by Alison Weir
Invariably, hunting took priority over business: the King “was going out to have a shot at a stag,”9 or his huntsmen were waiting and “he must needs hunt them.”10 He was delighted when, in 1526, the King of France sent him some wild boar, which were almost extinct in England, and observed that “the hunting was very pleasant, and a King’s game.”11 It was also highly risky, for boar were notoriously ferocious.
In his youth, Henry went hunting with a huge entourage of courtiers, but in 1526 numbers were restricted because the courtiers’ absence left the court “disgarnished” and, through their boisterousness, “the King’s disports were hindered and impeached.”12 After that, Henry took with him just a handful of his intimates. His inventory lists numerous items of hunting and other sporting equipment, many crammed in the cupboards in his privy lodgings. Two of his wooden knives, or hunting swords— one etched with scenes of a boar hunt, the other damascened in gold— were crafted by the Spanish swordsmith Diego de Çaias, and are still in the Royal Collection.13
Katherine of Aragon also enjoyed hunting, and was still accompanying Henry as late as 1530, at the height of their nullity suit.
Most of the royal forests, paled deer parks, and hunting chases had been emplaced before 1200, many being annexed to royal castles, manors, and hunting lodges. Henry’s favourites were Windsor Great Park, Richmond Park, Greenwich Park, Bushy Park, and Epping Forest, and he himself established several more parks and chases, including Hyde Park, Waltham Chase, St. James’s Park, Nonsuch Park, Marylebone (now Regent’s) Park, and the vast Honour of Hampton Court.14 The royal parks and forests provided the King not only with good sport, but also with venison for his household and a substantial income from dues and fines: severe forest and venery laws imposed stiff financial or custodial penalties on ordinary people who stole the King’s deer.
The hunting, or “grass,” season lasted from May or June until September or October. For part of this period, the King usually went on progress, so that he could enjoy the hunting in other parts of his kingdom. Each autumn, upon his return, he would personally supervise the restocking of his parks with game and ensure that there was sufficient hay and oats to last the deer through the winter.15
The King owned a fine stable of up to two hundred horses.16 His favourites were nimble Barbary steeds or light-footed Neapolitan coursers, which he imported from Europe at a cost of up to £40 (£12,000) each. Several were gifts from princes who sought his friendship, like the bay courser sent by the Duke of Termoli. In 1509, Queen Katherine asked her father “to send to the King my lord three horses, one a jennet, the other from Naples, and the other a Sicilian, because he desires them much, and has asked me to beg Your Highness for them, and also to command them to be sent by the first messenger that comes here.”17
In June 1514, Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, a famous breeder of horses, sent Henry a splendid “bright bay” called Governatore and three brood mares. Henry watched “astounded” as their trainer, Giovanni Ratto, put the mares through their paces, then asked his courtiers, “What think you of these mares? I have never seen better animals.” After Ratto had ridden Governatore with an impressive display of Spanish dressage as a compliment to the Queen, Henry declared that this was “the best horse” and patted the bay, murmuring “So-ho, so-ho, my minion.” He could not have been more pleased if the Marquis had given him a kingdom, wrote a watching Venetian. Afterwards, Henry asked Ratto what the Marquis would like in return for his generosity. “Nothing but the King’s love” was the reply.18
Later that month Ratto informed Gonzaga that Henry was of the opinion he had never ridden better-trained horses, and the King himself wrote an effusive letter of thanks “for your supreme goodwill towards ourself, for those most beautiful, high-bred and surpassing steeds [that] have been sent from the very best feeling and intention. We number Your Excellency and your most noble children among our dearest friends. Farewell, with prosperity and happiness!” The next month he sent the Marquis “some horses, saddled and harnessed in their full trappings” as a return gift.19
Henry was also thrilled with the mounts sent by Alfonso I, Duke of Ferrara, in 1519 and the Spanish jennets given him by the Emperor Charles V in 1520. His own courtiers knew that the surest way of pleasing him was to give him a horse. In 1520, for example, Sir Edward Guilford gave him two horses: one, a bay called Byard Hays, became one of his favourite mounts. 20
The King, according to a Venetian ambassador, was a “capital horseman.”21 He would train for hours, and he exercised his mounts regularly, praising them by rubbing them with his whip and crying, “Holla, holla, so boy, there boy!” or admonishing them with a sharp “Ha, traitor! Ha, villain!” On the advice of his Italian riding masters, he preferred to encourage his horses by kindness rather than use his spurs or whip.22
Riding and a knowledge of matters equestrian were essential accomplishments for gentlemen, especially those of aristocratic birth, who were brought up to handle great warhorses while wearing full armour. It was Henry VIII who introduced into England the manage, the new Italian art of dressage, at which he excelled above all others. This involved putting a rigorously trained horse through a series of spectacular movements by using light touches or commands. The horse might turn, rear, stop suddenly after a gallop, weave between obstacles, or perform the astonishing capriole, or “great leap,” in which all four of its hooves were off the ground at the same time. The King would show off his skills at every opportunity, particularly at tournaments, where he would astound his audience by performing “supernatural feats,” making a succession of horses either execute “a thousand jumps in the air” or “fly rather than leap, to the delight and ecstasy of everybody.”23
Katherine of Aragon was a competent horsewoman, although she used a Spanish sidesaddle, shaped like a chair.
Henry also bred horses, and he was constantly improving his blood-stock. He founded royal studs on the Welsh marches, in Nottinghamshire, and at Hampton Court to breed horses for hunting and even racing. It was Henry VIII, rather than Charles II, who was the first English King to race horses. He kept “geldings that did run” and employed “riding boys that ride the running horses.” Their livery comprised satin and fustian doublets in the Tudor colours of green and white, “partihosen,” and black velvet riding hats with gold buttons.24 The King laid out a flat racecourse and tiltyard at Cobham in Surrey; the racecourse, of which traces still remain, was a mile long, and stretched in a straight line to Leigh Hill. The King himself enjoyed racing: in 1513, while campaigning in France, he and twenty-five companions raced their horses around the outskirts of a town.25
Henry was very attached to his horses. One of his favourites was Canicida, about whom his Latin secretary, Andrea Ammonio, wrote some laudatory verses. In 1529, Henry made repeated visits to his stables just to see his favourite Barbary horse (possibly Governatore), which was enjoying a comfortable retirement. The King frequently stopped for a chat with his horse-keeper, Hannibal Zinzano, and showed genuine concern for the health of his horses. His Privy Purse Expenses list several homemade cures for their ailments, and also a number of payments of 7s. (£105) for “baths for the Barbary horse.”26 Henry’s horses were fed on bran from the royal granaries.27
The Master of the Horse was responsible for providing the King with horses for riding, hunting, and war, and was in charge of royal stables and conveyances as well as travelling arrangements. By virtue of the nature of his duties, and his being the third great officer of the household, he was constantly in attendance on his master, rode near him in ceremonial processions, and had the privilege of dining at his own table at court. Sir Thomas Knyvet was Henry’s first Master of the Horse. The Queen had her own Master of the Horse.
The Stables were a department independent of the court, and were responsible to the King himself. They employed a large staff of squires, stable boys, farriers, jockeys, and horse-keepers. The headquarters of the Stables were initially at Holborn, but when they were destroyed by fire in
1534, the department and its animals were transferred to the royal mews in Charing Cross, which normally housed the royal falcons.28 Horses used by the King and court were also kept in stables at the royal palaces; some of these were built around courtyards, and a section was always partitioned off for the King’s personal use. At Greenwich, there was one stable for his coursers and another for his stud mares.29 The King’s New Stable at Hampton Court, built in 1536, survives today as part of the Royal Mews on Hampton Court Green.
The Kennels was a separate department responsible for providing and housing the royal hunting packs of greyhounds, harthounds, buckhounds, and harriers. They came under the jurisdiction of the Master of the Privy Hounds, Humphrey Rainsford, and their headquarters were those originally established in the fourteenth century by Edward III on the Isle of Dogs on the Thames. There were kennels at some of the palaces also, including a vast one at Greenwich. Hunting dogs were fed a diet of meat, milk, and bread.
It was only as he grew older that Henry VIII grew to like hawking. His father had given him a hawk when he was nine, but as a young man he had “no affection” for the sport, despite being coached by the court’s resident expert, Sir William Tyler, a gentleman of the Privy Chamber. It was only when he reached maturity that he acquired a taste for it. In the 1520s, Thomas Heneage of the Privy Chamber reported to Wolsey from Windsor that “His Grace, every afternoon, when the weather is anything fair, doth ride forth on hawking, or walketh in the park, and cometh not in again till it be late in the evening.”30 In 1533, Sir William Kingston informed Arthur Plantagenet, Lord Lisle, 31 that “the King hawks every day with goshawks, sparrowhawks and merlins, both before noon and after.” Hawking provided good sport after the hunting season was over.32
Hawks, notably gerfalcons, peregrines, tiercels, and merlins, were extremely valuable birds, and the sport was strictly an upper-class pursuit, with the ownership of certain birds being dependent upon one’s rank. Henry imported hawks from Ireland, or received them as gifts from fellow rulers such as the King of France and Joachim I, Duke of Prussia. One of his hawk’s hoods, fashioned of leather and what might have been embroidered crimson velvet or silk, is in the Ashmolean Museum, together with his doeskin hawking glove worked with red and gilt thread. His accounts record payments for jesses (red strings attached to the hawk’s legs), hoods, and bells.33
The King’s hawks were the responsibility of the department of the Toyles, which was housed in the Royal Mews at Charing Cross. There the hawks were trained and cared for by experts in falconry, who fed them on sugar comfits, horehound water, and rhubarb.34 One of the eleven falconers was Lambert Simnel, who had in childhood been set up by Yorkist sympathisers as a pretender to Henry VII’s throne. The rebellion failed, and Henry sent Simnel to work in his kitchens, whence he worked his way up to the mews; he died in 1525. The Master of the King’s Hawks headed the department; this was initially William Norris, who was succeeded by Robert Cheseman, whose portrait by Hans Holbein shows him holding a falcon.35
At Greenwich, Henry built a mews known as “the cage” right next to his privy lodgings; it had racks of perches, and wooden lattices over the unglazed windows.36 New mews were also built at lesser houses such as the More and Hunsdon.37
Other royal bloodsports included bearbaiting and even bullbaiting; the King had his own bear pit and bears, in the charge of the Master of the King’s Bears. On Shrove Tuesday, Henry attended the traditional cockfights, for which, in 1533–1534, he built new cockpits at Greenwich and Whitehall, the latter being a curious octagonal structure with a lantern roof. 38 Both had tiered rows of seating, with a special chair for the King and a viewing gallery for the Queen.39 The fighting birds were kept in nearby coops.40
Henry occasionally went fishing: at Hampton Court, in 1530 and 1532, he fished in the Thames with an “angle rod,”41 and that same year he rewarded some men who had caught a prize fish at Greenwich. 42 He is also known to have fished in the moat at The More.43
Bloodsports were not the only sporting activities enjoyed by the King and his court. Henry was “extremely fond of tennis”44 and may have been taught the game by the professional players employed by his father;45 he himself certainly retained a coach.46 According to Giustinian, “it was the prettiest thing in the world to see him play, his fair skin glowing through a shirt of the finest texture”; 47 while playing, he stripped to his “slops” (drawers) and wore soft shoes, and after the game, he would don a “tennis coat” of black or blue velvet to stop him catching a chill.48 By all accounts, even allowing for a degree of sycophantic flattery, he was a world-class player.
The game Henry played was not the sedate lawn tennis of today, 49 but the earlier, more aggressive version known as royal, or real, tennis, or “palme,” which derived from the mediaeval French game of jeu de paume and had become a popular aristocratic sport in France and Italy. It could be played indoors or outdoors, and was a favourite winter diversion.50
The enclosed hard courts, or plays, had nets of fringed cord 51 and galleries for spectators, and were marked out with penthouses and chases. The walls were usually painted black and the window frames red, the windows being covered with protective wire.52 Racquets were a recent invention; until around 1500, the ball had been caught in a gloved hand. Henry’s balls were made for him by the Ironworkers’ Company in London; one, of leather stuffed with dog’s hair, was found embedded in the roof timbers of Westminster Hall in the 1920s,53 and another was found in the 1960s on the site of the King’s tennis court at Whitehall.
There were two versions of the game—the quarre, or minor court, and the dedans, or major court54—and the rules were sufficiently complicated to ensure that only educated men played. Castiglione recommended tennis as “a noble exercise” because it afforded courtiers the opportunity to display their physical dexterity and “nimbleness.”
Edward IV and Henry VII had built tennis plays, but Henry VIII was to build far more, notably at Hampton Court and Whitehall. The Keeper of Tennis Plays was responsible for maintenance, scoring, stringing racquets with sheep-gut, and coaching.55 When the King was not playing, his courtiers were allowed to hire the plays at a rate of 2s.6d (£37.50) a day.56 Gambling on the outcome of a game was common, and of course there were those who grumbled that tennis was “dangerous for the body and for the purse.”57
Since the fourteenth century, the longbow had been instrumental in England’s most renowned military victories, and all able-bodied men were required by law to practise shooting regularly. Sir Thomas Elyot declared that “shooting in the long bow incomparably excelleth all other exercise.” The King, like his late brother Arthur, was a superb archer58 and could outshoot even the crack shots in the Yeomen of the Guard: in Calais in 1513, while competing with them, “he cleft the mark in the middle and surpassed them all.”59 Early in the reign, a new butts was set up in Tothill Fields, near Westminster, and he was often to be seen shooting there; there were also butts at most of his houses, some of them—rather alarmingly— indoors. 60 Henry also enjoyed the sport as a spectator.61
Bowling was another sport favoured by the King in his later years, and again, he was very good at it. There were brick-built bowling alleys, some over two hundred feet long, at several houses including Richmond, Greenwich, Hampton Court, and Eltham,62 most of them erected after 1532; where there was no alley, a grass lawn could be used. The aim was to roll one’s wheel-shaped “ball” as close to the jack as possible. The game was a very popular all-weather sport, and bets were always laid on the outcome; in 1532, Henry, who was a frequent player, lost £21 (£6,300) to the Duke of Norfolk.63
In his youth, the King was always game for a wrestling match, even though this was not, strictly speaking, a sport for gentlemen. He was also adept at “casting the bar,”64 which involved throwing a heavy metal beam. No feat of strength was beyond him: he once even tried his hand at labouring, sawing blocks of wood and fashioning cobblestones with steel hammers.65
In his palace at Richmond, Henry VII h
ad copied the Burgundian precedent of building a recreational complex. In the lower end of the gardens there were to be found “pleasant galleries and houses of pleasure to disport in at chess, tables, dice, cards, bil[liard]s; bowling alleys, butts for archers and goodly tennis plays,” with space for spectators.66 Henry VIII followed his example at many of his residences; his first project was the building of a tennis play at Westminster. These complexes, which also included tiltyards, served as sophisticated leisure centres for the King and his courtiers.
13
“Merry Disports”
In the summer of 1509, Henry informed King Ferdinand that he was about to visit different parts of his kingdom.1 We know very little about this first progress, save that it was fairly extensive and included sojourns at Reading Abbey and the Old Hall at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, seat of Edward de Burgh, Lord Borough, who later married Katherine Parr.
Henry went on progress almost every summer of his reign. His purpose was not only to see his realm and be seen by his subjects, but also to enjoy the hunting that was to be had in other parts. At that time of year, many courtiers had returned to their estates to oversee the harvest, so the King was usually accompanied by a smaller retinue and sometimes just by his riding household. The Queen usually, but not always, accompanied him.
As he travelled, Henry distributed alms and largesse to religious houses and individuals.2 He always took his Chapel Royal with him, to conduct religious services and provide musical entertainment, and his hunting dogs, which were transported by cart.