Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII

by Robert Hutchinson

  Henry fully intended to take another army back to France before June 1514. In the forefront of his thoughts was the unsettling knowledge that he had failed to annihilate the military might of Louis XII, but instead had merely captured a handful of French towns. One of them, Thérouanne, he had deferentially relinquished to the Emperor Maximilian and the other, Tournai, he briefly retained as an outpost of the English possessions in northern France.2

  The king therefore was no nearer to securing the throne of France than he had been before the cripplingly expensive adventure across the English Channel.3 Moreover, Julius II’s papal brief that named him ‘Most Christian King’ and so happily approved his claim on France had mysteriously failed to arrive in England. Despite Henry’s very best efforts to lay his hands upon it, the document was hopelessly trapped in some dusty corner of the Vatican’s labyrinthine bureaucracy and, in fact, never appeared again.

  The king was nobody’s fool. Howard’s illustrious triumph at Flodden, so devastating to the Scottish crown and nation, may have safely secured England’s northern borders but it unfortunately made his own inexperienced deeds on the battlefield, at the Battle – or rather skirmish – of the Spurs, appear just a smidgen inglorious. They would certainly fail to be included in any history of famous victories, despite Henry’s crowing hyperbole and his courtiers’ fawning compliments.

  At least England’s military reputation had been restored at the European courts, creating the opportunity to cement alliances. As first fruit of the tactical successes in France, he had confirmed with the emperor that his younger sister Mary, now aged seventeen, should marry Maxmilian’s grandson, Charles, Duke of Burgundy, at Calais by May, when he would be fourteen. After the lavish nuptial celebrations, emperor and king would don their armour, collect their fearsome trappings of war and again strike boldly at perfidious Gaul.4

  Henry also received handsome gifts as tokens of friendship from lesser overseas potentates. In June 1514 the Marquis of Mantua sent him two fine horses named Altobello and Goventore. After riding them for six days, the king declared that he had never ‘ridden a horse that pleased him more than Goventore’. He enquired what would please the marquis and was told he ‘required nothing but the king’s love’.5

  But despite such minor tangible benefits from his foray into mainland Europe, none of Henry’s ambitious schemes came to fruition, as he failed to take account of the treacherous shifting sands of European politics.

  The new Pope, the vacillating and irresolute Leo X, decided to dissolve the Holy League and to seek peace with France. He sent his legate Gianpetro Caraffa to London to discuss the plan but Henry huffily refused to meet him. Leo, committed firmly to the sacred cause of Christian unity, wrote a smoothly worded appeal to the king in December 1513, pleading with him to ‘eliminate all hatred’ and to ‘sow the seeds of peace’. As the holy purpose to which Henry took up arms ‘had been secured’ the Pope ‘hoped he will listen to the proposals for an honourable peace’.6 The same day he briefed the king’s ministers, Warham, Ruthal and Fox, on his attempts to ‘earnestly move Henry, King of England, to incline to peace’. Leo had not forgotten

  that he took up arms for the liberty of the Church but as his adversary [Louis XII] has humbly come to the Apostolic See for pardon and he himself has gained both profit and glory, it is a Pope’s office to prohibit slaughter and there are other enemies of the Faith [the Turks] to be repelled.7

  He earnestly exhorted them to convince the king that universal peace should reign again amongst the European nations.8

  Leo ramped up the pressure on Henry by sending him a costly sword and a pileus (the cap of maintenance)9 given to European sovereigns by popes as a mark of their particular esteem.10 The award was celebrated by a special high Mass at St Paul’s on Sunday 21 May. The king, wearing a chequered gown of purple satin and gold, knelt at the high altar as the long sword, with a gilded guard and scabbard, was buckled around his waist. The foot-high (30.5 cm) cap ‘of purple satin, resembling the crown of the caps worn by the Albanian light cavalry’ was placed on his head, ‘which by reason of its length covered his whole face’.11 The subsequent stately procession proved a little perilous as the king felt his way around the interior of the cathedral.

  It may be that the king’s pointed snub to the Papal Legate was not merely immature tantrum. Around December 1513 Henry contracted smallpox, a disease rife in sixteenth-century England. The attack was severe: foreign reports suggested his physicians ‘were afraid [for] his life … [but] he is risen from his bed, fierce against France’.12 Erasmus had planned to give a gift to Wolsey (now appointed Bishop of Lincoln) while in London in January, but postponed his plans ‘deeming it unsafe there in consequence of the plague’. He reported: ‘The king was ill when I was there, that is at Richmond [Palace] but the doctor said he had escaped all danger.’13 Happily, Henry was spared any pockmarks on his face, often a telltale sign of the disease.

  Princess Mary was meanwhile pining for her young bridegroom-to-be, who was reported to be a sickly boy with a solemn disposition verging on the melancholy.14 Gerard de Pleine, the President of the Council of Flanders, met her in London in June 1514 and described his impressions to Margaret of Savoy:

  She is one of the most beautiful young women in the world. I think I never saw a more charming creature.

  She is very graceful. Her deportment in dancing and in conversation is as pleasing as you could desire.

  There is nothing gloomy or melancholy about her.

  It is certain … that she is much attached to Prince Charles of whom she has a very bad picture and is said to wish to see it ten times a day.

  Never a day passes that she does not express a wish to see him.

  I had imagined that she would have been very tall but she is of middling height and … a much better match in age and person for the prince than I had heard.15

  But this match was not to be. Louis XII’s wife, Anne of Brittany, died on 9 January 1514 and the fifty-one-year-old French king made unexpected secret overtures to take Mary as his new wife.

  Sporadic fighting between England and France continued. The following month the French attacked the south coast of England and burnt Brighton to the ground (leaving only the parish church of St Nicholas standing) before they were driven off by hastily mustered archers.16 In retaliation, Henry sent a punitive expedition to Normandy under the newly created Earl of Surrey to burn and ravage the countryside near Cherbourg.17 French troops also attacked Guisnes in the Pale of Calais and threatened to besiege it, ‘but the English sallied forth and repulsed them with much slaughter’.18

  Surprisingly, the French king’s proposal was not rebuffed, primarily because Ferdinand of Spain was about to sign a unilateral peace treaty with France and Maximilian had pulled out of the Holy League.19 Thus deceitfully deserted by his allies, Henry at first considered fighting on alone against France but then began to woo the Swiss as potential fellow combatants. Wolsey and Bishop Fox, however, urged a new peace treaty with the French king: Henry instructed Wolsey that he required 100,000 crowns as an annual ‘tribute’ paid ‘for withholding my inheritance’ – the throne of France – and that peace should ‘no longer continue than the payment of the money’.20

  Under the subsequent treaty, signed on 7 August 1514, Louis agreed to pay a million gold crowns (£250,000) to Henry in ten annual instalments. The final clause was an agreement that Mary should marry Louis XII.21

  In Rome, the English ambassador Cardinal Bainbridge, Archbishop of York, died suddenly on 14 July, having probably been poisoned by his chaplain Renaldo da Modena, who was indignant after being punched by his violent master. Henry formally requested Pope Leo to make Wolsey a cardinal in his place: ‘His merits are such that we esteem him above our dearest friends and we can do nothing of the least importance without him,’ he wrote. Furthermore, ‘no one laboured and sweated’ for the Anglo – French peace more than Wolsey.22

  Louis was not an attractive catch for Mary. He was toothless, s
yphilitic and gout-ridden, suffered from a scorbutic skin condition like scurvy and displayed symptoms of premature senility. Some roguish reports even suggested he had contracted elephantiasis23 or leprosy. He was scarcely the first choice of lover in any teenage girl’s dream of wedded bliss.

  The only glimmer of hope was that he was unlikely to live long. After much cajoling, a reluctant princess eventually told her brother that she would marry Louis only on condition that she had complete freedom to choose her next husband after he died. She already had Charles Brandon, created Duke of Suffolk in 1514, in her sights. On 30 July, she solemnly renounced her proposed marriage with Charles of Burgundy at a short formal ceremony at the royal manor of Wanstead, Essex, witnessed by Wolsey, Norfolk and Suffolk himself.24

  The proxy wedding was held on 13 August at Greenwich, with the French hostage, the Duc de Longueville, acting as Louis XII’s representative. The symbolic consummation followed with Mary, after having undressed, climbing into bed in the ‘presence of many witnesses’. Another French prisoner, the Marquis de Rothelin, wearing a doublet and garish red hose (but with one leg naked) crept under the covers and touched her body with his bare leg.25 The marriage was declared duly consummated amid polite applause from the bystanders. Mary’s real wedding night would be much less entertaining.

  The king paid out nearly £1,000 for her trousseau, more than half of which went on embroidery, including the £233 paid to a jeweller for the glittering gilt spangles sewn on Mary’s dresses.26

  Henry and Katherine saw his unenthusiastic sister off at Dover on 30 September 1514 but her voyage to France became an uncomfortable chapter of accidents. The Earl of Surrey, as Lord Admiral, was detailed to shepherd the wedding party safely across the English Channel but stormy weather delayed them for four days of mal de mer and abject misery.27 Mary’s ship was separated from the flotilla and ran jarringly aground on a sandbank outside Boulogne, forcing her to be rowed ashore in a small boat through the raging surf. Finally, Sir Christopher Garnish, staggering through the waves, had to carry her in his arms onto the beach.28 A true Tudor, she was vocal in her angry protests at the danger and damage to her dignity. Amongst her ladies was Mary Boleyn (daughter of Katherine of Aragon’s lady-in-waiting and the diplomat Sir Thomas Boleyn), who was chosen to join the entourage because of her fluent French.

  The bride’s first glimpse of her husband at Abbeville was unedifying. Clearly entertaining lascivious thoughts, the French king was ‘licking his lips and gulping his spittle’. His outfit was ludicrous, more befitting a younger man. The wedding was postponed for a few weeks because drooling Louis suffered a bad attack of gout, but finally their nuptials were celebrated in Abbeville Cathedral on 9 October. After the wedding night, the groom boasted vaingloriously that he had ‘performed marvels’ although his cousin and heir apparent Francis, Duke of Angoulême, unkindly gossiped ‘that unless I have been told lies … the king and queen cannot possibly have a child’.29 Most of her English servants were promptly sacked, much to Mary’s chagrin, although Mary Boleyn remained a lady of her chamber.

  Henry sent Suffolk to Paris on a secret mission to discuss plans to wreak his personal revenge on the Spanish king for violating his alliance with England and his cavalier treatment of him. Henry sought a military pact with Louis to expel Ferdinand from the kingdom of Navarre and assistance in pressing a barely plausible claim on Castile, of which Queen Katherine, the king insisted, was the legitimate heir.

  Before the duke departed, Henry extracted a solemn promise from him at Eltham Palace in front of Wolsey that he would make no attempt to seduce or make love to Mary while he was in France.30

  In London, Ferdinand’s ambassador Luis Caroz was feeling the effects of Henry’s wrath, being treated like ‘a bull at whom everyone throws darts’ – a graphic Spanish simile. The king’s behaviour was now ‘most offensive and discourteous’ and ‘if God does not change [his] mind, he will really carry out what he intends – to do as much harm [to Ferdinand] as he can’. If the father-in-law did not ‘bridle this colt’ it would be impossible to control him, Caroz warned gloomily.

  Katherine of Aragon’s surprising role as Ferdinand’s own envoy at Henry’s court had long since ended. It seems likely she was unaware of her husband’s thirst for vengeance on her father and with the continuing absence of a male heir, she probably would have been more worried about the fragility of her marriage. The Spanish ambassador bewailed the fact that her confessor, Friar Diego Fernández, had urged her that she

  ought to forget Spain and everything Spanish in order to gain the love of the king and of the English. She had become so much accustomed to this idea that she will not change her behaviour unless some person … near her tells her what she ought to do in order to be useful to the king her father.31

  Perhaps she had heard of the rumours circulating in Rome that Henry planned to repudiate her and put her away in a distant nunnery.32

  Suffolk, supposedly in France to attend Mary’s coronation, caught up with the newly-weds at Beauvais on 25 October. He found Louis lying down, with Mary sitting shyly by the royal bedside. The French king embraced him ‘and held me a good while and said I was heartily welcome’. The duke said Henry ‘recommended himself to his entirely beloved brother and thanked him for the great honour and [love] that he showed to the queen, his sister’. Louis in turn reported that no queen had ever ‘behaved herself more wisely and honourably’ and had ‘a loving manner’.33

  Suffolk handed over his secret letter and after due consideration, the French king promised he ‘was most willing to render all the services he has in his power’. But with Louis, there was always a sting in the tail: in return for his help against Spain, he required an English loan of 200,000 crowns and military assistance to seize the duchy of Milan the following March.34

  Mary was crowned Queen of France in St Denis just over a month later. Three days of celebratory jousts followed when Mary ‘stood so that all men might see her and wonder at her beauty’ but her husband was ‘feeble and lay on a couch for weakness’.35

  On 1 January 1515, Louis XII died, some whispered, from eighty-three days of over-exertion on the marriage bed with his teenage bride. With the demise of this tired old roué died also any hopes Henry had for French military support in punishing Spain.

  At the very hour of his death, Mary announced that she was not pregnant, so Louis was immediately succeeded by his son-in-law, the twenty-year-old Francis, Duke of Angoulême. He was ‘inexpressibly handsome and generous … he rises at eleven, hears Mass, then remains for two or three hours with his mother and afterwards visited his sweethearts or [goes] out hunting’.

  The young widow sat in her quarters, ‘dressed all in black, with a white kerchief on her head and under her chin like a nun. [She] is never still [and] moves her head.’36 Patently her agitation suggested that she had other things on her mind than mourning a depraved, diseased husband.

  Mary now felt liberated to marry Suffolk – given Henry’s earlier promise of her freedom of choice – but both inevitably feared Henry’s angry reaction. In March the duke wrote to Wolsey for help.

  The queen would never let me [be] in rest till I had granted her to be married.

  And so, to be plain with you I have married her [secretly] and have lain with her in so much [as] I fear … that she is with child.

  Suffolk acknowledged he would ‘rather be dead’ than have Henry ‘discontented’.37 Writing ‘with sorrowful heart’, Wolsey replied that although Suffolk wanted to keep his letter secret, he had shown it to Henry.

  The king would not believe it [and] took [the news] grievously and displeasantly – not merely for [your] presumption but for breaking your promise made … at Eltham. [He] would not believe your promise would be broken had you been torn with wild horses.

  Cursed be the blind affection and counsel that has brought you here!

  Wolsey added an ominous warning: ‘You are in the greatest danger that ever man was in.’38

  Nothing v
entured, nothing gained. Suffolk took his courage in both hands and wrote a pleading and contrite letter to his old friend and monarch. He begged forgiveness ‘for my offence in this marriage’ and prayed ‘for the passion of God that it may not turn your heart against me’.

  I will make good against all the world [to] die for it that ever I … did anything, saving the love and marriage of the queen that should be to your displeasure, [I p]ray God let me die as shameful a death as ever did man.39

  Mary also wrote to her brother, begging him to remember his pledge to her. Since Louis was dead and because of Suffolk’s great virtues – ‘to whom I have always been of good mind, as you well know’ – Mary had married him ‘without any request or labour on his part’. She was now so ‘bound to him that for no earthly cause can I change’.40

  Suffolk was frightened for his life and suspected that most of Henry’s Council – with the exception of Wolsey – wanted him executed. He felt hard done by – he had helped them all in the past but ‘now in this little trouble they are ready to destroy me’ he told the king. But the duke emphasised he was willing to undergo any punishment decreed by Henry.41

  After keeping the lovers agonisingly on tenterhooks, the king eventually granted them his royal prerogative of mercy that May – in return for repaying him £24,000 for the expenses of her wedding to Louis and handing over all her plate and jewels.42 On 11 March 1516 a son was born to Suffolk and his royal wife, and at the christening the king and Wolsey were godfathers and Katherine of Aragon the godmother. The child was baptised ‘Henry’.43