The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  When I remember those contests, I cannot help but believe that Providence spared me, held me back from a severe punishment. It was that summer of 1506 cost Bryan his eye; and one of my comrades died from a blow in the head while jousting. The curious thing is that immediately after his accident, he seemed well enough. But that night he suddenly died. One of Linacre’s assistants (for Linacre had gone with the King) told me it is often so in head injuries. The bleeding takes place inside the skull, where it cannot be felt or stopped.

  We were shaken, frightened—and young, so that in just a few days’ time we were back riding toward one another on horseback. Thus quickly and naturally do we kill one another in memory as well as in deed.

  At night we would sup together, and then play our lutes and talk of our future conquests in France, where we would be brothers-in-arms. It was a good time for us, a little pause between what had come before and what must come after.

  Late at night, alone in my chamber, I found myself loth to sleep. Now that I was no longer confined, I relished my solitude after a day of boisterous companionship.

  At Greenwich I had two windows in my chamber. One faced east, the other, south. The eastern one had a window seat, and there I found myself often, near midnight. It was always darkest in the eastern part of the sky. By mid-August the slow, lingering twilights had gone, and night came earlier. The stars were exceptionally clear now. I tried to pick them out, as I had been studying astronomy. I knew a great number of the constellations already. The heavens and the stars intrigued me. I was impressed that eclipses and other phenomena could be predicted by mathematicians. I wanted to learn how it was done. Already they knew that the third full moon from now would be partly shadowed. How?

  I wanted to learn all things; to experience all things; to stretch and stretch until I reached the end of myself, and found . . . I knew not what.

  The small casement window was open where I sat. A hot gush of wind came in, and there was a distant rumble. Far away I could see bright flashes. There would be a storm. The candles and torches in my chamber were dancing.

  The wind was from the west. Without thinking, I felt myself at one with that wind, that hot, questing wind. I took my lute, and immediately the tune and the words came, as if they had always been there:

  O Western wind

  When wilt thou blow

  The small rain down can rain?

  Christ, that my love were in my arms

  And I in my bed again.

  Summer ended, and the King returned. Within a few hours of his arrival, he summoned me to his chamber. Someone had told him about the tournaments. If I had not expected it, I should have. There are no secrets at court.

  I fortified myself for the interview by drinking three cups of claret in rapid succession. (One of the changes I had instigated in Father’s absence was an abundant supply of unwatered wine in my chamber.)

  Father was in his favourite place: his work closet. (It was popularly referred to as his “counting house” since he did most of his finances there.) He was wrestling with a great mass of chewed papers when I arrived, his head bent over a veritable ball of them. I noticed, for the first time, how grey his hair was. He was without his customary hat, and the torchlight turned the top of his head to silver. Perhaps that was why he never appeared in public without a head-covering of some sort.

  “Curse this monkey!” He gestured toward the little creature, now impertinently crouching near the Royal Seal. “He has destroyed my diary!” His voice was anguished. “It is gone!”

  Evidently the monkey had decided to turn the King’s private papers into a nest, first by shredding the paper and then by trampling it.

  “Perhaps you should put him in the royal menagerie, Sire,” I said. Six months ago. I had always hated the creature, who refused to be trained like a dog for his natural functions, yet could not imitate humans in the matter either.

  “Yes,” he said curtly. “But it is too late. He has already destroyed that which was most dear to me.”

  Just then the creature shrieked and began climbing on the wall-hanging. Clearly he belonged elsewhere: if not actually at the bottom of the Thames (my choice for him), then certainly in the royal menagerie at the Tower, where all the other strange (and unwelcome) beasts presented to the King by various misguided well-wishers ended up. There were lions (the symbolism was overworked), large turtles (for perseverance), wild boars (some noble emblem or other), camels (for wisdom, I believe), and even an elephant (for memory?).

  “I am sorry, Father.”

  “You have other things to be sorry for.” He abruptly put down the tattered ball of papers. “Your conduct while I was away, for one. Did you think it would remain hidden from me?”

  “No, Sire.”

  “Why, then? Why did you do it?”

  “I don’t know. I had to.”

  He snorted. “You are a fool. One of your companions died. And I have been told that—” Suddenly he stopped, racked by a ferocious cough. I had never heard one so deep. When he regained his breath, he went on, “—that you met with Princess Katherine secretly, against my express wishes. No, I will not pause for you to deny it! You are a wilful, perverse boy! You will never make a King, never, never, never—” He was close to tears. Then he put his head down and wept.

  I left him in his distress, overcome with my own. Was he correct in what he had said? You will never make a King, never, never, never. . . . The words stung and ate at me. He had seen many kings, and he knew.

  XI

  During the autumn, the King’s cough worsened. It was no longer sporadic but became a permanent part of him, waking and sleeping. In November the blood first appeared in the sputum: a signpost pointing to death.

  How did he feel, seeing it? Of all the things God does to us, showing us our certain death is the cruellest. I pray that I may be spared such unambiguity when my time comes.

  The King carried on. And lived through that winter and the next.

  And so I was not to be a fifteen-year-old King. Nor a sixteen-year-old King. For which I thanked God nightly.

  I was not ready to be King; I was far too young. Should I become King now, I must inevitably have a Protector, someone who would rule for me in the interim. And how to dispatch that Protector once I came of age? Protectors often usurped the throne. One had to go back no further than Richard III for an example.

  I would have to deal with men many years older than myself within my own realm; men publicly my supporters but in truth out only for themselves. And there were the ever-present pretenders and factions. I had several Yorkist cousins; one in particular, the Duke of Suffolk, Edmund de la Pole, son of Edward IV’s sister, styled himself “the White Rose” and waited, grinning, in France, to move against me. And abroad, I must face rulers almost triple my age: Ferdinand, King of Spain; Maximilian, Holy Roman Emperor; Louis XII, King of France; Pope Julius. I would be a youth among a pack of veteran intriguers and dissemblers.

  Father had assiduously avoided any entanglements on the Continent, but that could not endure much longer, particularly since the French and Margaret of Burgundy (Edward IV’s sister, known as “aunt to all the pretenders”) persisted in tickling Yorkist fancies and harbouring pretenders and claimants to the English throne. Father had had to fight three pitched battles to win and defend his crown, and I, most likely, would have to do the same. How would I fare on the battlefield? I might make a good showing on the rigorously prescribed area of the tournament field, but a true battle was something else. Richard III had been brave, and a good fighter, it was said . . . but he was hacked in a dozen places, and his naked body slung over an old horse after the battle. His head bobbed and struck a stone bridge in crossing and was crushed, but no matter, he was dead. . . .

  There would be fighting, and a test, sometime, of whether I was worthy to be King. And I shrank from it. Yes, I must tell it: I did not want the test and prayed for it to fall elsewhere, at some other time, on some other man. I was afraid. As it came closer, I
no longer wished to be King, so acute was my fear of failure. When I was a little younger, I had blithely assumed that since God had chosen me for the kingship, He would protect me in all my doings. Now I knew it was not so simple. Had He protected Saul? Henry VI? He had set up many kings only to have them fall, to illustrate something of His own unsearchable purpose. He used us as we use cattle or bean-plants. And no man knew what his own end or purpose was. A fallen king, a foolish king, made a good example of something, was part of the mysterious cycle.

  The year I was seventeen, there were but two overriding concerns at court: when would the King die, and how would he die? Would he expire peacefully in his sleep, or would he remain an invalid for months, perhaps years, becoming cruel and distracted on account of the constant pain? Would he lie abed carrying on his affairs of state, or would he become incapable, leaving the realm in effect without a King for an unknown stretch of time?

  And what of Prince Henry? Who would rule for him? The King had appointed no Protector, although surely the Prince could not rule by himself. Such were their fears.

  Outwardly, things went on the same as ever. Father continued to meet with ambassadors and discuss treaties, to haggle over the precise meaning of this phrase or that as if the outcome would concern him in five years’ time. He would stop every few minutes to cough blood, as naturally as other men cleared their throats. He kept a quantity of clean linens by his side for this purpose. In the morning a stack of fresh white folded cloths was brought to his bedside; when he retired, a pile of bloody, wadded ones was taken away.

  Father convened the Privy Council to meet by his bedside, and I was present at a number of these meetings. They were dull and concerned exclusively with money: the getting of it, the lending of it, the protecting of it. Empson and Dudley, his finance ministers, were unscrupulous extortionists. Evidently a King’s main concern (to be attended to every waking moment) was the chasing of money. It seemed sordid. Was Alexander the Great concerned with such things? Did Caesar have to fuss about Calpurnia’s dowry?

  For Katherine’s dowry still had not been settled to Father’s satisfaction. He continued to berate Ferdinand’s ambassador and threaten to send Katherine back, to marry me to a French princess, and so on. He quite enjoyed it, I think, as other men enjoy bear-baiting. And it kept his mind from the bloody linens.

  But the minds of everyone else at court were focused on them. It was a matter of great concern how many he had used today, and how much blood was on them. Was it thick or thin? Red or pink? Or black? The laundryman and washwomen were paid handsomely for this information.

  At the Christmas festivities Father continued his slow, agonizing Dance of Death, while by convention all onlookers pretended not to see. It was treason to “imagine” the King’s death but at the same time not humanly possible to avoid it.

  He continued playing political chess, using his two remaining unmarried children as his principal pawns and collateral. In a macabre (or perhaps only self-deceptive) gesture, he included himself in the marriage negotiations along with me and Mary. Just before New Year’s he put the finishing touches on his grand Triple Alliance, a confusing welter of marriages designed to weld the Habsburgs and the Tudors into a splendid family edifice. He himself was to become the bridegroom of Lady Margaret of Savoy, Regent of the Netherlands; I was to marry a daughter of Duke Albert of Bavaria; and thirteen-year-old Mary was to marry nine-year-old Charles, grandson of both King Ferdinand and Maximilian, and in all probability a future Holy Roman Emperor. (Although the Holy Roman Emperor must be elected, the electors seem singularly blind to the merits of any candidates outside the Habsburg family. It is no more an “election” than that of the Papacy, but is for sale.)

  WILL:

  To the highest bidder, as Henry and Wolsey discovered firsthand when they tried to buy the election of the Holy Roman Emperor in 1517 for Henry, and then the Papal election of 1522 for Wolsey. Those offices do not come cheap, and Henry and his pompous, puffed-up ass of a chancellor were simply not willing to pay the full market value. Henry sometimes showed a streak of perverse frugality—perhaps as a sentimental gesture to the memory of his father?

  HENRY VIII:

  Happy with this accomplishment, the King retired to his death-chamber. He went into it shortly after New Year’s Day, 1509, and never left it again. He chose Richmond as the place where he wished to die.

  Yet the outward pose must be maintained. The King was not dying, he was merely indisposed; not weak, merely tired; not failing, merely resting. Every day he sent for me, and I spent several hours at his side, but he stubbornly refused to confide anything of real importance to me. He must play his part, as I mine.

  When I came into his chamber, I must not remark upon his one luxurious concession to dying: the logs piled high in the fireplace and the abnormal warmth of the room. Nor must I sniff or allude in any way to the heavy perfumes and incense employed to mask the odour of illness and death. The rose scent was cloying, almost nauseating, but eventually I became used to it—after a fashion. I was to be always alert and cheerful, to appear as blind and insensitive as Father had once pronounced me to be.

  In spite of the splendid large windows, with their hundreds of clear, small panes set like jewels in a frame, the hangings were ordered closed, shutting out the abundant light. From where he lay, Father could have looked out upon fields and sky, but he chose not to do so. Instead he lay on his back on a long couch, surrounded by pillows and the ever-present small linens. He would talk idly, or say nothing at all, just stare sadly at the crucifix above the small altar at the opposite side of the room. He was very devout, like all the Lancastrians—although not insanely so, like his half-uncle Henry VI.

  “Yesterday I noticed that you used a fork for eating,” he suddenly said. His voice was so low I had to strain to hear it.

  “Yes,” I replied. All the younger men and women at court used forks now.

  “French thing,” he said dreamily. “The French can be clever. To use a miniature trident at the table—yes—clever. I once had a safe conduct from the King of France. Did you know that?”

  “No, Sire.” Why do the old always ramble so? Naturally I made a vow at the time never to do so myself.

  “King Richard bribed the Duke of Brittany when I was in exile. Or rather the Duke’s treasurer, Peter Landois. In exchange for my life, he promised Landois the income not only from my earldom of Richmond, but from all my followers as well. Ha!” He gave a short laugh, followed by a paroxysm of coughing. It ended with a hideous gurgling sound and a soaked linen. He shook and shivered.

  “Let me put another cover here,” I said hurriedly, pulling up something folded at his feet. Not until it was spread out did I recognize it: the lion skin from that gruesome exhibition so long ago. The tail hung off the side of the couch, its bush of hair looking strangely like an ornamental tassle.

  “Better. That’s better,” he whispered. “The King of France—he said I would be safe there. And so I was. So I was. First I had to escape from Landois, but that was easy. I simply disguised myself as a servant to my own servant. I changed my costume in the woods. Then we rode as fast as possible for the border of France, Brittany was not part of France then, you know,” he added.

  “I know.” I looked at him, trying to see the young Welsh adventurer somewhere within him. But there was only an old man shivering under the covers in an overheated room.

  “Sometimes the French are our friends, sometimes our enemies. They harboured me, but when I became King they also harboured the Duke of Suffolk, Edmund de la Pole.”

  “The White Rose,” I said bitterly. “Darling of the Yorkists.”

  “Not only did they harbour him, they recognized him as rightful King of England, and honoured him as such! Oh, he had a merry time in the French court. I have finally been able to force the lying French to extradite him. Now he’s in the Tower. As long as he lives, you are not safe.”

  “Even though we have him in captivity?”

  “Y
ou will have to execute him,” he said matter-of-factly. “His life is a luxury you cannot afford.”

  I was stunned. I could not imagine myself executing someone simply for existing, or for having the wrong (or right?) blood in his veins. “I cannot!” I said in horror. “He has done nothing!”

  “He exists. That is enough.”

  “No!”

  “He fled abroad and allowed himself to be honoured as rightful King of England by a foreign court. His intentions are treasonous.”

  “Intentions are not deeds.”

  “Henry! In the name of God, this is vital for you to understand: he is your enemy. There can be only one King in a land, and if your enemies perceive you to be hesitant or soft-hearted, you will go the way of poor mad Henry VI. They are ruthless; you must be, too. You are all that stands between peace and anarchy. Your life is the one thing keeping another round of chaos at bay. Preserve that life. It is your duty as God’s chosen instrument!”

  “By taking an innocent life?”

  “He is not innocent! He is guilty; a foul, loathsome traitor!” He was becoming so excited that he sat up and beat his fists against the lion skin, feebly. “It does not matter what you know or do not know about finances; you can rely on my finance ministers, Empson and Dudley. Or about the workings of the Privy Council; Bishop Fox, the Lord Privy Seal, can tell you anything you wish to know, and guide you. But in the matter of protecting your throne, you can rely on no one besides yourself.” He fell back, exhausted by the exertion. “To be a King is to be an unnatural man. You must be hard where others are soft, and soft where others are hard. And—”