Assassination: The Royal Family's 1000-Year Curse (23 page)

Henry’s new Chancellor was Sir Thomas More, a lawyer. To his considerable annoyance, Henry would learn that although More was not a cleric, he would not countenance disobedience to the Pope.

Yet even though Henry would eventually break with Rome, he always regarded himself as a good Catholic. Indeed, Henry had written a book opposing the views of Luther, and as a reward the Pope had granted Henry the title ‘Defender of the Faith’. That title has been assumed by all subsequent English monarchs, ‘FD’ (
fidei defensor
) appearing on current coins, even though the title was for Henry alone and not available to be inherited.

However, the annulment was paramount. There was little sympathy for it in England, although there was plenty of backing for an attack on the power and privilege of the Roman Church, which owned one-third of all the land in England, and was constantly imposing taxes so as to acquire more.

Henry started to make his moves, and they were all against the impious behaviour of priests: holding multiple positions, engaging in commerce, not visiting their parishes and so on. But nothing improved the chances of an annulment until Henry found a new ally, a young don (fellow or lecturer) at Cambridge University named Cranmer. He advised the King to collect opinions from learned men to aid his case. Henry loved the idea, seeking help throughout Europe from scholars, clerics, doctors, lawyers and even rabbis.

Many of these experts came out in favour of Henry’s case. However, others found a problem, for moving from Leviticus to Deuteronomy it was written that “If brethren dwell together, and one of them dies and shall have no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married abroad unto one not of his kin; her husband’s brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife ...”. Now it was clear that the prohibition in Leviticus only applied to two living brothers; Henry’s marriage to Catherine was valid, in fact the Bible had required it. In 1530, the Pope issued a bull (a papal decree to which a lead seal (
bulla
) was attached) prohibiting anyone from writing or speaking against the marriage. Henry’s case was hopeless.

Then Henry found someone who would look for new ways to cast Catherine aside. This man was Thomas Cromwell, an ambitious young lawyer who had formerly been Wolsey’s assistant. Cromwell used Parliament to pass laws attacking church rights, declaring that the Church’s authority derived from the sovereignty of the King. Unable to countenance such a proposition, Sir Thomas More resigned as Chancellor.

A new urgency arose at the end of 1532 when, despite her stance of wife and queen or nothing, Anne became pregnant. Perhaps a promise of wife and queen was enough. Anyhow, a son was a possibility; he must not be illegitimate. In January 1533, Henry secretly married Anne Boleyn.

Later that year, Thomas Cranmer became Archbishop of Canterbury, and he dutifully declared that Henry and Catherine had never been man and wife and that Henry’s marriage to Anne was valid. Next, Catherine’s daughter, Mary, was declared illegitimate. The people did not approve. Nevertheless, the link with Rome was broken, although there was no desire to adopt any new religious beliefs or practices. It was to be the Roman Church without rule from Rome.

At last, in September 1533, Anne gave birth – to a girl, Princess Elizabeth. Henry did not even bother to attend the christening.

Now Henry wanted blood, despite the problem with Catherine having been resolved. Henry was declared head of the English Church, and everyone was required to acknowledge Henry’s supremacy on oath. Many refused, and hundreds of priests, monks and bishops were executed and the same fate befell Sir Thomas More.

In 1536, Henry and Anne rejoiced when it was announced that Catherine had died. Strangely, she had made a will, something that was unlawful for a woman whose husband was still alive. It was Catherine’s only implicit acknowledgement of the annulment, or perhaps she was unaware of the rule. Henry had waited for six years to be freed from Catherine; if he had waited another three years for her death, the breach with Rome would not have been necessary.

Catherine died after suffering stomach pains and nausea. Poison was suspected by many. If it was poison, probably the culprit was not Henry, it was Anne. After all, in the same year Anne’s brother had tried, no doubt on her behalf, to poison another of Anne’s rivals, Henry’s illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy. He survived only because he shared the bottle of poisoned wine with others.

On the day of Catherine’s funeral, Henry celebrated by going jousting. He entered the ‘lists’ at Greenwich Palace; not some sort of document, but the name of the barrier enclosing the jousting arena. It was generally advisable to allow the King to win, although not too obviously. However, on this day Henry’s opponent would not be trying to lose. The two men charged, and they clashed, simultaneously unhorsing each other. Henry’s opponent’s lance had caught Henry full and square in the midriff and knocked him flying from his horse. He crashed to the ground in full armour, and the horse (also wearing heavy armour) fell on top of him. Henry lay motionless, the crowd silent. At first it was feared that the King had been killed. It was over two hours before Henry regained consciousness. Was this a murder attempt? Was his opponent trying to kill Henry to avenge Catherine? If he was, he could hardly have done a better job. Mysteriously, despite the notoriety of the event, the name of Henry’s opponent is not known – while all attention was focused on the injured Henry, his opponent had remounted and ridden away without removing his helmet. Henry survived, but many believe that his brain was damaged, as he suffered increasingly from insomnia, headaches and a terrible temper. He never jousted again, and his personality seemed to have changed.

News of the accident was brought to Anne. Within hours she went into premature labour and miscarried a boy. She blamed Henry, but he had no time for excuses. Henry had moved on; he was now interested in one of Anne’s ladies-in-waiting, Jane Seymour. He told Cromwell to deal with the matter, adding that Anne was cursed, the evidence being a sixth finger on one hand and (never proved) a third breast. Cromwell’s ‘enquiries’ produced a list of adulteries; and with confessions extracted by torture, Anne was duly found guilty of treason and beheaded, as were four of the alleged adulterers. The day before Anne’s execution, Cranmer annulled her marriage to Henry, but without giving any reason. Perhaps it was because Anne’s sister had been Henry’s mistress. Now both princesses were illegitimate.

The moment Henry was told of Anne’s death, he set off to see Jane Seymour; the next day they were betrothed and ten days later they were married. Henry had great hopes for a son. However, a son would take at least a few months to arrive, and Henry’s brush with death had led him to think once more about the succession. So an Act was passed giving Henry the right to appoint his successor for so long as Jane had no children. It is likely that the person Henry had in mind was his illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy, who was now the Duke of Richmond and Somerset. Clearly Henry was very fond of Fitzroy; although he did chastise Fitzroy and his friends when on a visit to France with Henry they had placed rotting corpses in the beds of the ladies of the French court to give them a fright.

If Fitzroy’s succession was indeed Henry’s plan, he failed yet again. Within weeks of the passing of the Act, Henry Fitzroy died of consumption.

Next, Henry and Cromwell saw to the dissolution of the monasteries and the acquisition of their wealth by the Crown and, upon a payment to Henry, by the nobility. There were uprisings, but nothing came of them except several hundred executions.

Henry was at last in control of both the country and the Church, he was rich and he had a new bride. All he needed was a son and heir. In October 1537, Henry was living in Esher to the south of London so as to escape the plague, having left the pregnant Jane at Hampton Court. Henry rushed back when he heard that Jane had given birth to a son. Everything seemed to be perfect. Unfortunately, the ‘surgeons’ who cut out the child, Prince Edward, took little care of Jane. Twelve days later she died of septicaemia. She was probably 29 years old, as 29 women walked behind the coffin at her funeral – one for each year of her life, as was the custom.

The disconsolate Henry continued with his attack on the Church, horrifying the Pope. In particular, the Pope was enraged when he learned of the confiscation of jewels and other valuables from the shrine of St Thomas Becket, and in December 1538 he excommunicated Henry. The breach was now final.

For his next move, Henry decided to deal with the remaining potential rivals to his new son as claimants to the throne. His attack was on the family of George Duke of Clarence (brother of Edward IV and Richard III). Henry VII had already executed George’s son, the Earl of Warwick, so Henry turned to George’s only surviving child, his daughter. He executed the 67-yearold Lady Margaret Pole Countess of Salisbury and her first son, Henry Pole
¹⁶
, the Poles not to be confused with the de la Pole Yorkist claimants who were descendants of Clarence’s sister, Elizabeth.

Lady Margaret’s second son was in Italy; he was a cardinal who would be the Pope’s agent in raising opposition to Henry. The third son was left to wander about Europe, having saved his life by giving Henry evidence of treason by the rest of his family; the fourth son was already dead. Cousins, friends and children were executed or imprisoned.
¹⁷

Now a widower, it was time for Henry to look for a bride; one bringing a foreign alliance would be best. The artist Holbein was sent out on missions to paint portraits of prospective spouses, and his paintings hanging in galleries today are no more than medieval photographs for matchmaking. Cromwell recommended Anne of Cleves, a princess “of incomparable beauty”. Henry accepted the recommendation, but he had been misled; the portrait was too flattering. When Anne arrived in England in January 1540, Henry was horrified at the sight of what he called “this Flanders mare”.

However, Henry did not wish to offend his German allies, so the wedding took place – but not much else. Seven months later, Anne had confirmed the non-consummation of the marriage, and she retired to the English countryside where she spent the rest of her life; the divorce was finalised in July. Henry did not blame Holbein; the victim would be Cromwell, who was later executed.

Turning to his former source, Henry was now taken with one of Anne’s ladies-in-waiting, 16-year-old Catherine Howard, niece of the Duke of Norfolk. She made herself very available, flirting with the aged king as she had already flirted with so many others. Within days, Henry had married Catherine. But this young girl married to a fat old man with legs covered in suppurating ulcers soon found numerous lovers. She was as promiscuous after her wedding as she had been before it. In early 1542, just like her cousin Anne Boleyn, Catherine was executed, several of her lovers having already gone to the block. As a precaution for the future, it was made a treasonable offence for an unchaste woman to marry the King without having first declared her unchastity.

16 Pole had some posthumous revenge when his great-grandson signed Charles I’s death warrant.
17 If the royal line should have run through the Duke of Clarence (which it should have done if Edward IV or his children, in particular Elizabeth of York, were illegitimate) then despite the executions the line would have run through Lady Margaret Pole and then through her first son Henry’s daughter Catherine so that Michael Abney-Hastings Earl of Loudoun would now be king. He is an avowed republican, living in Australia.

It was time again for war. Before attacking France, their ally Scotland had to be controlled. The English attacked, and the Scots retaliated and were defeated. Henry’s nephew, King James V of Scotland, who suffered from bouts of severe depression, died in total despair at what he thought was the end of the Stewart dynasty when his wife gave birth to a girl. He left the throne to his one-week-old daughter, Mary (later known as Mary Queen of Scots).

Next it was war with France. Henry made some territorial gains before peace was agreed. But the cost of the war had depleted the royal and national treasuries, and the king who had been one of the richest and most magnificent in Europe was now an invalid and virtually bankrupt.

If it was not war, it had to be marriage. Having taken an eighteen-month break, Henry returned to his domestic pastime, and in July 1543 he married for the sixth time. His new wife was Catherine Parr. She was 31 years old and had already been widowed twice. Henry would make her a widow for a third time, and then she would take a fourth husband. So, England’s most married king married England’s most married queen.

King Henry was now a complete wreck; often in pain, usually suffering a fever, always immobile. Henry had known that death was approaching, but his physicians could not give him a prognosis because to forecast the death of the king was
– like so many other things – treason. It is possible that Henry in fact died of syphilis. However, his demands for wives were largely to have sons, not because of any heightened sexual appetite.

Perhaps in the end Henry was killed by three of his passions: jousting damaging his legs and his brain, food resulting in obesity and strokes, and women resulting in anxiety and possibly syphilis.

So died the king who had been desperate to create a family that would prolong the Tudor dynasty, in the process casting off two wives, killing two wives, bastardising two children, and never having grandchildren. Yet all his wives were part of Henry’s family even before he married them; all of them descended from Edward I, just like Henry himself.

Death at the joust, the scene of the two attempts to kill him, would have spared Henry his grotesque old age, but it would have deprived him of his greatest claim to fame – the six wives.