The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (52 page)

Read The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers Online

Authors: Margaret George

BOOK: The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers
2.03Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“There are no variations in the Oath,” I insisted. This seemed to satisfy her—or did it?
“I know full well you love More!” she burst out. “And I know in what way, and in what manner! In an unnatural manner!”
“Unnatural?” Her cryptic allusions baffled me.
“‘Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is abomination.’ Leviticus, Chapter eighteen, verse twenty-two.”
“Anne!” I cried. “This is unseemly! And where did you read the Old Testament?” I asked, irrent?
“It is true, is it not?” She ignored my question. “You have ‘lain down with him’ in the meadows of your mind; sported and frolicked with him there, excluding all others. Craved his approval and love, sought it and cried for it? And now, even now, when he defies you and throws that love back in your face, you seek to mollify and placate him! Your darling must have a special Oath, handmade and tailored and tenderly fashioned by his lover—the King!”
“His lover is not me,” I said.
Pity! ”
“His lover is pain, disguised as Christ.” And he will wed her, with my executioner officiating as priest, I thought.
“Very allegorical,” she sniffed. “But it fails to clarify just how you intend to rescue your beloved from the pit he has diggèd for himself, as the Bible puts it.”
“There are only the regular steps by which to ascend. The Oath, and utter loyalty.”
“No special hand extended from the King? In an allegorical sense?”
“You should know well of allegories! You stage enough of them—insipid, mincing things, but all the same. You as a goddess, surrounded by worshipping fops! Do you enjoy the fawning, the stylized, false verses and compliments? Fie, lady, I outgrew them by the time I was twenty!”
“By then you had been King three years. When I have been Queen three years, perhaps I shall follow suit.”
“No, you shall follow suit now! Lent is soon approaching, and you will cease these ‘entertainments’ for the duration. Do you understand me, Madam?”
“Indeed.” She managed to infuse the word with disdain.
More and more our times together were like this: acrimonious, full of rancour and mistrust, a collapsing of respect. Yet I continued to desire her and crave her presence; I knew not why. She vexed my soul, not comforted it.
During the next few months it became increasingly clear that the refusers of the Oath would have to stand trial. At the end of 1534, Parliament passed another act, the Act of Supremacy, acknowledging my title as Supreme Head on Earth of the Church of England and defining it as treason to “maliciously seek to deprive” me of any of my rightful titles. Now the men in the Tower would have to be judged on that aspect as well.
Bishop Fisher was calm throughout his imprisonment, never seeking any deliverance. The Pope made a belated gesture of support by naming him a Cardinal. But Fisher cared not. He was an old man, an extension, really, of my grandmother Beaufort, never comfortable in the world that had grown up around him since her death. From the beginning of my Great Matter (styled by some “the divorce”), he had taken a stand against me. In the formal hearing of the divorce case at Blackfriars, Warham had presented a list of signatures of all bishops supporting my cause, including Fisher’s.
Fisher had risen in gaunt dignity and said, “That is not my hand or my seal.” Warham had admitted that Fisher’s signature had been “added,” but thers against me—Warham himself, for example. But in the end, alone of all the clergy, Bishop John Fisher stood unconvinced and unswayed.
He was finally brought to trial on June 17, 1535, on a charge of high treason for depriving the King of one of his titles by denying that he was Supreme Head of the Church in England. He admitted that he did not accept me as Supreme Head, but sought to exonerate himself by denying that he had “maliciously” done so. But the verdict came in: guilty, and he should die.
The Carthusian priors of the houses of London, Beauvale (in Nottingham-shire), and Axholme (in Lincolnshire) were hauled up out of the Tower and made to stand trial. Along with them were three stubborn monks from the London house. They all refused, for the last time, to take the Oath. They all tried to say they had never intended their own private thoughts and opinions to be “malicious.” But this failed to convince the examiners. They were sentenced to be hanged, then cut down alive and their entrails pulled out and burnt, and to be drawn and quartered, on May fourth. Reportedly they went to their deaths singing and with glad countenances, watching each of their fellows being torn limb from limb, absolutely undeterred.
 
Now there was no one left but More.
More must stand trial, and it must be a grand and public trial in the largest hall in the kingdom: Westminster Hall, where Coronation banquets were held. More was too monumental a public figure to command less.
First he had had several “pre-trials,” or examinations. These examinations were led by Cromwell, Cranmer, Audley (who had replaced More as Chancellor), Brandon, and Thomas Boleyn. In all of them he maintained his “silence.” I could report all the intricate reasonings he used, but I will not. The truth of the matter is that he based his case (clever lawyer that he was) upon legal hair-splitting-basically upon whether his silence was “malevolent” or not. It was the legal implications of silence that were on trial, not More himself.
His sophistry and legalisms did not impress his judges, and they found him guilty.
Once he saw that silence could do him no good (and that his judges had fathomed him true, in any case), he asked to make a statement. This request was granted.
“This indictment is grounded upon an act of Parliament directly repugnant to the laws of God and His Holy Church,” he said. He went on to explain that no one portion of Christendom could make laws governing the Church in that particular land, if they ran counter to the laws in every other land. England could not declare herself above the laws binding other Christian countries. We—Parliament and I—claimed that we could. And there the argument ended.
 
I have restrained myself from describing More’s trials and arguments in all their details, since the end was the end. It is torture to retrace each step and say where one action, one word, could have altered the outcome. His family came to visit him in the Tower and did their utmost to persuade him to sign the Oath, excuse himself, liberate himself.
In the Tower he spent his time writing. There were several books, some in Latin—
Of the Sorrow, Weariness, Fear and Prayer of Christ before his Capture
was the longest—and others in English:
A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation; The Four Last Things.
The latter described the four things that a man on his deathbed must deal with: ly cys of heaven.
More examined the moment of death carefully and concluded that there was no “easy” death: “for if thou die no worse death, yet at the leastwise lying in thy bed, thy head shooting, thy back aching, thy veins beating, thine heart panting, thy throat rattling, thy flesh trembling, thy mouth gaping, thy nose sharping, thy legs cooling, thy fingers fumbling, thy breath shortening, all thy strength fainting, thy life vanishing, and thy death drawing on” was in store for you.
From his window in the Tower, More saw Richard Reynolds of Syon and the Carthusian monks being carted out of the Tower for their felons’ execution at Tyburn. Reportedly he looked at them longingly and then said to his daughter Margaret (who continued to visit him and beg him to recant), “Lo, dost thou not see, Meg, that these blessed fathers be now as cheerfully going to their deaths as bridegrooms to their marriage?”
Then he berated himself for his “sinful” life. He was ever obsessed with his own sinfulness and even of the sorrow of the world at large and its purpose. He wrote:
But if we get so weary of pain and grief that we perversely attempt to
change this world, this place of labour and penance, into a joyful haven
of rest, if we seek Heaven on earth, we cut ourselves off for ever from
true happiness, and will drown ourselves in penance when it is too late
to do any good, and in unbearable, unending tribulations as well.
More had at last embraced his dark side. When he closed the gate at Chelsea on his way to his first examination, he was said to have murmured, “I thank God, the field is won at last.” He had turned his back on that quietude of Chelsea, on his wife and family, too, and thanked God that they would no longer be there to torment him, keeping him from becoming that monk who had first, in youth, served with the Carthusians as a novice. He never wished to see them again. That was what neither I, nor others, for a great long time, could comprehend.
He had said it clearly, himself, to Margaret, when she came to visit him in the Tower. “I assure thee, on my faith, my own good daughter, if it had not been for my wife and you that be my children, I would not have failed long ere this to have closed myself in as strait a room—and straiter, too.”
Now he had passed the test, forsworn—albeit belatedly—the things of this world, and could pledge his vows in blood. Undoubtedly, to one of that mind, it was a great relief. He had not disappointed or betrayed himself to a lesser life.
The execution was fixed for July 6, 1535. He told his daughter, “It were a day very meet and convenient for me—Saint Thomas’ Even.” His assignation with eternity was neatly fitted in with the Church calendar, which seemed to soothe him.
How could I feel upon receiving this news? Like a father whose daughter has chosen to marry unwisely, yet is deliriously happy in the meanwhile? Should I rejoice with her, grieving in my heart? Or should I use my authority to forbid the match?
I knew no action I could take would prevent this marriage. It had been contracted since More’s earliest days.
Yet I wanted him here with me, on earth!
Evenim in the Tower and sought to convey my anguish and love.
Aye, flattering Fortune, look thou never so fair,
Nor never so pleasantly begin to smile,
As though thou wouldst my ruin all repair,
During my life thou shalt not me beguile!
Trust I shall God to enter in a while
His haven of Heaven, sure and uniform:
Even after thy calm, look I for a storm.
So he longed always to be beyond any possible ties or recall to earthly matters.
LXIII
F
isher was executed on June twenty-second. His judges had pronounced the same sentence on him as that meted out to the Carthusian monks.
“I cannot imagine such a death,” Anne had said, upon reading the sentence.
“It is the usual felon’s death,” I replied. “Have you never known of what it consists?” Every English child had witnessed executions. Tyburn, where commoners were executed, was a popular public excursion place. People took their food and blankets and forced their children to watch, “lest you fall likewise into crime.” It was instructional. I had always thought it was a pity that hell was not equally observable.
“No. I have never watched an execution. Nor do I wish to.” She was agitated.
“Perhaps you should. As Queen, you should know to what we condemn felons.”
“It is the fire part I cannot bear!” she said. “To be burnt, to be touched by that evil, hot, licking, consuming thing—oh, they knew well what they did when they made hell a place of flames! I would never go there, never, never—”
“Then do not sin, my sweet.” I smiled. The remedy was at hand. Those who did not wish to go to hell knew precisely what they should do to avoid it. It was all laid out.
“Spare Fisher!” she said. “Do not let the flames touch him. No one deserves that!”
“A signature on a paper would have prevented it.”
“Even so ...”
I had intended all along to commute his sentence, to allow him a painless beheading. But Anne’s outburst puzzled me. It showed me yet another side of her.
“Have you long been troubled by this fear of fire?” I asked her.
“Always. Since I was a child, when once in my room a lighted piece of wood escaped from the fireplace. It landed on a stool nearby. It glowed and then subsided. I went to sleep watching it—and then awoke, suddenly, to a blaze. The horrible heat, the diabolical grin of the fire—‘I fooled you, now I have you....’ ” She shuddered. “And the crackling, the roasting ...”

Other books

A Love Surrendered by Julie Lessman
Her Secret Sex Life by Willie Maiket
The 21 Biggest Sex Lies by Shane Dustin
Blood Ties by Amelia Elias
Rhapsody, Child of Blood by Haydon, Elizabeth
Girl to Come Home To by Grace Livingston Hill
Whisper by Alexander, Harper
Military Daddy by Patricia Davids