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Authors: Robert Hutchinson
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Henry had commuted the sentence to simple beheading, as an act of mercy. It still took three blows to sever his head. Six Augustinian friars picked up Buckingham’s bloodstained body and head, placed them in a crudely made wooden coffin and carried it off to the Church of the Austin Friars for burial.
The king spent that day at Greenwich. As he sat in a chair in his gallery in the palace, recuperating from a bout of malaria, Wolsey urged him to send ‘letters of consolation and credence’ to Buckingham’s widow and son. Henry refused to answer and a few days later Wolsey repeated his request, adding: ‘If you think them convenient to pass, I remit that to you.’ We do not know whether they were ever sent and Henry left Greenwich shortly afterwards on a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Master John Shorn at North Marston, Buckinghamshire, to give thanks for his recovery.
130
130
Wolsey provided details of the case to English ambassadors abroad:
The king has for some time known the duke to be ill-disposed and recently he has been detected in treason against the king’s person and succession, especially against the princess with whose alliance in France he was much displeased. These things being proved and at last confessed by himself, he has been executed according to his demerits.
131
131
As befits all traitors, Buckingham was attainted and his goods and lands confiscated by the crown under an Act of Parliament dated 31 July 1523.
132
Some properties, however, were returned to the duke’s son, Henry Stafford, Earl of Wiltshire, shortly afterwards but he was not restored to his full titles until 1547. The prophetic monk was exiled from
his religious house at Hinton and was to be ‘sent to some other place of their religion to be punished for his offences’.
133
He is believed to have died in the Tower, broken-hearted at the fate of his patron.
132
Some properties, however, were returned to the duke’s son, Henry Stafford, Earl of Wiltshire, shortly afterwards but he was not restored to his full titles until 1547. The prophetic monk was exiled from
his religious house at Hinton and was to be ‘sent to some other place of their religion to be punished for his offences’.
133
He is believed to have died in the Tower, broken-hearted at the fate of his patron.
There remained one last immediate living threat to the Tudor crown.
Richard de la Pole, youngest brother of the Earl of Lincoln, executed in 1487 by Henry VIII, and of the Earl of Suffolk, beheaded by Henry VIII in 1513, had been traitorously serving the interests of France in his attempts to claim the English throne for the Yorkists.
In 1514, he had been given command of 12,000 German mercenaries to defend Brittany but this was a cover for an invasion attempt that never left St Malo. Another abortive invasion was planned in 1523 and two years later, Pole found himself fighting for Francis I of France outside the walls of the city of Pavia in central Lombardy. The Imperial forces of Charles V inflicted a crushing defeat on the French and Pole was killed by German
Landsknechte
as his troops were slaughtered around him.
134
Landsknechte
as his troops were slaughtered around him.
134
In London Henry was told of the massacre and the capture of the French king. He enquired of the messenger: ‘And Richard de la Pole?’ The messenger replied: ‘The White Rose is dead in battle … I saw him dead with all the others.’
The king cried out in delight: ‘God have mercy upon his soul! All the enemies of England are gone.’
135
And he ordered more wine for the courier.
135
And he ordered more wine for the courier.
THE KING’S ‘SCRUPULOUS CONSCIENCE’
‘If it be determined … that our marriage was against God’s law and clearly void then I shall not only sorrow the departing from so good a lady and loving companion but much more … bewail my unfortunate chance that I have so long lived in adultery to God’s great displeasure and have no true heir of my body to inherit this realm.’
Henry VIII’s speech to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, Bridewell, 8 November 1528.
1
1
Between January 1510 and July 1518, Katherine of Aragon became pregnant six times. We have seen how she initially miscarried of a girl child and then on New Year’s Day 1511 delivered a boy, christened Henry, who lived just fifty-three days. There are unsubstantiated reports of a live birth in September 1513 shortly after the victory at Flodden but if these are true, the male child must have died within hours.
2
Another boy was stillborn in November/December 1514 when Katherine was distraught at Henry’s angry reproaches over her father’s ‘ill faith’ and treachery.
3
2
Another boy was stillborn in November/December 1514 when Katherine was distraught at Henry’s angry reproaches over her father’s ‘ill faith’ and treachery.
3
But at four in the morning of Monday 18 February 1516 at Greenwich, a daughter was delivered who survived the perils of primitive Tudor post-natal care. Six days later, the king declared confidently to the Venetian ambassador Sebastian Giustinian: ‘We are both young. If it was a daughter this time, by the grace of God, the sons will follow.’
4
4
The baby was named Mary – after Henry’s younger sister – on
Wednesday 20 February in a christening in a temporary wooden structure, hung with Arras tapestries, erected outside the door of the Franciscan Observant Friars’ church adjoining Greenwich Palace. Wolsey was chosen godfather as Henry did not want to single out one of the European heads of state for the role and thus offend the others.
5
Wednesday 20 February in a christening in a temporary wooden structure, hung with Arras tapestries, erected outside the door of the Franciscan Observant Friars’ church adjoining Greenwich Palace. Wolsey was chosen godfather as Henry did not want to single out one of the European heads of state for the role and thus offend the others.
5
A physical manifestation of Henry’s conviction that he would eventually have a son was included in the heraldic arms set in the façade of the gatehouse of a grand new mansion the king was building at Beaulieu, near Boreham, in Essex.
6
The emblems above the Tudor dragon and greyhound are Henry’s red rose and Katherine’s pomegranate, shown with its seeds bursting out, itself a representation of her fecundity. But one pomegranate has a Tudor rose emerging from it – symbolising the hoped-for birth of a male heir.
7
6
The emblems above the Tudor dragon and greyhound are Henry’s red rose and Katherine’s pomegranate, shown with its seeds bursting out, itself a representation of her fecundity. But one pomegranate has a Tudor rose emerging from it – symbolising the hoped-for birth of a male heir.
7
Fourteen months later, the queen was pregnant yet again. On 1 July 1518, the king wrote to Wolsey from Woodstock in Oxfordshire:
I trust the queen my wife be with child. I am … loath to repair London-wards because about this time is partly of her dangerous times and because of that I would [move] her as little as I may now.
My lord, I write this to [you] not as an assured thing but as a thing wherein I have great hope and likelihoods.
8
8
When the king returned to the hunting lodge four days later, his Latin secretary Pace reported that ‘the queen welcomed him with a big belly’.
9
In October Giustinian told the Doge: ‘The queen is near her delivery which is anxiously looked for.’
10
But on 10 November, Katherine was delivered of a dead daughter, one month off her full term, ‘to the vexation of as many who know it’, according to Giustinian, as ‘the entire nation looked for a prince’.
11
9
In October Giustinian told the Doge: ‘The queen is near her delivery which is anxiously looked for.’
10
But on 10 November, Katherine was delivered of a dead daughter, one month off her full term, ‘to the vexation of as many who know it’, according to Giustinian, as ‘the entire nation looked for a prince’.
11
Henry’s hopes of a crop of robust Tudor sons with Katherine were never fulfilled. If they had been, England’s subsequent political and religious history would have developed along very different paths.
There has been speculation that the queen’s tragic record of one miscarriage and four stillbirths was due to Henry having had a balanced translocation of his chromosomes. His sperm cells might have had extra – or missing – genetic material, which can sometimes cause miscarriages.
After almost five centuries nothing can be asserted with any certainty, and even with modern medical investigation it is frequently difficult to identify precisely why recurrent miscarriages or spontaneous abortions occur. Potential causes are legion but the queen’s natal problems could have been caused simply by viral infection or nutritional imbalances. Given the lack of hygiene and the unhealthy diets of the period, she may have suffered from Listeriosis, which can trigger spontaneous abortion or stillbirth, a disease caused by the bacterium
Listeria monocytogenes
, found in stream water and some food. This also manifests itself as meningitis or pneumonia in newborns, which possibly killed the two boys that Katherine delivered in 1511 and 1513.
12
Her unhappy travails are hardly startling given the prevalent infant mortality rate, which was almost two hundred in 1,000 during the Tudor era.
13
After almost five centuries nothing can be asserted with any certainty, and even with modern medical investigation it is frequently difficult to identify precisely why recurrent miscarriages or spontaneous abortions occur. Potential causes are legion but the queen’s natal problems could have been caused simply by viral infection or nutritional imbalances. Given the lack of hygiene and the unhealthy diets of the period, she may have suffered from Listeriosis, which can trigger spontaneous abortion or stillbirth, a disease caused by the bacterium
Listeria monocytogenes
, found in stream water and some food. This also manifests itself as meningitis or pneumonia in newborns, which possibly killed the two boys that Katherine delivered in 1511 and 1513.
12
Her unhappy travails are hardly startling given the prevalent infant mortality rate, which was almost two hundred in 1,000 during the Tudor era.
13
Regular pregnancies had taken a huge physical toll on the queen. In October 1519 an ungallant Giustinian described Katherine (whom he seldom saw) as ‘not handsome, though she had a very beautiful complexion. She is religious and as virtuous as words can express.’
14
Other Venetian envoys were still less gracious – reporting that Henry ‘has an old deformed wife while he himself is young and handsome’.
15
14
Other Venetian envoys were still less gracious – reporting that Henry ‘has an old deformed wife while he himself is young and handsome’.
15
The queen was now aged thirty-three and in Tudor times this was an advanced age for childbirth. She was growing stout (Plate 15) and as she approached the menopause, any chance of safeguarding Henry’s uncertain dynasty looked increasingly slender. In his desperation, the king promised God that he would crusade against the infidel Turks if he could have a male heir born in wedlock.
What redoubled the king’s frustration and disappointment was his success in siring a bastard son with Elizabeth (or Bessie) Blount, the eighteen-year-old blonde daughter of Sir John Blount, a member of his Spears bodyguard. She came to court as one of Katherine’s maids of honour
16
(a misnomer if ever there was one) probably through the influence of her cousin and Henry’s childhood mentor William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, appointed Chamberlain to the queen in 1512, or the family’s earlier links with Prince Arthur’s court at Ludlow. Elizabeth’s vivacity and her talents for dancing and singing caught Henry’s eye, as well as her singular beauty. She was also well educated and is known to
have possessed a copy of the poet John Gower’s
Confessio Amantis
(‘The Lover’s Confession’) written in
c
.1386 – 93 at the request of Richard II.
17
Suffolk, away in France on secret diplomatic duties in October 1514, knowingly asked Henry to pass on his best wishes to ‘Mistress Blount’,
18
who probably became the king’s mistress about this time.
19
One can envisage the leer on Suffolk’s face as he penned the words.
16
(a misnomer if ever there was one) probably through the influence of her cousin and Henry’s childhood mentor William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, appointed Chamberlain to the queen in 1512, or the family’s earlier links with Prince Arthur’s court at Ludlow. Elizabeth’s vivacity and her talents for dancing and singing caught Henry’s eye, as well as her singular beauty. She was also well educated and is known to
have possessed a copy of the poet John Gower’s
Confessio Amantis
(‘The Lover’s Confession’) written in
c
.1386 – 93 at the request of Richard II.
17
Suffolk, away in France on secret diplomatic duties in October 1514, knowingly asked Henry to pass on his best wishes to ‘Mistress Blount’,
18
who probably became the king’s mistress about this time.
19
One can envisage the leer on Suffolk’s face as he penned the words.
In Rome, there was scurrilous talk of the king being merely ‘a youngling, [who] cares for nothing but girls and hunting and wastes his father’s patrimony’.
20
Later, Thomas Howard, Third Duke of Norfolk, praised the queen’s ‘great modesty and patience’ over the king ‘being continually inclined to
amours
’.
21
Henry was often promiscuous during the last stages of Katherine’s pregnancies (when vigorous, energetic intercourse could endanger the foetus) and her last in 1518 was no exception. Elizabeth Blount’s condition dictated that her last appearance at court came on 3 October 1518. Her child was born on 15 June, far away from prying, pruient eyes, at the Augustinian priory of St Lawrence at Blackmore, near Ingatestone, Essex, in a residence alongside the churchyard named ‘Jericho’ – an epithet for a ‘house of pleasure’ reputedly utilised by the king.
22
The child, named Henry Fitzroy, was taken into regal care and later provided with his own household. Bessie was safely married off to Gilbert Talboys in 1522 and provided with a generous dowry of lands and property in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire by a Parliamentary Act approved compliantly by both houses.
23
She continued to receive tokens of royal favour between June 1522 and January 1539 and in 1531 a New Year’s gift from Henry consisted of a silver-gilt cup weighing thirty-five ounces (992 g).
20
Later, Thomas Howard, Third Duke of Norfolk, praised the queen’s ‘great modesty and patience’ over the king ‘being continually inclined to
amours
’.
21
Henry was often promiscuous during the last stages of Katherine’s pregnancies (when vigorous, energetic intercourse could endanger the foetus) and her last in 1518 was no exception. Elizabeth Blount’s condition dictated that her last appearance at court came on 3 October 1518. Her child was born on 15 June, far away from prying, pruient eyes, at the Augustinian priory of St Lawrence at Blackmore, near Ingatestone, Essex, in a residence alongside the churchyard named ‘Jericho’ – an epithet for a ‘house of pleasure’ reputedly utilised by the king.
22
The child, named Henry Fitzroy, was taken into regal care and later provided with his own household. Bessie was safely married off to Gilbert Talboys in 1522 and provided with a generous dowry of lands and property in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire by a Parliamentary Act approved compliantly by both houses.
23
She continued to receive tokens of royal favour between June 1522 and January 1539 and in 1531 a New Year’s gift from Henry consisted of a silver-gilt cup weighing thirty-five ounces (992 g).
Years later, a critic of Wolsey’s ministry commented sarcastically:
We have begun to encourage the young gentlewomen of the realm to be our concubines by the well marrying of Bessie Blount whom we would yet by sleight have married much better than she is and for that purpose changed her name.
24
24
But Henry was not the great libertine with an insatiable debauched appetite that some fiction writers would have us believe. Most of his adventures were mere flirtatious dalliances rather than serious affairs;
more romantic courtly love than heavy-breathing lust.
more romantic courtly love than heavy-breathing lust.
In the European royal lechery stakes, he runs out a poor finisher behind his brother monarchs. Francis I of France maintained a string of constantly changing ‘sweethearts’ as well as two official mistresses at his court. The dark-haired Franoise de Foix, Comtesse de Chateaubriand, held the king’s affections from 1519 but was supplanted seven years later by the blonde Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly, Duchess d’Estampes, who wielded formidable political power in Renaissance France. Francis had also sampled the delights of Mary Boleyn soon after she arrived in Paris in the bridal entourage of Mary Tudor in 1514, brutally labelling her in March 1536 as
per una grandissima ribalda et infame sopre tutte
, ‘a singular great whore and more notorious than all the others’ – and this in a court infamous across Europe for its wantonness and immorality.
25
The Emperor Charles V also maintained a stable of mistresses, including Johanna Maria van der Gheynst, who bore him a daughter, and Barbara Blomberg, who had his son. Thus
La chéri du Roi
, ‘the darling of the king’, had a recognised and not entirely dishonourable position in sixteenth-century royal courts.
per una grandissima ribalda et infame sopre tutte
, ‘a singular great whore and more notorious than all the others’ – and this in a court infamous across Europe for its wantonness and immorality.
25
The Emperor Charles V also maintained a stable of mistresses, including Johanna Maria van der Gheynst, who bore him a daughter, and Barbara Blomberg, who had his son. Thus
La chéri du Roi
, ‘the darling of the king’, had a recognised and not entirely dishonourable position in sixteenth-century royal courts.
Henry now at least knew he was physically capable of producing a male heir and he must often have pondered over what seemed like a curse on his marriage with Katherine.
His elder sister Margaret had married that ‘young witless fool’ Archibald Douglas, Sixth Earl of Angus, after her first husband James IV of Scotland was killed at Flodden. In 1519 she decided to desert Angus after being parted from him for six months
26
and Henry was priggishly aghast at her dissolute behaviour. He sent Margaret a stern letter remonstrating about the separation and her ‘suspicious living’ and sent an Observant Friar, Henry Chadworth, to correct and amend her morals.
27
In 1526 when she began divorce proceedings in a Papal Court so she could marry the dashing young courtier Henry Stewart, the king lectured her on her ‘inevitable damnation’. He warned Margaret that her very soul was endangered unless ‘as in conscience you are bound under peril of God’s everlasting indignation’ she relinquished ‘the adulterous company with him that is not nor may not be of right your husband’.
28
26
and Henry was priggishly aghast at her dissolute behaviour. He sent Margaret a stern letter remonstrating about the separation and her ‘suspicious living’ and sent an Observant Friar, Henry Chadworth, to correct and amend her morals.
27
In 1526 when she began divorce proceedings in a Papal Court so she could marry the dashing young courtier Henry Stewart, the king lectured her on her ‘inevitable damnation’. He warned Margaret that her very soul was endangered unless ‘as in conscience you are bound under peril of God’s everlasting indignation’ she relinquished ‘the adulterous company with him that is not nor may not be of right your husband’.
28
Henry was therefore a king with a complex, almost schizophrenic
character, obsessed about the future of his dynasty. Aside from his tantrums and his later descent into ruthless, despotic cruelty, the most singular aberration in his personality was breathtaking hypocrisy. He was happy to behave promiscuously when Katherine was in the advanced stages of pregnancy, but conversely, he was prudishly censorious of any immorality amongst those close to him, like his friend William Compton, cited in an ecclesiastical court in 1527 for living in open adultery with a married woman – no less than Henry’s former paramour, Anne Hastings.
29
In 1536 he clapped his twenty-one-year-old niece Lady Margaret Douglas
30
in the Tower after she secretly married Lord Thomas Howard, youngest half-brother to the Third Duke of Norfolk. Her would-be groom followed her into the fortress where he died the following year. Lady Margaret was later pardoned – ‘considering that copulation had not taken place’, but was dispatched to the spartan discipline of the Bridgettine nunnery at Syon Abbey in Isleworth, Middlesex, to improve her spiritual health.
31
character, obsessed about the future of his dynasty. Aside from his tantrums and his later descent into ruthless, despotic cruelty, the most singular aberration in his personality was breathtaking hypocrisy. He was happy to behave promiscuously when Katherine was in the advanced stages of pregnancy, but conversely, he was prudishly censorious of any immorality amongst those close to him, like his friend William Compton, cited in an ecclesiastical court in 1527 for living in open adultery with a married woman – no less than Henry’s former paramour, Anne Hastings.
29
In 1536 he clapped his twenty-one-year-old niece Lady Margaret Douglas
30
in the Tower after she secretly married Lord Thomas Howard, youngest half-brother to the Third Duke of Norfolk. Her would-be groom followed her into the fortress where he died the following year. Lady Margaret was later pardoned – ‘considering that copulation had not taken place’, but was dispatched to the spartan discipline of the Bridgettine nunnery at Syon Abbey in Isleworth, Middlesex, to improve her spiritual health.
31
Mary Boleyn had returned to England from France in April 1515 and secured a place in Katherine of Aragon’s household, probably through the influence of her diplomat father Sir Thomas Boleyn. (Katherine was evidently a poor judge of morality in her ladies.) She married William Carey, an Esquire of the Body in Henry’s Privy Chamber,
32
on Saturday 4 February 1520, when she was in her early twenties. Henry was the guest of honour and gave the couple a less than generous wedding present of 6s 8d. A series of grants to Carey from early in 1522 to 1526 (some of the properties formerly owned by Buckingham) suggests that Henry had taken his wife to his bed and her cuckolded husband was being amply rewarded for both his silence and his discretion. One of the last royal gifts was Carey’s appointment as Keeper of the manor, garden and tower of Greenwich Palace.
33
One account reveals that Henry ‘in his barge [went] from Westminster to Greenwich to visit a fair lady whom the king loved who was lodged in the tower in the park’ – probably Mary Boleyn.
34
Not that the king was always so discreet: a ship was brazenly named after his mistress in September 1523.
32
on Saturday 4 February 1520, when she was in her early twenties. Henry was the guest of honour and gave the couple a less than generous wedding present of 6s 8d. A series of grants to Carey from early in 1522 to 1526 (some of the properties formerly owned by Buckingham) suggests that Henry had taken his wife to his bed and her cuckolded husband was being amply rewarded for both his silence and his discretion. One of the last royal gifts was Carey’s appointment as Keeper of the manor, garden and tower of Greenwich Palace.
33
One account reveals that Henry ‘in his barge [went] from Westminster to Greenwich to visit a fair lady whom the king loved who was lodged in the tower in the park’ – probably Mary Boleyn.
34
Not that the king was always so discreet: a ship was brazenly named after his mistress in September 1523.
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