The King is Dead

by Suzannah Lipscomb

  24 Foxe, A&M, Vol. V, pp. 553–61.

  25 Ibid., p. 556.

  26 We are told, however (by Foxe, ibid., p. 558), that he only did so when sent to the queen because she was sick with melancholy, fear and agony, induced in her by the revelations of the articles; so perhaps there is some truth to the story of the serendipitously misplaced document. Certainly, Kateryn must have been in a notably bad way for Henry to send one of his own physicians. Kateryn was more usually attended by Dr Robert Huicke (Hamilton, ‘The Household of Queen Katherine Parr’, pp. 57–8).

  27 It has even been speculated that the parallels between the two speeches suggest that Shakespeare might have read and used Foxe as his inspiration (James, Kateryn Parr, p. 278, n. 84). Cf. Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Act V, Scene II, lines 142–85, especially lines 152–3 (‘Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, / Thy head, thy sovereign’) with Foxe, A&M, Vol. V, p. 559.

  28 Foxe, ibid.

  29 Starkey (Reign of Henry VIII, p. 130) states that Wriothesley’s attempt to arrest the queen took place in the gardens of Hampton Court, assuming it took place in July or August. All the information we have on location from Foxe – our only source – is that they were at Whitehall. In Six Wives (pp. 761–4), Starkey changed his mind and placed the incident in March 1546.

  30 Foxe, Vol. V, p. 561.

  31 Scepticism about the story has been expressed by Ryrie (The Gospel and Henry VIII, p. 56), Bernard (King’s Reformation, p. 592) and especially Redworth (In Defence of the Catholic Church, pp. 233–4).

  32 Foxe, A&M, Vol. V, p. 558; see Freeman (‘One Survived’, pp. 238–43) for a discussion of historians’ grounds for acceptance or rejection of Foxe’s account, and for his own conclusions in its favour; Gibbons, Political Career, pp. 186–9.

  33 Freeman, ‘One Survived’, pp. 243–5; Burnet (History of the Reformation, 1865, Vol. I, p. 541) repeats Foxe’s claim.

  34 Burnet, ibid.

  4 THE FINAL MONTHS

  1 Hall, Chronicle, p. 867.

  2 Hertford rejoined the meetings of Privy Council on 1 August 1546, Lisle on 15 August (APC, 1547–1550, pp. 501, 514).

  3 CSPS, Vol. VIII, pp. 533–4.

  4 Guy, Tudor England, pp. 196–9; Starkey, Reign of Henry VIII, pp. 132–43; Hutchinson, Last Days, pp. 209–16.

  5 CSPS, Vol. VIII, p. 534.

  6 Burnet (History of the Reformation, 1865, Vol. I, p. 542) notes that the Parr incident alienated the king so that he could never again endure the sight of Gardiner. Elton (Reform and Reformation, p. 330) and Susan Brigden (New Worlds, p. 138) are among those who have adopted this line. Redworth (In Defence of the Catholic Church, pp. 237–40) and Childs (Henry VIII’s Last Victim, p. 260) are among those who note Wriothesley’s pivotal role and Gardiner’s ongoing royal favour until November 1546.

  7 Redworth, In Defence of the Catholic Church, pp. 237–9.

  8 De Selve to d’Annebaut, 4 November 1546 (De Selve, Correspondance politique, p. 51).

  9 CSPS, Vol. VIII, p. 556.

  10 As Foxe called him (e.g., A&M, Vol. V, p. 261).

  11 Foxe, A&M, Vol. VI, pp. 163–4.

  12 This is according to testimony in the same trial (1551) by John Dudley, who was by this time Earl of Warwick (Foxe, A&M, Vol. VI, p. 179). Colin Armstrong, in his article ‘English Catholicism Rethought’, suggests that Gardiner had crypto-papist sympathies.

  13 Gardiner to Somerset, 6 June 1547 (Gardiner, Letters, pp. 286–7; also Foxe, A&M, Vol. VI, p. 36).

  14 Gibbons, Political Career, p. 195.

  15 Heal, Of Prelates and Princes, pp. 114–5, 123; cf., for example, SP 4/1/19 item 85, payment to the Archbishop of Canterbury for exchange of lands, November 1545.

  16 Gardiner to Henry VIII, 2 December 1546 (Gardiner, Letters, pp. 246–8).

  17 Foxe, A&M, Vol. VI, pp. 138–9.

  18 Gibbons (Political Carer, p. 196) suggests that as a result Gardiner was out of politics for the next month or so, as well as removed from the will, but the meaning of this is unclear: Gardiner was often not at the Privy Council – for example, the last time he attended before this incident was on 5 October 1546 (APC, 1542–47, p. 534).

  19 Starkey, Reign of Henry VIII, p. 132; Ives, ‘Henry’ VIII’s Will’, 1992, p. 796; Elton, Reform and Reformation, p. 330; also Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p. 490.

  20 APC, 1547–50, p. 16 (6 February 1547).

  21 L&P, Vol. XX, Part II, 610. The full line is: ‘Ye told me oones ye love no extremites and the meane is best, as the wife confessed to her husband who could hitte it’, which reads like a sixteenth-century joke whose meaning is lost.

  22 L&P, Vol. VII, 20; Gammon, Statesman and Schemer, p. 26.

  23 State Papers of Henry VIII, Vol. X, p. 745; L&P, Vol. XX, Part II, 917; Gibbons, Political Career, p. 163 n. 34.

  24 As Samuel Rhea Gammon does, Statesman and Schemer, p. 115.

  25 North would go on to be part of the commission for the suppression of Protestant heresy under Mary I. Starkey implies that we can tell Paget operated without Henry’s knowledge because the document is stamped not signed (Reign of Henry VIII, p. 133); but after September 1545, every document requiring Henry’s authorization was stamped rather than signed, so this is irrelevant.

  26 CSPS, Vol. IX, p. 20.

  27 Foxe, A&M, Vol. V, p. 691.

  28 Burnet, History of the Reformation (1820 ed), Vol. III, p. 253.

  29 L&P, Vol. V, 1059.

  30 Susan Brigden (‘Henry Howard’) and David Starkey (Reign of Henry VIII, p. 135) argue this. Herbert of Cherbury, too, thought Surrey and Norfolk had been ‘exposed to the malignity and detraction of their accusers’ (Life and Reign, 1662, p. 624).

  31 Herbert of Cherbury (ibid.), p. 629; Brigden (ibid.), p. 534.

  32 CSPS, Vol. VIII, pp. 534, 556.

  33 SP 1/227, f. 129.

  34 CSPS, Vol. VIII, p. 534.

  35 See Elton, Reform and Reformation, p. 330; James, Kateryn Parr, p. 289.

  36 CSPS, Vol. VIII, p. 534; L&P, Vol. XXI, Part II, 516, 551, 595, 598, 604, 618, 629, 654 (9 December to 2 January); APC, 1542–47, pp. 559–62 (8 December to 2 January). It is unclear where they met on 4 January.

  37 L&P, Vol. XXI, Part 2, 546; Childs (Henry VIII’s Last Victim, p. 270) says that Surrey spent the first ten days of this confinement at Wriothesley’s house, from 2 December 1546; Ives, ‘Henry VIII’s Will’, 1994, p. 908.

  38 The idea that Wriothesley jumped ship in late 1546 to ally with the reformers – as posited by Gibbons (The Political Career, p. 190) and implied by Ives (‘Henry VIII’s Will’, 1992: that he ‘began trim to the way the wind was blowing’, p. 783) – has no evidential base beyond the inscrutable memo.

  39 Diarmaid MacCulloch (Thomas Cranmer, p. 339) agrees: ‘they hardly needed a Machivellian conspiracy to establish their supremacy when their enemies handed it to them on a plate’.

  40 Herbert of Cherbury, Life and Reign, 1662, p. 625; L&P, Vol. XXI, Part 2, 555, 697.

  41 Jessie Childs (Henry VIII’s Last Victim, p. 286) argues that Surrey did, in fact, have a valid claim to bear the arms of Edward the Confessor. Still, Elton’s judgment that there is ‘slender proof’ for Surrey’s guilt is mistaken: at least two of these provocations were (or could be construed to be) treasonous under the Treasons Act of 1534 and the Succession Act of 1536; they were all affronts.

  42 Freeman, ‘One Survived’, p. 251.

  43 SP 1/227, f. 123; my italics.

  44 L&P, Vol. XII, Part 2, 541; Bindoff (History of Parliament, Vol. III, p. 353) opines that Southwell probably ratted on Surrey in order to ‘ingratiate himself with the King and the rising house of Seymour’.

  45 Brigden, ‘Henry Howard’, pp. 514–15; Childs, Henry VIII’s Last Victim, pp. 258–9, 292–3. Both Surrey and Askewe were paraphrasing the first five chapters of Ecclesiastes, but compare the treatment of lines 44–6 of Chapter 3. In Surrey they read:

  I saw a royal throne whereas that Justice should have sit;

 
Instead of whom, I saw, with fierce and cruel mode,

  Where Wrong was set, that bloody beast, that drunk the guiltless blood.

  Askewe rendered them:

  I saw a royal throne,

  Where justice should have sit,

  But in her stead was one

  Of moody, cruel wit.

  Absorbed was righteousness,

  As of the raging flood:

  Satan, in his excess,

  Sucked up the guiltless blood.

  It is impossible to believe (as per Starkey, Reign of Henry VIII, p. 126) that by this point Surrey had probably ‘become as conservative as his father’.

  46 Herbert of Cherbury, Life and Reign, 1662, pp. 629–30; Gammon, Statesman and Schemer, p. 73.

  47 CSPS, Vol. IX, p. 3; L&P, Vol. XXI, Part 2, 697; Herbert of Cherbury, ibid., p. 626.

  48 L&P, Vol. XXI, Part 2, 753.

  49 Burnet, History of the Reformation, 1865, Vol. I, p. 544.

  5 THE MAKING OF THE WILL

  1 CSPS, Vol. VIII, p. 320, although I think Baldwin Smith (‘The Last Will’, p. 14) is overstating it to say that ‘three times’ in 1546 (March, October and December) ‘Henry had approached death and drawn away’. Henry was ill, but he does not seem to have been on the point of death before January 1547.

  2 Although we are most familiar with colic as something that babies suffer from, it is, in fact, an intense pain in humans of any age, or animals too, caused by muscular contractions in response to an obstruction in the digestive tract, gall bladder or other internal tube. L&P, Vol. XXI, Part 1, 1227; De Selve to Francis I, 8 July 1546 (De Selve, Correspondance politique, p. 7).

  3 De Selve to Francis I, 8 September and 28 October 1546 (ibid., pp. 25, 47).

  4 De Selve to Francis I, 25 November 1546 (ibid, pp. 60–1); L&P, Vol. XXI, Part 2, 517.

  5 CSPS, Vol. VIII, p. 533; L&P, Vol. XXI, Part 2, 605, 606.

  6 APC, 1547–1550, p. 18; Foxe, A&M, Vol. VI, pp. 163, 177. Paget remembers all seven of them being in attendance; Lisle remembered only himself, Hertford, Paget, Russell and Browne.

  7 Jessie Childs has carefully observed that it is possible that ‘secretary’ simply meant that Wriothesley had been the scribe, rather than refer to his actual post as secretary; but that would make the sentence tautologous (‘written with the hand of the lord Wriothsley, being secretary’) and therefore seems unlikely.

  8 John Guy (Tudor England, pp. 198–9, 481), following Dale Hoak, argues that there were two wills, which are, he implies, substantively different: one housed at the Inner Temple, dated 13 December 1546 (Petyt MS 538/47, ff. 398–406), and the one at The National Archives, dated 30 December 1546 (TNA E/23/4). Eric Ives (‘Henry VIII’s Will’, 1992, pp. 780–1) proved that the Inner Temple one is not an earlier, different will, but instead a copy of the will of 30 December, and that the scribe misheard the date. Ives also demonstrates that a comparison of the two documents indicates no differences of substance between them.

  9 Foxe, A&M, Vol. VI, p. 163.

  10 Ibid.; BL Harley MS 849, f. 32r.

  11 Sturge, Cuthbert Tunstal, pp. 1–25.

  12 L&P, Vol. X, 797.

  13 Willen, John Russell, pp. 4–40.

  14 Henry VII had included both the chief justices of the King’s Bench and the Common Pleas in his list of executors (Astle, Will of King Henry, p. 42). Perhaps the presence of Sir Edward Montagu on the Council, who had been Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench until 1545, was felt to be sufficient. Sir Thomas Bromley would rise to become the Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench himself in October 1553.

  15 John Spelman, Reports, edited by J.H. Baker (Selden Society, 94, 1978), Vol. II, p. 360, cited by Ives, ‘Henry VIII’s Will’, 1992, p. 801.

  16 Foxe, A&M, Vol. VI, p. 163.

  17 CSPS, 1547–9, pp. 340–1; Foxe, A&M, Vol. VI, p. 164; Ives, ‘Henry VIII’s Will’, 1992, p. 789.

  18 Foxe, A&M, Vol. VI, pp. 163, 170; Vol. V, pp. 691–2; Burnet, History of the Reformation, 1865, Vol. I, p. 548.

  19 SP 4/1/19, item 85; BL Harley MS 849, f. 32r.

  20 Baldwin Smith, Henry VIII, p. 11, but he does not provide any evidence to support this assertion; L&P, Vol. XXI, Part 2, 648 item 16.

  21 SP 4/1/19 item 85.

  22 See discussion of the dry stamp by Ives (‘Henry VIII’s Will’, 1992, pp. 782–8); Starkey (‘Court and Government’, p. 55).

  23 L&P, Vol. XXI, Part 1 (1536), 31, 32, 33; (1537), 34.

  24 SP 4/1.

  25 SP 4/1/19, item 85; BL Harley MS 849, f. 32v. The claim by W.K. Jordan – that he, A.J. Pollard and Lacey Baldwin Smith, having examined the original will, were unpersuaded that Henry had not personally signed it – is barely plausible (Jordan, Edward VI, p. 55; Pollard, England Under Protector Somerset, p. 5, though Baldwin Smith, ‘The Last Will’, pp. 22–3, is more circumspect). Had Henry signed it himself, there would have been no need subsequently to include the will in the register of documents signed by dry stamp, nor would its stamping have been sworn to later by Paget. Cf. Ives, ‘Henry VIII’s Will’, 1992, p. 782.

  26 BL Harley MS 849; Letter from Sir William Maitland, Lord of Ledington (Lethington), Secretary of Scotland to Sir William Cecil, 4 January 1566, in Egerton, Egerton Papers, pp. 41–9.

  27 Egerton, ibid., pp. 46–7. Both David Starkey (Reign of Henry VIII, pp. 133–8) and John Guy (Tudor England, pp. 198–9) are of this view.

  28 Starkey, ibid., p. 140.

  29 Ibid.

  30 Ives (‘Henry VIII’s Will’, 1994, p. 904) also makes this argument.

  31 Starkey, Reign of Henry VIII, p. 138.

  32 L&P, Vol. XXI, Part 2, 331.

  33 De Selve and La Garde to Francis I, 10 January 1547 (De Selve, Correspondance politique, p. 81); L&P, Vol. XXI, Part 2, 684.

  34 Foxe, A&M, Vol. VI, p. 189; De Selve and La Garde to Francis I, 15 January 1547 (De Selve, Correspondance politique, pp. 86–7).

  6 THE FAITH OF THE KING

  1 Lloyd, Formularies of Faith, p. 215.

  2 MacCulloch (Thomas Cranmer, pp. 356–8) and Scarisbrick (Henry VIII, pp. 469–70) are two of the few historians who mention this. Bertano’s appearance is secretive in the sources: L&P, Vol. XXI, Part 1, 1339; De Selve, Correspondance politique, p. 17.

  3 Foxe, A&M, Vol. V, pp. 563–4; Starkey, Reign of Henry VIII, p. 130; Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p. 472; MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, p. 357.

  4 Foxe, A&M, Vol. V, p. 564; Gibbons, Politicial Career, p. 167.

  5 Ives, ‘Henry VIII’s Will’, 1992, p. 797; Bindoff, Tudor England, pp. 149–50; Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain, p. 105.

  6 Elton, Henry VIII, pp. 25–6; Baldwin Smith (‘Henry VIII and the Protestant Triumph’, p. 1243) considered this at some length.

  7 Beem, ‘Have not wee a noble kynge?’, p. 220; Bernard, King’s Reformation, p. 591.

  8 Muller, Stephen Gardiner, p. 87, citing Gardiner, A declaration of such true articles as George Joye hath gone about to confute as false (London, 1546), ff. 8–11.

  9 Bernard (King’s Reformation, p. 594), strangely, says that there are ‘no bequests or requests to the Virgin Mary’, which is patently wrong.

  10 Astle, Will of King Henry, p. 3; Wooding, Henry VIII, p. 272. Henry VII mentions ‘Saint Michaell, Saint John Baptist, Saint Johon Evuangelist, Saint George, Saint Anthony, Saint Edward, Saint Vincent, Saint Anne, Saint Marie Magdalene, and Saint Barbara’ and says ‘thi moost Blissed Moder evir Virgyne, oure Lady Saincte Mary; in whom after the in this mortall lif, hath ever been my moost singulier trust and confidence, to whom in al my necessities I have made my continuel refuge, and by whom I have hiderto in all myn advertisities, ever had my sp’ial comforte and relief’ etc.

  11 TNA PROB 11/40/40, 28 January 1558, Will of Steven [sic] Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester.

  12 TNA PROB 11/32/514, 19 September 1549, Will of Sir Anthony Denny; PROB 11/32/121, 11 May 1548, Will of Sir William Parr; PROB 11/34/154, 14 May 1551, Will of Thomas, Earl Southampton of [sic].

  13 TN
A PROB 11/32/514; PROB 11/34/154; PROB 11/40/40.

  14 According to medieval Catholics, Purgatory was a place of purging to which the soul went after death, where the sinner had an opportunity to pay off the remaining debt for his or her sin. The soul’s journey through Purgatory could be hastened in life by the performance of penances or the receiving of ‘indulgences’ – certificates issued by the pope, granting time off Purgatory in reward for good works – or, after death, by the prayers of others. The Reformation began with Martin Luther’s protest against indulgences in 1517, and Protestants soon abandoned the notion of Purgatory, decrying it as unscriptural. The amount Henry VIII left for prayers for his soul is still less, however, than his father’s legacy of £2,000 to be given in alms for ‘the weale of our soule… to th’entent thei [the receipients of alms] doo prai to Almighty God for the remission of our synnes, and salvacion of our Soule’ (Astle, Will of King Henry, p. 9).

  7 THE SUCCESSION

  1 SoR, Vol. III, 28 Hen. VIII c.7, pp. 656–62; 35 Hen VIII c.1, pp. 955–8.

  2 SoR III, 35 Hen VIII c.1, p. 955.

  3 Henry VII’s only provision for the future was for the marriage of his daughter Mary to the Prince of Spain. His will provided her with a dowry of £50,000, which was to be supplied to her even should the marriage fail to be effected (Astle, Will of King Henry, pp. 38–41); he makes no mention of his direct heir. Cf. also J. Nichols, A Collection: Henry V’s will (pp. 236–42) and Henry VI’s will (pp. 291–319).

  4 Ives, Lady Jane Grey, pp. 39–40.

  5 J. Nichols, A Collection: Henry V’s will (pp. 236–42) and Henry VI’s will (pp. 291–319); Astle, Will of King Henry.

  6 Guy, My Heart is My Own, p. 53. It may also be that Henry was disbarring Marie de Guise’s heir out of spite because Marie de Guise had chosen to marry Henry’s nephew, James V of Scotland, rather than Henry himself, in the marital interval between Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves.

  7 Griffiths, ‘Minority of Henry VI’, pp. 161, 163.

  8 SoR, Vol. III, 28 Hen. VIII c.7, p. 661.

  9 Baldwin Smith, ‘Last Will and Testament’, p.17.