Great Harry

by Erickson, Carolly, 1943-

  Henry's crusading dream merged with his hostility toward France when shortly after his accession the French king and the pope renewed their enmity. The armies of Louis XII besieged the papal forces at Bologna, while assembling at Pisa a schismatic church council meant to depose the pope and replace him with a pontiff more amenable to French interests in Italy. The pope, Julius II, was even more warlike than his

  French adversary. Erasmus caught sight of him in the midst of a triumphal procession at Bologna, a noisy spectacle of "troops under arms, generals prancing and galloping, lovely boys, torches flaming, spoils, shouts that rent the heavens, trumpets blaring, cannon thundering," and over it all the pope carried aloft in a gorgeous litter.^^ In October of 1511 Julius proclaimed the formation of a Holy League to "defend the unity of the church" and drive the French out of the Italian lands. Henry, who saw in the papal League both a holy cause and an opportunity for military renown, joined Julius' camp. Fighting under the papal banner, he explained to the emperor in the following year, was certain to prove as acceptable to God as fighting against the Turks; to confirm his assertion Henry procured for his soldiers the time-honored papal indulgence, granted since the eleventh century to crusaders who died in battle against the infidel.

  "We live in evil times, and the world grows worse instead of better," Henry wrote sadly at the outset of his reign. Fighting on the side of good against the forces of evil was where his duty lay, and from time to time he checked the splendid extravagance of his court when he thought self-denial would further the cause of the right. He issued sumptuary laws forbidding all those below the rank of lord or knight to wear silk, and even the highest nobles were expected to adopt a less sumptuous mode of dress. The talk of the court turned periodically to saving money on clothes so that it might be spent on arms and horses, and in these times the Genoese and Tuscan cloth merchants suffered for want of English business. The king put aside his jeweled caps and velvet doublets for more modest garb, and his counselors and companions followed his example. In December of 1511 Henry and the entire House of Lords dressed themselves frugally in long gowns of gray cloth cut in the Hungarian fashion. ^^

  Sobriety and restraint in dress were paralleled by a deepened reverence for the highest symbols of the faith. A number of relics arrived from Italy at this time, sent by the bishop of Famagosta: a stone from the tomb of the martyr Saint Katherine, along with some of the oil which flowed from her body, a fragment of the holy sepulcher, and another of the column at which Christ was scourged, part of Christ's sponge, and a piece of the vessel in which he washed his apostles' feet.^^ Henry's piety had just been rewarded with a special mark of papal favor. Julius II had taken back the title "Most Christian King" from the schismatic Louis XII and conferred it on Henry VIII; this, coupled with the pope's gift of the French throne itself, seemed justification enough to order the royal painter John Brown to "paint divers of the pope's arms in divers colors" on the banners and streamers the king would one day carry into battle.

  The campaign of 1513, then, was the culmination of years of eager cultivation of the mood of war. While the knights assembled their panoplies and bought warhorses and armor the king was ordering guns cast by the master gunners of Flanders. As early as January, 1510, he sent specifications to Hans Popenruyter, a gunmaker at Malines, for twenty-four thousand-pound curtolds—later to be christened with such dynastic titles as Rose, Crown, York, and Lancaster—and an equal number of

  thousand-ix)und serpentines for his ships. Thousands of handguns were ordered as well, along with saltpeter, gunpowder and gun frames. Wooden chests had to be built to store the arms, and carts without number to carry the chests, supplies and provisions to the seacoast and, after the crossing, to the battleground itself. All these things Henry looked to, leaving the day-to-day management to his able almoner Thomas Wolsey and devoting his energies to convincing his contrary Council that he would not be thwarted in his purpose.

  The councilors, chosen for Henry by his father before his death, were for the most part skeptical of the young king's zeal for battle. His principal advisers, a trio of ecclesiastics who had served Henry VII for years, were unsympathetic to war as a costly adventure offering at best more risk than profit. William Warham, archbishop of Canterbury and chancellor, Erasmus found to be "witty, energetic and laborious" beneath a quiet exterior, but his long years of diplomatic and legal experience and his own weariness—he wanted nothing more than to retire to his church and parishioners—left him no stomach for war. Richard Fox, bishop of Winchester and lord privy seal, "a lord of extreme authority and goodness," had worked too long in the previous reign in the interests of p>eace to endorse Henry's military policy, while Thomas Ruthal, bishop of Durham and the king's secretary, narrowly devoted all his energies to the everyday drudgery of administration and the continuing accumulation of the vast lands and rents that made him the richest prelate in the realm. But if these three spoke out against war others in the Council stood with the king, notably Wolsey and Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey, whose son Edward was lord admiral. And Henry's resident envoy in Rome, Cardinal Bainbridge. like Pope Julius a warlike cleric with an inveterate hatred of the French, supported the plans for war with unvarying passion.

  Bainbridge was in constant touch with the court through Queen Katherine, who was herself the chief advocate of war next to the king. She sent the cardinal all the political news, writing with the judicious and informed tone of a seasoned stateswoman. Her views and influence were important enough to merit inclusion in the dispatches of the resident ambassadors; the Venetian Badoer reported tersely in November of 1512 that "the king is for war, the council against it, and the queen for it."^^ Katherine's consuming interest in military affairs extended to specific points of naval strategy. When Henry was preparing to send his fleet against France she became "very warm" about the enterprise and strongly recommended that he acquire four great galleasses and two smaller ones from Venice, as she had information that the French were building two small galleasses of their own. She spoke long and earnestly to Badoer about this, asking the cost of the ships and soliciting his involvement in the conflict with France.*^

  As war preparations gained intensity the French protected their interests by paying spies to send them news of English militar preparations and to sabotage them whenever they could. A French merchant living in London was paid to write daily reports on English affairs, sending his letters to his brother in Rouen, routing them by way of Antwerp because

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  English couriers were barred from French ports. A French gunner in the service of the EngHsh Lord Penys agreed, in return for a large sum, to set fire to the stores of gunpowder on an agreed signal. There were reports that one of Henry's secretaries had been won over to the side of the French and was passing on valuable information to his employers. And a Norman priest living at the English court who was able to travel regularly to his home region in the Argentan without arousing suspicion was making himself particularly useful to Louis XIL This relatively inconspicuous cleric, "of brown visage, having his left brow higher than the other," was being employed to carry messages from Louis to members of the de la Pole family—representatives of the men the French upheld as the rightful heirs to the throne of England.

  Edmund and Richard de la Pole, sons of Edward IV's sister Elizabeth, had an unarguably good claim to the throne. In one view, it was a better claim than Henry's, for the legitimacy of Henry's mother Elizabeth of York had been called into question.* According to a document produced in the reign of Richard III, Elizabeth's parents had not been validly married; all their children were bastards. This put the descendants of Edward IV's brother and sister in line for the crown—first his brother George's grandchildren, Henry, Geoffrey and Reginald Pole, and then his sister Elizabeth's surviving sons Edmund and Richard de la Pole. The elder son Edmund, earl of Suffolk, had been imprisoned in the Tower since 1506; his wife Margaret was one of Katherine's ladies in waiting. The younger son Ric
hard was a captain in Louis XII's service. Through the Norman priest the de la Poles were kept in communication with one another during 1512 and the early months of 1513, and with the French court. ^^

  The war strategy of the Holy League took final shape early in 1513. Each of the allies was to harass the French from a different quarter—the pope in Provence or Dauphine, Ferdinand of Aragon in Beam, Languedoc or Aquitaine, Henry in Picardy and Normandy, and Emperor Maximilian in another region still to be determined. The pope was to fulminate ecclesiastical censures on any power which opposed the League, while Henry bound himself to aid Maximilian with a payment of 100,000 crowns.

  Now that a definite timetable had been agreed to—the simultaneous assaults were to be under way by June—Henry sprang into action. His first concern was his fleet. Throughout February and March he went to the docks nearly every day to encourage the sailors and the shipwrights and carpenters who were making ready the Mary Rose, the Peter Pome-granet, the John Hoptons and the other large and small warships. Writs went out to all the royal vassals to supply the king with "tall persons to serve on the sea," and a special guild of masters and mariners was founded "for the reformation of the navy, lately much decayed by

  *Of course, Henry's title rested not only on his mother's Yorkist pedigree but on his father's admittedly weaker Lancastrian claim. His paternal grandmother Margaret Beaufort was a great-great-granddaughter of Edward III.

  admission of young men without experience, and of Scots, Flemings and Frenchmen." Ships of all sizes were subject to royal conscription for use in the war, and as the trade in military stores and equipment escalated all other business ceased.*® According to a list painstakingly drawn up by Henry himself in February of 1513, some twenty-six ships had been hired to supplement the existing fleet of twenty-three. The king noted the names and tonnages and captains of all the royal ships, changing five of the captains' names as adjustments in their assignments were made. The flagship he renamed, with a symbolic name he would use later for a much larger and more powerful ship: the Great Harry Imperial.

  In Holy Week of 1513, two months before the king and his army embarked from Dover, the fleet sailed down the Thames and out into the Channel. There were eighty ships in all, including one little boat named for Erasmus, and a number of long, low vessels manned by hundreds of oarsmen and reputed to be more effective than galleys in Channel waters. In addition to a double complement of sailors the fleet carried, according to one account, as many as sixteen thousand picked soldiers; when battle was joined the warships were coupled by means of grappling hooks and the soldiers poured over onto the enemy's deck, fighting there as if on land. By April 23 the English had won a major encounter at sea. Word arrived from Admiral Howard in Brittany that four French ships had been captured, and inviting the king to come in person to celebrate the victory. Henry gave an extravagant reward to the sailors who brought the news and declared himself ready to set off at once, but his councilors held him back; it was risk enough, they said, for him to accompany the army.*^

  If all went well for the fleet at first, by the end of the month its fortunes had soured. Admiral Howard wrote at length to Henry praising the performance of each of his ships—the king had asked him to send word "how every ship did sail"—but his letters told of misfortunes and hindrances. He had never seen such storms; food was growing scarce; he had word that a hundred French ships were sailing toward him, but though he trusted in God and Saint George to ''have a fair day on them," he could not be sure of victory. Some of the men were sick, or wounded from the first encounter. Many had died of measles. And one of his great ships, the Katherine Fort He za, was sinking slowly. ''Bedell the carpenter bored so many holes in her," he confided to the king, "that she leaks like a sieve."***

  The worst blow came when Howard and sixteen others boarded a French ship and, after a furious fight, all save one were killed. The survivor, wounded in eighteen places, lived to tell how in his final moments of life the admiral had flung his gold whistle of command into the sea lest it should fall into the hands of the French. It was a gesture befitting a hero's death, but other testimony contradicted the story. The French captain who found Howard's body left no doubt that he was still wearing his admiral's whistle. Among those who mourned Howard's loss the most were the king and Charles Brandon, his closest friends. To Henry he left one of his ships and one of his two bastard sons—whichever of the two he might choose—to be his servant when he reached full age.

  To his "special trusty friend" Brandon, Howard bequeathed his other ship, "praying him to be a good master unto him," and his ceremonial chain of office made from three hundred gold coins.^^

  Undeterred by his admiral's death Henry made his final arrangements to cross to France. To enhance his personal magnificence he ordered his goldsmiths to fashion the harness and trappings for his horse, spending enough on these sumptuous adornments to buy twenty heavy brass field guns.^^ He spent another thousand pounds on little chains, branches, buttons and aglets of solid gold to fasten onto his doublets when he laid his crusader's tunic aside. His weapons were as gorgeously appointed as his armor; among them was a silver crossbow sent to him by the emperor, mounted in an elaborately worked silver-gilt case.

  A series of last-minute frustrations threatened to delay the embarkation. A huge band of thieves attacked the train of wagons bound for the coast carrying the royal money chests; eighty of the robbers were caught and, on the king's order, hanged on the spot.^^ "Some lewd persons" burned and broke apart many of the little boats used to convey men and provisions from the shore out to the larger ships, hampering loading. And a crisis developed over the soldiers' beer. Brewhouses had been set up at Portsmouth to brew a hundred tons of beer a day, employing dozens of brewers, millers, beer-clerks and coopers. Deep trenches had been dug, covered with boards and turf, to store the filled barrels and protect them from the heat, but the soldiers complained that the country beer of Portsmouth soured too quickly for their taste and could not be compared to that made in London with barley malt. The London beer proved to be no better. "Much of it is as small as penny ale," the new admiral, Thomas Howard, grumbled, "and as sour as a crab."

  Their holds full to bursting with men and horses and sour beer, the ships of the fleet were ready at last. Henry gave the order to weigh anchor, confident that he had enough troops and equipment and cannon to conquer hell.

  Owre Kynge went forth to normandy With grace and myght to chyvalry: Ther god for him wrought mervelusly. Wherfore englonde may calle and cry

  Deo gratias. Deo gratias anglia redde pro victoria.

  When they landed at the English-held town of Calais the king and his army were given a joyous welcome. Charles Brandon, recently created Viscount Lisle and marshal of the army, and Thomas Wolsey, whose signature on thousands of orders and receipts and authorizations had been largely responsible for bringing the army together and seeing it safely transported across the Channel, now supervised the unloading of the ships. As the king rode into the town amid the cheering citizens of Calais to give thanks for his safe journey Brandon and Wolsey watched the sailors lead ashore the oxen and mules and great Flanders mares that would pull the carts and ordnance. Alert to each detail, Wolsey counted every chest, barrel and box that came out of the holds to make certain nothing was missing or lost.

  For the next three weeks the army stayed in Calais while the English and imperial diplomats worked out a joint strategy and the mercenaries Henry had hired assembled. In his spare time the restless king, eager to leave for the battlefield, practiced shooting with the archers of his guard. Standing among them in a garden one afternoon he was conspicuous for his height and bearing, an observer wrote, and surpassed them as far in skill as in appearance, taking such sure aim that he hit the target squarely in the middle.

  Archery was waning in England in the early sixteenth century, and Henry was attempting to promote it by example and by statute. English archers had formed the core of the fighting force in the Middle Ages, though in Hen
ry's reign a new archery technique had reduced their effectiveness. A well-aimed arrow could still penetrate sheet steel, however, and the recent advent of handguns had not yet made the bow obsolete. Even at extreme bowshot, some two hundred and fifty yards, trained archers shot far more accurately than men armed with arquebuses, who could be relied on to hit their targets only at point-blank range. What was more, archers could shoot six times a minute, ar-quebusiers only once in two or three minutes.

  And firearms were heavy, awkward and unreliable. Soldiers who

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  used them tired quickly, and only the most experienced of troops had the presence of mind to load them carefully under fire, remembering to put wadding between powder and ball and then again on top of the ball, making certain the fuse stayed lit long enough to fire the gun while keeping it clear of the reserve gunpowder. Handguns were delicate mechanisms which broke or malfunctioned frequently, and could be repaired only by gunsmiths; bows, on the other hand, never clogged or fouled and were equally reliable in all weathers.^ Both archers and arquebusiers were needed, though Henry's backward-looking battle array relied too heavily on the former in an age of artillery, heavy cavalry and massed pikemen.