A Brief History of the Tudor Age (6 page)

The traveller who turned left at Charing Cross, following the bend in the river, soon came to the large mansion on the waterfront which Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor and
Archbishop of York, had finished building by 1525. This
splendid residence of the Cardinal of York was known as York Place. After Wolsey’s fall from power in 1529, he was
persuaded to give it to the King in a futile attempt to regain the royal favour. It then became known as Whitehall, and was the chief residence in Westminster of Henry VIII and his three children,
Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth I. Like all the large houses on the river in London and Westminster, it had its private stairs leading down to the water, and a landing place where the residents in
the palace could leave and arrive by barge.

About half a mile south of Whitehall was Westminster Hall and Westminster Abbey. Westminster Hall was the chief public building in the realm, where all the most important official meetings were
held. It was here that the King addressed Parliament, and that the House of Lords sat, though the House of Commons met in the adjacent building, St Stephen’s Chapel. The King’s common
law court, the Court of King’s Bench, sat in Westminster Hall; the great state trials of traitors were held here; and it was used for the coronation banquet after the new King had been
crowned in the Abbey.

At the beginning of the Tudor Age, Westminster Abbey was one of the most important of the 513 monasteries in England. With its twenty-five monks it was only the seventeenth in size, but it was
the richest of all; its annual income was £2,409, whereas the priory of Christchurch in Canterbury, which was the largest monastery in the country with seventy monks, had an annual income of
£2,374. Westminster Abbey was on the very edge of the built-up area of Westminster and London. The open country began with Tothill Fields, at the Abbey gates, where Tothill Street and St
James’s Underground Station stand today. The fields and woodlands continued to the north of Tothill Fields, surrounding the new royal palace of St James’s which Henry VIII built at the
end of his reign, and linking up with Hyde Park. To the south and west of Tothill Fields, the open country continued up river to the village of Chelsea, two miles away.

By the beginning of the sixteenth century there was a substantial built-up area on the south bank of the river across
London Bridge in the borough of Southwark. By 1600 there
were continuous buildings and little alleyways on both sides of the main street, Long Southwark, which ran south from London Bridge for a mile to the New Town (or Newington), where the open country
began. There were continuous buildings for a mile along the south bank to the west of London Bridge, which reached nearly to the village of Lambeth, where the Archbishop of Canterbury’s
palace was situated; while the buildings extended the other way along the south bank to the east of London Bridge, along St Olaf’s Street, for half a mile to the village of Rotherhithe.

The river was the boundary between the counties of Middlesex and Surrey and the dioceses of London and Winchester; but the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor and corporation of London had been
extended to apply to Southwark. There were important houses and buildings in Southwark. The Bishop of Winchester had his town residence there, on the fringe of his diocese. In the reign of Henry
VIII, the King’s great favourite and brother-in-law, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, built a mansion in Southwark. The Marshalsea prison was on the east side of Long Southwark, about half a
mile from London Bridge. It afterwards became famous, in the nineteenth century, as a debtors’ prison; but in Tudor times Ludgate was the debtors’ prison, and the Marshalsea, along with
the Counter, the King’s Bench prison and the Clink in Southwark, the Fleet prison and Newgate across the river, and the Gatehouse in Westminster, was used as a prison for various kinds of
offenders, including political suspects charged with sedition, whose offences were thought not to be sufficiently serious to merit imprisonment in the Tower and a charge of high treason. Many
prominent politicians and propagandists, after experiencing the shock of being arrested for sedition, were relieved to find that they were being sent to the Fleet or the Marshalsea and not to the
Tower.

The city was dominated by the great Tower of London, at the south-east edge of the city on the north bank of the Thames. Nearly everybody in England, including Shakespeare, believed
that the building of the Tower had been started by Julius Caesar; but a few historians and antiquaries knew that this was untrue, and that it had first been built by William the
Conqueror in 1078. It covered an area of 400 yards square, and had eighteen towers and other buildings. By 1597 the tower on the riverside was being called ‘the Bloody Tower’ because of
the mysterious suicide or murder there of the Earl of Northumberland in 1585, but in the Tudor Age it was usually called ‘the tower by the watergate’. People who left or arrived at the
Tower by barge embarked and landed at the watergate. Important prisoners who were arrested on a charge of high treason were often brought to the Tower by barge, including Henry VIII’s second
Queen, Anne Boleyn, and her daughter, the future Elizabeth I, when she was the Lady Elizabeth in the reign of her sister Queen Mary. It was more difficult for the prisoners to escape from the barge
than if they were taken by land through the streets of London, and it avoided the risk of demonstrations of sympathy for the prisoners from the Londoners. So the watergate afterwards became known
as ‘Traitors’ Gate’; but the name was not used during the sixteenth century.

The Tower was a royal residence and an arsenal as well as a prison. The King’s apartments were in the White Tower. Most of his cannon, and a large quantity of other weapons, such as pikes
and armour, were ordinarily stored in the Tower. In times of rebellion hundreds of prisoners were sometimes herded into the Tower; but usually only the most serious offenders were imprisoned there.
Some of the prisoners were kept in strict confinement in their prison cells, in complete isolation from the other prisoners; but the social conventions of the age made it impossible to deprive a
nobleman or a gentleman, however heinous a traitor or heretic he night be, from being attended by his personal servant; nor could a noble lady or a gentlewoman be prevented from being attended by
her lady’s maid. These servants were sometimes able to smuggle messages in and out of the Tower; but the authorities were of course aware of this danger, and the servants were very carefully
watched. They hardly ever succeeded in
arranging for their imprisoned master or mistress to escape, and only the Jesuit, Father Gerard, and his friend John Arden in 1597
succeeded in escaping from the Tower during the Tudor Age.

If a prisoner’s offence was not considered to be outstandingly serious, he was allowed ‘the liberty of the Tower’, which meant that he could walk freely in the garden and
anywhere he wished within the walls of the Tower. Prisoners in strict confinement, and their families and friends, petitioned the King and the Council to be allowed the liberty of the Tower; and if
the favour was granted to a prisoner after he had been confined in his cell for some weeks or months, it was usually a sign that the authorities were going to take a lenient view of his offence,
and perhaps that his release might be imminent.

The King had other royal palaces in London besides the Tower, for he sometimes stayed at Baynards Castle and Bridewell; and by the sixteenth century it had become the custom that the King
resided in the Tower for the first few weeks after he came to the throne, until his coronation, and never stayed there again, unless he was threatened with great danger. Henry VII sent his wife and
children to stay in the Tower when the Cornish rebels marched on London and reached Blackheath in 1497; but none of the succeeding Tudor sovereigns ever lived there after their coronation, no doubt
because they believed that if it were known that they had taken up their residence there, this would start a rumour that they were threatened by a dangerous revolt.

The coronation of the new King, with the religious ceremony and its link with the ancient biblical concept of anointment, had made such an impression on the people that in earlier times the idea
had spread unofficially that a King did not obtain his authority to reign, and his right to demand allegiance from his subjects, until after he had been crowned. For this reason, the coronation was
always held almost immediately after the new sovereign’s accession. This idea had been firmly dispelled by the
beginning of the Tudor Age, but it was still thought
desirable for him to be crowned as soon as possible.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it became the practice to postpone the coronation for more than a year after the accession; but every Tudor sovereign was crowned within three months of
coming to the throne. Henry VII, after defeating Richard III at Bosworth on 22 August 1485 and being proclaimed King on the battlefield, had wished to be crowned at Westminster as soon as he
reached London; but the outbreak of the terrible sweating sickness forced him to postpone the coronation until 30 October 1485. When Henry died at Richmond on 21 April 1509, the new King, Henry
VIII, who had been at his father’s bedside at Richmond, moved within a few days to the Tower of London, and fixed the date of his coronation on 24 June, Midsummer Day and the Feast of St John
the Baptist.

On the day before the coronation, Henry VIII went on the traditional procession through the streets of London on his way from the Tower to Westminster. He always loved ceremony and show, and his
coronation procession was more splendid than any of his predecessors’. The streets were decorated with cloth-of-gold; the Lord Mayor and aldermen, and the masters of the livery companies,
were in the streets to salute the King as he passed; so were virgins dressed in white, and priests who censed him and his Queen as they passed. Henry, who was dressed in crimson velvet lined with
ermine and a coat with gold, diamonds, rubies and emeralds, rode on a splendidly accoutred horse, surrounded by his bodyguard, along Bread Street, Gracechurch Street, Cheapside and Cornhill; and
his Queen, Catherine of Aragon, whom he had married twelve days before, followed a little way behind him in a litter escorted by her ladies and attendants. On leaving London and entering
Westminster at Temple Bar, the King and the procession went along the Strand to Charing Cross and then continued to Westminster Abbey, where Henry and Catherine slept that night as guests of the
monks, while the great crowds who had lined the streets went home filled with admiration for their handsome young King.

Next day the coronation took place in the great church of the Abbey. After the coronation, the King and Queen and the notables went across the road for the traditional
coronation banquet in Westminster Hall. During the meal, the King’s Champion rode into the hall on horseback and offered to fight any traitor who denied the King’s right to the throne.
The office of King’s Champion, which was hereditary, was held by Sir Robert Dimock. He had performed this duty as King’s Champion at the coronation of Richard III in 1483. Just over two
years after he had challenged any traitor who denied that Richard was the lawful King, Dimock performed the ceremony again at the coronation of Henry VII, who had proclaimed Richard a usurper and
killed him. Twenty-four years later, Dimock performed the ceremony for the third time at the coronation of Henry VIII.

Edward VI, who was nine when he became King at Henry VIII’s death on 28 January 1547, was crowned within a month, on 20 February. Again there was a procession from the Tower to Westminster
on the eve of the coronation, with the city dignitaries, the cheering crowds, pageants and acrobats. The national pride had been aroused by the capture of Boulogne and the burning of Edinburgh in
the last years of Henry VIII’s reign, and the people looked forward to the day when their new boy King would grow up and emulate and extend his father’s victories, and rule over
England, Ireland, Scotland and France. As he passed through the streets of London in the coronation procession, the people sang a new song that someone had composed for the occasion:

After Edward died on 6 July 1553, Mary defeated Jane Grey’s supporters and was proclaimed Queen in London on 19 July. She arrived there after her march from Norfolk on 3 August, and
was crowned on 1 October. Her coronation procession through London was a little more subdued than those of Henry VIII and Edward VI, perhaps because she was too preoccupied with
the religious changes which she was contemplating to encourage a great popular demonstration in her own honour. Although she was an accomplished horsewoman, and had ridden into London through
Aldgate on horseback two months before, she rode in a coach in the coronation procession. Next, in a coach immediately behind the Queen, came those two well-known Protestant ladies, the Lady
Elizabeth and her stepmother the Lady Anne of Cleves, who were both about to become Catholics, under duress.

Elizabeth I became Queen on Mary’s death on 17 November 1558, and was crowned on 15 January 1559. Her coronation procession through London on the previous day was not merely, as always, a
festive occasion, but was also a great Protestant demonstration by her supporters. She had already made it clear that she intended to restore the Protestant religion in England; she had stopped the
burning of heretics, and had walked out of her chapel royal when the priest elevated the Host during Mass. The savage persecution of Protestants in Mary’s reign had increased their support in
London; it was probably the only part of the country, except for Kent, where they were already a majority of the population.