Great Harry

by Erickson, Carolly, 1943-

  Of Henry's potential critics one voice had been stilled. Margaret Beaufort, who at sixty-eight was still active enough to serve as principal executor of her late son's estate, took to her bed during the festivities surrounding her grandson's coronation. She lived long enough to advise him, as she lay on her deathbed, to take as his mentor her confessor and close friend John Fisher. Fisher's destiny was indeed to be bound up with Henry's, but in a way the Venerable Margaret would have shuddered to hear. She foresaw only that the thoughtful, learned Fisher could help to guide her eighteen-year-old grandson through the trying transition to high authority now that she herself could not. Comforted by this she died, and was buried in Henry VII's chapel in Westminster Abbey, where her bronze effigy shows a lined but handsome face, full of resigned tolerance.

  Henry had not forgotten his grandmother when he began his reign. In his first month as king he granted her a manor in Surrey, and had smoothed her way as his father's executor. Now he served as her executor in his turn, dividing her extensive lands and houses among the household officers, many of whom had been her servants. Her London house of Coldharbour went to the steward of the household; another London residence, "The Royal," was given to Roger Radclyf, a former servant of Margaret's who joined Queen Katherine's staff. One Gryffyn Richards, another of Margaret's household who became clerk of the signet to Katherine, was made keeper of Margaret's manor of Collyweston, while John Pechy, one of Henry's favored companions, became steward for all her holdings in Kent.^

  The passing of the Venerable Margaret broke Henry's last link to his childhood. The two dominant figures of his past, his father and grandmother, were swept from his life within months of one another. He was his own master. He might face the disapproval of his councilors, but whatever they thought of him, he was still their king. And the king's word was law.

  It was this awesome realization, coupled with his awareness of his immaturity, that ran in Henry's thoughts at the outset of his reign and found expression in his verses. "With good order, counsel and equity,/

  God lord, grant us our mansion to be!" he wrote. "For without their good guidance/Youth should fall in great mischance."^ He was unsure of himself; he was finding his way, a young man of firm conscience but slight experience set over sophisticated courtiers of uncertain morality and unmistakable inclinations to vice. "God and my right and my duty,/From them I shall never vary" Henry sang, insisting "I hurt no man, I do no wrong;/I love true where I did marry." But he knew as well as anyone that, if he chose, he could let his duty go, hurt whom he chose and cultivate wrongdoing, and betray Katherine with any woman who appealed to him—all without hindrance.

  For youth is frail and prompt to do. As well vices as virtues to ensue; Wherefore by these he must be guided And virtuous pastance must be therein used.

  Any of a number of activities might have driven out the temptations Henry faced. But one pastime more than any other furthered the political and personal aims of the young king while keeping him on the path of virtue. Feats of arms—tourneying, tilting, fighting at the barriers—not only absorbed his idle time and kept him from idle thoughts but allowed him to demonstrate his remarkable physical virtuosity and his eagerness for battle. These were the preoccupations of a king bent on war, and on disheartening his enemies.

  Though he trained almost daily Henry did not enter the lists himself until one day in January of 1510, when he heard that some of the courtiers were preparing a joust in secret. Someone gave the secret away, and the king, with his closest intimate William Compton, had himself and his companion armed in the little hunting park at Richmond and rode onto the tiltyard "unknown to all persons, and unlooked for."^ The two strangers acquitted themselves well, breaking many staves and coming away the winners in encounter after encounter until Compton, running against Edward Neville, caught a crippling blow and was so severely injured he was not expected to live. His partner disabled, Henry turned to leave the field. But he had been recognized: a voice cried out, "God save the king!" and he had to take off his helmet and disclose himself to the cheering spectators.

  Once Henry began to compete formally in the jousting he seemed never to miss a tournament. With Compton (who recovered), Brandon, Buckingham or Neville he challenged all comers, often hurling his spear farther than the others and giving more telling blows with his huge two-handed sword. The king and his aides often took the prize, though their opponents were "divers valiant and strong persons," but even when he lost Henry remained the most enthusiastic and hardy of all the contestants, never missing a day of exercise and attending every joust. "The king of England amuses himself almost every day of the week running the ring, and with jousts and tournaments on foot," Caroz wrote to Ferdinand during a series of jousts in the late spring of 1510. "Two

  days in the week are consecrated to this kind of tournament, which is to continue till the Feast of St. John, and which is instituted in imitation of Amadis and Lanzilote, and other knights of olden times, of whom so much is written in books/'^

  The jousts played out Henry's childhood dreams of knighthood, dreams built on medieval tales of romance and courtly adventure. But if the mock combats honored the enchanted chivalry of the Round Table their practical utility was always kept in view. In the document proclaiming these jousts the king explained their purpose. In the summer season, his proclamation read, it was customary for gentlemen to pass the time in hunting or hawking or other such diversions; but "because such sports be not ready in May and June, to eschew idleness, the ground of all vice, and give honorable and healthy exercise," five weeks of jousting would be held." Another tournament summons reminded the court that the king was "not minded to see young gentlemen inexpert in martial feats." Several months earlier Henry had taken a first step toward making the young men of his court fit to serve him in arms. He instituted a special armed guard to be drawn from noblemen's sons, especially those "unexercised in the feat of arms, and in the handling and running of spears." The recruits were to be turned into skilled fighting men, outfitted with armor and ready to be put into the field, each with two horses, a page, a full panoply, and two good archers well horsed and harnessed.^

  Henry's intentions were clear: he meant to go to war. And his intended enemy was equally evident. "The new king is eighteen years old, a worthy king and most hostile to France," a Venetian diplomat wrote, adding "it is thought he will indubitably invade France." To remove any doubt about the object of his belligerence Henry took the earliest opportunity to display his hostility toward the French. In the first summer of his reign an ambassador arrived from France, a corpulent cleric who in addition to his diplomatic services to Louis XII was abbot of Fecamp. Henry invited the abbot to his palace at Westminster, but almost as soon as the Frenchman entered his presence he became enraged. The abbot had been instructed to acknowledge King Henry's letter to his master requesting friendship and peace. The letter had in fact been written by Henry's councilors, and was in itself little more than a gesture of protocol at the opening of a new reign. The king chose to take it as a betrayal of his true feelings, however, and exploded in rage when the abbot announced he had come to England to confirm the good relations between the two countries.

  Glaring at the courtiers around him, Henry shouted, "Who wrote this letter? I ask peace of the king of France, who dare not look me in the face, still less make war on me!"

  Without waiting for anyone to reply he stormed out of the audience hall, leaving Fox and the others to placate the ambassador. But there was more to the insult. Henry saw to it that the injured abbot was invited to watch the afternoon's sport of tilting at the ring, giving careful orders that once he arrived no seat was to be provided for him. Now it was the ambassador's turn to walk off the tiltyard in anger, but before he got far a

  royal messenger called him back, offering him a cushion to sit on. Thoroughly affronted, he eased his great bulk onto the cushion and watched in silence as Henry rode back and forth across the field, putting his lance through the metal ring time and
time again. To all appearances Henry had forgotten the abbot entirely; his boyish face was as free of concern as if the incident in the presence chamber had never happened. ^^

  Throughout the following year the talk of war continued. "The report is that he means to attack France, and to send troops across," Badoer wrote. Three men had been sent on a special mission to Italy to buy horse armor and other military accouterments, and the French were more suspicious than ever of Henry's intentions. To prevent the true state of affairs from becoming known—the English were in fact hampered by the lack of a military ally—the English ambassador in Rome had to send his dispatches home hidden in the cover of a book, as the French searched all passengers crossing the Channel. French diplomatic efforts intensified in the spring of 1510 when the disgruntled abbot of Fecamp came to England again, this time bringing with him two other emissaries and eight carts, "said to contain chests full of silver to give to the king."^^

  But if they thought they could bribe him they misjudged both his character and his treasury. Henry VII had left his son a treasury full enough to keep him free from financial worries for a while at least— making him, temporarily, richer than any of his fellow monarchs on the continent.^^ More than this, though, Henry was not likely to be swayed from any aim he sought merely by riches. "This king of ours is no seeker after gold, or gems, or mines of silver," Mountjoy wrote of his former protege. "He desires only the fame of virtue and eternal life."

  No group was as delighted with the new king as the men of learning. Mountjoy spoke for the entire humanist circle in writing rapturously of Henry's "extraordinary and almost divine character." A "new star" in the firmament of English government, he was to Mountjoy that rarest of men: a bold hero who was also an earnest seeker after goodness and justice; a strong ruler who valued knowledge as highly as he did power.

  Henry had shown his regard for scholarship by inviting Erasmus to come to live in England, offering him everything he needed to ensure his comfort and asking nothing in return "save to make our realm your home." In his letter to Erasmus Henry had called himself "your constant friend and admirer" and recalled the stages in their acquaintance. Erasmus had met Henry a second time when he stayed in England from 1505 to 1507, and though they cannot have spent long stretches of time in one another's company in these years they did share their thoughts more than once. Clearly they impressed each other, Erasmus finding in Henry the same gifted uniqueness and charm he had noted when they first met, and Henry, now able to take the measure of this celebrated scholar, listening to Erasmus talk of his interests and his travels with the keen eagerness of an avid student. It must have been during this time that Henry confided his military ambitions to his friend, and Erasmus, looking toward his future, wondered aloud whether he might settle in England when he became too old to travel any longer.

  "I recollect," Henry now wrote him, "that you once said that when you were tired of wandering you would make this country the home of your old age." He urged Erasmus to act on this intent now, without waiting for old age or any other consideration beyond the one Henry himself saw as critical. In defining it he disclosed another of the imperatives: to safeguard the welfare of Christendom. "It has been and is my earnest wish to restore Christ's religion to its primitive purity, and to employ whatever talents and means I have in extinguishing heresy and giving free course to the Word of God," Henry wrote. Through his enlightened scholarship Erasmus was a bulwark against heresy and impiety; in protecting and supporting Erasmus Henry would be preserving the purity of the faith. Come then, he concluded, "you and we together, with our joint counsels and resources, will build again the Gospel of Christ."'^

  Henry took the same deeply serious tone in a conversation he had with Mountjoy. He expressed regret at his own ignorance, and nothing the nobleman said could comfort him. His subjects did not expect him to be learned himself, Mountjoy protested, only that he encourage learning in others. But Henry responded with a dutifully pious epigram. "Without knowledge," he informed the overjoyed courtier, "life would not be worth our having."^^

  That Henry was saying what he knew Mountjoy wanted to hear in no way deflated the latter's enthusiasm. "The heavens laugh, the earth exults, all things are full of milk, of honey and of nectar!" he wrote to Erasmus. "But when you know what a hero he now shows himself, how wisely he behaves, what a lover he is of justice and goodness, what affection he bears to the learned, I will venture to swear that you will need no wings to make you fly to behold this new and auspicious star."

  Adew, adew, le company, I trust we shall meet oftener. Vive le Katerine et noble Henry! Vive le prince, le infant rosary!

  In the last days of January, 1510, Queen Katherine went into labor with her first child. Because the birth was premature there had been no time for the formal ceremony of withdrawal, the ritual preliminary to the final month of waiting during which the queen was closeted with her women, the physicians and midwives. Her labor was prolonged, and agonizing. Hour after hour she struggled with the pains, her chamber emptied of all but one physician, two Spanish women, and her cherished confessor, Diego Fernandez. A day and a night passed, and into the second day, at the height of her ordeal, she cried out to the Franciscan Saint Peter the Martyr to ease her suffering, vowing to send to his shrine one of her richest headdresses if he would bring her safely through her ordeal.

  Hours later the child was bom, a stillborn girl. Katherine wept from exhaustion and disappointment, but remembered to send one of her maids to the shrine of Saint Peter with the jeweled headdress. The midwives lowered their eyes and crossed themselves against the evil omen and hoped the king would not take out his anger on them.

  Henry had to be told, of course, but not at once. Only the five people in the birth chamber knew what had happened, and they were sworn to secrecy. Publicly it was said that the queen was still pregnant, with the birth expected in May, and the king, looking forward eagerly to the arrival of a son, ordered new coverings for the steps of the baptismal font and linen napkins for the servants who were to assist at the ceremony. A special upholstered cradle of estate was made ready to hold the royal infant, lined in crimson cloth of gold and embroidered with the king's arms. All the accouterments of the birth chamber were ordered too— sheets and bearing panes for the bed, swaddling bands for the newborn infant, beds for the nurse and two rockers who would sleep by the queen in her labor, and the *'groaning chair" where she would sit for the delivery itself, trimmed like a seat of honor in cloth of gold and equipped with a bowl of copper and gilt to catch the blood. ^

  In the first weeks after the stillbirth a biological enigma helped to sustain the delusion that she was still pregnant. Her uterus swelled to a prodigious size—''larger than ever was seen in a pregnant woman"—and

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  her physicians made ready for another birth. Katherine herself half believed there might be another child in her womb, though there were indications to the contrary. Then, as suddenly as she had swelled up, the queen deflated. But by now the pretense had been carried to its final stage, and Katherine had formally withdrawn to await the birth. Henry and his closest advisers had learned the truth, and the awkwardness of the situation was not altered by the fact that sometime in March or April Katherine actually did conceive a second child.

  By the end of May messengers were arriving from foreign courts asking why the birth had been delayed. King Ferdinand was particularly insistent, and Katherine, who had feared to anger her father by her failure to bear a healthy son, finally confessed the truth to him, begging him to accept the misfortune as God's will and to spare his anger. She added a distressing note. The maid to whom she had entrusted her jeweled headdress—a trustworthy and pious girl who hoped to become a nun— had been kept from fulfilling Katherine's vow. Her father had confiscated the headdress and had sworn before a notary that it belonged to his daughter and not to the queen. The man's want of respect offended Katherine, as well as thwarting her act of piety, and she begged Ferdinand to pu
nish him however he could.^

  The bizarre course of the queen's pregnancy had disrupted Henry's smoothly running court. The privy councilors, who had to live down the daily embarrassment of Katherine's continued withdrawal, openly blamed her bedchamber women for the error but privately accused the queen. She had put them in an impossible position; ''they find it so difficult," Caroz wrote, "that they do not know what to say." Their indignation weighed heavily on Henry, who had already had to resign himself to the disappointment of the stillbirth and had found Katherine's ever changing condition increasingly hard to tolerate. He was frustrated by the timid physicians and midwives who feared to tell him anything displeasing, and hence said nothing, and annoyed by Katherine's confessor, who confused everyone he met with farfetched explanations of Katherine's behavior in an effort to protect her from ridicule. He was ill at ease with Katherine, whose fear of new disorders and of his anger made her reluctant even to tell him the good news of her second pregnancy until long after she was certain of it. She knew the councilors blamed her for making fools of them—and of the king. More than this, she knew she bore direct responsibility for assuring the succession.

  ''I know," Caroz wrote to Ferdinand, ''that many of the privy councilors and other persons are murmuring, and they presume that because the queen is not pregnant she cannot conceive." Rumors of Katherine's inability to bear healthy children increased as her confinement was prolonged, fed by the courtiers' irritation with her as well as by her curious cycle of symptoms. She looked healthy enough. Fernandez described her as very fit, "and the most beautiful creature in the world, with the greatest gaiety and contentment that ever was," and Caroz too found her to have "a pretty and most healthy color in her face." Yet the aftermath of her first pregnancy had been anything but normal, and