The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  Whereas no cause of mercy is deserved upon my part, yet of your most accustomed mercy extended unto all other men undeserved, most humbly on my hands and knees I do desire one particle thereof to be extended unto me, although of all other creatures I am most unworthy to be called either your wife or your subject.

  My sorrow I can by no writing express, nevertheless I trust your most benign nature will have some respect unto my youth, my ignorance, my frailness, my humble confession of my faults, and plain declaration of the same referring me wholly unto Your Grace’s pity and mercy.

  First at the flattering and fair persuasions of Manox, being but a young girl, I suffered him at sundry times to handle and touch the secret parts of my body which neither became me with honesty to permit nor him to require.

  Also, Francis Dereham by many persuasions procured me to his vicious purpose and obtained first to lie upon my bed with his doublet and hose and after within the bed and finally he lay with me naked, and used me in such sort as a man doth his wife many and sundry times, but how often I know not.

  Our company ended almost a year before the King’s Majesty was married to my Lady Anne of Cleves and continued not past one quarter of a year or a little above.

  Now the whole truth being declared unto Your Majesty, I most humbly beseech you to consider the subtle persuasions of young men and the ignorance and frailness of young women.

  I was so desirous to be taken unto Your Grace’s favour, and so blinded with the desire of worldly glory that I could not, nor had grace, to consider how great a fault it was to conceal my former faults from Your Majesty, considering that I intended ever during my life to be faithful and true unto Your Majesty ever after.

  Nevertheless the sorrow of my offences was ever before mine eyes, considering the infinite goodness of Your Majesty toward me which was ever increasing and not diminishing.

  Now I refer the judgment of all mine offences with my life and death wholly unto your most benign and merciful grace, to be considered by no justice of Your Majesty’s laws but only by your infinite goodness, pity, compassion, and mercy—without the which I acknowledge myself worthy of the most extreme punishment.

  She lied! She lied even here, even in her “honest” confession, she lied. Where was Culpepper in this, eh? “I intended ever during my life to be faithful and true unto Your Majesty.” The effrontery, the brazen deceit, in her very crawling phrases revealed that she did not know yet that Culpepper was taken. Her duplicity was stunning.

  All my love for her ceased upon that instant. I saw her entire, for what she was.

  I nodded to Cranmer, who was standing by, near to whimpering.

  “Thank you. You have done well,” I said. “A faithful servant is not one who leaps to attend to joyful tasks, but one who takes it upon himself to shoulder the doleful ones. There are many to serve the bridegroom, but no one to lay out a corpse.”

  “I am grieved for you, and wish only to help.”

  “You have proved yourself over and over, but at no time more than now. I had so many to help me marry the Princess of Cleves. Where are they now?”

  “The chief one is dead, Your Grace.”

  So he was brave as well as true, I thought. Not one in a thousand would have voiced that, although all would have thought it.

  “Cromwell.” I laughed a mirthless laugh. “Oh, how he would have relished these days, to have seen his enemies, the Howards, brought low. To have seen me shamed by that slut! My just reward for having chosen her over Cromwell’s Lady Anne.” Cromwell must be laughing—if one can laugh in hell. I know that demons cackle and jeer, but the damned?

  “No one with any heart or goodness could laugh at these circumstances,” Cranmer insisted. Because he was good himself, he could not imagine its absence in others.

  “They must be brought to trial,” I said, my mind leaving Cromwell in his shroud. “First the men, then Catherine. See how she feels when Culpepper denies her. As he will. He will swear he loved her not. How will she like that, to be denied publicly by the lover for whom she is giving up everything? That will hurt her worse than the sword which is to follow. He will deny her, you know. He will deny her and throw himself on my mercy.”

  I rubbed my forehead. My head was pounding. “The men must have an open trial. Admit everyone at court, and their friends, to attend. Foreigners, too, so that they may spread the word abroad. I want all the world to know how misused and abused I have been! No more will they think I am cruel or bloody, but see for themselves how deceived and betrayed I have been!”

  He nodded unhappily.

  “Do not look so miserable. The worst part is over. Now only formalities and legalisms remain.”

  He bowed.

  Suddenly I thought of something. “Oh, and Cranmer—bring me back the original letter that Catherine sent Culpepper. I would have it in my safekeeping. Such pieces of evidence have a way of disappearing just before a trial or hearing. As the original Papal dispensation for my marriage to Katherine of Aragon did just prior to the opening of the legatine court; as my letters to Anne Boleyn vanished and reappeared at the Vatican. I shall keep the Queen’s letter upon my person, so that anyone wishing to steal it must steal it from my very bosom.” As my wife was stolen.

  But no, she had not been stolen. She had stolen away on her own.

  Alone again, I sat down and opened the “confession.” I reread it slowly, word by word, as if this time I would see something that had not been there before, something that would redeem and negate the whole of it.

  Instead I found more sorrow than ever.

  First at the flattering and fair persuasions of Manox, being but a young girl, I suffered him . . . which neither became him with honesty to require. . . .

  Francis Dereham by many persuasions procured me to his vicious purpose . . . and used me. . . .

  The subtle persuasions of young men and the ignorance and frailness of young women. . . .

  The tone stank, the wheedling attempt to excuse herself and shift all the blame onto the men. How much more becoming if she had stood up for herself, shouldered the responsibility! Better a proud Delilah than an excuse-making Eve.

  And why had she wanted to marry me?

  I was so blinded with desire of worldly glory. . . .

  The fool! She was too stupid even to flatter! She just stated flatly that she coveted the jewels and gold.

  O, I had loved a stupid harlot. Bad enough a harlot, but a fool as well. A girl too unschooled to write a grammatical letter, and too unclever not to insult the very one from whom she was begging mercy! Evil and subtlety, such as her cousin Anne Boleyn employed, were grand snares which could catch any mortal man. But stupidity! I had been ensnared by the surface charms of a simpleton!

  CIX

  The ugly secret was out and scampering about the realm like an army of rats. It would undoubtedly reach York and Lincoln far more quickly than the progress had, undoing all the good I had accomplished there for the majesty of the Crown. The trial would clarify and satisfy every morbid curiosity, for I cared not if every foul fact were exposed. Let the full abominations be known. I cared not for my own pride; but let no one afterward accuse the state of injustice, or a trumped-up trial, as they had over the Witch.

  Catherine was given orders to surrender her royal apartments at Hampton and move, under guard, to Syon House, a former monastery. Her presence there would certainly deconsecrate it, if the Church had not already done so.

  Since her hysterical confession, I had sent Cranmer back to her again, along with Thomas Wriothesley, who was less tender-hearted. It was necessary that she make a statement about Culpepper. We knew her guilt already, and if she hoped to gain absolution for her eternal soul, she must admit to her sin.

  Faced with Culpepper’s admission, and the evidence of her letter to him, she fainted.

  “He could not—he dared not—” she murmured, collapsing. Upon opening her eyes, the first thing she demanded was, “The letter! The letter!”

 
“It is taken, Madam,” she was told. “The King’s Majesty hath it.”

  She keened and wailed. She then confessed to meeting Culpepper in pre-arranged secret places and by the backstairs of palaces; that she had called Culpepper her “little sweet fool” and given him a velvet cap and ring for love tokens.

  “But there was no sin between us, I swear!” she wept, with one breath, while with the next blaming Lady Rochford and Culpepper for having pressed her for these meetings.

  Lady Rochford had a different tale to tell, one that exonerated her. She had arranged these meetings at Catherine’s mysterious urgings. Furthermore, she swore that “Culpepper hath known the Queen carnally considering all things that I hath heard and seen between them.”

  Enough. Enough of this. Now the entire truth must be driven out. Dereham and Culpepper and Lady Rochford and Catherine Howard and all the other Howards must be brought to trial. The preliminaries, the investigations, were over.

  Guildhall, in London. The entire Privy Council, and the foreign ambassadors—the French envoys Marillac and Castillon, and the venerable Chapuys—were in attendance when the men were brought before the company of jurors.

  I was told that Dereham was charming. His arrogance was gone and he traded on his background, his good family, and his love for Catherine and honest intentions. He cherished her, he said, and his only thought was to make her his wife. He had been heartbroken when he returned from Ireland (whence he had gone only to make his fortune so that he could offer her the luxuries she so deserved) to find that she spurned and scorned him. She was no longer a simple maiden at the Duchess’s, but a girl with a court position, which had quite gone to her head. Her other suitors—particularly a certain Thomas Paston and her cousin Thomas Culpepper (Thomases again!)—did not worry him. It was the King who was his rival, the one before whom he must reluctantly give way. Nevertheless, “If the King were dead I am sure I might marry her,” he had claimed.

  If the King were dead. He had imagined my death, wished it. Evil intent, malice in the heart. And then—he had requested a position in Catherine’s household. Clear proof and evidence that he had wicked intentions.

  The Duchess had sponsored him in this request. She, too, had a stake in all this. She was involved.

  Culpepper was less abject and co-operative than Dereham when first he was brought in. Clearly he disdained to share the floor with a commoner like Dereham. But in a flash of pride he blurted out that all along the progress they had met secretly, with the connivance of Lady Rochford, and always at Catherine’s hot insistence, and that he “intended and meant to do ill with the Queen, and that likewise the Queen so minded to do with him.”

  With that, and with the reckless nonchalance that was his trademark, he threw away his life, and Catherine’s. There could be no mercy now, no mercy for any of them. They were a nest of traitors, traitors who had crouched in the royal apartments planning and wishing my illness and incapacity: Dereham seeking a place in Catherine’s household, and Culpepper conveniently near to “serve” me. Yes, serve me poison, as he had done in March, when I was taken so ill. It was not from God that this illness had come, it was from human hands, in Satan’s service. I had been stricken, had almost died, so that he could have access to the pleasures of my wife’s body.

  Die. These instruments of evil must die.

  On December tenth, they were taken out of the Tower and transported to Tyburn, the place where commoners were executed.

  The Privy Council had advised me that Culpepper’s offence was so “very heinous” that it warranted a notable execution, despite his petition to be permitted the kindness of decapitation.

  Culpepper. The pretty, lusty boy whom I had loved, as only rogues are lovable. The serpent I had nourished in my bosom, protecting him from the penalties of his own folly and evil. He had raped a gamekeeper’s wife and then murdered one of the villagers who tried to save her. This was deserving of the death penalty, but I had been dazzled by his beauty and words, and therefore I had pardoned him. In so doing I had done wrong. He had taken it only as licence to continue his evil, not repent it. In showing misplaced mercy I had created a monster.

  The traitor’s death: as excruciating a death as human ingenuity could contrive.

  Culpepper had earned it. Nonetheless I wrote out on parchment, “Sentence to be commuted to simple beheading,” and sent the message straight to Tyburn to meet the executioners.

  Let them call me softhearted, womanish. Could I help it if I had a tender conscience and desired to show mercy?

  Christmas. There were no festivities, and Catherine was still a prisoner at Syon House, while I kept to my own apartments and read and reread her letter to Culpepper until I knew every wrinkle on the paper, every ink blot. Why did I do this, like a monk repeating a rosary? Why did I torture myself so? If I thought to make myself insensitive to the wound, it had just the opposite effect: I never allowed it to heal, and by my constant probing, I kept the wound open.

  Further investigations, dreary as they were, revealed yet more treason. I was forced to imprison the Duchess because she destroyed evidence relating to Dereham. She had hastily opened his trunks and destroyed his memorabilia and burnt his incriminating letters just before my commissioners arrived to confiscate them.

  In truth, the entire Howard clan had conspired to hoodwink me and conceal Catherine’s true character, so that they could seize power. They knew the little whore for what she was, but would pass her on to their King, to satisfy their own greed. Now they would pay the price: to the Tower with them all! They were all tried and found guilty of misprision of treason, and thus must forfeit their goods and possessions to the Crown and their bodies to perpetual imprisonment. All of them: Catherine’s lascivious uncle, William Howard; her aunt, Lady Bridgewater; and all her brothers and sisters. Several of these cowards disappeared abroad. As for Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, he wrote an oily letter:

  Most noble and gracious Sovereign Lord, yesterday came to my knowledge that mine ungracious mother-in-law, mine unhappy brother and his wife, with my lewd sister of Bridgewater, were committed to the Tower, which I am sure is done for some false and traitorous proceedings against your Royal Majesty; which revolving in my mind, with also the most abominable deeds done by two of my nieces against Your Highness, has brought me into the greatest perplexity that ever poor wretch was in, fearing that Your Majesty, having so often and by so many of my kin been thus falsely and traitorously handled, might not only conceive a displeasure in your heart against me and all other of my kin, but also abhor in manner to hear speak of any of the same. Wherefore, most gracious Sovereign Lord, prostrate at your feet, most humbly I beseech Your Majesty to call to your remembrance that a great part of this matter has come to light by my declaration to Your Majesty, according to my bounden duty, of the words spoken to me by my mother-in-law the Duchess, when Your Highness sent me to Lambeth to search Dereham’s coffers, without the which I think she had not been further examined, nor consequently, her ungracious children.

  Which my true proceedings toward Your Majesty being considered, and also the small love of my two false traitorous nieces, and my mother-in-law, have borne unto me, doth put me in some hope, that Your Highness will not conceive any displeasure in your most gentle heart against me, that God knoweth did never think a thought that might be to your discontentation.

  It was true that no one in the family liked the Duke, which was now to his credit. His ungracious and traitorous nieces—oh, he spoke well, and described them perfectly! What was worse than to be uncle of a witch and a whore—unless it was to be husband of them? The Duke was not to go to the Tower with the rest. I would spare him. But would I spare Catherine? That was what the people wondered as the days passed and she remained at Syon House, under guard but not without certain comforts. Her jewels had been taken, but not her attendants. She still had four ladies for companionship. She had not been tried, nor had any trial date been set. Already six weeks had passed since the treasonous d
isclosure; by this like time Anne Boleyn had been in her grave three weeks already, and I remarried. Some laid the delay to respect for the Christmas season; others said it betokened a still-lingering love for her. Wagers were that she would live, even though her paramours had perished as felons.

  There was a part of me that wished that. And there was a way, there was a way . . . if she would acknowledge her marriage to Dereham, admit that she had been his wife. . . . True, then she would have committed perjury and bigamy by going through a marriage ceremony with me, but that was not treason; the only treason was to the human heart, to have trampled so on an old man’s heart. But if she repented, and as a widow retired to a quiet and virtuous life . . . yes, then she could live.

  I sent such an offer to her, along with a paper for her to sign. Before it had even reached her, I regretted it. How could I have forgotten, even for an instant, the rest of it? She and Culpepper imagining my death, poisoning me in March, so that only God saved me? Oh, fond old man’s fancy, doting so! I had forgot. I had forgot. I had willed myself to forget, as if forgetting made it not so.

  She sent proud word back, denying Dereham. There had been no marriage. She was not, and never had been, his wife. She was my wife. She was Queen of England.

  So she would cling to that, and die, rather than renounce it, and live? The one thing in her sordid little life that made her special, that would say to later ages, She lived. In this, and this only, we have lived, then: to be special for an instant.

  I would grant her this. I would allow her to become immortal. If I did not love her, I would force her to sign the paper, un-Queen herself, and live out an obscure life in Sussex. But I did love her, and so I would give her the death she craved.