The Children of Henry VIII (16 page)

Fitzroy, by comparison, quietly prospered after Anne’s execution, securing a grant of her luxurious riverside property, Baynard’s Castle, off Thames Street, as his London home, together with such lucrative sinecures as the posts of Warden of the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover Castle.
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Then tragedy struck him down too. On or about 8 July, he was diagnosed with an illness strongly resembling severe bronchial pneumonia, leading to pleural empyema.
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Within a few days, he would have gone down with a recurring fever and chest pains, before regularly coughing up sputum that had a foul smell, quickly suffering the fatal infection of the lungs and other organs, such as the kidneys, accompanied by severe weight loss.

The verdict of his physicians was that he still had a few weeks to live.
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That proved highly optimistic, since on the 23rd, the teenager died in his privy apartments at St James’s Palace. Since he weakened so rapidly, some said he had been poisoned. More likely, his lungs or kidneys failed.
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Henry’s reaction is open to question, but the Duke of Norfolk, who was given the responsibility of arranging the funeral but was afterwards rebuked by the king for giving his son a dishonourable burial, was quite clear. His instructions had been to take care that the body was secretly interred at some distance from the capital.
As the duke confided to Cromwell, ‘The king’s pleasure was that his body should be conveyed secretly in a close[d] cart unto Thetford [in Norfolk] … and there so buried.’
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Henry, it appears, had at first not wanted it generally known that he seemed unable to father a living son. Later, when second thoughts prevailed, Norfolk was the casualty of the king’s indecision. It was said he was to be sent to the Tower for allowing Fitzroy’s body to be wrapped in cloth rather than sealed in a lead coffin. At this, the duke was incredulous, exclaiming, ‘When I shall deserve to be there, Tottenham shall turn French!’
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F
IGURE
8
The tomb of Henry Fitzroy, originally at Thetford Priory in Norfolk, and moved after the priory’s dissolution to the Church of St Michael, Framlingham, Suffolk.

But Henry, despite his rumblings of dissatisfaction, made no redress to his son. Provision of a suitable tomb was again left entirely to Norfolk, who constructed a remarkable and costly monument at Thetford Priory, replete with Italian classical motifs, that was clumsily moved after the dissolution of the priory to Framlingham Church, some forty miles away (see
Figure 8
).
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Mary’s reconciliation with her father became complete when she wrote ecstatically (if optimistically) to him, ‘I will never vary from that confession and submission I made to your highness.’ And she prayed God that he and Jane would shortly be blessed with a son.
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As her own gesture of conciliation, Jane had already taken the prudent step of writing affectionately to her stepdaughter. Mary thanked her warmly for a letter she found ‘no less full of motherly joy for my towardness of reconciliation than of most prudent counsel for my further proceeding therein.’
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On 6 July, Henry and Jane visited Hunsdon, staying there for three full days. Her father treated Mary with much of his old affection, ‘continually talking with her’. Jane presented her with a diamond, and Henry threw in a bag of gold and silver coins, ‘telling her to have no anxiety about money, for she should have as much as she could wish.’
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This was the prelude to the reorganization of the joint household, which was now restructured so as to have two separate ‘sides’—one each for the two half-sisters, and each with its own separate staff.

Mary’s side, as befitted her seniority, was the larger and more lavishly equipped. Some forty-two servants were appointed, including four gentlewomen, four gentlemen, two chamberers, a physician and a chaplain. Among these gentlewomen were two
who would come to rank among Mary’s closest friends and remain with her for the rest of her life: Susan Tonge (Mrs Clarencius), a young widow, and Frances Baynham, who married Sir Henry Jerningham.
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While not on the scale of the princely household that the king’s elder daughter had been allocated by Wolsey in 1525, it dwarfed Elizabeth’s establishment, which was cut back to as little as seventeen servants.
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The disparity inevitably provoked more friction. Lady Bryan, Elizabeth’s governess, began quarrelling with Sir John Shelton over how the household’s meagre budget of £4,000 a year should be redistributed. A redoubtable woman, she wrote very forcefully to Cromwell in August to make quite sure that she had understood the new arrangements correctly and to air her grievances.
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Bryan was especially indignant at the fresh economies she was expected to make. She protested that, with Elizabeth growing fast, no suitable garments were available that would fit a 3-year-old, and there was no one to turn to. Sir John, she complained, was throwing his weight about, calling himself ‘master of this house’. ‘What fashion that shall be’, she fumed, ‘I cannot tell, for I have not seen it before’.

Shelton had objected to Elizabeth eating apart from the main household on grounds of cost, insisting that she leave her chamber at mealtimes and dine in the great hall at the ‘board of estate’. Bryan deemed it inappropriate for a child still so young to eat there. Dietary concerns apart, it would be impossible to stop her snatching ‘divers meats, fruits and wine’ that would be readily at hand, ‘which would be hard for me to refrain her grace from’. Elizabeth was ‘too young to correct [i.e. chastise] greatly’, not least because she was teething. Her sore mouth meant that Bryan felt
obliged to allow her to have her own way more often than she usually did.
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Cromwell knew a determined woman when he saw one. Bryan was victorious, after which comparative harmony prevailed for over a year.
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This, not least, was because Mary, for several months at a time, now left the cloistered environment of Hunsdon and Hatfield to rejoin her father and stepmother at Court. Jane purposely went out of her way to be kind to her, inviting her to spend Christmas at Greenwich Palace with them, and in 1537 to accompany them on their summer progress, when they slowly wound their way from Hampton Court to Woking and Guildford, and from there to Easthampsted in Berkshire, before returning to Windsor Castle.
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With much of her old relationship with her father rebuilt, Mary visibly mellowed. To Jane she sent cucumbers, knowing how much she adored them. She even found it within herself to be kinder to Elizabeth, praising her in a letter to her father as ‘such a child toward, as I doubt not, but your highness shall have cause to rejoice of in time coming, as knoweth Almighty God.’
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By the time the Court reached Windsor, Jane was seven months pregnant. On Friday, 12 October 1537, she gave birth to a son at Hampton Court, who was named Edward after Henry’s distant ancestor, Edward III, through the Beaufort line. At the christening on the 15th in the newly redecorated Chapel Royal, Mary was godmother and the 4-year-old Elizabeth, carried in the procession by her step-uncle, Edward Seymour, bore the chrism.
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But on 23 October, the queen, who so far had shown no sign of postnatal complications, became ill from heavy bleeding. As the day passed, she rapidly worsened.
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At 8 p.m. on the 24th, after she was given the last rites, the Duke of Norfolk scribbled a note to
Cromwell, summoning him to Hampton Court. ‘I pray you to be here tomorrow early to comfort our good master, for as for our mistress, there is no likelihood of her life, the more pity.’
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Jane died during the night and was buried in state at Windsor.
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But the infant flourished, and with Henry’s legitimate male heir safely in the nursery, the spotlight was off his daughters.

The Court spent Christmas in mourning for the queen, but its normal routine was restored by the spring, when the joint household of Mary and Elizabeth was further reorganized. The Sheltons were replaced by Lady Kingston, wife of Sir William Kingston, who had carried Mary’s train at Edward’s baptism and was one of her favourites.
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But the arrangement was temporary, since a year later Kingston was supplanted by Sir Edward and Lady Baynton.
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For Elizabeth, the major change was Lady Bryan’s transfer to serve as Edward’s governess in an independent princely household, up and running at Hampton Court in March 1538.
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In addition, senior male officers were appointed from the very outset, such was the child’s dynastic importance. Sir William Sidney was made chamberlain, Richard Cox (soon to be the boy’s almoner and later Dean of Christ Church, Oxford) was the tutor and Sir John Cornwallis was the steward.
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Elizabeth’s replacement governess was Blanche Herbert, Lady Troy, widow of Sir William Herbert of Troy Parva, who had once welcomed Henry VII to his house.
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To assist Troy, Cromwell appointed four gentlewomen, three gentlemen, two chamberers and a chaplain.
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One of these gentlewomen was Katherine Champernowne, nicknamed ‘Kat’, who in or about 1545 would marry
John Ashley, Elizabeth’s second cousin
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and a gentleman waiter in Prince Edward’s household, who would teach the boy to play the virginals when he was older. Another was Blanche Parry, whom her aunt, Lady Troy, had nominated.
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Both Kat and Blanche would stay with Elizabeth for the rest of their lives and each, in turn, would become her principal gentlewoman after her accession to the throne.

After Jane Seymour’s death, the relationship between the Court, the prince’s household and the joint household was relatively porous.
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Mary was sometimes with Elizabeth in Hertfordshire, but more often at Court or visiting her brother at his nursery in her capacity as godmother, spoiling him with presents. Elizabeth spent most of her time in Hertfordshire, but made a number of visits to Hampton Court, Greenwich and Richmond.
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As New Year’s gifts to their half-brother in 1539, Mary sent ‘a coat of crimson satin embroidered’ and Elizabeth ‘a shirt of cambric [i.e. fine linen] of her own working’.
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