Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII
Page 36
70
Ibid., p.322.
71
Sherborne died in 1526. He forged a papal Bull to appoint himself to the see of St David’s in 1505 and became Bishop of Chichester three years later.
72
CSP Spain, vol. 1, p.328.
73
Duke de Estrada to Queen Isabella, London, 10 August 1504 (CSP Spain, vol. 1, p.330).
74
Henry VII to Julius II, Westminster, 28 November 1504 (CSP Spain, vol. 1, p.342).
75
Addressed ‘To the most illustrious Lady Katherine, Princess of Wales, my most beloved daughter’, Isle of Sheppey, Kent, 4 August 1504 (CSP Spain, vol. 1, p.328).
76
London, 10 August 1504 (CSP Spain, vol. 1, pp. 326 – 7).
77
The failure to draw blood from Katherine probably was not because the surgeon failed to find a suitable vein to cut into; de Estrada says he was her household physician who ‘generally bleeds very well’. Why did he not use leeches?
78
Durham House was a large complex with a number of courts and its own chapel close to Charing Cross. Battlemented walls and a tower fronted the river. On its western and northern perimeters there was a narrow lane giving access to a landing stage on the Thames. See Wheatley, p.155.
79
CSP Spain, vol. 1, p.331.
80
Ibid., pp.349 – 50.
81
He succeeded the traitor Sir William Stanley as Lord Chamberlain in 1495.
82
Strickland, Queens of England, vol. 2, p.118. The repudiation was described in a two-page document in Latin – BL Cotton MS Vitellius D XII, which was probably destroyed by fire on 23 October 1731 at Ashburnham House, Westminster, where the Cotton MSS were being temporarily housed – but not before it was seen by early antiquaries. This version is taken from Burnet, vol. 2, pp.vi-vii.
CHAPTER 4: KING IN WAITING
1
CSP Spain, vol. 1, pp.329 – 30.
2
De la Pole was the son of John, second Duke of Suffolk, by Elizabeth Plantagenet, younger sister of Edward IV When his father died in 1491, Henry VII forced him to forego the title of duke, which rankled.
3
Vergil, p.123.
4
See Hanham, pp.239 – 50.
5
Vergil, p.125.
6
In May 1492, Vaughan – then a Gentleman Usher of the King’s Chamber – had tried to take part in a court joust at Sheen, but the heralds organising the event said he was ‘not of a respectable descent’. He did take part, killing Sir James Parker in the first course by his lance piercing Parker’s helmet visor and ‘forcing his tongue to the hind part’ of his skull. The courtier improved his status the following year by marrying Lady Anne Percy, the widow of Sir Thomas Hungerford and daughter of the Third Earl of Northumberland. See Gunn, ‘Courtiers’, p.37.
7
Three Justices of the United States Supreme Court, during a mock trial of Richard III in 1997, ruled in a 3 – 0 decision that the ‘prosecution’ had not fulfilled the necessary burden of proof that the princes had been murdered or that Richard III was complicit in their deaths.
8
Tyrell was buried in the Austin Friars’ church (see Hampton, pp.9 – 22). Sir Thomas More, in his History of Richard III, claims Tyrell and his accomplice John Dighton (one of those who allegedly smothered the princes) confessed to the murder of the two boys during their interrogation under torture in the Tower, ‘but whether the bodies were removed, they could nothing tell’ (Marius, p.106). This seems unlikely – why did Henry VII not use this confession as a powerful propaganda weapon against the Yorkists?
9
Thus Suffolk was ritually cursed by the papal Bull and condemned to perpetual hell. The Bull was obtained with the assistance of Adriano Castelli (c.1461 – c.1521), Bishop of Hereford (1502 – 4) and secretary to Alexander VI, who made him a cardinal in May 1503. The papal Bull was later proclaimed in London (Vergil, p.133).
10
Cunningham, ODNB, vol. 44, p.698.
11
Joan had married her nephew Ferdinand II of Naples in 1496 when she was eighteen and he twenty-seven. The marriage was short-lived, however; he died on 7 September the same year.
12
A sweet wine from Smyrna (an ancient town in Turkey, now Izmir), flavoured with aromatic spices and then filtered.
13
‘Memorials’, pp.223 – 39.
14
She never remarried and died on 27 August 1518.
15
Jointure: an estate settled on a wife to provide income for the period during which she survives her husband.
16
Bentley, p.130.
17
Hall, p.498. Northumberland wore a coat ‘of goldsmith’s work, garnished with pearl and [precious] stone’ and was accompanied by four hundred henchmen. He was esteemed ‘both of the Scots and Englishmen, more like a prince than a subject’.
18
The wedding guests sat down to a feast of prodigious proportions, including boar’s head, brawn with mustard, charred grouse, baked or stewed capons, roast pork and shoulders of mutton, swan with chowder, roast crane and veal. The ‘skynk to potage’ sounds less appetising. For the third course, there were jellies, decorated with the royal arms of Scotland and England, and plums, apples and pears with blancmange (Thomas & Thornley, p.324).
19
Ellis, 1st ser., vol. 1, p.41. The marriage was hardly a love match but there are signs of real affection between James and Margaret later on. They had six children, the first being James, Duke of Rothesay, born on 21 February 1507. Of the six, two daughters were stillborn and only one, James, survived infancy. He was later to become James V of Scotland, a few months after his first birthday.
20
CSP Spain, vol. 1, pp.329 – 30.
21
Ehses, pp.xliiiff.
22
Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p.10. The only copy of this letter is contained in a register of briefs in the Vatican archives.
23
Tertian fever may last up to one day and then reappears on the third. The disease is spread by the bite of the female Anopheles mosquito, which breeds in stagnant water. This spreads the parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which grows in the liver and then enters the bloodstream and invades the red blood cells.
24
Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p.10.
25
Ibid.
26
CSP Spain, vol. 1, p.379.
27
Vergil, p.139; ‘Greyfriars Chronicle’, p.28. The eagle had been renewed in December 1497, being set up ‘by a carpenter of London called Godfrey’ (Thomas & Thornley, p.286). After being blown off, the weathercock was replaced on its pinnacle ‘not without great exertions on account of the vast height’.
28
Vergil, p.135.
29
Hayward, p.91.
30
Hall, p.534.
31
Juana was constantly jealous over her handsome husband’s attractiveness to women, indulging in many fiery Spanish tantrums. She cut off the long hair of one of her ladies-in-waiting, whom she suspected of having an affair with Philip, and laid the long tresses on his pillow as a warning to him. She also dismissed all her ladies as being too pretty.
32
CSP Spain, Supplement to vols. 1 and 2, pp.132 – 3.
33
‘Greyfriars Chronicle’, p.28.
34
CSP Spain, vol. 1, p.379, claims that the archduke offered up Suffolk ‘unasked’. A century later, Bacon recounts the conversation differently. Henry told Philip: ‘Sir, you have been saved upon my coast. I hope you will not suffer me to wreck upon yours.’ When the archduke asked for an explanation, the king replied: ‘I mean it by that same harebrained wild fellow, my subject, the Earl of Suffolk, who is protected in your country
and begins to play the fool when all others are weary of it.’ Philip answered: ‘I had thought sir your felicity had been above those thoughts, but if it trouble you, I will banish him.’ Henry said, ‘Those hornets were best in their nests and worst when they did fly abroad’ and that his desire was to ‘have him delivered’. The archduke then confessed to be ‘a little confused’ with all these metaphors (Bacon, pp.223 – 5).
35
Hayward, p.91.
36
LP Henry VII, pp.284 – 5; Starkey, Henry – Virtuous Prince, p.217.
37
CSP Spain, vol. 4, pt. 1, p.340.
38
Vergil, p.139.
39
BL Add. MS 21,404, f.9. Printed in Byrne, pp.7 – 8.
40
No copy survives, but years later, Erasmus remembered it began: ‘A report has arrived here too sad to be readily believed but so persistent that it cannot appear altogether baseless that Prince Philip has departed this life.’ Clearly Erasmus knew of Henry’s close relationship with the archduke (Nichols, vol. 1, p.424).
41
Nichols, ibid., pp.424 – 6 and Byrne, pp.4 – 5.
42
Lucian (c.AD 125-after AD 180) was the author of the first science fiction story. His True Story has the hero transported by a giant waterspout to the surface of the moon.
43
Pollard, Henry VIII, p.16.
44
Katherine of Aragon to Ferdinand of Spain, London, 22 April 1506 (BL Egerton MS 616 ff.29v – 30).
45
Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p.8.
46
Henry VII to Ferdinand of Spain (CSP Spain, vol. 1, pp.406 – 8).
47
De Puebla to Ferdinand, London, 15 April 1507 (CSP Spain, vol. 1, p.409). Juana’s maternal grandmother had been declared insane and was locked away in Arévalo. In 1503, after giving birth to her fourth child, Juana ran out of her castle and spent thirty-six hours continually screaming in the open air (see Michael Farquhar, A Treasury of Royal Scandals, New York, 2001, p.56). Eventually her son, Charles V of Spain, locked her up in a windowless room in the castle of Torclesillas. She died on 12 April 1555, aged seventy-five, after nearly fifty years of imprisonment.
48
They were married by proxy at Christmas 1508.
49
CSP Spain, vol. 1, p.406.
50
Ibid., p.411.
51
Ibid., p.412.
52
Richardson, p.456.
53
Vergil, p.135. Bray was buried in a chantry chapel in the royal mausoleum of St George’s Chapel, within Windsor Castle. His image, with a ‘sage and grave’ countenance, appears amongst three attendants to the king in a stained-glass window in the priory church of Great Malvern, Worcestershire, together with the kneeling figures of Elizabeth of York and Prince Arthur, completed in December 1501 (see Richardson, p.455).
54
Rex, The Tudors, p.40.
55
CSP Spain, vol. 1, p.206.
56
CSP Spain, Supplement to vols. 1 and 2, p.22.
57
Rex, The Tudors, p.40. In his will, Henry VII bequeathed the relic to St George’s Chapel, Windsor.
58
Now Westminster Abbey.
59
CCR Henry VII, pp.138 – 48.
60
Chrimes, p.305. The hospital stood on the south side of the Strand on a site now occupied by the Savoy Hotel and Savoy Theatre. It was dissolved by Henry VII’s grandson Edward VI in 1553, but refounded by his granddaughter Mary I in 1556, with her maids of honour supplying the beds. It was finally closed in the early 1700s (BL Stowe MS 865, f.5r).
61
Anglo, ‘Court Festivities’, p.20. On 7 December 1507, there is a payment of twenty shillings to ‘John Blank, the black trumpeter, for his month’s wages of November at eight pence the day’. Anglo points out that a negro musician, probably this politically incorrectly named John Blank, is twice shown amongst the king’s trumpets in the Great Roll of the Tournament at Westminster in February 1511 (ibid., p.34).
62
TNA LC/2/1/1, ff.73 – 73v and Starkey, Henry – Virtuous Prince, p.173.
63
Guildford (1489 – 1532) was the son of Sir Richard Guildford, Master of the Ordnance to Henry VII and Comptroller of his household. He was created a banneret for his services fighting the Cornish rebels in 1497 but died in Jerusalem while on pilgrimage.
64
Skelton became Rector of Diss in Norfolk and was probably ‘the Duke of York’s schoolmaster’ who was paid a final forty shillings in April 1502 (Carlson, p.267).
65
Carlson, p.253. For more on Holt, see Orme, pp.283 – 305.
66
Pollard, Henry VII, vol. 3, p.16.
67
Blezzard and Palmer, p.256.
68
Anglo, ‘Court Festivities’, pp.33, 35 and 36. BL Add MS 31,922 contains sixty-three songs and ballads composed early in the reign of Henry VIII, a third of them attributed to Henry himself. ‘Pastime with Good Company’ heads the list at f.14r.
69
LP Henry VIII, vol. 6, pt. ii, p.2,243.
70
Starkey, Henry – Virtuous Prince, p.197.
71
‘Casting the bar’ involved hurling a heavy iron bar from a standing position, rather like shot-putting in modern athletics field sports.
72
A stout wooden pole, six to eight feet (1.83 – 2.44 m) in length, frequently iron-tipped at both ends.
73
Hayward, p.91.
74
TNA LC 2/1/1 f.73v.
75
Gunn, ‘Courtiers’, p.45 and Starkey, Henry – Virtuous Prince, p.231.
76
Thomas & Thornley, p.328. The ‘master carpenter that framed [the gallery] was punished by imprisonment many days after’ (ibid., p.331).
77
Charlton, pp.41 – 5.
78
LP Henry VIII, vol. 13, pt. ii, p.318. He was executed for treason by Henry VIII on 9 December 1539.
79
Ferdinand told him in ?July 1508 that his ‘principal objective must always be to endeavour to have the nuptial ceremony between the Prince and Princess of Wales performed as soon as possible’. He should see to this ‘with the utmost diligence’ (CSP Spain, vol. 1, p.458).
80
‘Correspondence de Fuensalida’, p.449.
81
Peter Foley, ‘Retrospective on the Quincentenary of the Death of Henry VII’, Ricardian Bulletin, December 2009, p.34.
82
Vergil, p.145.
83
Rex, The Tudors, p.43.
84
Clifford Brewer, p.110.
85
Bacon, p.229.
86
De Puebla to Ferdinand of Spain, London, 5 October 1507 (CSP Spain, vol. 1, p.439).
87
CSP Venice, vol. 1, p.330.
88
CSP Spain, vol. 1, p.457.
89
‘Fisher: Works’, vol. 1, pp.271 – 2.
90
Ibid., p.273.
91
Forty shillings were paid out on 25 March for ‘the king’s grace for playing money’ and on 10 April, two payments totalling the large sum of £53 4s 11d were made to Sir Peter Greves ‘for the wages of certain priests singing in diverse places for the king’ (Anglo, ‘Court Festivities’, p.37).
92
‘Fisher: Works’, vol. 1, p.274.
93
Badoer faced ‘great perils’ on his journey: ‘his horse fell upon him, subsequently he was well nigh drowned.’ Haplessly, he told the Venetian government that ‘he would array himself as an ambassador’ (CSP Venice, vol. 1, p.342).
94
CSP Venice, ibid., p.344.
95
TNA E 23/3.
96
&nbs
p; Richard Welles was paid 66s 8d on 6 April for writing Henry VII’s will (Condon, ‘The Last Will of Henry VII … ’, p.105).
97
Condon, ibid., p.112.
98
A marble bust purporting to show Henry VII in the agony of death was in the collection of Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill. However, the bust, probably Italian and now called ‘Shouting Male Head’, was carved in the seventeenth century and is unconnected with any royal demise. It is in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland at Syon House and is illustrated in Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill, Michael Snodin (ed.), New Haven and London, 2010, p.129.
99
‘Fisher: Works’, vol. 1, pp.285 – 6.
100
Henry to Margaret of Savoy, Westminster, 27 June 1509 (BL Add. MS 21,404, f.10).
101
‘Fisher: Works’, vol. 1, p.274.
102
BL Add. MS 45,131, f.54; Doran, p.56.
CHAPTER 5: VIVAT REX
1
BL Add. MS 21,404, f.10.
2
‘Correspondence de Fuensalida’, p.513.
3
Gunn, ‘The Accession of Henry VIII’, p.280. Suffolk and Buckingham had been identified by anonymous ‘great personages’ in 1504 as possible successors to Henry VII (see LP Henry VII, vol. 1, p.233.
4
Sandford, p.472.
5
Later, an efficient clerk cancelled this entry and substituted the word ‘nil’. The payment was then listed in Henry VIII’s chamber accounts (Gunn, ‘The Accession of Henry VIII’, p.280).
6
BL Add. MS 45,131, f.52v.
7
Ibid.
8
‘Correspondence de Fuensalida’, p.516.
9
Ibid., pp.514 and 516.
10
Routh, p.42.
11
Gunn, ‘The Accession of Henry VIII’, p.282.
12
Thomas & Thornley, p.336.
13
Harris, pp.153 – 71; Gunn, ‘The Accession of Henry VIII’, p.284.
14
Holinshed, vol. 3, p.505. This must have been menacing gossip to Henry VIII’s ears. The last ‘Lord Protector’ of the realm had been Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who was appointed to the post on 30 April 1483. On 26 June the following year he became Richard III.
15
Hall, p.512. Henry VIII pardoned him and later created him Earl of Wiltshire.
16
Report of the Deputy Keeper of Public Records, vol. 3, London, 1842, appendix 2, p.226.