Great Harry Read online

  This book made available by the Internet Archive.

  Contemporary poems and songs quoted as chapter openings are taken from John Stevens, ed., Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court, 11, 21, 249, 391, 3%, 416, 418, 419; Thomas Percy, ed., Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, I, 107, 180, 181, 271, 296, 298, 305; II, 61, 139, 222, 244, 270, 273; III, 147, 79,27,2S9,322',Lyricsfrom Elizabethan Songbooks, 207; The Portable Elizabethan Reader, 658; William Chappell, Old English Popular Music, 25-26, 61, 74, 76-77; Tucker Brooke and Matthias A. Shaaber, eds.. The Renaissance, 498; Roy Strong, Tudor and Jacobean Portraits, endpapers; Joseph Hall, ed.. The Poems of Laurence Minot, 110; Kenneth Muir, Life and Letters of Sir Thomas Wyatt, 32; Edward Arber, ed.. An English Garner: Tudor Tracts, 1532-1588, 27; John Stevens, ed.. Music at the Court of Henry VIII, 50, Antiquarian Repertory, III, 263; William Thomas, The Pilgrim, 1; Walter C. Richardson, Mary Tudor: The White Queen, xiv; Edward Lowinsky, "A Music Book for Anne Boleyn," in Florilegium Historiale: Essays Presented to Wallace K. Ferguson, ed. J. G. Rowe and W. H. Stockdale, 181; and G. R. Elton, Policy and Police, 137, citing a "vagrant singer" who wandered the Norfolk countryside "with a crowd and a fiddle."

  ILLUSTRATION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reproduce the illustrations specified:

  Bibliotheque de Mejanes, Aix-en-Provence: 1

  By courtesy of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster: 2, 4, 5

  National Portrait Gallery, London: 3, 8, 16, 17, 18, 27

  Bibliotheque municipale d'Arras, Recueil de portraits: 6

  From the Woburn Abbey Collection, by kind permission of the Marquess of Tavistock, and the

  Trustees of the Bedford Estates: 7 Metropolitan Museum of Art: 9, 20 Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge; reproduced by permission of the Syndics of

  the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge: 10 By gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen; copyright reserved: 11, 12, 14, 15 BBC Hulton Picture Library: 13 Copyright The Frick Collection, New York: 19 Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien: 21, 26 Musee du Louvre: 22, 23 Alte Pinakothek, Munchen: 25

  By courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of London: 24 Staatiiche Graphische Sammlung, Munchen: 28

  Descendants

  EDWARD III

  EdrT>und D. of York

  Richard =" Anne Mortinr>er

  E of Cam bridge

  dr of E. of March

  HENRY VI

  I Edward (o.i.p.1471)

  D. of Somerset

  I Margaret Beaufort = Edmund Tudor E of Richmond

  Richard D of York

  EDWARD IV

  George

  D of Clarence

  ' 1

  HENRY VII — Elizabeth EDWARD V Richard Catherine - Wm. Courtenay Edward Margaret = Sir Richard Pole

  (m. 1483) D. of York

  (m.1483)

  E. of Devonshire E. of Countess of

  Warwick Salisbury I (ex.1499) (ex.1541)

  Henry Marquis of Exeter (ex, 1538)

  I

  Edward Courtenay (d. 1556)

  I

  Henry Pole Lord Montague (ex. 1538)

  Afthur (d 1502)

  I

  HENRY VIII

  I 1 1

  MARY ELIZABETH EDWARD VI

  I

  James IV — Margaret = Archibald

  of Scots I I 6th E. of Angus

  James V Margaret = Matthew

  4th E. of Lennox

  Mary == Henry Charles

  I Lord Darnley

  JAMES I

  (VI of Scotland)

  Arbella Stewart

  of Edward III

 
  Thomas of Woodstock D. of Gloucester

  Anne = Edmond

  E. of Stafford

  1 1 1

  RICHARD III Elizabeth = John de la Pole Margaret (3rd wife of

  (0.5.P 1485)

  E. of Suffolk

  Charles the Bold, D. of Burgundy)

  Humphrey

  D. of Buckingham

  Humphrey

  Henry (ex. 1483)

  John Edmund Richard

  (d. 1487) E. of Suffolk (d. 1525) (ex. 1513)

  I I

  Edward Anne = George Hastings

  D. of Buckingham E. of Huntingdon

  {ex.1521)

  I

  Reginald Cardinal Pole (d. 1558)

  Geoffrey

  Ursula = Henry

  Lord Stafford

  Mary = Charles Brandon I D. of Suffolk

  ■~r^

  Frances = Henry Grey I D. of Suffolk (ex. 1554)

  Eleanor = E. of Cumberland

  I 1 1

  Jane Catherine = Edward Seymour Mary Margaret Clifford = Henry Stanley

  (ex.1554) E. of Hertford 4th E. of Derby

  (son of the Protector)

  d. - died

  m. — murdered

  ex. - executed

  o.i.p. — died without issue {obin sine prole)

  Preface

  There is a story that in the reign of Bloody Mary, when hundreds of Protestants were being burned for their beHefs, the corpse of Henry VIII was torn from its resting place at Windsor and, by the queen's orders, thrown into the flames and burned to ashes. That Mary Tudor should have taken such bitter and final revenge against her father says much about the passions Henry aroused in others. From his family, his courtiers, his subjects he called forth both staunch affection and undying hatred. Yet an even stronger feeling overshadowed these: a feeling of astounded awe. For Henry Tudor was, as one who knew him wrote, "undoubtedly the rarest man that lived in his time."

  Even more than his exalted rank, his towering height, powerful physique and extraordinary handsomeness set Henry apart from his contemporaries. A phenomenal athlete, he seemed to draw on superhuman energies as he outrode, outdanced and outfought friends and rivals both in England and abroad. These physical gifts were balanced by unfailing warmth and charm, chivalrous delicacy of feeling, and perceptive mental endowments that enabled Henry to share fully in the intellectual life of the humanists at his court and to win their respect.

  Beyond these personal attributes Henry possessed the indefinable quality of majesty, the ensorceling aura of kingly command and fatherly authority that overawed his subjects and gave his enemies pause.

  Midway in his reign darker qualities of mind emerged in Henry, growing stronger as he was continuously thwarted in his aims and in the end eclipsing his attractive nature. The radiant hero of the Battle of the Spurs became the troubled, anxious mler of the mid-1520s, harried in mind by the fear of divine vengeance, then the fearsome murderous king of the 1530s whose wrath was fatal to those about him. The Catholic Church puts at fifty the number of martyrs whose deaths he brought about by execution or starvation. Several wives, at least a dozen blood relatives and a

  similar number of onetime counselors and friends lengthened the list of victims.

  By the 1540s, as Henry entered his fifties, he had become a monstrous figure to his people—an inhuman tyrant of mythic proportions whose valor and integrity had dissolved under the corroding influence of adultery, sacrilege and blood lust. In actuality Henry was by this time an aging colossus plagued by agonizing pains in his legs, soured by domestic misfortunes and overburdened by governmental labors. The inner compass that had guided him to overturn the old order of English society—to break away from the Roman church, destroy the monasteries, and undertake the reshaping of religious belief—had misled him, and he suffered in consequence.

  Yet in his last years Henry rose above the limitations of his age and bulk to personally undertake the conquest of France, and displayed again the matchless vitality that all his life made him the envy of younger men. And it was that vitality, whic
h fueled both his hearty bonhomie and his raging irritability, that made Henry the object of helpless fascination. He seemed to know everything, to be everywhere at once. "There is not a single bruit anywhere which he does not hear among the first, be it false or true, even to little private matters which princes care but little to hear," the French ambassador Marillac wrote of Henry. ''He speaks as if he knew not only the kings and lords but their servants, forces, places, designs, and occasions, both far and near, as if he had men all over the world who did nothing but write to him."

  The Milanese ambassador was more succinct. Henry, he wrote, "wants to have his feet in a thousand shoes."

  This is a retelling of Henry's personal story, and as such it is more the life of a man than of a king. As popular history, it makes no attempt to arrive at a fresh assessment of the reign, nor to detail the political accomplishments of Henry or his ministers. My indebtedness to J. J. Scarisbrick's elegant and exemplary political biography of Henry VIII will be evident to informed readers: the bibliography at the end of this book acknowledges many of the other historical works I have used. But my chief resource has been the treasure-house of sixteenth-century letters, dispatches, and official documents collected in the Calendars of Spanish, Venetian and Milanese state papers and in the Letters and Papers of Henry VIIL One researcher has estimated that the tens of thousands of pages in these collections contain a million separate details about Henry: to construct a composite image of the king from these slivers of his reality has been my primary task.

  Along the way, help has come from several sources: from my ever cheerful, ever competent assistant Brett Cooke and his superlative predecessor Martha Moore: from Decca Treuhaft, Peter Dreyer, Geoffrey Bruun, Gregory Wilcox and other heartening friends, and from readers of Bloody Mary whose questions and encouraging letters have buoyed me through a long labor.

  One more influence must be acknowledged. When sixteen years ago I applied for graduate study at Columbia University, I hoped to work there

  with Garrett Mattingly, whose splendidly dramatic account of the Armada I had read with great enthusiasm. Professor Mattingly died before I enrolled at Columbia, but I have been a student of his books ever since, and a passage from his Catherine ofAragon has stayed with me during the eighteen months I have spent in the company of Great Harry. In describing him Mattingly referred to ''the inwardness of that majestic childishness, that absurd mixture of naivete and cunning, boldness and poltroonery, vindictive cruelty and wayward almost irresistible charm." As a brief sketch of a multifaceted character, these twenty-three words are unimprovable.

  Carolly Erickson

  Berkeley, California January 31, 1979

  I

  Of personage he was one of the goodliest men that lived in his time, very high of stature, in manners more than a man, and proportionable in all his members unto that height; of countenance he was most amiable, courteous and benign in gesture unto all persons, and specially unto strangers; seldom or never offended with anything, and of so constant a nature in himself, that I believe few can say that ever he changed his cheer for any novelty how contrary or sudden soever it were.

  Prudent he was in council and forecasting; most liberal in rewarding his faithful servants, and ever unto his enemies as it behoveth a Prince to be; he was learned in all sciences, and had the gift of many tongues; he was a perfect theologian, a good philosopher, and a strong man at arms; a jeweller, a perfect builder as well of fortresses as of pleasant palaces; and from one to another there was no necessary kind of knowledge from a king's degree to a carter s but that he had an honest sight in it.

  What would you I should say of him: He was undoubtedly the rarest man that lived in his time.

  — William Thomas, writing of his contemporary Henry VIII in The Pilgrim

  buns Harry

  I

  Aboffe all thynge

  Now lete us synge

  Both day and nyght,

  Adew mornyng,

  A bud is spryngynge

  Of the red rose and the whyght.

  On the morning of June 12, 1497, Elizabeth of York hurried with her five-year-old son Henry from her mother-in-law's house Coldharbour in Thames Street to the Tower of London. Reaching the Outer Ward they entered the White Tower through Coldharbour Gate, then climbed as rapidly as they could the flight of steps that led to the entrance of the great keep. Here, within the massive walls of William the Conqueror's strong fortress, they would be safe.

  Outside the city was in panic. A rebel army of Comishmen, thousands strong, was advancing on London. Armed with bows and arrows, bills and staves the rebels had marched unopposed through Devon and Somerset, to Bristol, then southeastward through Winchester and Salisbury. A general watch was set in the capital, and Londoners were fleeing the city as from a plague.

  At first the king, Henry VII, stayed calmly in his palace upriver at Sheen. He had sent urgent word to his captain Daubeney, who was on his way north to meet a threatened invasion on the Scots border, to bring his men south again to head off the Comishmen. But as the rebels came closer and there was no sign of Daubeney, the king left Sheen for safer quarters, and two days later his wife and second son followed his example. On the day that the queen and prince moved to the White Tower, fifteen thousand of the rebels encamped at Famham, The next day they were at Guildford, and then, dangerously near, at Blackheath.

  The little prince who spent the next uncertain days beside his mother in the Tower apartments was a chunky, round-faced child whose blond hair was bobbed to the ears and combed into long bangs across his forehead. A sketch made of him at about this time shows his alert, interested expression, his face set off by a broad hat with a large feather curled around its brim. His mother, then in her early thirties, was a tall, handsome woman with fair skin and pale gold hair. Londoners called her "the good queen Elizabeth," and Prince Henry, who was rarely alone

  21

  with her, must have grown closer to her as they waited out the danger together.

  At last the royal army arrived, and on June 17 Daubeney and his men confronted the rebels at Blackheath. Two thousand of the Cornishmen were killed that day; the rest, frustrated and beaten, surrendered and then set out for home. All that summer they straggled back to their villages, only to find that their punishment was not yet over. "All Cornishmen who eat grain garnered since the rebellion," the chronicler wrote, "or drink beer brewed with this year's crops, die as if they had taken poison."* News of the mysterious deaths spread rapidly. The king's power was indeed awesome, it was said; he was obviously "under the protection of God eternal."

  In actuality Henry VII was far from secure on his throne. Within months of the victory at Blackheath the disaffected Cornishmen had joined forces with a stouter rebel, Perkin Warbeck, who had long claimed to be Richard, duke of York, the younger of the ill-fated princes murdered in the Tower many years before. Warbeck's followers were defeated as they assaulted Exeter, and the false "duke of York" was captured, but the king's position seemed hardly more assured in 1497 than it had been when he won the throne by battle twelve years earlier.

  The king's insecurity overshadowed the lives of his children, and FYince Henry had never known a time of calm. In the summer that he was bom, his father was preoccupied by the threat of invasion from France and was gathering men and money to cross the Channel into Brittany. When the prince was still a babe in arms the king carried out his invasion—the first and only time he commanded an English army. In young Henry's early childhood his father was often away from court on progress, journeying from one town or royal manor to another throughout the areas of discontent, showing himself to his subjects and sending out spies in an effort "to purge his land of all seditious seed and double-hearted fruit."^ Perkin Warbeck began his six-year campaign to supplant Henry VII when Prince Henry was an infant, and before his misadventure ended he had drawn the French king Charles VIII, the Scots king James IV, and Henry's onetime supporter Sir William Stanley into the conspiracy against the reign
ing king.

  The plots against Henry VII were all the more unsettling in that they were accompanied by murderous intrigues at court. According to a confession written in the year before the Cornish rebellion, several men, among them the archdeacon of London, determined "to kill the king and his children, his mother, and those near his person." Hoping to avoid implicating themselves in the crime, they turned to magic. They went all the way to Rome to find a sorcerer who could provide the deadly charm they needed, an ointment which when spread around a door the king was certain to walk through would somehow compel those who loved him best to become his murderers.^ Hazards of other kinds intruded on the lives of the royal children. During the Christmastide celebrations in 1497, when the king and his family were in residence at the medieval palace of Sheen, a fire broke out. The flames spread quickly through the wooden structure.

  destroying the apartments of the king and queen and driving the entire household out into the courtyard. Shivering in the December cold, the servants, the household officials and the royal family watched their possessions go up in flames; "great substance of riches, as well in jewels and other things of riches, was perished and lost."^

  At Christmas of 1497 there were four children, two sons and two daughters. The eldest, Prince Arthur, was eleven. Princess Margaret, a lively girl who was said to be her father's favorite, was eight. Prince Henry was six and the youngest, little Princess Mary, was not yet two. A fifth child. Princess Elizabeth, had died at the age of three several years earlier.

  Of the four surviving children, Arthur took precedence. He was the eldest; he was the best-looking, with skin so fair it was almost pale and curly blond hair; most important, he was heir to the throne. Arthur Tudor incarnated the union of his father's house of Lancaster with his mother's house of York. He was "the rosebush of England," the symbolic joining of the red and white roses, the hope of the Tudor dynasty. At his birth Elizabeth of York, in gratitude for her safe delivery and for the arrival of the hoped-for male heir, founded a chapel dedicated to the virgin in Winchester Cathedral. Her pleasure in her son increased as he grew into a slender boy, admired for his looks and for the rudiments of princely geniality he showed even in childhood. Though unprepossessing in personality, Arthur filled his role well, and gave every sign of growing into a suitable king.