Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII
Page 39
96
Ellis, 3rd ser., vol. 1, p.152. Katherine was about to lead reinforcements north as she wrote this letter. See also: BL Cotton MS Caligula D VI, f.93. Her instructions to muster troops in inland shires during her Regency are in Lambeth Palace MS 247, ff.58 – 60.
97
Cruickshank, p.127.
98
BL Cotton MS Cleopatra B V, ff.64 – 95.
99
CSP Milan, p.395.
100
Chronicle of Calais, pp.71 – 4; Gunn, Charles Brandon, pp.30 – 1.
101
CSP Milan, p.405.
102
BL Cotton MS Vespasian F III, f.15. For a full account of the Battle of Flodden, see Hutchinson, House of Treason, pp.15 – 20. In a letter to Wolsey, Katherine described the battle ‘as a great gift that almighty God has sent to the king … This matter is so marvellous that it seems to be of God’s doing alone’ (BL Cotton MS Caligula B IV, f.35). James died excommunicate and Henry sought special permission for him to be buried with royal honours in St Paul’s Cathedral, London. This never happened. James IV’s body was eventually taken to the Carthusian monastery at Sheen where, wrapped in lead, it lay unburied for many years. The antiquary John Stow reported later in the sixteenth century that after the dissolution of the house in the 1530s, the corpse had been thrown into a lumber room ‘amongst the old timber and rubble. Since [such] time, workmen there, for their foolish pleasure, hewed off his head. Lancelot Young [Master Glazier to Elizabeth I] … brought [the head] to his house in Wood Street [London] where for a time he kept it for its sweetness. In the end, he caused the sexton [of St Michael’s Wood Street] to bury it amongst other bones, taken out of their charnel house’ (John Stow, Survey of London, 2 vols., Oxford, 1908, vol. 1, p.298).
103
BL Egerton MS 2,014, f.2. Reprinted in part in Byrne, pp.20 – 1.
104
Hatfield House MS CP 277/1, f.1.
CHAPTER 8: HOME AND ABROAD
1
Greenwich, 3 June 1516 (CSP Venice, vol. 2, p.305).
2
It was handed back to France in 1519 but captured by Imperial forces in 1521. For the English occupation of Tournai, see: Mayer, pp.257 – 77 and Davies, pp.1 – 26. Charles Brandon, now created Duke of Suffolk, led a 10,000-strong English army in August 1523 to initially capture the French port of Boulogne as a jumping-off point for a major military enterprise planned for the following year. His objectives were changed, however, and the army struck east, coming within fifty miles (80.47 km) of Paris before bad weather bogged down the troops and they retreated to Flanders (‘State Papers’, vol. 6, pp.221ff. and 233ff.).
3
A total of more than £1 million was paid out by John Heron, Treasurer of Henry’s Privy Chamber, between the king’s accession and 1518, of which nearly 70 per cent was spent on preparations for war and hostilities. See TNA E 36/215/257ff. and Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p.54.
4
Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p.39. According to Venetian tittle-tattle, Charles was completely against marrying Mary, saying a little ungallantly that ‘he wanted a wife and not a mother’ (‘Sanuto Diaries’, vol. 5, xvii, pp.23 – 4).
5
CSP Venice, vol. 2, p.175.
6
BL Cotton MS Vitellius B II, f.56.
7
Henry boasted vainly to the Venetian ambassador in May 1514 that he wanted to go to Jerusalem and ‘would take it with 25,000 men’ (‘Sanuto Diaries’, vol. 5, xvii, p.139).
8
LP Henry VIII, vol. 1, 2nd ed., p.1,107.
9
The cap of maintenance is also called the ‘cap of estate’ or ‘cap of dignity’.
10
BL Cotton MS Vitellius B II, f.69.
11
‘Sanuto Diaries’, vol. 5, xviii, pp.302 – 5.
12
LP Henry VIII, vol. 1, 2nd ed., p.1,184.
13
Allen & Allen, ‘Opus Epistolarum’, vol. 2, epistle 287. His ministers reported in January 1514 that ‘the king has been lately visited by a malady named the smallpox but is now recovered and out of danger’ (LP Henry VIII, vol. 1, 2nd ed., p.1,141). The doctor was probably John Chambre, listed as a member of the Privy Chamber in 1514 – 5 (‘Rutland Papers’, p.21).
14
Charles was ill in June 1514 and his doctors claimed the effects of the moon were prolonging his illness (LP Henry VIII, vol. 1, 2nd ed., p.1,303. His letter to Princess Mary of 18 December 1513 hardly bursts with affection: he asked a diplomat to inform him of ‘the state of your health, which is the best news I can hear’ (BL Cotton MS Galba B XIII, f.93).
15
‘Letters Louis XII’, vol. 4, p.335.
16
See L. G. Carr Laughton, ‘The Burning of Brighton by the French’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 3rd ser., vol. 10 (1916), pp.167 – 73.
17
Surrey reported to the King’s Council on 14 June: ‘I landed yesterday in Normandy, three miles west of Cherbourg and burned [four] miles west, three miles east and more than [two] inland as far as any house might be seen for great woods, leaving nothing unburnt but abbeys and churches. [We] burned many gentlemen’s country houses, well built and stuffed with hangings … of silk, of which neither they nor our men have little pr[ofit] for all or the more part was burnt.’ He had re-embarked without any loss (BL Cotton MS Caligula D VIII, f.246).
18
‘Sanuto Diaries’, vol. 5, xviii, pp.302 – 5.
19
BL Egerton MS 544, f.158.
20
BL Cotton MS Caligula D VI, f.121v.
21
BL Harley MS 3,462, f.142v.
22
BL Add. MS 15,387, f.25.
23
J. S. Brewer, vol. 1, p.10, fn. Elephantiasis grossly enlarged part of the body – usually an arm or leg – due to obstruction of the lymphatic system by filarial worms.
24
LP Henry VIII, vol. 1, 2nd ed., p.1,325. Charles of Burgundy, when he heard the news of Mary’s jilting, told his councillors: ‘Well! Am I to have my wife as you promised me?’ They answered him: ‘You are young but the King of France is the first king in Christendom and having no wife, [so] it rests with him to take for his queen any woman he pleases.’ Charles then took a young hawk and plucked its feathers and explained: ‘Because he is young he is held in small account and because he is young he squeaked not when I plucked him. Thus have you done by me. I am young, you have plucked me at your pleasure and I knew not how to complain. Bear in mind that for the future I shall pluck you’ (CSP Venice, vol. 2, p.201).
25
BL Harley MS 3,462, f.142.
26
TNA SP 1/5/230, f.266.
27
One of Henry’s warships, the 900-ton Lubeck, was wrecked on the French coast, and several hundred of the crew drowned.
28
‘Rutland Papers’, p.25.
29
Knecht, p.80.
30
LP Henry VIII, vol. 2, pt. 1, p.74.
31
CSP Spain, vol. 2, p.248.
32
‘Sanuto Diaries’, vol. 5, xix, p.1.
33
BL Cotton MS Caligula D VI, f.149.
34
LP Henry VIII, vol. 1, 2nd ed., p.1,456 and CSP Spain, vol. 2, pp.243 – 5.
35
Hall, p.572.
36
‘Sanuto Diaries’, vol. 5, xx, pp.98 – 9.
37
BL Cotton MS Caligula D VI, f.176.
38
LP Henry VIII, vol. 2, pt. 1, pp.74 – 5.
39
BL Cotton MS Caligula D VI, f.184.
40
LP Henry VIII, vol. 2, pt. 1, p.75.
41
BL Cotton MS Vespasian F XIII, f.80.
42
LP Henry VIII, vol. 2, pt. 1, p.125.
43
BL Egerton MS 985, f.61v.
44
Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p.76.
45
‘Sanuto Diaries’, vol. 5, xxix, p.20; Russell, pp.131 – 2.
46
‘Sanuto Diaries’, vol. 5, xxix, pp.71 – 9.
47
Russell, p.176. It was probably intended to be a Welsh dragon.
48
Routh, p.44. See A. J. Geritz, ‘The Relationship of Brothers-in-Law Thomas More and John Rastell’, Moreana, vol. 139 – 40 (1999), pp.35 – 48.
49
Routh, ibid. Rastell (c.1475 – 1536) served as coroner in Coventry from 1506 but two years later, possibly because of his Lollard religious beliefs, moved to London where he ran a successful legal practice in addition to printing and publishing mainly law books, although he was the first in England to print musical scores (see A. Hyatt King, ‘The Significance of John Rastell in Early Music Printing’, The Library , 5th ser., vol. 26 (1971), pp.197 – 214). However, Rastell fell foul of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1535 over his denial of clerical rights to tithes and died in poverty in the Tower of London.
50
Williamson, pp.94ff. and 248ff., and Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p.124.
51
It is generally considered to have been discovered by John Cabot in 1497.
52
Balasses were rubies, coloured faintly red.
53
Granates were yellow-red prismatic garnets.
54
Hatfield House MS CP 245/5, ff.3v – 4r.
55
Hatfield House MS CP 245/5, ff.9v – 14r. Another copy is in BL Cotton MS Vitellius C VII, f.337v.
56
Rut (fl. 1512 – 28) was appointed master of the 800-ton Genoese carrack Maria de Loreto in 1512 after it had been seized in Dartmouth, Devon, for service in the French wars.
57
Built in 1524 and named after the wife of Sir Henry Guilford, one-time Master of the Horse and Comptroller of the Royal Household.
58
Andrews, p.55.
59
A league was reckoned to be the distance a man could walk in an hour and is roughly equivalent to three miles (4.8 km).
60
LP Henry VIII, vol. 4, p.3,121.
61
Wright, pp.29 – 40.
62
Hayward, p.6. The average height for men during the Tudor period was around 5 ft 8 in. – although John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, was the same height as Henry VIII.
63
LP Henry VIII, vol. 3, pt. 1, p.142.
64
BL Cotton MS Caligula D VII, f.158. Henry had sworn to grow his beard until meeting King Francis of France. His mother, Louise of Savoy, was puzzled by the sudden loss of facial hair and asked the English ambassador, Sir Thomas Boleyn, whether this was a slight to her son. Boleyn hastened to reassure her that Henry’s affection for Francis was greater ‘than [that for] any king living. She was well appeased and said, “Th[eir] love is not in the beards but in the hearts.”’ An illumination in the Chief Justice Rolls in the Court of King’s Bench in Trinity Term, 1518, shows Henry as young and clean-shaven, but this may have been a stock image of his father, Henry VII, adapted for the new king (TNA KB 27/1024).
65
Vespers is the evening office or service, beginning in the Latin rite: ‘O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end. Amen.’ Compline is the final office of the day.
66
LP Henry VIII, vol. 3, pt. 1, p.350.
67
Tennis had its dangers. On 10 July 1525, the city of Valencia gave a banquet to the Marquis of Brandenburg ‘after which he played at tennis and caught a fever by overheating himself and died in three days’ (BL Cotton MS Vespasian CIII, f.75).
68
Kybett, p.22. During dancing at a diplomatic reception, eight masked noblemen wore black velvet slippers ‘this being done lest the King should be distinguished from the others; as, from the hurt which he lately received on his left foot when playing at tennis, he wears a black velvet slipper’ (LP Henry VIII, vol. 4, p.clxxv).
69
A payment for 1,000 crowns was made in January 1519 ‘playing money for the king, Twelfth Eve’.
70
Hall, Chronicle, p.520. It is ironic that the Sheriffs of London prohibited the playing of ‘tennis, dice and other unlawful games, contrary to the statutes for the maintenance of archery’ in a proclamation published in December 1528. A case of one law for the rich and another for the poor? (See BL Harley MS 442, f.97.)
71
CSP Venice, vol. 2, pp.557 – 63.
72
‘Dispatches’, vol. 1, pp.85ff.
73
Ibid., p.83.
74
J. S. Brewer, vol. 1, p.97.
75
CSP Venice, vol. 2, pp.246 – 7.
76
Ibid., p.325.
77
William Cornish (1465 – 1523) was the Master of the children of Henry’s Chapel Royal. He was also a composer, dramatist and actor, and responsible for the musical and dramatic entertainments at the royal court. See Anglo, Spectacle, pp.118 – 21 and 203 – 4.
78
LP Henry VIII, vol. 2, p.1,246.
79
CSP Venice, vol. 2, pp.397 – 404.
80
LP Henry VIII, vol. 4, pp.869 – 72.
81
Lambeth Palace Library MS 602, p.59.
82
Roper, pp.67ff.
83
Ackroyd, p.226.
84
LP Henry VIII, vol. 3, pt. 1, p.468.
85
BL Cotton MS Vitellius B IV, f.111.
86
Ayot, p.70, fn.
87
BL Cotton MS Vitellius B IV, f.226.
88
Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p.116.
89
35 Henry VIII cap. 3. It was repealed during the reign of Catholic Mary I but restored under Elizabeth (1 Elizabeth cap. 1) and has remained part of the style and title of the English crown ever since.
90
Fuller, book v, p.168.
91
CSP Venice, vol. 2, p.560.
92
A felt hat, worn by doctors of divinity in the sixteenth century, the name probably derived from the Latin pileus, a conical hat.
93
A red felt cardinal’s hat lined with silk, sixteenth century, once owned by Horace Walpole and kept in the Holbein Chamber at Strawberry Hill, was said to have been Wolsey’s, having been discovered by Bishop Burnet when he was Clerk of the Closet in the seventeenth century. It is now at Christ Church, University of Oxford.
94
Singer, pp. 96 – 101 and 104 – 7.
95
The only English Pope was Adrian IV, or Nicholas Breakspear, who occupied St Peter’s throne from 1154 to 1159.
96
Adrian VI was the last non-Italian pope to be elected until John Paul II, 456 years later.
97
See D. S. Chambers, pp.20 – 30.
98
Guy, p.47.
99
Erasmus to Paulus Bombasius; Basle, 26 July 1518 (Nichols, vol. 3, epistle 805).
100
Roper, p.20.
101
Hall, pp.597 – 8. See also Walker, pp.1 – 16.
102
Harris, p.168.
103
His personal accounts for January – April 1521 show income totalling £8,274 for the four months, or £3·2 million in current spending values (LP Henry VIII , vol. 3, pt. 1, pp.500 – 1). His lands had an annual value of £4,905 15s 5¼d. However, in 1520, he had debts of £10,535 19s (Harris, p.172).
104
In 1500, Buckingham had married Alianore, eldest daughter of Henry Percy, Fourth Earl of Northumberland. Their second son Henry married the daughter of Margaret
Pole, Countess of Salisbury, and their eldest daughter Elizabeth wed Thomas Howard, later Earl of Surrey and Third Duke of Norfolk.
105
CSP Venice, vol. 2, p.561.
106
Ellis, 3rd ser., vol. 1, pp.214 – 18.
107
BL Harley MS 283, f.70.
108
Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p.120.
109
B L Add. MS 19,398, f.644.
110
Thornbury Castle is now a hotel.
111
For example, see Vergil, pp.262ff.
112
Tothill Fields were a marshy tract of land between Millbank and Westminster Abbey.
113
Hall, p.622.
114
In 1560, merchant tailor Richard Hall gave £500 for the purchase of the property in Suffolk Lane, off Thames Street, for use as a school. This building was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and a new school, housing two hundred boys, was built on the site in brick in 1675.
115
BL Cotton MS Vitellius B IV, f.96.
116
The roll and file of the Court of the Lord High Steward is in TNA KB/8/5.
117
The Statute of Treasons of 1352 (25 Edward III cap. 2) included ‘compassing or imagining the king’s death’ as a treasonable offence. See discussion in Tanner, pp.375 – 81.
118
Under English law, commoners have the right to a trial by a jury of their equals and a statute of 1341 (15 Edward III cap. 1) gave the nobility the right to be tried by their peers. From the Tudor period, the Lord High Steward heard cases when Parliament was not sitting, otherwise trials were conducted in the House of Lords. The last peer to be tried by his peers and executed was Laurence Shirley, Fourth Earl Ferrers, who was hanged for murder in 1760. The last trial in the Lords was of Edward Russell, Twenty-sixth Baron de Clifford, who was acquitted of manslaughter in 1935. The right of the nobility to trial by peers was abolished in 1948.
119
Hall, p.623.
120
LP Henry VIII, vol. 3, pt. 1, pp.490 – 1.
121
Ibid., p.492.
122
BL Harley MS 283, f.70.
123
LP Henry VIII, vol. 3, pt. 1, pp.cxxxi – iii.
124
Harris, p.185.
125
Surrey had married Buckingham’s daughter Elizabeth early in 1513. It was not a happy marriage. See Hutchinson, House of Treason, pp.63 – 76.
126
BL Cotton MS Vitellius B IV, f.84v.
127
BL Stowe MS 163, f.3.
128
Hall, p.624.