Henry

by Starkey, David

  * * *

  Wolsey was teaching Henry a new lesson: to know his own power. This was the beginning. Where would it end?

  And when would it extend to policy?

  Over the next few years, Wolsey enabled Henry to fight and win wars and impose peace. It was, as has been well observed, a partnership that, between them, turned Henry into a northern Caesar who (as not only he thought) bestrode Europe. Wolsey also taught Henry what he could do, as opposed perhaps to what he should do. In so doing, he laid the foundations for the older, greater, badder Henry.

  He also destroyed himself in the process.

  Notes - CHAPTER 26: WOLSEY

  1. The Chronicle, 515.

  2. Siemens, Lyrics of Henry VIII.

  3. LP I i, 442, 520, 546/27, 31.

  4. LP I i, 546/42.

  5. Vergil B, xiii–xvii.

  6. Ibid., 152–3.

  7. OxfordDNB, ‘Wolsey’.

  8. Vergil B, 194–5; CSP Sp. II, 44 (p. 42); LP I i, p. xiv.

  9. Hughes and Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations I, plate 2; Vergil B, 195–6; Huntington Library, Ellesmere MS 2655, fo. 8v. I owe this transcription to the kindness of John Guy.

  10. Vergil B, 196.

  11. Loc. cit.

  12. R. S. Silvester and D. P. Harding, eds, Two Early Tudor Lives (New Haven and London, 1962), 12.

  13. LP I i, 784/44.

  ENDNOTES

  ABBREVIATIONS

  AR F. Grose, ed., The Antiquarian Repertory, 4 vols (London, 1807–9)

  Beaufort Hours F. Madden, ‘Genealogical and historical notes in Ancient Calendars’, Collectanea Topographia et Genealogica I (1834), 277–79.

  BL British Library

  The Chronicle E. Hall, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke [The Chronicle] (1809)

  CIPM Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem

  CPR Calendar of Patent Rolls

  CS Camden Society

  CSP Sp. Calendar of State Papers, Spanish

  CSP Ven. Calendar of State Papers, Venetian

  Collectanea J. Leland, De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea, ed. T. Hearne, 6 vols (1770)

  CWE Complete Works of Erasmus (Toronto, 1976–)

  OxfordDNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

  EETS Early English Text Society

  EHR The English Historical Review

  GEC G. E. Cokayne, Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, etc Extant, Extinct, or Dormant, rev. ed. V. Gibbs and later H. A. Doubleday, 13 vols (London, 1910–49)

  Great Chronicle A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley, eds, The Great Chronicle of London (1937)

  HKW H. M. Colvin et al., eds, The History of the King’s Works, 6 vols (London, 1963–82)

  HR Historical Research

  LP J. S. Brewer et al., eds, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, 1509–47, 21 vols and addenda (London, 1862–1932)

  LP Hen. VII J. Gairdner, ed., Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, 2 vols (Rolls Series, 1861, 1863)

  Memorials W. Campbell, ed., Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII, 2 vols (Rolls Series, 1873, 1877)

  Materials J. Gairdner, ed., Memorials of King Henry the Seventh (Rolls Series, 1858)

  PPE Elizabeth of Yourk N. H. Nicolas, ed., The Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York: Wardrobe Accounts of Edward Fourth (London, 1830)

  Queens of England A. Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, 8 vols (1854)

  Queens of Scotland A. Strickland, Lives of the Queens of Scotland, 2 vols (1852)

  RP Rotuli Parliamentorum (1278–1504), 6 vols, London, 1767–77

  Vergil A H. Ellis, ed., Three Books of Polydore Vergil’s English History, CS old series 29 (1844)

  Vergil B D. Hay, ed. and trans., The Anglica Historia of Polydore Vergil, CS third series 74 (1950)

  TNA The National Archives

  CHAPTER 1: ENTRY INTO THE WORLD

  1. LP IV iii, 5791.

  2. K. Staniland, ‘The Royal Entry into the World’, in D. Williams, ed., England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium (Woodbridge, 1987), 299, n. 8; AR I, 304–6, 333–8. Collectanea IV, 179–84. The Ryalle Book itself is discussed by D. Starkey, ‘Henry VI’s Old Blue Gown: The English Court under the Lancastrians and Yorkists’, The Court Historian 4 (1999), 1–28.

  3. TNA: E 404/81/1 (1 September 1491).

  4. For instance, in The Great Chronicle, 248, the entry concerning Henry’s birth is not only an insertion, made long after the event (‘This year on Saint Peter’s Day in June was borne Henry, duke of York, the king’s second son which reigned after him’), it also appears under the wrong year. The ‘Beaufort Hours’, 279, notes Henry’s birth only with the bare date; in contrast, for both Arthur and Margaret, the place and the exact hour of birth are given as well.

  CHAPTER 2: ANCESTORS

  1. D. R. Carlson, ‘The Latin Writings of John Skelton’, Studies in Philology 88 (1991) IV, 1–125, 40.

  2. J. E. Powell and K. Wallis, The House of Lords in the Middle Ages (1968), 363.

  3. GEC XII ii, 905 n.g.

  4. Vergil A, 135.

  5. Great Chronicle, 212 and 431n.; J. Warkworth, Chronicle of the first thirteen years of Edward IV, ed. J. O. Halliwell, CS old series 10 (1839), 11.

  6. C. L. Schofield, Edward IV, 2 vols (1923) I, 546; H. Ellis, ed., Original Letters illustrative of English History, 1st s. 3 vols (1824), 2nd s. 4 vols (1827), 3rd s. 4 vols (1846), I, 140; OxfordDNB, ‘Millyng’.

  7. Schofield, Edward IV I, 546; Great Chronicle, 213; GEC XI, 545. 373

  8. J. Bruce, ed., History of the Arrival of Edward IV, CS old series 1 (1838), 17.

  9. A. Wroe, Perkin (2003), 471.

  10. RP VI, 278.

  CHAPTER 3: THE HEIR

  1. Memorials, 39.

  2. Loc. cit.

  3. For all this, see D. Starkey, ‘King Henry and King Arthur’ in J. P. Carley and F. Riddy, eds, Arthurian Literature,16 (Cambridge, 1998), 171–96, pp. 177–8.

  4. Collectanea IV, 204, 206.

  5. Beaufort Hours, 279.

  6. Collectanea IV, 204.

  7. Ibid., 206.

  8. Vergil A, 208.

  9. Ibid., 207; BL Add. MS 4617, fo. 186; Staniland, ‘Royal Entry’, 307 n. 60.

  10. Materials II, 349, 459; BL Add. MS 4617, fo. 202; CPR Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III (1476–85), p. 241.

  11. Materials II, 298, 343, 394, 404, 437, 553, 556.

  12. Materials II, 343, 349, 370, 459; BL Add. MS 4617, fo. 205.

  13. OxfordDNB, ‘Alcock’.

  14. N. Orme, ‘The Education of Edward IV’, HR 57 (1984), 119–30, 126–30.

  15. OxfordDNB, ‘Courtenay’.

  16. N. Pronay and J. Cox, eds, The Crowland Chronicle Continuations: 1459–1486 (1986), 181; W. Jerdan, ed., Rutland Papers CS old series 21 (1842), 10.

  17. M. Condon, ‘Itinerary’ (unpublished); CPR Henry VIII I (1485–94), 152; Materials II, 115.

  18. Original Letters, 1st s. I, 18–19 (misdated to the later crisis of 1492).

  19. Collectanea IV, 212; Condon, ‘Itinerary’.

  20. Collectanea IV, 236.

  21. Ibid., 249–57.

  22. Collectanea IV, 249–54.

  CHAPTER 4: INFANCY

  1. TNA: E 404/81/1 (31 December 1491); for Anne and her first husband, Geoffrey Uxbridge, see CPR Henry VII I (1485–94), 212, 214, 242, 276, 281, 294 and CPR Henry VII II (1494–1509), 11. Anne was widowed between 1494 and 1496 and remarried Walter Luke by 1504 (ibid., 46, 345).

  2. AR I, 306, 336–7.

  3. AR I, 337.

  4. See above, p. 51–2; Collectanea IV, 250.

  5. TNA: E 404/80, warrants dated at Greenwich, 1 and 29 June and 3 July 1491.

  6. TNA: E 404/81/1 (31 December 1491 and 20 July 1492).

  7. Queens of England, II, 369–70, 436; PPE Elizabeth of York, p. lxxxv.

  8. TNA: E 404/81/3 (17 September 1493).


  9. CPR Henry VII I (1485–94), pp. 401, 407–8; M. M. Condon, ‘An Anachronism with Intent? Henry VII’s Council Ordinance of 1491/2’, in R. A. Griffiths and J. Sherborne, eds, Kings and Nobles (Gloucester, 1986), 228–53.

  10. CPR Henry VII I (1485–94), pp. 434, 438–9, 441, 453; F. Hepburn, ‘Arthur, Prince of Wales and Training for Kingship’, in The Historian 55 (1997), 4–9.

  11. TNA: E 404/81/3, warrants dated 17 September 1493 and 13 March 1494; LP Hen. VII I, 391, 393; Great Chronicle, 254.

  12. TNA: E 101/414/8, fos. 11, 32, 43; E 101/413/11, fo. 31.

  13. Memorials, 58–60.

  14. TNA: E 404/81/3, warrant dated 13 March 1494; E 404/82, warrants dated 12 April 1496, 29 July 1497 and 15 March 1498.

  15. TNA: E 101/414/8, fo. 27; PPE Elizabeth of York, 88, 99.

  16. TNA: E 404/82, warrant dated 26 October 1495; Queens of England II, 439; J. Stow, A Survey of London, ed. C. L. Kingsford, 2 vols (1971) II, 109.

  17. The ‘Beaufort Hours’, 278, gives the date as ‘xv. kl Apr … 1495’, that is 18 March 1496 as the compiler of the calendar in the ‘Hours’ follows the usual practice of starting the new year on 25 March; TNA: E 101/81/4 (3 February 1495), E 101/82 (23 March 1497).

  18. The ‘Beaufort Hours’, 278, gives the date as ‘ix. kl Mar … 1498’, that is, 21 February 1499. The date is confirmed by the fact that the Canterbury font was sent for on 20 January 1499 (S. Bentley, ed., Excerpta Historica (1831), 120. TNA: E 101/83, warrants dated 20 December 1499 and 26 July 1500).

  19. CPR Henry VII II (1494–1509), 46, 345; LP I i, 82 (p. 38); I i, 132/39, 1221/18.

  20. See below, p. 331–2.

  CHAPTER 5: DUKE OF YORK

  1. A. F. Pollard, ed., The Reign of Henry VII from Contemporary Sources, 3 vols (1913) I, 185.

  2. CPR Henry VII I (1485–94), 214, 423; II (1494–1509), 26; GEC I, 249; I. Arthurson, The Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy (Stroud, 1994), 197; OxfordDNB, ‘Poynings’.

  3. J. Gairdner, History of Richard III (1878), 282–3.

  4. LP Hen. VII II, 388–9.

  5. GEC III, 257–61.

  6. GEC XII ii, 911; Schofield, Edward IV II, 94.

  7. Condon, ‘Itinerary’.

  8. TNA: E 404/81/4 (2 October 1494).

  9. J. Gairdner, ed., The Paston Letters, 6 vols (1904) VI, 151–2.

  10. LP Hen. VII II, 389; Condon, ‘Itinerary’.

  11. Great Chronicle, 254.

  12. J. Anstis, ed., The Register of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, 2 vols (1724) I, 236–7.

  13. Gairdner, Paston Letters VI, 151–2.

  14. LP Hen. VII I, 391–3.

  15. Ibid., 394.

  16. C. G. Bayne and W. H. Dunham, eds, Select Cases in the Council of Henry VII, Selden Society 75 (1958), 28–9; Gairdner, Paston Letters VI, 151–2.

  17. LP Hen. VII I, 389, 394–6.

  18. Ibid., 396–8.

  19. Ibid., 389, 400–2.

  20. Great Chronicle, 256; Vergil B, 73–5.

  21. Great Chronicle, 258.

  CHAPTER 6: RIVAL DUKES

  1. LP Hen. VII I, 392; RP VI, 470.

  2. M. K. Jones and M. G. Underwood, The King’s Mother (Cambridge, 1992), 113–14; L. T. Smith, ed., The Itinerary of John Leland, 5 vols (1906–08) V, 31.

  3. K. Mertz, The English Noble Household, 1250–1600 (Oxford, 1988), 216–17; TNA: E 404/82 (warrants dated 17 February 1496 and 13 December 1497); E 404/83 (warrant dated 14 December 1498).

  4. CPR Henry VII II (1494–1509), 126, 39, 243, 303; warrants cited in n. 41 above; W. Nelson, John Skelton, Laureate (New York, 1939), 74.

  5. BL: Cotton MS Vitellius B XII, fo. 109.

  6. Condon, ‘Itinerary’; Bentley, Excerpta Historica, 101; RP VI, 479, 511–12.

  7. GEC IX, 610–20.

  8. GEC IX, 619 n. d and e.

  9. RP VI, 481.

  10. PPE Elizabeth of York, 17, 99 and see below.

  11. GEC IV, 328–30.

  12. Collectanea IV, 222; PPE Elizabeth of York, 79, 189, index ‘Cotton’.

  13. Ibid., 32, 75, 103.

  14. Ibid., 77, 79.

  15. Ibid., 88.

  16. Anstis, Register I, 236; II, 41; TNA: E 404/81/4 (warrant dated 12 May 1495).

  17. Bentley, Excerpta Historica, 103; TNA: E 101/414/8, fo. 34.

  18. Great Chronicle, 275–6, 443n.

  19. CSP Ven. I, 754; TNA: PRO 31/14/121. I am most grateful to Dr Adrian Ailes for checking the latter on my behalf.

  20. Arthurson, Perkin Warbeck, 192.

  21. Bentley, Excerpta Historica, 114; TNA: E 36/126, fo. 37r. I am most grateful to Dr Sean Cunningham for checking the latter on my behalf. He also agrees that it is inconceivable that ‘the duke of York’ refers to anyone but Henry.

  CHAPTER 7: EDUCATION

  1. Bentley, Excerpta Historica, 105.

  2. A characteristic specimen is reproduced in J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (1968), illustration 4. The letter, to Wolsey, begins: ‘Because writing to me is somewhat tedious and painful’.

  3. For a specimen of Margaret’s hand, see Queens of Scotland I, 105. It is as big and bold as Henry’s and most of the letter forms are the same. But the rhythm is different.

  4. For Mary’s hand, see W. C. Richardson, Mary Tudor: the White Queen (1970), illustration 23.

  5. See below, p. 178.

  6. J. O. Halliwell, ed., The Most Pleasant Song of the Lady Bessy, Percy Society 69 (1847), 10.

  7. BL Cotton MS Vespasian F XIII, reproduced in Queens of England II, 396.

  8. J. Skelton, The Complete English Poems, ed. J. Scattergood (1983), 312–58.

  9. Ibid., 347, lines 1226–7.

  10. Ibid., 132.

  11. Ibid.

  12. D. R. Carlson, ‘Royal Tutors in the Reign of Henry VII’, Sixteenth Century Journal 22 (1991), 253–79, 255–60.

  13. Skelton, Complete English Poems, 132; Nelson, Skelton, 15.

  14. M. St Clare Byrne, ed., The Letters of King Henry VIII (1968), 420–1.

  15. Nelson, Skelton, 239, n. 2, cited in Carlson, ‘Royal Tutors’, 258, n. 11. Arthur first took up residence at Tickenhill Manor, Bewdley in 1499. It was an informal, half-timbered maison de retraite, which had been ‘in a manner totally erected by King Henry VII for Prince Arthur’ (Leland, The Itinerary II, 87–8).

  16. Nelson, Skelton, 48–9; Skelton, Complete English Poems, 345–7.

  17. Skelton, Complete English Poems, 347; F. M. Salter, ‘Skelton’s Speculum Principis’, in Speculum 9 (1934), 25–37.

  18. Skelton, Complete English Poems, 347; Salter, ‘Skelton’s Speculum Principis’, 25–37.

  19. Salter, op. cit., 29.

  20. Cf. Nelson, Skelton, 75–6; Carlson, ‘The Latin Writings of John Skelton’, 1–125, 38–42.

  21. G. R. Elton, ed., The Tudor Constitution (Cambridge, 1962), 344.

  22. W. K. Jordan, The Chronicle and Political Papers of King Edward VI (1966), 3; Sir Thomas Elyot, The Boke of the Governour, ed. H. H. S. Croft, 2 vols (1883) I, xx.

  23. F. M. Nichols, ed. and trans., The Epistles of Erasmus, 2 vols (1904) II, 201.

  24. BL Egerton MS 1651; P. Smith, Erasmus (1923), 61–2, 453–7; W. K. Ferguson, ed., Erasmi Opuscula (The Hague, 1933), 25–31.

  25. Nelson, Skelton, 57, 72.

  26. CWE I, 104.

  27. J. Larson, ‘A Polychromatic Terracotta Bust of a Laughing Child at Windsor Castle’, Burlington Magazine 131 (1989), 618–24.

  28. Reproduced in K. Hearn, ed., Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Stuart England, 1530–1630 (1995), no. 1.

  29. See for example the account of his behaviour at his reception by the City on 30–31 October 1498 (Great Chronicle, 288–9).

  CHAPTER 8: WEDDINGS

  1. J. G. Nichols, The Chronicle of Calais, CS old series 35 (1846), 3–4, 49–51.

  2. W. Busch, England under the Tudors: I Henry VII (1895), 363–4, rejects the idea that the visit to Calais was provoked by the sweating sickness on the ground that the disea
se did not break out till the summer.

  3. Busch, Henry VII, 167.

  4. Great Chronicle, 294.

  5. TNA: E 1011415/3, fos. 25, 28, 29v.

  6. CSP Sp. I, 282.

  7. CSP Sp. I, 280.

  8. CSP Sp. I, 213.

  9. Beaufort Hours, 279.

  10. E. F. Rogers, ed., Thomas More: Selected Letters (New Haven and London, 1961), 2–3.

  11. AR II, 292.

  12. AR II, 301–2; Great Chronicle, 315.

  13. AR II, 311–12.

  CHAPTER 9: THE LAST PRETENDER

  1. See above, p. 140.

  2. LP Hen. VII I, 397, 400–1.

  3. Vergil B, 123.

  4. GEC XII i, 451–54; LP Hen. VII I, 132, mentions ‘the favour he [Guildford] beareth him [Suffolk]’; CSP Sp. I, 231, 233.

  5. LP Hen. VII I, 134, 225–6.

  6. GEC XII i, appendix I; RP VI, 544–9.

  7. Anstis, Register I, 244; Gairdner, Paston Letters VI, 172–3. The Chronicle of Calais, 6. This says that Dorset and Courtenay were brought to Calais Castle on ‘the xviij. of October the xxiij. [year] of Henry the Seventh’. This is 1507, not 1508 as the editor renders it. 1507 is also the date given by André (Memorials, 100).

  8. See above, p. 101; Catalogue of Ancient Deeds in the Public Record Office, 6 vols (1890–1915) V, no. A. 13484; Pollard, Reign of Henry VII I, 219.

  9. Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, The Life and Raigne of King Henry the Eighth (1649), 2.

  10. P. Sarpi, The Historie of the Councel of Trent, trans. Nathanael Brent (1620), 16.

  11. C. A. J. Armstrong, ‘An Italian Astrologer at the Court of Henry VII’ in E. F. Jacob, ed., Italian Renaissance Studies (1960), 433–54, 434–5.

  12. Ibid., 451–3.

  13. Ibid., 437–42.

  14. OxfordDNB, ‘Deane’.

  CHAPTER 10: FUNERALS

  1. Bentley, Excerpta Historica, 126.