The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  “I thought it best to warn you, so when you are called to swear, you will know,” I continued. “You will swear first, and then your household. It will only take a few moments. Commissioners will come to your household, at crown expense. You will not be disrupted.” I sounded apologetic, and that would never do. “See that you take it,” I said.

  “And if, in my conscience, I cannot?”

  “Then you must die a traitor’s death. For you will have acknowledged yourself a traitor, according to law.”

  “Then surely the Princesses Katherine and Mary must die as well. For they, above all others, would damn themselves in so swearing.”

  “You must not consider others when taking the Oath. That is no concern of yours. Consider only yourself, and your immortal soul.”

  “I shall remember that, Your Grace.”

  “You can hide no longer!” I said. “The Oath will hunt you out, even here. Know that.”

  “The best thing is to maintain my silence. Silence gives consent, in common law.”

  “That is not good enough! There are all sorts of silences. Few of them are good. They range from the hateful, through the mocking, to the indifferent. Silence is never an ally.”

  “Perhaps it may be mine,” he said.

  “Do not delude yourself,” I answered. “He who keeps silent is my enemy. It must be so, when I make it so easy to declare yourself my friend. The expense, the trouble, are all mine. All you must do is accept. Like the guests summoned to the divine wedding feast.”

  “Yes, but the invitation was not as open as it appeared. Guests wearing the incorrect apparel were turned away, and sent to hell. Would you do that to me?”

  “To refuse to put on the correct apparel is insulting!” My voice was rising. “Especially when the host has provided it!”

  Just then the moon rose, a great pale disk. Her rays bathed the observing platform in a silver pallor.

  “Our guest,” said More. “Or is she our hostess? Sometimes it is hard to be sure.”

  Just so, he turned my adamant warning into a pleasantry. I longed to shake him, shout louder. But he, who had heard and hearkened to the words of dead scholars and saints—what more could a living man do to capture his attention?

  “ ‘He who is not with me is against me,’ ” I finally said. “The law will interpret it so.”

  “I hear you, Your Grace,” said More. But had he truly?

  We watched the eclipse begin, and could make out the great dark shadow creeping across the splotched face of the moon, higher now, and more lonely. The two lenses used together enabled us to see how very dark and irregular the features of Man in the Moon were.

  “Of what do you suppose they are made?” More wondered, aloud. “Ashes? Or some substance we do not have on earth? Could they be liquid? No, then they would shimmer and we would see them sparkle. Could they be tarlike?” He sounded like an excited little boy.

  Whatever they were, they were fading from sight as darkness fell upon them.

  “Could there be anything living there?” I thought of the tales of moon creatures and the old pagan goddesses and Artemis and Diana. The moon seemed a sentient being, one so involved in our lives.

  “God has seen to that.”

  God. Always such a surety with More.

  “Aye. Although we will never know in what way.”

  “He has populated the earth with odd creatures enough,” More said. “Enough for three lifetimes of study.”

  Should I say anything else? I had come to warn More, to advise him. I had tried to do so, and had been rebuffed. How many warnings was I obligated to give? Was I quit now? Could I enjoy the eclipse in peace?

  “Thomas,” I said, “my business tonight was serious. Deadly serious. I wish you to know that. If you have any questions—”

  “I will ask them, Your Grace. Surely you can believe that.”

  “Then ask them!”

  The compromised lunar disk was left on her own as we faced one another.

  “I have none. I know the answers. Once one knows the answers, however much one dislikes them, then there are no more questions to ask.”

  “But do you know the answers?”

  “Yes, Your Grace. I knew them before you came here. But I thank you for coming.”

  “As long as you understand.”

  “I understand,” he insisted. “I understand.”

  The eclipse having ended, we made our way slowly down the slope to his house, dark now. Off to the right I saw a small building, and I asked, out of a sort of politeness, what it was.

  “I call it the New Building,” he said.

  “But what is it used for?”

  “All the things the Old Building had not room for,” he answered.

  “Private things?” I understood—or thought I did.

  “Yes.” He actually stopped, and framed his words carefully. “Private things.”

  I was to sleep in the upper chamber in the rear of the house. The bed had been fitted out with a feather mattress, and laid over with furs. I must confess that by the time I reached the chamber I was groggy and ready for sleep. I would have slept on a stone altar.

  “I thank you, Thomas,” I murmured. As soon as the door was shut, I staggered toward the bed, and fell upon it, neglecting to remove my clothes. I flung myself full length and passed into a deep sleep. I had meant to think upon Thomas and his obvious disregard of my warnings, but I thought of nothing at all.

  Sometime in the middle of the night I awoke, as wide awake as if I had slept a fortnight. The little candle across the room jumped and danced. It had burned halfway down from where I had lighted it. Hours before? Moments? I had no sense of time.

  I knew only that I could not sleep. A peculiar sort of energy flowed through me, and I knew I must be up. I swung my feet over the side of the bed, fished for my shoes. They were there, cold and hard, the left transposed with the right, so sleepy had I been upon retiring.

  I padded across the room to take hold of the candle, use it to find a praying place. For I knew that was what I needed to do: to pray. I had not prayed in days. My soul was starved for it. I grasped the candle, held it aloft. Of course there was a devotional niche, complete with kneeler and pictures of the saints: the one essential in a Thomas More room.

  But in passing over to it I saw a deep yellow light shining from outside the window. It came from somewhere on the grounds. Was it the cooks, lighting the day’s fires? Yet it seemed too early. Then I remembered that More had let most of the servants go.

  It was in the New Building. Could there be thieves? More had refused to tell me what purpose the New Building served. Had he secreted his jewels there? Perhaps he had kept more than he admitted.

  No matter; thieves were there. I would not wake More; I would rather confound them myself.

  I attired myself fully, then drew on my cloak. I crept down the darkened stairs and made my way to the great outer door which opened (I remembered) from the Great Hall to the outside.

  Poor More. He had so little, had given up so much, and yet men sought to rob him. Anyone associated with court, no matter how remotely, was always assumed to have hidden riches.

  The building was close now. I pressed at the door and was relieved to find that it swung open easily. I came inside and shut it.

  Now. I was obviously within range of the robbers. The thought that I could confront them, frighten them away, somehow relieved my conscience. I had brought More to lowered circumstances (or had he brought himself?), and yet I could personally prevent their being lowered further. One somehow ransomed and redeemed the other.

  Inside the building, it was icy cold—colder, even, than outside. That startled me, and I had to draw my mantle closer about me as I felt my way about. I could not ascertain where the light had come from, for all seemed to be dark within. Perhaps the thieves had extinguished their light.

  I pressed my way past one door, taking care not to make it squeak on its hinges. Now I could see light, faint light. It o
riginated around a corner.

  I flattened myself against the wall and peered around it.

  I expected robbers, filling their bags with More’s reduced belongings. They would be laughing, flinging the things in, desecrating them, already spending the money in their heads.

  But there was no intruder there. Only More himself, bare to the waist, kneeling on a pallet.

  Over his shoulder was a whip. But no ordinary whip. I recognized it as the “discipline”: a small metal ring with five chains suspended from it, each chain ending in a hook. As I watched, he beat himself with it, slowly, rhythmically, reciting all the while, “It is for You, Lord, for You. Let my imagination and my memory be effaced. For You, Lord, for You.”

  He rocked back and forth on his knees, thrashing himself and chanting.

  His entire upper body was cut and bleeding. There were slashes all over his back. But they were superimposed on flesh that was already irritated and infected. Yellow pustules were scattered like the blooming of evil little flowerets all over his chest and back, and his whole skin was bright red. There was not an inch of unmarked skin on his upper trunk.

  “Forgive me, Lord, that my sufferings do not approach Yours,” he intoned. “I will increase them, so as to please You.” Then he picked up the “discipline” again, and began to flog himself. He gasped with each fivefold lash, yet continued. Blood oozed from the new-created gashes down to his waist, where it dribbled to the floor.

  “I cannot begin to appreciate Your sufferings, O Lord,” he murmured. “This as yet feels like pleasure.” He whipped himself until his shoulders were completely raw and laid open. “It is not enough!” he cried, flinging himself forward, prostrate upon the ground. “I cannot go the full length. Only give me strength.”

  There was no crucifix before him, yet he seemed to see it.

  His hand—twitching now, but obedient to his will—reached out and grasped the “discipline” once more. He held it out at arm’s length, then flicked it full in his face.

  “As You wish, Lord, as You wish.”

  Blood spurted from his face, ran down onto his shoulders, where it traced an obscene pattern.

  “I will give You more,” he murmured, as though in a trance. The whip hit him full in the face again. I feared for his eyes. “More, O Jesus.” Another lash. The blood was swelling now like a spring stream, running down his neck.

  Suddenly he flung himself prostrate before his inner vision again. “Enough? But, O Lord, I would do so much more . . . give You so much more!

  He lay motionless for long moments, then eventually pulled himself to his knees.

  “As You wish, Lord,” he repeated, and crawled toward a dark garment lying nearby. He began pulling it on, and as he did so, he screamed in pain.

  “As You will, Lord!”

  He continued to draw it down. But it stopped at his waist, and was sleeveless. A hair shirt. I knew then what had caused the hideous, tormented redness of his delicate skin, and brought about the boils and infections. The ends of the horsehairs—tied, to be prickly and blunt—worked their way into the skin of the wearer within a few hours. Hair shirts were woven and constructed thus, to torment the flesh of the wearer.

  Worn on top of fresh lashings and scourgings—what agony would it inflict? Too little for More and his torturing God, evidently.

  Now he was fastening a linen shirt over his hair shirt. Did he wear the hair shirt always? Every day? For how long had he worn it? I would never know the answers to those questions, as More would never give them, and I could never ask them.

  But I knew the answer to my own tormenting question. More would seek the full punishment of the law as yet another “discipline.” And I would, perforce, be the one chosen to administer it.

  I hated him in that moment—hated him for making me his scourge. That was all I had been all along: his scourge, his temptation, his test. I was not a man to him, but an abstract trial, a representation of one of his confounded Platonic ideas. He had never seen me at all, but only the symbol he had chosen to assign to me.

  I despised him. He was a blind fool, taking living beings and recasting them in the image of his abstract honour.

  Farewell, More, I bade him silently. May you enjoy the “discipline” you have chosen. Remember always that it is your discipline, not mine. For I would keep you with me, veil mine own eyes, imagine that you were as I would cast you in my own imagination. . . .

  Before he could come upon me, I was out the door and into the free cold air, then back to my own chamber. When I awoke again it was mid-morning, and the sun was cheerful.

  “Good morrow, Your Grace,” said More, at breakfast. “I trust you slept well.”

  “Indeed,” I said. “As well as you.”

  “Then did you pass the night calmly,” he said. “For never have I slept a fairer sleep.”

  The smile was remote.

  “May you sleep many another such,” I replied.

  LX

  It was May Eve, and I lay at Oxford. I had come to inspect Wolsey’s “Cardinal College,” which of course had been abandoned upon his death. I was considering whether to rescue it and put it under royal sponsorship or to let it continue to languish. The Great Quadrangle, a beautiful cloister-courtyard, only half constructed, had suffered through four winters’ ravages. It must be restored and finished soon, or it would be a complete loss.

  But royal colleges took a great deal of money. My grandmother Margaret Beaufort had founded two at Oxford’s young rival, Cambridge. To honour my reign, and to further the higher learning, I should found and support one, I knew. But the money! O, the money!

  Now I had spent the day with the learned deans, hearing all the reasons why I should assume the responsibility for Wolsey’s lost college. Bishop Fisher, Katherine’s fierce partisan and holder of the chair of theology at the University, sought to speak with me and to persuade me. I refused to hear him. I would not speak to the man under the present circumstances. Oxford would soon be needing a new theologian for his chair! Was he aware of that?

  In the small “withdrawing room” in the suite of rooms I occupied for this visit—courtesy of Wolsey, as these had been his quarters—I sat down with Cromwell. I had brought him with me for my own reasons, reasons he would soon find out.

  A number of uncharacteristic settees were stationed about the room, draped with rich fabric and heaped with pillows. In contrast to this, the floors were old, worn stone, grey and cold. The windows were arched and high and filled with tracery. One had the impression of a parish church outfitted with a caliph’s couches.

  I stretched myself out on one of the settees. But how did one lounge regally? Half lying down seemed a sloppy way of presenting oneself. In any case, it did not lend itself to business. Therefore I sat straight up.

  Cromwell looked at the bare table between us. “A shame,” he said, shaking his head. “Wolsey would have had it heaped high with dainties. Fisher sends nothing.”

  “Except, perhaps, a message. This bare table proclaims his asceticism.” The ugly scrubbed wood, with its mournful scars, looked at me in scorn. “We would not have accepted his gifts, in any wise. There is only one thing we wish of him. And that he refuses.”

  The Oath.

  They had begun to administer the Oath shortly after my visit to More. The commissioners had gone out to towns and guild halls, to marketplaces and monasteries. Men and women had signed readily, taking their Oath as a pause between planting their fields and going to market. The most popular time was mid-morning, when they could gather and chat while waiting, over a cup of ale.

  Only a very few so far had refused.

  Thomas More.

  Bishop John Fisher.

  And a few lone monasteries.

  Altogether, only a few score of men. A few score—out of three million!

  Katherine and Mary had not been presented with the Oath yet. Undoubtedly they would also refuse. I had received letter after letter from Katherine, alternately admonishing me and cryi
ng for my love. They saddened me and mired me in guilt. Would she never leave off?

  The Pope had finally heard and hearkened to her pleas. At long last, dragging himself out of some primordial sleep, he had pronounced sentence on the matrimonial case of Henry VIII of England and the Princess Dowager, relict of his late brother, Arthur: the dispensation was good, the marriage valid, and we were to return to one another immediately. Failure to comply would . . . would . . . he would do such dreadful things . . . would we be sorry . . . !

  The tantrums of a tardy child.

  The stupid fool, Clement. If he had given immediate judgment, on the heels of Wolsey’s first request . . . would it have made a difference?

  “Clement says he will make Bishop Fisher a Cardinal,” said Cromwell, softly.

  “What, in the wake of this refusal?” I said. “Then I’ll send the head to Rome to receive its hat!”

  “The executions will begin?”

  “They must.” But I would accept changes of heart at the last hour. In fact, I prayed for them.

  “When?”

  “After the parties have had a decent chance to clear their heads and change their minds. In the Tower, of course.” And not the prettied-up part.

  “How many months will you allow them?”

  Why was he so precise, so pressing?

  “A year and a day. Then I can never lament my haste.”

  “On the contrary, you are most lenient. Slow to anger, like the Almighty. The Princess Dowager, now—there’s a one to try a man’s patience. She dangles at Buckden as the bait for a rebellion. And Chapuys dangles her.”

  “She will be offered one last opportunity to co-operate. I have sent Brandon, with a delegation of commissioners, to take her the Oath. If she refuses, she becomes a prisoner, forfeit of all rights.” I had thought it a suitably unpleasant assignment for Brandon.

  He looked at me questioningly.

  “You need not doubt me,” I said. “I will not flinch.” Everyone, it seemed, counted on my flinching. That was a mistake. Especially for those who staked their lives on it.