The King is Dead

by Suzannah Lipscomb

  [3] one Sceptre of gold with a dove thereupon weighing 12 ounces

  A portrait of King Charles I, by Daniel Mytens (1631). The Stuart monarch is here depicted with the Tudor imperial crown – the same crown that Henry VIII’s inventory describes as ‘the King’s Crown of gold, garnished with 6 balas, 5 sapphires, 5 pointed diamonds….’

  [20] one clock of carnelian garnished with gold, diamonds, rubies, and pearls in the top of the cover being a boy with an arrow in his one hand and an antique shield with a diamond in it on the other hand [weighing] together 13 oz.

  [21] one looking glass set in gold garnished in the one side with three sapphires, 4 rubies, one emerald and two pearls pendant and on the other side 4 sapphires and four rubies, the stele of Agathe, two little boys – one holding the king’s arms in a shield and the other a pearl and 6 pearls hanging, on the other side of the body is a man on horseback, the body being a clock within crystal garnished with four diamonds and 56 rubies with 4 antique boys enamelled white, two of them bearing in their hands a shield with the king’s arms and a pearl in either hand and the other two, the one hath two pearls and the other hath one pearl in their hands; the base or foot standing upon four round crystals garnished with ten rubies and 4 naked women of gold standing at every corner, one and a man in the top thereof being naked, [weighing] together 98 oz.

  [223] an image of Our Lady with a Child and a ball with a lily in her hand and a crown garnished with glasses like sapphires and a balas with a vice [face] of silver and the base new made and she new gilt [weighing] 56 oz 3 quarters

  [234] a book of Gospels garnished and wrought with antique work of silver and gilt, with an image of the crucifix with Mary and John [weighing] together 322 oz.

  [2773] a man of diamond with a shield and a sword standing upon a dragon

  [2806] two crosses of gold garnished with diamonds, rubies, sapphires and pearls

  [3031] a Cross with a Crucifix, all gold, garnished with coarse emeralds and pearls

  [3103] a lion of gold garnished with diverse gross stones of sundry sorts

  [3218] one ring of gold being sometime Queen Katherine’s signet

  [3470] a great sapphire set in gold

  Dress

  [3335] a black velvet cap with a brooch and 20 buttons of gold, small

  [9915] a gown [a man’s loose outer layer] with a square cape of crimson velvet and crimson satin all over embroidered with purls of damask gold and silver, having a rich border and guard of crimson velvet embroidered with damask gold and pearl, faced with crimson satin all over embroidered with damask gold and pearl, with a like border containing the said facing, being upon the sleeves of the same gown 26 diamonds set in buttons of gold, the same gown lined throughout with crimson satin and having a case of yellow sarsenet quilted

  [9926] 12 pairs of hose of black silk knitted

  [14207] a Spanish gown of purple damask lined with purple taffeta, faced with purple satin with 42 pairs of aglets of gold

  [14229] a doublet of white silk and gold knit with hands, bought off Christofer Mulliner

  [14275] a coat of leather, furred with lamb and faced with sables

  [14287] a riding coat of black velvet with 3 narrow borders of cordants with Venice gold, wrought with knots, raised with the same gold, furred with ermine and faced with sables

  Furniture

  [9795] three cushions of rich cloth of tissue, the backside being of plain cloth of gold, round about with a narrow fringe of Venice gold and every of them having four buttons with tassels of Venice gold and purple silk…

  [10503] a coffer covered with black velvet containing the physiognomy of King Henry the Eight cut in wood in a case of metal

  [10580] a great table with the picture of the Duchess of Milan being her whole stature

  [10632] a table with the picture of King Henry the Eight standing upon a mitre with three crowns having a serpent with seven heads coming out of it and having a sword in his hand wherein is written Verbum Dei [the Word of God]

  [12323] a Cupboard of printed leather, standing upon the same: Our Lady saluted by Gabriel, with diverse goodly flowers and conceits of needlework within a glass

  [12960] one chair of purple gold tissue having the King’s Arms crowned, held by His Grace’s beasts, embroidered upon the back thereof fringed with a thin fringe of Venice gold and purple silk, having four pommels of wood gilt and two roundels of wood having in them the King’s Arms or badges painted and gilt.

  [14153] one bedstead carved, painted and gilt, having ceelor tester [canopy], double valances and bases of crimson damask, embroidered with borders of acorns of cloth of gold, the said ceelor and tester richly embroidered with the King’s Arms within a garland crowned, held by his Majesty’s beasts. The said tester fringed on both sides with a narrow fringe of Venice gold, the valances fringed with a deep fringe of Venice gold and silk lined with canvas stained red, with 5 curtains of crimson taffeta fringed on both sides and beneath with a narrow fringe of Venice gold with one bed, one bolster, two pillow and one pillow of assaye of fustian filled with down with 7 quilts of linen cloth filled with wool and two little quilts for the bed sides of linen cloth filled with wool and covered with blue velvet, one crimson damask lined with red flannel, one scarlet lined with white fustian, one fustian of white fustian and one counterpoint of crimson damask, embroidered round about with a border of cloth of gold and allouer, lozenged with cordants of Venice gold and fringed with a narrow fringer of Venice gold lined with sarsenet and four cloth sacks to truss all the said stuff in.

  Games and toys

  [3227] a chessboard of ebony wrought with gold on both sides

  [3228] a case of black leather containing 32 chessmen silver whereof 16 being gilt, and in the same cases 13 hens and a fox of silver gilt.

  [11381] a great baby [doll], lying in a box of wood having a gown of white cloth of silver and kirtle of green velvet, the gown tied with small aglets of gold and a small pair of beads of gold and a small chain and collar about the neck of gold

  Musical instruments

  [11910] 5 flutes of ivory tipped with gold enamelled black with a case of purple velvet garnished at both ends with silver and gilt

  [11926] a bagpipe with pipes of ivory, the bag covered with purple velvet

  [12333] a pair of virginals [keyboard instruments with strings plucked with a quill] fashioned like a harp

  Sundry items

  [1976] three forks of silver and gilt two of them having crystals in the handles [weighing] 6 oz 3 quarts

  [2844] an hourglass garnished with gold

  [2919] a mirror of gold having written upon it on the one side ‘fiat voluntas tua’ [‘let thy will be done’], the other side a glass

  [3294] a globe or instrument of astronomy copper gilt standing upon a foot of silver gilt

  [3779] boar spears with ashen staves, trimmed with crimson velvet and fringed with red silk

  [9452] 7 rackets for the tennis

  [14434] a two-hand sword with a scabbard of green velvet, having scallop shells upon the pommel and the cross with the said pommel partly gilt

  [16021] a staff of unicorn’s horns garnished with silver gilt and 9 stones in the top

  [16047] a dagger garnished with silver gilt, the hilt enamelled blue.

  A Tudor conception of what Henry’s will, in folio 9, describes as ‘this Realme of England and Irland’, here mapped out (c.1564) by Laurence Nowell. This beautiful map was commissioned by Sir William Cecil, who served the Duke of Somerset in the late 1540s as a secretary and who rose to become Elizabeth I’s durable chief minister.

  Notes on the Text

  NOTES ON THE TEXT

  Full titles and other publication details for works cited below appear in the Select Bibliography. The following abbreviations are used in these Notes:

  A&M John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (1838 edition)

  APC Acts of the Privy Council, Vol. II, 1547–1550

  CSPS Calendar of Letters, Despatches and State Pap
ers relating to the Negotiations between England and Spain…

  EM John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials (1822)

  HJ The Historical Journal

  JBS Journal of British Studies

  L&P Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII

  ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

  SoR The Statutes of the Realm

  SP State Papers

  TNA The National Archives, Kew

  FOREWORD

  1 G.R. Elton, Reform and Reformation (1978), pp. 331–2; John Guy, Tudor England (1988), pp. 197–9; David Starkey, The Reign of Henry VIII (1995), pp. 136–142.

  2 Foxe, A&M, Vol. VI, p. 606.

  3 Elton, Reform and Reformation, p. 330.

  4 Susan E. James (Kateryn Parr, p. 289), the otherwise excellent biographer of Kateryn Parr, Henry VIII’s sixth wife, reiterates this point: ‘during the month of December, Privy Council meetings had taken place not at Westminster but at the Earl of Hertford’s Somerset House’. This is doubly flawed in that the Earl of Hertford was not yet the Duke of Somerset, and so his house remained called ‘Hertford Place’, not yet ‘Somerset House’.

  5 CSPS, Vol. VIII, p. 534; L&P, Vol. XXI, Part 2, 516, 551, 595, 598, 604, 618, 629, 654: 9 December to 2 January; APC 1542–47, pp. 559–62: from 8 December to 2 January; it’s unclear where they met on 4 January.

  6 Starkey (Reign of Henry VIII, pp. 137–8) asserts here that there is ‘incontrovertible evidence that the actual contents of the will were altered long after the date on which it was supposed to be signed… Sir Thomas Seymour was listed as a councillor in the will, but he was only appointed to the Privy Council on 23 January.’

  7 Ibid.

  8 Ives (‘Henry VIII’s Will’, 1992, p. 788) spotted Starkey’s mistake, but Hutchinson (Last Days, p. 215) repeated it. In addition, twelve members of Henry VIII’s Privy Council are not listed as councillors in the will: nine of them are merely assistants, and three (Gardiner, Norfolk and Westminster) were excluded. See Appendix II for full lists of the personnel of each council.

  9 It was first alleged by Foxe (A&M, Vol. V, p. 689), and repeated by Elton (Reform and Reformation, p. 331), Lacey Baldwin Smith (Henry VIII, 1971, p. 271) and Hutchinson (Last Days, p. 217).

  10 APC, 1547–1550, p. 18; EM, Vol. 2, Part I, p. 17; Herbert of Cherbury (Life and Raigne, 1649), p. 563.

  11 SoR, 26 Hen. 8. c.13; Foxe, A&M, Vol. V, p. 689.

  12 Foxe, A&M, Vol VI, p. 194.

  13 Childs, Henry VIII’s Last Victim.

  1 THE DEATH OF A KING

  1 Henry VIII had three velvet and silk-covered sedan chairs in which he could be carried around his palaces. The inventory of his possessions at his death records: ‘Twoo Cheyres called trauewes for the kinges Majestie to sitt in to be carried to and fro in his galleries and Chambres couered with tawney vellat allouer quilted with a cordaunte of taawny silke’ and ‘an other Cheyre called a Traeuwe serving for thafforesaide purpose couered with russett vellatt allouer quilted with a cordaunte of russett silke’. In addition, he had a fourth chair covered with purple velvet and silk in which he could be lifted up and down the stairs: in the words of the inventory, ‘one Cheyre couered with purple vellat… the same cheyre did serue in the kinges house that goeth upp and downe’ (my italics; Starkey, Hayward and Ward, Vol 1., p. 263, ‘Refuse Stuffe at Westminster in the Chardge of James Rufforth’). This latter reference is corroborated by a comment made by Elizabeth Holland, the Duke of Norfolk’s mistress (now only known to us through Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s history) that the king ‘could not go up and down the stairs, but was let up and down by a device’ (Herbert of Cherbury, Life and Reign, 1662, p. 625).

  2 de Selve, Correspondance politique, No. 96, pp. 88–9; CSPS, Vol. IX, p. 2; L&P, Vol. XXI, Part 2, 713, 743.

  3 SoR, Vol. III, 26 Hen. VIII, c.13.

  4 CSPS, Vol. IX, p. 20.

  5 The account of Henry VIII’s death comes from John Foxe, A&M, Vol. V, p. 689.

  6 Marshall, ‘Death’.

  7 Collinson, ‘John Foxe as Historian’.

  8 Foxe, A&M, Vol. V, p. 689.

  9 Lipscomb, 1536.

  10 Cavendish, ‘Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey’, p. 86.

  11 Note that Deuteronomy (Chapter 25, Verse 6) states the polar opposite: that a man ought to marry his brother’s widow.

  12 Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p. 287.

  13 SoR, Vol. III, 28 Hen. VIII c.7, p. 660.

  2 THE LAST DECADE

  1 L&P, Vol. XII, Part I, 1068; ibid., Part II, 77. This has led some commentators to suggest that Henry had ulcers in both legs, but this is our only evidence to suggest it.

  2 L&P, Vol. XII, Part I, 995.

  3 Burnet, History of the Reformation, 1865, Vol. IV, pp. 272–85.

  4 Burnet, ibid., p. 86.

  5 Burnet, History of the Reformation, 1820, Vol. 3, Part I, p. 253; Starkey, Rivals in Power, p. 100.

  6 L&P, Vol. XVI, 1334.

  7 SP 1/180, f. 69; L&P, Vol. XVIII, Part I, 894; my spelling of her name, following her recent biographer Susan E. James, replicates how Kateryn herself spelled it.

  8 BL Royal MS A X XVI, f. 45r.

  9 Hutchinson, Last Days, p. 106.

  10 SoR, 35 Henry. VIII, c.1, p. 955.

  11 SoR, 34 & 35 Henry VIII, c. 1.

  12 SP 1/212, f. 110v–111r; L&P, Vol. XX, Part II, 1030; also recorded by Hall, Chronicle, pp. 864–5; Marshall, ‘Mumpsimus and Sumpsimus’, pp. 157–65.

  3 THE LAST YEAR

  1 See the excellent Childs, Henry VIII’s Last Victim, for a full life of Surrey.

  2 APC, 1542–47, p. 104.

  3 Jordan, Edward VI, p. 49.

  4 Childs, Henry VIII’s Last Victim, pp. 239–43; Gruffydd, Elis Gruffydd; L&P, Vol. XXI, Part I, 33 (8 January 1546).

  5 Burnet, History of the Reformation, 1865, Vol. I, p. 534; Herbert of Cherbury, Life and Raigne, 1649, p. 538.

  6 As his contemporary John, Lord Russell, once described his own; Willen, John Russell, p. 48; L&P, Vol. XIX, Part I, 816. See, for example, Hertford’s terrible script and orthography in his letter to Paget, 29 January 1547 (SP 10/1/1).

  7 CSPS, Vol. IX, p. 20.

  8 Heralds were, and are, officers of arms, who have served the monarch since at least the thirteenth century. They originally acted as royal messengers, and they came to record and control the use of coats of arms and to organize ceremonial events.

  9 SP Foreign, 1547–53, p. 490, cited by Gibbons, Political Career, p. 193.

  10 Nott, Works of Henry Howard, Vol. I, p. xcvii.

  11 Peter Marshall, Preface to Gibbons, Political Career, p. xvii.

  12 David Starkey spells her name ‘Ann Ascue’, while Diarmaid MacCulloch uses ‘Anne Ayscough’, but neither indicates the reason for their adopted orthography. According to John Bale, who edited and published her account of her examinations, she spelt her name ‘Askewe’, though he, curiously, does not: see Askew, Examinations, which contain the ‘Examinations’ as first published by Bale in 1546 and 1547.

  13 Or ‘God dwelleth in nothynge materyall’: ‘The lattre examinacyon’, in Askew, Examinations, pp. 99, 111, 106; Foxe, A&M, Vol. V, pp. 544–5.

  14 Askew, ibid., pp. 121–2.

  15 Although Thomas S. Freeman (‘One Survived’, p. 249) disputes that they were all ‘members of Parr’s inner circle’; James, Kateryn Parr, p. 272.

  16 Askewe named her torturers as Wriothesley and Rich (‘The lattre examinacyon’, in Askew, Examinations, p. 127), but Foxe’s source, Knevet himself, said in the 1560s that Sir John Baker, not Rich, had been the second man.

  17 Bale et al., Select Works, p. 142; Burnet, History of the Reformation, 1730, Vol. I, p. 537; Foxe, A&M, Vol. V, p. 547; ‘The lattre examinacyon’, in Askew, Examinations, p. 127.

  18 Starkey, Reign of Henry VIII, p. 119; Freeman, ‘One Survived’, p. 250; Foxe, A&M, Vol. V, p. 548. Also see J.G. Nichols, Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, p. 306. According to Foxe, Knevet was
so concerned about the illegality of the action that he rushed to tell Henry what had transpired, though this may have been more out of fear of the consequences of having disobeyed Wriothesley than anything else.

  19 ‘The lattre examinacyon’, in Askew, Examinations, p. 130.

  20 L&P, Vol. XXI, Part II, 1383 [72]; Ryrie, The Gospel and Henry VIII, p. 56.

  21 L&P, ibid. [49]; Wabuda, ‘Shaxton’.

  22 Blage himself made this play on words to Henry, saying: ‘if your majesty had not been better to me than your bishops were, your pig had been roasted ere this time’ (according to Foxe, A&M, Vol. V, p. 564).

  23 Thomas S. Freeman has recently (in ‘One Survived’) made a plausible case, based on the work of David Starkey, for putting Kateryn Parr’s brush with Wriothesley before the attack on Askewe. The evidence he adduces seems to me, however, to create a case for Parr being under suspicion either in April or in July, and does not decisively indicate in which of those two months the incident occurred. While Foxe’s ordering of events is not entirely reliable, given that it is the only evidence for the Parr case, it seems, on balance, most sensible to stick with his situating of the affair after the Askewe and Blage arrests. It also makes sense that Wriothesley’s campaign was attempted over a short period of weeks, from Askewe’s prosecution for heresy on 28 June to some point in late-mid July. By 25 July, Henry was ordering ‘almaner juelles, perlles, precious stones, as well set in gold… ffurres of sables… clothes… for the pleasure of us [and] our dearest wief, the Quene’ (L&P, Vol. XXI, Part I, 1383 [96]).