Great Harry

by Erickson, Carolly, 1943-

  Toward the close of the day Lambert began to falter, whether beaten down by the strength of his sovereign's arguments, or from hoarseness, or simply from fear of death it is impossible to say. Even so he refused to recant, and put himself at the king's mercy instead. Rising to his full majesty, his white doublet gleaming, Henry condemned him as a heretic and ordered Cromwell to sentence him immediately. Lambert was taken off to the Marshalsea, and six days later, along with three Flemish Anabaptists, he was burned at the stake at Smithfield.^

  The alarm over extremist heresy, the growing conservatism of doctrine, the king's spectacular display of righteous erudition were all prompted by the fragile diplomatic situation. For the Franco-imperial accord reached at Aigues-Mortes had not evaporated, as Henry had hoped, but had grown stronger, and as the year 1539 opened England was a nation on the brink of war.

  "The most pestilent idol and usurpator of princes, the bishop of Rome," so read letters summoning all the nobles and gentlemen of the realm to arms, "has moved, excited and stirred great princes and potentates of Chistendom, not alonely to invade this realm of England with mortal war, but also by fire and sword to exterminate and utterly to destroy the whole nation and generation of the same."^ This vision of conquest followed by mass annihilation roused the English as no call to arms had done for half a century. In every comer of the kingdom troops were levied, weapons scoured, defense works thrown up. Every report of warlike movements spurred more activity. There was talk of a great fleet gathering in the Netherlands to carry French and German soldiers to the Channel coast. It was said all English ships in Flanders had been seized, and trade interrupted. In every coastal town the king's laborers were arriving to undertake the work of shoring up bulwarks, constructing blockhouses and erecting new fortresses where none had ever been before.

  In February the Privy Council was sitting daily to try to meet the growing threat of war. Word reaching England from sources on the

  continent indicated that the invasion was coming closer; in mid-January Francis and Charles had signed yet another accord binding themselves to make no unilateral agreements of any kind—a customary preliminary to taking the field—and both sovereigns recalled their ambassadors in England. The pope had sent Cardinal Pole to put additional pressure on the French and the imperialists, as well as on James V of Scotland. King James had recently strengthened his country's traditional ties to France by marrying Marie de Guise, and this, coupled with his antipathy to Henry and the influence of Cardinal Beaton, newly arrived from the papal court and urging war, was expected to draw him into the conflict.

  At times Henry sat among his councilors at their daily sessions, but as often he was at the seacoast supervising the fortifications. He seemed to be everywhere at once, at Calshot and Pendennis, Plymouth and Lyme. He oversaw the progress of repairs at Berwick and Tynemouth and a dozen other ports—and even at "Harry's Walls" in the faraway Scilly Islands—by letter and messenger. With his usual care for economy he directed that building stone from the razed monastaries be put to use in the defense works, with the result that Hurst Castle was constructed in part from the ruined walls of Beaulieu Abbey. He set his stamp on the structures as a commemoration and a warning; at St. Mawes a plaque proclaimed "Henry the Eighth, Invincible King of England, France and Ireland, Builded Me Here in Defense of the Republic to the Terror of his Enemies." At Dover he overcame the difficulties presented by restive workmen who had recently gone on strike for higher wages and who were known for their violence. And at Deal, where over fourteen hundred laborers were employed, he worried over the soundness of the bulwarks amid heavy seas and roaring winds—the greatest storms ever seen along the coast in early spring.^

  While the ring of fortresses was taking shape the mustering of troops went forward. Levies from the southern and southeastern shires were put in readiness to withstand assault from the continent, and in the north, Norfolk summoned his militiamen to guard the Borderlands against the Scots. Faced with the present peril none shied from the king's service, not even the men of Lincolnshire who had rebelled in such numbers only two years before. Far from hanging back they swore to Suffolk, who had been sent to lead them, that they would eagerly spend their lives and goods to serve King Harry, and were only too glad to have a chance to redeem themselves in his eyes.^^ In some places townspeople not only formed themselves into armed bands but undertook to prepare their defenses on their own initiative. When the earls of Oxford and Essex arrived in Harwich to put the town on guard they found the entire population, including the women and children, shoveling dirt from two huge trenches and shaping it into bulwarks. All that the people of Harwich lacked were cannon, and these Henry supplied within days of their request.^*

  By March much of the work was finished, and the frenzied activity of the past few months gave way to a mood of watchful apprehension. There had been an unexpected gesture of rapprochement from France; having withdrawn his ambassador Castillon Francis sent a replacement, ostensi-

  bly an indication of a lessened threat of war. But an English spy in France sent word warning Henry and his councilors not to be deceived by this ruse, for in fact Francis was busy gathering men and materiel in secret, and had already assembled fifty warships—including his great ship the Havre Neuf —to send against the English coast. "Be on your guard," he concluded, "for the king intends harm, whatever good face the ambassador may show."^^ Armed with his informant's advice Henry gave orders for the final provisioning of his hundred and fifty warships and commanded that a watch be kept beside all the coastal beacons, to be set alight in case of sudden attack.

  On April 2, Good Friday, the warning came. Fifty huge imperial ships had been seen lying off Marsdiep, ready to raise anchor. They would be at Dover by Easter Sunday. Thomas Cheyney, warden of the Cinque Ports, sent his swiftest messenger to the court, and received orders to send two boats to sea to confirm the report. All Easter day and night the English boatmen spent in mid-Channel, "in the trade where all great ships must pass," expecting at any moment to see the turrets of the vast imperial armada rising up before them out of the mist.

  They did not come that day, nor the next, nor the day after, though the winds were favorable and the seas relatively calm. Finally on Wednesday the mariners caught sight of a massive fleet, sixty-eight sail in all, flying the black eagle of the Hapsburgs and making for the Downs. Cheyney ordered his fifteen hundred men to take up their positions on the ramparts of Dover Castle, loaded his ordnance, and prepared to fire.

  Yet before giving the alarm he paused, recalling the king's insistence on absolute certainty. He decided once again to send small boats to approach the enemy warships, then kept an uneasy watch as he awaited their return.

  For the next twelve hours Cheyney looked for a sign, either of hostility or reassurance. Meanwhile an alarming rumor spread that farther to the south the invasion had already begun, and that a companion fleet to the one originally sighted had landed troops on the island of Thanet off the Kentish coast. Reinforcements were sent southward immediately, but almost before they had been dispatched the English boatmen came ashore, looking relieved and smiling.

  They told Cheyney that they had been taken aboard the imperial flagship and shown every courtesy by the admiral, who explained that his fleet was bound for Spain, not England, and that he meant no harm whatever to them or their coasts. If they doubted his word they had only to see for themselves how undermanned and poorly armed the ships were, equipped more like merchantmen than gunships, their holds bursting with provisions for the emperor's planned voyage to Constantinople. On boarding their own boats again the Englishmen received a final token of respect: a parting salute from the Hapsburg fleet's inadequate guns.^^

  With the passing of this crisis the tension began to lift, and in the following weeks, as no further peril showed itself, the war measures began to wind down. The ships returned to their docks and their crews went ashore. The London militia and the shire levies disbanded, their

  captains leaving for t
heir country estates. Thomas Cheyney relaxed at his post, and heard to his extreme pleasure that he had been elected a Knight of the Garter. The king, who had on the whole rather enjoyed all the excitement, set off with a reduced household to spend the summer in his hunting parks, and turned his thoughts once again to matrimony.

  This is all that women do,

  Sit and answer them that woo;

  Deck themselves in new attire,

  To entangle fresh desire;

  After dinner sing and play.

  Or dancing, pass the time away.

  One weapon Henry had not chosen to wield against his enemies during the critical months just past: the offering of his hand and throne in marriage. Had he done so he could easily have set his opponents at odds, for to take either a French or a Hapsburg bride would have renewed the longstanding distrust between Francis I and Charles V and might even have rekindled war between them. That Henry did not commit himself finally to marry was a measure of his faith in England's defenses should war come, and of the usefulness of his availability as a diplomatic drawing card. His private desires, though discernible, played on the whole a minor role in his choice.

  For more than two years following the death of Queen Jane the king was the object of intense matchmaking by his councilors—particularly Cromwell. More than a dozen women were brought forward as possible brides, from Mary Skipwith and his former mistress Margaret Shelton, thought to be the most likely candidates among the ladies of the English court, to Francis Ts daughter Marguerite, to the dazzling Christina, duchess of Milan, said to be the most beautiful woman in Flanders. Women of all ages and descriptions were suggested. The matronly widow of the earl of Egmond ("over forty, but does not look it") was recommended alongside a fourteen-year-old waiting maid at the Flemish court, who despite her youth was said to be "of goodly stature, virtuous, sad and womanly." The duke of Cleves' daughter Anne, thought by one writer to be "of no great praise either of her personage or her beauty," was nonetheless proposed for the sake of the diplomatic advantages which an alliance with the duchy would represent.^

  While the merits of these and other potential mates were being debated Henry played the role of a sedate widower, understandably cautious about the prospect of entering on the "extreme adventure" of marriage a fourth time. If taking four brides was not exactly unheard-of—after all, Suffolk had done it, and he was not unique—it was far from customary; in marrying yet again Henry would be giving ample demonstration of the triumph of hope over experience.

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  Given his marital history the king might well be excused if he forswore matrimony altogether. Long after her death Katherine of Aragon was still causing him difficulties. He was eager to claim her estate, valued at some five thousand marks, as his by right, but the money was entangled in an unusually complex probate case. At issue was Katherine's legal status. If, as Henry had spent years of effort trying to show, she was not and had never been his wife, then her goods were not his to claim. As an unmarried woman she could have made a will naming her heir or heirs, yet because to her dying day Katherine held herself to be married she died intestate, which meant that her property had to be administered by her Spanish relatives. Doubtless the irony of the situation was not lost on Henry as he read with wry dismay the reports of his lawyers cautioning him against trying to seize assets legally due the crown of Spain.^

  As for Anne Boleyn, he could only pray never to run across her like again. And even Jane Seymour, to all appearances a more than satisfactory wife save for her mortal delicacy, gave Henry some pause. Within a week of their marriage he had been overheard to regret his choice. Catching sight of two beautiful girls at court he "said and showed himself somewhat sorry that he had not seen them before he was married."^

  Overall Henry took maximum advantage of his situation, allowing his advisers and diplomats to design any number of matrimonial schemes— several of them calling for multiple weddings for the king and one or more of his three children—while he professed no more than disinterested acquiescence in their plans. He had "framed his mind," he said publicly, "both to be indifferent to the thing and to the election of any person from any part that with deliberation shall be thought meet." That is, he would either marry or not, as led by his advisers; if they urged him to take a wife, he would accept any bride they recommended, wherever she came from. To this rather astounding declaration he added the offhand remark that the diplomats negotiating on his behalf "would have good sport to make him amorous at his age."^

  Henry's wariness in the marriage market was real enough, but no one took seriously his claim to be indifferent about the choice of a bride. He would not be content with secondhand reports. He must see and speak with his intended before making a final decision. "The king my master," Cromwell announced to the German Protestants in 1538, "is not one to marry without having first seen and known the princess who is to be his companion for life."^ As it turned out this crucial requisite was to be ignored, with fateful results.

  Among the imperial candidates Henry's favorite by far was the duchess of Milan, preferred primarily for her claims to the duchy ruled by her late husband, Francesco Sforza, but also for her vast personal charms. A niece of Charles V, Duchess Christina had been married at thirteen and widowed a year later. She was now a blooming sixteen, and rumored to be "both widow and maid," as Katherine of Aragon had claimed to be when Henry married her. (Christina was of course Katherine's great-niece, which meant that she was related to Henry by affinity; had he cared about such things, this would have made her

  unsuitable.) The more Henry heard of Christina the more he was enchanted by her. She was said to be very tall, gentle of countenance and soft of speech. When she spoke she lisped, "which did nothing misbecome her," and when she smiled "there appeareth two pits in her cheeks and one in her chin, the which becometh her right exceedingly well." Though not so fair-skinned as Jane Seymour, Christina had exceedingly pretty features, and bore a strong resemblance to Margaret Shelton, whose attraction for Henry was beyond doubt.^

  Henry sent Holbein to sketch a likeness of the dimpled duchess, and was so "singularly pleased" with the result that he began to act at once like a man in love. His spirits rose, he commanded his musicians to play all day long and far into the night, and he filled his evenings with masking—either a sign of budding romance, Chapuys commented, or a smokescreen intended to mislead the French.^ On the English side at least there seemed to be nothing but enthusiasm for the match, yet the imperialists were cautious. Before he gave his niece to Henry the emperor would be certain to insist on a papal dispensation, an impossibility in anti-papal England. Christina herself, accounted to be "the wisest of the wise" despite her age and customary reticence, had her doubts about becoming queen of England. Her councilors were adamantly opposed to the idea, convinced as they were that any wife of Henry VIII would be certain to suffer an unnatural death. To a man they warned Christina "that her great-aunt was poisoned, the second was put to death and the third lost for lack of keeping her childbed."®

  If one woman stood out among the Hapsburg candidates the French court abounded in potential brides. That "warren of honorable ladies," as Castillon termed it, yielded at least a half-dozen attractive women, any one of whom could be counted on to grace Henry's throne. If, as Francis was supposed to have said, "a court without ladies is like a year without springtime," then at the French court it was perpetual spring. "I never saw so many women," Francis Bryan wrote while on an embassy to France. "I would I had as many sheep to find my house whilst I live."^ There were so many, in fact, that it seemed unreasonable to expect any suitor to approach each one individually. Would Francis agree to assemble seven or eight of them at Calais, Henry asked Castillon, "especially of the houses of Lorraine or Vendome and Nevers," so that he could come there and make their acquaintances all at the same time?

  The response was an abrupt no. "It is not the custom in France to send damsels of that rank and of such noble and princely families to be passed in r
eview as if they were hackneys for sale," Francis replied haughtily. If Henry desired one of the women, he should send his envoys to report on her manner and appearance in the traditional way.^^ When Castillon told Henry much the same thing he got an emphatic reaction.

  "By God!" Henry said. "I trust no one but myself. The thing touches me too near. I wish to see them and know them some time before deciding."

  The ambassador answered, half laughing, "Maybe your Grace would like to mount them one after another, and keep the one you find to be the

  best broken in? Is that the way the Knights of the Round Table treated women in your country in times past?''

  These pointed questions shamed Henry, Castillon wrote, '*for he laughed and blushed at the same time," and saw the indelicacy of his proposal. He hesitated before speaking again, and rubbed his nose, and shifted the conversation to the friendship between Francis and Charles.^^

  There was no mass gathering of French brides, but the portraits, descriptions and the reports of his envoys gave Henry much information without it. He liked best what he heard of Marie de Guise, whose ample proportions matched his own. (Henry's girth widened prodigiously in the late 1530s; his wardrobe accounts and other court records contain frequent payments to his tailors for letting out his doublets and jackets.^2) Only two months after Queen Jane's death Castillon believed him to be so enamored of Marie that he would do nearly anything to gain her hand. He had been heard to express the rather unromantic sentiment that "he was big in person and had need of a big wife"; ambassadorial reports had convinced him that Marie was just the right size. But she proved to be unavailable, having been promised to James V of Scotland many months before, and Henry was forced into the uncomfortable role of uncle by marriage to a woman he "would have given half his kingdom to marry."