The House of Tudor

by Alison Plowden

  On 7 July Henry appointed his wife Regent in his absence abroad - an honour not accorded to a Queen consort since the days of Catherine of Aragon - and on the twelfth he set sail for Calais. The attack on France, undertaken in conjunction with the Emperor, was not a great success either politically or militarily, though Henry did achieve what was probably his main objective - the capture of Boulogne, the port used by the French to send military aid to Scotland - and he thoroughly enjoyed himself superintending the details of the siege, riding about the trenches happily occupied in ‘foreseeing and caring for everything’.

  The Council and the army commanders had done their best to dissuade the Km from taking the field in person, believing not only that it would be the death of him but that he would be very much in the way. Nothing, though, was going to stop Henry from grasping this opportunity to go campaigning again and to re-create the triumphs of his glorious past. It was not the same, naturally. The sick old man who had to be hoisted painfully on to his horse, or carried round in a litter, bore little resemblance to the splendid young warrior of thirty years ago, but even so his two months’ holiday in France did him a lot of good and he was noticeably better in health and spirits as a result.

  It was, it could only be, a temporary improvement, and the following March he was very poorly again with one of the recurring fevers - caused most likely by a flare-up of his inflamed leg - which had been troubling him for the past three years. The King tried hard to conceal his growing infirmity from the public; he continued to hunt and to travel about the country round London, but those closest to him could see a steady deterioration and certain people were already looking towards the future. Already the jockeying for position during an inevitable royal minority had begun and by the summer of 1545 two distinct parties were forming. On the one side stood the conservatives - the old Duke of Norfolk, the right-wing bishops, Gardiner of Winchester and Bonner of London, and the Lord Chancellor Thomas Wriothesley. Opposing them were the progressives, led by the Prince of Wales’s uncle, Edward Seymour Earl of Hertford, and John Dudley Lord Lisle, both able men who had been making a name for themselves in the royal service as diplomats and as military commanders. Behind these two were a number of other privy councillors and courtiers, up-and-coming families like the Parrs and the Herberts and, though he was careful not to draw too much attention to the fact. Archbishop Cranmer himself.

  The developing conflict was basically about power and politics, but it was fought out over religious issues - logically enough when one remembers that in the sixteenth century politics and religion were, for all practical purposes, one and the same thing. Certainly Henry’s religious policy had been dictated by political and, to some extent, personal necessity. A natural, dyed-in-the-wool conservative himself, it is highly improbable that the King would ever have considered breaking with Rome if the Pope had not been so disobliging as to refuse him his divorce. Having once considered it, of course, the advantages in terms of increased revenue and enhanced royal power and status became splendidly apparent but Henry remained a conservative at heart and while he lived the Church of England remained Catholic in the sense that all the basic tenets of the Catholic faith continued to be observed and were indeed enforceable by law.

  It was not, of course, as simple as it sounded. The King may not have meant to start a revolution when he rejected the Pope and all his works but that, in effect, was what he had done. There was a long tradition of anti-clerical feeling and smouldering religious radicalism in England and Henry’s personal quarrel with Rome had provided the spark which set a quantity of tinder-dry undergrowth alight. The subsequent conflagration proved, not surprisingly, difficult to control - especially when the Great Bible, based on Tyndale’s and Coverdale’s translation, was made available to the general public. The average concerned and educated layman was now, for the first time, in a position to study and interpret the word of God for himself and, in the 1530s and 1540s, this was the very stuff” of revolution. It led naturally to the spread of revolutionary ideas; to the realization that it was possible for an individual to hold direct communion with God, that the ordinary layman was no longer totally dependent on the priest to act as his intermediary, and the sense of excitement and emotional release this brought to many people cannot be emphasized too strongly.

  Henry’s attitude towards the force he had unloosed remained ambivalent. As long as it seemed politically expedient, he had encouraged or, at any rate, had not seriously discouraged a limited amount of progressive thinking. On the other hand, he had no intention of allowing the radicals to get above themselves, and from time to time they received a sharp reminder that the Supreme Head was watching them. The King’s policy, generally speaking, was to hold a balance between the opposing factions and he would, with splendid impartiality, hang Catholics for treason and burn Protestants for heresy. But during the mid-1540s it seemed as if the progressive party was having things pretty much its own way. Certainly very few heresy prosecutions were brought during 1544 and 1545, and in London especially the law was being openly flouted. The conservatives thought they knew where to lay the blame for this distressing state of affairs.

  Queen Katherine Parr was known to favour the new humanistic brand of piety which laid great stress on the importance of private devotion and played down the organized, sacramental aspects of religion. She had gathered round her a number of like-minded ladies and together they spent much of their time studying and discussing the Gospels and listening to discourses by such fashionably advanced clerics as Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Shaxton. Katherine’s circle included the young Duchess of Suffolk, who made no secret of her poor opinion of the conservative bishops; Joan Denny, wife of one of Henry’s favourite gentlemen; the Queen’s sister, Anne Herbert, and her stepdaughter, Elizabeth Tyrwhit; Lady Lisle, the Countess of Hertford and the Countess of Sussex. Between them these ladies commanded a considerable weight of influence and they were, in the estimation of men like Stephen Gardiner, rapidly turning the Court into a hotbed of the most pernicious heresy.

  The climate began to show signs of change in the late summer of 1545. In August of that year the Duke of Suffolk died suddenly while the Court was on a progress. For Henry it was a grievous personal loss. Charles Brandon was one of his oldest friends and one of the very few who could still remember those golden summers long ago when life was spent in ‘continual festival’. His death was also regarded as a loss for the friends of the Gospel, since the Duke had become closely associated with the progressive party in recent years. By Christmas it was clear that the King himself was getting worried about the increasing dissension between the rival factions, and in a speech delivered to Parliament on Christmas Eve, he reproved the nation via its elected representatives for speaking slanderously of priests and for having the temerity to follow its own ‘fantastical opinions and vain expositions’ in high matters of religious doctrine.

  Unfortunately, this royal scolding had little effect on that section of the population which had discovered the heady delights of theological and, by implication, political debate. ‘Religious novelties’ continued to proliferate and by the spring of 1546 the bishops were pressing urgently for an anti-heresy drive This was in full swing by late March, but Gardiner, Wriothesley and other leading conservatives remained convinced that the key to the situation lay with the Queen; that the way to bring down the progressives was to attack them through their wives.

  It was June before an opportunity presented itself. In the story as told by John Foxe, the Protestant propagandist, it was the Queen’s habit to sit with her husband in the evenings and to entertain him with intellectual conversation which naturally turned to the absorbing topic of religion. This was all very well, up to a point. Henry always enjoyed good talk, he was fond of his wife and pleased that she should take an interest in serious matters. But on one occasion, about the middle of June, Katherine allowed her enthusiasm to run away with her and unwisely forgot the cardinal rule of debate with the Ki
ng - that he must win any argument, especially theological argument, hands down. Henry’s legs were particularly troublesome just then and his temper was consequently shorter than usual. He lost patience, changed the subject abruptly and, after the Queen had said goodnight turned to Stephen Gardiner, who happened to be present, grumbling that he did not know what the world was coming to and that it was a fine thing at his age to be taught by his wife.

  This was just the opening Gardiner had been waiting for. He agreed warmly with his sovereign lord and went on to warn him of the danger of the opinions so ‘stiffly maintained’ by the Queen - opinions which not only disallowed and dissolved the politic government of princes, but also taught the people that all things ought to be in common. Beliefs of this kind, Gardiner pointed out, ‘were indeed so odious and for the Prince’s estate so perilous, that...the Council was bold to affirm that the greatest subject in this land, speaking those words that she did speak and defending likewise those arguments that she did defend, had with impartial justice by law deserved death.’

  This was fighting talk and Henry was, or pretended to be, seriously disturbed. Was he nourishing yet another serpent in his bosom? Had such rank and wicked heresies really been finding sympathy under his own roof? Obviously something must be done, and the King immediately authorized an enquiry into the conduct and beliefs of the members of the Queen’s household. If any evidence to support the Council’s allegations came to light, then the Queen herself and anyone else involved were to be arrested pending further investigation. This was all Gardiner needed and he hurried off to set the wheels in motion, though - and he was not known as ‘wily Winchester’ for nothing - he carefully left the actual dirty work in the hands of Thomas Wriothesley.

  In preparing their case against Katherine, the conspirators held what they hoped would be a trump card in the person of Anne Kyme, better known by her maiden name of Anne Askew. Anne, a truculent young woman from Lincolnshire, was a notorious heretic, already convicted and condemned. The interesting thing about her from Wriothesley’s point of view was that she was known to have had close connections with the Court. If it could be proved that the Queen, or any of the Queen’s ladies had been in touch with her since her arrest; if it could be shown that they had been encouraging and supporting her, then the Chancellor would have more than enough evidence to justify a dramatic series of further arrests. Anne was therefore transferred to the Tower and interrogated by Wriothesley and his henchman, the Solicitor General, Richard Rich. But apart from the fact that she admitted receiving some small sums of money, through her maid, from servants wearing the livery of Lady Denny and Lady Hertford, Anne told them nothing. Exasperated, Wriothesley ordered her to be put on the rack, but since it was illegal to resort to torture without a proper authorization from the Privy Council and, in any case, unheard of to apply it to a gentlewoman like Anne Askew, the Lieutenant of the Tower hastily dissociated himself from the proceedings. There followed a quite extraordinary scene, with the Lord Chancellor of England stripping off his gown and himself turning the handle of the rack. It did him no good. Anne either would not or could not (probably could not) provide him with any useful information. All he succeeded in doing - for naturally the story soon got about - was to turn her into a popular heroine.

  Having failed with Anne Askew, the Queen’s enemies were obliged to fall back on charges of a more general nature - such as possession of banned books which they felt pretty certain would be found in her apartments, or which could always be planted there. A list of charges had, in fact, been drawn up by early July and, according to Foxe, was shown to the King and signed by him. The Queen’s arrest would now follow, but a few days before it was due to take place Henry told one of his physicians, Dr. Wendy, all about the plan - at the same time swearing him to secrecy. Then, a copy of the ‘articles’ against the Queen was dropped by convenient ‘accident’ in the passage outside her rooms. It was, of course, quickly found and shown to Katherine who, for the first time, became aware of her danger. Terrified, she collapsed, falling ‘incontinent into a great melancholy and agony’. Dr. Wendy was sent to attend her and naturally passed on everything the King had told him. He advised his patient to get rid of any incriminating books without delay and to throw herself on her husband’s mercy.

  But Katherine Parr could think of a number of people, including her immediate predecessor, who had thrown themselves on Henry Tudor’s mercy without result. She would have to do better than that if she was to save her life. Whatever happened she must contrive to see and speak to her husband before her enemies struck and on the evening of 13 July she made her way to the King’s Privy Chamber, walking through the dim, ancient courts and corridors of Westminster accompanied only by her sister, Anne, and her cousin Lady Lane. If she was afraid, she did not show it.

  Henry greeted her with bland good humour, congratulated her on her recovery from her sudden indisposition - and then he pounced. He had been troubled about some knotty point of theology. Perhaps the Queen could resolve his doubts. This was Katherine’s cue and she picked it up calmly. She was only a poor, ignorant woman. Why should the King require her judgement ‘in such diffuse causes of religion’ which were far beyond her understanding? Even if she were to venture an opinion, she would still refer ‘in this, and in all other cases, to Your Majesty’s wisdom, as my only anchor, supreme head and governor here on earth, next under God, to lean unto’.

  ‘Not so, by St. Mary!’ came the menacing reply. ‘You are become a doctor, Kate, to instruct us, as we take it, and not to be instructed or directed by us.’

  ‘If Your Majesty take it so’, answered the Queen, ‘then hath Your Majesty very much mistaken me.’ It was, of course, quite unsuitable - against the ordinance of nature, in fart - for any woman to presume to teach her husband. It was she who must be taught by him. As for herself, if she had ever appeared bold enough to attempt to argue with her lord and master, she had meant it for the best; hoping by intellectual discussion to amuse and distract him and take his mind off the pain in his legs. She admitted that she had also encouraged such discussion for her own sake, ‘that I, hearing your Majesty’s learned discourse, might myself profit thereby’.

  Henry was immensely pleased and relieved. ‘And is it even so, sweetheart?’ he exclaimed. ‘And tended your arguments to no worse end? Then perfect friends we are now again, as ever at any time heretofore.’ The reconciliation was complete. The King embraced his wife and told her she had done him more good than if someone had given him a hundred thousand pounds. Never again would he misjudge her, and ‘with great signs and tokens of marvellous joy and liking’ he kept her at his side far into the night. Next day, Henry, still in the best of tempers - ‘as pleasant as ever he was in all his life before’ - summoned Katherine and her ladies to join him out in the summer sunshine in the palace gardens. This idyllic scene was presently interrupted by the arrival of the unsuspecting Thomas Wriothesley, with forty yeomen of the guard at his back and a warrant for the Queen’s arrest in his pocket. But instead of the triumph he had been anticipating, the Chancellor was greeted with a tirade of royal abuse and sent packing with his tail between his legs, ‘the whole mould of all his device being utterly broken’. This, at any rate, is the traditional story as related with much glee and a wealth of circumstantial detail in John Foxe’s The Book of Martyrs.

  It has been suggested that Henry, increasingly melancholic and pathologically distrustful of everyone around him as he felt old age and physical infirmity creeping up on him, had allowed Stephen Gardiner to poison his mind against his faithful and devoted wife - even that his mind was becoming clouded by pain and disease, that he was becoming a pathetic, irresponsible old man, easily manipulated by whoever happened to be fortunate enough to catch his ear. At the same time, it is noticeable that anyone rash enough to assume that the ageing King could be manipulated ended up by regretting it and Henry’s manoeuvres more closely resemble those of a seasoned political operator, up to every trick in the game, th
an a senile dotard. In view of later developments, it seems highly probable that he had seen through Gardiner from the beginning and had adopted the classic technique of appearing to go along with the conspirators until they had been drawn into exposing their hand. It is significant that the King made sure that his wife should receive some advance warning of her impending doom and also gave her an opportunity to defend herself- an opportunity not granted either to Anne Boleyn or to Catherine Howard.

  The collapse of the plot against the Queen marked the end of the short-lived right-wing resurgence on the Council and by the autumn the conservative Catholic party had suffered a virtual death-blow in the disgrace of the Duke of Norfolk and the sudden removal of Bishop Gardiner from the list of executors of the King’s will. The ruin of the influential Howard family seemed complete. Norfolk’s arrogant soldier-poet son, the Earl of Surrey, was executed for the technical treason of quartering his arms with those of Edward the Confessor, and the old Duke himself escaped a similar fate by the skin of his teeth. As for that brilliant but tricky lawyer and diplomat Stephen Gardiner, Henry would give no reason for excluding him from the projected Council of Regency, except to say that ‘he was a wilful man and not meet to be about his son’. He himself could control Gardiner and ‘use him and rule him to all manner of purposes’, but no one else would be able to.

  As Christmas approached, it was becoming obvious that the King had begun to fail. He who had once been the handsomest prince in Christendom was now a swollen, rotting hulk, suffering such agony from his ulcerated legs that his physicians despaired of his recovery. The exact nature of Henry’s illness remains a matter for speculation and suggestions have included malaria, gout, alcoholism, cardiac infection, osteomyelitis and, of course, syphilis. This hypothesis was first put forward in the late nineteenth century and was naturally pounced on joyfully by all those who enjoy a bit of historical dirt. But, in fact, there is not a shred of contemporary evidence that the King had venereal disease, no hint that he ever underwent the recognized treatment for ‘the great pox’, and this was just the sort of interesting information which foreign ambassadors were paid to ferret out.