Great Harry

by Erickson, Carolly, 1943-

  Henry was very partial to banquets on shipboard. In 1515 he launched a new galley, the Virgin Mary, named in honor of his sister. It amused him to play the role of ship's master that day, striding the decks in a sailor's coat and trousers made from cloth of gold. Ruthal, bishop of Durham, hallowed the ship with a mass and Princess Mary christened it, but the king attracted more attention than either of them. Engraved on the broad gold chain he wore around his neck was the device "Dieu est mon droit," an altered version of his motto, and attached to the chain was a large whistle whose shrill blasts sounded almost as loud as a trumpet. The king blew his whistle again and again as he showed his guests the great brass and iron guns the ship carried and led them around her capacious decks built to hold a thousand fighting men.^^

  Knowing his liking for dining on shipboard the Venetian ambassador entertained Henry and his attendants aboard his city's flagship in 1518. Some three hundred courtiers were rowed out to the galley in little boats, and came aboard to find the decks transformed into a banqueting hall complete with a raised platform for the king and four rows of long tables for the other diners. Tapestries and silks were hung from the masts, and the tables held an abundance of sponge cakes and other confections and wine served in goblets of Venetian glass. The cleverness of the arrangements led Henry to praise the captain and masters again and again, and the unique entertainment that followed the feasting caused even more comment. Sailors appeared high above the heads of the courtiers, hanging from slack ropes suspended from the mast; they turned and twisted in the air, entangling and disentangling themselves in the rigging and performing amazing feats of balance and acrobatics. Though the banquet was a great success what interested Henry most was the galley's artillery. The next day he returned and asked to have all the guns fired one by one, watching each to note its range and trajectory and praising the gunners' skill.^^

  Henry's courtiers were constantly called upon to wager with him. Bets were made on everything from wrestling matches to tournaments, and every gentleman or lady was expected to have the courage to play coolly for high stakes. The knight marshal of the household took charge of the official wagering that accompanied jousts and other competitions, and sent the king dice and cards in a "fair silver bowl" when he called for them. Fortunes changed hands at the king's gambling tables. The privy

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  GREAT HARRY 109

  purse accounts list hundreds of pounds lost from day to day, and thousands allotted for "playing money" in general.^'* But the wagering was not confined to games of chance. Because of the betting that accompanied it tennis was condemned by the cautious as "dangerous for the body and for the purse"; indeed the excitement of risk was added to every courtly pastime. Buckingham's day-to-day losses in 1519 included sums of fifteen and forty pounds lost at dice to his brother and Lord Montague, fifty-one pounds lost "to Suffolk and others since coming to the king," another thirty-one lost to Suffolk at shooting and fourteen "lost to the king at tennis" and seventy-six pounds lost at dice "in my new place with the duke of Suffolk and the Frenchmen. "^^ Sums an ordinary householder would have thought princely were casually gambled away in an hour's leisure; according to Giustiniani, the amounts the king himself risked were incalculably higher, reaching six to eight thousand ducats in a single day. Henry could not after all allow his nobles to appear to be wealthier or less concerned about their losses than he was, with the result that he made himself an easy mark for the really skilled gamblers among his gentlemen and for the professional gamesters they brought to court to cheat him.

  In the second year of his reign Henry was reportedly "much enticed to play at tennis and at dice, which appetite, certain crafty persons about him perceiving, brought in Frenchmen and Lombards, to make wagers with him, and so he lost much money."^^ He eventually saw what was happening and drove the cheaters out, or so he thought, but there were others to take their place. London was said to be full of professional gamblers; there were "half an army" of dicers alone, a contemporary wrote. Their trade flourished. Boundlessly wealthy, they dressed splendidly, "always shining like blazing stars in their apparel." They spent their days despoiling naive noblemen of their inheritances, their nights in the company of prostitutes and tavern keepers.

  The best among them were masters of an art as "complex and perfected" as any in the medieval trivium or quadrivium. Equipped with false dice which always rolled high or low (provided, for a fee, by prisoners in the King's Bench or the Marshalsea), or with an accomplice who posed as an onlooker and betrayed the victim's card hands by signs, the expert chose a target and, in time, took all he had. Even the most suspicious player, who was on the lookout for cards marked with fine spots of ink or nicked at the comers, or for weighted dice, could be outwitted. Wary of playing another man's game, he could be beaten easily at his own, where he had the reckless confidence to wager "God's cope" itself. Careful not to let anyone he suspected see his hand, he could be cheated by a female accomplice sitting demurely beside him and sewing; by the speed of her needle she signaled his cards to her associate.*^

  Henry's attempts to rid his court of gamblers only led them to seek dupes elsewhere in his domains. In 1514 three such men, Peter Roy, Peter le Negro and Bartholomew Costopolegrino, were accused at Calais of cheating at cards and dice. In denying the charge they tried to establish their good reputations by assuring their accusers that they had played with many noblemen in England—a claim that may well have led to

  further charges.^** Of course, not all card and dice play meant gambling; some was for fortunetelling. Playing cards could be used to predict the future, with the numbers on the cards corresponding to good or ill luck and the picture cards read according to their color symbolism. Dice were cast to make predictions too, and especially to foretell the future in matters of love.

  If the courtiers were expected to keep Henry company and to share his amusements they were also an appreciative audience for his performances. They listened attentively while he sang and showed his virtuosity on the virginal, recorder, gitteron-pipe, lute-pipe, comet and organ. They applauded his informal concerts on the organ and harpsichord— instruments he was said to practice on day and night. They sang the melodies he wrote to French verses about sorrowful partings, lovers' sufferings, and true love and overlooked the awkward rhymes he wrote himself:

  The daise delectable. The violett wan and bio; Ye ar not varyable; I love you and no mo.

  I make you fast and sure; It ys to me gret payne Thus longe to endure, Tyll that we mete agayne.

  They were proud of his skill as an amateur composer whose best-known song, "Pastime with Good Company," became a popular classic. His songs were sung in inns and alehouses as well as at court, and preachers incorporated them into their sermons. In 1521 servants in the royal household heard the king's almoner speak, taking as his text "Pastime" and another of Henry's songs, "I love unloved." His masses and motets, no worse than many others written by professional musicians, were sung in his chapel and elsewhere, and his instrumental music was played at banquets and as an accompaniment to court pageantry.

  In Henry's time music went with every significant event and many mundane ones; in the intervals between events it filled the hours of idleness. A German traveler to England in Henry's childhood was delighted at the musical receptions he was given everywhere he went. When he stopped at an inn for the night invariably the host or hostess would come out into the street to welcome him, accompanied by the entire household, all of them singing as they approached.*^ At court the king's bands—shalms and oboes for outdoor entertainments, lutes, rebecs and pipes for indoors—played for many hours each day. The children of the Chapel Royal sang at the frequent daily masses and for vespers and compline when required. The pre-eminence of his choral musicians was important to Henry; when he suspected that Wolsey's choirboys were more capable than his own, he pointedly complained of the fact to his

  choirmaster William Cornish, with the result that "young Robin,'' one of Wolsey's best singers, thereafter
lent his "sure and cleanly singing" and "good and crafty descant" to the royal choir.^^

  Of course, the king's virtuosi had no rivals: Blind More, his principal harper who recited long poems of "old adventures" in the medieval fashion, the anonymous Brescian lutenist who was paid the remarkable wage of three hundred ducats a year, the organists Dionysius Memo and Benedict de Opitiis, appointed in 1516 "to wait upon the king in his chamber." Foreign musicians hoping to enter Henry's service arrived at court every month, counting heavily on his renowned patronage.

  The sad story of one of these visiting artists, Zuam da Leze, reached his native Venice sometime before 1520.^^ A gifted clavicembalist, da Leze had no doubt that he belonged at the court of Henry VIII, and that once he heard him play the king would make a place for him and reward him as his talent deserved. Ordering the finest clavicembalo he could afford from the Venetian instrument builders, da Leze had it carted overland across Europe, worrying that any bump in the road or change in the weather might damage the delicate soundboard or sour the strings. Finally he arrived in England, brought his instrument to court, and played for the king—only to be sent away with polite thanks and a purse of twenty nobles, far less than the cost of the instrument alone. The Venetian was at first stupefied; then he despaired. At dinner, surrounded by courtiers indifferent to his disappointment, he took his knife and plunged it into his breast. Servants hurried him away from the table and into bed, dressing his wound and calming him, but once they left him alone he hanged himself with his belt. No one recorded what the king said or did when he heard the news, or what became of the beautiful clavicembalo.

  Most court players had less tempestuous careers. They were minstrels, general-purpose entertainers recruited at the schools of minstrelsy held each year during Lent and valued for the variety of their talents. "Harping and carping"—music and speech—was their usual offering, but some combined skill on the lute or rebec with acrobatics, storytelling, or acts with trained animals. They were sometimes interchangeable with fools. "Sir, what say ye with your fat face?" was a standard line, thrown out along with mimicry and rapid-fire insults interspersed with songs and dance tunes.^^

  At least one of Henry's minstrels, Hans Nagel, combined skill in music with a more unsavory talent: spying. He served as a courier for the pretender Richard de la Pole in France, delivering messages to de la Pole's adherents in England and Scotland and reporting on the state of the English court and government. Nagel's dual identity was known to the English, but he was allowed to carry out his secret errands unimpeded; his movements and contacts were noted with care, for it was rumored that de la Pole was preparing to invade England with fifteen thousand German mercenaries in the pay of Francis I. Other information from English spies in France suggested that de la Pole might be taken to Scotland to raise rebellion there, or that the French might try to recover Tournai."

  112 ^ GREAT HARRY

  Throughout the winter of 1516 Nagel sang and joked for Henry and his courtiers, unaware of the shrewd intelligence that lay behind the king's affable smile and of the use being made of his activities by the king's ministers.

  Musical ability was all but indispensable in servants. A list of the men and women employed in the household of the marquis of Exeter described all their talents in detail, giving special prominence to music. William Perpoynte the compiler noted as ''aged twenty, unmarried, goodly stature, can play well upon sundry instruments." Anne Browne was listed as ''not married, good with the needle, and can play well upon the virginals and lute." William Boothe could "sing properly in three-man songs," and Thomas Wright, aged thirty-eight, could "play well with a harp, sing, juggle, and other proper conceits and make pastimes." One of the men in the list was a skilled musician, perhaps a professional, who played four or five instruments, while another, who had served the marquis as master of the musicians, played only indifferently himself but was able "to teach men to do things in music which he himself cannot express nor utter, and yet he can perfectly teach it."^^ When Henry bought children, as he did in December of 1516, paying a stranger forty pounds for a child, it is tempting to think that he purchased them for their musical gifts.^^

  All the carefully orchestrated ceremony, fantasy and fairytale pageantry of court life came together in the spectacles called mummeries or disguisings, or masks. Here the courtiers were sometimes audience, sometimes participants; they frequently played themselves, though in idealized roles, and the king joined them in their role-playing.

  Henry's former tutor John Skelton, William Cornish and others were called upon to create these entertainments, loosely organized around an allegorical plot and set on movable stages. Singers and musicians figured prominently in the overall scheme, but the principal feature of the mask was virtuosic dancing by the disguised couples. The dances were intricate and demanding; they took many hours to learn, and more hours to polish. The king was a superb dancer, agile, graceful and light on his feet, and the mask might have been invented to show off his skill. At a mummery in 1518 twelve couples danced before the assembled company, dressed alike in suits of fine green satin overlaid with cloth of gold tied with golden laces. Masking hoods covered their heads, and the ladies wore elaborate headdresses. When they had finished their dances they took off the hoods; Henry and his sister Mary were found to be the leading dancers, with Brandon, Neville, Bryan, Poyntz, Norris, Henry Guildford and Nicholas Carew among the others.^^

  A much more elaborate mask was held at New Year's of 1516, when the court was at Eltham. Fifty people took part, in addition to the children of the Chapel Royal, who began the evening with a comedy featuring Troilus and Pandarus. A "castle of timber'' was wheeled into the hall, out of which came three knights ready to do battle with three challengers. They fought with "punching spears," then with naked swords; after they left the scene a queen and six of her ladies came out of the castle, recited their parts, and listened to a "melodious song" from seven minstrels perched on the battlements. Finally the maskers ap-

  peared, six couples dressed in green and white Bruges satin, trimmed in spangles and brooches and ornamented with the letters H and K in yellow. They danced again and again to the music of the minstrels, the entire entertainment lasting many hours.^^

  Masking was so frequent a pastime at Henry's court that large storerooms and even houses were rented to accommodate the "revels stuff" that accumulated. Catalogues of these costumes many pages long record their character: "seven masking hats, Tartary fashion, of yellow and red sarcenet, with eight hairs curled to serve them," "eight satin mantles trimmed with silk, Irish fashion," "for the Palmer's mask, eight short cloaks of scarlet with keys embroidered on the shoulders, eight hats of crimson satin with scallop shells embroidered in front, eight palmer's staves, clapdishes and beads."^* Props and stage settings took up at least as much space—bushes and trees with green satin leaves, silk flowers in all colors of the rainbow, made so cleverly "that they seemed very flowers," antique pillars, gilded arches, arbors and lattices, and an occasional oddity such as the "image of Hercules, made of earth" constructed for a pageant in 1511.^^

  The masks were entertainment, spectacle, stage settings for a special sort of royal performance. But they were at the same time a mirror of court life, a narcissistic reflection of its artificiality and its exaggerated emphasis on finery. A kind of mania for elaborate dress infected all the European courts in this period. Diplomats, soldiers on campaign, traveling merchants and entertainers took foreign styles with them wherever they went, until Italian, Greek, German and Turkish fashions were as familiar in France and England as they were in their own lands. Styles changed rapidly, with the cut of men's trousers and doublets shifting even more often than that of women's gowns and kirtles. There were constant innovations—low bodices, very wide sleeves, very narrow sleeves, trousers "divided off like a chessboard" and costly to make. Drapers made available an ever increasing array of velvets and silks and brocades and metallic fabrics of gold and silver, as valuable as coin or plate made into clo
th. Once bought they were cut and sewn by battalions of expert tailors, embroiderers and seamstresses, who were often called upon to work with unbelievable efficiency. One of Louis XII's courtiers planned to wear a splendid gown at the king's marriage ceremony in 1514. He sent a messenger to Italy to buy a bolt of the most sumptuous cloth of gold available, at a cost of 116 crowns a yard. The messenger made the return journey at top speed, arriving on the eve of the festivities. Overnight the gown was designed, stitched and lined with sables—all at a cost of two thousand crowns. When the resplendent courtier made his appearance the following day he was pronounced the most superbly dressed man in the room.^^

  The English courtiers were no less affected by the fascination with adornment. Though another "act against costly apparel" was passed in 1515 they continued their passionate interest in the newest trimmings and the prevailing taste in gown colors—Lady blush, gosling, marigold, Judas color, peas porridge tawny or popinjay blue. In the early years of Henry's reign gentlewomen wore velvet caps with lappets hanging down over their

  shoulders, or white caps or kerchiefs. Though this headgear covered their hair completely they were accused of spending hours arranging it; "I am certain," a preacher harangued his parishioners in the early sixteenth century, "that it would take less time to clean out a stable of forty-four horses than it takes you to pin up your hair."^^ The men wore their hair short with bangs across the forehead, "like the priests in Venice," and covered it with caps in a variety of continental styles. Their fine lawn shirts were bordered with lace and lavishly embroidered at the neck and wrists while the coats, gowns and doublets worn over them were of velvets and damasks lined in satin or velvet of a contrasting color. The wealthiest lined their gowns with fur—often sable or lynx—or with the rarest and most precious of all linings, egret's down. The wardrobe inventory of the duke of Buckingham, a man of opulent taste, listed one gown of white damask cloth of gold lined in crimson velvet and another "laid with silver and gilt, and a girdle of green riband silk, with a great knot thereto." In all, the duke's wardrobe list included fourteen gowns, twelve doublets and jackets, nine pairs of hose and eighteen pairs of shoes.^2