The Last White Rose (75 page)

Young, handsome and charming, c.1513. Anon.
(Bridgeman)

Henry VIII

In his prime. A copy at Chatsworth of Holbein’s portrait in a lost fresco at the Palace of Whitehall.
(Photo,
author’s collection)

Old, ill and merciless, 1540s. Portrait medal by Steven van Herryck.
(Photo, author’s collection)

Penshurst Place was a favourite residence of Henry VIII’s victim, the Duke of Buckingham, and gives us some idea of his vast wealth and magnificence.
(Bridgeman)

(above)
Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chief minister. Convinced that the White Rose families were a danger, he destroyed them in 1538 by inventing the so-called ‘Exeter Conspiracy’. Early seventeenth century copy of a portrait by Holbein from The National Portrait Gallery.
(Photo, author’s
collection)

(left)
Bishop John Fisher, beheaded in 1535 for refusing to accept Henry VIII’s break with Rome. He encouraged the plan to replace the king with Mary and a Yorkist king consort.
(Photo, author’s collection)
 

(right)
A young Katherine of Aragon, c. 1504–5. Her failure to give Henry VIII a male heir heightened his sense of insecurity and fear of Yorkist conspiracies.
(The Trustees of
the 9th Duke of
Buccleuch’s Chattels
Fund)
 

(left)
The Lady Mary (Mary I) in the 1540s. Bastardized by her father, there are hints that during the 1530s she was ready to replace him on the throne and take a Yorkist husband as her consort – Reginald Pole.
(By kind permission
of Viscount De
L’Isle from his
private collection
at Penshurst Place,
Kent, England)
 

Cardinal Reginald Pole (1500–58), Clarence’s grandson. During the 1530s the Yorkists hoped to make him king consort. Henry VIII saw Pole as a dangerous rival and sent assassins to Italy to kill him.
(Photo, author’s collection)
 

(left)
Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury. Daughter of Edward IV’s brother, the Duke of Clarence, she was the last Plantagenet. In 1541 Henry VIII had her beheaded without trial as part of his campaign to exterminate the White Rose families.
(TopFoto)
 

(right)
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517–47), beheaded by Henry VIII who suspected he was planning to seize the throne  – the only ‘evidence’ being that he had added the coat of arms of a Saxon king of England to his heraldic achievement.
(Photo,
author’s collection)

Copyright

Constable & Robinson Ltd
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First published in the UK by Constable, an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2010

Copyright © Desmond Seward, 2010

The right of Desmond Seward to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

ISBN 978–1–84901–802–9

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