“There are those who seek to desecrate the royal corpse,” he said. “In the past hour I found burning-oils and even silver stakes amongst those who have sought to enter; knives and heart-removing devices. Some of these are witches—how else could they have known the King lay dead? For it has not yet been announced, lest the French make war against us in our confusion and disarray. The Council meets tonight.”
“To decide what?”
“The details of the funeral. The publication of the will.”
“They found it, then?”
He looked confused. “Why, was it lost?”
That is what they would give out. It was lost. Or the King had not made one. To give them time to alter it. O Jesu, chaos reigned!
“I know naught of wills and councils,” I said, adopting my most wheedling manner. “I seek only to do honour to my lost King. Tell me, where is he?”
“In the Privy Chamber. The chapel is not prepared to receive him. While it is being readied, he must lie in state in his own Privy Chamber.” He waved me in.
They had done something to him in the night: spirited him away, disembowelled him, steeped him in spices and preservatives. Now his corpse lay lapped in Eastern tars and inside a flimsy coffin. It was draped with heavy black velvet palls. The supports underneath it were sagging. No one had been prepared for this eventuality. To “imagine the King’s death” was treason, therefore one could not ready even the most elementary props for it. The coffin supports were inadequate, but no one could replace them beforehand without running afoul of Cromwell’s leftover secret police.
Sun streamed into the chamber. I felt foolish approaching the death-bier. It was all so makeshift, so un-kingly. I had nothing to say here, nothing to do. I had joined the throng of people who only wished to “check up.” I disgusted myself. I left.
Later I was told that “officials” (what officials?) made it more palatable and seemly. The coffin was surrounded by eighty tapers, and there were Masses, obsequies, and continual watches kept by the chaplains and gentlemen of the Privy Chamber.
Outside this well-ordered respect, the realm trembled and soldiers diced for the seamless garment. No, that is really being too cynical. The truth was that offices must be filled and a nine-year-old King “protected” ... especially from his older sisters, who represented substantial claims to the throne in their own right.
Here I must digress to comment on the two contradictory deathbed scenes reported by “witnesses,” neither of whom was present at the time. The Protestant version is that King Henry had envisioned a great enlightened state in which the Reformed religion would prevail. In this version, Henry deliberately had Edward brought up by Protestant tutors and entrusted the Protestant cause to Mary’s conscience by calling her to his deathbed and saying, “Be a mother to Edward, for look, he is little yet.” Dying in sanctity, he had commissioned Mary to protect her brother, had cut down the Howards as Catholic weeds that might block Edward’s Gospel sunlight, and had created the Governing Council as a safety device to shelt12;was surrounded by wax tapers, each two feet long, and weighing, in total, a ton. The entire floor and walls of the chapel were covered in black cloth. It was a chapel of exquisite death.
While Henry was engaged—albeit unwillingly—in this tableau, the realm was seething like an anthill. Chancellor Wriothesley went to Parliament to announce the death formally before both houses of the assembled Lords and Commons. Then Sir William Paget read Henry’s will (discovered at last) so it could be proclaimed throughout the land.
The surprise provision in it was that Henry had not ruled out the possibility of children by Katherine Parr; for he placed them directly after Prince Edward in the line of succession, and before Mary and Elizabeth. These were his exact words:
And for the great love, obedience, chastity of life, and wisdom being in our wife and queen Katherine, we bequeath unto her three thousand pounds in plate, jewels, and such apparel as it shall please her to take of such as we have already....
And per default of lawful issue of our son Prince Edward, we will that the said imperial crown after our two deceases, shall fully remain and come to the heirs of our entirely beloved wife, Katherine, that now is.
And all this time we had assumed their marriage was of the spirit only! Now the Dowager would have to be carefully watched, and guarded, for the next three months, much as the Princess of Aragon had been after Arthur’s death. Truly they were sisters in fate.
The news of King Henry’s demise was received with great exultation in Rome. Only Cardinal Pole refused to join in, prompting the Pope to ask, “Why do you not rejoice with the rest at the death of this great enemy of the Church?” Pole stated that the new King, Edward, was steeped in Lutheran and Zwinglian principles, and that his Regency Council was made up of Protestants, so the Church had gained nothing by King Henry’s death; indeed it had probably lost something.
But to return to the lying-in-state at Whitehall. At dawn of each day, the Lord Chamberlain stood in the choir-door and chanted in a sad, clear voice, “Of your charity pray for the soul of the high and mighty Prince, our late Sovereign Lord and King, Henry VIII.” The mourners —some of whom had been keeping watch throughout the night—then would begin to murmur their prayers before sung Mass would begin, to be later followed by dirges. The Pope would certainly have approved of the Catholicism of the rites.
Then came the day of the removal, so that Henry might be interred in his vault near the altar of St. George’s Chapel. Workmen had been busy prying up the great marble paving stones and digging down into the soil beneath. They uncovered Jane’s coffin, its royal pall faded and worm-eaten, but still recognizable. Knowing Henry wanted to be as close to her as possible, they excavated a space for his great sarcophagus directly adjoining it.
By mid-February, all was ready. So it was that on the thirteenth day of that cursed month, the coffin was conveyed from the Chapel Royal and loaded upon the funeral carriage to make the slow, two days’ journey to Windsor. The great, creaking hearse, nine storeys high and draped in black, swaying from its bulk and awkward shape, was escorted by a four-mile procession of mourners ;
“He’s here because of the King,” said one of his fellows, boldly. “And because of the King’s executed Queen. Remember how she wept and grieved?”
“No, it’s to fulfil the Scriptural prophecy, the one about King Ahab. A friar said our King would meet the same fate. He preached it to his face. When he wished to marry the Boleyn woman. The Scripture was:
“‘And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the Lord, Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the Lord, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine.
“‘And the battle increased that day; and the King was stayed up in his chariot against the Syrians, and died at even: and the blood ran out of the wound into the midst of the chariot.
“‘And one washed the chariot in the pool of Samaria; and the dogs licked up his blood.’”
Protestants always knew Scripture by heart, and quoted it smugly.
“But this was Queen Catherine Howard,” one realist pointed out. “Perhaps she cursed him.”
Now you have it, my lad. Now you have it. So evil and hatred can survive the dissolution of the body ... unlike love and devotion. Love is stronger than death. No, hatred is.
“We must wait until light.”
In the full light of morning, workmen entered the chapel to re-solder the split coffin. The dog was still there, crouching under the hearse. The plumbers and solderers had trouble driving him off, but by thrusting hot pokers at him, they were able to get him to quit the den he had made under the hangings of the hearse. Once out from under it, he bounded away and seemed to disappear. He did not use any of the church doors to make good his escape.
Peering under the hearse, the workmen saw that it, and the coffin inside it, were cracked. A fluid, thick and repulsive, was oozing down and dripping s
lowly on the floor. They thought that it was not blood, but corpse-fluids, mixed with embalming fluids and spices. The jouncing and jostling of the funeral hearse over the rough roads had loosened the fastenings and allowed this hideous episode to occur. They worked quickly to patch it up, and then, in the light of day, transport the coffin to its final resting place.
By ten in the forenoon, the funeral cortège was on the road, leaving the fouled stones of Syon Chapel to be cleansed.
The people were thicker now; more lined the road as we approached Windsor. But I could not leave the ugly taste of Syon behind, and the malevolence of Catherine, and the eternity of our past deeds. Nothing is ever gone, it seems, and the past does not wash clean like paving stones. Only the good disappears. I have smelt the potpourris made of last summer’s roses, and they are stale and faint. Good evaporates; evil remains and incubates.
The interment at Windsor was a lengthy but simple ceremony. It was almost exactly like Charles Brandon’s, eighteen months previous. Bishop Gardiner, that most Catholic of Henry’s prelates, led the burial service. There was no eulogy. All of Henry’s friends were dead, save myself, and no one invited me to speak.d not used some things for many years, and yet they were mine; I knew them. With other things, the ownership was less certain. But as I labouriously gathered them up, I became aware that there was nothing I owned of my King’s. I had not sought lands or titles, nor would my life have offered jewels or gold an understanding home. But now I was left with nothing I could touch and say, “This was his,” or “This was ours, together.”
I felt so sad over this that I perplexed myself, so bereft that I even shouted at Hal one evening.
“You left me nothing of you! I need something to touch, like an old fond woman! And there is nothing. The vultures have taken everything away, to make an ‘inventory.’ Even your handkerchiefs have been taken!”
And yet, and yet—was not memory always, and exclusively, within one’s head? What good did an object do?
It was a fortnight after the King’s funeral, and I had but one day to vacate the royal apartments at Whitehall. I had gathered my things together, and the bundles were bound and strapped and covered by a canvas. They bulged and jutted in strange ways, the implements of an unorganized lifetime. Tomorrow they would be taken away; my sister had said I could join her household in Kent.
My last night in royal apartments. I should have felt something, should have been able to distil some essence of all these years. But I felt uneasy, unwanted, rather than nostalgic. I was anxious to be on my way, out of this house of death and the past.
For the fortieth time I walked around the bundles, checking the knots. All was within. All ... what had I forgotten? Wearily I bent down to see it, whatever afterthought had been propped up there. Forever, the “afterthoughts” would come trickling in. Now I would have to find room for this, this—
King Henry’s little harp. The one he used when composing.
It had not been here earlier. Had someone brought it? But no one had entry to my chamber. And certainly not within the past half hour, which was the last time I had walked around the bundles, checking the knots.
But there it sat, leaning against my belongings, pressing itself to them.
So love can survive, too. Or something close to it. Consideration and kindness.
In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you.
It must be a very big mansion, to encompass all it does.
Author’s Afterword
My object in writing The Autobiography of Henry VIII was, in the process, to meet Henry VIII in person. In order to do so, I had to become a master spy in some ways. When the object of one’s spying is a historical character, one is privileged to call the spying “research.” My research took the form of doing a great deal of reading—of contemporary accounts of Henry VIII, of which there are luckily a large number, and also of the works of scholars analyzing this material. I also tried to visit the extant sites connected with Henry VIII and to see as many objects owned or handled by him as possible, and to recreate some of his experiences, such as taking the pilgrims’ walk at the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham—although not barefooted in winter, as he reportedly did.The Autobiography has helped dispel some of these untruths.
If you would like to do further reading and research of your own, I include here some of my sources for the various areas of his life.
HENRY THE KING
Biographies: A.F. Pollard, Henry VIII, 1902 (New York: Harper Torch-book edition, 1966) the basic pioneering work; J.J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1968) now the standard work. Other descriptions: Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, 1613, for a near-contemporary picture of the majesty and trappings; Muriel St. Clare Byrne, The Letters of Henry VIII (London: Cassell & Co., 1936) gives Henry in his own words. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, The Life and Raigne of King Henry the Eighth, 1672, uses lost documents and splendid language. S.T. Bindoff, Tudor England (C. Nicholls & Co., 1950).
The Young Henry VIII
The young Henry left behind some physical evidence of his athletic thinness (height, 6’2”; chest, 42”; waist, 35”) in the armor on display at the Tower of London. See his armor for foot-combat, as well as his jousting armor, covered with Katherine of Aragon’s initials in true knightly fashion.
You can also see the young, golden-haired Henry VIII in a large painting in Chichester Cathedral by Lambert Barnard, painted in 1519; in the Great Tournament Roll of Westminster; and in the initial letters of the Plea Roll of Trinity 1517 (K.B.27/1024), reproduced in “Royal Portraits from the Plea Rolls,” Public Record Office Museum Pamphlets No. 5, HMSO 1974. There is one portrait of the young Henry VIII by an unknown artist in the National Portrait Gallery. You can recognize him by his characteristic lips and nose.
The young Henry was a warrior, and you can follow his footsteps in France, to Calais, and in Belgium, in Tournai, which he captured in the war of 1513. There he built, with characteristic over-excitement, a huge fortress, sparing no expense. He had thought to hold Tournai permanently. The Henry VIII Tower is now a museum.
Go to Portsmouth and see the reclaimed “great ship,” the Mary Rose, which was built and originally launched by Henry VIII in 1510, wearing a jewel-encrusted gold whistle. Reading: Ernle Bradford, The Story of the Mary Rose (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1982).
In London, Eltham Palace, where he spent much of his childhood, is still extant, and retains a feeling of the original countryside setting around Greenwich.
In Rouen, there is a carving at the Palais de Justice commemorating that great chivalric event, the Field of Cloth of Gold, showing the young Henry VIII and Francis I meeting in glory.
—Books relating to the period of Henry’s early kingship: Sebastian Giustinian, Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII, 1520, ed. R. Brown, 2 vols (London, 1854count of Henry VIII’s invasion of France, 1513 (Oxford, 1969).
—Pomp and display: Sidney Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969); Joycelyne G. Russell, The Field of Cloth of Gold, Men and Manners in 1520 (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969); Neville Williams, Henry VIII and His Court (New York: Macmillan Co., 1971).
The Middle-Aged Henry VIII
—Government and the Reformation: G.R. Elton, The Tudor Revolution in Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), particularly good on Thomas Cromwell and his role; G.R. Elton, England Under the Tudors (Cox & Wyman Ltd., 1974). Also Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (New York: Jove Book edition, 1982) by the Rev. John Foxe, a minister in Elizabeth’s reign who described the Protestant martyrs in Henry’s and Mary’s reign.
—Dissolution of the Monasteries: visit ruined abbeys, such as Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk; take the pilgrims’ walk to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, in Walsingham, Norfolk; visit Canterbury Cathedral and the former site of Becket’s tomb.
—Height of power and glory: visit Hampton Court, which Henry
VIII acquired from Cardinal Wolsey as the balance of power tipped toward the King. R.J. Minney, Hampton Court (Coward, McCann and Georghegan, 1972).
—Holbein’s paintings and sketches are reproduced in Holbein and the Court of Henry VIII, a catalogue printed by The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, 1978, H.M. the Queen. Read about the sitters in David Mathew’s The Courtiers of Henry VIII (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1970).
The Old Henry VIII
-Lacey Baldwin Smith, Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1971). A study of the last ten years of Henry’s life, an enthralling account, with solid scholarship.
-J.F.D. Shrewsbury, “Henry VIII: A Medical Study,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, VII (1952); A.S. McNalty, Henry VIII: A Difficult Patient (London, 1952).
—Visit Deal and Walmer Castles in Kent, his coastal defenses built during the war scare of 1539; they were the latest in design for the new cannon warfare.
THE WIVES
Katherine of Aragon:
Garrett Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1941). Still the definitive biography, fine scholarship and beautifully written. Visit Buckden Palace and Kimbolton (now a school) in Huntingdonshire, her places of exile; her grave at nearby Peterborough Abbey.
Anne Boleyn:
Eric W. Ives, Anne Boleyn (London: Basil Blackwell Inc., 1986); Paul Friedmann, Anne Boleyn, a Chapter of English History, 1537-1536, 2 vols. (1884). Visit Hever Castle in Kent; her grave at the Chapel of St. Peter-ad-Vincula at the Tower of London.
Jane Seymour:
No biography is available; the nearest is William Seymour’s Ordeal
The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers Page 61