Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII

by Robert Hutchinson

  21

  Hall, p.425.

  22

  BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E III, fol.123.

  23

  BL Royal MS 2A XVIII, f.30v. Margaret Beaufort’s 240-page Book of Hours, which she used to jot down memorable events, was probably drawn up for John Beaufort, First Duke of Somerset, before 1399.

  24

  Madden, p.279. St Eustace, a legendary second-century Christian martyr, has now been removed from the Catholic calendar of saints.

  25

  On 30 May 1488 a grant of a £40 annuity was made to Stephen Bereworth, doctor of medicine, ‘in consideration of the grantee’s cordial affection and good service to the king and in reward for his medical attendance upon Prince Arthur, the king’s first-born son’. Was Arthur a sickly infant? See ‘Materials’, vol. 2, p.319.

  26

  BL Lansdowne MS 978, f.26.

  27

  See, for example, David Starkey, ‘King Henry and King Arthur’ in Arthurian Literature, J. P. Carley and F. Riddy (eds.), vol. 16 (1998), pp.171 – 96 and 177 – 8, and Starkey, Henry – Virtuous Prince, pp.41 – 2.

  28

  Bacon, pp.18 – 19.

  29

  Hall, p.428.

  30

  See Anglo, Images, p.51.

  31

  Such as Bernard André’s sycophantic attempt to perceive the image of the ancient king in the appearance of the child. See Sydney Anglo, ‘The British History in Early Tudor Propaganda’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. 44, (1961), pp.29 – 30.

  32

  Jasper, Earl of Pembroke and First Duke of Bedford, married Catherine Woodville, sister of Edward IV’s queen, Elizabeth Woodville, on 7 November 1485. She was the widow of Henry Stafford, Second Duke of Buckingham, executed by Richard III at Salisbury on 2 November 1483 after his abortive rebellion.

  33

  ‘Plumpton Correspondence’, p.50. On 14 October 1486 a rabbit warren and lands in Much Marcle and Stretton, Herefordshire, were granted to Thomas Acton after being seized by the king because of the rebellion of Thomas Hunteley ‘and his adherence to the rebels of Wales’ (CFR, pp.60 – 1).

  34

  See Luckett, pp.166 – 8.

  35

  Edward Plantagenet (1475 – 99) was the elder son of the fatally ambitious George, First Duke of Clarence (1449 – 78), brother of both Edward IV and Richard III, who was accused of treason by the former and secretly executed in the Tower of London on or around 18 February 1478. Tradition has it that he was drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine, and a body, believed to be that of Clarence, was subsequently exhumed. It had not been decapitated. See Michael Hicks, False, Fleeting, Perjur’d: George Clarence, Duke of Clarence, Bangor, 1992, pp.184 – 6.

  36

  Bennett, p.63.

  37

  In 1996 Gordon Smith suggested that Simnel might have been Edward V, the elder of the two princes who disappeared in the Tower – or claimed to be him (see ‘Lambert Simnel and the King from Dublin’, The Ricardian, vol. 10, pp.498 – 536). Tradition has it that the Simnel cake – a light fruitcake with marzipan, eaten during Lent – was named after this youthful imposter, but the term appears in medieval English literature and so pre-dates him.

  38

  Leland, vol. 4, p.212, and Starkey, Henry – Virtuous Prince, p.55.

  39

  Oxford led Henry’s vanguard at Bosworth. Perhaps the king’s experience during that battle, when he and his bodyguard had to fight off a furious, frenzied mounted attack by Richard III and his household knights, persuaded Henry to direct the battle from behind the front lines. See Hutchinson, House of Treason, p.xvi.

  40

  A vault opened at Lovell’s home at Minster Lovell, near Witney, Oxfordshire, in 1728, contained a man’s skeleton seated at a table, which has been assumed to be the missing viscount (Brooks, p.273).

  41

  For a fuller discussion of the rebellion, see Bennett, passim.

  42

  BL Royal MS 2A XVIII, f.30v.

  43

  Leland, vol. 4, p.216. The coronation was attended by fifteen bishops, seventeen abbots, two dukes, twelve earls, two viscounts, twenty barons, three duchesses, four countesses, seven baronesses, thirty-one knight bannerets and one hundred and fifty knights, plus their wives and other gentlewomen.

  44

  Halsted, p.177.

  45

  At the banquet that followed in Westminster Hall, Henry and Lady Margaret watched proceedings from a stage erected on the left wall of the building, ‘richly beset with cloth of arras, that they might see privily at their pleasure the noble feast’ (Leland, vol. 4, p.227).

  46

  Ibid., p.236.

  CHAPTER 1 : IN MY BROTHER’S SHADOW

  1

  Thomas & Thornley, p.254. A ‘courser’ was a large war horse.

  2

  Leland, vol. 4, pp.179 – 83.

  3

  See ‘Ryalle Book’, pp.304 – 6 and 333 – 8.

  4

  A coarse twill of linen and cotton.

  5

  Leland, vol. 4, pp.179 – 80.

  6

  BL Royal MS 2A. XVIII, f.30v. Henry’s birth is recorded, using the Roman calendar under ‘IV Kalendar Julii’. Lady Margaret recorded the precise hour of the birth of both Arthur and his sister Margaret – but not that of Henry. In the manuscript of the Great Chronicle of London, Henry’s birth was inserted some time after the event and was recorded under the wrong year. See Starkey, Henry – Virtuous Prince, p.373. Lady Margaret’s imprecision was normal in the late fifteenth century. John More, the lawyer father of Thomas More, noted the date of his son’s birth on a page in his copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regnum Britanniæ as 1477, amended it to 1478 and then changed it back. It was probably 7 February 1478 (see Ackroyd, p.4).

  7

  Construction of the church began in 1482, and three years later Henry VII founded the convent of Observant Friars there with a warden and twelve brethren from this reformed Franciscan Order (see William Page (ed.), Victoria History of Kent, vol. 2, London, 1926, p.194). Images in painted glass of saints and of Henry VII, Lady Margaret Beaufort and Elizabeth of York were inserted in its windows (see BL Egerton MS 2,341).

  8

  In January 1485, Richard III stopped Fox’s appointment to the vicarage of Stepney, north of London, because he was associated with the ‘great rebel, Henry ap Tudor’. Thirty-eight years later, Fox recalled his baptism of Henry (LP Henry VIII, vol. 4, p.2,588).

  9

  Starkey, Henry – Virtuous Prince, pp.11 – 12 and Doran, p.19.

  10

  TNA E 404/81/1 – 31 December 1491.

  11

  The Launcelyn arms were Gules, a fleur-de-lis argent. Her grandfather John was Justice of the Peace for Bedfordshire in 1423 (see William Page (ed.), Victoria History of Bedfordshire, vol. 3, London, 1912, p.238).

  12

  Charles Cooper, p.35.

  13

  Frideswide may have been one of the five daughters of George Puttenham of Penn, Buckinghamshire, knighted in 1501.

  14

  The Tudors were always generous to their nursery staff. Katherine Gibbs, former wet nurse to Prince Arthur, was granted an annuity of £20 ‘from Christmas last’ on 28 April 1490 (CPR Henry VII, vol. 1, p.306). Shortly after her royal duties ended, Anne, widow of Geoffrey Oxenbridge, was granted the office of Bailiff of the town of Winchelsea, subject to a rent of £20 to the king, ‘beyond the £10 a year that the king gave the said Anne for her service, to hold so long as she shall continue the said payment’ (CPR Henry VII, vol. 2, p.11). On 5 March 1504 she and her second husband, Walter Luke, were granted an annuity of 100 shillings for life, paid out of the customs of Winchelsea ‘of boats fishing on the sea called “snares” [a type of fishing line] anchorage and … other small customs of woods, herring, barley, ale, salt, peas, cheese, timber and feather beds’ (ibid., p.345). Luke was also commissioned in July 1505 along with
four others to investigate land ownership in Bedfordshire (ibid., p.422). He was later knighted and appointed a Justice of the Court of King’s Bench. Anne died on 9 September 1538 and Luke six years later. The couple have a Purbeck marble tomb, with brass plates depicting them both kneeling at prayer desks, in the chancel of All Saints Church, Cople. The inscription proudly declares that Anne was ‘nurse unto his … majesty’. The brass is illustrated in William Lack, H. Martin Stuchfield and Philip Whittemore’s Monumental Brasses of Bedfordshire, London, 1992, p.25.

  15

  The use of swaddling or ‘swathing’ bands went out of fashion in the seventeenth century, but apparently is now reviving, as some believe that restricting a baby’s movement lowers the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (see Alison Sim, The Tudor Housewife, Quebec, 1998, p.26). There are a number of monuments to children who died very soon after their birth depicting them in their swaddling bands, such as at Rougham, Norfolk, 1510; Stoke d’Abernon, Surrey, 1516; Chesham Bois, Buckinghamshire, c.1520; and Cranbrook, Kent, of the same date. Anne Asteley (d.1512), at Blicking, Norfolk, holds two children in swaddling bands, one in each arm – a double tragedy. These are known as ‘chrisom’ monuments after the name of the child’s white baptism robe which was utilised as a shroud if he or she died within a month of birth.

  16

  ‘Ryalle Book’, p.337; Leland, vol. 4, p.302.

  17

  Leland, vol. 4, pp.301 – 2.

  18

  Starkey, Henry – Virtuous Prince, p.63.

  19

  TNA E 404/81/3 – 17 September 1493.

  20

  She was the eldest daughter of John Jermingham and his wife Agnes (daughter of Sir John Darell), of Somerleyton, near Lowestoft, Suffolk. The couple had seven children, including three other daughters who all became nuns and were alive in 1473. Elizabeth married a John Denton and in 1517 became governess to Princess Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and his first wife Katherine of Aragon. She died a year later.

  21

  See Flügel, Men and Their Motives, p.277 and ‘On the Character …’, pp.124ff. Two of Henry’s wives had been married or declared for close relatives – his first wife Katherine of Aragon had previously married his brother Arthur, and his last, Katherine Parr, planned to marry his brother-in-law, Thomas Seymour. See Hutchinson, Last Days, p.59.

  22

  Bentley, p.95.

  23

  On 29 May 1494, the king paid five shillings for ‘a hat for my lord Harry’; Bentley, p.98.

  24

  The portrait, inscribed ‘le Roy henry d’angleterre’ beneath the sketch, is in Bibliothèque de Méjanes MS 442 Res MS 20. There are doubts about its authenticity, particularly regarding the dress and style of hat, which look more appropriate to the fashion of c.1515 – 25. See Doran, p.17 and Hayward, p.89.

  25

  Tudor kitchen staff worked either naked or wore clothes smothered in grease. See Peter Brears, ‘Food and Drink at Henry’s Court’, in Rimer et al., p.85.

  26

  Edward IV had six illegitimate children by at least three mistresses, in addition to the ten legitimate offspring, of which only seven survived him.

  27

  Warbeck’s later confession said he was the son of John Osbek, Comptroller of Tournai. See S. J. Gunn, ‘Perkin Warbeck’, ODNB, vol. 57, pp.246 – 8.

  28

  Her crown, made in 1461, was adorned with enamelled white roses for the House of York set between pearls. It remains the only surviving medieval royal English crown and is held in the treasury of Aachen Cathedral in Germany. The remainder of the medieval English crown jewels were broken up after the seventeenth-century English Civil War.

  29

  The purple-red colour of mulberry, from the Old French morée.

  30

  Wroe, p.141.

  31

  Frederick III died at Linz aged 77 during a botched attempt to amputate his left leg.

  32

  Wroe, pp.134 – 6.

  33

  Bernard André, De Vita atque gestis Henrici Septimi Historia, in ‘Memorials’, pp.49 – 52.

  34

  Henry wrote to Sir George Talbot, Fourth Earl of Shrewsbury, giving news of ‘the feigned lad called Perkin Warbeck [who was] born at Tournai in Picardy’. See Ellis, ‘Original Letters’, 1st ser., vol. 1, p.20.

  35

  Bacon, pp.134 – 5. Stanley had earlier been disappointed by Henry VII in his claim to the Earldom of Chester: his ‘suit did not only end in denial but in a distaste’ according to Bacon. Prince Arthur was created Earl of Chester on 30 November 1489.

  36

  CPR Henry VII, vol. 1, pp.407 and 438 – 9. Arthur was empowered to ‘array men-at-arms, archers and other fensible [militia] men’ in these counties ‘for the defence of his person and the resistance of ill-doers … and for putting the laws in execution’.

  37

  The town of Droitwich, Worcestershire, bought bows and arrows to arm newly recruited soldiers ‘sent when my lord prince went into Wales’ (Worcestershire Record Office, 261.4/BA1006/31b/319).

  38

  J. B. Smith, ‘Crown and Community in the Principality of North Wales in the Reign of Henry Tudor’, Welsh History Review, vol. 3 (1966), pp.163 – 71.

  39

  CPR Henry VII, vol. 1, p.423.

  40

  Sir Edward Poynings succeeded Henry as Lord Warden in 1509. Later holders included the Duke of Wellington (1829 – 52), Sir Winston Churchill (1941 – 65) and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (1978 – 2002). The post is currently held by Admiral the Lord Boyce, former Chief of the Naval Staff and later Chief of the Defence Staff, who was appointed in July 2004. The ports were required to supply fifty-seven ships and their crews for fifteen days’ service each year, either as warships or royal transports.

  41

  Poynings (1459 – 1521), soldier-administrator, led an expedition to subdue the Irish and impose English-style justice upon them. An Act (10 Henry VII cap. 9), which came to be known as Poynings’ Law, ensured that no parliament could be held in Ireland without the king’s prior consent. Only bills earlier approved by the Privy Council in London could be considered. His illegitimate son Thomas was also a loyal Tudor courtier.

  42

  LP Henry VII, vol. 2, p.374.

  43

  TNA E 404/81/4; BL Cotton MS Julius B. XII, ff.91 – 110. Failure to attend incurred a fine.

  44

  With some prurience, one suspects use was made of the disposable earthenware urinals of the type we know were employed by members of Henry VIII’s Privy Council later in the sixteenth century so that their calls of nature did not interrupt proceedings. They were supplied at three pence each, according to his apothecary’s accounts. See Hutchinson, Last Days, p.207.

  45

  ‘Dinner’ in the Tudor period was eaten around ten o’clock in the morning.

  46

  BL Cotton MS Julius B. XII, ff.91 – 110.

  47

  Thomas Grey, Lord Harrington, was the son and heir of Thomas Grey, First Marquis of Dorset, a stepson of Edward IV. Dorset was imprisoned during the Lambert Simnel uprising in 1487 and was required to make his heir a ward of Henry VII, together with proving guarantees of his loyalty to the Tudor crown. See T. B. Pugh, ‘Henry VII and the English Nobility’ in The Tudor Nobility, G. W. Bernard (ed.), Manchester, 1992, pp.49 – 110.

  48

  Jocelyn Perkins, Most Honourable Order of the Bath, 2nd ed., London, 1920, p.7.

  49

  The two-storey chapel was completed in 1348 but was destroyed in the great fire of 1834. The lower storey, which was reserved for use by members of the royal household, survives as the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft. After 1547, in the reign of Henry VIII’s son Edward VI, the chapel was deconsecrated and became the debating chamber of the House of Commons, with the Speaker’s chair positioned on the old altar steps.

  50

  On 31 October 1494, Northumberland received a payme
nt of £2 6s 8d for the robes of a Knight of the Bath, worn during the ceremony. See Bentley, p.99.

  51

  The last time this ritual was employed was during Charles II’s coronation in April 1661. It is perhaps somewhat apposite that the Order’s chapel is now the Henry VII Chapel in Westminster Abbey. Its Grand Master is Charles, Prince of Wales, who was appointed in May 1975 by Queen Elizabeth II.

  52

  Westminster Hall was completed in 1097 and at the time was the largest hall in England, if not in Europe. It measures 250 feet in length and 67 feet in width (73 m by 20 m) and has a fourteenth-century raftered roof.

  53

  BL Cotton MS Julius B. XI I, ff.91 – 110. Henry did not wear his spurs for very long. Within an hour or so, the king’s master cook claimed them as his fee for services rendered during the long ceremony.

  54

  Ibid., ff. 92v – 93.

  55

  The priest, Thomas Lyng, wrote to Sir John Paston (who was knighted at the Battle of Stoke) in Norfolk, describing the scene in Westminster Hall: ‘The king and queen went crowned on Hallowmass Day last and my Lord of Shrewsbury bore my Lord Harry in his arms and ten bishops with mitres on their heads, going before the king that day round about Westminster Hall with many other estates [nobles].’ He probably confused a couple of abbots for bishops as only eight bishops took part in the proceedings. See Paston Letters, vol. 6, p.152.

  56

  LP Henry VII, vol. 1, pp.393 – 4.

  57

  Vergil, pp.73 – 5; Thomas & Thornley, p.256.

  58

  Thomas & Thornley, p.257.

  59

  Henry’s Privy Purse paid out £15 19s for Stanley’s burial in the Bridgettine Church at Syon, near Isleworth, Middlesex, on 27 February 1495. Eleven days earlier, the accounts recorded a £10 payment to ‘Sir William Stanley at his execution’ – probably the traditional guerdon (or reward) to the headsman, given in the hope of a clean, speedy end. Bentley, p.101.

  60

  The £500 was delivered to Clifford by Sir Reginald Bray, one of Henry’s ministers, on 20 January 1495 (Bentley, p.100). He used the money piously – an attack of conscience perhaps? – to build a new aisle onto his local parish church at Aspenden, Hertfordshire.

  61

  He died in 1508 and was buried in an expensive tomb in the church at Aspenden. Its south porch, erected between 1508 and 1526, was endowed by his widow, Elizabeth, and bears Clifford’s arms and those of her first husband, Sir Ralph Jocelyn.