The House of Tudor

by Alison Plowden

  Oh my Erasmus, if you could see how all the world here is rejoicing in the possession of so great a Prince, how his life is all their desire, you could not contain your tears for joy...Our King does not desire gold or gems or precious metals, but virtue, glory, immortality. I will give you an example. The other day he wished he was more learned. I said: ‘That is not what we expect of your Grace, but that you will foster and encourage learned men.’ ‘Yes, surely’, said he, ‘for indeed without them we should scarcely exist at all.’

  No more splendid saying, thought Mountjoy, could have fallen from the lips of a prince.

  There really seemed no end to the gifts and graces of this marvellous youth and it is hardly surprising that a great wave of optimism should have swept the country. In the spring of 1509 many people genuinely believed that a new era, ‘called then the golden world’, was dawning and that under the beneficent rule of an apparently ideal Christian monarch the bad old days of faction, suspicion and heavy taxes would be gone forever.

  Almost the first act of the ideal Christian monarch was to get married, and after all it was the despised and neglected Spanish princess who carried off the prize. The reasons behind this startling volte-face remain a little obscure. The bridegroom’s own explanation, given in a letter to Margaret of Austria, was that his father, as he lay on his death-bed, had expressly commanded him to fulfil his obligations to the Lady Catherine and as a dutiful son he had no choice but to obey. Another account of the old King’s last hours maintains that he expressly assured his son he was free to marry whom he chose and Don Gutierre Gomez de Fuensalida, the Spanish envoy who had been sent to England on a fence-mending mission, attributed the dramatic transformation of Catherine’s affairs entirely to the direct, personal intervention of the new King, who imperiously swept aside all the pettifogging obstacles which had been holding up the marriage for so long and ordered Fuensalida to complete the financial arrangements as quickly as possible - something that much-tried individual had been trying his best to do for the past year.

  Henry had seen very little of his fiancée for some time, so it is not likely that any tender feelings were involved. It looks very much as if he was simply impatient to prove his manhood by taking a wife, and the quickest and easiest way to achieve that was to marry the girl he was already engaged to, who was on the spot and patiently waiting his pleasure. Fortunately, King Ferdinand was now in a position to produce the second half of Catherine’s dowry and Catherine, who had been at her wits’ end to find the wherewithal to clothe herself and feed her servants, was caught up almost overnight in a whirl of wedding preparations, with nothing more serious to worry about than ordering a new trousseau.

  As the King had set his heart on having his Queen crowned beside him, there was no time to be lost. On 10 May Henry VII was buried with all due ceremony in Westminster Abbey, to dwell ‘more richly dead than he did alive’, and as soon as the funeral was over Henry VIII bore his bride off to Greenwich. They were married very quietly in the church of the Observant Friars by the palace wall and although (at least so it was said later) the Archbishop of Canterbury had his doubts about the legality of this marriage of brother and sister-in-law, any scruples he may have felt were not strong enough to prevent him from performing the ceremony.

  The coronation had been fixed for 24 June, four days before the King’s eighteenth birthday. London was filling up with people who had come to town to see their monarch ‘in the full bloom of his youth and high birth’ and the City, which had not been en fête since Prince Arthur’s wedding eight years before, was busy sweeping and sanding the streets and hanging out streamers and banners of tapestry and cloth of gold; while tailors, embroiderers and goldsmiths worked round the clock to fill orders for furred robes, new liveries, coats of arms and elaborate horse trappings.

  On 23 June, the King made his ritual journey from the Tower to Westminster- a resplendent figure in crimson and gold, flashing with diamonds, rubies and emeralds and with a great golden baldrick slung round his neck. As for his retinue, Edward Hall, that indefatigable chronicler of Tudor pageantry, declares ‘there was no lack or scarcity of cloth of tissue, cloth of gold, cloth of silver, broderie or of goldsmiths’ works: but in more plenty and abundance than hath been seen or read of at any time before’. The Queen’s procession followed, with Catherine sitting in a litter draped with white cloth of gold and carried between two white palfreys trapped with the same material. She wore embroidered white satin and had a coronet ‘set with many rich orient stones’ on her head. Her marvellous russet-coloured hair hung loose down her back and Hall specially noticed that it was ‘of a very great length, beautiful and goodly to behold’.

  The next day Henry and his Queen were anointed and crowned by Archbishop Warham ‘according to the sacred observance and ancient custom’, and afterwards all the quality crowded into Westminster Hall for a banquet ‘greater than any Caesar had known’. A grand tournament had been organized ‘for the more honour and ennobling of this triumphant Coronation’ and the next few days were given over to jousting, feasting and dancing.

  The celebrations were brought to a temporary halt by the sudden death of the King’s grandmother. Margaret Beaufort had been staying in the Abbot’s house at Westminster for the coronation and she died there on 29 June at the age of sixty-six. The death of the foundress of the royal Tudor family broke another link with the past which everyone was now so busy forgetting and although she was given a suitably grand funeral and buried, according to her wish, beside her son and daughter-in-law in the Henry VII Chapel, the new King did not allow her passing to interfere with his pleasures any longer than was decently necessary.

  Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby, is remembered for her piety, for her generosity in almsgiving, for her patronage of learning and as the founder of St. John’s College, Cambridge. It is possible, though, that her grandson’s memories of this formidably virtuous grande dame were not particularly cheerful ones. Lady Margaret had always played an active part in the upbringing and education of her grandchildren and she would certainly have been associated in the King’s mind with the last few years of his father’s reign when, at least according to Fuensalida, the teenage Henry had been guarded as strictly as a young girl. He spent most of his time studying in a room leading off his father’s chamber; he was only allowed out to exercise through a private door into the park and was surrounded by attendants chosen by his father. No outsider, wrote the ambassador, could approach or speak to him and he scarcely opened his mouth in public.

  Fuensalida may well have been exaggerating the case but it is certainly true that the old King never permitted the Prince of Wales to take even the most minor independent share in government and made sure that, as he began to grow up, he stayed well out of the limelight. Whether this was simply because Henry VII considered his only surviving son too precious an asset to be let out of his sight, whether he doubted the boy’s readiness to cope with independence or whether he was increasingly afraid of being outshone by his handsome, athletic heir we have no means of knowing. The fact remains that the future Henry VIII was kept a schoolboy under the constant surveillance of either his father or his grandmother until the moment of his accession. The prince seems to have borne this stultifying regime with exemplary patience, but it is hardly surprising that the moment he was free he should have thrown off all restraint - stating his intentions with engaging frankness.

  Pastance with good company

  I love and shall until I die

  Grudge who will, but none deny.

  So God be pleased this life will I

  For my pastance,

  Hunt, sing, and dance,

  My heart is set;

  All goodly sport

  To my comfort

  Who shall me let?

  Who indeed? Here was a young man with the world at his feet, his father’s money to spend and a good deal of boredom to make up for. He meant to enjoy himself and enjoy himself he did. For the r
est of that first carefree summer the Court settled into a round of ‘continual festival’, with revels, tilts and tourneys, pageants, banquets and ‘disguisings’ following one another in an endless, glittering and expensive stream, and with the King always in the thick of the fun.

  Henry had an insatiable passion for dressing up, and for charades. On one occasion, he and a bunch of cronies burst unannounced into the Queen’s chamber ‘all appareled in short coats of Kentish Kendal, with hoods on their heads and hosen of the same, every one of them [with] his bow and arrows and a sword and buckler, like outlaws or Robin Hood’s men’. The Queen and her ladies, though ‘abashed’ by this invasion, knew what was expected of them and danced politely with the strangers. Another time the King suddenly vanished in the middle of a banquet, to reappear ‘appareled after Turkey fashion’ in a gold turban and hung round with scimitars. His companions were dressed up as Russians and the torch-bearers had their faces blacked ‘like Moriscos’.

  The Queen’s part in these merry pranks was to provide an admiring audience and she never failed to play up - to be suitably astonished and appreciative of the joke when Robin Hood, or the Saracen, or the mysterious Muscovite revealed himself as her husband. The King was delighted with her and, after less than two months of marriage, wrote to his father-in-law in elegant Latin, assuring him of ‘that entire love which we bear to the most serene Queen, our consort’. When, on 1 November 1509 he was able to tell Ferdinand that ‘the Queen, our dearest consort, with the favour of heaven, had conceived in her womb a living child and is right heavy therewith’, the young couple’s happiness seemed complete.

  Catherine was twenty-three now - a very different being from the shy, homesick child who had landed at Plymouth in 1501. During the seven lean years of her widowhood she had learnt some hard but useful lessons in patience, discretion, self-reliance and self-control and she had matured into a responsible, serious-minded and capable young woman. In the early years of their marriage Henry was not only devoted to her, he relied heavily on her judgement and experience, he respected her opinions and listened to her advice. It seemed an ideal match. Husband and wife shared many interests, both loved music and dancing, both had intellectual tastes, both were deeply religious. In addition, Catherine’s good breeding and perfect natural dignity made an excellent foil for Henry’s exuberance and her gently restraining influence saved the Court from any taint of vulgarity - attracting members of the older aristocratic families (some of whom became her special friends) who might otherwise have been repelled by the rollicking young men who flocked round the King.

  But admirable creature though the Queen might be - and no one denied her many good qualities - her real business was to bear children, the sooner the better. No thinking man could forget that all the splendour and prosperity and high hopes of the new reign rested on the fragile foundation of one life. If the King were to have an accident in the tiltyard or the hunting field; if he were to fall victim to the sweating sickness, which notoriously attacked the upper classes; then the whole Tudor achievement would collapse overnight and the country revert into an anarchy far worse than any it had known under the faction fights of the rival Roses.

  In May 1510 Catherine was delivered of her first child. It was a girl, born dead. Within a matter almost of days she was pregnant again and at Richmond Palace on I January 1511 she gave birth to a boy, alive and apparently healthy. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The Tower cannon fired a royal salute. Bells pealed and bonfires blazed in the streets of London. There were processions and Te Deums in the City churches and the authorities provided a ration of free wine for drinking the baby’s health, while the baby’s father dashed off impulsively to offer up his gratitude at the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.

  As soon as the Queen had been churched, she came up to Westminster where there was to be an extra special tournament to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Wales. The proceedings opened with a pageant of quite spectacular ingenuity. A whole ‘mock forest’ complete with rocks, hills and dales, its trees and flowers cunningly constructed of green velvet and damask and coloured silks, with a castle made of gold in the middle and concealing four armed and mounted knights was drawn in says Hall, ‘as it were by strength of two great beasts: a lion and an antelope. The lion flourished all over with damask gold. The antelope was wrought all over with silver of damask, his beames and horns and tusks of gold.’

  The King, not unlike some gorgeous heraldic beast himself in his gilded armour, entered the lists as Sir Loyal Heart. The royal pavilion of cloth of gold and purple velvet was lavishly decorated with the initials H and K embroidered in fine gold and, as a further compliment to the Queen, her badge, the pomegranate, was featured prominently among the display of Tudor roses.

  The following night a great banquet was held in the White Hall during which Henry performed his famous vanishing act - reappearing with five companions and a chosen band of ladies in another pageant, this time ‘a garden of pleasure’. The ladies were in Tudor white and green, Sir Loyal Heart and his friends in slashed purple satin heavily encrusted with ornaments of solid gold. But when the King began to distribute these as souvenirs to certain favoured guests, the common people, watching the fun from a distance, broke in to demand their share. They snatched the gold lace and spangles off the pageant, despite the efforts of the Lord Steward and his officers to stop them, and stripped the King and his companions to their doublets and hose. Eventually the guard had to be called to put the intruders out, but there was no ill-feeling. Nothing could spoil such a happy occasion and by the time the Court sat down to supper ‘all these hurts were turned to laughing and game’.

  The triumph at Westminster ended with ‘mirth and gladness’, but the gladness was pitifully short. On 22 February little Henry of Richmond was dead. He had lived just seven weeks. It was a dreadful blow, to the King and Queen and to the whole nation, but especially to the Queen. In the words of Hall’s Chronicle, Catherine, ‘like a natural woman, made much lamentation. Howbeit, by the King’s persuasion, she was comforted but not shortly.’ Henry’s own grief had been genuine and violent, while it lasted, but it was not in his nature to be despondent for long. There would, after all, be plenty of time to beget more sons. The cloud on the horizon was as yet no bigger than a man’s hand and the King quickly forgot his first serious disappointment in the thrill of preparing for his first war.

  Henry VII had been a pre-eminently civilian monarch. His foreign policy had been concerned with drawing up commercial treaties and trade agreements, with forming useful and profitable alliances with other royal houses, and with keeping out of other people’s wars. No one expected his son to continue along these sensible but unexciting lines. A king was still, in practice as well as theory, the war leader of his people and a fine upstanding young king like the second Henry Tudor would have to prove himself in battle as a matter of honour.

  The second Henry Tudor was only too anxious for a chance to prove his mettle, but when he came to the throne he had found himself boringly at peace with all his neighbours - even with France who remained the ancestral enemy to every right-thinking Englishman. This was a state of affairs which the new King meant to change as soon as he could. Young Henry’s head was stuffed with romantic dreams of the glorious past, dreams of Crécy and Agincourt and of reconquering England’s lost empire. He saw himself as another Henry V and in the first summer of his reign, to the acute embarrassment of his Council, had hurled defiance at a surprised French ambassador in a scene which had only needed a tun of tennis balls to be complete.

  But, to the King’s irritation, France would not play. Louis XII was a middle-aged man intent on consolidating his recent territorial gains in Northern Italy. He was not in the least interested in the noisy challenges of a beardless boy or in becoming involved in a pointless war with England, and Henry was sulkily obliged to contain his impatience. Even he needed a casus belli, however slight. He also needed allies. Not even he was rash enough to take on an a
dversary twice his size singlehanded.

  As it turned out, he did not have to wait very long for either of these two necessary adjuncts of military adventure. The Pope, becoming alarmed by the strength of the French armies on his doorstep, provided the first. The King of Aragon provided the second. Ferdinand had noted his son-in-law’s bellicosity and Franco-phobia with quiet satisfaction and was only waiting for a favourable opportunity to use them for his own advantage. By the summer of 1511 this opportunity seemed to be at hand. Franco-Papal relations had deteriorated sharply and in October a Holy League directed against the ‘schismatic’ King of France was signed in Rome. Henry could now go to war well buttressed by allies and when Ferdinand suggested they should make a start by mounting a joint invasion of Gascony from the south, he fell in eagerly and quite unsuspectingly with his father-in-law’s plans, though, oddly enough, he did not accompany the army which sailed from Southampton in April 1512.

  From the Spanish point of view, the summer’s campaign went off very nicely indeed. While the presence of some ten thousand English archers kept the French pinned down in Bayonne, Ferdinand was able quietly to annexe the small neutral kingdom of Navarre on his north-western frontier. He showed no visible sign of being prepared to cross the frontier, and the English expeditionary force received neither the cooperation nor the supplies they had been expecting. Marooned in the neighbourhood of San Sebastian with no fighting to do, the climate, the food and the harsh local wine played predictable havoc with their tempers and their stomachs. By the end of August the men were openly mutinous. By September the army was on its way home, leaving two thousand dead from fever and dysentery and having achieved precisely nothing. Ferdinand, keeping a perfectly straight face, accused his ally of deserting him - and just as the main operation had been about to begin! Other people passed unkind remarks on the subject of the sad decay of English military virtues, and Henry smarted under a devastating public humiliation. Next year, though, it would be different. Next year he would take the field himself and then these insufferable foreigners would see what an English army could do.