Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII

by Robert Hutchinson

  They were made in the shape of castles and animals of various descriptions as beautiful and as admirable as can be imagined.

  The Nuncio ended this breathless paean of praise to the opulence and glamour of Henry’s court with a valediction – which would have come as music to Henry’s ears:

  The wealth and civilisation of the world are here and those who call the English barbarians appear to me to render themselves such.

  I here perceived very elegant manners, extreme decorum and very great politeness.

  There is this most invincible king, whose acquirements and qualities are so many and excellent that I consider him to excel all who ever wore a crown.

  Blessed and happy may this country call itself in having as its lord so worthy and eminent a sovereign.79

  Henry’s court was a magnificent, well-ordered institution. Two of his Privy Chamber Gentlemen always slept on a pallet inside the royal bedchamber and all had to be ready for service at seven o’clock in the morning to help him dress – ‘in [a] reverent, discreet and sober manner’. None were allowed to touch the king’s sacred person without his special command. Regulations ordained that members of the Privy Chamber were

  to be friendly to each other and keep secret all things done there; not to enquire in the king’s absence where he is going or talk about his pastimes and if anyone uses unfitting language [about] the king, it is to be immediately reported.

  They must not exploit their position for special pleading on behalf of others: ‘the nearer they are to his person the more humble they must show themselves.’ One groom, called Peter Malvesey, was recruited especially for ‘tennis play’ – Henry’s coach, perhaps?

  Penney, the royal barber, attended Henry

  at his rising, having in readiness his water, clothes [towels], basin, knives, combs, scissors, to trim his head and beard. He must take care to keep his own person and apparel clean and not to go in company with vile persons or misguided women on pain of losing his place and being further punished at the king’s pleasure.

  The Privy Chamber should be kept

  pure and clean and free from great resort of people who disturb the king’s retirement [therefore] no one is to be allowed to enter besides those he himself calls for, except the ministers deputed to attend.

  The knight marshal and his officers were ordered to exclude ‘boys and vile persons and punish vagabonds and beggars’ who were always hanging around the court looking for handouts of food. No one at court was allowed ‘to have greyhounds or other dogs, except for a few spaniels for ladies’.80

  Henry needed to be protected from distractions because he had now become an author. In late 1517 the German priest Martin Luther had attacked the church’s system of indulgences, claiming that avoidance of God’s punishment of sin could not be bought merely by cash. Both Pope Leo X and Charles V demanded the retraction of his views and Luther’s refusal resulted in his excommunication and banishment as an outlaw. None knew it, but it was the beginning of the Reformation.

  In England a pious Henry immediately wrote a refutation of Luther’s opinions and these emerged in 1521 as the opening three chapters of his book Assertio Septem Sacramentorum (the ‘Defence of the Seven Sacraments’). That April, his secretary Richard Pace wrote to Wolsey, mentioning that the king was much occupied ‘in scribendo contra Lutherum’ (writing against Luther) ‘as I do conjecture’.81 He was aided in his work by some of his clerics and Thomas More helpfully marshalled the royal arguments ‘as a sorter-out and placer of the principal matters therein’.82 More himself did not fail to mince his words about Luther, graphically describing him in his own writings as ‘an ape, an arse, a drunkard, a lousy little friar, a piece of scurf, a pestilential buffoon, a dishonest liar’.83

  Leo X concurrently ordered Wolsey to burn all Luther’s books in England and prohibit their reading.84 There was an evocative public incineration of the heretic’s works at Paul’s Cross alongside the London Cathedral on 12 May and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, preached a sermon, railing against Luther’s errors.85

  A copy of Henry’s book was specially bound in cloth of gold and presented to the Pope in October 1521. The king had personally inscribed dedicatory verses (dutifully supplied by Wolsey) on its endpaper and his Latin Secretary Richard Pace, aware they were ‘written with a very small pen … and I knew the Pope to be of a very dull sight, I would have read the verses aloud [but] his Holiness took the book from me and read the verses promptly, commending them singularly’.86 Six weeks later, by papal Bull, Leo at last granted Henry his coveted recognition – Fidei Defensor, ‘Defender of the Faith’87 – but refused to add the words Gloriosus (‘famous’) or Fidelissimus (‘ever faithful’) that several cardinals had suggested.88 The title was intended for the personal use of the king, but it became inextricably attached to the English crown by Parliamentary Act in 1543.89

  Despite the slightly grudging award, the king was delighted. One later tradition of uncertain veracity has it that his fool, or jester, found Henry ‘transported with an unusual joy’ because ‘the Pope had honoured him with a style more eminent than any of his ancestors’. The fool boldly answered: ‘O good Harry, let you and I defend one another and let the faith alone to defend itself.’90

  Wolsey’s star was now in the ascendancy at Henry’s court and he handled all England’s business. Giustinian in 1519 described him as ‘about forty-six years old, very handsome, learned, extremely eloquent, of vast ability and indefatigable’. Honours and preferments were heaped upon his grey-haired head: Archbishop of York in September 1514; cardinal in September 1515; and in May 1518, he was appointed Papal Legate to England. On Christmas Eve 1515, Henry appointed him Lord Chancellor in succession to Warham.

  The Venetian ambassador recalled that on his arrival in London Wolsey used to say to him:

  His Majesty will do so and so … Subsequently, by degrees, he forgot himself and commenced saying, ‘We shall do so and so.’ He then reached such a pitch that he used to say: ‘I shall do so and so.’91

  No one obtained audience with Wolsey until the third or fourth attempt – and then had to walk through eight rooms at his palace at York Place before reaching the audience chamber.

  The cardinal’s household numbered almost five hundred, and one of them, George Cavendish, described this prince of the church’s daily procession to Westminster Hall to hear legal cases in the Chancery Court:

  [He] would issue out, apparelled all in red, in the habit of a cardinal which was either of fine scarlet or else of crimson satin … the best he could get for money. Upon his head, a round pillon.92

  He also had a tippet [cape] of fine sable around his neck, holding in his hand a very fair orange [with] the substance within taken out, wherein was vinegar and other confections against the pestilent airs, the which he most commonly smelt unto, passing among the press [of people] or … when he was pestered with suitors.

  His procession was led by a page bearing the Great Seal of England and another his red cardinal’s hat93 and these were followed by tall priests carrying two large silver crosses, one symbolising Wolsey’s role as Archbishop of York and the other, a double cross like that of Lorraine, his position as Papal Legate. Two pillars of heavy silver, again carried by priests, came next, together with the cardinal’s pursuivant of arms, with a ‘great mace of silver gilt’. Wolsey himself was humbly mounted on a mule, but this was richly trapped out in crimson velvet with gilt stirrups, and he was surrounded by his own guards, armed with gilded poleaxes and whose uniforms bore the initials ‘T. C.’ for ‘Thomas Cardinalis’ embroidered in gold.94

  After Leo X died on 1 December 1521 Wolsey may have entertained some hopes of succeeding him as the second English Pope95 – indeed, the king urged him to stand as a candidate. In the conclave of cardinals, he only received five votes, all in the fifth scrutiny on 3 January 1522. In the event sixty-three-year-old Adrian VI96 was elected but he died on 14 September 1523. Wolsey may have been relieved when Clement VII succeeded to
the papacy, preferring the domination he enjoyed over English affairs to the byzantine intrigues and conspiracies of the Vatican.97

  Henry liked able men about him. For years he pestered Wolsey to recruit Thomas More into royal service. He stepped up his efforts after the lawyer had appeared on behalf of Leo X in a Court of Star Chamber case concerning a papal cargo of the chemical alum (used to preserve fruit and vegetables) which had been illegally confiscated by Suffolk in 1514.98 More’s friend Erasmus acknowledged that the king ‘could not rest until he had dragged [him] to his court – dragged is the word for no man tried more strenuously to gain admission to court than he did to escape from it’.99

  More admitted in a letter, now lost, that he came to Henry’s court ‘with the greatest unwillingness … as the king himself often throws in my face’. He was appointed Master of the Court of Requests – the hearer of ‘poor men’s [legal] suits’ – in 1518 and a month later joined the Privy Council.100 Henry warned More that ‘in all his doings and affairs touching the king, he should first respect and regard God and afterwards the king, his master’. He was knighted in 1521.

  In May 1519 the court was purged of some of the noisiest and most badly behaved of Henry’s cronies – his close friends of the joust and those endless late-night gambling sessions. Six Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber – the one-eyed Francis Bryan, Nicholas Carew, Edward Neville, Arthur Pole, Henry Norris and William Coffin – were dismissed for being too ‘familiar and homely’ with Henry and ‘not meet to be suffered for the king’s honour’.

  The underlying cause was not just the scale of Henry’s mounting gambling debts. Although some blamed Wolsey for the purge, it seems more likely that the group’s behaviour had offended some of the more conservative elements at court. Some of them had returned from a boisterous diplomatic mission to France in the autumn of 1518 during which they had

  ridden disguised through Paris throwing eggs, stones and other foolish trifles at the people …

  And when these young people came again into England, they were all French in eating, drinking and apparel and yes, in French vices and brags so that all the [nobles] in England were by them laughed at.101

  There was a more serious – and more important – casualty to come.

  The proud and powerful Sir Edward Stafford, Third Duke of Buckingham, was riding for a fall with his sovereign. Up to now, he had been a regular partner in energetic games of tennis against the younger Henry (£14 was lost in a wager with the king in 1519) and had sumptuously entertained him at his home in Penshurst, Kent, in August 1518.

  But Henry had deliberately isolated him from any political power. The duke may have been a member of the king’s Council, but he attended meetings only infrequently.102 By 1520, Buckingham was falling out of royal favour because of jealousy over his wealth,103 his huge estates and concerns over his status, based on his connections by marriage104 and, most importantly of all, his ancestry.

  Henry could never completely put out of his mind the duke’s dormant but compelling claim to the throne of England, which descended from Thomas of Woodstock, seventh and youngest son of Edward III. In the event of Henry having no surviving male heir, that claim would threaten the Tudor dynasty – in such a circumstance, the Venetian ambassador considered the ‘very popular’ duke ‘might easily obtain the crown’.105 Doubtless the king also recalled those ominous rumours about Buckingham’s unbridled ambitions that circulated at his accession, and his public embarrassment about his affair with the duke’s younger sister.

  Perhaps the duke was aware of this antipathy and may have taken steps to demonstrate his loyalty. Probably in 1517, he had excused himself from competing in a joust against the king because of the risk ‘of running against his person, for I would liever [rather] by his commandment go to Rome than do so’.106

  Hot-tempered Buckingham had also made an enemy of Wolsey, whom he, like so many of England’s old nobility, regarded as a low-born upstart who not only exerted far too much influence over Henry but had his chubby fingers in too many state and church pies. The duke was truly galled to have to be ‘subservient to so base and uncivil a fellow’. He also believed him to be hostile to the aristocracy, claiming: ‘My lord Cardinal is so sore with noble men, that they would be all … his top [superiors] if the king’s grace were displeased with him … He would undo all noble men if he could.’107

  At court, the duke was furious to see Wolsey – that ‘vile and importunate’ man – impudently wash his hands in the water used by the king in his ritualised ablutions before dining. He snatched up the basin and angrily tipped its contents over Wolsey. The drenched minister swore a furious oath that he would shortly ‘sit upon [Buckingham’s] skirts’ – or take him down a peg or two. The following morning Buckingham turned up at court, cheekily wearing a short doublet, explaining to the king that this garment would prevent Wolsey from extorting his revenge.108

  There was genial laughter at this merry quip, but the cardinal never forgot a slight and could bear grudges for a season or two. Wolsey secretly warned Buckingham in 1520 that although he knew the duke was accustomed to rail (complain) against himself, the duke should be careful how ‘he did use himself towards his highness’.

  Late in 1520 or early 1521, Henry wrote secretly to Wolsey regarding fresh suspicions he entertained about Buckingham and some of his fellow noblemen. The king could not trust his clerks or messengers on this sensitive issue, so despite finding ‘writing somewhat tedious and painful’, he took the rare step of penning the short note himself ‘as none other but you and I’ should be aware of its contents. The king instructed his minister to

  make good watch … on the Duke of Buckingham, on my lord of Northumberland, on my lord of Derby, on my lord of Wiltshire [Buckingham’s brother] and on others which you think suspect to see what they do with this news.

  No more to you at this time but sapienti pauca [these few words are judicious].

  Written with the hand of your loving master.109

  What this mysterious ‘news’ constituted is unfortunately unknown to us – but there were rumours of a plot to assassinate Wolsey in 1518 and Buckingham may have been considered a ringleader. Above all, there were his aspirations for the crown. When the duke sought Henry’s permission to visit his own properties in the Welsh Marches in late 1520, his application was peremptorily refused, because of fears that he would raise a rebellion from among his tenantry and retainers.

  The duke was deeply patriotic with an irrational, jingoistic hatred of the French; he greatly resented his personal expense in attending the Field of the Cloth of Gold. He was also fervently religious, founding a college in August 1514 at Thornbury, south Gloucestershire, where from 1511 he began building an impressive fortified house110 set within a park of a thousand acres (404.69 hectares) for his deer.

  In 1520, Buckingham told his Chancellor Robert Gilbert that he had been such a great sinner he was sure he lacked grace. While he may have hoped for forgiveness from his Maker, he was to receive no mercy from Henry.

  While contemporary chroniclers believed Wolsey conducted a vindictive campaign against the duke111 there is little documentary evidence for this. But the king now took a high level of interest in the duke’s activities, so much so that in November 1520, Buckingham was worried that a member of his own household was ‘misreporting’ him to Henry.

  This campaign of covert surveillance and assiduous collection of information about the duke at last bore its bitter, poisonous fruit.

  On 8 April 1521, Henry summoned the duke, who was at Thornbury, to come without delay to Greenwich Palace. Buckingham, with his customary ducal largess, generously rewarded the royal messenger with a mark (13s 4d) and obediently departed for London. He was blissfully unaware that his small entourage was being followed at a distance by a group of Henry’s courtiers and sergeants-at-arms, under the command of one of the king’s praetorians, Sir William Compton.

  Buckingham paused only to visit devoutly the Shrine of Our Lady of Eyton, nea
r Reading, and then lodged in a hostelry at Windsor for the night. While in the building, he identified one of those shadowing his progress as Thomas Ward, a gentleman harbinger at Henry’s court. Habitually forthright and direct, the duke demanded to know why he was there – but Ward would only answer that he was engaged on the king’s business. Buckingham guessed his true mission in one heart-stopping moment of acuity, followed instantly by the awful logic that his life was now forfeit. Ashen-faced, he ‘perceived that he could not escape. Much was he in spirit troubled that as he was at his breakfast his meat would not down.’ Anyone would suffer a loss of appetite confronted with the sure knowledge that their journey would end in the Tower of London and that their chances of survival were minimal.

  The duke, however, was made of stern stuff. He presented a brave face and rode on to Tothill Fields,112 alongside Westminster, where he boarded his barge on 16 April for the last stage of his planned journey to Greenwich Palace. Minutes later he passed Wolsey’s palace, York Place, and ordered his boatmen to put him ashore there, intending to confront the cardinal face to face in perhaps his last opportunity to tell him what he really thought of him. However, he was politely informed the minister was ‘diseased’ and could not see him. Buckingham must have felt the black clouds of Nemesis gathering around him, but he still left Wolsey’s cooks a twenty-shilling tip.