The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  I could recount every article of their treason. But it is tedious. Henry Courtenay and his wife Elizabeth had intrigued with Chapuys in his inept plot to rescue Katherine and Mary. In Cornwall he gathered followers who conspired to proclaim him King.

  Henry, Lord Montague, had looked forward to the day that “the King’s leg will kill him, and we shall have jolly stirring at last.” (What spy had betrayed my secret to him? What traitor had discovered it, and disclosed it?) Reginald Pole had come on a mission from the Pope to help the Pilgrims deprive me of my throne. In fact, the Pope had “entrusted” England to him. These treasons were confessed by Sir Geoffrey, their brother.

  Yet another sadness: Nicholas Carew, my old friend, had known of this treason and yet kept it from me; and Edward Neville (my boyhood companion—he who had ridden with me to the White Tower on my accession) had joined the conspiracy.

  My father’s prediction had come true.

  On the day of their executions, I made my way to Father’s tomb in Westminster Abbey. I had never visited his tomb before, with its bronze vault resting under the delicate stone lace of his commissioned chapel ceiling. Men praised his glorious chapel, spoke of its beauty, but I had never wanted to come to it, because then I would acknowledge his achievement in some way. Today I was ready to make that acknowledgment, and I had nowhere else to go.

  It was colder inside the Abbey than outside. There were places where the roof and windows leaked, and pools of ice lay beneath them, opaque and thick. There seemed to be no one present in that whole vast nave. The chantry offices—reciting prayers for the dead—had ceased with the abolition of Popish abuses in regard to Purgatory. The praying, muttering monks were no more.

  I had to pass through the great choir, and thence past the tombs of Queen Maud, Queen Edith, Henry III, Henry V (the great warrior-king, the perfect Christian) and his Queen, Catherine de Valois. She had always been but a name to me, a royal link between Henry V and my ancestor Owen Tudor. Now as I passed her marble box I saluted her, wondering if my lust and proclivities for commoners had come from her. Certainly she would have understood her great-grandson’s yearnings and preferences.

  My father’s chapel was set off from the rest of the nave by a flight of stairs. One ascended them as if approaching some higher plane of life. Before me opened up the great stone work of art described as “the most beautiful in Christendom.” It resembled the woods after an ice storm, and particularly today, in its mantle of cold: the delicate tracery of stems, branches, leaves, all encased in a white, shimmering, brittle hardness.

  Father rested within a fence of wrought iron and bronze, fashioned to represent a miniature cathedral. The doors were locked, but I carried the key. Opening the door, I stepped into his secret garden of bronze and gold. Once inside, I found myself in a world apart—sweet, protected, timeless.

  He lay within a great black marble sarcophagus, guarded on each corner by a golden angel. A gilded representation of him lay atop, hands joined piously, feet resting on a lion. Beside him lay my mother, in golden effigy, likewise praying.

  His bones were in this container. The golden image was not he. But it was hard not to address the representation instead of the box with the bones. No wonder idol-worship and graven images had proved so difficult to eradicate.

  I made my way around the tomb, aware, suddenly, of my great bulk. Father was seeing it. He was seeing the enormous, broken thing his athletic, contemptuous son had grown into.

  “But I am now a King, Father.” I spoke my thoughts aloud. “I behave as you would have me.” I had meant to kneel by his tomb, but there was no ledge on the marble sarcophagus, and the stone floor was harder and colder than ice. I remained standing. “I trust no one. This day I see the last of my friends executed for treason. Neville and Carew—the ones waiting for me to come and play after I left you in your sickroom. The ones in my mind’s eye when I contradicted you.”

  Each word left my mouth in a little puff of breath-smoke.

  “It is not nearly as lonely as I feared,” I said, after a bit. “And loneliness serves as an excuse for all sorts of indulgences. You knew that all along! Why did you not tell me? If I had known, I would have embraced it all the sooner.”

  I looked at his gilded face, so serene in its representation. He rested in artistic triumph.

  “The last of your enemies dies this day,” I assured the effigy. “The White Rose is plucked.”

  Tudor was supreme. There would be no more pretenders. And I had provided the necessary heir.

  My body pained me. I was never good at standing, and my legs had begun to ache. I needed to sit down. Father would understand. He and I thought alike, now.

  LXXXII

  The people were whipping themselves into a frenzy of looting and destruction, all under the guise of religion. At first they had trembled to see their relics taken from their little local shrines and consigned to bonfires. Then, delight in the bonfire itself began to consume them. There is something so deeply satisfying about destroying, trampling, killing. . . . And soon the people themselves outdid the royal commissioners in seizing the relics and desecrating them.

  The townsfolk of Maidstone took the ancient Rood of Boxley and reviled it in the marketplace; those at Kirkstall burnt the girdle of Saint Bernard, looked to as helpful in childbirth, and tore up the wimple of Saint Ethelred, used to cure sore throats.

  But these were insignificant relics and lacklustre shrines. What the common people did on their level, I would do on mine. I would make a great show of dismantling and utterly destroying the three most ancient, sacred shrines and pilgrimage-centres in England: that of Saint Cuthbert in Durham, that of Our Lady of Walsingham, and, most sacrosanct (and jewel-bedecked) of all, Saint Thomas à Becket’s in Canterbury.

  Saint? The man was a saint as Thomas More was a saint, as Bishop Fisher was a saint! They were all nothing but filthy and abominable traitors and rebels against their King! Becket had won, in his day, simply because the Pope had managed to intimidate his weak King.

  That was in his day. But there was no reason why . . . yes, none whatsoever . . . a man can be brought to trial long after the crime . . . and he must stand for it. . . .

  “Dismantle the entire Becket shrine,” I ordered my workmen, carefully chosen for both their skill and their honesty. “The gold I want in reinforced wooden carts. The jewels, inventoried and sorted, transported in locked coffers. As for the inner coffin, once you have removed the gold plate covering it, leave it as is. Oh, unfasten the lid, but do not open it.” I explained myself no further.

  After they had departed for Canterbury, I sat down and began to draft an unusual summons to my Privy Councillors and the ranking members of Convocation.

  We stood on the Opus Alexandrinum, the Roman-inspired pavement of intricately inlaid coloured marble that surrounded Becket’s tomb behind the high altar of Canterbury Cathedral. There were some forty of us, all told—from the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, Thomas Cranmer, and all his lesser bishops, to my Vice-Regent for Spiritual Affairs, Cromwell, and his Council subordinates.

  They surrounded the iron chest, resting on its pink marble arcaded base, that housed the “sacred” remains of Thomas à Becket. The painted wooden lid was loosened and ready to be lifted.

  The shrine was bare, otherwise. The canopy of gold netting which had sagged with the weight of pilgrims’ offerings—brooches, rings, jewels—had been emptied. The gold plate had been carted away, in twenty-six groaning wagons. Upon my finger glowed the “Regale de France”—a ruby which Louis VII of France had presented when he came to seek the saint’s help for a sick child. I had had it made into a fine ring, set round with sapphires, diamonds, and emeralds “recovered” from the golden canopy. I called it my “Becket ring.”

  “My dear councillors and spiritual advisors,” I said, in a soft voice. It carried well in the small area. The acoustics were good. “We are here to try an accursed traitor. Since the defendant could not safely make the journey to London
to stand trial, we, in consideration of his limiting condition, have convened the trial here.”

  I looked about. Cromwell had the proper expression of normalcy on his face. The rest looked frightened, bewildered, or uncomfortable.

  I nodded to the serjeant-at-arms. “You may call the defendant.”

  “Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, come into the court.”

  I gave another signal, and four royal guards stepped up to the coffin and removed the wooden lid. At that, a silence gripped our party.

  I must set an example for them. I approached the dark cavity of the iron box and peered within.

  As I did so, I felt suspense, dread of what I might see, what might happen. . . .

  Nothing happened, and it was difficult to see inside, in the gloom. I called for a taper and thrust it right into the coffin itself.

  There were rotted ecclesiastical vestments swathing a crumbling skeleton. Its mitre had fallen away, revealing a skull with a thin slice taken off its top. Dust and dirt lay an inch thick on the bottom. How did it come to be inside a sealed coffin? I wondered irrelevantly.

  “You may view the accused,” I said, motioning to my councillors. They filed by, peering into the sarcophagus, lit by the single taper inside. One by one they returned to their places.

  When all were silent and waiting, I continued, “The accused, Thomas a Becket, must answer to the following charges.” I unrolled a lettered parchment. “One: to the crime of defying and humiliating his King, Henry II of England and Angevin. Two: to the crime of masquerading as a saint.”

  I turned to Cromwell. “You may present the Crown’s evidence against the defendant.”

  Oh, how I enjoyed it: the delicious recounting of the ungrateful traitor’s behaviour, knowing all the while the final outcome. The crushing of one’s enemies . . . the Israelites had known that supreme pleasure, had celebrated it even in the Psalms. King David seemed to have had enemies aplenty, and he had been shameless in asking the Lord to do them in.

  “A lowly man, Becket, who, gaining the confidence and friendship of the King of England, used that as means to advance his own power,” read Cromwell. “Not being content with ingratiating himself with the King and being granted familiarities far above his station, he coveted the Chancellorship and obtained that, then lusted after the Archbishopric and obtained that. He lusted after the power of the Church, and once he was endowed with all he desired, he had no further use for the King. So he turned against him, defied his laws, obstructed his decrees, and trafficked with his sworn enemy, the King of France.”

  These charges were discussed, as a courtesy to legal niceties. Then I called for the verdict.

  “For maliciously misusing the King’s affection for his own worldly gain: guilty or no?”

  A mumbled response. “Guilty.”

  “For masquerading as a saint: guilty or no?”

  “Guilty.”

  “For gross ingratitude to his sovereign: guilty or no?”

  “Guilty!” Their enthusiasm was increasing.

  “Then we find you, Thomas Becket, the accused, guilty on all counts as charged. Guilty as an errant traitor to your divinely appointed sovereign lord. Guilty in that your death was untruly called martyrdom, being canonized by the Bishop of Rome, because you had been a champion to the usurped authority and a bearer of the iniquity of the clergy. There appears nothing in your life and exterior behaviour whereby you should be called a saint, but rather esteemed to have been a rebel and traitor to your prince.”

  I took a deep breath in the rarefied air of the opened shrine, before continuing.

  “The sentence is this: in future you are to be called only Bishop Becket, and all mention of you in books of Common Prayer, lists of saints, and so forth, are to be stricken out.

  “And we hereby condemn you to be burnt as a traitor, and your ashes scattered.”

  I nodded to my unquestioning, obedient guards, who came forward, bent over the coffin, and began enfolding the bones within their robes of office. While we watched, they transferred the lumpy bundle—with a corner of the mitre protruding—to a new wooden chest, which they carried away.

  A heavy feeling came upon the company, far heavier than when Becket’s remains were physically present. We could all hear the neat clicks of the guardsmen’s heels as they marched down the long length of the nave with their casket.

  “There were, as I said, twenty-six cartloads of gold festooning the abomination that housed Becket’s miserable remains. I think an eighth-cartload for each of you who helped examine the justice of the matter would be most appropriate,” I said.

  Thus I dismissed them. Even enriched as they were, there was no buoyancy in them as they took their leave and melted away into the gloom of the cathedral.

  Only Cromwell remained, directly across from the emptied sarcophagus.

  “Old bones smell ugly,” I finally said. “I would expect a fresh corpse to stink, or a waterlogged body. But this was clean, and dry.” I shook my head, wonderingly. The peculiar odour—of centuries of packaged, brooding death—was stronger than ever.

  “It is done,” I said cheerfully, waving my hand—the one with the Becket ring on it.

  Speak, Crum. Say something to banish the odd feeling I have inside . . . a feeling I have not felt since . . . I know not. . . .

  “Your Grace, this must end,” Cromwell said soberly. The taper lit only part of his face, but his words were chiselled and clear.

  They said what I knew already.

  “I understand that this was but a political gesture, made to give a little sport to the dull proceedings of dismantling and inventorying the vulgar, Papalist shrines,” he continued, putting the most flattering interpretation on it. “I understand it, but I fear it will be misunderstood by the people and exploited by your enemies. You are aware, Your Grace, that many already question your sanity? Your actions of late have played directly into the hands of your sworn enemies. It is you who are a traitor to yourself. For the law defines treason as ‘giving aid and comfort to the enemy’ and that is what you have been doing—by your lack of self-control, by your actions that are open to unkind, even malicious interpretations. Forgive me, Your Grace—” The boldness of his words now frightened him.

  “Have no fear, Crum,” I said. “It is finished. It is over.”

  He had no way of knowing that it had all gone flat, that I was weary of my rebellion and bored with my schoolboyish howl against God, Who seemed—most humiliating of all—not to have taken much notice of it. Certainly He had not responded in any observable way.

  LXXXIII

  What had the past year of unthinking, pain-filled rampage gained me? I was forced to take a fearless look and confront the results.

  I was certainly richer, from the plunder and seizure of the monastic property and shrines. Abbey plate and jewels and manuscripts and vestments now adorned my palaces, and I was buying the loyalty and support of the gentlemen to whom I sold or leased the abbey lands, making sure they had a vested interest in preventing a return to the Papal fold. There was nothing like property and money to sway a man’s political leanings.

  I was isolated in the larger world. In company with Job, I could lament, For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me. The Pope had called for a war upon me, and lo! a miracle had occurred. Francis and Charles had actually made peace with one another, signed a truce, and loomed as allies against me.

  My gleeful rage against the signs and relics of Popery, my allowance of the loosely worded (and interpreted) Ten Articles of Faith to Establish Christian Quietness had caused the Protestants to gain a pernicious foothold in England, and they were now trying to subvert my Church.

  My orgy of self-pitying eating and drinking had expanded me beyond all recognition. I was obese, repulsive to look upon.

  I had multiplied my troubles and problems. I had solved none and created new ones.

  For several months I did nothing. I made few
appearances, and those were restrained and circumspect. I passed no new laws and made no pronouncements. I reversed my eating habits, becoming as abstemious as a desert hermit, and found to my horror that the fat on me was firmly entrenched and did not obediently melt away at my command.

  To check the dangerous foreign situation that had arisen, I decided to use monastic money to finance the construction of a chain of fortresses and defences all across the southern coastline, stretching from Sandown in the East to Pendennis in the West. I employed a Bohemian engineer, Stephen von Haschenperg, to design these castles, which would be constructed on new principles, allowing for the latest advances in cannon warfare. It would disappoint those who hoped that the monastic wealth might be used to found hospitals, colleges, schools. I was disappointed myself. But there can be no higher learning, no institutions of mercy, unless a country is at peace and not ravaged by her enemies.

  I would halt the growing influence of Protestantism by rescinding the Ten Articles. They would be replaced by a conservative Act, setting forth the required orthodoxy of faith.

  Parliament duly passed this Act of Six Articles. It affirmed the doctrine of Transubstantiation, noted it was not necessary to receive both bread and wine at Communion, said that priests could not marry, that vows of chastity were perpetual, that private Masses were permitted, and that private confession was necessary. Burning was the penalty for once denying the first article, and a felon’s death for twice denying any of the others. I gave the authorities power to enforce it by severe means, for nothing else could prevail. This earned it the sarcastic popular sobriquet, “The Whip with Six Strings.”