The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  “Sometimes it is difficult to appreciate an unexpected victory when one has been bracing for a struggle,” I said.

  “Yes. This schedule was ingenious,” he replied wistfully, running his hands over it, where it lay spread out on our consulting-table. “Now I shall have to expand the numbers sitting on the Court of Augmentations, to handle the gush of new acquisitions.”

  The Court of Augmentations was the body Cromwell and I had created to process the monastic properties and dispose of them. “I think perhaps a new head is in order, to free you,” I said. “I shall appoint Sir Richard Riche.”

  Cromwell chortled. He looked quite like a jolly uncle when he did so. “A masterful touch, as the Pilgrims demanded his removal from power. After me, of course. They despised us.”

  I looked up from the table to glimpse the cold, promising March sky outside. This time last year I had been hawking with Crum, and had given him the fearsome commission. . . .

  “It is all over now,” I said in wonder. It was all over, and peace had come again.

  “I beg your pardon?” Crum looked at me, alert.

  “I was only thinking how quiet it is in the land.”

  “All your enemies are dead, Your Grace.”

  LXXIX

  The day the abbot and monks of Sawley Abbey were hanged, I found Jane crying in her chamber.

  I had made arrangements to spend the morning with her looking over the plans for the Queen’s New Lodgings, now being constructed at Hampton Court. I had thought my Janey—for so I called her, between the two of us—would relish being able to choose the wood, the artisans to carve it, and all the rest to make the royal quarters a reflection of herself.

  Spread out all around her were drawings and samples of colours and materials. But she did not even seem aware of any of them. They surrounded her like dropped petals from an overblown rose, but she did not regard them.

  “Well, Janey,” I said, stepping into the chamber, “have you decided? You spoke of purple, once—”

  My spirits drooped as soon as I beheld her. No, I could not stand another source of sadness today! I could not comfort; I had no comfort to give. I wanted the monks blanked out of my mind.

  “Have you not decided, then?” I chided her gently.

  “I—they all looked suitable.”

  “Have you no preference, then?” I fought to keep the little saw-edge of irritation out of my voice. “These new lodgings are to be the equal of—”

  “Anything in France,” she finished for me. “But I am no Madame de Heilly.”

  “Francis’s mistress has no taste,” I said. “And these lodgings are for you, Janey. For you. Can you not understand how I wish for you to have a place of your own, not inherited from Wolsey or . . . the others?”

  “Yes, yes.” It was then that I realized the apartments were for me, not for her. I needed to see her in surroundings that had no echoes.

  “Choose something, Janey. It will mean a great deal to me,” I begged her.

  “Very well.” She bent forward, picked up a panel of wood. She sounded weary. “This is attractive. I should like the Queen’s Privy Chamber done in this.”

  “Walnut. Very well, my love. And to go with walnut, dark green is always suitable.”

  “No, I’ll not have that. ’Tis too—expected. I’ll have scarlet instead.” She pointed at a smear of colour.

  “The Westminster red.” I recognized it. “Most noble.”

  She smiled. “You will pin down my desires and preferences, in spite of myself.”

  “I wish to see you captured by them, so that in your absence I can still see you.” I hesitated. Should I tell her of what I had seen? “Is the choice really that difficult, that you must cry over it?”

  She quickly hid her face.

  “There should be no secrets between us,” I said, as gently as I could. “Nothing to be ashamed of.” She knew me, knew all of me. And I was glad of it.

  “It is not I who am ashamed! It is you—or should be!” she cried. “The monks—”

  Not this again.

  “—that you are having hanged this very moment—”

  The arrogant rebels of Sawley, then.

  “—in a mocking fashion—”

  “The punishment must fit the crime! And should serve as a deterrent for possible converts. These particular monks were arrant traitors.”

  “It is not the monks,” she wept. “It is you!”

  Now I was completely confused and bewildered. “I do not understand,” I finally said.

  “What does it do to you to order such things done?” she said. “It changes you, forever.”

  Poor innocent. Perhaps she did not know me, after all. I was changed that way when I had had to order my first executions after my Coronation, those of Empson and Dudley. After the first they are all the same.

  “I hope not,” I assured her, reluctant to reveal my true feelings. She would find them ugly. And possibly unacceptable.

  “What sort of a world will my children inherit? A world without monks and nuns, a world where abbots hang out of steeples—”

  Children.

  “Janey, are you—?” I had prayed, I had thrown myself on God’s mercy, for there were so many physical hindrances. . . .

  “Yes. I have only just now begun to believe it.”

  So that was what all this was about. The tears, the scruples, the evasiveness.

  I embraced her, feeling her healthy, compact body against me.

  A miracle. For I had thought some punishment lurked, and a child would never be granted me.

  That Sunday, a Te Deum was sung in all the churches in thanksgiving for the Queen’s pregnancy. That meant it was officially announced throughout Christendom, and that everyone would hear of it: the Pope, the Emperor, Francis, the lingering rebels in the North. Truly it was a sign that peace had come again to England, that the horrible upheavals of the past decade were over, like a passing storm.

  The year grew flowery and warm, and Jane and I passed that summer in perfect harmony. As I have said, happiness is near impossible to write of, and so I cannot. Although I would, I would—so that I somehow could relive it, in minute detail, not just as a suffused feeling.

  She grew fanciful that summer, quite unlike herself. She wished strawberries by the bucket, and cherries, baby peas, and quail. I sent to France for the early cherries and peas, and to Calais for quail. The Lieutenant of Calais returned a full three dozen fat quail (procured across the border in Flanders), with elaborate instructions on how to keep them alive from Dover to London, and how soon after killing they should be prepared. In one sitting she ate a half-dozen quail, laughing all the while as much at her indulgence as at her specific tastes.

  I could begrudge her nothing. The people were rejoicing already, so happy were they with the prospect of an uncontested heir to the throne.

  Jane’s pregnancy was uneventful and healthy. Why, then, why . . . ?

  Let me record this briefly, for lingering over it does not assuage it.

  Jane’s happy pregnancy was countermanded by a labour that seemingly would not end. It lasted three days and two nights, and for the final twenty-four hours she was so weak and disoriented she was given no hope of survival. There was talk—among the physicians—of opening her and removing the child. Even today, there are some who claim I was asked to choose between the mother and the child and that I said, “Choose the child by all means, for another wife can easily be found.” This shows the hatred my enemies bore me.

  The truth is that I never gave such an order, nor was I presented with a choice.

  After what seemed forever, suddenly the child—a healthy, robust boy—was born. And as soon as he was removed from her body, Jane began to rally. The bonfires flared outside the hills of London; cannon sounded.

  A prince was born!

  King Henry VIII had a son.

  I had a son. I could only repeat those words over and over, as the enormousness of them enveloped and protected me like a
shield.

  I held him in my arms, and saw how golden and perfect he was. The son denied me with Katherine and Anne—now here, as if it were a simple matter.

  He was to be named Edward. He had been born on the eve of St. Edward’s Day, and it was my grandfather’s name. I told Jane, whispered it in her ear as she lay upon her state bed. My Jane, delivered back to me as well. She smiled, and agreed.

  Edward was christened in high state three days later, in the chapel at Hampton Court. The Duke of Norfolk and Cranmer were his godfathers, and Mary was his godmother. Jane, propped up on great bolsters and covered with crimson velvet and ermine, waited in her chambers (and I by her side) to give Edward her blessing following the ceremony. Then she watched the celebrations afterward from her royal couch. She laughed and the torchlight gleamed in her eyes. She was well then, I tell you. She was well.

  But from that midnight on she became feverish, then ill. The illness sapped the strength she had regained in the three days since Edward’s birth.

  The fever and illness turned to debilitation, then hallucinations. For nine days she lingered thus, hovering between our world and some other.

  Then, on October twenty-fourth, she died.

  WILL:

  Everywhere, people sought to fix blame. Some attributed it to “neglect of those about her who suffered her to take cold and eat such things as her fantasy in sickness called for.” Monk-lovers and Papalists called Jane a “reformer” who had met her just end (at the Lord’s hand). Henry’s enemies called it the revenge of Katherine and Anne. (Jointly?)

  The common people, who still (despite his enemies’ hopes) loved Henry, sought to turn this tragedy into a high romance. Within days after Queen Jane’s death, ballads were being sung about her—and one in particular was quite memorable (in contrast to the one Anne wrote to memorialize herself).

  Queen Jane was in travail

  For six weeks or more,

  Till the women grew tired,

  And fain would give o’er.

  “O women! O women!

  Good wives if ye be,

  Go, send for King Henry,

  And bring him to me.”

  King Henry was sent for,

  He came with all speed,

  In a gown of green velvet

  From heel to the head.

  “King Henry! King Henry!

  If kind Henry you be,

  Send for a surgeon,

  And bring him to me.”

  The surgeon was sent for,

  He came with all speed,

  In a gown of black velvet

  From heel to the head.

  He gave her rich caudle,

  But the death-sleep slept she.

  Then her right side was opened,

  And the babe was set free.

  The babe it was christened,

  And put out and nursed,

  While the royal Queen Jane

  She lay cold in the dust. . . .

  So black was the mourning

  And white were the wands,

  Yellow, yellow the torches,

  They bore in their hands.

  The bells they were muffled

  And mournful did play,

  While the royal Queen Jane

  She lay cold in the clay.

  Six knights and six lords

  Bore her corpse through the grounds;

  Six dukes followed after,

  In black mourning gowns.

  The flower of Old England

  Was laid in cold clay.

  Whilst the royal King Henry

  Came weeping away.

  Henry did indeed “come weeping away,” to Windsor, before Jane’s embalmed body should begin its lying-in-state at Hampton Court. He said he could not bear to see it, or to take part in any of the funeral ceremonies. He appointed Mary to act as chief mourner, and shut himself up in his chambers at Windsor, where no man saw him for days.

  LXXX

  There are horrid similarities between a wedding and a funeral. Both cause ordinary life to be suspended until a certain rite has been performed. Both require costumes of a solid colour—one white, the other black. Both must be performed in public and require those who attend to participate emotionally. Both leave things changed forever. Both have objects and superstitions peculiar to themselves: coffin-palls and bridal veils, funeral effigies and wedding rings. Both are costly and must be lavish to show proper respect.

  King Henry, in his grief, left his trusted councillors—that is, Cromwell, Cranmer, and Brandon—to arrange and conduct the funeral. There was no need for them to consult him; they knew that there were to be no bounds to the expense for this funeral, that it must be glittering and holy. The monastic gold that Jane had so tried to save would now pay for her funeral.

  I attended, for I knew that in later days Henry would want it described to him, although he could not bear to see it now.

  Jane’s coffin was set up in the middle of the Queen’s Chamber of Presence. The freshly decorated room was now hung with black, and all the emblems of death were present: crosses, images, censers. Around her bier were set torches and candles, burning continuously; and a group of mourning ladies, in black habits, kept watch in the chamber all through the day and night.

  Mary was chief mourner. It was no ceremonial duty to her, but a heartfelt one. Jane had brought her back to court and made her part of the Royal Family once more, after an exile of five years. But beyond that, from her reddened eyes and grief-slowed movements beneath her long black gown, I could see that it was her mother she was mourning as well. Mary had not been permitted to attend Katherine’s funeral.

  This chambered mourning, with its incessant dirges, continued for a week. Then Jane’s almoner, the Bishop of Carlisle, sprinkled the coffin with holy water and allowed it to be moved to the Chapel Royal, where a catafalque had been erected. Her coffin was taken in long procession, with unlit torches, through the council chamber, into the King’s great watching chamber, across the Great Hall, down the stairs into the Clock Court, and along the cloisters, until it reached the door of the chapel.

  There she lay in state for a fortnight, until her grave was prepared in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor.

  The funeral car, drawn by black horses, moved slowly from Hampton Court through the frosty November countryside to Windsor Castle. Death was everywhere—in the fallen leaves, in the dried grass, in the silence of the air. The black procession wound through the brown landscape, and only crows and rooks remained to see.

  On top of the great enclosed funeral car, as custom dictated, a wax effigy of Queen Jane rested, wearing her crown and robes of state, her hair streaming out upon the pillow, her neck fastened with jewels. It looked so like her at her best that men gasped at it. For my part, I always felt that these effigies were a taunt and a tease, and made grief sharper; perhaps that was their purpose. After a funeral, they were customarily saved. Henry’s mother’s and father’s were kept, and may be seen to this day, also Edward III’s. But Henry ordered Jane’s destroyed before he could see it. Perhaps he knew it might come, in time, to serve as an idol for him.

  Jane was to be interred near the altar of the chapel. The melancholy rituals of stave-breaking and Requiem Mass, of elegies and incense, were all performed; and at last Jane’s coffin was lowered into the vault prepared for it.

  There was no one who rejoiced at this death.

  That in itself should serve as her epitaph, instead of the trite verse carved on her gravestone:

  Phoenix Jana jacet nato phoenice: dolendum,

  Saecula phoenices nulla tulisse duos.

  (Here a phoenix lieth, whose death

  To another phoenix gave breath:

  It is to be lamented much

  The world at once ne’er knew two such.)

  Certainly Jane deserved a better remembrancer.

  HENRY VIII:

  I was with her when she died, so there was no need for someone to come and tell me, no blessed time between the hearing and seei
ng in which I could think, “It cannot be so.” No, I was by her bedside, for the physicians had said that if she improved this night, then her battle was won. Of course she would win it; there was no doubt in my mind. My will, my prayers, my love, all would overcome the affliction. And her flushed face, her darting eyes, made her seem no different from a child with a common fever. Sleep was the cure for it; therefore, when she closed her eyes and slept, I thought it all for the best.

  I was holding her hand—sweaty it was, and slippery. I meant to hold it until I was sure she was sound asleep, and then disengage my own. (This is the first time I have ever allowed myself to recall, and recount, these things.) Too sudden a movement might wake her. And so I waited. And then, in some imperceptible, subliminal way, I felt a change in the hand. There was less heat there.

  I let go of it and took it in my other hand. No, imagination. Her hand was the same; I had just overheld it. But whatever the subtle change in temperature was, it kept on. It was growing cooler with every breath.

  Every breath . . . I looked at Jane and saw no movement there. But her breath was always soft.

  The stillness of death. It is a stillness peculiar to itself, that the softest breathing, the deepest sleep, cannot mimic.

  I shook her, trying to startle her into breathing. The heaviness, the denseness of even her shoulder, proclaimed the irreversible change. Her head lolled forward, as limp as a silk scarf.

  I have no memory of what I did after that. Only of my thoughts, which exploded and scattered, like a cage of rats suddenly released.

  I awoke in the King’s chamber at Windsor Castle. Sunlight shone on the wall. It was either mid-morning or mid-afternoon, I could not tell which. The room was chilly. Therefore it was not summer.

  Then it rushed upon me like a maddened dog, fastening its teeth in me: Jane was dead. It gave me no time even to completely awaken before it attacked me. I was savaged by its fangs, bloodied and defeated.