by David Field
‘My dear, lovely Jane! Who are these good people who have kept you amused until my arrival on this happy occasion?’
Jane seemed to come alive as she replied, ‘This lady is my younger sister Elizabeth, who once served as a Queen’s Lady along with me. Then she married Sir Anthony Ughtred, who became Governor of Jersey. She is now a widow, and will shortly give birth to her second child in somewhat straightened circumstances on her modest estate in Yorkshire.’
‘Would you wish her to be appointed as one of your Ladies upon your coronation?’ Henry asked with a generous smile. ‘You only have to ask, and it shall be done.’
‘Perhaps later, once she has been delivered of her new child, and it is of an age to be left behind,’ Jane suggested, then turned to Richard. ‘This gentleman is Richard Ashton, Senior Clerk to Master Secretary Cromwell. He was one of the few who showed me any kindness when I attended upon the late Queen; while she regarded me with contempt, and rarely spoke a civil word to me, Master Ashton was most attentive. Were it not for his good offices, I might have fled from the Court long ere I did, and then our love might perhaps not have blossomed as it did in more recent times. In some ways I feel that I have more to thank him for than most, excepting Your Majesty, of course.’
‘That courtesy shall be well rewarded upon our marriage,’ Henry told Jane with a smile towards Richard, who bowed his head in grateful acknowledgment. Then Henry raised his voice to be heard throughout the chamber. ‘Come, friends, and let us about this most happy of ceremonies. Thomas, you shall be witness.’
Five minutes later Jane and Henry had become officially betrothed, and Richard reflected gloomily on the fluctuating winds of fortune in the court of Henry of England. The previous day had seen the execution of she whom Henry had, if anything, sought in marriage with far greater enthusiasm than this somewhat plain lady from a fading Wiltshire estate.
Anne had been beautiful in her day, the product of an upbringing in the household of a royal ambassador at the Court of France, but her remains now lay, with their head severed and tucked between her feet, in a converted arrow casket in a chapel in the Tower. It certainly did not pay dividends to betray the King of England, or even to lay oneself open to the accusation of having done so. It was to be hoped that this naive daughter of minor gentry would have better fortune.
The wedding took place ten days later, in the Queen’s Chamber in Whitehall Palace, the service conducted by the Bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner. Gardiner was definitely of the new school of English clergymen, whose academic grasp of matters ecclesiastical, and their ability to argue any point of holy scripture in a manner acceptable to Henry, rather than any inherent holiness, had brought them considerable preference. Gardiner had been Secretary to Cardinal Wolsey until his former master had found him too pedantic and boring by comparison with the darker and more charismatic Cromwell, and both men had hated the very ground that the other walked upon ever since.
Cromwell would have much preferred the ceremony to be conducted by Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose clerical leanings were closer to those of the Protestant faith that was prevalent all over mainland Europe, and which Cromwell himself inclined towards. But it was, after all, merely one ceremony, and Cromwell clenched his teeth, smiled, and awaited the rewards that could be expected as one consequence of the generosity of which Henry was capable when he got what he wanted.
It came as no surprise when, shortly after the new marriage, Thomas Cromwell became Lord Privy Seal when the title was ripped away from Thomas Boleyn, Anne’s father; Cromwell was happy to resign, in the same process, from his duties as Master of the Rolls, which had actually required him to engage in some work. A week after that he was elevated to the rank of Baron of England; he could not title himself ‘of Putney’ with a straight face when he remembered the squalid alleyways in which he had lurked, lurched, fornicated, fought, defecated and vomited in his wild youth, but ‘Baron Cromwell of Wimbledon’ seemed to have the right ring to it.
The Seymours themselves were far from overlooked, and Henry gave Jane over a hundred manors as a wedding present, one of which she hoped to be allowed to pass to Richard when, following her overtures during the actual honeymoon period, Henry instructed Cromwell to draw up the necessary papers.
By the middle of July of that year, Richard had become Sir Richard Ashton. This was nothing compared with the elevated fortunes of Jane’s brother Edward, who became Viscount Beauchamp less than week after the marriage, and Earl of Hertford in October of that same year. At this stage, however, his younger brother Thomas received no such rewards, and experienced the first pang of jealousy against his older brother that was to dominate the rest of their lives together.
The wedding ceremony was followed by a magnificent banquet, to which all the principal players were invited. After the meal, Henry and Jane sat in splendour at the high table, smiling indulgently as the dancers bobbed and swirled before them. There were many French courantes, a slower dance in which the partners spent more time in actual physical contact at the arm and the waist, partly in diplomatic deference to Henry himself, whose mobility on the dance floor was restricted by his old jousting injury, and partly because it was the most popular with male courtiers seeking to interest a lady in an assignation once the music had ceased for the night.
Richard had been flattered by Bess’s request that he accompany her onto the dance floor as often as he felt both able and inspired, since she was apprehensive of being either bruised or sexually mishandled by older courtiers with more enthusiasm than skill. He had not missed a single opportunity, and had spent a happy couple of hours almost overpowered by her rich, heady perfume, and the closeness of her full breasts as they pulled together for a swirling turn.
Their conversation had become less formal, and more personal, as the dancing wore on, and there came a point at which they agreed that they each preferred to spend the remainder of the festivities dancing together, to the exception of any other partner. After a while, it was Bess who steered the topic towards family matters.
‘Jane tells me that you are now knighted.’
‘That’s so. You are now dancing with Sir Richard Ashton.’
‘I danced for some years with another “Sir”, although he had neither your youth nor your vigour.’
‘He had enough to father two children though, did he not?’ Richard replied. ‘You were referring to your late husband?’
‘I was indeed. Will you consider marriage yourself, now that you are knighted?’
‘I have a certain lady in mind to whom I would wish to make my suit, certainly, but although I have the knighthood, I have no land to go with it, and my current duties are such that they do not generate much beyond my living-in keep.’
‘If you love the lady enough, then you should not let anything on this earth prevent you from making your fortune by some means or other, then claiming her as yours.’
‘You make it sound easy, but I have neither skill nor training for commerce, I know not how to wield a sword in battle, and I have no experience in diplomacy. What must I do — take to the life of a footpad?’
Bess laughed and kissed him gently on the cheek. ‘Yet you will find a way, I feel sure. A handsome body like yours should not be allowed to go to waste.’
‘Even were I to find the way to my fortune, how do I know that the lady who occupies my every waking thought would accept my suit?’
‘That depends upon the lady, and how attractive she finds you, as well as your fortune.’
‘Surely it is the fortune alone that attracts women to men in these times?’ Richard argued cynically.
‘Do you think so? I do not. Once the clothes are cast off in the bed chamber, any woman with capable eyesight looks for a firm muscular frame like yours, and a face as handsome.’
‘So if, for the sake of example only,’ Richard ventured, ‘the object of my hopes were yourself, and I had a fortune, you would not reject my suit?’
Bess looked round
quickly, then kissed Richard warmly on the mouth. ‘Let us abandon the pretence. Come to me with your fortune and I will gladly accept your suit. But do not delay too long — having been exposed at an early age to the pleasures that await a man and a woman under the sheets, I am burning to re-engage in them.’
PART II
XVII
In July 1536 Cromwell had received yet another royal office, that of ‘Vice-Regent in Spirituals’, which made him second below Henry in the administration of the English Church. Given that Cromwell had never been ordained, this was the loudest message yet to the old order that religion in England was in the hands of the far from holy; even the old office of Archbishop of Canterbury no longer carried with it a direct line to Rome, and when Archbishop Cranmer began his series of collaborative meetings with Thomas Cromwell designed to flesh out the new order of religious observance that became known as ‘The Ten Articles’, he did so as an equal whose former high office as ‘primus inter pares’ of the Roman Catholic Church in England carried no additional weight.
The Holy Scriptures themselves, as the word of God, were to be given preference over any prelate’s interpretation of them, and iconic images were not to be worshipped in themselves, and masses were not to be sung for the blessing of souls. When they were published and distributed in August, Cromwell had taken the opportunity to add the requirement for an English Bible to be made available in every parish church, and for some this was the final straw.
A rebellion began in Lincolnshire, when a local mob registered their protest at the planned stripping of its cathedral of all its icons and other items of wealth by surrounding the building and sealing its doors, bringing out the Great Cross that was its proud and joy, and gathering under it, defying anyone sent by Cromwell to loot so much as an altar candle holder. The local gentry had been obliged to pretend to join in the protest, on fear of death if they did not, but had ultimately convinced the rebels that a petition to the King would achieve their desired objective.
It did not, but a fervent Catholic of the old school, a lawyer called Robert Aske, had persuaded thousands of his fellow countrymen to rise up in opposition to recent unwanted changes to both law and religious practice. It was to be doubted whether the perceived grievances that were put into the mouths of farm labourers, stonemasons, brewers, blacksmiths and tilers were really their own, rather than that of their rural and urban overlords, but the final set of demands that the rebels listed as their price for handing back the towns of York and Pontefract that they had seized were very indicative of the recent upheavals in the way that life had been lived for centuries.
First and foremost, they wanted the Church in England to be returned to the ultimate control of Rome, with the Pope re-established over Henry as the apex of English Catholicism. Along with that came a call for the abolition of all heresies, and most notably those of Luther and Tyndale. Next, a reversal of the monastic policy, and the reinstatement of all monks and other holy men in their original houses. As if they had not already sufficiently affronted Henry, they also called for the re-legitimation of the Lady Mary, and for ‘condign punishment’ to be visited upon Thomas Cromwell as ‘a subverter of the good laws of the realm’ and a ‘maintainer and inventor of heretics.’
Cromwell believed that the grievances listed by the rebels might well have been authored by Norfolk himself, and he suspected that his old enemy would be somewhat lacking in enthusiasm for bringing the rebels to heel. Then word came back south that the original rebel force had been joined by not only the Archbishop of York, but also Lord Thomas Darcy, who had handed Pontefract Castle over to Aske and his army when he should have been defending it for the King.
Cromwell saw his chance when word also came that Norfolk, instead of instigating the predictable orgy of slaughter, hanging rebels in rows from castle walls and putting their leaders to the sword, was negotiating with them for a peaceful resolution. One of their demands, apart from a general pardon for all their actions thus far, was that Henry journey north and hear their grievances in person in a special Council session to be held at Doncaster, and Cromwell seized upon this during his next audience with the King.
‘I cannot believe that my lord of Norfolk would so belittle your authority that he could not only presume to offer a pardon in your name, not only even consider to dictate to you how you should act in the matter of your own daughter, but — and this grieves me most of all, Sire — command your presence in the north of the nation of which you are both the anointed sovereign by the hand of God, and the undisputed head of the Church that these presumptuous peasants are seeking to hand back to the anti-Christ in Rome.’
Henry smiled. ‘I am warmed by your loyalty and concern for my royal dignity, Thomas, but I fear that you expect too much of Norfolk, whose forces are considerably outnumbered.’
‘If Norfolk is no longer able to defend Your Majesty by force of arms, which in my lengthy experience has been all that he was ever fit for, then perhaps others should be sent north in his stead.’
‘We have neither the men nor the finances, Thomas, as you yourself must surely be aware.’
‘Then perhaps a more subtle approach, Sire?’
‘What have you in mind?’
‘That we pretend to negotiate, until we have their leaders in our grasp, then we deal with them as the traitors that they truly are. Once the head is cut from the beast, the arms and legs will follow as a natural course.’
‘Would that not constitute low treachery?’
‘One might say, instead, “inspired statecraft”, Sire. But should you shrink from such a course, lest it diminish your honour as King, let me do it for you, in my own name. I am already regarded as the blackest devil by those who seek to challenge your authority, and would lose little by simply playing the role that popular prejudice has ascribed to me.’
‘What do we tell Norfolk?’
‘Simply to agree that you will summon a Parliament in York, if the rebels will agree to disband. Then I will send separately to their leader, Aske, inviting him to London to meet with you privately and discuss those matters which are causing so much grievance. Once the rebels have disbanded, you order Norfolk to lay waste the countryside, hang such of the rebels as he can locate, and secure the royal strongholds. Then Aske can be tried for treason and executed — either down here, or in York.’
‘You would incur that ignominy on my behalf?’ Henry asked nervously. ‘I cannot afford for my people to regard me as being so black-hearted.’
‘Willingly, Sire, since you have done so much for me. Will you so instruct Norfolk?’
‘I shall do so today, while you attend to your darker half of this stratagem.’
Cromwell was still chuckling as he re-entered his offices, explained the plan to Richard, and instructed him to send the invitation to Robert Aske.
Richard looked puzzled. ‘Do you not fear that your name will become even blacker in the public estimation than it is at present?’
‘Why should I?’ Cromwell replied. ‘Who is the person who offers peace terms to the sweaty mob up north? Who will be seen to be the one who restored the King’s uneasy peace in Yorkshire? Robert Aske will know the truth of it, but Norfolk’s is the name that will be remembered.’
Richard looked hard at Cromwell. ‘There really is no end to your treachery, is there?’
‘Statecraft, Richard. As I explained to Henry, let us call it statecraft. Talking of which, it would seem that Lady Rochford is back in favour. At least, she is back at Court, and calling herself Viscountess Rochford. I am advised that her former father-in-law Wiltshire, who is now back to being merely Sir Thomas Boleyn, has allowed her one hundred pounds a year, and she has hopes of becoming a Lady to our new Queen. I promised to speak for her in Jane Seymour’s ear, when it is free from Henry’s mouth, and the Viscountess asked to be remembered fondly to you.’
‘I have fond memories of her also,’ Richard replied, ‘but now my heart is committed elsewhere.’
‘I rather ima
gine that Jane Rochford is more interested in where your cock will be committed,’ Cromwell smirked, ‘but if you are alluding to Bess Seymour, keep well in mind that she is now a royal sister. Others in her position in the past have been known to be traded off to foreign princes; she will be regarded as a fine catch for as long as Jane is in favour.’
‘Think you that she will ever cease to be?’ Richard asked.
Cromwell shrugged. ‘If a man buys an expensive mare that will not foal, or which whelps only puny offspring, then in my experience it is either sold off or put to death. But while Jane is Queen, Bess will exist in her reflected glow, and given her comeliness she will not be short of suitors.’
‘During the wedding feast she gave me assurance that my suit would be welcomed, were it accompanied by a good estate,’ Richard said.
‘And you no doubt look to me to procure you one?’ Cromwell asked with a quizzical stare. ‘I can put you in possession of many a fine old abbey whose rental income might feed your horse for an entire year, but any land grant of appreciable size I shall reserve for Gregory.’
‘Why would you favour your idle son over your loyal Senior Clerk?’ Richard replied, only part in jest.
Cromwell smiled that infuriating smile of his. ‘You have clearly not heard that popular expression regarding blood being thicker than water. And Gregory is not idle — he manages my several properties in and around the city with considerable skill.’
‘He does not, however, labour long and hard to deal with the mountains of paper that keep you in your many offices,’ Richard countered, but Cromwell even had an answer for that.
‘Neither do you, while we sit here discussing your improbable dream of winning the hand of Bess Seymour. See to that letter for Robert Aske.’
