Henry VIII

by Alison Weir

  On 12 December, Norfolk was arrested, and Surrey followed him to the Tower the next day, having been apprehended at Whitehall during dinner. 9 While Henry had good cause to proceed against Surrey, “his inexcusable severity” to Norfolk was hardly justified, but Hall imputes it to the effects of illness and pain.

  From his prison, Norfolk protested to the Council, “I have always shown myself a true man to my sovereign,” and added, “I think surely there is some false man that have laid some great cause to my charge, or else I had not be sent hither. I have had great enemies.” 10

  With the fall of the Howards and Gardiner’s disgrace, the conservative faction was finished, leaving Hertford’s party in a position of unchallenged dominance, both on the Privy Council and in the Privy Chamber. Van der Delft was in no doubt that “the custody of the Prince and the government of the realm” would be entrusted to Hertford, who had “obtained authority with the King.”11 It was significant that during December and January, Council meetings would be held at Hertford’s London house rather than at court.

  Once he was able to travel, the King moved in slow stages to London, lodging on the way at Esher, Nonsuch, and Wimbledon, before arriving at Whitehall. After making short visits to Ely Place in Holborn and Hampton Court, he stayed at Greenwich for the last time on 22 December, then finally returned to Whitehall, plainly very ill. Whereas, in August, he had paid less than £5 (£1,500) for medicines and sickroom comforts, in December the bill rose to £25 (£7,500).12 This included purchases of perfume to sweeten his chambers and sheets, “two pairs of slippers newly devised to warm feet,” and a new close stool upholstered in black velvet edged with a black silk fringe, with arms and a lifting seat.13 The treatments prescribed by Henry’s doctors included applications of rose water and “eyebright water,” ointments for haemorrhoids and the stomach, comfits of cinammon and green ginger, and regular blanket baths by the barber-surgeons. 14

  On Christmas Eve, the Queen and the King’s daughters left Whitehall on his orders, to spend Christmas at Greenwich. Prince Edward was at Ashridge, and at New Year Katherine sent him a double portrait of herself and the King, urging him to “meditate upon the distinguished deeds of his father” whenever he looked at it.15 The Prince wrote Henry a letter in Latin, assuring him he would strive to follow his example “in virtue, wisdom and piety.”16 It is unlikely he was aware of how ill the King was.

  Henry spent the festive season in total seclusion; the court was closed and only “a handful of councillors and three or four Gentlemen of the Chamber” were allowed access to the King.17 They kept at bay those who might exert undesirable influence over him, and ensured that little information about his condition reached the outside world, with the result that we know very little about what was happening to him during these final weeks. Nevertheless, van der Delft, and many others, guessed that Henry was dying: he was said to be “in great danger,” and his physicians were in despair.18

  Before he left for Boulogne in the summer of 1544, the King had drawn up his Will, in which were enshrined the provisions of the recent Act of Succession. On the evening of 26 December, he summoned Hertford, Paget, Lisle, and Denny to his chamber, and asked for the Will to be read to him. He then drew up a list of sixteen councillors of the reformist persuasion to serve on a Council of Regency, but made it clear that this was to be an equal coalition and that no one man was to wield power. Hertford, Dudley, Paget, Sadler, Cranmer, and Russell were included, but Henry refused to have Gardiner because “he was a wilful man and not meet to be about his son,” and of so troublesome a nature that no man but himself could rule him.19 In choosing the rest, Henry, unwittingly or not, prepared the way for the establishment of a radical Protestant government.

  Of course, the King’s arrangements for the regency ran contrary to Hertford’s expectations. Paget, who was “privy in the beginning, proceeding and ending of the Will,” wrote it out himself, and although it was said to be signed “with our own hand in our Palace of Westminster” on 30 December in the presence of eleven witnesses, the dry stamp was used, as Paget later admitted,20 and it must have been used after 23 January, because it refers to Sir Thomas Seymour as a privy councillor, and he was not admitted to the Privy Council until that date. The Will is said to have been given to Hertford on 30 December for safekeeping, but it appears that Paget had it in a box and Hertford kept the key.21

  Henry, therefore, did not sign the Will at all; in order to retain control over his councillors, he may have deferred doing so until the last possible moment, and then left it too late, leaving his councillors with no choice but to use the sign manual. It is also possible that, without the King’s knowledge, they altered the Will before the dry stamp was applied, but dated it to a day when the King had been well enough to sign it.22 However, had this been done, one would have expected the provisions to be more heavily weighted in favour of Hertford’s leadership, although the motive may have been merely to increase the size of individual bequests. Whatever the circumstances, no one thought to question the validity of the King’s Will at the time.

  Henry was stricken with fever again on 1 January 1547.23 On 8 January, there were rumours that he was dead, because, “whatever amendment is announced, few persons have access to his chamber.” 24 Two days later, the ulcer on his leg had to be cauterised, an agonising process in the days before anaesthetics. De Selve commented, “Whatever his health, it can only be bad, and [he] will not last long.” 25

  On 10 January, Queen Katherine and the Lady Mary returned to Whitehall. Although Henry was a little better, they were not allowed to see him for the present;26 it is not clear whether it was Henry, or his doctors, or the Seymour faction who kept them away.

  The Queen was not included in the Council of Regency, probably because Henry disapproved of women interfering in politics. However, he left her handsomely provided for, with £3,000 (£900,000) in plate, jewels, and furnishings, and £1,000 (£300,000) in cash, in recognition of “the great love, obedience and chastity of life being in our wife and Queen.”27

  Surrey was tried at the Guildhall for high treason on 13 January, and spoke up vigorously in his own defence, but his case was prejudiced from the start because, the day before, Norfolk had formally admitted his guilt in concealing his son’s treason. The King, although confined to his sickroom, followed reports of the proceedings closely, and noted on one memorandum, “If a man presume to take unto his arms an old coat of the Crown, which his ancestors never bore, nor he of right ought to bear, can he use it without offence?” Elsewhere he wrote, “If a man compassing himself to govern the realm do actually go about to rule the King, and should for that purpose advise his sister to become his harlot, what this imparteth?”28 It imparted, of course, that Surrey was guilty as charged, and his peers, on receiving a note to that effect from the King, accordingly condemned him to death. A triumphant Hertford was among them. On hearing his fate, Surrey shouted at him, “The King wants to get rid of the noble blood round him and employ none but low people!”29

  After the trial, Henry’s health improved a little. He ordered French saplings for his garden, evidently hoping to be around to see them grow into trees,30 and on 17 January he gave audience to both the Spanish and French ambassadors and said he was sorry that his incapacity had prevented the speedy dispatch of their business. When van der Delft and de Selve congratulated him on his recovery, he admitted that his suffering had been prolonged and severe. The ambassadors had been warned not to tire him, but he seemed “fairly well” and in good spirits, and spoke lucidly of international affairs, military matters, and a “closer amity” with France. However, he deferred frequently to Paget, who gave the impression of being better informed.31 This was to be the last time Henry would appear in public, and from henceforth access to his rooms would be severely restricted. Nevertheless, he was not yet at death’s door, and on 19 January was planning Prince Edward’s investiture as Prince of Wales.32

  A Bill of Attainder against both Norfolk and Surrey was intro
duced into Parliament on that day; this would sentence them to forfeit not only their lives, but also their lands and possessions to the Crown. The King told Paget that these would be “liberally disposed and given to his good servants,” and he drew up a list of those who were to benefit, which he “put in the pocket of his nightgown.” But despite excited speculation in the Privy Chamber, it was never found after his death. 33

  On 21 January, Surrey, who had made a frantic yet abortive attempt to escape from the Tower through his privy,34 was beheaded on Tower Hill.35

  After 19 January, Henry had had a relapse, and it was now obvious that he was dying. Even his musicians had been dismissed, and it was Paget who sat with him through the long winter nights, deep in conversation.36 Later, Hertford and other councillors took their turn.

  Clearly, the King was losing his grip on affairs. On 23 January, when it was suggested to him that Sir Thomas Seymour be made a privy councillor, he cried out from his sickbed, though his breath was failing him, “No! No!” But Hertford pressured him into agreeing.37

  Three days later, his strength ebbing away, Henry summoned the Queen to his bedside. “It is God’s will that we should part,” he began, but was too choked to go on and, weeping, sent her from him. 38 In a less sympathetic mood, he dictated a farewell letter to Francis I, who was dying of syphilis, and reminded him that he too was mortal. 39 Even in extremis, the old rivalry simmered.

  On 27 January, the dry stamp was applied to the Howards’ attainder, the royal assent having been given by commission in the House of Lords, as the King was too ill to attend.40 Norfolk’s execution was set for the following day. But the Duke was not to die, for the King had other, more urgent concerns, and may have decided that enough blood had been spilt. It is often said that Henry died before he could sign the death warrant, but his signature on the Act of Attainder would have been sufficient authority for the execution to go ahead. And if, as Odet de Selve later suggested, Hertford had applied the dry stamp without the King’s knowledge, he would surely have seen that the sentence was carried out. So the likelihood must be that Henry ordered that Norfolk be reprieved.41

  On the morning of 27 January, the King saw his confessor and received holy communion. Later that day, he was well enough to discuss state affairs with his councillors, but by the evening he was failing fast. The Council, knowing his death was imminent, ordered that all the ports be closed.

  No one, even his doctors, had as yet plucked up the courage to warn Henry of his imminent demise. He had always been loath to hear any mention of death, and Hall states that “his servants scarcely dared speak to him to put him in mind of his approaching end, lest he, in his angry and imperious humour, should have ordered them to be indicted,” for it was treason to predict the King’s death. Yet it was also unthinkable that a man should be denied time to prepare his soul, so Sir Anthony Denny boldly ventured to warn his master that “in man’s judgement, he was not like to live” and should remember his sins, “as becometh every good Christian man to do.” Henry said he believed that the mercy of Christ would “pardon me all my sins, yea, though they were greater than they be.”42

  Denny asked Henry if he would like to speak to any “learned man.” He replied that “if he had any, it should be Dr Cranmer, but I will first take a little sleep, and then, as I feel myself, I will advise upon the matter.” These were his last known words. A messenger was at once dispatched to Croydon to summon the Archbishop, but when Cranmer arrived in the early hours of Friday, 28 January, the King was beyond speech, and when the primate asked him to give some sign that he died in the faith of Christ, “did wring his hand in his as hard as he could.” Cranmer and the councillors present took this for hearty assent.43

  Shortly afterwards, at around 2 A.M.,44 Henry VIII gave up his long struggle and quietly slipped from this world.

  The cause of the King’s death is uncertain, thanks to the secrecy that surrounded his final illness, but it is likely to have been a pulmonary embolism. For two days his passing was kept secret, and his body lay undisturbed in his bedchamber while outside court life went on as normal, with the King’s meals being brought to his lodgings with the usual flourish of trumpets. 45

  On 28 January, the Earl of Hertford rode to Hertford Castle to secure the person of the nine-year-old Prince and pay homage to him as King. Once this was accomplished, he sent Paget the key that would unlock the casket containing the old King’s Will. The next day, Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, so overcome with weeping that he could barely speak, announced Henry VIII’s death to Parliament, where there were great demonstrations of grief. The young Edward VI was brought to the Tower on 31 January, and there proclaimed King, with the heralds crying, “The King is dead! Long live the King!”

  The next day, in defiance of his late master’s wishes, Hertford was named Lord Protector and appointed to head the Council of Regency. 46

  Meanwhile, Henry’s body had been embalmed and encased in lead, and laid in state in the presence chamber at Whitehall, surrounded by burning tapers. After a few days, it was moved into the chapel.

  There were solemn dirges and tolling bells in every parish church in the land, in memory of the late King. In Paris, Francis I ordered a requiem mass at Notre Dame. On 14 February, Henry VIII’s body began its journey from Whitehall to Windsor, where it was taken in a solemn procession stretching for four miles. Antonio Toto and Nicholas Bellin helped to produce the heraldic escutcheons and painted banners that were carried about the hearse.

  The vast coffin, covered with palls of blue velvet and cloth of gold, lay on a chariot drawn by black-caparisoned horses, which drew it along roads that had been swept and even widened for the occasion. On top of the coffin was a wax effigy of the King, carved by Nicholas Bellin and clad in crimson velvet trimmed with miniver and having on its head a crown atop “a night cap of black satin, set full of precious stones.” It wore jewelled bracelets and velvet gloves adorned with rings. Even in death, Henry was magnificent.

  The cortege rested that night at Syon Abbey. The next day, it reached Windsor, and in accordance with his will, the King was buried in the vault in the choir of St. George’s Chapel, next to “his true and loving wife, Queen Jane,” the mother of his heir. Sixteen strong members of the Yeomen of the Guard carried the coffin into the black-draped church and lowered it into the vault. Gardiner, who would not recover royal favour until the reign of Mary I, preached the sermon and conducted the requiem mass, while the Queen watched from Katherine of Aragon’s closet. At the end of the ceremony, the chief officers of the household signified the termination of their service by breaking their white staves of office and casting them into the vault after the coffin, as the trumpets sounded “with great melancholy and courage, to the comfort of them that were present.”47 The King had left money for daily masses for his soul to be said for him at the altar “while the world should endure,” 48 but the new Protestant ruling caste put a stop to them after a year.

  The magnificent Renaissance tomb that Henry had taken over from Wolsey was never completed. Work on it ceased with the death of Edward VI in 1553, probably due to lack of funds. It was partially dismantled by the Commonwealth in 1649, and in 1805 the sarcophagus was used as the base of Lord Nelson’s tomb in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral. One candlestick, the only surviving example of the fine metalwork on the tomb, most of which was sold off or melted down under Oliver Cromwell, now reposes in Ghent Cathedral. The chapel which had housed the tomb was completely refurbished by Queen Victoria in memory of the Prince Consort, and is now known as the Albert Memorial Chapel.

  Henry VIII’s unmarked vault was discovered in 1813, quite by chance; his coffin had partially fallen away, and his skeleton could clearly be seen. Jane Seymour’s coffin was undisturbed. Also in the vault was the lost coffin of Charles I and that of an infant of Queen Anne, both placed there in the seventeenth century. In 1837, a slab of black marble was placed on the tomb on the orders of William IV.

  Writing in the year of Henry
VIII’s death, his earliest biographer, the admiring William Thomas, declared that the King “was undoubtedly the rarest man that lived in his time. I say not this to make him a god, nor in all his doings I will not say he has been a saint. He did many evil things, but not as a cruel tyrant or as a hypocrite. I wot not where in all the histories I have read to find one king equal to him.”49

  Henry was a legend in his own time, and under the reigns of his children, all of whom revered his memory, the legend became embedded in the national consciousness; during Elizabeth’s time, “Great Harry” was especially lauded for having brought the English Church out of the tyranny of Rome. That he had caused intolerable religious divisions, executed hundreds of his subjects,50 nearly bankrupted his treasury on ruinous wars, destroyed the glories of hundreds of abbeys and churches, and debased the coinage of the realm seemed of little import beside such an achievement. And indeed it is true that, besides founding the Church of England and steering his realm courageously through a religious revolution, he promoted parliamentary government, immeasurably enhanced the standing of the monarchy, overhauled the machinery of the state, changed the face of the English landscape forever, patronised the arts to lasting effect, and created the most magnificent court in English history, setting a pattern for future centuries. Henry began his reign in a mediaeval kingdom; he ended it in a modern state.