Henry VIII: The King and His Court

by Alison Weir

  Henry and Francis observed every courtesy towards each other. When an English herald began to read out a proclamation beginning, “I, Henry, by the Grace of God King of England and France,” using the style that English kings had used since they laid claim to the kingdom of France in the fourteenth century, the King stopped him, and said to Francis, “I cannot be while you are here, for I would be a liar.” For the duration of the visit, he was to be simply Henry, King of England.42

  But on 13 June, the old rivalry surfaced. After watching a wrestling match between the Yeomen of the Guard and some Bretons, Henry challenged Francis to a similar contest, and was ignominiously thrown. Honour required that he demand another round, but Francis, at the instance of his courtiers, tactfully refused.43 Fortunately, Henry scored a victory soon afterwards in an archery contest.

  Francis was, however, determined to show the English king that no slight had been intended. He ignored the advice of his lords, who thought he was putting himself at risk of some kind of treachery, and very early on Sunday 17 June, accompanied by only two gentlemen, went to Guisnes, where his brother monarch was still sleeping. Henry woke to see the King of France standing over him, offering to serve as his valet and help him dress. Henry was pleased with this mark of respect, and said, “Brother, you have played me the best trick ever played, and shown me the trust I should have given you. From now on, I am your prisoner.” He gave Francis a fabulous collar of rubies, and received in return a bracelet worth twice as much. 44 Hurt feelings were thus soothed, and good diplomatic relations restored.

  Although it was “hotter than St Peter’s in Rome,” 45 the weather caused problems. Strong winds blew dust into faces and over clothing, jousters could not couch lances in the face of the gusts, and some of the tents were blown away, including the French King’s vast marquee, forcing him to retreat to Ardres for shelter. Many of the local peasants and beggars got drunk on the free wine and collapsed in heaps by the fountain, and when ten thousand people turned up one day to watch the jousts, both Henry and Francis, fearful of what might happen if they too became inebriated, ordered that persons having no business in the Val d’Or should leave it within six hours, on pain of hanging.46 Yet still the people kept coming, and the Provost Marshal of the Field was powerless to stop them.

  Saturday, 23 June, saw the final public event. The tiltyard had been converted into a temporary chapel and there, at noon, Wolsey, assisted by five other cardinals and twenty bishops, celebrated a solemn mass before both courts. The choir of the Chapel Royal sang alternately with its French equivalent, La Chapelle du Musique du Roi; then Richard Pace gave a Latin oration on peace to the congregation. During the service, a firework in the shape of a salamander,47 Francis I’s personal emblem, was accidentally set off, causing a hiatus in the proceedings. Another occurred when Henry and Francis strove to let the other take precedence in kissing the Gospel; similarly, neither Queen wished to be the first to kiss the Pax,48 so they kissed each other instead.49

  The two Kings had agreed to found and maintain a chapel to Our Lady of Peace on the site of their meeting, and after the service Wolsey laid its foundation stone.50 Afterwards there was an open-air feast and a final round of barriers, followed by the firework display. The next day saw the Kings visiting each other’s Queen again. After a last feast, followed by mumming and dancing, Queen Katherine presented prizes to all those who had excelled in the jousts.

  As Erasmus had predicted, very little of political significance was actually achieved at the Field of Cloth of Gold; the chapel to Our Lady of Peace was never built, the temporary palace was dismantled, and within three years England and France were at war again. The whole exercise proved to be little more than a lavish charade. Yet Henry VIII always regarded the meeting as a triumph; he was “as well pleased with this interview as if he had gained a great realm.”51 Years later, around 1545,52 he commissioned, perhaps for Whitehall Palace, two large—and not entirely accurate— paintings of it from artists whose names are lost, but who were probably Flemish.53 One shows the King’s embarkation at Dover; his tiny figure is to be seen in the distance on the deck of his flagship, the Katherine Pleasaunce.54 The other picture gives a composite view of the events, including the King arriving in procession 55 from Guisnes (with Calais in the distance), the meeting between the two sovereigns, a feast in a pavilion, and, in the background, one of the tournaments. Above, in the sky, appears the firework salamander.

  After taking their leave of King Francis and Queen Claude on 25 June, and exchanging many costly gifts, among them jewels, horses, and a litter, Henry and Katherine retired to Calais, where the King thanked his courtiers for attending him and sent half of them home.56

  On 10 July, Henry and Katherine and their reduced entourages rode to Gravelines, where they met with Charles V and the Regent Margaret. On the following day, they brought them back to Calais, where they planned to entertain them in a temporary banqueting house of canvas painted with heavenly bodies, constructed “upon the masts of a ship, like a theatre.” Unfortunately, the strong winds blew it down, so Henry and his courtiers, resplendent in their masquing gear, came to the Emperor’s lodging instead. 57 The news of these visits left Francis I somewhat uneasy, and he was further disconcerted when on 14 July Henry and Charles signed a treaty agreeing not to make any new alliances with France during the next two years. Shortly afterwards, Henry returned to England.

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  “One Man’s Disobedience”

  Henry spent the late summer of 1520 on progress mainly in Berkshire and Wiltshire, dividing his time between “goodly pastimes and continual hunting.”1 He also visited Woodstock. But he was not in a happy mood, because Wolsey had sent several of the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber on diplomatic errands abroad, possibly to get rid of them for a time. 2 Feeling ill-used, Henry summoned Thomas More, Bishop Ruthall, and others to attend him, so that foreign visitors to court “shall not find him so bare without some nobles and wise personages about him.” 3

  Wolsey, meanwhile, had been keeping a close watch on Buckingham, who, in October 1520, retired from court to his palace at Thornbury. For at least two years now, the King’s lack of a male heir had led people to speculate that Buckingham, a descendant of Edward III, might be named his successor, or even attempt to seize the crown for himself.4 Henry was aware of this and it made him uneasy; hence Wolsey’s vigilance. His suspicions were even more aroused when Wolsey obtained information from the Duke’s servants that Buckingham was making ill-advised remarks about his proximity to the throne and had predicted that Henry would have no sons and that he himself would be king one day.5 The Duke had also angered Henry by pressing his claim to the office of Constable of England, which had been held by his father, through the law courts, even in the face of Henry’s displeasure. Buckingham’s intentions may well have been sinister, but even if they were not, he certainly acted with a dangerous lack of discretion. And given his wealth, vast estates, and large affinity, there is no doubt that he appeared to pose a very real threat to the King.

  Buckingham seems to have tried to lull Henry into a sense of false security when, at New Year, 1521, he borrowed money from Robert Amadas to give the King a wine goblet “of the best fashion,” engraved, “With humble, true heart.”6

  After Christmas, Queen Katherine journeyed again to Walsingham “to fulfil a vow,”7 and also perhaps to pray once more for a son. Back at court, the King, hearing that Francis I had suffered a head injury and had to have his hair cut short, decreed that all his male courtiers were to wear their hair cropped in sympathy. Gradually, long hair for men was growing out of fashion, but evidence from portraits shows that Henry grew his again, and also that at some stage he shaved off his beard. It was not until around 1525 that he adopted the beard that was to remain with him until the end of his life.

  During the winter, Buckingham had begun to mobilise troops, ostensibly to protect him when he toured his estates in Wales, where he was not popular; but the King feared he meant to use those t
roops for an entirely different, treasonable purpose. The Duke was also said to have purchased a large amount of cloth of gold and silver with which to bribe the Yeomen of the Guard. What could not be ignored was evidence that he had sworn to assassinate Henry just as his father had planned to assassinate Richard III, coming before him with a knife secreted about his person “so that, when kneeling before the King, he would have risen suddenly and stabbed him.” 8

  In April 1521, Wolsey moved against Buckingham. The Duke was summoned to Windsor but arrested on his way and taken to the Tower, where he was charged with imagining and compassing the death of the King. On 13 May he was tried by a committee of his peers, headed by Norfolk, who, weeping, condemned him to death, the chief evidence against him being the damning testimony of his own officers, who bore grievances against him. Four days later he was beheaded. His execution caused a great stir, and he was “universally lamented by all London”9 because it was believed that the Cardinal, out of pure malice, had brought him down.

  Skelton, Vergil, and many others blamed Wolsey for Buckingham’s fall, for it was well known that the two had hated each other. Charles V commented, “A butcher’s dog has killed the finest buck in England.” 10 In fact, Wolsey had advised Henry not to proceed against the Duke; it was the King who was determined to bring down this overmighty subject, 11 and Buckingham’s treacherous stupidity that enabled him to do so. Compton, who had long hated Buckingham, seems also to have been instrumental in bringing him to the block.

  Those members of the older nobility who had been allied by blood ties to Buckingham—among them the Countess of Salisbury, whose daughter was married to his son and who was herself perilously near to the throne—lost favour in the aftermath of his execution. Lady Salisbury was dismissed from her post as governess to the Princess Mary; her eldest son, Lord Montagu, spent a brief spell in the Tower, while his younger brothers, Geoffrey and Reginald (then a student in Venice), felt the draught of royal displeasure. George Neville, Lord Abergavenny, elder brother of the King’s favourite Sir Edward Neville, was no longer welcome at court for a time.

  Buckingham’s extensive landed property, which was worth about £5,000 (£1.5 million) a year, was forfeited to the Crown. The King divided it up, reserved some for himself, and distributed the rest among those lords and courtiers whose loyalty he felt he could depend on, among them Norfolk, Dorset, Worcester, the Earl of Northumberland, Sir William Sandys, Sir Thomas Boleyn, Sir Nicholas Carew, Sir Edward Neville, Thomas More, Sir Richard Weston—a member of Henry’s Privy Chamber who built the great house known as Sutton Place on his share of the pickings—and Henry’s cousin, the Earl of Devon, who had disdained to have much to do with Buckingham, and was elected a Knight of the Garter in his place. The office of Constable of England was allowed to lapse with Buckingham’s death, which left the Duke of Norfolk as Earl Marshal supreme as Commander in Chief, master of state ceremonial, and president of the College of Arms.

  The King, who was just then laid low with the first of several bouts of malaria, granted Buckingham’s widow a pension for life. At Wolsey’s prompting, Henry also wrote letters of condolence to the Duchess and her son, Lord Henry Stafford.12 Later on, Stafford Castle and some estates nearby were returned to Lord Henry.

  Seven of the Duke’s houses were considered suitable for the King: Kimbolton Castle in Huntingdonshire, “a right goodly lodging” built in the fifteenth century but in need of repair; Stafford Castle and Maxstoke Castle, which also required renovation; the newly built manor house at Bletchingly, which had a hall, chapel, chamber, and a parlour lined with wainscot;13 Writtle Manor in Essex, three miles from Beaulieu, which would be convenient as a hunting lodge if the moat were cleared of weeds;14 Thornbury Castle; and Penshurst Place. In the end, only Kimbolton, which was leased to Sir Richard Wingfield;15 Writtle; Bletchley, which was leased to Sir Nicholas Carew; Thornbury; and Penshurst became royal property. Maxstoke was given to Sir William Compton.

  The palatial Thornbury Castle was only partially built, and would never be completed. Henry used it occasionally as a progress house. Like Richmond Palace, on which it is thought to have been modelled, it had pleasant geometric knot gardens enclosed by covered galleries, an orchard, and a rose garden with paths, arbours, and aviaries.

  Penshurst Place, a fortified house of sandstone, had been built in 1340–1341 by Sir John Pulteney; it had been royal property in the early fifteenth century before being acquired by the Stafford family. It boasted a magnificent beamed great hall which still remains today, along with one of its four original corner towers. A second hall, which no longer survives, was added around 1430. Henry retained Penshurst, which was managed by Sir Thomas Boleyn (who lived at nearby Hever Castle), until his death, and may have used it during his affair with Mary Boleyn. It was granted by Edward VI to Sir William Sidney in 1552.

  When Henry’s fever lifted, he decided, good son of the Church that he was, to go on pilgrimage to give thanks for his safe recovery. But the Church as Henry knew it was under threat. In 1517, a monk of Wittenberg, Martin Luther, had nailed to a church door a list of ninety-five theses, attacking ecclesiastical abuses such as the sale of indulgences and rejecting papal authority, holy relics, pilgrimages, penances, and clerical celibacy. Condemned by the Pope, he refused to be silenced, and in 1521, Charles V summoned him to appear before the Diet of Worms, where again he declined to retract his protests. By then, he had attracted a strong following, in Germany in particular, where the controversies he had stirred provoked civil disorder. Luther’s heresy was thereafter quickly disseminated through western Europe, and was recognised as one of the most serious threats yet, not only to the Roman Catholic Church, but to the unity of Christendom as a whole.

  What Luther advocated was a more personal kind of faith, in which a man might pray directly to God rather than through intercessors such as the Virgin Mary, the saints, and priests. This rendered many priestly functions redundant, along with most of the Sacraments, of which Luther acknowledged only two, baptism and the Eucharist. Even then, he and his followers challenged the doctrine of transubstantiation, asserting that the consecrated Host did not miraculously become the actual body and blood of Christ, but merely symbolised it. Faith alone, rather than ritual and ceremonial, was the foundation of this new religion.

  By 1521, Lutheranism—it was not called Protestantism until 1529— had inflitrated into England, where it would take root in fertile ground at both universities and also among some followers of the New Learning. Heretical tracts and pamphlets were, of course, banned by the authorities, yet were secretly circulated anyway, despite the fact that the penalty for heresy was death by burning.

  Kings could not afford to let heresies such as Luther’s take root because they encouraged social divisions, sedition, and even revolution, which undermined the very body politic made up of church and state. As Henry pointed out, “By one man’s disobedience, many were made sinners.” These new ideas “robbed princes and prelates of all power and authority.” 16 In the King’s opinion, religious doctrine was a matter for those best qualified to understand and interpret it, not the ordinary person. For Henry, egalitarianism was an utterly alien concept and a threat to the established concepts of order and hierarchy in a Christian society.

  Both Charles V and Francis I had special titles bestowed on them by the Pope—Charles was “the Most Catholic King” and “Protector of the Holy See,” Francis “the Most Christian King”—and since 1512 Henry had been dropping hints that he would like a title, too. Now, alarmed by what he had read of Luther’s works, he saw his chance to earn it. In 1521, at the instance of Wolsey, he wrote a scathing attack on Luther, whom he called “this weed, this dilapidated, sick and evil-minded sheep.”17 It took the form of a short but succinct book entitled Assertio Septem Sacramentorum adversus Martinus Lutherus (A Defence of the Seven Sacraments against Martin Luther).

  The King had help from Richard Pace, who translated for his master Luther’s controversial De Captivitate Babyloni
ca (1520) and the subsequent papal bull excommunicating him. Thomas More was a “sorter out and placer of the principal matters,”18 and he, John Fisher, and others gave practical assistance and advice and the benefit of their knowledge of the Church Fathers. Nevertheless, the book was from first to last the King’s own, and he gave it priority over state affairs and even hunting expeditions. 19

  It was, Henry explained in his introduction, “the first offspring of his intellect and his little erudition,” and he had felt it his duty to write it “that all might see how he was ready to defend the Church, not only with his armies but with the resources of his mind.”

  “What serpent so venomously crept in as he who called the Most Holy See of Rome ‘Babylon’ and the Pope’s authority ‘Tyranny,’ and turns the name of the Most Holy Bishop of Rome into ‘Anti-Christ’?” Henry thundered. Thomas More urged him to tone down his polemic, on the grounds that the Pope “is a prince as you are, and there may grow breach of amity and war between you both. I think it best therefore that his authority be more slenderly touched upon.” But Henry would not listen. “Nay, that it shall not,” he declared. “We are so much bounden to the See of Rome that we cannot do too much honour too it.”20 Years later, he was to have cause to bitterly regret not taking More’s advice.

  The Assertio was completed by May 1521, when Wolsey exhibited a manuscript copy at Paul’s Cross, where Luther’s works were publicly burned. 21 In July, it was printed, and thirty presentation copies were sent to Rome; one, beautifully bound in cloth of gold, was intended for Pope Leo X, to whom it was dedicated by Henry in his own hand.22