The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  It was a brave show. He returned, and divesting himself of his gold-encrusted doublet, his great necklace of rubies, he put on a plain linen nightshirt—eschewing even the embroidered ones—and walked once around his bedchamber before submitting himself, childlike, to be hoisted into bed by his lift-pulley.

  He never left that bed again.

  As the darkness closed in on him, and his physicians gave up hope, no one dared tell him that his end was near—for to “prophesy” or “imagine” the King’s death was treason, as Henry Norris and Henry Howard had found out. I myself did not dare tell him, as I was afraid that he would turn on me and hate me—and I could not bear that, not now. I did not want to lose his love, and so I hung back, cowardly, like the rest.

  At length, Sir Anthony Denny—a recent courtier, with no old love to cripple his action—spoke boldly to the King. In the opinion of his physicians, Denny said, the King had not long to live. Was there anyone to whom he wished to confess, or to open his soul?

  “Cranmer,” whispered Hal. “But not yet.” He felt death to be much further away, not standing right at the headboard. Nevertheless they sent for Cranmer straightway, as he was at Croydon, an hour’s journey south of London.

  And, indeed, when Cranmer arrived, his King was already past speech and barely breathing. “Do you die in the faith of Christ?” asked Cranmer, kneeling, whispering directly in the failing ear.

  No response.

  Cranmer took his hand. “Give me a sign that you believe that Christ has redeemed you, that you die in firm union with Him.” A faint squeeze of the hand, imperceptible but to Cranmer.

  “He hears!” he said. “He has affirmed it. He dies in the faith of Christ.”

  Then I, too, took his hand. (This is unrecorded; I was not a prelate and had no gatekeeping duties over his soul.) I squeezed it hard.

  “You have done well, my Prince,” I said, directly into his ear. “You have done as well as any man can do, with what God gave you to do with.”

  Did he hear me? Did he know me? There was life there; then there was not. Just so, he was gone.

  Someone pulled me away. “Leave him,” they said. “Your time is over. We have no need of fools.”

  Another cuffed me directly. “Let your King protect you now, all-licenced, hateful, interfering fool!”

  My reign, along with Hal’s, was over. Already it was ugly in the chamber. I knew they would raven him, tear him.

  “The will?” they said. “Where is it? Announce nothing until we have o’er-read the will.” They began ransacking the chests, the boxes, the coffers.

  I remembered the journal. It was of no use to them but to desecrate. But where had he put it? The last I had seen it, it was at his desk. . . .

  Feathers were flying. They were ripping open the mattress underneath him, searching for the will. Cranmer begged them to stop.

  “If he’d left the will in a proper place, we’d have no need of this,” they replied. “But no! Like the madman he was, he hid it even from his own Council—”

  I slid open the hidden desktop, and there the journal lay, right in plain view. I took it out.

  “What is that, fool?” Tom Seymour wrenched it from my hands. Upon seeing the tiny handwriting, he lost interest. He could scarcely read.

  “My poetry,” I said. “Ideas for poems I hope to write, upon retirement.” A journal would interest them, threaten them. Poetry would bore them, and be safe. Henry Howard knew that, as he had attacked King Henry under the guise of writing about the Assyrian king Sardanapalus (“. . . with foul desire/And filthy lusts that stained his regal heart . . . Who scarce the name of manhood did retain . . . I saw a royal throne . . . Where wrong was set/That bloody beast, that drank the guiltless blood”).

  “Fah!” He tossed it back. “Begone. No one wants you now. It’s our day, the day of the Seymours, the day I’ve waited for since my stupid sister married that rotten, evil hulk of a King.” He grinned and repeated the last sentence in the dead King’s face—the face to which he had always been unctuous and simpering in life. Now I, too, began to see the red in Thomas’s eyes, which the King had recognized in his “madness.”

  I walked out of the death-chamber, the journal tucked beneath my arm. Outside in the adjoining Privy Chamber the remainder of the councillors and courtiers waited to hear the word, to know where the King’s soul lingered. No, in truth, they cared not where his soul was, but only where his will and his gold and his heir were.

  Nonetheless it was a good reign, and beyond the courtiers, the realm grieved his going. He had done well by everyone but himself.

  CXXXII

  I fled down the corridors, seeking only to escape the clutching hands and covetous faces of the self-seekers now gathered around the dead King’s apartments. I found my own quarters and made my way to a pallet without lighting a candle, lest anyone see the light and come to question me.

  When dawn came, I awoke and found that the great palace of Whitehall was still, hushed—pausing for death. The supplicants and mourners had departed, the watchers had gone to bed; the sun was not yet up. Death held sway; Death ruled the realm.

  Where had the scramblers for the will gone? Had they found it? What did it say? Had they scampered off to proclaim the news? Or did they hold it fast, like a cardplayer with a losing hand—hoping for deliverance, for some “rearrangement”? Were they themselves working to bring about that rearrangement?

  I came up to the royal apartments. I had to knock now; there was no friendly King to let me in. The head of the Yeomen of the Guard grabbed me and searched me.

  “What madman would carry weappns against a dead man?” I asked, more in wonder than in anger.

  “There are those who seek to desecrate the royal corpse,” he said. “In the past hour I found burning-oils and even silver stakes amongst those who have sought to enter; knives and heart-removing devices. Some of these are witches—how else could they have known the King lay dead? For it has not yet been announced, lest the French make war against us in our confusion and disarray. The Council meets tonight.”

  “To decide what?”

  “The details of the funeral. The publication of the will.”

  “They found it, then?”

  He looked confused. “Why, was it lost?”

  That is what they would give out. It was lost. Or the King had not made one. To give them time to alter it. O Jesu, chaos reigned!

  “I know naught of wills and councils,” I said, adopting my most wheedling manner. “I seek only to do honour to my lost King. Tell me, where is he?”

  “In the Privy Chamber. The chapel is not prepared to receive him. While it is being readied, he must lie in state in his own Privy Chamber.” He waved me in.

  They had done something to him in the night: spirited him away, disembowelled him, steeped him in spices and preservatives. Now his corpse lay lapped in Eastern tars and inside a flimsy coffin. It was draped with heavy black velvet palls. The supports underneath it were sagging. No one had been prepared for this eventuality. To “imagine the King’s death” was treason, therefore one could not ready even the most elementary props for it. The coffin supports were inadequate, but no one could replace them beforehand without running afoul of Cromwell’s leftover secret police.

  Sun streamed into the chamber. I felt foolish approaching the death-bier. It was all so makeshift, so un-kingly. I had nothing to say here, nothing to do. I had joined the throng of people who only wished to “check up.” I disgusted myself. I left.

  Later I was told that “officials” (what officials?) made it more palatable and seemly. The coffin was surrounded by eighty tapers, and there were Masses, obsequies, and continual watches kept by the chaplains and gentlemen of the Privy Chamber.

  Outside this well-ordered respect, the realm trembled and soldiers diced for the seamless garment. No, that is really being too cynical. The truth was that offices must be filled and a nine-year-old King “protected” . . . especially from his older sisters, who repre
sented substantial claims to the throne in their own right.

  Here I must digress to comment on the two contradictory deathbed scenes reported by “witnesses,” neither of whom was present at the time. The Protestant version is that King Henry had envisioned a great enlightened state in which the Reformed religion would prevail. In this version, Henry deliberately had Edward brought up by Protestant tutors and entrusted the Protestant cause to Mary’s conscience by calling her to his deathbed and saying, “Be a mother to Edward, for look, he is little yet.” Dying in sanctity, he had commissioned Mary to protect her brother, had cut down the Howards as Catholic weeds that might block Edward’s Gospel sunlight, and had created the Governing Council as a safety device to shelter Edward whilst he grew to maturity. He had carefully stricken Gardiner from the list, and from his will, as a troublemaker. “He is a wilful man and not meet to be about my son,” he had muttered. “For surely, if he were in my testament, he would cumber you all, and you should never rule him, he is of so troublesome a nature. Marry, I myself could use him, and rule him to all manner of purposes as seemed good unto me; but so shall you never do.”

  He had sent for Kate and, holding her hands, had consoled her: “It is God’s will, sweetheart, that we shall part, and I order all these gentlemen to honour and treat you as if I were living still; and if it should be your pleasure to marry again, I order that you shall have seven thousand pounds for your service as long as you shall live, and all your jewels and ornaments.” Kate could not answer for weeping, and so he bade her leave him. Thus the wise, prescient King, having weeded his garden and staked it out to the best of his ability, expired in grace and contentment.

  The Catholic version is full opposite. This mysterious eyewitness records that the King, smitten by conscience and devoured by remorse, passed his last hours in his bedchamber, flailing with his arms and calling for “white wine,” then sitting upright and seeing shadows. “All is lost,” he cried. “Monks, monks!”

  In fact both stories are fanciful, albeit fetching.

  That Henry tried to plan for the future, and assure Edward’s security, is true. That he lamented the mistakes of the past and even longed for the lost world he had helped destroy, is also true. But neither of these things permeated his deathbed. By the time he had come there, his main effort was struggling for breath. Philosophical quandaries are a luxury granted to healthy men.

  In five days the Chapel Royal was prepared and readied to receive Henry. His coffin was transferred to the dark, dank, redecorated chapel, where it would rest within a larger coffin for twelve days before being transported to Windsor for interment in St. George’s Chapel. The people came to pay their respects. The government published the royal death—along with appropriate bell-tolling and proclamations—and worked at establishing a Protector for the child King. They marvelled at how Henry had omitted it from his will, considering that such a thing was “absolutely necessary” for the peaceful governing of the realm. One would almost have thought, they said, that Henry had feared it: an example of his suspicious nature—or his wandering mind. No matter, they would make it all up, do what the mad King would have done, were he himself. Their unsurprising choice was Edward Seymour, the Prince’s uncle. He would be the Protector, the uncrowned King, the ruler of England for nine years, until Edward reached eighteen.

  But this is stupid. You already know this, and what happened afterward. I must record the details of the funeral and only that.

  CXXXIII

  As I have said, the outer coffin stood for twelve long days in the Chapel Royal. To describe this coffin: it was a very large box, made of good English wood, draped with black silk set with precious stones, and garnished with escutcheons and bannerols of the King’s descent. Banners of saints, beaten in fine gold upon damask, covered each corner. Stretching over all of it was a great canopy of transparent cloth-of-gold filmed with black silk.

  The huge reliquary—for such it was—was surrounded by wax tapers, each two feet long, and weighing, in total, a ton. The entire floor and walls of the chapel were covered in black cloth. It was a chapel of exquisite death.

  While Henry was engaged—albeit unwillingly—in this tableau, the realm was seething like an anthill. Chancellor Wriothesley went to Parliament to announce the death formally before both houses of the assembled Lords and Commons. Then Sir William Paget read Henry’s will (discovered at last) so it could be proclaimed throughout the land.

  The surprise provision in it was that Henry had not ruled out the possibility of children by Katherine Parr; for he placed them directly after Prince Edward in the line of succession, and before Mary and Elizabeth. These were his exact words:

  And for the great love, obedience, chastity of life, and wisdom being in our wife and queen Katherine, we bequeath unto her three thousand pounds in plate, jewels, and such apparel as it shall please her to take of such as we have already. . . .

  And per default of lawful issue of our son Prince Edward, we will that the said imperial crown after our two deceases, shall fully remain and come to the heirs of our entirely beloved wife, Katherine, that now is.

  And all this time we had assumed their marriage was of the spirit only! Now the Dowager would have to be carefully watched, and guarded, for the next three months, much as the Princess of Aragon had been after Arthur’s death. Truly they were sisters in fate.

  The news of King Henry’s demise was received with great exultation in Rome. Only Cardinal Pole refused to join in, prompting the Pope to ask, “Why do you not rejoice with the rest at the death of this great enemy of the Church?” Pole stated that the new King, Edward, was steeped in Lutheran and Zwinglian principles, and that his Regency Council was made up of Protestants, so the Church had gained nothing by King Henry’s death; indeed it had probably lost something.

  But to return to the lying-in-state at Whitehall. At dawn of each day, the Lord Chamberlain stood in the choir-door and chanted in a sad, clear voice, “Of your charity pray for the soul of the high and mighty Prince, our late Sovereign Lord and King, Henry VIII.” The mourners—some of whom had been keeping watch throughout the night—then would begin to murmur their prayers before sung Mass would begin, to be later followed by dirges. The Pope would certainly have approved of the Catholicism of the rites.

  Then came the day of the removal, so that Henry might be interred in his vault near the altar of St. George’s Chapel. Workmen had been busy prying up the great marble paving stones and digging down into the soil beneath. They uncovered Jane’s coffin, its royal pall faded and worm-eaten, but still recognizable. Knowing Henry wanted to be as close to her as possible, they excavated a space for his great sarcophagus directly adjoining it.

  By mid-February, all was ready. So it was that on the thirteenth day of that cursed month, the coffin was conveyed from the Chapel Royal and loaded upon the funeral carriage to make the slow, two days’ journey to Windsor. The great, creaking hearse, nine storeys high and draped in black, swaying from its bulk and awkward shape, was escorted by a four-mile procession of mourners bearing flaring torches. All along the route, curiosity-seekers stood gaping, beholding death reduced to—or was it magnified by?—the ceremonial trappings of a royal funeral.

  Along the Thames-side road the hearse bumped along, shaking and rattling and even groaning at times. It was a rutted, ice-pitted path, hastily gravelled for the occasion, and even the stately pace of the wagon horses could not eliminate the beating the hearse must endure. As the short winter day ended, and the pitiful little sun sank directly before us, we reached Syon.

  Syon. The suppressed Bridgettine monastery that had resisted the King’s dissolution. Syon Abbey—where Catherine Howard had spent her last days, and had been forced out and onto a barge to go down the Thames, in the opposite direction of the King’s cortège. Henry would not be happy to rest here. Why had they planned it so?

  The horses were to pull the hearse directly into the nave of the little church there, and so they did. The horses then being unhitched
, the hearse was left, surrounded by torches in the otherwise dark church. The company retired to the working part of the erstwhile monastery; they were hungry and wanted feeding and wine. The King stood alone. I must confess that I joined them, as my joints ached and I was cold clear through, and there was a fire in the hall.

  But the point is that I left Hal alone; left him in that dark and somehow evil chapel. If I had had the wits about me to count sheep, to remember anything, then I would have realized that it was February thirteenth—the anniversary of Catherine Howard’s execution. And I would have stayed with him.

  Sometime during the night, after the sleepy mourners and choristers had come, sung the midnight dirges, and then departed, the coffin opened, and the King’s blood seeped out and dripped upon the stone pavement—thick and ruby-coloured, so it was said. For hours it dripped, as the candle-flames around the coffin guttered and finally went out. And then, the holy presence of light and blessed substance gone, out crept the spirits of hell to do vengeance on the unguarded King. A large black dog, having come from no one knew where, crept forward, upon the final guttering of the flames, before the entire chapel was plunged into darkness. It crept up underneath the hearse, and began lapping up the blood with its long, evil tongue.

  It was still there, slurping and grovelling, when the priest came to sing Matins. Dawn had not yet come, and the priest was fumbling with the candles, when he heard the licking and growling.