The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  Catherine Knollys to Will Somers:

  January 5, 1558. Basle.

  Will:

  Your insults must be answered. You speak of my dishonouring the King my father. If he were my father, did he not dishonour me by never acknowledging me as his own? (He acknowledged Henry Fitzroy, made him Duke of Richmond—the offspring of that whore Bessie Blount!) Why, then, should I acknowledge or honour him? First he seduced my mother before her marriage, and now you say he subsequently cuckolded her husband. He does not deserve honour, but disdain. He was an evil man and brought horror wherever he went. The only good he did, he did merely as a by-product of evil: his lust for my aunt, Anne Boleyn, caused him to break from the Pope. (Thus the Lord used even a sinner for His purposes. But that is to the Lord’s credit, not the King’s.) I spit on the late King, and his memory! And as for my cousin, Princess Elizabeth (the daughter of my mother’s sister, naught else), I pray that she may . . . no, it is too dangerous to put on paper, regardless of the trustworthiness of the messenger or the receiver.

  Go thy ways, Will. I want no further correspondence from you.

  Will Somers to Catherine Knollys:

  March 15, 1558. Kent.

  Catherine:

  Bear with me yet a little. In your wonderfully muddled letter I sensed one essential question; the rest was mere noise. You asked: If he were my father, did he not dishonour me by never acknowledging me as his own?

  You know the answer: He was taken out of his true mind by that witch (now I must insult you again) Anne Boleyn. She tried to poison the Duke of Richmond; would you have had her try her hand on you as well? Yes, your aunt was a witch. Your mother quite otherwise. Her charms were honest, and her thoughts and manner honest as well. She suffered for it, while your aunt-witch thrived. Honesty seldom goes unpunished, and as you know, your mother did not have an easy berth in life. He would have acknowledged you, and perhaps your brother as well (though he was less certain of his parentage), if the Witch had not prevented him. She was jealous, very jealous of your sweet mother, although, God knows, she gave the King ample cause for jealousy: the admiration of all the world was not enough for the Witch, she must have the services of all the male courtiers as well. Well, as she herself said, the King, having run out of earthly honours for her, provided her with the crown of martyrdom. Ha! All who are killed are not martyrs. She sought to ally herself with Thomas à Becket and even Thomas More, but it was not to be. She has failed in her transparent bid for posthumous honour and glory.

  And now take this journal, and make peace with yourself. If you cannot, then save it for your . . . relation, the Princess Elizabeth, against the time when . . . I, too, must say no more than this. It is dangerous, and even my wattly old neck does not find the feel of a rope particularly appealing. I cannot give it into her hands now, although as you have made clear, she is the obvious choice. Spies surround her, and she is watched constantly. Mary wants to send her back to the Tower, and make sure she never emerges again.

  How I came about the journal is this: I was, as you know (or perhaps you do not; why should we always assume our private histories are of general importance, and known to all?) first seen by Harry, the King, when my master, a wool merchant in Calais, happened to court. I was not a jester then, just a young man with an hour to pass in the galleries. I amused myself as I customarily did when without the more interesting offices of sack or wine: I talked. The King heard; the rest, as the common people say, is history. (Whose history?) He took me into his service, gave me cap and bells, bound me to him in more ways than I was at the time aware. We grew old together; but here I must set down what the young Harry was. The eye of the sun, that blinded us all . . . yes, even me, cynical Will. We were brothers; and when he lay dying in that stuffy chamber in Whitehall, I was the only one who had known him young.

  But I digress. I was speaking of the journal. When I first came to Harry in 1525 (just before the Witch enthralled him), he was keeping a sort of daily log, all full of rough notations. Later—after the disgrace of Catherine Howard, his fifth so-called Queen—when he was so ill, he began a personal journal to beguile the time and take his mind from the daily pain in his leg and the growing factions about him. Oh, yes, daughter—he felt himself to be losing control. He knew the parties forming about him, waiting for him to die. So he lashed out, in the open; and secretly, he wrote it all down.

  Toward the end, he could only make the roughest notes, which he (eternal optimist) planned to expand later. (Why, only one month before he died, he ordered fruit trees for his garden that would not bear fruit, at the earliest, until ten years hence. An irony: I hear they bloomed last year, and Mary had them cut down. If she must be barren, then the royal garden must perforce imitate the royal person.) He never did; he never will. I enclose them here, along with the rest, with my own notes and explanations. I hesitated to deface the journal, but when I read it, it was as though Harry were talking once again, and I was ever wont to interrupt him. Old habits persist, as you can see. As well as I knew him, though, the journal showed me an unknown Henry—proving, I suppose, that we are all strangers, even to ourselves.

  But I began by saying how I came to possess the journal. The answer is simple: I stole it. They would have destroyed it. They have destroyed everything else remotely connected to the King, or to the Old Times: first the Reformers and now the Papists. The Reformers smashed the glass in every church, and the Papists, so I hear, have gone one step further in bestiality, so that even I hesitate to write it. The Queen’s agents have taken Harry’s body—her own father!—from its grave, burnt it, and thrown it into the Thames! Oh, monstrous!

  This journal, then, is his last earthly remains. Will you be so unnatural a daughter as the Queen, and burn it, as well? If you are not his daughter (as you maintain), then be to him a better daughter than his true-born.

  How humourless this is. Humour is, indeed, the most civilised thing we have. It smooths all raw edges and makes the rest endurable. Harry knew that. Perhaps I should employ a jester of my own, having evidently outrun my own calling.

  The blessings of your enigmatic God upon you,

  Will

  Enclosed herein is the journal.

  I feel constrained to note: Bessie Blount was not a whore.

  The

  Journal

  of

  Henry VIII

  I

  Yesterday some fool asked me what my first memory was, expecting me to lapse happily into sentimental childhood reminiscences, as dotty old men are supposed to enjoy doing. He was most surprised when I ordered him out of the room.

  But his damage was done; and I could not order the thought out of my mind as easily. What was my earliest memory? Whatever it was, it was not pleasant. I was sure of that.

  Was it when I was six? No, I remember when my sister Mary was born, and that was when I was five. Four, then? That was when my other sister, Elizabeth, died, and I remembered that, horribly enough. Three? Perhaps. Yes. It was when I was three that I first heard cheers—and the words “only a second son.”

  The day was fair—a hot, still, summer’s day. I was going with Father to Westminster Hall to be given honours and titles. He had rehearsed the ritual with me until I knew it perfectly: how to bow, when to prostrate myself on the floor, how to back out of the room before him. I had to do this because he was King, and I would be in his presence.

  “You never turn your back to a king,” he explained.

  “Even though you are just my father?”

  “Even so,” he answered solemnly. “I am still your King. And I am making you a Knight of the Bath today, and you must be dressed in hermit’s clothes. And then you will re-enter the Hall in ceremonial robes and be made Duke of York.” He laughed a little dry laugh—like the scudding of leaves across a cobbled courtyard. “That will silence them, show them the Tudors have incorporated York! The only true Duke of York will be my son. Let them all see it!” Suddenly he lowered his voice and spoke softly. “You will do this bef
ore all the peers in the realm. You must not make a mistake, nor must you be afraid.”

  I looked into his cold grey eyes, the color of a November sky. “I am not afraid,” I said, and knew that I spoke the truth.

  Throngs of people came to watch us when we rode to Westminster through Cheapside. I had my own pony, a white one, and rode just behind Father on his great caparisoned bay. Even mounted, I was scarcely any taller than the wall of people on either side. I could see individual faces clearly, could see their expressions. They were happy, and repeatedly called blessings on us as we passed.

  I enjoyed the ceremony. Children are not supposed to enjoy ceremonies, but I did. (A taste I have never lost. Did that begin here, as well?) I liked having all eyes in Westminster Hall on me as I walked the length of it, alone, to Father. The hermit’s robes were rough and scratched me, but I dared not betray any discomfort. Father was sitting on a dais in a dark carved seat of royal estate. He looked remote and unhuman, a King indeed. I approached him, trembling slightly, and he rose and took a long sword and made me a knight, a member of the Order of the Bath. In raising the sword, he brushed lightly against my neck, and I was surprised at how cold the steel was, even on a high summer’s day.

  Then I backed slowly out of the hall and went into the anteroom where Thomas Boleyn, one of Father’s esquires of the Body, was waiting to help me change into my rich red ceremonial robes made especially for today’s occasion. That done, I re-entered the hall and did it all again; was made Duke of York.

  I was to be honoured afterwards, and all the nobles and high-ranking prelates were to come and pay homage to me, recognizing me as the highest peer in England—after the King and my older brother Arthur. I know now, but did not understand then, what this meant. The title “Duke of York” was the favourite of pretenders, and so Father meant to exact oaths of loyalty from his nobles precluding their later recognizing any pretenders—for, after all, there cannot be two Dukes of York. (Just as there cannot be two heads of John the Baptist, although some Papalists persist in worshipping both!)

  But I did not understand this. I was but three years old. It was the first time I had been singled out for anything of my own, and I was hungry for the attention. I imagined all the adults would cluster about me and talk to me.

  It was quite otherwise. Their “recognition” consisted of a momentary glimpse in my direction, a slight inclination of the head. I was quite lost in the forest of legs (for so they appeared to me; I scarcely reached any man’s waist) which soon arranged themselves into clusters of three, four, five men. I looked about for the Queen my mother, but did not see her. Yet she had promised to come. . . .

  A bleating fanfare announced that the dishes were being placed upon the long table running along the west wall of the hall. It had a great length of white linen upon it, and all the serving dishes were gold. They shone in the dull light, setting off the colour of the food within. Wine servers began to move about, carrying huge golden pitchers. When they came to me, I demanded some, and that made everyone about me laugh. The server demurred, but I insisted. He gave me a small chased silver cup and filled it with claret, and I drank it straight down. The people laughed, and this caught Father’s attention. He glared at me as though I had committed a grave sin.

  Soon I felt dizzy, and my heavy velvet robes made me sweat in the close air of the packed hall. The buzz of voices above me was unpleasant, and still the Queen had not come, nor any attention been paid me. I longed to return to Eltham and leave this dull celebration. If this were a festivity, I wanted no more of them and would not envy Arthur his right to attend them.

  I saw Father standing somewhat apart, talking to one of his Privy Councillors—Archbishop Morton, I believe. Emboldened by the wine (for I was usually somewhat reluctant to approach Father), I decided to ask him to allow me to leave and return to Eltham straightway. I was able to approach him unobtrusively as I passed the clots of gossiping nobles and courtiers. My very lack of size meant that no one saw me as I moved closer to the King and stood back, half-hidden in folds of the wall-hanging, waiting for him to cease talking. One does not interrupt the King, even though one is the King’s son.

  Some words drifted to me. The Queen . . . ill . . .

  Was my mother, then, prevented by illness from coming? I moved closer, straining to hear.

  “But she must bury this sorrow,” Morton was saying. “Yet each pretender opens the wound anew—”

  “That is why today was necessary. To put a stop to all these false Dukes of York. If they could see how it hurts Her Grace. Each one . . . she knows they are liars, pretenders, yet I fancied she looked overlong at Lambert Simnel’s face. She wishes it, you see; she wishes Richard her brother to be alive.” The King’s voice was low and unhappy. “That is why she could not come to see Henry be invested with his title. She could not bear it. She loved her brother.”

  “Yet she loves her son as well.” It was a question disguised as a statement.

  The King shrugged. “As a mother is bound to love her son.”

  “No more than that?” Morton was eager now.

  “If she loves him, it is for what he recalls to her—her father Edward. Henry resembles him, surely you must have seen that.” Father took another sip of wine from his huge goblet, so that his face was hidden.

  “He’s a right noble-looking Prince,” Morton nodded, so that his chin almost touched his furred collar.

  “I give you his looks. Edward had looks as well. Do you remember that woman who cried out in the marketplace: ‘By my troth, for thy lovely countenance thou shalt have even twenty pounds’? Pretty Edward. ‘The Sun in Splendour’ he called himself.”

  “Whereas we all know it should have been ‘The King in Mistress Shore’s Bed,’ ” Morton cackled. “Or was it Eleanor Butler’s?”

  “What matter? He was always in someone’s bed. Remember that derisive ballad about ‘lolling in a lewd love-bed’? Elizabeth Woodville was clever to exploit his lust. I do not wish to belittle the Queen’s mother, but she was a tiresome old bitch. I feared she would never die. Yet we have been free of her for two years now. Praised be God!”

  “Yet Henry—is he not—” Morton was clearly more interested in the living than the dead.

  The King looked about him to make sure no one was listening. I pressed further into the curtain-fold, wishing myself invisible. “Only a second son. Pray God he will never be needed. Should he ever become King”—he paused, then lowered his voice to a whisper as he spoke the unspeakable words—“the House of Tudor would not endure. Just as the House of York did not survive Edward. He was handsome and a great soldier—I grant him that—but at bottom stupid and insensitive. And Henry is the same. England could survive one Edward, but never two.”

  “It will never come to that,” said Morton smoothly. “We have Arthur, who will be a great king. The marks of greatness are already upon him. So learned. So stately. So wise—far beyond his eight years.”

  “Arthur the Second,” murmured Father, his eyes dreamy. “Aye, it will be a great day. And Henry, perhaps, will be Archbishop of Canterbury someday. Yes, the Church is a good place for him. Although he may find the vows of celibacy a bit chafing. Do you, Morton?” He smiled coldly, a complicity acknowledged. Morton had many bastards.

  “Your Grace—” Morton turned his face away in mock modesty, and almost saw me.

  My heart was pounding. I pressed myself back into the curtains. They must not ever know I was nearby, and had heard. I wanted to cry—indeed, I felt tears fighting their way into my eyes—but I was too insensitive for that. The King had said so.

  Instead, after I had stopped trembling and banished any hint of tears, I left my hiding-place and moved out among the gathered nobles, boldly talking to anyone I encountered. It was much remarked upon later.

  I must not be hypocritical. Being a prince was good sometimes. Not in a material sense, as people suppose. Noblemen’s sons lived in greater luxury than we did; we were the butt-end of the King’s “ec
onomies,” living and sleeping in Spartan quarters, like good soldiers. It is true we lived in palaces, and that word conjures up images of luxury and beauty—for which I must take some credit, as I have worked hard to make it true, in my own reign—but in my childhood it was otherwise. The palaces were relics of an earlier era—romantic, perhaps, steeped in history (here Edward’s sons were murdered; here Richard II surrendered his crown), but decidedly uncomfortable: dark and cold.

  Nor was it particularly adventuresome. Father did not travel very much, and when he did he left us behind. The first ten years of my life were spent almost entirely within the confines of Eltham Palace. Glimpses of anything beyond were, for all practical purposes, forbidden. Ostensibly this was for our protection. But it had the effect of cloistering us. No monk lived as austere, as circumscribed, as dull a life as I did for those ten years.