by Alison Weir
The King, who could now rest peacefully in the knowledge that he was well guarded, had meanwhile removed to his privy bedchamber, where he was attended by one of his Gentlemen, who slept on a pallet at the foot of the bed. When Henry wanted to sleep with his wife, he summoned his Grooms of the Chamber, who brought his nightrobe and escorted him with lighted torches to the door of the Queen’s bedchamber, which was reached via a private connecting gallery or stair.63 The Grooms would wait outside the door until the King was ready to be escorted back to bed. The ceremony surrounding such an intimate event seems surprising today, but it must be remembered that the begetting of heirs to the throne was a matter of legitimate public interest, and also that it was unthinkable that the sovereign should be left unattended at any time.
10
“Innocent and Honest Pastimes”
During the summer of 1509, in the weeks after the coronation, Henry VIII indulged himself in the novel pleasures of kingship. “Our time is spent in continuous festival,”1 Queen Katherine wrote to Ferdinand of Aragon, while the King informed his father-in-law that he was diverting himself “with jousts, birding, hunting and other innocent and honest pastimes.”2 At eighteen, Henry was “young and lusty, disposed all to mirth and pleasure, nothing minding to travail in the busy affairs of his realm,”3 and—as some English bishops pointed out to the Spanish ambassador—did not “care to occupy himself with anything but the pleasures of his age; all other affairs he neglects.”4 In fact, Henry was so busy enjoying himself that he would only work during matins in the chapel royal, or late in the evenings,5 provided he had nothing better to do.
For the first four years of the reign, the young King relied upon the ministers he had inherited from his father. These were much older, wiser men, but this very fact placed them at a disadvantage, since Henry always preferred to surround himself with young people. The truth was, he could not bear to be reminded of old age, illness, or death.
Henry also had an aversion to paperwork. “Writing is to me somewhat tedious and painful,” he once told Cardinal Wolsey.6 He virtually had to be forced to write letters; Wolsey once insisted he pen a missive to his elder sister Margaret, Queen of Scots, because “women must be pleased.”
Henry was always ready with an excuse as to why he could not attend to business, be it a headache or the fact that he was removing to another house. When his Secretary, Richard Pace, wanted to go through some diplomatic correspondence with him, he made the excuse that he had to attend matins. The next morning he escaped to the chase, and when he got back to find Pace waiting for him, he insisted on having supper first. Only in the evening did he begrudgingly get down to work. In 1521, poor Pace was appalled when Henry refused to put his seal to letters because he had found out that the French King did not do so; Pace had to go along with this until Henry reverted to the traditional method of signing and sealing royal letters. In 1513, a Milanese ambassador was somewhat offended when the King “put off our discussion to another time, as he was then in a hurry to go and dine and dance afterwards.”7
Henry’s councillors found his lack of application to his duties disconcerting after having become used to the dedication and carefulness of his hardworking father. Fortunately, they were all experienced men who were perfectly capable of governing the country in their master’s name, although this did not stop them from trying to make Henry attend to his obligations as his father had done. Because they were concerned “lest such abundance of riches the King was now possessed of should move his young years to a riotous forgetting of himself,” they constrained him to “be present with them to acquaint him with the politic government of the realm, with which at first he could not endure to be much troubled.”8 But Henry was impatient with them, and showed much disgust at the time they took to deliberate on affairs.
For centuries, the seat of government had been the Palace of Westminster. Here were to be found the great departments of state: the Exchequer, under the rule of the Lord Treasurer; the Chancery, headed by the Lord Chancellor, who was also Keeper of the Great Seal of England; and the Courts of Common Pleas and the King’s Bench. Parliament, which was summoned and prorogued at the King’s pleasure, also sat at Westminster.
Power was centred, however, upon the court, where the King was, and increasingly upon his secretariat, which travelled around with him, and comprised the Lord Privy Seal and the King’s “Master Secretary” and their staffs. Together with the Lord Treasurer, the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord Steward, and the Lord High Admiral, these officers were the foremost members of the Privy Council.9 Next in importance came the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The Privy Council, which advised the King and implemented his policies, was based at Westminster. The Court of Star Chamber, through which it exercised its legal powers, sat in the palace. The Council’s seventy-odd members, who were all chosen by the King, were aristocrats, clerics, household officers, and professional lawyers, but attendance levels varied. Council meetings were held in private. The King did not always attend, preferring to discuss affairs privately with individual councillors, often while walking in his galleries or gardens, but all the Council’s business was done in his name. Throughout Henry VIII’s reign, thanks initially to the King’s political indolence and later to the dominance of Wolsey and Cromwell, the Council’s executive powers expanded, although it remained very much a consultative body. By 1530, it was meeting more and more at court.
In 1509, the most powerful force on the Council was Richard Foxe, Bishop of Winchester, who had been Lord Privy Seal since 1489. A sensible yet cunning lawyer and diplomatist, he seemed to the Venetian ambassador to be almost a king himself.10 “Here in England they think he is a fox, and such is his name,” the King told Luis Caroz, the Spanish ambassador,11 with some truth. Foxe had enjoyed a distinguished career in the Church and was a notable patron of learning and a humanist, who corresponded with Erasmus.
Henry’s first Lord Chancellor was William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had held the post and the primacy since 1504. He too was a humanist and friend of Erasmus, who found him to be “witty, energetic and laborious [i.e., hardworking]” and recorded that, although Warham gave “sumptuous entertainments, he himself ate frugal meals and hardly ever tasted wine, but yet was a most genial host. He never hunted or played at dice, but his chief recreation was reading.”12 Warham was a competent lawyer and diplomat; he and Foxe were typical career churchman who had neglected their ecclesiastical duties in order to further their political ambitions.
The Lord Treasurer was Foxe’s rival, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey. John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was Lord Admiral. The chief Secretary was Thomas Ruthal, Bishop of Durham, a capable administrator who had been in post since 1500 and who was growing rich on the proceeds of his labours. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, was also a prominent councillor. There was therefore a strong ecclesiastical presence on the Council. By the end of Henry’s reign, that would no longer be the case.
In November 1509, the man who would be one of the chief causes of this change, Thomas Wolsey, was appointed Lord High Almoner to the King. Wolsey was then thirty-six. The son of an Ipswich grazier and wool merchant (not a butcher, as Skelton disparagingly asserted), he had been an outstanding scholar at Oxford, graduating at only fifteen. He had taken holy orders, then risen meteorically through the Church to become, in 1507, chaplain to Henry VII and secretary to Bishop Foxe, who thereafter did all he could to further Wolsey’s career. It was probably due to Foxe that Wolsey got the post of Almoner.
The Almoner’s chief duty was to distribute the King’s charity to the poor. Wolsey had a brilliant mind; he was “very handsome, learned, extremely eloquent, of vast ability and indefatigable.” 13 Above all, he was a prodigiously thorough and hardworking servant. Henry soon recognised his worth, and in quick succession appointed him Dean of Hereford and Lincoln, Prebendary of York, a canon of Windsor, and Registrar of the Or
der of the Bath. Wolsey was already acting as an unofficial royal secretary when, in 1511, Foxe secured him a seat on the Privy Council. All this suited the Almoner very well, for he was a proud, greedy, extravagant man with ambitions well beyond his station in life. Through flattery, charm, wit, and a convivial manner, he had gained the affection and respect of the King, and his fortunes were set to prosper.14
With the government in the capable hands of Foxe, Warham, Surrey, and Ruthal, Henry VIII considered himself free to enjoy the more pleasurable and visual aspects of sovereignty. In order to emphasise his magnificence, the King usually took his recreation in public, accompanied by appropriate ceremony. On feast days and state occasions, the Master of the Revels would devise lavish, large-scale entertainments for the court, in the manner of the festivities and pageants made popular by the Dukes of Burgundy. Many had mythical, allegorical, or chivalric themes, and most had some useful propaganda value: The King intended these entertainments not only to impress beholders but also to surprise them. Unlike his father, he often participated, and was almost childlike in his enthusiasm for revelry. By showing off his person and his prowess in pageants, dances, tournaments, and sports, he could present to the world the image he wanted it to see.
And the world took notice. The King’s subjects favourably contrasted him with Henry VII, who had been generally unpopular, and concluded that here was a monarch to be proud of. Ambassadors sent home glowing reports of the splendour of the English court and its ruler, and Henry’s reputation as a magnificent, liberal, and talented prince spread throughout Europe. At the same time, his treasury dwindled, for these entertainments were ruinously expensive, although the King no doubt felt them an expense well justified for their propaganda value alone.
Court entertainments were staged frequently during the first two decades of the reign; later on, as the King grew older and lost interest in youthful pleasures, he preferred to spend money on building or refurbishing his houses, and also became preoccupied with the religious issues of the Reformation. Later still, his deteriorating health and thickening girth increasingly precluded his participating in revelry.
On certain holidays the public were allowed into the court to watch the entertainments; if they became too enthusuastic, the King’s guard would intervene15—apart from one memorable occasion in 1511, of which more will be heard later.
The Master of the Revels and his staff were responsible for staging court entertainments. They had to devise the themes of pageants and masques; make all the costumes, scenery, and props; and arrange all the seating and lighting. This was all done in close consultation with the principal participants—there is evidence that some ideas came from the King himself—as well as the Lord Chamberlain and the Dean of the Chapel Royal, which provided choristers for the pageants.
Some costumes and props were made of the richest materials and even embellished with gold and jewels; others were improvised, such as the papier-mâché lions made for a pageant at Greenwich. Pages and pages of costumes and props were listed by the Revels Office, including “7 masking hats, Tartary fashion, of yellow and red sarcanet, . . . 8 satin mantles trimmed with silk, Irish fashion, . . . 8 short cloaks of scarlet with keys embroidered on the shoulders, 8 hats of crimson satin with scallop shells” (these were for “the Palmers’ masque”), and props such as foliage with leaves of green satin and flowers of silk, antique pillars, and statuary such as “the image of Hercules.”16 All this was a complicated operation involving a great amount of work, hundreds of craftsmen, and many hired hands. The Revels Office also maintained and stored all the “revels stuff,” and extra accommodation, such as the dissolved monastery at Blackfriars, had to be made available from time to time.17
Another of the Master’s duties was to censor any suggested entertainment that was likely to offend the King. By 1545, the post of Master of the Revels had become such an important one that the King decided to issue a patent conferring it for life; the first permanent Master was Sir Thomas Carwarden.
Early on in the reign, the chief deviser of court entertainments was William Cornish. Musician, composer, poet, playwright, actor, and a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, Cornish was a versatile genius who wrote church music in the style of John Dunstable and secular songs such as “Ah, Robin!” and “Blow Thy Horn, Hunter,” and was also a virtuoso on the organ. The King was impressed by his talents, and put him in charge of court entertainments. It was Cornish who was responsible for the brilliant pageants and masques of the early years of the reign, and Cornish who constituted the Children of the Chapel Royal, of whom he was appointed Master in 1509, into a dramatic company for the purposes of court entertainments. The King was particularly fond of seeing his choristers perform in plays, and he often rewarded them;18 the boys sang, danced, and often acted the female roles. Sometimes, the adult choristers and Chamber servants also participated.
Early Tudor drama consisted chiefly of mediaeval miracle and morality plays, which were rarely performed at court and went out of fashion with the Reformation, and short interludes, which were the successors to morality plays, pageants, and masques; the last two relied on spectacle, music, and dance rather than plots. Hardly any play texts survive from before Elizabeth I’s reign, and sophisticated dramatic works were rare. Not until 1576 was a public playhouse built in London, and until then, most ordinary people could only watch plays staged by travelling players in inn yards and marketplaces. But theatrical entertainments were popular at court. Under Henry VIII, Eltham Palace seems to have acquired a reputation as a dramatic venue. When the King was in residence, there were frequent performances in the great hall, and Londoners were admitted to watch them. Eltham was also famous for the puppet show The Divine Motion of Eltham , which was performed in the palace in Henry’s reign and was later mentioned by Ben Jonson.
Interludes, as the name suggests, were short plays with popular themes performed during the intervals between court entertainments. The earliest surviving example is Fulgens and Lucrece, written by Henry Medwell in about 1486–1490 for John Morton, Cardinal Archbishop of Canterbury. Modelled on an Italian play about the Roman Republic, it was aimed at educated, aristocratic audiences likely to be open to humanist influences. The young Thomas More is known to have acted in interludes while serving in Cardinal Morton’s household.19 William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream features a typical interlude, Pyramus and Thisbe. Interludes were meant to mix “mirth with modesty”;20 characters were comic or allegorical, and plots might be satirical, moralistic, or farcical. The text was often written in doggerel verse.
Interludes were performed by small groups of itinerant players who visited the court, the great houses of the nobility, the universities, and the Inns of Court. Up to seven different groups might perform for Henry VIII in a single year, with many receiving rewards from him.21 Some companies, like the King’s Players and the Queen’s Players, were permanently employed by the Chamber.
Apart from John Skelton, one of the finest writers of pre-Reformation interludes was John Heywood, a Londoner who married Thomas More’s niece, Elizabeth Rastell, and worked for the court from 1519, initially as a singer. He also wrote music for the lute and keyboards22 and was no mean poet. Heywood’s most famous works were The Play of the Weather (1533) and The Four Ps (c. 1544). In the latter, four characters, a Palmer, Pardoner, ’Pothecary, and Pedlar, all compete to tell the biggest lie. The winner is the Pardoner, who claims he has never seen a woman out of patience. Heywood’s The Pardoner and the Friar derived from Chaucer, and was used as a model by Christopher Marlowe for The Jew of Malta. Heywood is said to have narrowly escaped being executed for treason in 1544 because the King so admired his work.
Heywood’s father-in-law, John Rastell, who was married to Thomas More’s sister, also wrote interludes for the court, the most famous being The Nature of the Four Elements (c.1520). Rastell was a multitalented lawyer who also worked as a printer, military engineer, and decorative artist; in 1520, the King employed him to help embe
llish the temporary palace built for the Field of Cloth of Gold. It was Rastell who, in 1517, helped launch the first English expedition to America for the purposes of colonisation; sadly, it got no further than Ireland.
Pageants (the word means “movable stage”) were entertainments involving mock battles (with knights and ladies bombarding each other with flowers, fruit, and sweets), allegorical figures, and the ideals of chivalry and courtly love. They were a Burgundian innovation and afforded an opportunity for mounting dazzling spectacles featuring impressive scenery, special effects, music, poetry, and dance. Pageants were performed at Christmas, Epiphany, Shrovetide, and other feast days, or for the entertainment of ambassadors, and might often be combined with tournaments. Indoors, they were usually mounted on giant wheeled pageant cars that conveyed the whole set into the great hall. The audience watched from tiered benches which had been set up in readiness along the walls.
“Disguisings,” much beloved by Henry VIII, were often incorporated into pageants or acted out as separate entertainments. They involved the participants dressing up in disguise, with masks, and either performing incognito or taking people unawares; the King was especially fond of bursting in upon Queen Katherine and her ladies in the Queen’s Chamber. The denouement came when the masks were removed and the players’ identities revealed. Henry took a boyish delight in these disguisings, and Katherine seemingly never tired of feigning astonishment that it was her husband who had surprised her.
