by David Cohen
Now twenty-six years old, Henry Tudor decided to try his luck, once he had made sure of his mother’s support. He managed to raise a small army and landed in Wales. By then, Richard III was unpopular in the south of England. The two rivals met in battle at Bosworth in 1485. Lord Stanley, Henry’s stepfather, was supposed to be fighting on Richard’s side but he changed sides during the battle. This was decisive and, when Henry won, Stanley was quite happy to see Richard killed on the battlefield.
To bolster his uncertain claim to the throne, Henry Tudor married Elizabeth of York, Edward IV’s daughter. In doing so, he united the Houses of York and Lancaster, which were not really so disunited, as we have seen. Their first child, Arthur, was born in 1486; Henry, their second son, arrived in 1491. Henry’s childhood was deeply affected, not just by his father’s persistent anxieties but also by deaths in his close family; his parents saw three of their children die in infancy.
Once he became King, Henry VII invited his mother Margaret to live at the court. She had survived a long time and was now something of an intellectual. Margaret was determined that her grandchildren should receive an excellent education. In his biography of Henry VIII, David Starkey argues that, unlike most princes, Henry VIII was ‘not masculinised, not sent away. He was close to his mother, physically brought up with his sisters in a household dominated by women until he was well into his teens.’ Starkey seems to downplay the fact that Henry was also taught the very masculine arts of fighting and jousting.
Margaret made certain that her grandson read every Greek and Latin author of any consequence and that he was schooled in the Bible. All this did not, however, prevent the future Henry VIII becoming the most pernicious narcissist ever to sit on the throne, and also one of the most tyrannical parents.
Henry VIII’s narcissism
The way some royals have been brought up could easily make them prime candidates for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which the American Psychiatric Diagnostic Manual describes as ‘a pervasive disorder characterised by self-centeredness, constant need for attention, lack of empathy, and an exaggerated sense of self-importance’. The narcissist tends to believe he or she is unique and should only associate with others of the same status, dreams of success and power, and also expects special treatment. Henry VIII suffered from, or indeed revelled in, more extreme narcissism than any other British king. This would damage his own children and affect the history of England.
Margaret Beaufort recruited two teachers from Cambridge, William Home and John Skelton, for her grandson. Skelton was a decent poet, if rather vain. He had no qualms about making his own contribution to Henry’s education clear:
The honour of England I learned to spell
I gave him to drink of the sugared well.
The self-inflating poet also fuelled Henry’s narcissism by comparing him to Alexander the Great, which implied that he, Skelton, could be compared to Aristotle, who had been Alexander’s tutor. More sensibly, Skelton was also influenced by Erasmus, the Dutch Renaissance scholar who came to England in 1499 and met the eight-year-old Henry; Erasmus tested him and helped plan his education.
Erasmus influenced the way children were brought up through three books: On the Rules of Etiquette for the Young, On the Order of Study and On the Education of Children. He had some sense of the balance children need between love and discipline and said, ‘We learn with great willingness from those we love’– it’s a good maxim.
Spare the rod and spoil the child was orthodoxy. ‘Parents themselves cannot properly bring up their children if they only make themselves feared,’ Erasmus noted, however. Mothers should be affectionate but fathers had an important role, too: they had to get to know their offspring. Children had to wash their faces every morning, though one should not encourage them to get obsessive because ‘to repeat this exercise afterwards is nonsense’. They had to be pious as well as clean, he said. The fastidious Erasmus allowed them to wipe their nose with their fingers but condemned doing so with a cap or a sleeve. Then, children had to kiss a piece of bread if they dropped it and Erasmus was also very particular when it came to drinking. ‘Morally speaking,’ he warned, ‘it is not proper to throw the head back when drinking in the way storks do in order to drain the last drop from the glass.’
Erasmus might have had his eccentricities but he was an astute observer, for he noted, ‘Nature has equipped children with a unique urge to imitate whatever they hear or say; they do this with great enthusiasm,’ but he did not think much of imitation as he added, ‘as though they were monkeys and they are overjoyed if they think they have been successful’.
Children should also be taught ‘tact in the conduct of social life’, Erasmus said. When he was ten, Henry’s first public engagement required him to show he had mastered tact and politeness. In a very grand ceremony, his older brother Arthur was married to Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. As he walked around the palace corridors in the early morning after his wedding night, Arthur boasted that he had spent much of it ‘in Spain’– in other words, they had consummated the marriage.
Five months later, Arthur and Catherine succumbed to the ‘sweating sickness’, a version of the plague. Arthur died on 2 April 1502; Catherine recovered only to find herself a widow. Henry VII’s wife was thirty-six years old and decided, as many bereaved mothers do, that she should have a baby to replace the child who had died. In February 1503, she gave birth to a daughter but the child died, as did the mother. Within a year, Henry VII had lost his wife, the oldest son he adored and a baby daughter. He became depressed and for a month saw virtually no one. At this time, he also became very protective of his one surviving son, Henry, who became his heir at the age of eleven.
Once Henry VII had recovered from his acute depression, he decided it would make sense to marry Henry to Arthur’s widow. Catherine’s parents, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, agreed in principle as they did not want to give up a useful match which would give them enormous influence in English politics. Henry VII, the butler’s progeny, had no intention of giving up a glittering alliance. His son was told that he would now replace Arthur ‘in Spain’.
After many arguments over Catherine’s dowry, the soon-to-be crowned King Henry VIII married Catherine. He was seventeen years old and she was twenty-three. They were happy but failed to produce healthy children. Catherine was to be one of many queens and princesses who suffered a tragic number of miscarriages and still births.
On 31 January 1510, Catherine gave birth prematurely to a still-born daughter. Henry VIII’s first son – Henry, Duke of Cornwall – was born on 1 January 1511. He lived for just fifty-four days.
Henry’s narcissism fuelled his ambitions too. In 1513, it was almost a century since Henry V had invaded France and Henry VIII wished to outshine his namesake. He sailed for France and appointed Catherine his Regent, though she was pregnant again. She coped with an invasion by the Scottish King and rode north in full armour to address the troops. When the Scots were defeated, she sent Henry a piece of the bloodied coat of King James IV of Scotland for her husband to use as a banner, a token of love and of the strength of their marriage. This token did not bring the couple luck, however: the obstetric tragedies continued.
Catherine lost another son when Henry returned from France and another one in December 1514. On 18 February 1516, she finally delivered a healthy girl, who was named Mary and christened three days later with great ceremony. In November 1518, Catherine gave birth to another daughter but the child died after a week.
Mary, the only child to have survived, was much loved by both her parents. Indeed, they were planning a splendid match and had their hearts set on the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V as a son-in-law; they also made sure she had a good education. They employed Juan Luis Vives, a pioneer in the education of Princesses who had taught in Paris, Oxford and Bruges, and edited Augustine’s City of God. But the greatest teacher could not have prepared Mary for the problems she wo
uld face when her father became increasingly angry and worried when Catherine had not given him a son.
Henry’s education allowed him to take part as an intellectual equal in the debates on religion that divided sixteenth-century Europe. In 1521, Pope Leo X gave him the grand title of Defender of the Faith in recognition of Henry’s book, Assertio Septem Sacramentorum (The Defence of the Seven Sacraments). Henry defended the sacramental nature of marriage and the supremacy of the Pope against Martin Luther. The honour, of course, fuelled his narcissism.
As a more than competent Biblical scholar, Henry knew the Biblical texts were contradictory on the thorny subject of marrying one’s brother’s widow. Leviticus 20:21 said: ‘And if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless’. Genesis 38:8, however, was all for it, as Judah said to Onan: ‘Lie with your brother’s wife and fulfil your duty to her as a brother-in-law to produce offspring for your brother’. Deuteronomy 25:5 also ordered, if brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Moses had ruled where a brother died without children, a surviving brother must marry the man’s widow; Arthur had died childless so Henry had apparently followed Scripture. Henry himself would have needed excellent self-knowledge to know whether he did really feel guilty, or was just desperate for a male heir, or if he was getting bored with Catherine who was becoming old and a bit podgy. If psychology has taught us anything, it is that motives are mixed.
A surprising gambler – Mary Tudor
Over the years, Catherine had tolerated Henry’s many mistresses, including Mary Boleyn, sister of the more famous Anne. When she was fifteen, Mary had gone to live at the court of Francois I and, like Eleanor of Aquitaine, bedded the Kings of both France and England. Mary knew the King would never marry her and accepted the situation when Henry tired of her. Her sister Anne was different. When Henry became infatuated with her, she would not sleep with him and made the astonishing demand that the King marry her first. Even more astonishingly, Henry accepted Anne’s terms, though he knew trying to divorce the daughter of one of the most powerful royal houses in Europe would cause mayhem. Catherine’s nephew, Charles V, was not about to allow his aunt to be humiliated and was in a position to impose his will: he controlled Italy and could capture Rome and the Pope any time it pleased him. There were theological problems too as the Catholic Church did not allow divorce, though it often permitted annulments. Canon law also forbade men from marrying their brother’s widow.
Henry’s actions over the next ten years changed the course of English history. His narcissism made him believe he could persuade the Pope, the Emperor, the King of France, his soon-to-be abandoned wife and his daughter Mary to accept what he wanted. Henry’s narcissism was so profound that he convinced himself that what he wanted was right for the country and probably for God, who he had recently assisted by attacking Luther.
Henry’s daughter became one of the main victims of her father’s narcissism. When the King’s ‘great matter’ started, Mary was ten years old. She loved her father as well as her mother, but she believed her mother was right: their marriage had been proper, and properly consummated, and her father was now trying to weasel his way out of it. The subsequent battle would damage Mary’s relationship with Henry for the next twenty years. He refused to see her and she had to suffer the humiliation of seeing her mother excluded from court while Anne Boleyn was showered with favours. The last time Henry saw Catherine was in July 1531.
After the Pope refused to grant his divorce, Henry seceded from Rome and announced royal supremacy over the church. He annulled his own marriage, in effect, and married Anne in May of 1533.
Mary was now in disfavour and her position became critical when Anne became pregnant. The new wife did not produce a male heir, however. Elizabeth was born on 7 September 1533. Two days later, Henry issued instructions that Mary was not to be called a true Princess, simply the Lady Mary. In a splendid show of pettiness, he also ordered her servants were to have their gold-embroidered coats taken away from them. Mary did not accept her demotion and wrote to her father, complaining one of his officials had written a letter to her in which he did not address her properly as a Princess.
Catherine realised Mary had to be careful, given her father’s familiar temper. She wrote to her: ‘Answer you with few words obeying the King your father in everything save only that you will not offend God or lose your soul.’ The King refused to allow mother and daughter to see each other. Distraught Catherine recommended Mary prepare for her ordeal ahead by reading a Life of Christ and imagining the Stations of the Cross. It was pious and not very practical advice.
In November 1533, Henry inflicted a further insult on his eldest daughter: Mary was to be made a lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth, while her own ladies-in-waiting were to be sacked. Eustace Chapuys was the ambassador of Mary’s cousin Charles, and kept making suggestions to her as to how she should behave so that no one could imagine she accepted these insults willingly. Mary was now separated from her mother, at war with her father and her cousin’s ambassador was erratic; sometimes he urged Mary to defy her father, other times to obey him.
In December 1533, when the Duke of Norfolk asked Mary if she had a message for her father, she only said that she wanted his blessing, though she knew he would never give that until she accepted he was Supreme Head of the Church of England; Norfolk told her he dare not take such a message. ‘Go away,’ the teenage Mary apparently then told him before retiring to her chamber to weep. Henry subsequently accused Norfolk of having being too soft on his daughter and removed the last few servants Mary still had, leaving her with just one chambermaid.
During these quarrels, Anne Boleyn constantly nagged Henry to be tougher on his daughter. She promised to reduce ‘the pride of the unruly Spanish blood line’ and persuaded the King to confiscate most of Mary’s jewels. Mary once had to be forced into a litter when she refused to travel as part of Elizabeth’s entourage in her unwanted role as one of the ladies-in-waiting. But Henry also had moments of sentimentality when he softened towards his daughter and blamed her behaviour on her mother’s Spanish stubbornness. He once saw Mary at a window and raised his cap in greeting. Anne Boleyn was livid when she found out and made sure her husband was never again near his eldest daughter.
For the next twenty-five years, the history of England would revolve around Henry’s two daughters. The baby Elizabeth was ‘as goodly a child as hath been seen’. At three months old, she was sent to live outside London because there was less plague in the countryside. We do not have a record of every visit her parents made to her but they certainly came to see her when she was six months old. Henry was enchanted by his bright little daughter.
On 30 March 1534, Mary was told to meet Elizabeth again. The Spanish ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, advised her to go and be polite ‘for fear of irritating her father’. But Mary did not heed this advice, which infuriated Henry. A month later, he declared Elizabeth was his heir; Mary had been totally denied by her father.
Mary did not capitulate, however. When Elizabeth was about eighteen months old, someone referred to her as ‘the Princess Elizabeth’. Mary snapped that she knew of no other Princesses in the realm but herself. She defied the King, writing, ‘they were deceived if they thought her bad treatment’ would make her change her attitude. A detail we have about Mary’s habits may give a clue to her conduct: she has often been described as ‘pathetic’ but she adored gambling and her behaviour suggests she was indeed willing to risk everything. By the end of 1534, she was becoming nervous, however, and wrote to Chapuys because the King had again ordered her to see her little half-sister. She did not know what to do, she told the ambassador. Again, he urged her to go, and this time she did.
Sensing the King’s hostility towards his daughter, some of Henry’s nobles took liberties and were impertinent, even vicious. One told Mary that, if he had such an ungrateful child, he
would either kill her or batter her head against a wall until it was ‘as soft as a boiled apple’. Mary was often unwell and her mother kept begging the King to let them be together and offered to nurse her herself. Henry refused to allow it.
In late December 1535, sensing she would soon die, Catherine wrote to her nephew, Charles V, asking him to protect Mary. The jilted Queen then sent one final letter to Henry, addressing him as her ‘most dear lord and husband’, which she must have known would irritate him. She urged him to remember the health of his soul, which he should prefer ‘before the care and pampering of thy body, for which thoust have cast me into many calamities’.
Catherine added: ‘For my part, I pardon thou everything, and I desire to devoutly pray God that He will pardon thou also.’ She begged her husband: ‘For the rest, I commend unto thou our doughtere Mary, beseeching thou to be a good father unto her, as I have heretofore desired.’ The phrase ‘heretofore desired’ implied Henry had failed in his duty. On 7 January 1536, Catherine died at Kimbolton Castle. Mary went into deep mourning as the rest of the court celebrated; tradition claims Anne Boleyn wore yellow the day that Catherine died. Chapuys reported it was actually the King who decked himself in colour to mark his ex-wife’s death. Elizabeth was there with her parents, who made a great show of their two-year-old daughter.
Far from caring for Mary when she was distraught after her mother’s death, Henry would not even let her attend the funeral. But the human body can react in odd ways: on the very day of the funeral, Anne Boleyn had a miscarriage of a male child. The miscarriage sealed her fate.