Henry VIII: The King and His Court

by Alison Weir

  About four to six weeks before the delivery, the Queen was to “take to her chamber” and retire into seclusion to await the birth. On that day, she would hear mass in a chapel “well and worshipfully arrayed,” and then host a banquet for all the lords and ladies of the court in her “great chamber,” which was also to be hung with rich tapestries and furnished with “a cloth and chair of estate and cushions,” so that the Queen might “stand or sit at her pleasure.” “Spices and wine” would be served, and then two high-ranking lords would escort the Queen to the door of her inward lodgings, which opened into the antechamber to her bedchamber, where she would take formal leave of the courtiers and her male officers. As she left, her Chamberlain would desire all her people to pray “that God would send her a good hour.” She would not be seen again in public until after the birth.

  “Then all the ladies and gentlewomen to go in with her, and none to come in to the great chamber but women; and women to be made all manner of officers, as butlers, panters, sewers, etc.” No man would be allowed in, not even the King, until after the delivery. Everything that was needed would be brought to the door of the great chamber and there given to the temporary female officers.4 As the birth approached, the Queen’s chaplains would hold themselves in readiness for an urgent summons, as would the messenger appointed to convey news of the birth to the King. 5 Childbirth was a hazardous business, for both mother and child, and around a quarter of newborns were lost. The future of the Tudor dynasty hung upon a happy outcome.

  In November, a tournament was held over several days, at which “the King broke more staves than any other.”6 Then the court moved to Richmond, where the Queen took to her chamber. At the end of December she went into labour; no more is heard of the “groaning chair,” and it appears that Katherine gave birth on “a fair pallet bed” placed beside the great bed in her bedchamber,7 and wearing one of the fine Holland smocks and double petticoats that were later found among the “necessaries provided for what time she lay in childbed” at the Wardrobe in Baynard’s Castle.8 There was no effective pain relief. In 1512, Katherine sent the Abbot of Westminster to her pregnant sister-in-law, Margaret Tudor, with the Girdle of Our Lady, a holy relic in the possession of Westminster Abbey but loaned out to royal ladies in labour, whose sufferings were said to be relieved by its presence in the birthing chamber.9 Perhaps we may assume that Katherine herself had found it efficacious.

  In the early hours of New Year’s Day, 1511, the Queen was delivered of a prince, to the great jubilation of the King and the court. A royal salute was fired from the cannon ranged along Tower Wharf, all the church bells pealed out in celebration, Te Deums were sung by the clergy, and there were triumphant processions through London. In order for his subjects to share in his joy at the birth of his son and heir, Henry ordered that bonfires be lit in the streets of London and that the Lord Mayor arrange for the citizens to be served with free wine to drink the Prince’s health. He rewarded the midwife with £10 (£150) and Mistress Poyntz with £30 (£450). 10

  The royal infant must have looked very tiny indeed in his vast painted wooden cradle, which measured approximately five feet by two feet and was trimmed with silver gilt and had buckles either side to secure his swaddling bands. He lay there, wrapped up tight, under a cover-cloth fringed with gold and a scarlet counterpoint furred with ermine.11 Yet when he was displayed to important visitors, he was placed in an even bigger cradle of estate, upholstered in crimson and decorated with gold fringing, with his father’s coat of arms above his head.

  The Queen had now moved to a bed of estate set up in her presence chamber, where, wrapped in a round mantle of crimson velvet, she would receive guests and well-wishers. She would also write a letter to her Lord Chamberlain and, perhaps other officers and nobles, formally announcing the birth. 12 It was customary for queens to lie in for up to thirty or forty days after the delivery, before being purified in a special ceremony known as “churching,” after which they were no longer considered unclean and could return to their normal routine.13 Queens did not breastfeed; a wet nurse was engaged for that, leaving the royal mother free to conceive another heir for the dynasty.

  When he was five days old, the Prince was christened at Richmond, and given the name Henry. He was also styled Prince of Wales. His godparents at the font were Archbishop Warham, the Earl of Surrey, and the Earl and Countess of Devon,14 his great-aunt and uncle, while his august sponsors were King Louis XII of France and Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy, daughter of the Emperor Maximilian I, who both sent expensive gifts of gold plate.

  Back in his nursery, the Prince was subject to an orderly regimen laid down by his great-grandmother, Margaret Beaufort. Although royal parents visited their children, they did not undertake the daily care of them; that was left to the nursery staff. Prince Henry’s Lady Mistress supervised his wet-nurse and dry nurse, who were assisted by four chamberers known as rockers, whose chief duty was to lull their charge to sleep by rocking his cradle. All nursery staff had to swear a special oath of loyalty before the Lord Chamberlain, as did the Grooms, Yeomen, Panters, and Sewers who waited upon the nursery.15 The wet-nurse had to be of excellent moral character, since “the child suckleth the vice of his nurse with the milk of her pap,”16 and all her food was assayed for poison. A physician stood by to supervise every feeding to make sure that the baby was getting enough and was not being slipped any unauthorised foods. Among the “necessaries as belong unto the child” there were “a great pot of leather for water,” “two great basins of water,” and yards of “fine linen and blanket.” The nursery was quite luxurious, with tapestries, eight large carpets, and two cushions of crimson damask, and great formality was observed within it.17

  Royal children did not usually live at court, where the risk of infection was unacceptably high, but were assigned separate establishments and households while still quite young. The King immediately appointed no less than forty persons to serve his son, including a Clerk of the Signet, a Serjeant of Arms, three chaplains, a Carver, Yeomen of the Wardrobe and the Beds, a Keeper of the Cellar, and a Baker. Looking further ahead, he also designated a room in the Palace of Westminster as the Prince’s council chamber.

  That done, the proud father set off on a visit to the Priory of Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk to give thanks for the gift of a son and heir.18 Dismounting a mile away, at the Slipper Chapel, the King, like all the other pilgrims, removed his shoes and walked barefoot to the Virgin’s shrine, where he lit a candle and offered a costly necklace. He also arranged, at his own expense, for the royal glazier, Bernard Flower, to make stained glass windows for the Lady Chapel.19

  His pilgrimage completed, Henry returned to Richmond. Then, “the Queen being churched and purified, the King and she removed to Westminster,” 20 the Prince having been left in the healthier air of Richmond.

  It was now time to celebrate in style. On 1 February, there was a tournament at which the King, Brandon, Neville, and Sir Edward Howard, all clad in “coats of green satin guarded with crimson velvet,” tilted against Essex, Devon, Dorset, and Surrey’s son, Lord Thomas Howard. Henry’s councillors were still trying to persuade him to watch rather than take part, “and spake thereof as much as they durst, but his courage was so noble” that they had to give way.21

  On 12 and 13 February, perhaps the most lavish tournament of the reign was staged at Westminster in honour of the Queen. The King took the role of Coeur Loyal—Sir Loyal Heart—and appeared in the tiltyard, wearing his wife’s colours, with three other challengers on a pageant car drawn by a mock lion and antelope of damask gold and silver. The car was decked out as a forest “with rocks, hills and dales”; in the midst was a golden castle, and outside the castle was “a gentleman making a garland of roses for the Prince.” When the car stopped before the Queen, the “foresters” on it sounded their horns, and out rode the four challengers from the castle: the Earl of Devon was Bon Valoir, Thomas Knyvet Bon Espoir, and Edward Neville Valiant Desire. All presented their s
hields to Katherine.

  The next day, the answerers appeared. Charles Brandon arrived on horseback, attired as a hermit, and received the Queen’s permission to accept the challenge. He then threw off his habit “to reveal that he was fully armed.” He was joined by Henry Guildford, then the Marquess of Dorset, and Sir Thomas Boleyn, “dressed like two pilgrims in black velvet tabards with pilgrims’ hats over the helmets, and carrying Jacob’s staffs in their hands; and their tabards, hats and cloaks were decorated with golden scallop shells,” as if they had come from the shrine of St. James at Compostela. Course after course was run, with the Queen bestowing the prizes; there was great applause when the King won the challenger’s prize. Even after the tournament had drawn to a close, Henry insisted upon running another course with Brandon, “for the King’s lady’s sake.” 22

  The Great Tournament Roll of Westminster, a manuscript now in the College of Arms, vividly depicts the proceedings at this tournament. One scene shows Henry jousting in front of Katherine of Aragon, who sits under a canopy of estate with her ladies in a pavilion hung with cloth of gold and purple velvet embroidered with H’s and K’s, pomegranates and roses.

  On the second night, there was great revelry in the White Hall, with “an interlude of the Gentlemen of his Chapel before His Grace,” in honour of the Prince, and a pageant, The Garden of Pleasure, in which Henry again appeared as Coeur Loyal, wearing a purple satin suit adorned with gold H’s and K’s. Several people, including the Spanish ambassador, would not believe the letters were real gold, so, during the dancing that followed, the King invited them to pull them off him to prove that they were. Unfortunately, the general public, who had been allowed in to witness the festivities, mistook this as an invitation to divest the King and his courtiers of their finery for largesse, and surged into the throng of merry-makers, grabbing and pulling as they went. Henry was stripped down to his doublet and hose, as were most of his companions, while poor Sir Thomas Knyvet lost all his clothes and, stark naked, had to climb a pillar for safety. Even the ladies who had danced in the pageant, wearing gowns of Tudor green and white, “were spoiled likewise, wherefore the King’s guard came suddenly and put the people back.” The King passed the whole thing off as a joke, and “all these hurts were turned to laughing and game.” The evening concluded with a banquet in the presence chamber, with everyone attending in what was left of their finery.23 After this, security was tighter at public events.

  Ten days after these rejoicings, terrible news arrived from Richmond. On 23 February,24 the little Prince had died. The Queen was distraught, but the King, concealing his own grief, comforted her. No blame was attached to the nursery staff, and Elizabeth Poyntz was rewarded for her service with an annuity of £20 (£300).

  The Keeper of the Wardrobe supplied an elaborate hearse on which the tiny body was conveyed to London. Dozens of wax candles burned around the hearse day and night while a round-the-clock vigil was kept over it by black-clad mourners in Westminster Abbey, where the Prince was afterwards buried late at night in a torch-lit ceremony.25 His soul, wrote an observer, was “now among the holy innocents of God.”26

  Henry made no further outward show of grief. That Easter, Pope Julius II bestowed on him a Golden Rose that he himself had blessed, and which symbolised the flowers that preceded the fruits of the Passion of Christ. Not only was this a great comfort, it was also a sign of high apostolic favour, which in 1512 was followed by a Sword and Cap of Maintenance. It was also an inducement for Henry to join the so-called Holy League, an alliance between the Papacy, Spain, and Venice against Louis of France, who had aggressive ambitions in Italy.

  May Day was celebrated as usual. “The King, lying at Greenwich, rode to the wood to fetch may,” and for three days, he, Howard, Brandon, and Neville “held jousts against all comers. Many a sore stripe was given and many a staff broke.”27

  During his summer progress of 1511, Henry travelled through the Midlands, visiting Nottingham and Coventry, where he and the Queen watched part of the famous cycle of mystery plays, performed by local guildsmen. The King also indulged himself in sports and gambling, but there were complaints from his courtiers that he was “much enticed to play at tennis and at dice” by “crafty persons” who “brought in French-men and Lombards to make wagers with him, so he lost much money.” Fortunately, before too much damage had been done, “he perceived their craft” and sent them away.28 Thereafter, he would be on his guard against professional tricksters.

  During the year 1511, Henry rebuilt Sunninghill, an old royal lodge in Windsor Forest, which he intended to use as a hunting box. It was kept in repair for most of his reign, but has long since disappeared, its exact location being now uncertain.

  In October, the King joined the Holy League. As a sign of solidarity with the Church, he commanded his courtiers to curb their extravagance and dress more soberly; he even forbade the nobility to wear silk. Instead of wasting their money on outward show, they should be spending it on the weapons and horses required for a crusade against the King of France. Henry himself put away his rich garments, donning plainer clothes, and in December, when attending Parliament, he appeared in the House of Lords wearing “a long grey cloth gown” cut in the Hungarian fashion.29

  This fad for austerity did not last long. The King spent Christmas at Greenwich “with great and plentiful cheer in a most princely manner, where was such viands served to all comers of honest behaviour as hath been few times seen.”30 The King spent over £800 (£240,000) on New Year’s gifts.31 On New Year’s Night, a pageant, The Fortress Dangerous, was put on in the great hall. It featured a castle with towers and a dungeon, “garnished with artillery and weapons, after the most warlike fashion”— there was a message here for Henry’s courtiers—and inside were six ladies wearing gowns of russet satin “laid all over with leaves of gold.” Predictably, the castle was assaulted by the King and five other knights; the ladies, “seeing them so lusty and courageous,” readily yielded, and came down to dance with them.32

  For Twelfth Night, William Cornish had devised something novel: “The King with eleven other were disguised after the manner of Italy, called a masque, a thing not seen afore in England. They were apparelled in garments wrought with gold, with visors and caps of gold; and after the banquet [was] done, these masquers came in with six gentlemen, disguised in silk, bearing torches, and desired the ladies to dance. Some were content, and some that knew the fashion of it refused because it was not a thing commonly seen. After they danced and communed together, and as the fashion of the masque is, they took their leave and departed, and so did the Queen and her ladies.” 33

  What caused all the fuss was that, rather than dancing with ladies they had rehearsed with, as in a pageant, the men were choosing their partners from the audience. Masques, or “masks,” as they were known in England, were a form of drama in which the plot took second place to disguises, poetry, music, and dancing, and they were usually performed by amateurs. They began with a spectacular entry, continued with a “presentation,” and ended with a dance, which was often very complicated and required skill and agility. Like pageants, many masques had allegorical or political themes. The introduction of this new form of entertainment into court festivities is an indicator that Italian influence was beginning to be felt at the English court. The King’s growing preference for masques, in which he could show off his talents to perfection, heralded the demise of the pageant, but that would not take place for several years.34

  Henry was at Greenwich when, at the end of April 1512, the Palace of Westminster was largely destroyed by a fire that broke out in the kitchens. Westminster Hall, the Painted Chamber, the crypt of St. Stephen’s Chapel, and the Jewel Tower luckily survived, but the rest of the royal lodgings and the service quarters were gutted. They were not rebuilt, although the hall continued to house the law courts and the Palace of Westminster remained the official seat of government. The ruins of the old palace were not finally cleared away until 1532.35

  The
loss of his chief London residence drove the King to look elsewhere for somewhere to lodge in the capital, yet the two palaces available in the City, which the King immediately made use of, proved outdated, too small, and insufficiently grand.

  One was Baynard’s Castle, a battlemented, double-courtyard house with octagonal corner towers. It was sited in Thames Street, between Paul’s Wharf and Blackfriars, with a frontage facing the north bank of the River Thames. The first castle on the site had been built in the reign of William the Conqueror, and was named after its custodian, Ralph Baignard, but it had been rebuilt in 1428 by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and again in 1501 by Henry VII, who made it “beautiful and commodious” 36 for the wedding celebrations of Prince Arthur and Katherine of Aragon, who spent their wedding night there. Prior to that it had been the London residence of Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, the mother of Edward IV and Richard III. It was now the Queen’s property, and used chiefly to store her Wardrobe stuff. The King found that the site was cramped and that there was no room to expand.37