Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII

by Robert Hutchinson

More was impressed by the young Henry’s extraordinary charisma and gracious presence. He reported to Fisher:

  The king has a way of making every man feel that he is enjoying his special favour, just as the London wives pray before the image of Our Lady by the Tower, until each of them believes it is smiling upon her.17

  With these personable talents, Henry VIII would have made a credible and successful politician.

  More presented a Coronation Suite of five Latin poems to the king and queen, describing his sovereign as the ‘glory of the age’, with his succession inaugurating ‘a new golden era’. Virtue and learning were to reign supreme; liberality was to expel avarice; darkness would give way to light. As for Katherine, he predicted that ‘she will be the mother of kings as great as her ancestors’.18 John Skelton, Henry’s old Latin schoolmaster, also penned effusive verses in honour of the occasion, predicting that the king would be just and wise and protect England’s common people.19

  Touchingly, Henry did not overlook those who were important to him in his formative years. Anne Oxenbridge, ‘late the king’s nurse’ who, after the death of her first husband, had married Walter Luke by 1504, was granted an annuity of £20 a year on 9 July.20 The fifty shillings paid to a ‘Mistress Oxenbridge’ in September 1510 may be a slip of the clerk’s pen and probably refers to the same lady. Spending money for her, perhaps?21 In December 1519 there is also a payment of 6s 8d ‘to the king’s nurse for cheese’.

  Elizabeth Denton, the former ‘lady mistress’ of the royal nursery at Eltham Palace, was also provided with a liberal annual pension of £50 for life. She was granted the Keepership of Coldharbour (Lady Margaret’s London home), and a tun22 of Gascon wine each year, delivered from the port of London by Sir Robert Southwell, Chief Butler of England.23 Giles D’Ewes, Henry’s French teacher, who also taught him to play the lute, was appointed that September as librarian at Richmond Palace on an annual salary of £10, payable from income from the customs of the port of Bristol.24

  The loyal servants of the king’s grandmother were also not forgotten by this grateful and considerate sovereign. The month after her death, eight were granted sinecure posts ‘for services to the king’s granddame’, including her sergeant-at-arms, William Pool, who had moved across to Katherine’s household to serve in the same capacity. He was made Bailiff of the town and Lordship of Holesworthy, North Devon.25

  His father’s faithful retainers were also rewarded: William Adbaston was granted a mill called ‘Pole Milne, alias Shipton Milne in the manor of Langley, Oxfordshire’, at an annual rent of fifteen shillings in thanks for his ‘services to Henry VII and for his relief and succour in his old age’.26 William Berryman, ‘late yeoman for Henry VII’s mouth [a food taster] in his kitchen’, was given leases of a tavern called le Rose super le Hope and a brewery in the London parish of All Hallows, Staining, in return for his payment of the almost lyrical peppercorn rent of ‘a red rose at Midsummer’.27

  Henry signed Letters Patent allowing Lady Margaret’s executors – amongst them Fox, Fisher and Sir Henry Marney – to acquire the site and possessions of the Priory of St John, Cambridge, ‘now in a most impoverished and dilapidated condition’ and instead found a college on its site ‘for a master, fellows and scholars’ to be called ‘the College of St John the Evangelist, Cambridge’.28

  His young, roistering friends were not left out of Henry’s openhanded largess. Charles Brandon, his hero of the joust, was given the lucrative position of Chamberlain of the principality of North Wales in November 1509.

  The king had also not forgotten his filial duties towards his parents, endorsing existing estimates to build their tomb within their new chapel in Westminster Abbey.29 Eventually these plans were discarded and the Florentine sculptor Pietro Torrigiano, who signed a contract to build a monument in the chapel to Henry’s grandmother in November 1511, was commissioned by the old king’s executors in October 1512 to make the tomb of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York at a cost of £1,500.30 It was one of the earliest Renaissance monuments in England.

  Henry VIII’s realm was not quite as tranquil as Katherine believed; danger and treasonous ambitions still lurked in the hearts of some of his higher-ranking nobility. His father’s old fretful spectre of insecurity had returned to haunt his young successor.

  In August the northern noble Thomas, First Lord Darcy,31 warned Bishop Fox, the Privy Seal, of further treasonous statements by the servants of his neighbour, Sir Algernon Percy, Fifth Earl of Northumberland. In early June Darcy had replaced Northumberland as Warden General of the eastern Scottish Marches and as Captain of the frontier town of Berwick.32 Now it seemed that the old disloyal whisperings by these ‘knaves, craftsmen and beggars’ about Buckingham and Northumberland’s aspirations had not died away after the coronation. They claimed that:

  my lord of Buckingham should be protector of England and that their master [Northumberland] should rule all from north of the River Trent and have Berwick and the marches.

  Richard Tempest reported to me their saying, at coming into Craven [North Yorkshire] from London that ‘if their lord had not rooms [appointments] in the north as his father had, it should not be long well’.

  Gilson, Ratcliffe and Tipping, ‘servants to my said lord’ in St Martin’s in London in his place [house, said] that Sir Rhys ap Thomas [the Tudors’ principal lieutenant in South Wales] was gone to the sea, fled of his country.33

  Darcy cautioned that Fox was also the object of sinister treasonous mutterings:

  It is the saying of every market man that the Lord Privy Seal cannot bring himself to rule the king’s grace [without] put[ting] out of favour the Earl of Surrey, the Earl of Shrewsbury, the Bishop of Durham [and others]. Now he will prove another way which is … to bolster himself to rule with the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Northumberland. Doubtless, fast they curse and speak evil of my Lord Privy Seal beyond measure.

  Darcy said Fox could show his two-page warning letter ‘to the king’s grace or otherwise’.34

  Henry must have been well aware of this sedition. Away from his pleasure-seeking, he established ordinances on 25 July to improve the defences of the Tower in an attempt to provide a place of refuge – a final redoubt – for him in London in the event of an insurrection in the capital. These fresh standing orders instructed the Yeomen of the Guard and other soldiers stationed in the fortress ‘not to be absent without leave’ and stipulated that never more than one-third of the garrison should be away from the fortress at any time. Security at the Tower’s gates was also tightened up.35

  In November he also improved his personal protection. Henry VII had set up a group of fifty archers as a bodyguard – they exist today as the queen’s Yeomen of the Guard – but his son wanted an additional force of peerless loyalty to call on in an emergency.

  At the suggestion of William Compton (who was a page to Henry when he was Prince of Wales and was now the Groom of the Stool, fulfilling the king’s most intimate personal needs), the king established a group of men-at-arms solely for his close security. This ‘Retinue of Spears’ was recruited from ‘young men of noble blood’ and formed a handy, quickly mobilised military force to safeguard the royal family.

  Each ‘Spear’ was fully armed, clad in armour and equipped with four horses for himself and his page, together with another for his ‘costrel’ or shield-bearing servant who was armed with a lance. Each should bring ‘two good archers, well-horsed and harnessed’ to ‘muster before the king at a month’s notice’. None could depart from his duties without permission. This force, under the command of Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex, and Sir John Pechy, its lieutenant, had to swear an oath of absolute allegiance to Henry:

  I shall be a true and faithful subject and servant to our sovereign lord King Henry the Eight and to his heirs, Kings of England, and diligently and truly give my attendance in the room of one of his Spears and I shall be retainer to no man, person or persons of what degree or condition, whosoever he be by oath, livery, badge, promise
or otherwise but only to his grace without his special licence.36

  I shall not hereafter know or hear of anything that shall be hurtful or prejudicial to his most royal person, especially in treason, but I shall withstand it to the uttermost of my power and the same with all diligence to me possible, disclose to the King’s Highness or the Captain of the Spears or his deputy, or such other of his council as I know will discover the same unto his Grace.37

  Henry was testing his strength as king and his strutting Tudor arrogance was never far from the surface. In August, the Venetian ambassador, Andrea Badoer, watched gleefully as the new French envoy, the corpulent Abbot of Fécamp, was given very short shrift at Westminster. After being ushered into the royal presence, the abbot announced that he had come in response to Henry’s letters to his master, Louis XII, ‘requesting friendship and peace’ and that he would now formally confirm that peace. Henry took immediate offence and

  turning to his attendants [he] exclaimed: ‘Who wrote this letter? I ask peace of the King of France, who dare not look me in the face, still less make war on me?’

  He stomped off angrily and would ‘hear no more’. Later that day a display of ‘tilting at the ring’ was planned and, politely, the French ambassador had been invited to attend. Badoer reported that ‘no place having been reserved for him upon a stage erected for guests, he departed in dudgeon. The king, however, had him recalled and caused a cushion to be given him and he sat down’. The Venetian summed up: ‘In short, King Henry holds France in small account.’38

  Possibly because of the plague that was raging in some parts of England, Henry kept Christmas isolated at Richmond, with forty shillings paid to the children of the Chapel Royal for singing Gloria in Excelsis and £10 to William Wynnesbury as ‘Lord of Misrule’, who presided over the full gamut of noisy revelry. The festivities continued until Twelfth Night (probably then the evening of 5 January), with a play staged in the great hall, but for the king, the merrymaking continued.

  On 12 January 1510 he took part incognito in a private joust in Richmond Park together with Compton, who was also in disguise. This was the first time he had jousted as king and despite his efforts his presence was an open secret. There were ‘many broken staves [lances] and great praise given to the two strangers, but especially to one, who was the king’.

  Disaster followed.

  Edward Neville,39 one of Henry’s cronies, ran a course against Compton and ‘hurt him sore and [he] was likely to die’. There was panic amongst the spectators that the injured contestant was Henry, but when the visor of Compton’s helmet was raised, ‘one person that was there knew the king and cried “God save the king!” [and] with that all the people were astonished. Then the king discovered [revealed] himself to the great comfort of the people.’40

  Unabashed by this accident, Henry decided to take on the persona of Robin Hood in a merry jape to entertain the heavily pregnant queen. After Christmas, the court returned to Westminster and one morning the king and eleven of his nobles, all disguised as Sherwood Forest outlaws, burst suddenly into the queen’s chamber, dressed in

  short coats of Kentish kendal41 with hoods on their heads and hose of the same. Everyone of them, his bow and arrows, and a sword and buckler42 … [like] Robin Hood’s men.

  Whereof the queen, the ladies and all other[s] there were abashed … for the strange sight [and] also for their sudden coming.

  After certain dances and pastime made, they departed.43

  History does not record what Katherine thought of her husband’s schoolboy prank; without question, her physicians would have advised against any sudden shocks in her condition.

  Henry had summoned his first Parliament to be held at Westminster on 21 January – the first to be called for six years. On that day, all the lords assembled in the queen’s great chamber and processed to the abbey church for God’s blessings on their deliberations. The king was preceded by the sword of state and the cap of estate, borne respectively by Henry, Lord Stafford, and his brother Buckingham. Flanked by his sergeants-of-arms and four gentlemen ushers on either side, Henry represented the very image of majesty, his long train carried by Oxford and supported in the middle by Charles, Lord Herbert. After passing by his father’s wooden and palled hearse, still standing in the abbey’s choir, the king was delayed by the press of the crowd before he succeeded in passing through the gallery to the Parliament Chamber. Sitting on the throne and wearing the cap of estate, Henry listened approvingly as Warham, his Lord Chancellor, opened the Parliament with prayers and preached from the initial chapter of the first Epistle General of St Peter – ‘Fear God, honour the King’ – which he used to underline the importance of temporal allegiance and the need for good laws.44 The king attended Parliament again two days later and on 23 February.

  Its business was routine – discussions on the revenues necessary to pay the expenses of the king’s household and assigning money to fund the king’s great wardrobe.

  This income was very necessary: Henry VIII, freed of the shackles imposed by his father, was beginning to spend prodigiously. In the first two full months of his reign, May and June 1509, his household expenses (which included some incidentals from the coronation) totalled £3,414 1s 1d, compared with the £12,759 expended in a whole year by his father up to 29 September 1508.45 The first manifestations of the king’s later love for retail therapy – his purchases of nice trinkets and pretty objects in precious metals – began to appear in July and included £6 6s 8d for just over three ounces (372 g) of fine gold ‘for the king’s little chain’, while Henry Worley, goldsmith, was paid forty-three shillings for ‘garnishing of knives’. Katherine, after her years of penury, was also spending freely: the Under-Treasurer was authorised that month to pay her £1,000 for her debts. In October, a Frenchman was paid £223 at Croydon for jewels; the goldsmith John Munday £133 12s; and three Italian merchants, more than £584 for cloth of gold – the total for these three transactions amounting to £495,000 in today’s purchasing power. Goldsmiths were also paid £333 6s 8d for the king’s New Year gifts.

  Parliamentary business also included some of the more prosaic aspects of Tudor society, such as a new law prohibiting coroners from charging fees for investigating obviously accidental deaths as ‘their insistence … often caused annoyance because bodies lie long unburied’.46 Another Act was intended to stamp out perjury;47 further legislation limited the export of coin, plate and jewels48 and, ironically, the wearing of ‘costly apparel’.49 Finally, an Act provided legal redress to landowners who had been deprived of the titles to their property by the false inquisitions operated by Empson and Dudley in the years after 1504.50 However, bills of attainder for the two councillors had been passed by the Commons but not by the House of Lords by the time Parliament was prorogued at the end of February.

  Perhaps the king tried to make amends to Katherine for his earlier Robin Hood prank. On Shrove Tuesday – the last day before the dreary Lenten fast – Henry threw an elaborately arranged banquet in the queen’s honour for the foreign ambassadors in the Parliament Chamber at Westminster. Amid polite applause, Henry personally led Katherine to his own regal seat beneath the golden cloth of estate canopy at the top table. The guests were ‘marshalled by the king, who would not sit, but walked from place to place, making cheer to the queen and the strangers’.

  Suddenly the king disappeared and then re-entered the banquet with Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex. Both were dressed in the Turkish fashion, wearing long robes of baudekin (a rich figured silk) powdered with gold, and crimson velvet hats, and each armed with broad-bladed Middle-Eastern scimitar swords. The king’s young friends followed, dressed in the Russian and Prussian styles, escorted by torchbearers in crimson satin, their faces blackened with soot to resemble Moors. All then took part in a ‘mummery’ – a silent play or dance to music. ‘So the king made great cheer to the queen, ladies and the ambassadors,’ reported Edward Hall.51

  But Henry had not finished with the joys of dressing up.
He disappeared again and in a short while, there came in

  drum and fife [players] apparelled in white damask [satin] and green bonnets [and] certain gentlemen followed with torches, apparelled in blue damask … fashioned like an alb52 and on their heads, hoods with … tippets.53

  After them came a certain number … whereof the king was one, apparelled all in one suit of short garments … of blue and crimson velvet with long sleeves, all lined with cloth of gold.

  Then followed ladies – one of whom was Princess Mary, Henry’s younger sister – gorgeously attired, some wearing headdresses ‘rounded … like the Egyptians. Their faces, necks, arms and hands, covered with black … so that the ladies seemed to be Negroes or Moors.’ All danced ‘a certain time’ before ‘they departed every one to his lodging’.54 Henry had put on a good show – the silks alone cost him £133 7s 5d and the bill for the gold plate on the tables was a further £451 12s 2d.

  At the end of April 1510, a chapter of the Order of the Garter was held at Greenwich. During the second office of vespers, ‘the king in his stall and [the] other knights (including Buckingham and Northumberland) in theirs’, Bishop Ruthal sought nominations for the vacant stalls (gaps in membership). He was acting registrar of the Order, as one had not been chosen. Henry promptly named his new almoner, Thomas Wolsey, to discharge the office thereafter.55 Wolsey, his ‘head full of subtle wit and policy’, had caught the king’s eye and was rapidly gaining in favour at court. That year Henry gave him Empson’s house at Bridewell, off London’s Fleet Street.56