Six Wives (113 page)
Authors: David Starkey
But, Catherine concluded, 'I leave the whole matter to your discretion'.
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Catherine was, in short, a natural. Not until Victoria would there be another royal author who was as successful and as at home in the world of books and publishing. But Henry failed lamentably to play the part of Disraeli. Instead of murmuring quietly (on the basis of his own
Assertio
), 'we authors', as Victoria's Prime Minister was to do, he showed a disagreeable jealousy.
Assertio
), 'we authors', as Victoria's Prime Minister was to do, he showed a disagreeable jealousy.
Was it the envy of a less successful writer for a best-seller? Or a man's reluctance to be bested by a woman? Or just the customary tension within any literary couple?
* * *
Such emotions were, I think, involved. But the age meant that far larger issues were at stake as well. For instance, on 10 November 1545, four days after the publication of the augmented edition of Catherine's
Prayers or Meditations
, a shocking incident took place at Ely Place, the town-palace of the new Lord Chancellor, Wriothesley. 'As I was going to Mass', Wriothesley informed Secretary Paget, 'a bill . . . was let fall . . . in my dining chamber.' The 'bill' or paper denounced his activities in reporting to Henry the discovery of forbidden religious books and (almost certainly) threatened him in crude and highly personal terms. 'You know', Wriothesley's report to Paget continued, 'that when those naughty [wicked] books were brought unto me, I could do no less than send them to his Highness, and also travail, as much as I could, to find out the author.' 'Wherein', he reflected ruefully, 'though I have not much prevailed, yet some be angry with my doing.'
Prayers or Meditations
, a shocking incident took place at Ely Place, the town-palace of the new Lord Chancellor, Wriothesley. 'As I was going to Mass', Wriothesley informed Secretary Paget, 'a bill . . . was let fall . . . in my dining chamber.' The 'bill' or paper denounced his activities in reporting to Henry the discovery of forbidden religious books and (almost certainly) threatened him in crude and highly personal terms. 'You know', Wriothesley's report to Paget continued, 'that when those naughty [wicked] books were brought unto me, I could do no less than send them to his Highness, and also travail, as much as I could, to find out the author.' 'Wherein', he reflected ruefully, 'though I have not much prevailed, yet some be angry with my doing.'
Paget was to report the incident to Henry; show him the bill and find out what the King wished to be done in the matter.
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* * *
The incident cast a long shadow over the first Session of the new Parliament, which opened two weeks later on 23 November. For the swash-buckling Member for Tavistock, Sir Peter Carew, 'was found to have had one of [the offending bills] in his custody' and was arrested and detained. He was released fairly promptly, on 13 December. But the arrest of an MP proved counter-productive in the Lower House, with fatal result for the Bill against illicit books. 'The bill of books', Secretary Petre reported to his colleague Secretary Paget at the end of the Session, 'albeit it was at the beginning set earnestly forward, is finally dashed in the Common House.'
According to Petre, Henry took the failure in his stride. 'Whereat I hear not', Petre reported, 'that his Majesty is much miscontented.' This would suggest that Catherine's policy, which tolerated and even encouraged the publication of works of the 'new learning', was still in the ascendant. She was still in high favour at New Year, when Henry, despite having almost bankrupted himself in the war, gave her an extraordinarily extravagant New Year's Gift of 1,000 marks (£66 13s 4d).
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On the back of all this Cranmer was riding high, too, and in the first half of January 1546 he manoeuvred Henry into agreeing to abolish a whole series of traditional observancies as 'superstitious'. First the ringing of bells on Hallow E'en, the covering of images in Lent and the kneeling to the uncovered cross on Palm Sunday were to go. But having got so far, why stop? In collusion with Paget, it was decided that Henry should endorse more radical measures: there was to be no kneeling to the cross at any time and the yet 'greater abuse' of 'creeping to the cross' on Good Friday should 'cease from henceforth and be abolished'.
But suddenly, as Denny was presenting the final papers to the King for signature, he brushed them aside saying, 'I am now otherways resolved'.
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What had happened?
* * *
The conventional answer is that Gardiner, who was in Brussels negotiating with the Emperor, pulled off a coup by warning Henry that further religious Reformation in England would jeopardise the renewal of the Imperial alliance. Henry listened and Gardiner, able now to conclude the treaty, returned in triumph to England on 21 March.
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There is some truth in this. But I am sure that other, more intimate forces moved Henry as well.
For Elizabeth had decided to repeat the success of her last New Year's Gift to Catherine by producing a similar present this year for her father. As with the
Mirror
, it would be a translation of a religious work by a leading royal authoress. But instead of Queen Margaret of Navarre, the writer would be Queen Catherine of England and the work her recently published
Prayers or Meditations
. This Elizabeth turned into Latin, French and Italian and topped with an elegant Latin epistle dedicating the whole to 'my matchless and most kind father'.
Mirror
, it would be a translation of a religious work by a leading royal authoress. But instead of Queen Margaret of Navarre, the writer would be Queen Catherine of England and the work her recently published
Prayers or Meditations
. This Elizabeth turned into Latin, French and Italian and topped with an elegant Latin epistle dedicating the whole to 'my matchless and most kind father'.
Historians, including the present writer, have fallen over themselves to praise Elizabeth's tact and subtlety in sending him the gift of a book 'compiled by the Queen your wife . . . [and] translated by your daughter'. But was it really such a clever choice after all?
For though the dedication emphasised that theology was the proper study of Kings, 'whom philosophers regard as Gods on earth', it went on, rather awkwardly, to sing the praises of the
Prayers or Meditations
and its author, who was, of course, not a King at all but a woman and a Queen. 'A work of such piety', Elizabeth innocently enthused, 'a work compiled in English by the pious industry of a glorious Queen and for that reason a work sought out by all!'
Prayers or Meditations
and its author, who was, of course, not a King at all but a woman and a Queen. 'A work of such piety', Elizabeth innocently enthused, 'a work compiled in English by the pious industry of a glorious Queen and for that reason a work sought out by all!'
For all those reasons, Elizabeth concluded,
Prayers or Meditations
'was by your Majesty highly esteemed'.
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Prayers or Meditations
'was by your Majesty highly esteemed'.
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But was it?
* * *
It is, in fact, unlikely that Henry had bothered to read Catherine's work in the original English. For Henry was not interested in vernacular religion, which he thought of either as a woman's world or (in its less innocent form) as a dangerously heterodox nuisance. Instead, his concerns (as Elizabeth mentioned) were with theology and religious controversy. These took place in Latin and were properly royal and masculine.
But Elizabeth's Latin translation would have brought home to Henry just how far his wife was trespassing into this realm. She had also got his daughter Elizabeth at it. And, he would soon have discovered, she had set his other daughter Mary's pen to work as well. Indeed, I wonder if the illness which stopped Mary from finishing her translation of the Erasmus
Paraphrase
was not a diplomatic one that followed an explosion from her father.
Paraphrase
was not a diplomatic one that followed an explosion from her father.
* * *
All this is speculation, of course. But it is borne out by the great speech which Henry gave at the prorogation of Parliament on Christmas Eve 1545.
Normally the task was performed by the Chancellor. But, on this occasion, aware perhaps of the bad odour in which Wriothesley was held by many members, Henry delivered the speech himself. The mere fact caused a sensation. But its content was still more impressive. For Henry, that most extreme of men, uttered a heartfelt plea for moderation. And central to it was the proper use of Scripture.
It had been given to his people 'in your mother tongue', Henry explained, as a concession, 'only to inform your own consciences and to instruct your children and family'. But the concession had been abused and God's Holy Word was 'disputed, rimed, sung and jangled in every alehouse and tavern'.
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Henry, according to Petre, spoke 'so sententiously, so kingly, or rather fatherly', that even many who were used to hearing him talk wept. As for Petre himself, he wrote, it gave him 'such a joy and marvellous comfort as I reckon this day one of the happiest of my life'.
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With such applause ringing in his ears, Henry had begun the holidays in expansive mood. But, as Christmas turned into New Year, he discovered that the 'jangling' of Scripture had spread from the alehouse into the palace and that the jangler-in-chief was none other than his own wife.
* * *
There is one final piece to be fitted into the jigsaw. One of the most contentious matters debated in the 1545 Parliament was the Act to dissolve the remaining religious foundations known as Chantries, which existed primarily to pray for souls in Purgatory. The doctrine of Purgatory was now in dispute and the King was desperate for the cash. But the Bill was fought to the last. 'The book of colleges etc.', Petre noted in his end-of-session report, 'escaped narrowly and was driven over to the last hour, and yet then passed only by division of the House.'
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As Petre's description of the Act implies, it could also be construed to threaten the endowments of the Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge with confiscation as well. Cambridge knew instantly where to turn and appealed to Catherine in a sonorous Latin letter.
On 26 February the Queen replied, pointedly, in English and in a letter drafted in her own hand. After drawing attention to her use of the vernacular, she turned to the learning which they had called on her to defend. She understood, she said, 'that all kind of learning doth flourish amongst you in this age, as it did amongst the Greeks at Athens long ago'. But, she warned them, they were 'not so to hunger for the exquisite knowledge of profane learning' that it might be thought that 'the Greeks' university was but transposed or now in England revived'. For that would be to forget the great difference between now and then: Christianity. Learning, she emphasised, existed only to serve the true doctrine of the Gospel; all else was vanity. This should define their activities, so 'that Cambridge may be accounted rather a university of divine philosphy, than of natural or moral, as Athens was'.
Finally, she informed them, she had put their suit to 'my lord, the King's Majesty'. And he in turn had assured her that not only would he forgo their existing possessions but also found new Colleges.
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The confidence and assurance of this letter is astonishing. And its contents, no doubt relayed to Henry in Catherine's interview with him, probably astonished – and troubled – Henry. For here was a woman who not only strayed into the territories of sacred and profane learning but presumed to redefine their respective frontiers as well. Where would it stop? Or rather, when would it stop?
Henry decided to answer his own question and the result was that Catherine lost favour, suddenly and, it seemed, catastrophically.
* * *
On 27 February 1546, the day after Catherine had written to Cambridge, the Imperial ambassador Van der Delft, to whom the Queen had, as usual, gone out of her way to be agreeable, wrote home in some agitation. 'Sire', he informed Charles V, 'I am confused and apprehensive to have to inform your Majesty that there are rumours here of a new Queen, although I do not know why, or how true it may [be].'
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These rumours were linked, almost certainly, with Foxe's 'story' of the plot against Catherine, 'wherein appeareth in what danger she was for the Gospel by means of Stephen Gardiner and others of his conspiracy'. The 'story' has been dismissed as a fiction by some historians, most notably by Glyn Redworth, Gardiner's most recent biographer. Others have been impressed by the wealth of accurate circumstantial detail, including, in particular, the names of Catherine's women.
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But no one has managed quite to pin the 'story' down. In part, this is because of Foxe's characteristic vagueness over the chronology of the incident, which at one point he dates to 'about the year after the King returned from Boulogne' (October 1544) and at another to the period 'after these stormy stories' of the trial and execution of the Lincolnshire woman Anne Askew (18 June –16 July 1546) for denying that the bread and wine in the mass became the body and blood of Jesus Christ. It is also because historians have missed an important clue about the King's physicians, Drs Owen and Wendy, who figure crucially in the 'story'.
Foxe begins by describing Catherine's public profession of the Gospel. He notes her reading and study of the Scriptures, and her employment of learned chaplains, both for her own private instruction and also to give expositions of the Gospel in her Privy Chamber 'every day in the afternoon, for the space of an hour'. The 'conferences', as Foxe calls them, were a regular feature of life in her Court, but they were 'especially [prominent] in Lent'. They were intended primarily for the ladies and gentlemen of her own Household. But they were also available to 'others that were disposed to hear'.
'As these things', Foxe emphasises, 'were not secretly done, so neither were their preachings unknown to the King.' 'Whereof at first', he adds, 'and for a great time [after], he seemed very well to like.'
But Catherine, Foxe allows, grew too bold and started 'frankly to
debate with the King touching religion, and therein frankly to discover herself '. She was, in short, treading the same path as Anne Boleyn, and Henry came similarly to detest it. And, as with Anne, there were many who were prepared to take advantage of Henry's growing irritation with his wife.
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* * *
The breaking-point came probably in the last week of March. Henry moved from Greenwich back to Whitehall on the 28th while Gardiner had returned from his embassy on the 21st and immediately resumed a leading role in the Council and the Court. Catherine, who now had to visit her increasingly immobile husband in his own apartments, rather than waiting, as had previously been the custom, for him to come to hers, had spent some time with the King. And, as usual, she had turned the conversation to religion. Henry, never the most patient of men, had grown increasingly irritable with the painful disability of his ulcerated leg, and it was as much as he could do to keep his temper. So he deflected the conversation to other topics. But he kept up appearances and bade her a hearty 'Farewell sweetheart' as she left.
As soon as she had gone, however, he gave vent to his real feelings. ' "A good hearing", quoth he, "it is when women become such clerks; and a thing much to my comfort, to come in mine old days to be taught by my wife".' Gardiner, then and subsequently, played on Henry's feelings and 'marvellously whetted the King both to anger and displeasure towards the Queen, and also to be jealous and mistrustful of his own estate (power and position)'. 'For the assurance whereof ', Foxe adds meaningfully, 'princes use not to be scrupulous to do anything.'
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