At the time of Anne’s death, parliament passed the Second Succession Act, which declared Henry’s marriage to Anne invalid and their daughter Elizabeth illegitimate, and removed her from the line of succession – leaving Henry with no direct legitimate heir to the throne. This was buttressed by Henry’s insistence that Mary, after two years of resistance, should now sign an oath declaring her father’s royal supremacy and her own illegitimacy. In addition, the king’s niece, now second in line to the throne, chose this moment to marry without the king’s consent – a deed which now amounted to treason because it lined up her husband to be the future king. She was imprisoned with extraordinary timing, as just at that moment the king’s illegitimate but much-beloved son, Henry Fitzroy, died at the age of seventeen. Henry no longer even had the option of legitimizing his bastard.
In July 1536, Henry responded to all these challenges by making his first minister, Thomas Cromwell, vicegerent over all ecclesiastical affairs, and issued the Church of England’s first doctrinal statement – a clear indication that as far as Henry was concerned, his royal supremacy did not merely make him a figurehead. The king also issued two important proclamations dealing with religious issues – one designed to stop extremist preachers, another to cut the number of holy days that would be celebrated in the country. As the new vicegerent, in August 1536, Cromwell issued a set of royal injunctions or orders to enforce this new doctrine, and presided over the beginning of the dissolution of the monasteries.
In October, these new religious commands, and especially the suppression of the monasteries, led to a large uprising against the king in Lincolnshire, which was quickly followed by a massive armed rebellion, starting in Yorkshire, which became known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. This was the largest peacetime rebellion ever raised against an English monarch – and what is worse, Henry did not have sufficient troops to meet the rebels in the field if it came to battle. It was the single greatest crisis of his reign. An indication that the watching world expected Henry’s downfall is suggested by the fact that the Pope, at this juncture, made Reginald Pole a cardinal for his opposition to Henry’s rule. Incredibly, the rebels were persuaded to stand down, and the year ended with Henry curiously inviting the rebels’ leader, Robert Aske, to court. It was truly an annus horribilis.
It was a year of threats – both external and internal – of things going horribly wrong, of betrayal, rebellion, grief, age, and ill health. But it was also a year of reaction – of Henry asserting his power through his supremacy, his image, his rapid remarriage and the festivities, through his bluster to the rebels. The impact of the year can be seen immediately in the course of 1537 when Henry cracked down on those who had rebelled against him, oversaw further dissolution of the monasteries and commissioned from Holbein the Whitehall mural, an important projection of his masculinity and power. This was truly a year that defined, changed and created the character we think of as Henry VIII.
In 1536, a series of events cut right to the core of how Henry VIII saw himself as a man. This might seem something of a grand assertion, given that many of the sources most coveted by historians – those that reveal the deep, inner-workings of a man’s mind – are simply not available for this enigmatic king. Yet, we can gain insight from the way Henry VIII acted, from the cultural worldview of his time, and from remarks those around him reported him as making. With all these in mind, it requires only a little careful psychological inference to reconstruct and analyse the impact of the events of 1536.
The events that most require our attention occurred over the course of a harrowing six months, between January and July 1536. The cumulative impact of these traumas is made all the more striking if one realizes, as what follows will suggest, that Henry only allowed Anne Boleyn’s execution because he truly believed Anne was guilty of adultery and had horribly betrayed him. It is small wonder that this succession of events challenged his very manhood and changed him from a virile man in his prime, to a man who suddenly perceived he was ‘growing old’, and tried to fight this in ways that made him ‘a caricature of virility’.2
CHAPTER 5
A Wife’s Death
Henry VIII’s response to the first major event of 1536 betrays little sign that he yet sensed this approaching weakness, even if, in practice, this first pivotal event shaped the way he responded to everything that followed. At 2 p.m. on 7 January 1536, Katherine of Aragon died. Hers had been a relatively short illness, which modern commentators have deduced to be stomach cancer. She had been in very great pain over the course of five weeks, having first been reported sick in early December 1535. It was thought serious enough to call the Spanish ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, to her side in mid-December. By late December, her apothecary, Philip Grenacre, wrote that she couldn’t eat or drink anything without being sick, couldn’t sleep for more than an hour and a half because of the pain in her stomach, and had lost all her strength. Chapuys was shocked to discover at the turn of the year that Katherine ‘was so wasted that she could not support herself either on her feet or sitting in bed’, but she obviously had a remission before she died, because after four days at her bedside, Chapuys was convinced enough that she was out of danger to leave her in the evening of Tuesday 4 January 1536, in ‘good hope of her health’, and was desolate at news of her death three days later.1
For Katherine, life had been thoroughly unpleasant for many years – Diarmaid MacCulloch calls them ‘years of dignified misery’. This had been particularly apparent since August 1531, when Henry had sent Katherine away from court to live at The More, close to St Albans, and the princess Mary to Richmond. This was the last time Katherine saw her daughter: Henry even refused to let Mary see her mother in her dying days. By the time of her death, Katherine had not left her chamber at her new house of Kimbalton Castle for two years, and her supporters regarded the men that Henry had placed in her household – all except her confessor, apothecary and physician – as ‘guards and spies, not servants’. She had always stayed true to Henry. In June 1533, Katherine had movingly written of her feelings for him, citing ‘the great love that hath been betwixt him and me ere this… the which love in me is as faithful and true to him… as ever it was’.2
Henry’s feelings for her were quite different. Before Chapuys rode to be at Katherine’s deathbed, Henry had called him for a meeting. There he told Chapuys that he believed Katherine would not live long, and when they spoke a little later, that she was in extremis and he would hardly find her alive. After each of these comments, Henry immediately directed Chapuys’ attention to foreign affairs. He emphasized the strained relationship between Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, and England, reiterating his hope that Katherine’s death would remove all the difficulties between them, so that ‘if she died you would have no cause to trouble yourself about the affairs of this kingdom’. This apparent callousness on Henry’s behalf, to which Chapuys responded in terse, shocked staccato that her death could do no good, did have some basis in legitimate fears about the safety of the kingdom. At this time, a papal bull3 had been prepared which would allow Henry’s kingdom to be given to anyone who could take it, and English subjects to be absolved from their duty of allegiance to the king. Although the bull was not actually published until 1538, in late 1535 and early 1536 its publication – and the legitimated treason and chaos it would unleash – appeared to rest upon a knife-edge. Simultaneously, Francis I of France was being asked if he were willing to make war on England. It is in light of this substantial threat being made upon his kingdom because of Henry’s divorce from Katherine and union with Anne Boleyn that we should interpret Henry’s immediate reaction to hearing of Katherine’s death on Saturday 8 January. He exclaimed ‘God be praised that we are free from all suspicion of war’!4
Yet, even this defence does not make the rest of the king’s conduct more palatable. He and Anne showed great joy, and appear to have celebrated the occasion. Anne gave a ‘handsome present’ to the messenger who brought her news of Katherine’s death. Henry, d
ressed ‘all over in yellow, from top to toe, except the white feather he had on his bonnet’, went to Mass accompanied by trumpets. Afterwards, he danced with the ladies, where, having sent for Elizabeth, who was almost two and a half (Chapuys calls her ‘his Little Bastard’), Henry showed her off, parading her from one lady to the next, ‘like one transported with joy’. He also organized an informal joust at Greenwich in which he participated, the significance of which will become apparent later. It is perhaps wise to be a little cautious about Chapuys’ report – coming as it did from a partial observer who was very much on Katherine’s side. The chronicler Edward Hall reports that it was Anne who was dressed in yellow, and another report suggests Henry was dressed in purple silk with a white plume. These seemingly garish colours, which are normally represented as an exhibition of unbecoming glee, may have had a different symbolism to the wearers. Hall specifically notes that Anne ‘wore yellow for the mourning’ – it was the colour of royal mourning in Spain at that time, and purple has traditionally been the colour of royalty (although Henry’s other actions make clear it would have been his own royalty, rather than Katherine’s, except as Princess Dowager, that he was marking), and had traditional associations with public mourning.5
Nevertheless, Henry and Anne were very obviously exceedingly happy, in a way that some considered unseemly. Apart from Henry’s anxieties about foreign affairs, his other concerns, as David Starkey has noted, were to use the style of Katherine’s funeral to indicate his continuing belief that she had never been his wife nor a queen, and to acquire her belongings. Ralph Sadler, Cromwell’s clerk, wrote to Cromwell that he had questioned Henry’s decision not to have a hearse at St Paul’s, as had been the custom at the death of Henry’s sister, Mary, in 1533. Henry had replied that ‘she was a Queen’ (Mary was the dowager queen of France, as well as duchess of Suffolk) and that for Katherine it would not be ‘either requisite or needful’, though he intended she would be buried at Peterborough with great solemnization. His approach to Katherine’s possessions is darker. If Katherine had not been queen, then she died a widow, and a ‘woman sole’ with the right to dispose of her goods as she wished (they would not automatically go to Henry). Yet, on 19 January, Richard Rich, the solicitor-general, the man whose word had sent Thomas More to his death, wrote to Henry about this tricky legal situation suggesting that Henry ‘might seize her goods by another means’, without admitting her to be his wife.6
Henry’s behaviour – his almost unmitigated joy and capacity for self-deception – suggests the youthful ebullience, confidence and conviction he felt at the turn of 1536. One might have thought that the death of his first wife, the wife of his youth, would have had a greater effect on him. He was, however, so thoroughly persuaded of the legitimacy of his position as Supreme Head of the Church of England – of his marriage to Anne Boleyn who was expecting his son and heir – that it doesn’t seem to be until later that his experience of Katherine’s death had a consequential effect on his sense of his own mortality. Henry was not to know at this stage that Katherine’s was the first, and least emotionally draining, of the three deaths of those close to him in this year. Rather his reaction to this event paints a picture of Henry’s mental state before the cataclysmic events of 1536 had really begun to unfold. When they did, it was precisely his buoyant, youthful exuberance that came under attack.
CHAPTER 6
The King’s Honour
One way of understanding the effect of the events of 1536 is to realize that they threatened Henry VIII’s honour, with which he was greatly preoccupied. He commented as much in August 1544 in a letter to Francis I, king of France ‘thus touching our honour, which, as you know, we have hitherto guarded and will not have stained in our old age’. He was not alone. Men at this time were ‘intoxicated’ with honour, and with maintaining their reputations and good names. Men and women in the sixteenth century used the concept of ‘honour’ to talk about their gender roles: male honour was bound up with masculinity, upholding patriarchy, controlling women and defending one’s good name.1
The characteristics of masculinity, or ‘manhood’ as it was referred to in the sixteenth century, were marriage and the patriarchal control of a household, the exercise of reason, sexual prowess, physical strength, especially demonstrated through violence, and courage. In the noble and chivalric world in which Henry VIII operated, the paramount place for demonstrating physical strength and manly courage was in the joust, and until 1536, this was where Henry’s untroubled sense of masculinity had most glorified itself. The joust was the central event of a tournament, which normally also included other forms of mock combat. There would have been groups of knights fighting each other on horseback (called the tourney) as well as combat at barriers – opponents fighting on foot with swords or long staves across waist-high barriers. In the joust, two armoured riders would charge at each other on either side of a wooden barrier called the tilt, holding a lance in their right hands with the barrier to their left. Points were awarded for striking, and especially for breaking their lance against the body of the opposing knight. By the early sixteenth century, blunted lances, or lances made safe by a tip fixed to their point, were in general use. Nevertheless, the jousts were still wildly violent and dangerous. When kings participated, they fought for real. In 1559, Henri II, the king of France, was fatally wounded in a tournament when his opponent’s lance shattered and splinters pierced his visor, entering his head above his left eye. Henry VIII had narrowly escaped therefore, when in 1524, tilting against Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, he charged without remembering to lower his visor, and the duke’s spear broke on the king’s helmet and filled his headpiece full of splinters.2
By Henry VIII’s day, tournaments had become lavish occasions for pomp and magnificence. Despite the huge cost of tournaments and their associated masques and banquets (one estimate is that Henry VIII spent £4,000 on the Westminster tournament of 1511, almost twice the cost of his 900-ton warship, the Great Elizabeth), these were not mere entertainment, nor were they decadent, self-indulgent or wasteful binges in expenditure. For a start, in the sixteenth century, there was really no such thing as ‘inconspicuous consumption’ – anything of value was showy and obvious – and it was proper and necessary for a monarch to appear magnanimous and majestic. Baldesar Castiglione in his manual for courtiers published in 1528, summarizes contemporary thought when he wrote that the ideal ruler ‘should be a prince of great splendour and generosity… he should hold magnificent banquets, festivals, games and public shows’. Monarchical magnificence was an essential part of good lordship and kingly honour. The tournament thus served the important political goal of demonstrating the wealth and prestige of the monarch to his subjects and, especially, to foreign diplomats. Tournaments were, symbolically, also regarded as important peacetime training for war, and served as chivalrous alternatives, even if by this point they bore little resemblance to real warfare. Before a tournament in May 1540, the challenge framed itself in these terms, stating how ‘in the idleness of peace there is danger that noble men may themselves fall into idleness’, so now, ‘as, in the past, feats of arms have raised men to honour, both in God’s service against his infidel enemies and in serving their princes’. Sir Thomas Elyot, in his 1531 The Book Named the Governor, spoke of exercises, including wrestling, hunting and combat of arms, which are ‘apt to the furniture of a gentleman’s personage, adapting his body to hardness, strength and agility, and to help therewith himself in peril, which may happen in wars’.3
In the joust, individual knights competed against each other, so there were also opportunities for great personal glory. Henry VIII was a fine athlete and one of the champions of the joust. Sebastian Giustinian, the Venetian ambassador at Henry VIII’s court between 1515 and 1519, was suitably impressed: ‘after dinner, a stately joust took place, at which His Majesty jousted with many others, strenuously and valorously… this most serene King is not only very expert in arms, and of great valour, and most excellent in his pe
rsonal endowments’. His secretary, Nicolo Sagudino, also noted that ‘King excel[led] all the others, shivering many lances, and unhorsing one of his opponents’. From January 1510, when Henry made his first public appearance in the tiltyard as king, until January 1536, he was a splendid, passionate, skilful and brave participant in the joust. Miles F. Shore has commented that ‘Henry’s narcissism was strongly attached to masculine activities’, and the joust was pre-eminently an arena in which Henry VIII could display his superior physical strength, his ‘prowess’ and ‘the nobility of his courage’ (according to the contemporary Book of the Order of Chivalry) – all of which differentiated him from the weaker sex and established his credentials as a consummate man.4
Until 1536 then, Henry disported himself as a young athletic man, attracting the praise and admiration of onlookers. In 1536, this was all to change. On 24 January 1536, the 44-year-old Henry was unhorsed by an opponent and fell so heavily ‘that everyone thought it a miracle he was not killed’. The speed of the gallop at the charge, his heavy armour, the height of Henry’s great horse (and weight, if the large, mailed animal fell on him) and the blow of his opponent’s lance combined to make this a very serious accident. Henry was unconscious for two hours, and one suggestion has been that he bruised his cerebral cortex. Given what later happened to Henri II, it is no wonder that people suddenly became concerned with his mortality. The official line appears to have been to make light of the event. Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, wrote that Henry had sustained no injury, and at the beginning of February, Thomas Cromwell, the king’s chief minister, was reassuring people that ‘the King is merry and in perfect health’. Yet, there are several indications that such a fall was thought to have consequences on a grand scale. The papal nuncio in France, Bishop Faenza, wrote to the Vatican on 17 February ‘that since the King had this fall, there is some hope that he may return’, that is, to the Catholic fold. In other words, he made a direct correlation between a momentous accident that would have made the king aware of his mortality, and Henry’s concern for his own spiritual wellbeing (as the writer saw it) and that of his kingdom. The fall was felt to be so significant that it might just bring about such a momentous volte-face in Henry’s religious and foreign policy. By 6 March, Catholic Europe had conceded that such a change has not occurred, ‘the King has not improved in consequence of his fall’, but the very hope of it indicates the importance of the event in the eyes of the watching world.5
1536: The Year that Changed Henry VIII Page 4