The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  “I believe Brandon believes—or so he will tell Clement’s envoy—that I am hunting in New Forest, some two or three days hence. He must seek to find me there.”

  “I shall so remind him,” Norris said, his face showing no surprise at these instructions. Even then I wondered how he had taught himself such a trick. He bowed and left to carry my message to Suffolk’s house.

  I hoped the Papal pet would enjoy his fruitless hunting trip. Perhaps a wild boar would cooperate and yield him some meat, though not the meat he was seeking.

  That meat must now attire itself for another day, I thought, heaving myself up; it must apply the sauces and garnishes to make itself palatable to its onlookers.

  Before I had finished this overlong task, Cromwell begged leave to see me. Gladly I sent the barber and perfumier away, particularly the latter. He had been offering several new scents for my pleasure, “to stir the sluggish winter blood.” But they served only to remind me of what had not stirred the night before. Now the offending odours hung in the air, heavy, accusing. Muttering, I turned to greet Cromwell.

  “Your Grace!” He had a grin on his face, and it sat so strangely on him chat I felt it boded ill.

  “What is it?” I tried to keep the alarm out of my voice.

  “Your Grace, I have here—our deliverance.” He flung out his arms, and two great scrolls rolled down them, like logs down a hill. I saw the Papal seals dangling.

  “God in heaven! I will not receive them! Say you were not allowed admittance to my chamber. You fool!”

  He shook his head, laughing, and came toward me, striding through the repulsive “winter blood” perfume-cloud like Moses through the Red Sea. “Nay, Your Majesty—all your prayers are answered.” His voice was soft.

  “The bulls,” I whispered. “The bulls!”

  “Yes.” He handed them to me reverently. “They just arrived at Dover on a midnight ship. The messenger rode straight here.”

  I unrolled them quickly and spread them out. It was true. Pope Clement had approved Thomas Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury and accepted his ordination.

  “Crum!” The nickname was born in that moment of exhilaration and complicity.

  “Congratulations, Your Majesty.” Again the eerie grin. “This means you have won.”

  I stared down at the parchment, at the Latin, at the heavy signature. I had won. It had taken six years since the first “enquiry” into my matrimonial case. The coveted parchment now felt so light, so attainable. Six years. Lesser men would have turned back, been intimidated, counted the costs. Lesser men would not now, in March of 1533, be holding the parchment that Henry VIII of England now held.

  It would be the last time I ever required approval or permission from another person to do or not to do anything.

  “Yes. I have won.”

  “And how does it feel?”

  “It feels right.”

  While the other Papal messenger was slogging his way along muddy March roads toward the New Forest near Winchester, I entertained his more successful compatriot at Greenwich. I toasted Clement with the best wines and enquired solicitously after his health and praised his bravery during his imprisonment, and so on. Then I packed his messenger straight back to the Continent on the first available ship. Cranmer I prepared for his consecration as Archbishop.

  “And quickly,” I explained. “Before Clement can change his mind. I see now why he sent the order to separate from Anne and take Katherine back. It was meant to go hand-in-hand with the patent for you to become Archbishop. I was not to get the one without swallowing the other—like a child taking purge-medicine in a cake. He sent them separately to guard against robbers or accidents en route. His mistake! God clearly favoured us in making sure the messengers did not meet up again in England.”

  “I thought it was Cromwell who made sure they did not meet,” said Cranmer quietly.

  “It must have been God’s will, or He would never have permitted it to come about so easily.” I dismissed it. “You will be consecrated at St. Stephen’s, here in Westminster. But first, my dear Thomas, we must discuss my actions, and my intentions. Doubtless you found them puzzling. How did they appear on the Continent?” Cranmer had spent January on a diplomatic mission to the Emperor.

  Cranmer’s clear blue eyes registered nothing. “They did not appear any way at all. Begging your pardon, Your Grace, your Great Matter was not on everyone’s tongues there as it seems to be here.”

  “Nonsense! Of course it is of great concern and importance to the Emperor! I think that you were more involved in your own ‘great matter’ while in Germany. Were you not? Well, you can bid farewell to her. A married Archbishop! Let that be known, and we will be discredited.”

  Still, Cranmer looked back at me unblinkingly. Really, there were times when he annoyed me.

  “Keep her as a mistress. Mistresses are allowed by the True Church; wives are not.”

  “Does that not strike you as hypocritical, Your Grace?” Again, the quiet question.

  Now I lost all patience. “God’s blood! Are you a Reformer? Do you intend to turn on me after you are in office? To become a Protestant Becket? Because if you have such intentions, my dear Thomas, I warn you: you will not succeed. I will not tolerate betrayal. So speak now—declare yourself. Do not practise the hypocrisy of which you are so intolerant in others.”

  A long pause—too long. Then: “I am your man.”

  “Good.” The cloying fragrance was still in the air. I wanted to get away from it. “Come. Let us sit over here, in the morning light.” I led him to a sunny window-seat. “It is complicated,” I began.

  “Do not condescend to me, Your Grace.”

  He was right; that was what I had been doing. I began again. “Our goal is that you replace the Pope as the highest spiritual authority in England. Thus, a decision made by you cannot be appealed over your head to the Pope. To do that, we must sever certain connections with Rome. Parliament is doing just that.”

  “How? By what authority?”

  “By its own authority. By what authority, after all, did Rome first assert her jurisdiction here in England? By her own. Yes! This whole intricate structure of the Church that you see in England—the cathedrals, the abbeys, the parish priests, the wandering, preaching friars, the monasteries—all rest on such a flimsy base of authority. Rome’s say-so! Which Parliament will now examine and repudiate.”

  “With what specific laws?”

  Ah! His mind now quickened to the legal, canonical subtleties of the issue. Good. Let him lose himself there. I smiled. “Two.” He looked surprised. “Only two. The first: the Act Forbidding Appeals to Rome. The second: an act providing for the nomination and consecration of bishops without consulting Rome first. I have not thought of a name for this one yet—something innocuous, I hope.”

  “I see. Rome will not have the power to name the clergy in England, nor to pass judgment on its subsequent actions. Rome will be impotent.”

  Why must he use that word? “Just so.”

  “Why should Parliament agree to pass such laws?” he asked blandly.

  “Because I have lulled them into believing the laws are as innocuous as their titles. I have gone to great lengths to paint a picture of myself hand-in-glove with Clement. Would such a loyal son do anything to harm his spiritual father? Of course not. These laws are but trifling matters, so they think. Whose name goes on a bishop’s roll-call . . . which court hears an appeal . . . it is not a matter of concern to common people.”

  He rose slowly from the window-seat and rubbed his forehead. “You are making a mistake,” he said, with great sadness.

  Now I must listen to yet another “warning.” I was beginning to accept it as one of the occupational hazards of kingship. I sighed and waited.

  “To use Parliament thus is to grant them a power you will regret. If they have the power to confer a right, they also have the power to take it away. Should they decide to do so later, and by your own will the Pope is divested of mo
ral, ecclesiastical, and legal authority in England, to whom will you turn for support? You are making Parliament King in England. I fear that, Your Grace. You are taking away a distant, inconsistent, but morally based ruling partner and replacing it with a nearby secular one.”

  Was that all? “I can manage Parliament,” I scoffed. “It is a child in my hands.”

  “Children grow up, Your Grace. And when your son is but a child, Parliament will be his elder brother. Who will rule then?”

  “I do not intend to let Parliament grow out of bounds. I shall trim it back after the break with Rome is complete.”

  “Trimmed hedges grow back fast, as any palace gardener will affirm. And in human beings, a taste for power is seldom lost.” He looked at me oddly, as if about to add something, then thought better of it.

  “It is all I have to use at the moment. Would you have me dispense with it entirely and rule by my own decree, like Nero? By heaven, what a lovely thought!” I smiled. “But I fear the people would never tolerate that. And I work and live with what is, not with what would be, should be, or could be.”

  I looked out the window at the muddy Thames sliding by, bleak and March-dismal.

  “Nevertheless, your warning is well taken.” I reached over and patted his shoulder. “I do believe you have some political instincts after all, Thomas. That’s a relief!”

  He smiled wanly.

  “Now to more pleasant things. Your consecration. It is a lovely ceremony. . . .”

  So it was. But more lovely, to my ears, was the simple one preceding it in a private chamber in Westminster. There Thomas Cranmer, in the presence of myself and discreet witnesses, solemnly protested that he did not intend to keep any oath of obedience to the Pope if it involved going against the law of the land, the will of the King, or the law of God. The first two were my creatures, and the third was certainly open to royal interpretation.

  The transition had begun.

  XLVIII

  Now it was Holy Week, which the new Archbishop prepared to celebrate in grand fashion, under my orders.

  “Must we have it all, Your Grace?” Cranmer looked as distressed as he dared. He indeed leaned toward the Reformers, but dared not openly show it.

  “Aye.”

  “Even . . . ?”

  “Even creeping to the cross on Good Friday. I myself will lead the procession of penitents.”

  Cranmer tried to smile.

  “ ‘Creeping to the cross’?” laughed Anne. “That ancient relic! My love, you will rub your knees raw.”

  “I intend to. It is necessary that I observe all the old forms, even the ‘ancient relics,’ to reassure the people that the break with Rome does not mean we are abandoning the True Faith. And after Good Friday comes Easter.”

  “When your new Queen is paraded out.”

  We were standing near a large window in the King’s chamber at Westminster, whence we had come to spend Holy Week. Young priests were going in and out of the Abbey below like a line of ants, carrying sheaves of willows for Palm Sunday on the morrow.

  “Yes. It is our own time of rejoicing; we have certainly spent more than forty days in preparation for this day.”

  She laughed, and the early April sunlight struck her face—all youth and hope she was, and I felt my heart sing within me. “We shall not wait until the sun rises on Easter. No, you shall come out with me on the first Mass of Easter—Easter Eve at midnight.”

  Her eyes danced. “My new gown is cloth-of-silver. It will look best by torchlight!”

  “Like a faerie queen,” I said.

  The entire court was to celebrate Palm Sunday together. I had made it clear that that was my wish, and although they could not know why it was important to me, they naturally acceded. Some hundred of them assembled in the Great Hall of Westminster Palace just prior to the High Mass in the Abbey adjoining. Colours were drab; they were saving their best and newest for Easter Eve. Oh, what a blaze of colour there would be that night!

  Anne was with her ladies; officially she was still but a lady of the court, serving a Queen who was no longer Queen but merely Dowager Princess of Wales; and no longer at court, either. Just so are appearances honoured which are absurd and fool no one, yet we are fond of them.

  She stood, Anne the secret Queen, surrounded by her own lady-servers, who were casting flirtatious looks toward the gentlemen of my Privy Chamber. These were generally young and well-favoured men from leading families. Norris, as my personal attendant, was the oldest, near my own age. The others ranged in age as low as Francis Weston, who was twenty-two.

  I thought back to the handsome young men who had crowded round my Privy Chamber when I first became King. Where were they now? William Compton, Edward Guildford, Edward Poyntz—all dead. Those remaining, like Carew and Neville, were aging boys, grown stout, with sagging jowls, yet with no more matter in their heads than twenty years ago.

  Fleetingly I wondered how Weston would look in twenty years. He was so pretty he looked almost like a she-man, and such did not age well; at forty they resembled over-experienced courtesans whose best experiences were past. He had best marry quickly, and well. Even then I noticed how solicitous Anne was of him. It was one of those things one takes in without being aware of it—like whether a certain tree has lost its leaves.

  Now Cranmer appeared before us, all stately in his glittering new robes of episcopal estate. He held up his hands and conferred a blessing upon us.

  A priest walked up and down, shaking holy water upon us from a silver vessel. Behind him came two servers, their purple penitential robes gleaming, handing out willow branches to each “pilgrim.”

  Cranmer blessed them. “As men long ago welcomed Our Lord into Jerusalem by honouring Him with palms, let us do the same in our lives. Keep and use these humble branches to the glory of God, and to aid you upon your spiritual journey.”

  Then he turned, slowly and gravely, and led us in measured steps into the Abbey, where he celebrated the Triumphal Procession into Jerusalem with a Mass so grand and so complete that no Papalist, no matter how ardent, could accuse us of leaning toward Lutheranism or abandoning the True Faith.

  Spy Wednesday. The day, traditionally, when Judas spied on Jesus, asking him questions, prying to find out where he would be the next day—so he could inform Caiaphas and the others and earn his thirty pieces of silver. All that day, most likely, Judas was asking softly worded questions: “My Lord and my Master—with whom shall you share the Passover meal?” Then must he wait awhile before asking offhandedly, “And on what street is the house where we must gather before sundown?”

  Spies. I hated spies. I could not imagine what a man must feel who spies. Nor a man who employs spies. It seemed to me that once a man began relying on spies, he put himself in their power. At first the information they feed him is true, but it is a bait to catch him, and then nothing is as it seems. I preferred to base my actions on what was obvious and could be seen with my own eyes.

  Night was falling, and it was time to go to the Spy Wednesday Mass—the public chanting of Tenebrae. In the great Abbey, all candles would be extinguished one by one—to reenact Jesus’ abandonment by everyone, down to the last disciple.

  The day itself had been one of gloom, and so the mood of despair and loss was already in the air. But it was intensified by the dirgelike chanting of the priests and the snuffing of all light in the great Abbey nave.

  It felt like a tomb—all cold and dark and enclosed by stone. I tried hard to imagine the mind of Our Lord as He found Himself alone on the earth. There was an awesome period stretching between the fellowship of the Last Supper and the glory of the Resurrection; theologians called this time Satan’s Hour. It was a time when Christ experienced all human desolation, felt Himself to be abandoned by God.

  I shivered in my cloak. How quickly they ran to abandon Him! How soon the Passover wine and candles and warmth faded away. Our attempts to keep Satan at bay are so weak and pitiful. He always runs us to ground and we must stand and
face him—alone.

  I looked around me, but saw nothing. I could hear coughs and body movements, but all the men about me were hidden from my sight, and separate one from the other.

  This is how Satan rules—by separating us.

  But nothing can separate us from the love of God, Saint Paul says.

  Nothing save despair.

  Despair, then, is Satan’s handmaiden.

  Holy Thursday. Following the Last Supper, Christ washed the feet of the disciples, saying, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.” Now, as Kings of England had done time out of mind before me, I must wash the feet of beggars—as many beggars as I am years old. Now, in the well-lighted Chapter House of Westminster Abbey, forty-one poor men await me.

  I enter. They are seated on the stone bench that runs along one wall, looking around them in wonder. They are barefoot, not because they have removed their shoes, but because they have no shoes to remove. . . .

  I kneel before the first man, representing the first year of my life. He is old, scrawny like a diseased fowl, and his feet are callused and hard as claws. I pour the warm, rose-scented water over them, dry them gently with a new linen towel.

  The next man has festering sores all over his feet. The greenish pus runs into the water, clouding it in its silver basin. I beckon to Norris to bring a clean basin for the next man. It takes over an hour until the last man’s feet are washed.

  During all this, I do not feel a thing. Except shame that I feel nothing.

  Good Friday. Fasting all day, shut up in our smallest, plainest room. No one at court is allowed to speak to anyone else, to smile, to sing, to eat, to wear anything but black. Even the church bells’ metal clappers are replaced by wooden ones, to make dull, muffled sounds. A single piece of meat is left out on the table to grow maggoty and remind us of the corruption that awaits us all.