The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  He smiled in admiration. “As the Master Himself would have done.” His walk had an added jauntiness as he left the chamber.

  An interesting thought: What would Christ have done with Francis? It seemed to me that Our Saviour’s world had been clearly defined: partisans on one side and enemies on the other. Yet what of someone who spoke fair, yet hated Him in his heart? Was there an example of that in Scripture? There must have been. I vowed to find it. In the meantime, I prayed for fortitude in dealing with a man I now knew to be the nearest approximation on earth to His Satanic Majesty himself.

  WILL:

  Henry was ever wont to exaggerate, and see things in battleground terms. Francis was not the Antichrist, merely a dissolute Frenchman who saw life as a cosmic joke. He would no doubt be flattered to realize the signal honour Henry paid him in elevating him to such high ranks in the demoniac hierarchy.

  XXIX

  Whilst we met and took one another’s measure on the soft green fields of France, Francis and I, Bishop John Fisher of Rochester fulminated against the gathering, castigating us both.

  Although he had attended the meeting as part of Katherine’s retinue, he delivered a fiery sermon on the vanity of the entire idea, and while he had some valid points (namely, that all pleasure eventually turns to exhaustion and boredom; that man relies on the borrowed trappings of other animals for his clothes and adornments; that nothing lives up to our expectations) they applied equally to all of life as well, to the very fact of being born a human creature. His last point, that rain and hail and “strange skyward happenings” had wrecked the pretty pretend-palaces, summarized the whole meeting: the entente cordiale was insubstantial and immediately destroyed by the first breath of real politics.

  That did not stop me from being annoyed with Bishop Fisher, that nattering busybody. He had always been irritating and interfering. My grandmother Beaufort and he had been “thick as thieves,” as the saying goes. On her deathbed she had ordered me to “obey Bishop Fisher in all things.” Ha! My days of obedience had ended, although she could have no inkling of that. I paid little heed to the cantankerous old theologian, and certainly never sought his advice. But this public preaching on my foreign policy . . . it had to stop. I gave orders.

  Everywhere the clergy were publicly debating, denouncing, and pronouncing. The German monk, Martin Luther, had even gone into print with three theological tracts: On the Liberty of a Christian Man; Address to the Nobility of the German Nation; On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church of God. The last one was a direct attack on the Church in general and the Pope in particular, claiming that the prophecies in Revelation, Chapter 17, had come true at last. (“And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters. . . . And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. . . . And the angel said unto me . . . I will tell thee of the mystery of the woman. . . . The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. . . . And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.”) It was obviously the city of Rome, on its seven hills, and the Pope, to whom all kings owed allegiance.

  Pope Leo had excommunicated him, unless he recanted his opinions within sixty days. Luther’s answer was to burn the Papal bull in front of a cheering crowd.

  Cheering: for the people of Germany, the Netherlands, and Flanders had embraced Luther’s protests. It was as if they had long ago turned from the Church, had existed for a generation awaiting a leader to speak for them. He did not convert them; he discovered them.

  Charles, the new Holy Roman Emperor, immediately issued a decree suppressing Lutheranism in the Netherlands. The Humanists (whom he mistakenly believed had sowed the seeds for Lutheranism with their intellectual gibes at the Church) were expelled from the faculties of universities. Luther was called to a hearing before his superiors. He stated his beliefs, then said, “On this I take my stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.”

  The battle lines were drawn, and I found myself facing Luther as an adversary.

  Why did I take the Pope’s side? There are those who say that I meant merely to curry favour with the Pope, later to throw off my cloak to reveal my true colours—which is to say, no colour at all. To those critics, I have no religious convictions at all; I use religion to further my own ends. An equally insulting interpretation is that I am so inconsistent that I go first to one side and then to the other on the whim of a mood.

  The truth (to disappoint my critics and evil-wishers) is neither of these. I found Luther’s beliefs to be heretical and dangerous. Taken as a whole, they led to anarchy. They also rebelled against Christ Himself, Who plainly set up the Church.

  I believed the Church should be purified, not dismantled. And that is what I have done with the Church in England. It is simple! Why do people make the simple so complicated?

  As for my support of the Papacy: my eyes had not yet been opened by my own Great Matter. When I wrote in 1521, I wrote in sincerity and to the extent of my spiritual knowledge at the time. That is all God asks of any man. That he later grows spiritually should not be held against him.

  One of Luther’s heresies was in claiming that there were not seven Sacraments; that the Church (for mysterious, self-serving reasons of its own) had invented five of them. These five were Matrimony, Holy Orders, Penance, Extreme Unction, and Confirmation. Only Baptism and Communion remained. Under Luther’s interpretation, marriage was a legal contract; Holy Orders was unnecessary, for priests had no special powers; confession was something one did directly to God, not to a priest; Extreme Unction was a silly superstition; and Confirmation was a redundant version of Baptism. Christ had not performed any of them, therefore He could not have felt they aided in salvation.

  I believed—no, I knew—that Luther was absolutely wrong. Each of these Sacraments conferred grace; I had felt it come upon me when receiving them. I also felt called to refute him, on paper, lest he lead more souls to their damnation.

  I would find all Christ’s teachings on the matter, and those of every one of the doctors and fathers of the Church, from the very beginning up until today.

  It proved to be a formidable task. For upwards of four hours a day I laboured on the work. It required a staggering knowledge of theology, I was soon to discover. I had prided myself on my knowledge of the Churchmen and early Fathers, but culling the exact text for a minute philosophical point was an Herculean labour. I began to feel I lived among the dead, concerned only with the obscure opinions of those long since gone to dust, whilst ignoring the living and their distressingly selfish concerns about wages and room allotments. What was real? I began not to know, and as I shuttled back and forth between two disparate worlds, I became disoriented.

  In many ways I felt comfortable and soothed in the world of the mind, albeit the minds of dead men, for their thoughts, purified and preserved, were eternal. It would have been so easy to lose oneself here forever; a temptation, a siren call. . . .

  These were my labours by day. By night they were of another nature entirely.

  As I have said, I brought Sir Thomas Boleyn’s daughter Mary back from France, where she had evidently served under Francis—in a minor capacity, for he had a regular mistress already, Jeanne le Coq, a lawyer’s wife. In Richmond Palace I established a French suite of rooms (where Father had kept his wardrobe!). “I would explore France further,” I said, “and experience those aspects of living in which France is said to excel.” Mary must have the accoutrements necessary to duplicate her feats with Francis. She would duplicate, I would surpass. Yes, I carried my rivalry with him even this far. . . .

  The walls of the rooms were hung with tapestries depicting not Biblical scenes, but classical ones. French furniture was copied by my
cabinetmakers, and the mirrors and sconces favoured by French fashion were installed. Stepping over the threshold into the Pays de Gaul suite was like crossing the Channel.

  Mary awaited me on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, our assigned time. That in itself was French. The assignation. For the French prided themselves on their logic and rationality, and confined their lovemaking to prearranged trysts. One would think that would diminish the pleasure, but by divorcing pleasure from passion, it both heightened it and lightened it.

  All their positions had been catalogued and named, like their ballet steps. How pastel, how artistic they sounded; how far removed from anything to do with sweat, groaning, or fear.

  In France, so it seemed, the ancient, natural way of copulation had been entirely abandoned. Everything was from the rear or from the side. The moment of culmination they turned to poetry: la petite mort, the little death. Not, as in English, the moment of truth, the great anguish.

  Mary led me trippingly through these exercises. “The position for a King who has had a tiring day of Council meetings,” she whispered as she demonstrated one method.

  “Was it Francis’s favourite?” Sharing this woman with him, engaging in exactly the same acts in exactly the same body, was quiveringly arousing. “Did he do this—and this—and this—after his meetings?”

  Expertly Mary swam under me, bringing herself to la petite mort several times in succession, as if to avoid answering. That was another French fashion—no amoureuse worthy of the name was satisfied with only one petite mort. No, there must be a series, the more of them the better.

  “What of Francis?” I kept whispering.

  “It was never—he was never—” she murmured obligingly. “He was smaller than you.”

  Such exercises and flattery were only the beginning of her artful repertoire. There were many other things that decency does not permit me to record, even here.

  But in carrying pleasure to its furthest bounds, I exhausted pleasure. It grew to a surfeit. (As Bishop Fisher had predicted in his famous sermon: “First, the joys and pleasures of this life, be they never so great, yet they have a weariness and disgust adjoined to them. There is no meat or drink so delicate, so pleasant, so delectable, but if a man or woman be long accustomed therewith, he shall have at length a weariness of them. . . .”)

  All this while I was labouring in the theological thickets to complete my Assertio Septem Sacramentorum. I found a curious similarity between my two endeavours, in that preciousness ultimately kills all vitality in its subject. Theological hair-splitting and over-refined lovemaking techniques are cousins, bleeding their respective victims dry.

  XXX

  At length the book was finished. It was two hundred and fifty pages, all in Latin. I was pleased with it. Only then did I show it to anyone else, so that I was in effect presenting them with a fait accompli. (See how very French I had become; I thought in French phrases even beyond the bounds of pleasure.) It was to Thomas More and Wolsey and John Longland, Bishop of Lincoln, my confessor, and Edward Lee, canon of Lincoln, that I gave copies. And Wolsey and Longland and Lee returned them with nary a criticism or correction, and with letters attached that praised it.

  Only More’s did not come back. He held it three weeks past the time the others kept it. I knew then that he was actually reading it, and finding fault with it.

  More had lately been lured from his private life as a London lawyer. In Court of Star Chamber he had defended a Papal ship seized as forfeit under maritime law. His defence was so brilliant that Wolsey, who had represented the Crown in the matter, immediately set about to harness More’s talents for himself. He induced More to begin serving as Master of Requests—which meant that he must receive petitions presented to me, both at court and on progresses. From there I had named him to the Privy Council and had made it clear that he was to be part of the English party at the Field of Cloth of Gold. Little by little he had been sucked into court life.

  More requested to speak with me upon returning the manuscript. I could have received him in the audience chamber, seated upon my throne. But I preferred to speak with him man to man, not King to subject. He should come to my “counting room” and I would have warm, friendly firelight there, not the torches of ceremony.

  He was older now. But of course it should be so. A number of years had passed since I had, boyishly, given him the astrolabe to prove a point. He had been a grown man when my mother died. Now we were both men, and things were ordered differently. I did not have to send presents to prove that I was King and master.

  He bore the manuscript in a box.

  “I hope there are no changes,” I said, “as the presentation copies for His Holiness are already being prepared—by monks, of course. They have expertise at these things, at calligraphy.”

  “Not so much, anymore,” he murmured. He handed me the box. “I find only one fault in it. You stress the Pope’s authority too strongly. Perhaps it should be more slenderly stated.”

  Was that all? Relief came in waves.

  “Luther attacked it so viciously, I felt bound to shore it up again.”

  “You overstate the gravity of the office,” he said. “Pope Leo will buckle under the weight of it when he reads it. He is not meet to carry it. Nor, I think, is any other man on earth, the way you have presented it.”

  “But what did you think of the thing as a whole?” The question burst out.

  “I thought”—he paused—“it was an admirable work of scholarship. You have clearly shown much diligence in pursuing the references—”

  “The thinking! I mean the thinking, the analysis, the deductions! What of them?”

  More drew back, as if from a physical assault. “They were certainly . . . persuasive. And thorough.”

  But of course they should be persuasive, convincing.

  Suddenly I did not care to pursue it further. He had said “admirable,” “diligence,” “persuasive,” and “thorough.” Grudging compliments. Not the highest accolades. What he meant was competent, not stirring.

  He had seen no genius there.

  Well, what of it? Was he competent (that word again) to judge?

  “I thank you for your time in reading it,” I said. “I will take your suggestions into account.”

  In my head, not in the manuscript, which was even now being copied out on the finest vellum by the obedient monks.

  “We were glad of your company in France this summer past,” I said. “And of your willingness to undertake the diplomatic mission to Calais, regarding the return of Tournai.”

  He smiled. Or did he? His face seemed to have no provision for smiling. All its lines were sombre and downward.

  “You find yourself in our midst at last,” I said.

  “Yes. A surprise to myself,” he said.

  “You will learn to feel at home here,” I said. “For it is truly where you belong. The most brilliant minds in the realm should serve their sovereign, as thinking is a higher tribute than rubies. And one that a loyal subject should gladly present his King.”

  More bowed silently.

  I had not meant it to be presented thus. I had meant us to sit before the fire, exchange confidences, gain confidences, foster camaraderie. But he was not warm, despite his amiable manner. Amiability can function as an effective disguise for absolute coldness. I felt his coldness, stronger than I felt the heat of the fire.

  “My mind is yours to command,” he said.

  That was not what I meant, not what I intended at all. It was he who had interpreted it so, twisted my well-meaning into something sullen and sinister.

  Oh, let him go! Why did I care so very much what he thought and felt?

  He was just a man, like all the rest.

  WILL:

  The book—a great presentation copy bound in gold, with inner leaves of parchment—was dispatched to Leo X. Reportedly the Pope immediately read five pages and said he “would not have thought such a book should have come from the King’s grace, who hath been occup
ied necessarily in other feats, seeing that other men which hath occupied themselves in study all their lives cannot bring forth the like.”

  The Pope, grateful for the unabashed support of a king, conferred on Henry a long-coveted title: Defensor Fidei—Defender of the Faith. Now Henry would no longer feel naked beside his theologically bedecked fellow monarchs.

  The little book was an astounding success. Many translations were printed, in Rome, Frankfurt, Cologne, Paris, and Würzburg, among other places, and they sold as quickly as they came from the printing presses. A total of twenty editions was produced before the Continental appetite for it was sated. It was at that point that Luther entered the fray, hurling insults at its royal author. Henry, disdainful of replying, directed More to defend the work.

  HENRY VIII:

  My theological darts had struck home. I knew that by the vehemence with which the stung Luther responded. The “spiritual” monk unleashed a volley of low-born insults against me in his pamphlet Martin Luther’s Answer in German to King Henry of England’s Book. He called me “by God’s ungrace King of England” and said that since this King “knowingly and consciously fabricates lies against the majesty of my King in heaven, this damnable rottenness and worm, I will have the right, on behalf of my King, to bespatter his English Majesty with muck and shit and to trample underfoot that crown of his.”

  “Well,” I said to More, summoned before me, “you can see the level of this Luther’s mind. In the privies.” More turned the pages of the pamphlet listlessly. Even his expressionless eyes registered surprise (and disdain) when he read the “muck and shit” sentence.

  “I want you to respond to him,” I said. “In the same manner.” He was poised to protest, so I cut him off. “It is beneath the dignity of a King to write in this vein, any more than the Pope could do it. But a subject can write under pseudonymns. As you wrote your Utopia.”