Great Harry

by Erickson, Carolly, 1943-

  Such hours were precious to the king. No matter how great the pressures that weighed on him, Henry realized his familiar happiness with Katherine was not to be put aside lightly.

  Besides, the imponderables of his marriage seemed trifling matters compared to the scandalous and outlandishly complex married lives of many of the men around him. The least offender was William Compton, who had recently been cited in the ecclesiastical courts for living openly with a married woman.^^ Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey who became duke of Norfolk on his father's death in 1524, was the center of a more sordid triangle. After living for some years with a woman he chose "for love," his second wife Elizabeth, he suddenly became enamored of a woman of the court, Bess Holland, and with her as his mistress he

  shunned and abused his wife and cut off her income, cursing her when she complained. Even though Elizabeth Howard was a woman of notable virtue—''the king's grace shall be my record how I used myself without any ill name or fortune," she wrote in her defense—her husband subjected her to humiliation and eventually to torture when she refused to accept his new love. Good-hearted courtiers sympathized with the duchess and condemned Norfolk for what he was doing, but he seemed not to care. "He knows it is spoken of far and near to his great dishonor and shame," the aggrieved wife wrote, yet he was "so far in doting love" with Bess Holland "that he neither regards God nor his honor."^*

  Though less scandalous than Norfolk's, Charles Brandon's tangled marital history was currently giving him no peace. In October of 1524 a long legal treatise was drawn up defending the validity of his marriage to Mary Tudor and the legitimacy of their daughter Frances. Evidently questions had arisen about his past marriages and betrothals, and possibly about his continuing ties to his first wife Margaret Mortimer.^^ Brandon had his hands full managing his current wife's affairs, in particular her dowry, yet he was forced to involve himself in a bitter dispute between Margaret Mortimer, her husband, and her daughter and son-in-law. The issue was Margaret's inheritance, and the conflict became so heated it led to blackmail and attempted murder; finally, after a year of writs and lawsuits and injunctions, with Wolsey's help Brandon seems to have resolved matters.^^

  The irregular marital histories of lesser royal subjects came to the king's attention from time to time, and made his own domestic troubles seem idyllic by contrast. Early in 1525 the case of one Robert Constable of Flaymburgh in Yorkshire was discussed by the Privy Council. The case concerned his "riotous taking and carrying off of Anne Grysacre, daughter of Edward Grysacre, and the king's ward under age," and Henry and his councilors had to sit in judgment to resolve it.^^ At about the same time another man—this time a royal servant—sought Henry's pardon for two similar crimes. As a young man William Hetherington, "in youth a very evil-disposed person," had carried off a woman who was about to marry someone else, taken her to a "forbidden place," and married her. Later, finding that either his bride or his conscience pained him, Hetherington felt remorse and had his situation examined in an ecclesiastical court. Meanwhile he came across a woman who pleased him better than his first bride, and obtained from the royal court a letter of request for her hand. This woman proved to prefer another man, however, and went to live with him "for her pleasure," becoming pregnant with his child. Despite her condition the infuriated Hetherington kidnapped her, "partly against her will," and took her to live with him. It was left to the king to decide whether Hetherington's eighteen years of faithful service to the crown mitigated his offenses.^^

  Katherine too was concerned about her marriage, and like Henry, she seems to have turned to Erasmus for guidance. She asked him to write her a treatise "On Preserving Marriage" (De servanda conjugio), having admired another work of his on the comparative states of virgins and

  martyrs. Vives had dedicated to the queen his disquisition on virgins, wives and widows; now she wanted to read what Erasmus had to say about the married state.^^

  Erasmus did not find time to write his book on marriage for nearly a year. When he did it was all but superfluous, for Katherine had long since come to terms with her situation and made up her mind to persevere in it. She saw clearly enough that her role as Henry's wife was changing, but instead of abandoning it she looked on her new circumstances as a challenge to her piety. Her devout belief, her deep conservatism, her duty to Mary demanded that she go on, even though she could not give Henry the son he needed. She would be true to her marriage vows, ignoring her husband's mistresses and treasuring his companionship, and devoting her sorrows to God.

  Two incidents in these years frightened Henry into a strong awareness of his mortality and brought the succession sharply into focus. While jousting with Brandon he narrowly escaped death when wooden fragments from a shattered spear flew into his unprotected face; he had forgotten to lower his visor. He blamed no one but himself, and ran six more courses afterward to prove he was unhurt, but the entire court knew how close he had come to fatal injury. Soon after this he had another accident. Following his hawk across the muddy fields he came to a ditch full of water, too wide to jump. In trying to vault across he slipped and fell head first into the water. His head stuck fast in the mud at the bottom of the ditch, and he would have drowned without help, but fortunately an alert footman saw what had happened and rescued him.

  There was no time to delay; an heir had to be designated, before fate or hazard deprived the realm of a sovereign. Nine-year-old Princess Mary was given the title Princess of Wales and sent to hold court at Ludlow in the Welsh Marches. More significantly, six-year-old Henry Fitzroy was brought to court and elevated to such prominence that the king's intentions for him were unmistakable. In every way possible, Bessie Blount's son was being marked as heir to the throne.

  A huge concourse of people gathered at Bridewell in June of 1525 to attend the ceremonies. As they mingled in the gardens and antechambers of the palace they talked of Httle but the meaning of Fitzroy's sudden advancement, and of the intolerable heat and dust that kept them in constant discomfort that day. First the boy was created earl of Nottingham in a lengthy ceremony. Then he was made duke of Richmond and Somerset—the titles Henry had held as a boy. As More read out his patent of nobility Fitzroy knelt before his father, who solemnly invested him with the robe and sword, cape and circlet of a duke. Other men were advanced to new titles at the same time, among them Henry Counenay, created marquis of Exeter, and Thomas Boleyn, created Viscount Rochford. But Fitzroy's status put him ahead of every other nobleman in the kingdom, and ahead of the princess; as the Venetian ambassador Orio wrote, "he is now next in rank to his majesty."^^

  Henry himself drew the design for Fitzroy's arms, and had ducal robes made for him in crimson and blue velvet. He rode in a litter upholstered in

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  cloth of silver—a gift from Wolsey—and his riding horse was trapped in black velvet with gilt reins. His household was now increased to nearly two hundred officers and other servants, and some eighty manors came to him with his new titles. ^^ There was good reason to believe, as Orio said, that Henry loved his little son ''like his own soul."^^

  The king had made his decision. Bastard or not, Fitzroy would succeed him, unless he found an alternative. And for the moment, there was none in sight.

  Katherine reacted angrily to Fitzroy's advancement. "It seems that the queen resents the earldom and dukedom conferred on the king's natural son, and remains dissatisfied," an observer noted. She kept up her objections until the king lost his temper. He blamed her obstinacy on three of her Spanish ladies—as he had done once before, when she objected to his affair with Anne Stafford—and took the extreme measure of sending the three women away from court. Katherine continued to fume, to show her resentment in every way she could, and privately to question her daughter's future. But her anger made no difference, and in the end *'she was obliged to submit and have patience."^^

  1

  Nought is more honorable to a knight, Ne better doth beseem brave chivalry, Than to defend the feeble in their
right, And wrong redress in such as wend awry.

  When Cardinal Campeggio came to England to preach a crusade in 1518 his message reanimated Henry's ideal of chivalric service to the pope. Two years earlier the Ottoman Turks under Selim I the Grim had taken the Holy Land; now as in medieval times the knights of the West were called on to liberate the sacred places of Christendom. Henry, it seemed, was to be foremost among them, and to show the burning sincerity of his resolve he wrote a letter to Leo X eloquently pledging his aid.

  His highest aim had always been to defend Christendom against the infidel, Henry wrote, and now that the call had come he was ready to answer it with all his heart. With "ardor of soul" he promised an army of twenty thousand men and a navy of fifteen thousand, in seventy ships; everything else he possessed—his royal authority, his wealth and treasure, his realm itself—was the pope's to command. He did not spare his own safety. Pledging his life blood to the holy cause, he vowed to lead his army in person if his wife should bear a son before the expedition got under way.

  The Field of Cloth of Gold temporarily banked the fires of Henry's crusading ardor, but the idea was too ingrained in him to be put aside for long. Several years earlier he had spoken of conquering Jerusalem with an army of only twenty-five thousand men, and had asked the Venetians to provide him with four galleys to transport them in.^ Campeggio's visit had set him burning again, and his spirits rose to meet the challenge.

  Henry's crusading ambitions, though extravagant, were not unique: Emperor Maximilian had envisioned a much more improbable offensive in which the Turks would be defeated by the imperial armies allied with the emperor of Abyssinia, the king of Georgia and the Persian shah. But where Maximilian had been carried away by a thirst for glory Henry saw a larger obligation. For him undertaking a crusade was among his prime duties as the pope's champion, chief defender of the Holy See among the European sovereigns. Since the start of his reign, encouraged by Wolsey but even more by a sincere if archaic devotion rooted in medieval chivalry, Henry had aligned England's interests with those of the papacy. Time and again the course of diplomacy had been set to benefit the pope;

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  over the years Henry had fought the pope's enemies, joined his allies, and avenged his injuries, growing more and more certain with each campaign that because England sided with Rome, God and right must be on England's side.

  In 1521 this conviction was sealed when the pope conferred on Henry the title Defender of the Faith. Julius II had earlier given the same title to the Swiss, but as none of the proposed alternatives—King Apostolic, Orthodox, Defender of the Holy Roman Church—met with Leo's approval, it now went to Henry.^ The title crowned his reputation for virtue, a reputation he made every effort to expand. Of all the European princes, he told the Venetian ambassador Giustiniani. he alone kept faith; "and therefore," he added, "God Almighty, who knows this, prospers my affairs."

  For the pedestrian, tortuous realities of sixteenth-century diplomacy Henry had an enlightened contempt. Its intricacies must be respected, its treacheries forestalled. Yet when he came face to face with dissimulation Henry recoiled in exasperation. The Venetians, who had been sworn enemies of the French, changed sides abruptly in 1516, leading the king to lecture Giustiniani on the ethics of statecraft. "There could be no necessity soever for making you have recourse to such perfidy," he said indignantly, "becoming rather pale in the face."^ That duplicity was the norm of politics never ceased to perturb him, no matter how clearly he perceived his opponents' designs or how effectively he averted them. "Do you not perceive that the potentates first make peace and confederacy with a state, and then negotiate its destruction with others?" he asked Giustiniani. "How would you possibly have me place reliance?"^

  Other states were in truth no more devious or calculating in their dealings than England, and Wolsey was certainly capable of as much guile and dishonesty as any of his counterparts at foreign courts. Yet somehow Henry felt himself to be above all that. His ambassadors and his chancellors might dissemble; he did not.

  Pure in his intentions, unsullied by bad faith and guided by his loyalty to the pope Henry saw himself as all but invincible in the treacherous arena of European politics. More dangerous still, he imagined, like crusaders before him. that he had divine protection in battle. After the Battle of the Spurs he wrote to the pope saying he "attributed all his victories not to himself but to God alone. As God gave Saul power to slay a thousand and David strength to kill ten thousand enemies," he boasted, ''so he made him strong."^

  Henry's high-minded courage set him apart from his brother monarchs in France and the empire. Though he had become "the eldest prince in Christendom," older than Francis I by three years and older than Charles V by nine, Henry retained the ideals of his youth long after the others had shed their naivete. Wolsey called Francis "the Christian Turk" for his shrewd deviousness; according to the cardinal he was more to be dreaded than the real Turk.® As for Charles, though he had barely reached adulthood Wolsey found him to b>e very wise for his age, "and well understanding his affairs, right cold and temperate in speech, with assured manner, couching his words right well and to good purpose when he does

  speak."^ Prophecies were circulating about the young emperor, predicting, as part of a grander scheme of conquest, that he would subjugate England. Though unsettling, these predictions could easily be discounted, however. The family ties between the Tudors and Hapsburgs were strong; if England came to the emperor it would be by marriage, not conquest, when Charles married Princess Mary and made her empress of all his domains.

  As he embarked on his second decade of European politics Henry saw his future clearly and quite inaccurately. With imperial support he would defeat the French and be crowned in Paris. He left it to Wolsey to prepare the way.

  No one knew better than the cardinal the strength of his master's vision. The full force of his determination had been loosed. "He is a prince of royal courage and hath a princely heart," Wolsey wrote, "and rather than he will miss or want part of his appetite he will hazard the loss of one-half his kingdom." Throughout the fall of 1521 Wolsey negotiated with the imperialists at Calais, working out the details of a treaty binding Henry to declare war against France in the following year and to send his armies across the Channel a year later. His health suffered under the strain of overwork and, at one point, from fear of poison, but in the end he obtained Henry's aim. The king felt the challenge of war move closer; he was convinced. Pace wrote, that "great war is toward," and he made ready for it with his usual urgency.

  Armor was ordered, ships newly fitted and soldiers mustered to arms. Every royal subject and every foreigner living in the capital was ordered, under threat of heavy penalties, to collect all their storage barrels and wine casks and to set them out in the streets for the king's purveyors to buy. Anything that might be of use to the army, no matter how small or great, was subject to confiscation. In an effort to force Venice into the war on England's side Henry seized the Flanders galleys—part of the Venetian fleet—and stripped them of their heavy guns for use against France. The Venetians tried in vain to get the ships released, first by means of a bribe paid through Wolsey's physician and then through the intervention of the pope. After many months Henry finally let the ships go—though he kept their heavy guns—and ignored the hint from the aggrieved ambassador that he might at least recompense the innocent shipmasters and mariners for the pay they had lost. Damaged and undermanned, the fleet limped out of port at last and made for Venice, armed with ordnance borrowed from Wolsey for protection against pirates and Turkish sea rovers on the return journey.

  The campaign was launched in force in August of 1523. Charles Brandon was in command of some fourteen thousand men, plus another four thousand landsknechts and an allied contingent of three thousand horse.^ At first his objective was to be Boulogne. He would besiege and capture this Channel port, then take his army back to England before the onset of bad weather, gaining a foothold
to be used by a larger invading army in the spring. But Boulogne held out for weeks, and while Henry waited eagerly for news of the war Wolsey, it seems, rethought the military situation and envisioned a bold new plan. Brandon would break

  off the siege and march toward Paris, with the aim of "winning some great part of France or at the least wise all that is on this side of the water of Somme."

  The cardinal's scheme worried Henry. He knew well what it meant to march an army thousands strong through the "wet weather and rotten ways" of Picardy, dragging the huge guns and heavily laden carts across the swollen rivers, always fearful that supplies might be cut off or that the enemy might appear in force.^ The French were fighting in Italy, far enough away to put the minds of the English somewhat at ease, but Francis was determined to drive back any assault they made. He had been heard to swear "on the faith of a gentleman" that he would defeat Henry come what may, and he had reportedly equipped Richard de la Pole—the "White Rose" still in France awaiting his opportunity to seize Henry's throne—with twelve thousand men to put into the field against his royal cousin.^^

  Wolsey's view prevailed, and late in September Suffolk and his men set out southward, headed for Paris. To the king's surprise they advanced without serious hindrance, meeting and defeating two French companies and winning "free entry into the bowels of France" before the end of the month. Brandon sent word to Henry from his camp at Compiegne that there was "good likelihood of the attaining of his ancient right and title to the crown of France to his singular comfort and eternal honor"; four weeks later the English were only fifty miles from Paris.^^