Henry VIII: The King and His Court

by Alison Weir

  Henry Guildford, “a lusty young man well beloved of the King,” 19 was perhaps two years older than Henry; he was knighted in 1512 and remained in favour for the rest of his life, receiving several offices and grants of land. Like Boleyn, he was a cultivated humanist, and regularly corresponded with Erasmus. He also excelled in the joust and in court pageants. His brother, Edward Guildford, was another of the King’s jousting partners.

  William Fitzwilliam, Henry’s Cupbearer, had also been brought up with the King, who was a year his junior, and shared his love of the chase. The two men always remained close: Fitzwilliam understood his master’s “nature and temper better than any man in England.”20 In 1511 he was appointed an Esquire of the Body. He later became treasurer of Wolsey’s household for a short while, then returned to the King’s service, in which he remained for the rest of his life in various household posts and on active service on sea and land. He was a dependable, solid individual, who remained aloof from factional politics and was refreshingly free from the rapacious acquisitiveness that typified most courtiers.

  Henry was also fond of John Pechy, another star of the tiltyard, who served him in various administrative capacities and also invited him and Queen Katherine to hunt in his parks. Thomas Knyvet, Boleyn’s militaristic brother-in-law, was another member of the young King’s circle, as was his brother Charles Knyvet. Henry’s other intimates included Surrey’s son, Sir Edward Howard; Henry Stafford, Earl of Wiltshire; Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, and his brothers, Leonard and Anthony; and John St. John, a nephew of Margaret Beaufort, who had shared the King’s education and would serve both of his daughters.21

  During these early years, Henry was very fond of his cousin Henry Courtenay, the son of his aunt, Katherine of York, by William Courtenay, Earl of Devon. In 1509, Courtenay was only eleven; seven years earlier, his father had been sent to the Tower by Henry VII on suspicion of treason, and Elizabeth of York had taken the boy into the royal household to be brought up with the royal children. On his accession, Henry VIII freed the Earl, who died in 1511, whereupon his son inherited his title and his vast estates in the west country.

  Courtenay was one of several aristocratic companions of the King. At Henry’s accession, there were forty-five hereditary peers: one duke, one marquess, twelve earls, and thirty-one barons. Between them, they owned up to 70 percent of England; however, their power had weakened since the Wars of the Roses, when several old families had died out.

  Henry VII had mistrusted the nobility and created only five new peers. He restricted the numbers of liveried retainers they might keep and forced them to enter into bonds with ruinous penalties should they prove disloyal. Nor, being a peace-loving monarch, did he give them much scope to exercise their natural aptitude for war: since feudal times, the nobility had served the King in a military capacity as tenants in chief. Hence when Henry VIII came to the throne, with his grandiose ideas for reconquering England’s lost lands in France, the aristocracy hailed his accession with enthusiasm. “Now the nobility, long since at the mercy of the dregs of the population, lifts its head and rejoices in such a king, and with good reason,” wrote Thomas More in his coronation panegyric. In many ways, their expectations would be satisfied.

  However, Henry VIII, like his father, was suspicious of the nobility, some of whom had royal blood and might be potential dynastic rivals. He therefore kept them busy with political and administrative affairs at court and in the shires, and rewarded them handsomely, in order to keep them faithful. Their loyalty was vital to his security, so he was careful to identify their interests with his own.

  The nobility were jealous of their time-honoured right to act as the King’s chief political advisers, but as far as Henry VIII was concerned, good service was as important as high birth, if not more so, and where power had once been the privilege of the landed peerage, it was now beginning to devolve upon men who had risen through their own abilities and education rather than their pedigrees. “We will not be bound of necessity to be served with lords, but we will be served with such men of what degree soever as we shall appoint,” Henry once stated.22 The chief officers of the household might happen to be nobles, but their prominence at court derived from their offices rather than their birth. Like his father, Henry was also concerned with reestablishing the dominance of the Crown over the nobility, which had been weakened during the Wars of the Roses.

  Nevertheless, the nobility remained a caste apart; they sat in the House of Lords, and their status was reflected in their dress, entourages, and lifestyle. Their servants wore their livery and badges, and their heraldic emblems were emblazoned on their country houses. Their privileges were enshrined in Magna Carta, and over the centuries had been further defined by tradition and sumptuary laws. For example, only a duke could sit by himself at table with the King; an earl had to have another earl with him, and his robes had one less row of ermine than a duke’s. Peers surrounded the King on state occasions, their illustrious presence enhancing his majestas. Precedence governed all, and was an accepted fact of court life.

  The sovereign was the fount of all honour, and only he could create peers. Henry VIII created thirty-seven. But noblemen were well aware that he could also unmake them, through the parliamentary process of attainder, and that their status and wealth depended on his goodwill and their good behaviour. Neither could they marry without his consent. Having set a precedent in magnificence, the King encouraged his nobles to copy his extravagant example—in an age that valued outward show, they needed little persuasion—and so distracted them from the warmongering to which they had been bred. The effort to keep up with their monarch led many to financial ruin and the consequent erosion of their power and independence, which further restricted their ability to become involved in the kind of subversive activities so feared by the King.

  Henry made it clear that the court was the place to be if the nobles wished to fulfil their traditional ambitions and take their rightful place in society. Their scramble for attendance upon the King, as well as their enthusiastic attempts to emulate him, indicate how successful Henry’s controlling measures had been.

  The older nobility were disparaging and resentful of those whom the Duke of Norfolk scathingly termed “new men,” men such as Charles Brandon and Thomas Cromwell, whose titles and lands were bestowed by the King as rewards for good service; the peers believed the King ought only to pay heed to themselves, who were his “natural counsellors” by virtue of their birth.23 The “new men,” who were mostly from the gentry and merchant classes, only fuelled the peers’ fury by flaunting their new position as landed aristocracy and affecting the manners, dress, and lifestyle of the older nobility. The King had his work cut out to maintain the peace between the old elite and the nouveaux riches at court.

  Yet what now defined a gentleman was not just the ability to “live idly and without manual labour,”24 nor was it purely the traditional knightly virtues of military prowess, liberality, hospitality, honour, courtesy, and chivalry. In Henry’s reign, the definition was widened.

  In 1509, few aristocrats went to university, nor did they dabble in intellectual pursuits such as music and poetry; one lordly father said he would sooner see his son hanged than have him reading books. “Before poets began to be in price,” wrote Sir Philip Sidney, “our nation hath set their heart’s delight upon action and not upon imagination.” 25 If the upper classes did read, they resorted to works that reflected the values of their caste, such as romances or books of courtesy.

  In Italy, however, most men of rank were also men of letters; Henry VIII himself typified the Italian Renaissance ideal of the multi-talented, accomplished gentleman. His courtiers’ desire to ape him, together with the spread of Renaissance influences, ensured that attitudes changed rapidly. Humanists now argued that true nobility lay in intellectual aspirations rather than in blood.

  Before long, it was essential for any gentleman who wished to succeed at court to be literate, erudite, and musical, and to have some kno
wledge of the law and theology. Sir Thomas Elyot, in his book The Governor (1531), also advocated artistic pursuits such as painting and carving, so that a gentleman might be able to discern “the excellence of them which in music, statuary or painter’s craft possesseth any cunning.” Music in particular, declared Castiglione, was “not only an ornament, but necessary for a courtier.” Most aristocratic children were therefore taught to play an instrument, and many noblemen patronised musicians.

  A gentleman was also supposed to conduct himself with dignity, elegance, and effortless refinement, and “to use in every thing a certain recklessness, and to do it without pain.”26 Honour compelled him to make a brave show of his wealth, while affecting a certain nonchalance about it, since a preoccupation with money smacked of trade. In all he did, a gentleman was obliged to show courtesy to others and reverence towards God.

  The premier peer of England was Edward Stafford, third Duke of Buckingham. A descendant of Thomas of Woodstock, youngest son of Edward III, the Duke had a strong claim to the throne and his lifestyle was that of a mighty mediaeval magnate. His father, the second Duke, had been executed for treason in 1483 by Richard III, and his mother, Katherine Wydeville, was Henry VIII’s great-aunt. Stafford had come into his great inheritance at the age of seven; he was the richest peer in the realm, with an annual income of £6,000 (£1,800,000).

  Buckingham’s wife was the sister of the powerful Earl of Northumberland, and he was allied by blood and marriage to most of the older nobility. He owned vast lands in twelve counties, and had various seats, including Penshurst Place in Kent, Stafford Castle, Maxstoke Castle, Kimbolton Castle, and Thornbury Castle, a palatial residence he built between 1511 and 1521 in Gloucestershire, which was said to have been modelled on Richmond.

  Although Buckingham was a privy councillor, High Steward of England, and often at court, he never became one of Henry’s closest advisers. Not only was Buckingham too near the throne for comfort, but he was also “high minded,”27 haughty, aloof, and not very bright. He enjoyed gambling, although he lost frequently, and was a fine jouster, which was sufficient to guarantee him a place in the King’s circle, but his overweening pride in his lineage and his tendency to “rail and misuse himself in words” made him an uncomfortable companion. He lacked the bonhomie that Henry so appreciated in those close to him, and he did not condescend to acquire it; it is possible he even thought the King a parvenu.

  There were other nobles who were too near the throne in blood for Henry’s comfort. Several were scions of the Plantagenet House of York, which had been overthrown when Richard III was defeated and killed by Henry VII at Bosworth in 1485. There were those who believed that these “White Rose” lords had a better claim to the throne than the Tudors, and for this reason Henry VII and Henry VIII were ever-watchful of their activities. However, where Henry VII had been ruthless in suppressing his unwanted relatives, Henry VIII treated them well until his suspicions were aroused. Henry VII had executed Edward, Earl of Warwick, the son of Edward IV’s brother George, Duke of Clarence, but Warwick’s sister Margaret, widow of Sir Richard Pole, was a now a close friend of Katherine of Aragon.

  Edward IV’s sister Elizabeth had married John de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk. Their son, Edmund, the present Earl of Suffolk, had been a prisoner in the Tower since 1506 on account of his nearness to the throne, and his younger brother Richard, a notorious political agitator, had fled abroad. Then there was Henry Courtenay, Earl of Devon, who was as yet too young to pose any threat to the King’s security. In fact, for many years Henry enjoyed good relations with Devon and Margaret Pole.

  He was also on excellent terms with many of the older nobility, including the Bourchiers, Nevilles, Staffords, and Manners, all of whom were of Plantagenet descent. Most of the so-called White Rose faction were members of the Queen’s circle: their high lineage and conservative outlook appealed to her Spanish pride, and in time they came to be identified with reactionary opinion at court.

  Thomas Grey, second Marquess of Dorset, ranked second after Buckingham; he had no royal blood, but was the grandson of Edward IV’s queen, Elizabeth Wydeville, by her first marriage to Sir John Grey, and therefore the King’s cousin. Dorset had inherited his title in 1501 on the execution of his father, and had been the first patron of the young Thomas Wolsey. He was now forty, of middle height, with blonde hair.28 Although of no outstanding political ability, he was a hero of the joust. The King liked him greatly, and in 1523 made him a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber. Dorset’s wife was Margaret Wotton, who was later drawn by Hans Holbein,29 and his seat was at Bradgate Park in Leicestershire, now famous as the birthplace of his granddaughter, Lady Jane Grey.

  The most influential nobleman on the Council was the Lord Treasurer, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, aged sixty-six. The Howards had originally been East Anglian gentry, but thanks to a series of advantageous marriages had inherited the dukedom of Norfolk. Surrey’s father, John Howard, first Duke of Norfolk, had died fighting for Richard III at Bosworth, and Surrey, who had fought with him and been wounded, had been attainted by Henry VII. The King had asked Surrey why he had supported Richard, whereupon he staunchly replied, “He was my crowned king, and if the parliamentary authority of England set the crown on a stock, I will fight for that stock. And as I fought then for him, I will fight for you.”30

  Thanks to his integrity, his tenacity, and his abilities as a soldier and administrator, Surrey had gradually clawed his way back into favour, had regained some of his lands—his chief seat was his palace at Kenninghall, Norfolk—and been given responsibility for guarding the northern border; but he had so far failed, for all his loyal service, to achieve his ambition of recovering the dukedom of Norfolk.

  By his two wives, who were both members of the Tilney family of Norfolk, Surrey was the father of a large family and related through his children’s marriages to most of the English nobility. His eldest son, Lord Thomas Howard, was set for a brilliant political career at court, while his second son, the martial Sir Edward Howard, was one of the King’s intimates. A kindly, dependable man of modest tastes, Surrey was a favourite of both the King and Queen, and very popular with the people of England. He was, wrote Polydore Vergil, “a man of the utmost wisdom, solid worth and loyalty.”

  12

  “All Goodly Sports”

  During the heady summer of 1509, Henry VIII and his courtiers embarked upon an unceasing programme of sporting activities. The King was an energetic, vigorous man who revelled in frequent physical exercise, an unmatched sportsman whose expertise won him golden opinions in an age that valued such manly pursuits highly. Sport was, moreover, an interest Henry shared with most of the gentlemen and nobles at court. Many of them, too, excelled at it, “but the most assiduous and the most interested was the King.”1 He hunted, jousted, played tennis, wrestled, could throw a twelve-foot spear many yards, defeated all comers with his heavy, two-handed sword in mock combats, and could draw a bow with greater strength than any man in England. The benefits of all this activity included a splendid physique, robust good health, and sheer masculine strength. “When he moves, the ground shakes under him,” observed a Venetian.2

  Most gentlemen “passed the summers in disports,” 3 usually in the open air. Many of their traditional activities—jousting, riding, running at the ring, tilting at the quintain, and archery—were essentially martial exercises, yet thanks to a revival of the classical interest in physical fitness for its own sake in Italy, and Castiglione’s advocacy of the social importance of sport and the opportunities it offered for the display of magnificence, attitudes were changing. In 1531, Elyot wrote: “By exercise, the health of a man is preserved and his strength increased,” and in 1542 Andrew Boorde recommended moderate exercise through “playing at the tennis, or casting a bowl, or pairing weights in your hands.” Sport was also an effective channel for the aggression of large numbers of easily bored young male courtiers.

  Nearly all sports were competitive. It was not done, however, to compe
te with one’s social inferiors.4 Organised ball games, such as football, were played only by the lower classes, and Parliament passed legislation restricting the playing of bowls, quoits, and tennis to the upper classes, within the privacy of their estates.5 The King’s subjects were rather to spend their leisure hours practising archery, which would benefit the nation in time of war.

  In his youth, the King’s favourite sporting pursuits were jousting (which will be discussed separately) and hunting. Hunting was a royal and aristocratic sport, almost as prestigious as warfare, and required the same courage and skills as were needed in battle. It could also be very dangerous, as the King was to find on several occasions, and sometimes embarrassing, as when he killed the wrong buck and had to pay compensation to its owner.

  The quarry, which was usually deer, was either shot with bows and arrows, tracked down by dogs, or driven into nets called toils, ready for the ceremonious kill. Sometimes the deer were chased into an enclosure and the dogs let loose upon them. It was a cruel and bloody sport, but the Tudor age was not one for squeamishness.

  The King was passionate about the chase. In 1520, Richard Pace told Wolsey that their master was getting up “daily, except on holy days, at 4 or 5 o’clock, and hunts till 9 or 10 at night. He spares no pains to convert the sport of hunting into a marytyrdom.”6 Another observer reported: “He never takes his diversion without tiring eight or ten horses, which he causes to be stationed beforehand along the line of country he means to take, and when one is tired, he mounts another, and before he gets home they are all exhausted.”7 And another remarked that when the King “hath had good sport, he will talk thereof three or four hours after.”8