish who produced the pageant and played the role of Ardent Desire:4 Hall makes it very clear that it was not the King. This was Cornish’s last major pageant: he died in 1523, and was succeeded as deviser of court revels by John Rightwise, who continued in the same tradition. Rightwise, a clever Latinist, succeeded William Lily that same year as High Master of St. Paul’s School.

  Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk, led the dancers as Beauty; the Countess of Devon played the role of Honour; Mary Boleyn was Kindness; Jane Parker, the daughter of Lord Morley and shortly to be betrothed to Mary’s brother George Boleyn, was Constancy; and Anne Boleyn, Mary’s younger sister, 5 recently recalled from the French court because of the deteriorating political situation, was Perseverence.

  Anne Boleyn was just embarking on her spectacular but ultimately disastrous career, and this was her public debut at the English court. Born around 1501,6 she had spent her formative years first at the brilliant court of Margaret of Austria, then in the household of Mary Tudor during her brief reign as Queen of France, and later as a maid of honour to the pious Queen Claude. At the Burgundian and French courts, Anne had gained a fin
e education and learned every sophisticated accomplishment (as well perhaps as some more dubious ones), and on her return to England, her father—or possibly her sister’s influence—was able to secure her a place in Queen Katherine’s household. Anne stood out among the ladies at the English court because she was so French in her manners and style of dress, and therefore at the forefront of fashion.

  Anne was then about twenty-one, rather old to be unmarried. For two years now, her father had been negotiating to wed her to Sir James Butler, heir to the Earl of Ormonde, to settle a dispute over the Ormonde inheritance; but the matter was dropped for reasons that are not clear.7

  Thanks not only to Sir Thomas Boleyn’s talents as a diplomat and courtier, but also no doubt to his daughter Mary’s occasional occupancy of the royal bed, the Boleyns were in the ascendant and becoming very influential. Sir Thomas, now a wealthy man thanks to the lucrative stewardships that had been heaped upon him, was appointed Comptroller of the Household in 15208 and Treasurer of the Household in the autumn of 1522. 9 In 1523, he was made a Knight of the Garter.

  Boleyn was succeeded as Comptroller by Sir Henry Guildford, whose vacated office of Master of the Horse was filled by Sir Nicholas Carew. During the decade to come, Carew would often be away from court on embassies to Paris. Still a self-avowed “reprobate” who “never read any book of Scripture”10 but enjoyed Froissart’s Chronicles, he was nevertheless highly regarded by Francis I, who on many occasions urged Henry VIII to advance him.

  In 1522, Henry appointed a new French Secretary, Bryan Tuke, a former Clerk of the Signet and secretary to Wolsey. Tuke was a cultivated humanist and correspondent of Erasmus, and a fussy civil servant who liked things to be done the traditional way. In 1532, he wrote an elegant preface to the first printed edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

  There was great pageantry when, on 26 May 1522, the Emperor arrived in England on a state visit to mark the signing of the new treaty and his betrothal to the Princess Mary. After being met by Wolsey at Dover, he was conducted to the castle, where later that day the King turned up as if by chance, “that it might appear to the Emperor that his coming was of his own mind and affection.” 11 Henry could not wait to show off his warship, the Henry Grâce à Dieu, and himself escorted Charles around it. The two monarchs were rowed around the harbour in a little boat, and the Emperor marvelled at the well-armed English fleet.

  The two royal retinues then rode via Canterbury and Rochester to Gravesend, whence they travelled in thirty barges to Greenwich; all the ships in the Thames were “well garnished with streamers and banners, guns and ordnance,” which fired a salute as the Emperor passed by. 12 At Greenwich, on 2 June, the Emperor met his intended bride: “At the hall door, the Queen, Princess and all the ladies received and welcomed him.” He knelt for Katherine’s blessing, “as is the fashion of Spain between aunt and nephew,” and expressed “great joy” at seeing her “and in especial his young cousin Mary,”13 who gave him a gift of horses and hawks. That evening there was a great dinner, followed by dancing, with the Emperor solemnly leading out his diminutive betrothed. There was not enough accommodation in the palace for Charles’s retinue, which numbered two thousand persons and one thousand horses, and many had to be billeted in the nearby houses of courtiers or in local inns.

  From Greenwich, Charles made a state entry into London, where the livery and craft guilds and German merchants resident in the City accorded him a lavish welcome, with wonderful pageants—one of them devised by John Rastell—and seasonal decorations. The welcoming speech was made by Sir Thomas More. Both the Emperor and the King were presented with finely crafted swords.

  Charles and his suite were lodged in the Priory of the Blackfriars next to the nearly completed Bridewell Palace, and in the houses of rich citizens. Extra beds had had to be requisitioned from Richmond and the Tower. 14 The Emperor had brought with him not only the great nobles of his dominions, but doctors, surgeons, an organist, a master cook, a pastry chef, and a sauce maker. Henry provided four tuns of beer each day for his visitors, who were seen to eat heartily of the choice fare on offer.15

  While in London, Henry took the Emperor to view the Henry VII Chapel in Westminster Abbey and Westminster Hall, during which outing they were mobbed by a crowd desperate to see and touch them. At Bridewell, the two sovereigns played tennis against each other, with the Prince of Orange and the Margrave of Brandenburg. “They departed even hands on both sides after eleven games.”16 On 8 June Henry hosted a feast for the Emperor at Bridewell Palace, and on another evening the Suffolks gave a great dinner at Suffolk Place in Southwark.

  Henry next took Charles to Richmond for the hunting; then it was on to Hampton Court and Windsor, where on 10 June both monarchs signed their new treaty. During mass, the Emperor wore his Garter robes and sat in his stall in St. George’s Chapel; he and Henry both swore on the Blessed Host to remain in perpetual amity, and their pact was sealed by “great feasting.” 17

  That evening, the court gathered in St. George’s Hall to watch “a disguising or play” by William Cornish, in which “a proud horse,” representing Francis I, was “tamed and bridled” by an allegorical figure called Amity. A “sumptuous masque” and “costly banquet” followed.18

  The next few days were given over to the pleasures of the chase. Then, on 19 June, the Emperor and Mary were formally betrothed. On 3 July, Henry and Charles were hunting near Winchester, and afterwards feasted in Winchester Castle beneath the Round Table, which had been repainted in honour of Charles’s visit with a prominent Tudor rose in the middle.19 On 6 July the Emperor, bearing rich gifts from his host, sailed from Southampton, escorted by thirty of Henry’s ships, which were then detailed to reconnoitre along the French coast.

  A double portrait of Henry and Charles probably commemorates this visit. They sit at a table where lies a document—the treaty?—and above their heads is a rich canopy of estate. Each holds a sword, and there is a scene in a globe that perhaps portrays Rastell’s pageant.20

  Work had been proceeding rather slowly on the King’s tomb, but in 1522, when Henry presumably complained about this, or found fault with the workmanship, Pietro Torrigiano’s hot temper got the better of him. Henry’s wrath was such that the sculptor was obliged to flee back to Florence.21 His compatriot and colleague, the Florentine Antonio di Nunziato d’Antonio, known as Antonio Toto, a former pupil of Domenico Ghirlandaio, remained in the service of Cardinal Wolsey. Toto, one of the most important Italian artists then working in England, initially carried out decorative work and painted scenery for pageants, but was soon painting religious pictures for Hampton Court. Later, he is known to have worked on narrative paintings for the King. Giorgio Vasari, the Italian art historian, says that Toto executed “numerous works” for Henry, “some of which were in architecture, more especially the principal palace of that monarch [i.e., Whitehall], by whom he was very largely remunerated.” 22 In 1530, Toto was awarded £25 (£7,500) per annum for life. Vincenzo Volpe worked as his assistant.

  Work on the unfinished tomb was abandoned. In 1528, Henry had a simple vault made ready for him in the choir of St. George’s Chapel.

  In February 1523, the Princess Mary was seven, and it was considered time for her formal education to begin. Few women were educated at that time—Katherine of Aragon and the daughters of Sir Thomas More were outstanding but rare examples of the bluestocking—but attitudes were beginning to change. “Erudition in women is a reproach to the idleness of men,” wrote the enlightened More. Yet even he, along with most other people, still held that marriage was a woman’s highest vocation, and he placed great emphasis on his girls’ acquiring the requisite domestic skills; nor would he allow them to show off their academic talents outside their home.

  Influenced by More’s example, and also by the fact that Mary might well one day be Queen of England in her own right, the King and Queen were anxious for their daughter to be provided with an excellent classical education in the humanist tradition. In doing so,
they set a trend which other learned or aristocratic parents would follow, so that in time the kind of formal education hitherto available only to boys came to be regarded as desirable for girls also.

  Mary’s first tutor, appointed in 1523, was Henry’s physician, the elderly Dr. Linacre; he taught her Latin and wrote for her a rudimentary grammar book before his death in October 1524. An eminent Spanish educationist, Juan Luis Vives, was then asked by the Queen to draw up a curriculum for the Princess that would prepare her for her domestic role as a wife and mother, and also for her possible public role as the future Queen of England.

  Vives had been invited to England in 1523 by Cardinal Wolsey to become Reader of rhetoric at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Queen Katherine knew of him by repute, probably from Sir Thomas More, who had met Vives in Bruges in 1520 and been very impressed with his ideas. In 1522, the Queen had granted Vives a pension and requested him to dedicate his translation of St. Augustine’s City of God to Henry VIII. In 1524, Vives dedicated his treatise on female education, De Institutionae Foeminae Christianae (The Instruction of a Christian Woman), to Katherine, who had herself commissioned it.

  The regimen drawn up by Vives was severe and demanding, suitable only for a bright child. Its objective was to inculcate in Mary the highest moral standards. To that end she was to read only the weightiest classical and scholastic authors—Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, Plato, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine—as well as the works of Erasmus and More, and eschew romances or any “idle” book that might lead to wanton behaviour, since women were considered feeble-minded creatures, easily corruptible. Because silence was valued in the fair sex, Vives disapproved of females’ being taught rhetoric, and considered theology, philosophy, and maths beyond their intellectual capabilities.

  The Princess was to share her lessons with a handful of carefully chosen companions. All would be taught Latin, French, some Italian and Greek, grammar, music, traditional dancing, household management, and good manners, and were required to read selected passages from the Bible every day. Vives himself appears to have instructed Mary in Latin; all other subjects were taught by the devout, kindly Richard Fetherston, the Queen’s former chaplain, while Katherine regularly read with her daughter and helped with her translations. Like all the Tudors, Mary was gifted with musical ability. She had been taught from a very early age to play the virginals and lute,23 and her proud father loved to show off her precocious talent.