The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  But I was learning other things at Father’s behest. Every day the old ambassador would come to tutor me. He was Stephen Farr and had served Richard III, Edward IV, and Father on embassies to the Low Countries, to France, to Spain, and to the Pope and Emperor for over twenty years. He had a round face and a high red colouring that belied his years, although he must have been near seventy. Once I mentioned this and he said, “That’s my secret, you know. Being fat. People trust fat men. It’s the lean ones that seem possible dissemblers. Tell me, Your Grace: whom would you readier suspect of treason or plots—a fat person with a smooth face, or a lean one with a face like a withered apple? Could Friar Tuck have been evil? Or, conversely, could the Sheriff of Nottingham have been plump? Of course not. Employ only fat ambassadors, I beg you.”

  I laughed. (Some could accuse me of having chosen Wolsey on that basis, had they been privy to our conversation that day.)

  “It’s no joke, Your Grace, I assure you. People put much stock in appearances. And first feelings and impressions are never erased. The world is full of people who have a peculiar gift for sizing things up immediately. Jealous people call it ‘rash judgment.’ It is not that at all. I have heard”—he stood up and came toward me, a playful look on his face—“that Your Grace is an expert archer. That you draw the longbow with great accuracy. Tell me—on your best days, do you not hit the mark from the very beginning?”

  I nodded. And on bad days, it was just the reverse.

  “It is the same with people. The best judges never miss the mark. And from the very first.”

  “What has this to do with me?” I was anxious to get on with the lesson and impress him with the many facts I had memorized for his benefit since last time.

  “Everything. First, you must develop this uncanny skill in yourself, just as you developed your skill at riding or music. There is no greater gift a King can have. And, second, you must play to that gift in others.”

  “How?” How could I change a stranger’s impression of me? I, who could not even change my own father’s?

  He had turned and walked over to the window. He seemed old and tired. His cloak stirred the reeds. He stopped at the window and heaved a sigh. As well he might. The November rains had come and were pelting against the small panes of glass. His back seemed rounded; I had not realized how old he was.

  Suddenly he swung round and was reborn. He walked differently, almost jauntily, and his head was high. Watching him, I forgot November and thought of sun and summer.

  “You see?” He stopped in front of me. “It is all in the bearing, the demeanour. Actors know that. With a change of robe and a slight stoop, they go from young to old, beggar to king. It is simple: for a King, do like a King.”

  He sat down beside me, glancing toward the door. “And now I fear the King will come in and see that we are somewhat behind.” He seemed embarrassed at what he had just said, as if he wished me to forget it as quickly as possible.

  “Have you learned the things I told you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I replied. I glanced over at the fireplace. I wished I could add another log to the fire, as my fingers were chilled. But there were no more there. Father allowed only six logs per day until after New Year’s, no matter how foul the weather. I blew on my fingers. “First, France. There are sixteen million Frenchmen. They are the most powerful country in Europe. As late as my father’s exile, Brittany was an independent duchy. But when King Charles VIII married Anne of Brittany in 1491, it became part of France. The French are our enemies. Our great King Henry V conquered nearly all of France—”

  “Not all, Your Grace,” admonished Farr.

  “Nearly half, then,” I conceded. “And his son was crowned King of France in Paris! And I shall recapture those lands!”

  He smiled indulgently. “And how many Englishmen live in the realm?”

  “Three million. Three and a half million!”

  “And sixteen million in France, Your Grace.”

  “What matter the numbers? An Englishman is worth twenty Frenchmen! They are terrified of us. Why, French mothers frighten their children with threats of les Anglais!”

  “And English mothers frighten their children with cries of bogymen.”

  “We still have Calais,” I persisted.

  “For how long? It is an unnatural outpost.”

  “It is part of England. No, I mean to pursue my heritage! To recapture France.”

  “Have you been reading those Froissart things again, Your Grace?”

  “No!” I said. But it was not true, and he knew it. I loved those chronicles of knights and their ladies and warfare, and read them late at night, often when I should have been sleeping. “Well—perhaps a little.”

  “A little is too much. Don’t fill your head with such things. They are silly and what is worse, dangerous and outmoded. Any English King who attempts to recapture France now would risk his life, his treasury—and being ridiculed. A King can perhaps survive the first two. But the third, never. Now, then, have you memorized the general map of Europe?”

  “Yes. The French have swallowed up Brittany and gorged themselves on Burgundy. And Maximilian, Emperor—”

  “Of what?”

  “The Holy Roman Empire.”

  “Which is neither holy nor Roman nor an empire,” he said happily.

  “No. It is merely a conglomerate of German duchies yoked with the Low Countries.”

  “But Maximilian has some twenty million nominal subjects.”

  “United on nothing,” I parroted.

  “Exactly.” He was pleased. “And Spain?”

  “Ferdinand and Isabella have driven the Moors out, and Spain is Christian once more. They have eight million subjects.”

  “Very good, Prince Henry. I believe you have been studying—in between Froissart.” He reached out and cuffed me playfully. “Next we will discuss Ferdinand’s schemes, and the history of the Papacy. Pope Julius is very much a part of all this, you know. He seems to be personally trying to demonstrate Christ’s statement: ‘I came not to bring peace, but a sword.’ Read further in the notes I gave you and read all the dispatches in the red bag. They cover the correspondence during my years in France.” He stood up stiffly. He was pretending we had come to the end of our lesson, but I could tell it was because he was so uncomfortable in that room. The fire was nearly out, and our breath was visible.

  “I forgot,” he said. “Tomorrow is St. Martin’s Day, and so there will be no regular lesson.”

  That was disappointing. It seemed that whenever we began anything, it was interrupted by the constant procession of saints’ days. There were more than a hundred of them in the year. Why couldn’t the saints be honoured by going to Mass? Why did they require that everyone stop work as well?

  “And Your Grace—please tell the Queen how happy I am with her news, and that I am praying for a safe confinement and a fair new Prince.”

  He bowed once and hurried out, back toward normal warmth and people. It was no matter; I could not have asked him, even had he stayed. I would never ask my tutor why he knew something I did not. The King had not told me of this, nor had the Queen. Why?

  I walked over to the window. The rain had changed to sleet and was pelting against the walls and window. The window was poorly fitted, and small particles of sleet were working their way inside with no hindrance.

  The window overlooked not the palace garden, but the ditches and outhouses. I hated all those ugly, straggling things attached to the palace, but especially the open, stinking ditches. When I was King I would have them all covered over. When I was King . . .

  The driving sleet had already covered the structures, making them white and smooth. But not pretty. They were no more pretty than a skeleton, which could be equally white and smooth.

  A violent shiver drove me from the window to the dying fire.

  VII

  It was true, what Stephen Farr had said. The Queen my mother was with child. She was confined in February, 1503, on Cand
lemas Day, and delivered not of an heir, but of a stillborn daughter. She died nine days later, on her thirty-seventh birthday.

  Even today I must hurry over those facts, state them simply, lest I stumble and—rage? cry? I do not know. Both, perhaps.

  There were many days of official mourning, days while the sculptors worked hurriedly to carve the customary funeral effigy that would sit atop her mourning-car. It must be an exact likeness, so that it would appear that she was still alive, clad in her robes and fur, as the cortege wound through the streets of London from the Tower, where she had died, to Westminster, where she would be buried. The people must see their good Queen again, must carry this last picture of her in their minds. Last impressions, too, were important. I wanted to tell Farr that.

  But I would not see her again. Never, never, never . . . And when I saw the wooden image I hated it, because it seemed so alive, and yet it was not. They had done their job well, the carvers. Especially as they had had to work from a death-mask and not from life. But then, she was but thirty-seven, and had not thought to sit for her funeral effigy. No, not that.

  I heard the King weeping, late at night. But he never came in to my chamber, never tried to share his sorrow with me. Nor did he acknowledge mine, save for a curt announcement that we were all to attend the funeral.

  The day of the funeral was cold and foggy. The sun never shone, but turned the mist blue, as if to drown us in eternal twilight. Torches blazed in the London streets even in midday as the funeral procession wound its way from the Tower to Westminster, to the beat of muffled drums. First came the three hundred yeomen of the guard, then the hearse, a built-up carriage some twenty feet high, all in black, pulled by eight black horses, with the (to me) hideous effigy of the Queen all smiling and in royal robes atop it. Then followed thirty-seven young women, one for each year of her life. They wore white, white which seemed like part of the mist, and carried white candles. Then came the King, and Margaret, and Mary, and I.

  The ordeal did not end with the procession. Once inside Westminster Abbey, I still had a Requiem Mass and a eulogy to endure. The hearse was driven to the end of the nave where it awaited the next, the awful, part: the burial.

  I believe Warham celebrated the Mass; I do not recall. But a young man rose up to deliver the eulogy. Someone I had never seen before.

  “I have composed an elegy for the Queen,” he said, “which with your gracious permission I should like to read.” The man’s voice was strangely compelling, yet gentle.

  The King nodded curtly. The man began. He had written it as though the Queen herself were taking leave of us all. That had hurt the most; she had said nothing, no farewell to me. Now this man was attempting to repair the omission—as if he had known. But how could he have known?

  Adieu! Mine own dear spouse, my worthy lord!

  The faithful love, that did us both continue

  In marriage and peaceable concord,

  Into your hands here I do resign,

  To be bestowed on your children and mine;

  Erst were ye father, now must ye supply

  The mother’s part also, for lo! here I lie.

  Adieu, Lord Henry, loving son, adieu—

  Our Lord increase your honour and estate. . . .

  His voice, his very presence, brought an extraordinary peace to me. It was not the words in themselves; it was, instead, a great, reaching compassion. Perhaps the first I had ever known.

  “Who is he?” I leaned over to Margaret, who always knew names and titles.

  “Thomas More,” she whispered. “The lawyer.”

  That night as I prepared for bed, I was more tired than I had ever been. It had been dark for hours; by the time we had left the Abbey the slight daylight was long fled.

  At my bedside was a posset. I smiled. Nurse Luke would have seen to it, would have remembered me, even though she no longer had charge of me. I picked up the goblet. The contents were still warm. They tasted of honey and wine, and something else. . . .

  I slept. But it was not a normal sleep. I dreamed I was standing at the end of the garden at Eltham. And the Queen came toward me, looking as she had the last time I had seen her—laughing and healthy. She held out her hands to me.

  “Ah, Henry!” she said. “I am so happy you will be King!” She leaned forward and kissed me. I could smell her rose-water perfume. “Such a lovely King! Just like my father! And you will have a daughter, and call her Elizabeth, just as he did.”

  I stood up, and as happens miraculously in dreams, I was suddenly much taller than she, and older, although she remained unchanged. “Stay with me,” I said.

  But she was fading, or retreating, I could not tell which. My voice changed to desperation. “Please!”

  But she had already melted into something else: a strange woman with a pale, oval face. I feared her. The woman whispered, “For a King, do like a King!” and laughed hysterically. Then she, too, faded.

  I woke up, my heart pounding. For an instant I thought there must be someone else in the chamber. I drew aside the bed-curtains.

  Nothing but six squares of moonlight, exactly reproducing the panes of my window. But it had seemed so real. . . .

  I lay back down. Had my mother really come to me? No. She was dead. Dead. They had put her into her tomb that afternoon. Later, Father would erect a monument on the spot. He had said so.

  With no one to overhear or stop me, I cried—for the last time as a child.

  VIII

  How fitting it was, then, that the next change in my life had to do with my coming manhood.

  We had left Greenwich and removed to Father’s new showpiece, Richmond, where he intended to spend the next few weeks awaiting better weather and attending to affairs of the realm. Each time I came there, I noticed something different. Now I saw that he had put down polished wooden floors on top of the stone. It was a great improvement. And the new panelled wooden walls were far superior to the old-fashioned bare masonry. It would be good to wait for spring here.

  But the ice was still on the bare branches of the trees when Father summoned me into his “work closet,” as he called it. It was a small panelled room off the retiring room, with its own fireplace which was, as usual, so meagrely lit it was scarcely functional. I always took a surcoat when I received a message that the King wanted me.

  He scarcely looked up when he heard me come in. He was bent over an array of papers on the flat, scarred table that served as his desk. I was expected to stand mutely until he decided to acknowledge my presence.

  Eventually he did so by muttering, “Another appeal about these cursed vagrants!” He shook his head, then suddenly turned to me. “And what do you say about it? More to the point, what do you know about it?”

  “About what, Sire?”

  “About the poor laws!”

  “Which?” There were so many of them.

  He raised his hand and pointed to his ear.

  “The one against quacks and fortune-tellers? On their second offence they have one ear cut off. On the third offence they lose the other ear.” I remembered the Welshwoman at Arthur’s wedding feast. I wondered if she still retained her ears.

  “But what if the . . . soothsayer wears the cloth and claims his revelations are divinely inspired? What then?”

  “It would depend entirely on what his revelations were.” I had meant it in sarcasm, but the King nodded in approval.

  “You surprise me,” he said tartly. “I would have thought—”

  He was interrupted by an official from one of the neighboring townships. When Father was at court, he held a sort of business open-house on Tuesdays, and this was Tuesday.

  The man entered, dragging something. It was a large, torn net. He held it up in distress. Evidently the King was supposed to gasp when he saw it. Instead he just grunted.

  “Well?”

  “Your Grace, look at the state of this crow-net!”

  “It is unfit for capturing anything smaller than a buzzard. Are you much troubl
ed with buzzards in Oatlands?”

  “We need new crow-nets, Your Grace. When we sow this year—”

  “Then buy them,” he said curtly.

  “We cannot! The law says each town must provide adequate crow-nets to trap rooks, crows, and choughs. But we cannot, because of the taxes levied this year—and we cannot afford to pay the taker of crows his accustomed price, and—”

  “God’s blood!” The King leapt up and looked around accusingly. “Who let this beggar in?”

  The man cowered in the midst of his crow-net.

  “Yes, beggar!” the King roared. I was surprised at how loud he could speak when he chose. “Where is your licence? Your begging licence? You are required to have one, since you are begging outside your normal township limits. Do you expect me to pay for your cursed crow-nets? The taxes are levied on all my subjects! God’s blood, you’ve had a respite for years—”

  The man gathered up his spread nets like a woman bringing in laundry before a storm. “Yes, Your Grace—”

  The King flung a coin of some sort at him. “Put this in your alms-box!”

  When he was gone, the King asked calmly, “And what is the law regarding alms?”

  “If one should give alms into any place besides the lawful alms-box, he shall be fined ten times the amount of the alms he gave.”

  He beamed at me, as his mother used to when I successfully conjugated an irregular Latin verb. “You know the law, then. And will you apply it? No nonsense about the poor, and a Golden Age where we shall all be one and dance on the village green together, festooned in crow-nets?” He looked away. “It is natural, when one is young. . . . I too had ideas, when I was—how old are you?”

  “Eleven, Sire.”

  “Eleven.” He had a faraway look. “When I was eleven, I was a prisoner of the Yorkists. Two years later things changed, and poor, daft Henry VI—my uncle, remember—was on the throne again. My other uncle, Jasper Tudor, Henry’s half-brother, took me to him in London. And when the mad King saw me, he said, so that everyone nearby could hear: ‘Surely this is he to whom both we and our adversaries must yield and give over dominion.’ Henry was a saint, but he was feeble-minded. A prophecy? Should he have been punished, then?”