The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  As Cromwell said jovially on his way out, as if remarking on the weather, “The Church in England has an income two and a half times that of the Crown’s. Pity it should go to Rome.” He bowed and was gone.

  I stared after him. Become head of the Church? Dismantle the ancient structure?

  The sun poured in the southern windows, at midday strength now. What Cromwell was proposing was revolution. To change everything in England and in the process free myself.

  The chamber was bright. I remembered how I had eagerly chosen furnishings for these rooms, more than twenty years ago. I had been happy to exchange Father’s scarred, old-fashioned furniture for the new, polished Italian fashions, to yank down his moth-eaten tapestries and order new.

  But to pull down the ancient order of things? To recreate a kingdom? The chaos. The dust. The hurtful transition, the time when all lay bare and ugly, divested of the old and not yet comforted with the new. But if the old were rotten? If God had decreed that it be torn away, as in ancient Rome? The corruptness, the decay, the structure that could no longer support itself?

  There was a prie-dieu in one corner of my chamber, a dark corner. Above it in a niche was an ivory statue of the Virgin, with a votive candle flickering beneath it, incongruous in midday. I went toward it, as I knew not where else to go.

  The Virgin looked at me, and for one quickly passing instant I saw my mother in her face. Then it returned to smooth ivory again. I prayed, asking guidance. But I felt nothing, heard nothing inside. I could not proceed without guidance; this was too momentous a decision.

  I left my kneeler and walked to my Privy Chamber. I would lie down and think awhile, perchance sleep.

  There was no one inside, for which I was thankful. My attendants assumed I would not rest in midday; doubtless they expected me momentarily in the outer chamber for dinner. I closed the door softly, and as I did so, something fell with a soft noise. It was Wolsey’s medallion, one he had had executed in Italy, showing a Roman scene. It—being of baked clay—crumbled on impact. Gently I gathered up the pieces. Was this the sign I sought? Or was it merely a loose nail in the wall that had caused the falling?

  My sleep that night was broken and restless. In the midst of my dreams came wheeling figures of monks and nuns. Some looked at me accusingly. Others just peaceably went about their bee-keeping and wool-weaving and cultivation, sometimes upside down. Then came visions of the Pope, who was sometimes Wolsey and sometimes Father. When Father wore the Papal tiara, he looked at me accusingly. “How has it all been spent? And what have you done with my realm? Given it an heir? Made new and just laws? Nay, that I doubt—” Even as he spoke, mercifully he faded away from my inner vision.

  I awoke—had I ever really been asleep?—in the pale sky before dawn. I reflected on the dreams. Father . . . Wolsey . . . the Pope. All my life I had been a dutiful son to one or the other, entrusting my most cherished longings and ambitions to them. Trying to please them and never succeeding. Always I fell short of the mark, some way or other. Then I would try again, only to be subtly told . . . just this or that is not quite right.

  Now it would end. Now I would begin, at long last, to be my own man. Down with that persecuting trio of nay-sayers. I arose determined to do battle with the only surviving member of the three.

  XLIII

  I called Convocation to convene immediately. This was important to my plan, as I wanted to take the churchmen by surprise, with no warning of what awaited them. When all the high-ranking churchmen (Convocation was a body representing the Church as a whole) were assembled, they were stunned to hear themselves charged with the treason of praemunire, or bringing Papal bulls into England without prior royal permission. Only the payment of a fine of a hundred thousand pounds could win them a pardon . . . the fine and an innocent document bewailing and acknowledging their evil transgression, signed by them all, and addressed to the King, incidentally titled Supreme Head of the Church in England. Such a simple thing, was it not? So much simpler than the endless plots and ploys of Wolsey’s, devised to wring Clement’s arm. All those envoys, all those courts, meant nothing compared to that piece of parchment with those seven devastating words.

  Convocation balked; it pleaded; it tried to excuse itself. But in the end it capitulated, paid the money, and signed the document. The highest ecclesiastical body in the land had just proclaimed its King to be its head.

  I waited for Pope Clement’s reaction with curiosity. Surely this would galvanize the stubborn yet weak-willed creature, and let him know I meant to proceed along the course of freeing myself and my country entirely from Rome. It would be so simple for him to sign a parchment freeing me from Katherine, thereby preserving England and its sweet income for the Church—almost as simple as Convocation signing its document.

  But no. The recalcitrant goat refused. He issued warnings telling me to cease my actions upon pain of excommunication. He forbade anyone to speak in favour of the annulment until the case had been “decided”—in Rome, presumably. Did the fool not understand that there would be no decision from Rome that would bind me? And if he truly wished things to be impartial, as he made believe, he would have put a ban of silence on any discussion of the case, not just on those in favour of the annulment.

  “If the Pope issues ten thousand excommunications, I wouldn’t care a straw for them!” I bellowed when told of his latest threat.

  Cromwell and Anne were present then. Anne looked gleeful; of late she had been questioning my steadfastness to the cause. She believed that I would waver. (They all thought I would. The old Henry would have, but not the new.)

  She clapped her hands. “Ah, good!”

  Cromwell merely smirked. “Now there’ll be jolly stirring in Rome,” he said.

  “Let the Pope do what he wishes on his side—and then he shall see what I shall do on mine!”

  What I intended doing on my side was to continue to disconnect the Church in England from its fountainhead in Rome, using Parliament as the instrument of destruction. I convened Parliament and set them on to the Church.

  The Parliamentarians were willing—nay, hot as dogs on a wounded stag’s trail. The Church had been injured, and they meant to bring her down.

  The first line of attack was to threaten to abolish the traditional Church payments of Annates to Rome. It was the most vulnerable part of the Papal hide. The Pope did nothing. Parliament went ahead and abolished Annates. The first spear had been driven home.

  Second came an act forbidding appeals to Rome, because the King was the highest authority and supreme in his own land.

  Third came a measure prohibiting Convocation to meet or legislate without royal assent, and allowing the King to appoint a royal commission to reform the canon law.

  Pope Clement did nothing but bleat and fulminate.

  Fourth came an act that, in effect, empowered the King to appoint all bishops. Close on its heels was another, vitally important to Clement: no longer would England pay tithes (known as “Peter’s pence”) to Rome.

  At bottom we are moved by only two things: love and greed. Both will make us risk our lives, when nothing else will. Surely this kick in Clement’s venerable money-bag would bring him to his senses.

  But no. He was either a fool or a genuinely good man. Since I knew full well he was not the latter, he must, perforce, have been the former.

  A final act concerned heresy charges. Rather than being decided by the Church, they must now be reported and judged by laymen. This measure was immensely popular among the people and caused the Church much discomfiture.

  Thus, by the time Parliament had done its work, there was little power left in the Church in England. I was its Supreme Head; its governing body could not meet or even appoint bishops without my consent; all money to Rome had been cut off. The Pope had lost the island subjects originally won by Saint Augustine in the sixth century.

  You must not think that all this happened quickly, or that nothing else transpired while Parliament sat. In fact I was stil
l involved in what the French so charmingly call a ménage à trois. I was still, officially, Katherine’s husband. We still kept state as King and Queen, still appeared at all festivities and receptions together. At the other end of the palace, Anne was lodged, still serving, officially, as Katherine’s maid of honour. It was an intolerable and yet ludicrous situation. The final irony was that this ménage a trois was different from all others in one essential respect: I was not sleeping with either of the women.

  And I was beset on all sides. Many at court who had originally supported me began to waver. People continued to cheer for “Good Queen Katherine” whenever she went outside, and to decry Anne.

  Anne and I often attended the Chapel of the Observant Franciscans beside Greenwich Palace. Usually there was a thought-provoking sermon from the pulpit, as well as the ever awe-inspiring Mass. When we came to Mass one blustery February day, however, I was attacked even from there.

  It was cold and damp inside the chapel; the braziers failed to keep the chill from sinking in. I saw Anne shiver a bit from time to time. She was so thin that even the furs she constantly wore did little to alleviate her constant shivers and shakes. She had been ill several times since Christmas.

  The friar began to speak. But instead of offering an interesting theological premise, he began to shout.

  “Do you remember the story of King Ahab?” he screamed. “King Ahab was King of Israel. But he abandoned God and turned to false gods. Yes, a King of Israel worshipped Baal! Evil as he was, there was one by his side still more evil: his wife, Jezebel. She urged him on to even greater abominations.

  “Elijah the Prophet tried to warn him. But Ahab was a creature of Jezebel, not the Lord! At length he coveted a vineyard near his palace. It was owned by a man named Naboth. He proposed to buy it from Naboth, but Naboth refused.

  “King Ahab was not used to being refused. He was crossed in nothing. So he went home and sulked. Jezebel asked what was troubling him, and when he told her, that wicked woman smiled and said, ‘Come, eat and take heart; I will make you a gift of the vineyard of Naboth.’ ”

  Here the friar paused and looked around fiercely, like an owl perched and searching for rodents.

  “And what did she do? She arranged a ceremony in which Naboth was given the seat of honour—then paid two liars to come in and charge him publicly with cursing God and the King. The crowd, believing this, dragged him outside the city and stoned him to death. Thus did Jezebel make a ‘present’ of the vineyard to her husband.”

  The congregation was silent now, hanging on every word.

  “But Elijah went to the King and said, ‘This is the word of the Lord: where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, there dogs shall lick your blood. And Jezebel shall be eaten by dogs by the rampart of Jezreel.’ ”

  By now one could hear the wind whistling outside, through the thick stone walls, so silent had it grown in the chapel.

  “Now there is in this land a similar thing. A King who has turned his back on God and God’s true vicar, and has gone whoring after false gods!

  “A King so greedy for money and worldly things that he will rob not only Naboth, but God Himself! A King who is besotted with his own Jezebel, a woman who is bringing about his ruin, and that of the Church.

  “I say unto you, as Elijah said unto Ahab: The dogs shall lick your blood!”

  Anne was pale. The congregation broke out into murmurs. The friar stared balefully at me. He expected me to stamp out, guiltily. I intended to disappoint him, and continued to sit calmly in the royal box.

  Later, in her apartments, Anne broke down and sobbed. She flung herself against me and begged me to hold her, in a manner I had never seen before.

  “Now, now, sweetheart,” I said. “If you are to be Queen, you must learn composure. You must not let every little thing any fool says upset you so. He was but a self-appointed prophet. Next week I shall have someone answer him from the same pulpit; you’ll see. Cheer up, sweetheart. Look. I have brought you—”

  “There’s more—more—I did not want to tell you—it would worry you—but I must—”

  She was babbling. Clearly the Scriptural references had upset her. Gently I took her hand and led her over to the fireplace, where we seated ourselves. Then I poured out a cup of wine for each of us and handed it to her. She took it with trembling hands.

  “Now, what possible stock can you put in what he said? He was a fanatic, wishing to frighten us. Like that absurd ‘Holy Maid of Kent’ with all her ‘prophecies’ who has been wandering round the countryside, proclaiming our doom.”

  “They hate me,” she said. “They hate me, they hate me—oh, it was dreadful!”

  “Not so dreadful. I have heard worse.”

  “No. Not the sermon. The . . . incident. They tried to kill me.”

  “Who?”

  “A mob of women. Last week. I was alone for supper in one of the small royal river-houses near the Tower. Then one of the house-servers came and told me there was a mob of seven or eight thousand women coming, armed with sticks and stones. They meant to set upon me as I left and kill me!

  “I looked out the window and saw them approaching. It was true! I rushed to my boatmen and got across the Thames just as they arrived. They set up a great howling and threw stones after me, screaming and cursing me!” She shuddered. “Everyone curses me. With so many curses, how can I hope to escape them all?”

  “Why did you not tell me this?”

  “Because . . . I did not wish to add to your worries. And because, in a peculiar way, until I told you, I could believe that it did not truly happen. Now it is real.”

  “A mob of demented women, nothing more. The kingdom is full of them. Remember that one out of every ten men is probably half-mad, and there are more than three million men in England. That makes for many madmen. It means nothing,” I assured us both. “It means nothing.”

  XLIV

  But of course it did. What she said was true. The people did not like her. This was partly because they were still so loyal to Katherine, and partly because they disliked for a King to marry his subject. My grandfather Edward IV had done so, and there was great resentment over it, even though he had not had to put aside another wife to do so. Yet such was my love and determination that that did not deter me.

  Meanwhile, the ménage à trois was growing ever more unbearable. On hunting trips and progresses I must be with Katherine, leaving Anne behind. Yet at York Place—Wolsey’s vacated London palace—Anne and I lived without Katherine, as there were no Queen’s quarters there, it being a former ecclesiastical dwelling. There Anne and I could pretend she was my wife and Queen; she could preside over banquets and entertainments by my side. But by next day, it would be over. There was always some ambassadorial reception for which I must repair to Westminster and the stolid Katherine.

  The aggravating situation reached its peak during the summer of 1531. It was now four years since Wolsey had called his “secret” tribunal to hear my case, and two since the ill-fated legatine court with Campeggio and Wolsey. I had just reached my fortieth birthday and was feeling more than usually melancholy about it. I had begotten my first child at eighteen; yet here I was, forty and without a legitimate heir.

  The summer months were to be spent at Windsor. Katherine seemed determined to dog my footsteps. If I went to the garden to walk alone, she followed, a bulky black figure in the bright sunshine. If I walked the gallery during a sudden thundershower, when rain fell like javelins on the hollyhocks and roses beneath the windows, I could be sure that she would appear from a door and walk behind me, like a detached shadow.

  Not only did she attempt to attach herself to me like the sticky substance glaziers use to hold glass onto leaded panes, she also tried to keep Anne away from me by forcing her to play cards hour after hour. As long as Anne had to sit and play ruff-and-honours with Katherine, she could not walk with me by the river or in the garden. All the time Katherine maintained an outward sweetness; all the time she was writing treasono
us letters to the Pope and Emperor. Only once did she reveal her true feelings toward Anne. During one of their interminable card games, Anne happened to hold a king.

  Katherine said, “You have good hap to stop at a king, Lady Anne. But you are not like the others. You will have all, or none.”

  This could not go on. I could bear no more. The very sight of Katherine made me shake with suppressed anger. I knew I had to leave, and the only way to do so was simply—to do so.

  I told Anne to make herself ready, and that we would leave early in the morning for a hunting expedition and progress.

  That night I felt an immense sense of freedom and exhilaration. One by one I was cutting the ties that bound me to a dead past and made me helpless and angry—Wolsey, the Pope, Katherine. Eagerly, I packed for the progress.

  WILL:

  Henry has been accused of cowardice for his habit of never seeing his so-called victim after he had made up his mind to rid himself of that person. He sneaked out of Windsor Castle at dawn without ever telling Katherine good-bye; he avoided seeing Wolsey at the end; he stalked away from the May Day joust when Anne dropped a handkerchief to someone Henry thought had been her lover, and never saw her again; he refused to see Catherine Howard or Cromwell after he learned of their “crimes.”

  But knowing the man as I did, I think it was rather prudence that made him act as he did. Both Katherine and Wolsey repeatedly said that if they could have had just an hour in his presence they could have persuaded him to change his mind. Well, he knew that and chose to absent himself, lest he falter. At bottom, he was rather sentimental and easily moved. Yet he knew what he must do, painful as it might be, and did not want to be dissuaded.