Although he swore his confessor to secrecy, he told his closest servants that ‘if it pleased God to send him a new life, they would find him, a new changed man’.89
Henry was not only terrified of death but possible damnation as well. When he sought absolution for his sins, ‘he wept and sobbed by the space of three-quarters of an hour’. Two days later, now again at Richmond, the king received communion ‘at midnight and again upon Easter Day with [such] reverence that all that were present were astonished’.90
Exhausted by these exertions, Henry VII retired to his Privy Chamber, amusing himself by gambling and, more piously, listening to priests singing psalms.91 On 27 February John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and Thomas Wolsey, one of the king’s chaplains, were paid for the 2,000 Masses said for his recovery in London. A further 2,000 were said by the Friar Observants. Henry was now growing ever more feeble, too weak even to take the Holy Sacrament. The king therefore asked for the ‘monstrance’, a gold receptacle holding the consecrated Host, to be brought to him. When it was handed to him by his confessor
… he, with beatings of his breast, did obeisance thereunto and kissed … the foot of the monstrance so that the bystanders might scarcely contain themselves from tears and weeping.92
Outside the silent palace on the banks of the Thames, the new Venetian ambassador in London, Andrea Badoer – who arrived in late March, incognito, penniless and after a chapter of accidents93 – wrote to the king of his intention to present his letters of credence. Henry ‘expressed satisfaction and [said that] when better, he would give him audience’. On 29 March Badoer reported: ‘The sick king is very ill and his life in danger.’94
Two days later Henry made his 13,000-word, thirty-seven-page will,95 parts of which had been drawn up earlier over some time in readiness, but the final version is coloured by his recent penitential declarations96 so the words of a desperate and frightened man cry out of the pages. He acknowledges that
I am a sinful creature, in sin conceived and in sin have lived, knowing perfectly that of my merits I cannot attain to the life everlasting, but only by the merits of Thy blessed passion and of Thy infinite mercy and grace … The most Blessed Mother, ever virgin, our Lady Saint Mary … will now in my most extreme need of her infinite pity take my soul into her hands and present it unto her most dear Son, whereof sweetest Lady of Mercy, very Mother and Virgin, Well of Pity and surest refuge of all needful, most humbly, most entirely and most heartily I beseech thee.97
Henry VII took a long time to die – twenty-seven hours filled with pain and prayers.98
The final scene in his dramatic and violent life began late on the evening of Friday 20 April. Perceiving that ‘he began utterly to fail’ he called for his confessor to administer the last rites of the church. As the priest dabbed him with holy oil, the king ‘offered every part of his body by order and as he might with weakness turned himself at every time and answered in the suffrages [intercessory prayers]’.
At some point on that last day, Prince Henry was summoned into his dying father’s bedchamber. The king, propped up on heavy cushions, with difficulty ‘gave him fatherly and godly exhortation, committing unto him the laborious governance of this realm’.99 Prince Henry wrote afterwards that his father charged him ‘on his death bed, among other good counsels, to fulfil the old treaty with Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain by taking their daughter Katherine in marriage’.100
During his last hours, Henry VII heard ‘a Mass of the glorious Virgin, the mother of Christ, to whom always in his life he had a singular and special devotion’. A crucifix was frequently brought to him which ‘he beheld with great reverence, lifting up his head as he might, holding up his hands before it and often embracing it in his arms … kissing it, beating oft his breast’.101
This was a good end for a Christian prince.
We have a portrayal of this deathbed scene, drawn by Sir Thomas Wriothesley, Garter King of Arms (Plate 8). The king, still wearing his crown, lies in a great canopied bed surrounded by clerics and courtiers, all waiting for him to die. On his left is Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, and two tonsured priests. Then come members of the king’s household, identified by their heraldry: George Lord Hastings; Richard Weston, Esquire of the Body and Groom of the Privy Chamber; Richard Clement, another Groom; Matthew Baker, another Esquire; two gentlemen ushers, John Sharpe and William Tyler; and Hugh Denys, the king’s closest attendant. Then there is a mass of doctors, holding narrow-necked pots, either for administering medicine or to collect urine – in Tudor times, this was used to gauge symptoms of a patient’s sickness, either by its colour, smell, or (horribly) by taste. Finally, standing next to the king and holding his wand of office, is William Fitzwilliam, another gentleman usher. He is shown closing the king’s eyes. 102
Henry VII drew his last shuddering breath at 11 pm on Saturday 21 April.
The first Tudor king had died after a reign of twenty-three years and eight months. He was aged fifty-two.
His son, destined to become the greatest king in England’s long history, now waited in the shadows to win his own immortal power and glory.
5
VIVAT REX
‘Thanks be to God, our … kingdom is in good obedience, peace and tranquillity as it was in the time when the King, my late lord and father was still alive.’
Henry VIII to Margaret of Savoy, Regent of the Netherlands, 27 June 1509.1
As Henry VII’s body grew cold within his secret chamber in Richmond Palace, outside the silent and darkened room his government was thrown into feverish activity. Those who had witnessed his slow, agonizing journey to meet his Maker knew full well that the king’s death left his ‘kingdom not without danger’ as Fuensalida, the new Spanish ambassador in London, shrewdly observed a few days later.2 As far as the residual Yorkist threat to the crown was concerned, Suffolk and his brother William de la Pole were safely incarcerated in the Tower. Their sibling Richard remained a fugitive in Europe, posing a distant hazard, but a potential fresh claimant, Edward Stafford, the ambitious Third Duke of Buckingham, was arrogantly enjoying life in England, holding the greatest estates of any nobleman.3
It was therefore decided to keep Henry VII’s death secret until arrangements could be put in place for a smooth transition to the reign of Henry VIII, now aged seventeen years and ten months. The new king remained in his privy apartments at Richmond, presumably mourning the loss of his father, while the behind-the-hand whispering went on all around him.
A morbid and grotesque charade was played out in the echoing corridors of the palace to maintain the pretence that the old king still lived. Thomas Wriothesley, the Garter King of Arms and chief herald, maintained that the concealment was intended to allow time for his councillors to arrive at Richmond to discuss plans for the accession. But the embargo on the news being announced had a more sinister motive.
For forty-four tense hours, the façade of regal normality was kept up while partisan officials argued and haggled over their roles in the government of the youthful new monarch. Others covertly searched the palace for the treasure they knew had been stashed away by the old king in numerous ‘secret places under his key’. A total of £180,000 (£93 million in today’s money) in coins and gold was eventually discovered, secured and properly accounted for.4 Meanwhile, the commonplace rituals of court life were observed as usual. Trumpeters heralded the arrival of tasty hot meals in the royal apartments, but with only the stiffening royal corpse inside, there was no one alive to eat them. At Mass on Sunday 22 April, the routine royal offering was made at the high altar in the name of Henry VII.5
The next morning, St George’s Day, the heralds publicly cried ‘largess’ of Henry VII so that ‘commoners should have less suspicion of his death’.6 After dinner Richard Weston, Groom of the Privy Chamber – one of the faithful group who had watched the king breathe his last late on Saturday night – with a ‘smiling countenance’ asked the Lord Chancellor, Archbishop William Warham, to accompany him to speak to the
king. When they emerged from the bedchamber a little later, they also had ‘good countenance’ on their faces, ‘showing no great manner of mourning that men might perceive’.7
It was only then that the Privy Chamber courtiers revealed the king’s death to his leading councillors and peers who had gathered, as usual, to celebrate the annual Feast of St George, England’s patron saint, as Knights of the Garter. That night the new king attended evensong, probably in the church of the Friar Observants that abutted the western walls of the palace. Afterwards he went to supper. On both occasions he was still addressed as the Prince of Wales.
The court was then informed of Henry VII’s death. Fuensalida adroitly picked up the news from a source inside Richmond Palace, accurately reporting that the king had died on Saturday night and the subsequent concealment of the event. Given his mission, it was no surprise that he also immediately enquired whether the king’s death would have any impact on Katherine of Aragon’s beleaguered and blighted marriage. The ambassador was disconcerted to be told by a courtier that this was now thought unlikely as ‘from what they know of Henry it would burden his conscience to marry his brother’s widow’.8 Elsewhere in London, rumours of the king’s death panicked foreign merchants into nervously packing up their expensive goods and hiding them in places of safety.9
The new king, having finished his sombre supper, must have had discussions with his father’s veteran chief ministers late into the night. It was his first taste of the responsibilities of kingship. This eminent and distinguished group was led by Lord Chancellor Warham, who, during the previous reign, had been nicknamed ‘the king’s eye, the king’s mouth and his right hand’.10 The remainder consisted of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey (Lord Treasurer); Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester (Lord Privy Seal); Charles Somerset, Lord Herbert (Lord Chamberlain); and George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury (Lord Steward of the Household). John de Vere, Earl of Oxford and Constable of the Tower, and Thomas Lord Darcy, Captain of the Royal Guard, were probably summoned when measures to protect the security of the realm came up for discussion.11
It is almost certain that Henry VIII’s grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, who had travelled to Richmond from her London home at Coldharbour to see her son shortly before his death, also took part in these closeted conversations. One of the decisions taken was that she would act as regent for the king until his eighteenth birthday on 28 June and she insisted that her grandson kept in post the old king’s trusted ministers. Another, vengeful, decision was also taken (to be implemented very early the next morning), which was cynically designed to endear Henry VIII to his three million subjects.
On Tuesday 24 April the heralds – to raucous fanfares of trumpets – proclaimed the new king in the City of London: ‘Henry the Eighth, by the Grace of God, King of England and France and Lord of Ireland’. Upriver in Richmond, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and Sir John Cutt, Under-Treasurer of the Exchequer, attended a reconvened meeting of the same ministerial group to begin planning Henry VII’s extravagant obsequies. Precedents created by funerals of previous English kings were efficiently produced by the Garter King of Arms. These were carefully considered and some initial arrangements agreed.
After dinner his successor mounted up and quickly rode the twelve and a half miles (22 km) to the City of London amid the ragged cheers of groups of his subjects as the heavily guarded king and his escort clattered by.
This cavalcade headed straight for the Tower where the new sovereign took up residence in the royal suite on the top floor of the White Tower12 and he was joined there shortly afterwards by the premier nobles of the realm, Buckingham and Algernon Percy, Earl of Northumberland. According to their servants’ gamecock boasts, these strutting peers now expected to dominate and control the policies and decisions of their teenage monarch. Buckingham, they bragged ominously, saw himself in the powerful role of ‘Lord Protector of England’.13 Oxford, as constable, placed the Tower on high security alert and Henry wisely remained ‘closely and secret’ with his council within.14 Lady Margaret travelled there shortly afterwards. Outside the walls of the fortress, the city fathers organised extra watches in each ward (or district) of London to snuff out disturbances and guard against sedition.
There is always a breathless, expectant pause immediately after the accession of a new ruler when their subjects or vassals wait to see their true mettle revealed. Henry VIII, guided by his councillors, acted swiftly and with an iron hand.
In fulfilment of the decision taken the previous night, Henry VII’s two notorious councillors Sir Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley had been arrested early that morning and were brought to the Tower very soon after the king’s arrival. Simultaneously, Buckingham’s brother, Henry Lord Stafford, was also detained on suspicion of treason, possibly as a carefully calculated warning shot across the egotistical duke’s bows, as Stafford was quietly released shortly after the coronation.15
Dudley, president of Henry VII’s council, was charged that on 22 April he had conspired to ‘hold, guide and govern the king and his council’ by summoning a force of his tenants and retainers to his house in Candlewick Street Ward, London.16 Empson, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, was accused of similar crimes.
It was a brilliant and stunning public relations coup de maître. ‘By this action all the indignation of the people was appeased and everyone was grateful to the monarch for the punishment of the evil pair,’ Vergil crowed.17 Hall reported that their arrests brought ‘rejoicing of many people which by them were grieved’. No wonder there was celebration in the streets of London. Empson and Dudley’s ‘unreasonable extortion, noble men grudged, mean men kicked, poor men lamented, preachers openly at Paul’s Cross18 and other places exclaimed, rebuked and detested’. 19 Lady Margaret was probably numbered amongst Empson and Dudley’s countless enemies and took a leading role in the decision to detain them. Their rampant extortion and corruption during her son’s reign may well have offended her moral prejudices.20
Smaller fry were also swept up in this dramatic and unexpected purge. Those who had perjured themselves in legal proceedings instituted by Empson and Dudley were taken into custody or fled to sanctuary in their nearest church or monastery. ‘You could have seen a crowd of these creatures being led daily into London,’ reported Vergil, ‘a few of the perjured were led through the centre of the city and were punished with dishonour, who nearly all afterwards soon perished with shame at their exposure.’ Most, however, were treated more leniently ‘since they were considered less guilty’.21
Henry speedily moved on to his second populist action of the day, demonstrating that an iron hand can sometimes be concealed in a velvet glove. The pardon to offenders that a remorseful and penitent Henry VII had declared on 10 April had lapsed with his death. A more wide-reaching and generous general amnesty was now issued ‘for all things except debt, to everyone who will sue to it from the Lord Chancellor’ and covered all offences committed prior to Henry VIII’s accession. ‘No one is to make disturbances,’ it warned, ‘but any person wronged may seek remedy at the common law.’
There was an absolute pledge of fair justice for all, under Henry VIII’s law, for everyone, whether ranked high or low in the realm. The proclamation declared: ‘All his officers and ministers of justice from henceforth do and administer justice and in every cause do and execute their offices freely, righteously and indifferently to every of his subjects afore the laws of his land [with] good conscience, equity and discretion.’ Merchants, clothiers and artificers could also continue their occupations without fear of untrue accusations made against them ‘by customs [officers], comptrollers or searchers’, or by old laws never executed ‘till now of late time’. The king also promised to right the wrongs suffered by those ‘grievously vexed and troubled in times past’. Henry VIII’s pardon was issued by the sovereign’s ‘good heart’ and was ‘much more ample, gracious and beneficial’ than his father’s proclamation of two weeks before.22
He had wiped the royal slate clea
n of all the greed and injustice of his father’s reign and given the Tudor dynasty a fresh start.
The full text of the pardon was rushed into print by the king’s licensed printer Richard Pynson and copies distributed, initially in London and then posted up in the marketplaces of England. This was the first use of the printing press as a propaganda weapon in the new reign and Henry VIII, familiar with the power of the printed word through his education, was to make plentiful use of it in the years to come as the principal method of representing himself and his policies to his subjects.23
Fuensalida reported that the king ‘released many prisoners and arrested all those responsible for the bribery and tyranny of his father’s reign. The people are very happy and few tears are shed for Henry VII. Instead, people are as joyful as if they had been released from prison.’24
The speed of implementation was bound to cause administrative problems. Five days later Henry sent Lord Chancellor Warham a list of those exempted from his general pardon, which included all those accused of treason, murder and other more serious crimes. Heading the list of seventy-seven names were the three de la Poles, Edmund, William and Richard, as well as William Courtenay and, of course, Empson and Dudley. The exemptions also listed less exalted miscreants like ‘William Smith, late of the wardrobe’; ‘Wigan, late footman’; ‘Christopher Clapham, porter of Berwick’. At the bottom, Henry added, in his own hand, one more name to the list: ‘Thomas Thomas of Southampton’, whose felonies remain unknown. The king was getting a grip on the detail of the management of his realm.25
Henry VII’s demise threw confusion and uncertainty into the smooth cogs of European diplomacy. Most directly affected was King Ferdinand in Spain who was fearful that Katherine’s marriage was now in the greatest danger of never being solemnised or consummated. After hearing French rumours of the king’s death, he sent off an urgent and desperate dispatch to Fuensalida in London:
Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII Page 12