The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  LXXV

  We did not return to London, but, after spending the night in Carew’s house, set out early the next morning for Wolf Hall. Jane was a Wiltshire girl, and all who meant most to her were contained in her neighbourhood and its surrounding villages. The Seymours had held the wardenship of Savernake Forest since 1427, and had resided in the area of Bedwyn nearby since the early 1300s; it was from this little piece of England that they drew their strength and pleasure, not from court appointments. Jane was to be wed, and it was with her Wiltshire friends and neighbours that she wished to celebrate, like any village bride.

  We came to Wolf Hall in the late twilight, when all the servants had finished work and old, feeble Sir John had been fed, bolstered, and put to bed in his upper chamber. Jane flew up the stairs and I followed, marvelling that I had never done a thing like this before—climbing the stairs to confront a sweetheart’s father and ask his blessing. I was King. But I was acutely aware that many fathers would not consider their daughters well served in marrying me.

  “Father!” Jane pushed open the door and saw Sir John lying abed, a flannel nightcap on, even in May. She ran to him and knelt before his bedside.

  “Janey,” he said. “You’re home?”

  “Yes. I wish to ask your blessing. On my marriage. To the King.”

  I moved forward, into the little circle of light. “I love your daughter,” I said. “I wish to make her my wife, and my Queen.”

  He stared at me. “My Janey? Queen of England? She knows no Latin.”

  “She knows more than Latin,” I said.

  “Will you bless us, Father?” Jane asked.

  “Aye.” He frowned, as if gathering his wits like a shepherd his flock. “Aye.” He extended his hands. “Be to him a blessing, as Sarah was to Abraham.” He turned to me. “Cherish her. Do not choke her with jewels.” He nodded at his sagacity.

  Within a few days, others streamed to Wolf Hall, sickened by the real and moral stench of London. Edward and Thomas Seymour, of course, came straightway, arriving in the morning. They were followed by Francis Bryan, Anne’s cousin, who fled from her shame; Sir John Russell; William Fitzwilliam; and John Dudley. Immediately upon congratulating us, Edward set about to arrange the betrothal feast, which every proper bride should have. It would be held in the barn, as Wolf Hall had no suitable Great Hall to accommodate all the well-wishers. It was to be a country reception, and I would leave all of it to the Seymours, revelling in the freedom from having to preside over pageants and royal rituals.

  The great barn was cleared of hay and livestock, and a floor was quickly laid down. Next, the rough walls were hung with silk, and neighbouring children spent three days gathering wildflowers and vines and weaving them into long, thick garlands, which were hung over the silk. Torches were planted all along the half-mile path to the barn, and Sir John’s kitchens were consumed with preparations for the feast. In the village of Tottenham Park, the bakers left off making bread in order to bake the layers of the great betrothal cake in several ovens at once.

  In my palaces I took such things for granted; the cakes appeared, and I never thought who baked them. Here I was holding my breath, waiting to hear if the middle layer of the cake had fallen when the baker’s son opened the oven door prematurely. (It had not, although the middle sagged a bit.)

  Jane’s betrothal feast, served to a hundred neighbours and kinsmen, was simple and lovely. Three long tables had been set up in the transformed barn, and the brothers had procured enough white linen to cover them all, and enough pewter, gold, and silver to serve everyone from metal. (They refused all my offers to send to London for rolls of linen and boxes of gold plate.) French claret sparkled in the goblets, and Sir John managed, in spite of his malady of mind, to give the initial toast and make the formal announcement of Jane’s betrothal. Then Edward took over.

  “To my sister, who has won the heart of our sovereign lord the King, I wish all joy and happiness,” he pronounced, flourishing his cup. All rose and drank.

  Jane sparkled even more than the claret, revealing a side of her I had thought she lacked. Although I had been willing to forgo it, finding that I did not have to was an unexpected gift.

  Others rose and spoke—of Jane’s gentleness, of her great promise, of her humour and humility. In a peculiar way, I was envious of these Wiltshire yeomen and gentry. They had known Jane as a child, had seen her grow up. They were bestowing her on me. (Reluctantly?)

  The great cake was wheeled into the room. It had been iced with an ivory-coloured almond frosting, and its base was decorated with wildflowers and candied fruits, which resembled jewels. Jane laughingly cut it, and the inside was dark and filled with currants and spices. Pieces were passed out, and not a crumb remained at the end.

  Now the dancing. Fiddlers assembled, local lute-players and musicians with rebecs, citterns, humstrums, and little harps. Twin cousins, two pretty little girls, came up and crowned Jane with a circlet of wild roses. She laughed, and we danced, and the entire company joined us, in the transformed barn. . . .

  We were married on the next-to-last day of May in the small private chapel at York Place. Jane was quiet that day, not the sunburnt country girl of Wiltshire that I had discovered and adored. We must be married in London, that she understood. There must be no secret about it, no “unknown” priest. But she and I always thought of our marriage as truly having taken place that night in the great barn.

  Jane came to my bed a virgin, both in body and mind, as neither of my other “wives” had done. I came to her a bachelor, for I had never truly been married before. All was as it was meant to be, and so seldom is. . . .

  I introduced Jane to the realm as my Queen by presenting her with a new barge, modelled on that of the Venetian Bucentaur, and staging a great water-carnival on the Thames to salute us as we made our way upstream to attend Whitsunday Mass in Westminster Abbey. The day was glorious and clear, and the entire city populace had put aside its winter woollens and cavorted in sheer cottons and silks in every sunlit street. The Abbey was thronged, and the cheering mobs, showering us with flowers, transformed our appearance at the festive Whitsun Mass into a sort of semi-Coronation for Jane.

  Afterward, at York Place, I gave a great afternoon banquet, ostensibly to celebrate Whitsun—for the centerpiece was a huge cake of crushed strawberries, seven layers to commemorate the seven gifts the Holy Spirit conferred upon the Apostles at Pentecost—but it was in reality a bride-cake, and a bride-feast.

  England had a true Queen at last, and no one begrudged her me.

  I ended the celebrations by bringing her with me to the Opening of Parliament on June eighth.

  Seated beside me on the Chair of Estate, looking out over both Lords and Commons, she heard Chancellor Audley exclaim, “Ye well remember the great anxieties and perturbations this invincible Sovereign”—he nodded toward me—“suffered on account of his first unlawful marriage. So all ought to bear in mind the perils and dangers he was under when he contracted his second marriage, and that the lady Anne and her accomplices have since been justly found guilty of high treason, and have met their due reward for it.” He shook his head as the ugly black shadow passed over the entire Parliament, and over my soul as well.

  “What man of middle life would not this deter from marrying a third time? Yet this our most excellent Prince again condescendeth to contract matrimony! And hath, on the humble petition of the nobility, taken to himself a wife, this time, who by her excellent beauty and pureness of flesh and blood, is apt—God willing—to conceive issue.” The company rose in acknowledgment of this.

  “The lords should pray for heirs to the crown by this marriage,” Audley concluded.

  Jane was now my wife, and Queen indeed: wedded by a true rite, saluted by the common people, and honoured by Parliament. It was done, and I was happy at last.

  Happy at last. Why is it so difficult to describe happiness? There are words aplenty for anguish, despair, suffering, and these are full of vitality. But hap
piness is left with weak verbs, supine adjectives, drooping adverbs. A description of happiness moves a reader to skip over those passages and causes a writer to flounder in treacle.

  Yet how can we recall it if we do not write of it? We put up summer in preserved fruits and conserves, we trap autumn in wine made from late-ripening grapes, we make perfumes of spring flowers. That way we can recall, albeit in a slanted or altered way, some essence of the moment.

  But human happiness . . . all our words for it are so bland, as if the thing itself were bland, or merely an absence of pain. When in fact happiness is solid, muscular, and strong; its colour all the spectrum of light; its sounds as sweet as water splashing in a Pharaoh’s desert palace; and its smells those of the flesh and its life: fur, heat, cooking.

  I was happy with Jane, as happy as one of the great cats stretched out in the sun around Wolf Hall. Only touch them and feel their deep, rumbling purrs, as they rest entirely in the present moment. That was me, that summer Jane and I were one.

  LXXVI

  Happiness begets courage, inasmuch as we raise our eyes from hudled self-absorption and, secure behind the ramparts of our solid, sun-warmed castles, survey all the land surrounding us. There seems to be no truth we are not capable of confronting and withstanding, and so we go seeking it.

  Since that June day seventeen years ago, when Katherine’s last pregnancy had brought forth its irrefutable summation of accursedness, I had been a pawn of the truth, never its comrade. The truth was that hideous, malformed infant, and if that were the truth, then everything I had espoused was false. My marriage to Princess Katherine had been false; brought about by a dispensation that was obviously false, granted by a personage (the Bishop of Rome) whose claims were equally false. And so the whirlpool of falseness enveloped me, drowning me. I went under the waters, pulled under with foul, dark things, and swam as best I knew how, blindly.

  Now I was, miraculously, on dry land again. Like a shipwreck survivor, I sat on the beach, feeling my arms and legs for injuries, looking all round at the wreckage, but marvelling that I lived. A stroll down the beach would undoubtedly disclose further debris, surprise losses, and capricious survivals. Curiosity would draw me to the inspection, but not fear. Whatever remained in the larder of fate, that was good; I would make a meal of it and dine on it.

  So, in July, when the so-called Long Parliament dissolved at last and the land set about its lengthy and earnest business of producing grains, fruits, and vegetables, I took my inventory.

  Katherine was dead, and with her the threat of war from her nephew the Emperor Charles. She had died signing herself “Katherine the Queen,” but the matter of her title did not concern the coffin-worms, or anyone else at this point. That gigantic mistake in my past had now been crossed off.

  I wrote “Katherine” on a piece of parchment and drew a thick black line through it.

  Next I wrote “the conspirators.” For there had been a great network of them, poised and at the ready for a signal of some sort, a signal that never came. Chapuys had teased them into existence and served as their center; Cromwell had spied on them and supplied me with names and information. I wrote a “?” and resolved to talk to Cromwell about them.

  Mary. Now that both Katherine and Anne were dead, would Mary see her way clear to a reconciliation with me? She stood alone, deserted by her mother’s death. While Anne yet lived, pride would have prohibited Mary’s yielding in any way. But the Great Whore, Mary’s enemy and mine, had perished and would never triumphantly witness Mary’s softening. The hated half-sister, Elizabeth, was now no longer Princess, and Mary did not need to serve her in humiliation.

  I wanted Mary back. Our estrangement had been caused by people who were now nonexistent. Jane, Mary’s partisan, was eager for Mary’s return to favour; and Cromwell had shown interest in persuading her to lower her pride and open herself to change. I wrote another “?” and moved on.

  The Emperor Charles. Relieved by his aunt’s death from posturing for “honour” any longer, he was overwhelmed by the virulent, infectious Protestantism that was causing disruptions in his own lands. The Netherlands had become a hotbed of heresy; stately Lutheranism had whelped the ugly dogs of Sacramentarianism and Anabaptism—heresy in its purest form. Antwerp and Amsterdam were publishing centers for heretical tracts, and provided sheltering arms for radicals and subversives of every description. I drew a great line across Charles’s name.

  Francis had proved more successful in controlling the heretical ideas in his domains and had even appointed an Inquisitor-General. But by himself, he was unlikely to heed the Pope’s call to arms against me. I drew another line across “Francis.”

  Pope Paul III. There was no doubt that in this gentleman I had a tireless, clever adversary. He, unlike Clement, had drawn a line, and I was clearly outside it. Thereafter he made no apologies. His goal was to dethrone me or, failing that, to discredit me. It was he who had made Fisher a Cardinal, and it was he who had published the Papal bull which called for a Holy War against me by foreign powers and absolved all Englishmen from allegiance to me on my own soil. He was also grooming young Reginald Pole, a sort of latter-day Thomas More who had fled abroad, to be his weapon against me, deploying him on missions to implement Papal policy. I had been Reginald’s patron, paying for all his education, both here and abroad. The Pope had taken him from me and turned him against me. I left his name unmarked.

  The monasteries. There were more than eight hundred of them scattered over the realm, and Cromwell’s report, Valor Ecclesiasticus, divided them into “lesser” houses and “greater.” Some three hundred of them were “lesser” and had an income below an arbitrarily selected point. These houses had only a few members and were likely to be lax and poorly run. Certainly it was inefficient of the orders to have a great number of tiny monasteries in operation. Cromwell had recommended dissolving these establishments, letting the truly committed monks transfer to other, more disciplined houses of their orders, and releasing the rest from their vows. The property, of course, would revert to the Crown, as it was treason to send it to Rome. He reckoned that millions of pounds would accrue to me. I left the word “monasteries” un-inked. More to discuss with Cromwell.

  Now for a personal inventory. I wrote “poison.” I feared that Anne’s poison was slow-acting and irreversible. For my leg had not healed, as I had assumed it would do upon her demise. And Fitzroy—his cough had not lessened, and his colour paled day by day. I prayed that I could outlast the life of the poison, and ultimately defeat it, like a city under siege. Sooner or later its power must wane and abate. But it looked to be a long bodily siege. I was determined to withstand it. Would Mary? All the more reason for us to make peace. I was convinced that isolation increased the power of the poison. Under “poison” I included my impotence, which obviously had been due entirely to Anne’s malevolence, for it had disappeared with her.

  General health. Since my fall in the lists, and the permanent state of ulceration on my thigh, I had had to curtail my athletic activities. The lack of exercise had caused me to gain weight for the first time in my life. My very flesh seemed to expand and change from tautness to looseness. I tried every means of moderate exercise to reverse the process and bring it under control: walks with Jane, long, slow cantering rides, archery, bowling. But the tide of creeping slackness and fat was relentless. It seemed I needed the violent excesses of long hunts with hounds and horses, wherein the horses would tire before ever I did; the sweating tennis matches wherein I would bet upon myself; the foot combat at the barriers in tournaments when I must leap and swing swords while encased in one hundred pounds of tortoiselike armour; even the rigorous dances in court celebrations. Deprived of these tests, my flesh sighed, expanded, and began to sag.

  I left “general health” with no black line across it.

  Cromwell had shown me his hawks; now I would show him my hounds. I was proud of the royal kennels, and although Edward Neville held the honorary title of Master of the Buckhounds,
the actual day-to-day work was done by kennel-masters and dog-breeders, a staff of ten.

  This fine day in late July the dogs were being exercised in the open fields not far from Blackheath. Like men, they grew restless and despondent if they were kept indoors and inactive too long; they were meant to run, especially the greyhounds and Scottish deerhounds.

  The latter were an interesting breed. I had only lately been successful in obtaining puppies of this noted dog of the open northern country, which hunted by sight and not by smell. Of course, a man had to have a fleet horse and be an expert rider to keep up; in our southern areas, “chases” had been cut through forested areas in order to hunt in this manner.

  “They say these dogs have been in Scotland since ancient days,” I explained to Cromwell. “But clansmen also claim that they were bred originally from Irish ‘swifthounds’—when Ireland and Scotland were exchanging families and settlers back and forth. ’Tis all the same, the wild North. Savages.” I admired a pack of deerhounds bounding off together. “But they breed good animals.”

  Cromwell smiled, and sighed expansively. It never failed to surprise me how well the outdoors became him. I was used to thinking of him as a purely indoor breed. “Perhaps one day they will be tamed and civilized. But not in our lifetime,” he said. “Now we must merely contain them.”

  How quickly he came to the point. The open country gave us the opportunity to discuss it, as I had planned. “The disaffected lords assembled by Chapuys—what of them? In my experience, a group never disbands without having made a gesture of some sort.” I threw it out to him.

  “Yes, it is like a woman all dressed for a ball. She must dance to some tune.”

  “Whose tune?”

  “A northern one, most like. But as yet there’s nothing. Wait long enough, and eventually the maiden takes off her finery and goes to bed.”