Journey Through Tudor England

by Suzannah Lipscomb

  Nonsuch was unlike any palace before it. Unusually, Henry did not build onto an existing structure; in fact, he swept away the manor house and village at Cuddington to create an ornate palace that was one of the finest examples of Renaissance architecture in England. Rather than build a medieval-style Great Hall, as at Hampton Court, Henry ordered a long gallery — one of the first in England. In addition, while the outer courtyard had a normal turreted gatehouse in brick and stone, the inner court was timber-framed, and those timbers, hidden by plaques of carved slate, held stucco duro or fine plasterwork panels that created a dazzlingly ornamented display. William Camden in his Britannia of 1586 wrote that Nonsuch was, ‘built with so great sumptuousness and rare workmanship, that it aspireth to the very top of ostentation for shew, so as a man may think, that all the skill of Architecture is in this one piece of work bestowed, and heaped up together’.

  Loseley possesses some of the very few remaining panels from Nonsuch. In the Great Hall, you can see that some are painted: decorated with the initials of Henry VIII (HR for ‘Henricus Rex’) and his last queen, Kateryn Parr, or with the portcullis badge. Others, in the Minstrels’ Gallery and in the corridor upstairs, depict classical gods and mythical characters in a fanciful grotesque style. There are also some splendid inlaid trompe d’œil panels that create the illusion of arched passages stretching away into the distance. Finally, there is even a marble-on-alabaster table decorated with a Tudor rose and Scottish thistle in the entrance hall, said to come from Nonsuch.

  Despite its pedigree and later becoming one of Elizabeth I’s favourite houses, Nonsuch was unaccountably demolished in 1682—3 by Charles II’s mistress, Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland: an ignoble end for what was ostensibly the finest palace in the realm. The site was lost until excavations in Nonsuch Park in 1959 unearthed it, and the area is now marked only with stones. The pieces at Loseley matter so much because they are practically all that survive from this legendary palace.

  ‘Beware of high degree. To a vainglorious, proud stomach, it seemeth as the first sweet. Look into all the chronicles and you shall find that, in the end, it brings heaps of cares … and, most commonly, in the end, utter overthrow.’

  Arundel Castle is a magnificent stately home and hard to beat for a cultural day out. In truth, it is more Norman and Victorian than Tudor: many of its jaw-dropping interiors are reproductions. On the other hand, it is one of the only surviving homes (Framlingham and Charterhouse are the others) of the Howards, arguably the most ambitious, egotistical and powerful of all the Tudor families, and so it must be included in a visit to Tudor England. The other Howard estates at Kenninghall in Norfolk, Norfolk House in London and Surrey House in Norwich have all reverted to dust.

  Arundel Castle is still the home of the dukes of Norfolk, and has been so ever since it passed into the hands of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, in 1580, following the marriage of his mother Lady Mary Fitzalan to Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk. The Howard family was ambitious, but far from always successful. Consider their fortunes: this is a family in which every Tudor duke was attainted as a traitor and one was beheaded; two nieces became English queens and both were executed; one heir to the dukedom was beheaded; and another died in prison. Surely the most remarkable feature of this dynasty was its ability to rise constantly phoenix-like from the ashes.

  Arundel itself has a long and illustrious history. There has been a castle here since soon after the Battle of Hastings, as the gatehouse, dating from around 1070, testifies. The stone keep and parts of the curtain wall you see now were built by William de Albini in the early twelfth century out of Caen stone from Normandy, as well as the local Pulborough stone and flint. Queen Matilda would have seen this when she visited the castle in 1139. The Barbican — the squared towers either side of the entrance gate — and the Bevis Tower date from the late fourteenth century. There was also once a thirteenth-century Great Hall and lodgings around the South Bailey, but they were demolished in the Civil War and it is on their remains that the present Victorian house is built.

  The house itself is an exceptional example of the revival of Gothic architecture in the nineteenth century. The chapel mimics the thirteenth-century style of Westminster Abbey or Lincoln Cathedral almost perfectly, while the Barons’ Hall is Gothic style reinvented on a mammoth scale: it is 131 feet long! The house is so stunning that it is no wonder that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert came to stay here in 1846. Yet, it is only the medieval castle, and the Fitzalan Chapel in the grounds, that would have been familiar to the Tudor visitor.

  The Howards are commemorated here in a series of portraits in the Picture Gallery. You can see Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, born 1473, in a portrait by Daniel Mytens, after Hans Holbein. It fits a description of the Duke by the Venetian ambassador Ludovico Falieri in 1531 — he was ‘small and spare in person, and his hair black’ — but Norfolk’s slender frame is masked by his rich silk, velvet and ermine clothes, and eclipsed by the symbols of his powerful status and prestigious office: the Earl Marshal’s baton and Lord Treasurer’s stave, and the ostentatious collar of the Order of the Garter. In many ways, it is a successful portrait in that it sums up this driven, proud man.

  Norfolk could be charming, but was also something of an egoistic bully and a sycophant, with a quick, violent temper and a tendency to whine. He longed to be a Wolsey or a Cromwell: the King’s right-hand man. Falieri noted that he ‘aspires to greater elevation’.

  In early life, he married Anne Plantagenet, daughter of Edward IV, and he is buried with her at Framlingham. Two years after she died in 1511, when he was nearly forty years old, he married Elizabeth, the fifteen-year-old daughter of Edward Stafford, third Duke of Buckingham. Their marriage became one of the greatest scandals of the age when, in 1527, Norfolk took a mistress, Bess Holland, whom Elizabeth described as a ‘washerwoman of her nursery’. The Duke and Duchess separated in 1534, and Elizabeth complained miserably to Thomas Cromwell about her mistreatment and poverty, even alleging that the ladies of Norfolk’s household had attacked her ‘until I spat blood’.

  Norfolk was central to Henry VIII’s reign: he fought at Flodden, was ambassador to the French and did the King’s dirty work in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace [see PONTEFRACT CASTLE]. But loyalty to a mercurial king comes at a price, and frequently required the abandonment of scruples in other areas. For example, though Anne Boleyn was his niece, Norfolk himself presided over her trial, only to encourage another niece, Katherine Howard, to take her place in the King’s bed several years later. In 1546, he finally fell foul of the King and was attainted on account of his son’s — Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey — actions.

  Surrey, who was born in 1513, can be seen in a large six feet by six feet painting in the Gallery facing the foot of the stairs. As a teenager, Surrey had been close friends with the King’s illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset, to whom his sister Mary Howard (also seen in a portrait here) was married in 1533. Surrey was an exuberant and intemperate young man, once sent to Fleet Prison for breaking the Lenten fast and ‘as of a lewd and unseemly manner walking in the night … and breaking with stonebows of certain windows’. He was also a candid and innovative poet, who reflected indiscreetly on the perils of serving under a tyrant. He was to discover these dangers for himself.

  With lofty ambitions and treason in his blood on both sides of the family, in December 1546 Surrey was arrested for quartering the royal arms with his own: literally, adding the royal insignia on a small portion of his own coat of arms. Heraldry was a serious business in the Tudor age, and Henry VIII feared that Surrey planned ‘himself to govern the realm’. This grandiose portrait (a copy from 1610 of the original by William Scrots) displays Surrey’s avaricious pomp, leaning on a broken pillar (a symbol of endurance), with the baffling motto, ‘Sat super est’ (‘Enough remains’). Surrey was found guilty of treason and beheaded on 19 January 1547. It was scheduled that his father should also die on the morning
of 28 January. Norfolk had been a master survivor, but it seemed nothing could save him now. Until, that is, Henry VIII died in the night, mere hours before Norfolk’s planned beheading. Instead, he lived on the grand old age of eighty when, in 1554, he died in his bed.

  Aged eighteen, Norfolk’s grandson and Surrey’s son, Thomas (the Tudor historian’s job is complicated by a dearth of Christian names in the period), became the fourth Duke of Norfolk. He is depicted at Arundel, wearing his collar of the Garter, in a portrait by Hans Eworth. He married three times, first to Mary Fitzalan, portrayed nearby. His greatest claim to fame is that in 1572, he followed his father to the block for treacherously supporting the Ridolfi plot to free Mary, Queen of Scots. He had also hoped to make the beautiful Scottish Queen [see TUTBURY CASTLE] his fourth wife. In the Tower, Norfolk wrote a lesson to his teenage son, Philip, which would have served well for all the Howards:

  Beware of high degree. To a vainglorious, proud stomach, it seemeth as the first sweet. Look into all the chronicles and you shall find that, in the end, it brings heaps of cares … and, most commonly, in the end, utter overthrow.

  In the library, you can see a facsimile of Norfolk’s death warrant. The Roman Catholic cause for which he died is also commemorated at Arundel: in the dining room you will find the gold and enamel rosary beads carried by Mary, Queen of Scots to her execution at Fotheringhay Castle.

  Not the first, or the last, teenager in history to do so, Philip disregarded his father’s advice, preferring to enjoy the lavish life of Elizabeth I’s court. But in the 1580s, after his wife Anne Dacre’s conversion, and having heard the persuasive religious defence of the Jesuit Edmund Campion, Philip attested that walking one day in the gallery of his castle at Arundel, he ‘lift[ed] up his eyes and hands to Heaven … [and] firmly resolved to become a member of God’s church and frame his life accordingly’. The decision to convert to Roman Catholicism was one fraught with danger, and in April 1585, the Earl sought to flee the country, but was trapped as he crossed the Channel by men in Sir Francis Walsingham’s spy-ring. ‘For being reconciled to the Pope’ he was declared a traitor, and imprisoned in the Beauchamp Tower, where his graffiti remains [see THE TOWER OF LONDON]. He lived under the threat of death for ten and a half years, finally dying of dysentery in October 1595, having never seen his son and heir, from whom the present dukes of Norfolk, and the keepers of Arundel Castle, are descended.

  Other Tudor sights to see at Arundel: in the Armoury, there are four composite sixteenth-century suits of armour, while in the gallery, you can see a chest that Mary I gave to Henry Fitzalan, twelfth Earl of Arundel. There is also a ‘Nonsuch chest’ from 1682, with a picture of the façade of Nonsuch Palace.

  ‘Semper vivet anima Regis Henrici Octavi qui anno 34 sui regni hoc fecit fieri.’

  (‘May the soul of King Henry VIII, who had this built in the 34th year of his reign, live ever.’)

  Pendennis and St Mawes castles stand on headlands proudly facing each other across the mouth of the River Fal on the south-western tip of the Cornish coast. Guarding the estuary and anchorage known as Carrick Roads, near to Falmouth, they are perfect surviving examples of the scheme of coastal fortification constructed on Henry VIII’s orders after 1539. They were intended to be, quite literally, the last bastion of defence in the event of an invasion by the Catholic powers of Europe.

  Henry VIII’s decision to break from the Roman Catholic Church and establish himself as Supreme Head of the new Church of England had meant not only schism, but that he was seen by the Pope and Catholic monarchs as an ‘impious and heretical tyrant’. As such, they came to believe that it was their Christian duty to fight a holy war against the heretic and restore Catholic authority in England. In 1538, this situation became pressing. The French King, Francis I, and the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, signed a ten-year truce and, in December, the Pope published a decree excommunicating Henry VIII, freeing English subjects from any allegiance to him and authorising an attack on England. Invasion seemed not only unavoidable, but imminent.

  In response, Henry VIII’s commissioners put together an ambitious programme, known as the ‘Device of the King’, to build a chain of new forts, castles, embankments, ditches and bulwarks to protect the vulnerable ports and landing points along the southern and eastern coasts. These coastal artillery forts were the last castles built in England. Much of the money to finance them came directly from the dissolution of the monasteries [see FOUNTAINS ABBEY], while monastic bells were melted down in bulk to provide gunmetal.

  As the first safe place to land for ships heading up from the Mediterranean and an ideal springboard for an invasion by England’s enemies because of its wide, deep estuary, Carrick Roads was judged a soft target. Henry’s advisers, therefore, decided to build two forts, one on either side of the river, so that any advancing ships would be caught in the crossfire of their guns.

  Pendennis Castle is one of these structures. The circular gun tower was built in the early 1540s, although the gatehouse, ramparts and forebuilding (with its elegant oriel window) are all Elizabethan additions. The central tower was designed to be fifty-seven feet in diameter, with octagonal rooms over several floors featuring gun ports from which heavy artillery could be fired. The recreation of such a room here, with replica guns, suggests just how cramped, noisy and smoky the rooms would have been if they were ever used. The tower is surrounded by a chemise, or gun platform, with embrasures for another fourteen guns and there is also a high lookout tower. The guns that the Tudors used were smooth-bore and front-loading, mounted on wheeled truck carriages, each of which took four strong and skilled men to aim and fire. Completed by 1545, Pendennis Castle cost £5,614 to build: over £1.5 million today.

  Across the water, St Mawes Castle (also completed by 1545 at a cost of £5,018) is an even finer example of Henry’s fortifications. It has a graceful geometry, with a forty-six-foot circular central tower and three lower semicircular bastions arranged around it in a cloverleaf pattern. It has survived remarkably well: all the buildings, including the gatehouse, are original.

  St Mawes is particularly special because of its Latin and English inscriptions, which praise Henry VIII and his son. Over the gatehouse window is a carving of the Tudor royal arms and an inscription composed by John Leland (who wrote an itinerary of all the buildings in England in the 1540s), which reads, ‘Semper honos Henrice tuus laudesque manebunt’ (‘Henry, by honour and praises will remain forever’). On the second floor of the central tower, each room has an English inscription in the door spandrels that states, ‘God save King Henry VIII’ and ‘God save Prince Edward’. The door from the forward bastion into the central tower is also carved, this time with sea creatures and another Latin inscription: ‘Semper vivet anima Regis Henrici Octavi qui anno 34 sui regni hoc fecit fieri’ (‘May the soul of King Henry VIII, who had this built in the 34th year of his reign, live ever’). Perhaps the inscriptions were intended to rouse the men defending the fort to daring acts of patriotism (though not all soldiers would have been able to read — even the English!).

  St Mawes also houses an original Tudor bronze Alberghetti gun, one of the great range of Tudor guns and munitions including culverins, falcons, demi-cannon, slings and minions that were used at these castles. Both Pendennis and St Mawes also have small blockhouses or gun towers close to the water’s edge, which were probably built before the main castles had been constructed.

  Pendennis and St Mawes are two of the best examples of the circular castles that were part of the 1539 device programme. Others still standing include Walmer, Deal, Portland and Calshot. Reflecting new ideas about fortification, there were more angular castles built in the late 1540s at Southsea, Sandown and Yarmouth. In fact, as has often been the case throughout the history of grand defensive military schemes, by the time the castles were completed, the risk of invasion had passed.

  They were not built in vain, however. Under Elizabeth, the threat arose again, and both castles were garrisoned and provided wi
th guns. Sir Walter Ralegh mustered 500 men at Pendennis in 1596, when a Spanish fleet attempted to land and use Carrick Roads as a bridgehead from which to launch an invasion.

  ‘Sic parvis magna’

  ‘Great achievements from small beginnings’

  The converted Cistercian abbey at Buckland in Devon is chiefly remembered as the home of England’s most famous seaman, privateer and adventurer, Sir Francis Drake (which explains the bizarre decision to turn the top floor into a replica ship). Drake, rightly, remains a legendary hero of British history, but the story of Buckland Abbey reveals how much of his fame and success was a question of luck and timing, as well as of character and courage.

  Born around 1540 of humble yeoman stock, Francis Drake’s life at sea began when he was apprenticed to the master of a small coasting ship. He was the eldest of the eleven children of Edmund Drake, a lay preacher whose fervent Protestant faith helped to shape Drake’s sense of personal destiny. Another crucial ingredient in Drake’s formation occurred on a slaving voyage with John Hawkins in 1568: the English captains were tricked, ambushed and defeated by the Spanish at the Battle of San Juan d’Ulua off the coast of Mexico, inciting Drake’s life-long hatred of Catholic Spain and his determination to avenge England at sea.

  Stocky and strong, Drake was of middling height, with reddish brown curls and the ubiquitous sixteenth-century beard. He was cheerful, gregarious and direct, with an intrepid and impressive ability to inspire and lead. He made three bold and successful raids on the Spanish Main in the early 1570s, operating as a privateer (a private man-of-war licensed by the government, with a share of the spoils going to the Crown), although his first expedition — the first raid by any Englishman — was carried out without authorisation, which technically made it piracy. On his third voyage, he captured the Spanish treasure town of Nombre de Dios. His haul of 300,000 pesos’ worth of gold made him a rich man at home and a feared man abroad.