Henry VIII (59 page)

In February, Lady Lisle sent a large bribe to Mother Lowe in the hope of getting her daughter Katherine accepted into the Queen's household, only to be told that the King had decreed that no new maids be appointed unless one of the existing ones left to get married. Undeterred, Lady Lisle insisted that an unwilling Anne Basset approach Henry himself, armed with a gift of his favourite quince marmalade. Anne reported to her mother that “His Grace does like it wondrous well, and gave Your Ladyship hearty thanks for it,” but added that she had dared not ask for a place for her sister “for fear lest how His Grace would have taken it.” Later, when she did find courage to broach the subject, Henry told her that Sir Francis Bryan and others had asked him the same favour for their friends, and that he would “not grant me nor them yet.”
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The following month, Lord Lisle was found to have grossly mismanaged the King's affairs in Calais, and was sent to the Tower, where he died two years later. Henry had a soft spot for Anne Basset, and allowed her to remain at court, but there was no hope of her sister joining her.

Any romantic feelings that Henry may have cherished for Anne were extinguished that spring when he began pursuing Katherine Howard. By Easter, his passion for her was notorious, and the Catholic party at court, led by Norfolk and Gardiner, hastened to capitalise on their good fortune. Norfolk, who apparently knew nothing of her past, extolled his niece's “pure and honest condition,” while Gardiner “very often provided feastings and entertainments” for the King and Katherine at Winchester Palace in Southwark.
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Henry showered his new love with jewels and other gifts, and was rejuvenated by her youth, her prettiness, and her vivacity. He was “so marvellously set upon [her] as it was never known that he had the like to any woman.”
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Charles de Marillac described Katherine's countenance as “delightful,”
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but there is no certain portrait of her. Two almost identical miniatures by Holbein, thought to be of Katherine, survive today.
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They show a plump girl with auburn hair and the Howard nose, which bears out Marillac's assertion that she was “a young lady of moderate beauty but superlative grace, of small stature, of modest countenance and gentle, earnest face.”
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The miniature was first identified as Katherine in 1736, probably correctly, given the rich clothing of the sitter and the fact that she is wearing the same pendant that appears in Holbein's portrait of Jane Seymour; the wide jewelled border edging the low neckline of her gown may be the “square containing 23 diamonds and 60 rubies with an edge of pearl” that Henry VIII gave Katherine in 1540.
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A drawing at Windsor of a sitter with similar features may also represent Katherine Howard, but was not called her until 1867. It has recently been suggested that Katherine was the model for the figure of the Queen of Sheba in a stained glass window in King's College Chapel at Cambridge, which was crafted, probably by Galyon Hone, while she was queen; King Solomon bears a resemblance to Henry VIII. A Holbein portrait at Toledo, Ohio, now thought to be of Elizabeth Seymour, was erroneously identified as Katherine Howard in 1898.

In character, Katherine was frivolous, flighty, pleasure-loving, and sensual. Chapuys thought her “imperious and wilful,”
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which was perhaps the result of the King overindulging her. Although her religious views were certainly orthodox, she was not noted for her piety.

Henry was now resolved to rid himself of Anne of Cleves, and by April was “declaring before God he thought she was not his lawful wife.”
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Apprised of the King's wishes, Parliament petitioned him to look into the circumstances of his marriage since they doubted its validity.

On 17 April, Cromwell was raised to the peerage as Earl of Essex and appointed Lord Great Chamberlain of England, but while he was in London dealing with Parliament, Norfolk and Gardiner had the King's ear at Greenwich, and were busily poisoning Henry's mind against him; Norfolk in particular resented the fact that Cromwell had been given an earldom that had been held until recently by the Bourchiers, who were descended from Edward III.

That month, the King held the annual chapter of the Order of the Garter at Windsor. Several of its members had been executed for treason, mainly in the wake of the Exeter conspiracy, and it was suggested that their dishonoured names be deleted from the register. Henry, however, did not wish to deface the records, and ordered that the names should remain but that next to each were to be written the words,
“Vah, proditor!”
(Oh, traitor!).
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On May Day, the King and Queen watched the customary jousts from the new gatehouse at Whitehall. Among the challengers was Henry's new favourite, Thomas Culpeper, who had the misfortune to be unhorsed. Lady Lisle, who, like many women, was susceptible to the charms of this “beautiful youth,”
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had sent him her colours to wear, with a message that “they are the first that ever I sent to any man.”
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Culpeper was ambitious, wealthy, and of good birth. He had been brought up in the privy chamber, starting as a page and rising to the position of Gentleman, and now “ordinarily shared [the King's] bed.”
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By 1537, his influence with his master was considerable enough for Lady Lisle to send him a fine hawk in return for his patronage.
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Yet there was a ruthless, violent side to Culpeper. In 1539, he had brutally raped the wife of a park-keeper while “three or four of his most profligate attendants” held her down at his bidding; he then murdered one of the villagers who tried to arrest him. The King, not wishing to forego the young hothead's company, pardoned him.
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Culpeper was also greedy: he and his brother, another Thomas who served in Cromwell's household, were forever seeking to acquire grants of monastic land, court offices, and pensions.
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The tournament lasted five days, and when it ended, Henry and Anne attended a banquet at Durham House, to which the public were admitted so that they could watch the victors of the jousts receiving cash prizes and grants of houses from the King. This was Anne of Cleves's last public appearance as Queen.

Cromwell, the man who had helped to make her Queen, who believed he was at the pinnacle of his career, was arrested without warning on 10 June. As he entered the council chamber at Westminster, the Captain of the Guard apprehended him, and Norfolk and Southampton triumphantly stripped him of his Garter insignia and seal. Shouting that he was no traitor, Cromwell was then hustled off to the Tower. On 29 June, Parliament passed an Act of Attainder condemning him to death as a traitor and heretic: he was said to have denied the Real Presence in the mass, a charge that was calculated to alienate the King. He was also accused of presuming too far above his “very base and low degree.” Sir Richard Rich was one of those who testified against him, and Norfolk was undoubtedly instrumental in his fall.

The King was so appalled by the evidence laid before him that he did not think to question it, and paid no heed to Cranmer, who bravely ventured to ask, “Who shall Your Grace trust hereafter if you may not trust him?”
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Yet Henry did not put Cromwell to death immediately because, even now, he could prove useful by providing information that would help secure an annulment of the Cleves marriage. Cromwell readily complied, but it did not save him. Henry ignored his last letter, which ended with the desperate plea, “Most gracious Prince, I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy!”

Cromwell was beheaded on 28 July 1540 on Tower Hill, protesting that he died a faithful Catholic. The people of England, who did not understand his worth, rejoiced in his death, and the King's popularity soared. Henry also acquired a convenient scapegoat for the failure of his marriage to Anne of Cleves.

The Catholic faction at court were jubilant. “Now is the false churl dead, so ambitious of others' blood,” sneered Surrey. “Now he is stricken with his own staff.” He was referring to the process of attainder, whereby so many of Cromwell's victims had come to grief. Southampton, who had once been Cromwell's friend but had distanced himself from him after the Cleves marriage, now replaced him as Lord Privy Seal, with Lord Russell becoming Lord High Admiral in his place. Cromwell's fall also represented a victory for religious orthodoxy, and drove many radical reformers underground. Even Holbein, whose career had been advanced by Cromwell, fell out of favour and received no royal commissions for two years.

Yet the conservatives' victory was incomplete: many of those who had been Cromwell's men remained in post, and Cranmer, who held similar religious views to the late Lord Privy Seal, retained the King's confidence and could not be unseated. Although the influence of Norfolk and Gardiner increased after Cromwell's fall, neither was ever to achieve the political dominance he had enjoyed. Never again would the King rely on any one minister, as he had on Wolsey and Cromwell. From now on, he would rule alone, maintaining a balance of power between the rival factions at court.

On 24 June, Henry sent Anne of Cleves to Richmond Palace, ostensibly “for her health, open air and pleasure.”
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The next day, a deputation of councillors came to inform her that her marriage had been found to be invalid. She made no protest, and in return was rewarded with a generous financial settlement of £500 (£150,000) a year, Richmond Palace, Hever Castle, and Buckingham's former manor of Bletchingly, and the right to call herself the King's sister, with precedence over all the ladies in England after the Queen and the King's daughters. She was also allowed to keep all her jewels, plate, clothes, and hangings, and allocated a suitable household composed mainly of her German servants. Her marriage was annulled by convocation on 9 July, on the grounds of the King's lack of consent to it and Anne's alleged precontract with the son of the Duke of Lorraine.

Anne told her brother, “God willing, I purpose to lead my life in this realm.” Freed from the ties that had bound him to her, Henry discovered that he quite liked her, and invited her to court on several occasions. He also visited her at Richmond. Anne made the most of her independence, looking more “joyous” than ever and putting on a new gown every day, “each more wonderful than the last.”
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In the years to come, she would establish a considerable reputation as a good hostess, and entertained many courtiers at Richmond. Rarely had a royal divorce had such a happy outcome.

55

“I Have Been Young, and Now Am Old”

On the day Cromwell died, 28 July 1540, the King secretly married Katherine Howard at Oatlands Palace, with Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, officiating. The wedding night was spent in an ornate “pearl bed,” which Henry had specially commissioned from a French craftsman,
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and there were no more consultations with the royal doctors about impotence. The marriage was made public on 8 August, when Katherine was “showed openly” and prayed for as Queen in the chapel royal at Hampton Court.
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Henry was besotted with his young bride, and “so amorous of her that he knows not how to make sufficient demonstrations of his affection, and caresses her more than he did the others.”
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He showered her with gifts, including lands that had once belonged to Cromwell, took delight in showing her off, and indulged her every whim: “the King had no wife who made him spend so much money in dresses and jewels as she did, and every day [she had] some fresh caprice.”
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He seemed like a man reborn: his health improved, and so did his temper.

Whether Katherine was as enamoured of Henry is another matter, for at forty-nine, his increasing infirmity, bouts of enforced inactivity, and addiction to rich food had made him old before his time and grossly overweight.
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Suits of field and, optimistically, tilt armour made for him at Greenwich in 1540
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have a chest measurement of fifty-seven inches and a waist measurement of fifty-four inches—seventeen inches greater than it had been in 1536. Despite his obesity and his sore legs, he rode or hunted whenever possible, and still dressed in gorgeous clothes, although his accounts show regular payments to his tailors for letting out doublets and jackets.
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It now became fashionable for gentlemen of the court to affect bulky styles of dress in emulation of their sovereign, wearing puffed and padded short gowns that were almost as wide as they were long.

The French ambassador, Marillac, accurately summed up the King's character in middle life, or in what Henry himself was soon to refer to as old age: “This Prince seems tainted with three vices: the first is that he is so covetous that all the riches of the world would not satisfy him. Thence proceeds the second, distrust and fear. This King, knowing how many changes he has made, and what tragedies and scandals he has created, would fain keep in favour with everybody, but does not trust a single man, expecting to see them all offended, and he will not cease to dip his hand in blood as long as he doubts his people. The third vice [is] lightness and inconstancy.”
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To these three Marillac might also have added deviousness and perversity, for his predecessor Castillon had written of Henry: “He is a wonderful man and has wonderful people about him, but he is an old fox.”
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Secrecy and surprise were his watchwords; he kept his own counsel, spun his own webs of intrigue, set traps, then pounced on the unsuspecting. He ruled on the precept that fear engenders obedience.

Henry's seventeenth-century biographer, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who had access to several lost sources, described the King as “opinionate and wilful” and highly suggestible, “inasmuch as the impressions given him by any court whisperer were hardly or never effaced. This wilfulness had a most dangerous quality annexed to it, especially towards his later end, being an intense jealousy of all persons and affairs, which predisposed him to think the worst.” Advancing paranoia and attacks of excruciating pain permanently soured Henry's temper, and he was given to such unpredictable and terrifying explosions of rage that those about him concluded they had to deal with “the most dangerous and cruel man in the world.”
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On days when he was in an irritable mood, his courtiers had to keep their wits about them, for “when he came to his chamber he would look [around] angrily, and after fall to fighting.”
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Few dared contradict him, since his egotism was such that he was unable to conceive that he might be in the wrong.

No one at court ever felt truly safe, for the King had amply demonstrated that he “never made a man but he destroyeth him again, either with displeasure or with the sword.”
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Even his outward bonhomie could be sinister, for he often showed a smiling face to those whom he meant to destroy. Abroad, he was known as “the English Nero,”
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and it was said that “in England, death has snatched everyone of worth away, or fear has shrunk them up.”
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Despite Henry's enduring popularity among his own subjects, a growing number were becoming disaffected: a man arrested in Kent for slandering him was not exaggerating when he said, “If the King knew every man's thought, it would make his heart quake.”
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There were still flashes of the golden youth Henry had once been. He could yet exert his famous charm, or show kindness and generosity. If he felt he had been overharsh with his ministers, he would summon them into his privy closet and reassure them that it was the matter under discussion, and not they themselves, that had aroused his anger.
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Even if he did not live up to them, his ideals of kingship are evident in the passages he marked in his copy of
The Book of Solomon
: “Let mercy and faithfulness never go from thee,” and “Cast down the people whose delight is to have battle.” He was not devoid of emotion, and when touched, would weep openly. His sentimentality became more overt with the advancing years.

Although Henry had become more diligent at attending to business than he had been in his earlier years, and was now an exceptionally hardworking monarch, he still hated making decisions, insisting on taking a long time “to maturely advise and peruse instructions.” “As ye know,” Sadler had written to Cromwell, “His Grace is always loath to sign.”
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Incompetence irritated the King: Norfolk was reprimanded for sending useless letters full of “extreme and desperate mischiefs and remiss in honest remedy,”
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and Sir William Petre for failing to go into sufficient detail in his dispatches from France,
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while Cranmer was praised for his directness and brevity. The King outlaid large sums of money on efficient postal messenger services: dispatches sent from Calais reached court and were dealt with by the end of the following day.
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An astonished Marillac reported that Henry “speaks as if he had men all over the world who did nothing but write to him.”
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Certainly he was better informed than most European monarchs.

His role as Supreme Head of the Church had made the King more sanctimonious and high-minded than ever and more certain of his special relationship with God. Marillac observed that he had become “not only a King to be obeyed on Earth, but a veritable idol to be worshipped.”
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Demonstrating how self-deluded he could be, Henry constantly compared his own honesty, openness, simplicity, and chivalry with the perfidy and deceit of others. For him, as for many middle-aged people, there was no middle ground, only moral absolutes.

The King still remained devout in his religious observances. Once, when his leg was paining him, it was put to him that he need not kneel to “adore the body of Our Saviour,” but could receive the Sacrament sitting in a chair. He refused, saying, “If I lay not only flat on the ground, yea, and put myself under the ground, yet in so doing I should not think that I have reverence sufficient unto His blessed sacrament.”
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He insisted on creeping painfully on his knees to the cross every Good Friday until 1546.

Yet he was reluctant to abandon the title Fidei Defensor, even though it had been conferred upon him by the Pope, and in 1543 Parliament passed the Act of the King's Style, making the title an hereditary one, “anexed for ever to be the imperial crown of this His Highness's realm of England.”
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The books purchased by Henry VIII in the 1540s were chiefly Bibles, devotional works, and scholastic texts.
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A beautiful psalter was commissioned by him around 1540–1542 from the French illuminator Jean Mallard, who had once worked for Francis I. It contains seven exquisite miniature scenes, two of which portray the King in his favourite role as King David: in one he is slaying Goliath, and in others he appears as a penitent or reading in his bedroom. More of Henry's annotations appear in the margins: against verse 25 of the Thirty-seventh Psalm— “I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken”—he wrote in Latin, “Dolus dictum” (A painful saying).
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If the young Queen felt any distaste for her ageing husband, she hid it well and played the role of dutiful, loving wife to perfection. Each evening at six, Sir Thomas Heneage, Groom of the Stool, brought her news of the King,
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to her evident satisfaction.

Her days were one long round of pleasure: she did “nothing but dance and rejoice.”
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She was too young and inexperienced to concern herself with state or administrative matters. The only book dedicated to her as Queen was Richard Jonas's tract on midwifery, The Birth of Mankind.
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Although her education had been neglected, she could read and write, and the dubious Manox had taught her to play the virginals.

The King made no plans for Katherine's coronation. She made a state entry into London by river, arriving in her new barge, which was manned by twenty-six bargemen and strewn with rushes scented with rosemary. The Lord Mayor and Corporation rode out in their own craft to welcome her, and a salute of guns echoed from the Tower.

Henry settled Baynard's Castle on Katherine as her jointure. Many of those who had served Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves were appointed to her household, along with a horde of her Howard relatives. Lady Margaret Douglas was senior Lady of the Privy Chamber, and under her were the Dowager Duchesses of Richmond and Norfolk; Katherine's aunt and namesake, the Countess of Bridgewater; her widowed stepmother, Lady Margaret Howard; her sisters, Margaret, Lady Arundel, and Isabella, who was married to the Queen's Vice Chamberlain, Sir Edward Baynton; Lady Rochford, Jane Seymour's sister; Elizabeth, Lady Cromwell; Lady Rutland, wife of the Queen's Chamberlain; Lady Edgecombe; and William Parr's sister Katherine, wife of John Neville, Lord Latimer. Among the maids of honour were his other sister, Anne Parr; Anne Basset; and Surrey's favourite, Lady Elizabeth FitzGerald. Joan Bulmer, Margaret Morton, Katherine Tilney, and Agnes Restwold, who had been with Katherine in her grandmother's household and were all privy to the secrets of her past, were found posts as chamberers. There is some evidence that Bulmer, at least, used blackmail to obtain her post. Katherine's household cost Henry £4600 (over £2.5 million) a year to maintain.

Katherine dressed “after the French fashion” and insisted that all the other ladies at court do so, too.
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Every day she appeared in a new gown. The jewels Henry lavished on her were magnificent; they included a gold brooch with scenes from the life of Noah picked out in diamonds and rubies, a rich collar with her initial set in diamonds, heavy gold chains, ropes of pearls, gem-studded crosses, a necklace of table diamonds, black-enamelled gold beads, emeralds set in gold lozenges, pomanders, clocks, and a jewellery casket. The King also gave her a black velvet muff lined with sables and ornamented with rubies, hundreds of pearls, and tiny gold chains; it hung round her neck from a gold and pearl chain.
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Katherine's personal badge was a crowned rose. She adopted as her device the motto
“Non autre volonté que le sienne”
(No other will than his), and had it embroidered in gold around her sleeves.
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The King ordered that her badge and other emblems be set up in place of those of Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves in the royal palaces.

The Howards, led by Norfolk, now dominated the court. Katherine's brother Charles was appointed to the Privy Chamber, where her uncle, Lord William Howard, was already influential as one of the King's Gentlemen. Norfolk's brother-in-law, Robert Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex, was given Cromwell's former office of Lord Great Chamberlain and thus gained control of the Chamber. Surrey, despite his youth, became a Knight of the Garter.

The ascendancy of the conservatives provoked great resentment and jealousy on the part of their enemies, who were mostly of the reformist persuasion, and gave rise to the most vicious factional divisions of the reign. Two distinct parties emerged at this time: the conservatives, led by the reactionary Gardiner and Norfolk, who were supported when in the ascendant by the self-seeking Wriothesley, and wished to see a return to more traditional forms of religion; and the reformists, headed by the autocratic Hertford and backed by Cranmer, William Parr, and Hertford's staunch friend and political ally, the honest and able Sir William Paget (who became the first ever Clerk to the Privy Council in 1540). This party was keen to see even more change. Surrey sided with his father and, like him, hoped to bring about the overthrow of upstarts like the Seymours, but he was a liability, not only because of his wild, unpredictable streak, but also because his religious views were probably more radical than Hertford's. In the reformist party, there were frequent squabbles on account of the unpopular Hertford's high-handedness and criticism of his colleagues.
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Suffolk, meanwhile, managed to remain on good terms with both Norfolk and Hertford.

The dominance of first Wolsey and then Cromwell had prevented the emergence of such factions in the past, but now that there was no chief minister, there was nothing to stop them from attempting to gain ascendancy in Council, achieve control of the Privy Chamber, and manipulate an oversuggestible King. The power struggle between these factions, which was to dominate the 1540s, was essentially political, but was fought over religious differences.