Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII

by Robert Hutchinson

  Louis was not the only European monarch to join his maker. Ferdinand died on 23 January 1516 and was succeeded as joint ruler of Castile and Aragon by his grandson Charles and his mother, the mad Juana, who was promptly locked away in a remote Spanish castle. After his paternal grandfather Maximilian died in January 1519, Charles became the Holy Roman Emperor with extensive domains in central, western and southern Europe, together with the Spanish colonies in the Americas.

  Charles visited England briefly in late May 1520, breaking his voyage from Spain back to the duchy of Burgundy. He landed at Dover and with Henry went on to Canterbury, where, for the first time, he met his aunt Katherine of Aragon in the archbishop’s palace.44 It was only a brief visit as Henry himself was en route to meet Francis I of France – annoyingly still the ‘Most Christian King’ – for another summit arranged between Guisnes and Ardres, which was to become known as ‘The Field of the Cloth of Gold’.

  Both sovereigns tried to outdo each other in the magnificence and splendour of their entourages. Instead of fighting on the battlefield, it was a war of culture between the two traditional enemies. More than 5,000 courtiers and their attendants formed the English contingent. Wolsey had organised the erection of a huge temporary square palace for Henry, built of timber and canvas on brick foundations, at the designated meeting place, the Val d’Or. The sides of this valley had been laboriously excavated so that neither nation could enjoy the superiority of being raised above the other. The site today is marked by a granite stele on the busy D231 road near Balinghem, ten miles (16 km) south-east of Calais.

  It was not all talk. The meeting opened with almost two weeks of jousting and sport. Henry managed to sprain his wrist and so ran few courses while Francis, who ‘shivered spears like reeds’, suffered a black eye and had to wear a black patch over the injury. On one day of bad weather there was wrestling – including a bout between the two kings, arranged as they were drinking in a pavilion. Henry, to his great fury, was hurled to the floor by Francis using a touche de Bretagne – a Breton throw.45 He jumped up from the floor, calling for a rematch, but was refused with icy Gallic politeness. At least he had excelled at archery alongside twenty-four of his royal guard.

  The formal diplomatic extravaganza ended on Saturday 23 June, when Wolsey celebrated Mass in the presence of the English and French kings and queens. The theme was inevitably peace and a foundation stone was laid on the site for a church, to be called ‘Our Lady of Friendship’, endowed by both monarchs.46 At the start of the service, a firework, fashioned as a dragon, was floated over the camp at the height of a bowshot by the English.47

  This great Renaissance occasion failed to eradicate one traditional national character trait, at least amongst some of the English. On the way home, Lord Leonard Grey, brother of the Marquis of Dorset, scornfully told a friend: ‘If I had a drop of French blood in my body I would cut myself open to get rid of it,’ and the other replied, ‘And so would I.’ So much for entente cordiale. The king had them arrested.

  Although Henry enjoyed a fascination for both foreign intrigue and naval power, he was curiously lacking in enthusiasm for exploration and exploitation of the new worlds across the Atlantic. In 1517, John Rastell, a lawyer and printer (and brother-in-law to Thomas More), planned a voyage of colonisation to ‘this new land found lately … called America’. Henry provided him with letters of commendation addressed to any indigenous potentates he might come across, but funding came from two London Merchants, with More acting as a guarantor.48

  Rastell departed Gravesend on 1 March 1517 with two ships, one named the Barbara, but having reached Waterford on the coast of south-east Ireland, the crew decided that piracy was a more attractive option than distant, unfriendly coasts and abruptly put him ashore. They sailed on to Bordeaux and sold off his stolen cargo of flour, salt and tallow.49

  In early 1521 the London guilds were invited to fund a five-strong flotilla of ships to seek the elusive North-West Passage through the Arctic wastes to the riches of Cathay (China) and the East Indies. A royal ship was to accompany these intrepid vessels in a plan endorsed by both Henry and Wolsey, but merchants were loath to risk their money on this venture into the far unknown. They were instantly summoned into the royal presence and told to stump up the cash – ‘His grace would have no “nay” therein but spoke sharply to the mayor to see [the expedition] put in execution to the best of his power.’50 Several ships were funded but the flotilla never sailed.

  The North-West Passage continued to fascinate adventurous Englishmen. In 1541 Roger Barlow, the renowned explorer of the River Plate (between today’s Argentina and Uruguay) considered that ‘the shortest route, the northern, has been reserved by Divine Providence for England’. In 1527 the Bristol merchant Robert Thorne, whose father claimed to be the first to discover Newfoundland in 1494,51 tried to convince Dr Edward Lee, Henry’s ambassador at Charles V’s court, of the immense wealth of the East, which was just lying there, waiting to be picked up. The islands, now known as the Philippines, were

  fertile of cloves, nutmegs, mace and cinnamon … and abound with diamonds, balasses,52 granates53 and other stones and pearls. For we see where nature gives anything, she is no niggard.

  In his nineteen-page letter Thorne tried to explain, interminably, how courses were plotted at sea: ‘Your lord[ship] knows that the cosmographers have divided the earth by 360 degrees in latitude and as many in longitude under which is comprehended the roundness of the earth.’54 Poor Dr Lee! The still fresh concept of the earth being round was difficult enough, without the mathematical complexities of maritime navigation.

  Ever the enthusiast, Thorne immediately proposed an expedition to the North Pole to Henry, urging that the North-West Passage could outflank the Spanish and Portuguese by cutting down the sailing time to the Far East.55 Although the merchant bought a ship for the voyage, there is no record of any response from the king.

  The same year, 1527, the crown did support an English attempt to find the Passage. The leader, John Rut,56 was a king’s man and one of his two ships, the three-masted Mary Guilford, 160 tons,57 was a royal vessel.58 On 10 June he departed Plymouth but lost his other ship, the Samson, in heavy Atlantic storms. Braving icebergs, he reached the coast of Labrador. Anchored in the harbour of St John, Newfoundland, Rut wrote to Henry on 3 August 1527 – the earliest surviving letter written from North America:

  All the company are in good health. The Mary Guilford with all her [crew are safe] thanks be to God.

  Went northward till we came to [latitude] 53° where we found many islands of ice and deep water [where] we found no sounding [and] dared go no further for fear of ice …

  Went southward … [and] landed at Cape de Bas, a good harbour with many small islands and a great fresh river going up far into the mainland. The land is wilderness, mountains and woods and no habitation or people. In the woods we found the footing [tracks] of diverse great beasts but we saw none, not in ten leagues.59

  In the harbour, they found eleven boats from Normandy and one from Brittany, together with two Portuguese barques, all fishing the nearby cod grounds.60

  Rut then sailed south to Florida and into the Caribbean, reaching the Spanish town of Santa Domingo on the island of Hispaniola (the present-day Dominican Republic) in November. Faced with deep suspicion, and perhaps encouraged by a mortar shot fired across his stern, Rut hastily departed within twenty-four hours. The Spanish report on the incident said:

  They had sailed [as] far north as fifty and some degrees where certain persons died of cold; the pilot had died and one of the vessels lost.

  The ship being so anchored … that from the fortress of this city there was fired at it a small lombard loaded with a stone which passed close to the ship which at once cleared on a course for Castile.

  The ship was well equipped for war with much heavy brass artillery in two tiers [and] that she was ready for action.61

  Despite all the romance and adventure of this voyage, its ultimate failure to find
the passage to China may have convinced the king that his true destiny lay in Europe. He still wanted the throne of France.

  We have vivid descriptions dating from this period of Henry VIII in his proud, swaggering prime – the living embodiment of imperial splendour.

  A harness of engraved silver armour especially made for him in 1515 indicates he was at least 6 ft 1 in. (1.84 m) in height, with broad shoulders and a trim waist measurement of 351/2 in. (0.9 m). As such, he was taller than most of those around him.62 Sebastian Giustinian, who left London as the Venetian ambassador in August 1519, painted a detailed word picture of the then twenty-eight-year-old Henry (Plate 11). The king was:

  much handsomer than any other sovereign in Christendom – a great deal handsomer than the King of France.

  He is very fair and his whole frame admirably proportioned.

  Hearing that King Francis wore a beard, he allowed his own to grow and as it was reddish, he … got a beard that looked like gold.63

  The beard at this stage in Henry’s life did not survive long as Katherine of Aragon objected strongly to it, apparently nagging her husband daily until his barber shaved it off (Plate 12).64 During the first half of his reign, Henry’s hair was bobbed, but later it was cropped closer to his head.

  [He is] very religious, hearing three Masses daily when he hunted and sometimes five on other days, besides hearing vespers and compline daily in the queen’s chamber.65

  He is extremely fond of hunting and never takes the diversion without tiring eight or ten horses which he causes to be stationed along the line of country he means to take.

  In August 1520 while on progress, Henry rose daily at four or five o’clock ‘and hunts to nine or ten at night. He spares no pains to convert the sport of hunting into martyrdom’ complained one weary courtier.66

  Giustinian described how the king loved playing tennis, ‘at which game it was the prettiest thing in the world to see him play – his fair skin glowing through a shirt of the finest texture’.67 In 1527 he hurt his foot during one energetic match, probably at the Palace of Westminster, and the next month was forced to wear a black velvet slipper to ease the pain still troubling him.68

  Like his father, he had a passion for gambling, placing wagers on the outcomes of jousts, tennis and archery contests, as well as betting on games of dice, playing cards and chess. He ‘gambled with the French hostages to the amount occasionally … of from 6,000 to 8,000 ducats [£2,750 – £3,680] in a day’, according to the Venetian envoy.69 Dice or cards normally occupied him during late evening sessions after court masques or plays and often went on into the small hours. Large sums changed hands: in 1511 ‘crafty persons’, knowing Henry’s love of gambling, ‘brought in Frenchmen and Lombards to make wagers with him and so he lost much money but when he perceived their craft he eschewed their company and let them go’.70

  Henry had plenty of money to fund these excesses. Giustinian believed him to be very rich:

  His father left him ten millions of ready money in gold, of which he is supposed to have spent one half in the war against France.

  His revenues amounted to about 350,000 ducats annually [£165,000, or £66.5 million at current prices] … [and] his majesty’s expenses might be estimated at 100,000 ducats … [including] 16,000 for the wardrobe, for he is the best dressed sovereign in the world. His robes are very rich and superb and he put on new clothes every holiday.71

  Henry certainly knew how to dress to impress: ‘His fingers were one mass of rings and around his neck he wore a gold collar from which hung a diamond as big as a walnut,’ gasped one diplomatic visitor.72

  Lorenzo Pasqualigo, another Venetian, echoed Giustinian’s enthusiastic praise for Henry’s good looks. He watched Henry taking part in a St George’s Day procession in Richmond in 1515:

  The king is the handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on. [He is] above the usual height with an extremely fine calf to his leg, his complexion very fair and bright with auburn hair combed straight and short in the French fashion and a round face so very beautiful that it would become a pretty woman.73

  The Venetian had seen Francis I in Paris, and Henry, three years his senior, was curious about his brother king. Dressed (yet again) in a Robin Hood costume for the bucolic May Day festivities at Shooter’s Hill, near Greenwich, Henry asked Pasqualigo about his rival monarch’s physical attributes:

  ‘Is the King of France as tall as I am?’ I told him there was little difference. ‘Is he as stout?’ I told him he was not.

  ‘What sort of legs has he?’ I replied: ‘Spare.’

  Whereupon he opened the front of his doublet and placing his hand on his thigh said, ‘Look here. I have a good calf to my leg.’74

  The king maintained his love of music, frequently playing for hours on a variety of instruments and continuing to compose his own music: ‘After dinner, he took to dancing and playing on every musical instrument, ’ reported a diplomat after enjoying a splendid evening at the court. Nicolo Sagudino, Giustinian’s secretary, no mean musician himself, attended a soirée at Greenwich Palace in June 1515 when

  Two musicians … in the king’s service played the organ but very badly. They kept bad time, their touch was feeble and their execution not very good.

  The prelates who were present said the king would certainly desire to hear me as his majesty practises on these instruments day and night.75

  Henry decided to hire a maestro and lured Friar Dionysius Memo, the organist of St Mark’s Cathedral in Venice, to London in September 1516 and made him his head musician and chaplain. Giustinian told the Signory in Venice:

  [Memo] brought a most excellent instrument with him at great expense.

  The king … sent for him after dinner and made him play before his lords and all his virtuosi.

  He played to the incredible admiration of everybody, especially the king.76

  The king was also both predatory and ruthless in hiring sweet-singing choristers from other colleges and chapels to augment the choir of his own Chapel Royal. Henry was jealous of the quality of plainsong sung in Wolsey’s chapel at York Place, his opulent London palace, as Richard Pace, his secretary, warned the cardinal in March 1518:

  My lord, if it were not for the personal love that the king bears your grace, surely he would have out of your chapel, not children only but also men.

  His grace has plainly shown unto [William] Cornish77 that your grace’s chapel is better than his and proved the same by this reason – that if any manner of new song should be brought into both the chapels to be sung ex improviso then the song should be better and more surely handled by your chapel than by his grace’s.78

  Henry was always scrupulous in putting on a good show, knowing full well that pomp and circumstance symbolised England’s growing importance on the European political stage. In June 1517, Francesco Chieregato, the Apostolic Nuncio in England, was impressed by the king’s appearance, dressed in white damask ‘in the Turkish fashion with a robe embroidered with roses made of rubies and diamonds in accordance with his emblems’.

  After hearing Mass the royal party went on to the joust where forty gentlemen, members of the Spears’ bodyguard, opened proceedings, dressed in silk livery and wearing gold chains formed by the initials ‘H’ and ‘K’. These chains were ‘of five fingers’ breadth [and] upwards of 2,000 ducats [were] melted [down] to make each’. They all rode white horses, also decorated with the gold initials, which ‘cost the king a mint of money as during the last four months all the London goldsmiths have wrought nothing but these trappings’. The bridles and girths and the pommels of the saddles were made of pure silver.

  Henry was drawn that day against Suffolk:

  They bore themselves so bravely that the spectators fancied themselves witnessing a joust between Hector and Achilles.

  The king appeared on a tall white horse trapped from head to foot with little bells … and on his head a very large feather quite full of jewels.

  [He] presented himself before the queen
and the ladies, making a thousand jumps in the air and after tiring one horse, he entered the tent and mounted another of those ridden by the pages, doing this constantly and reappearing in the lists until the end of the joust.

  Afterwards, there was a buffet set out, thirty feet in length and twenty feet high (9.14 m by 6.01 m), ‘with silver gilt vases and vases of gold, worth vast treasure. All the small platters used for the table service and the goblets were of pure gold.’ The meal took seven hours to serve and consume:

  The removal and replacing of dishes the whole time was incessant, the hall in every direction full of fresh viands on their way to table.

  Every imaginable sort of meat known in the kingdom was served and fish in like manner, even down to prawn pasties but the jellies of some twenty sorts surpassed everything.