Journey Through Tudor England

by Suzannah Lipscomb

  Henry VIII had grown up aware of his history: he knew that in the thirty years before his father became king, England had been in an on-off state of bloody civil war, fought between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists (the Wars of the Roses). The marriage of his father and mother, he a Lancastrian, she a Yorkist, had brought peace, and the last thing that Henry VIII wanted was to return England to bloodshed. He needed a line of adult princes to prevent it from happening again.

  This meant making haste: Henry himself had been only seventeen when his father died at the age of fifty-two. He was worried that if he didn’t have a son by his early thirties, he might die in his fifties without an adult male heir. Sadly, that was exactly what came to pass. His son Edward was only nine when Henry died. Nor was one son enough. Children died easily. Henry’s own brother, Arthur, had died at the age of fifteen. Henry’s own sons — the illegitimate Henry Fitzroy [see FRAMLINCHAM], and his legitimate heir, later King Edward VI — died aged seventeen and fifteen respectively.

  So, having sons remained a priority for Henry VIII until the end; the peace and prosperity of England rested on the fruit of his wives’ wombs. Ironically, he could never know that all three of his legitimate children would reign; that his youngest daughter would prove to be one of England’s greatest monarchs; and that his dynasty would, nevertheless, end after his children’s generation.

  ‘Divine Providence has mingled my joy with the bitterness of the death of her who brought me this happiness.’

  St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle has played a unique role in British history as the burial place for many kings and queens, among them Edward VIII and Queen Alexandra, George V and Queen Mary, and George VI and Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. The stunning perpendicular chapel was the brainchild of Edward IV, and work started in 1475, but Henry VII added the intricate vaulted ceiling and Henry VIII completed the chapel. It is Henry VIII’s magnificent coat of arms that features above the organ loft between the nave and the quire. Above all, it is a place of pilgrimage because it is the burial place of King Henry VIII and his third and favourite wife, Jane Seymour.

  There is an extraordinary amount of beautiful detail to spot in the chapel, and you could while away many hours taking it all in. Like Henry VII’s chapel at Westminster Abbey, which features the Knights of the Bath, the quire at St George’s displays the carved and painted crests of the Knights of the Garter (the more recent female Knights have coronets and no swords, with the exception of Her Majesty the Queen). Henry VIII’s ‘stall plate’ (bronze plaque) marking his own infant elevation to the Garter is here (you can spot it as the highest and one of the largest in the stall, two to the left of the Sovereign’s). The beautiful, wooden oriel window in the quire was built for Katherine of Aragon, and is carved with intertwining roses and pomegranates.

  The south quire aisle is a veritable treasure trove. Look out for the panel painting of four kings, including Henry VII, and the recovered stall plate of Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, created a Knight of the Garter (KG) in 1559, but convicted of treason in 1572, when his plaque was removed. A stained-glass window nearby features Henry VIII, Edward VI, Jane Seymour and Elizabeth I (notably, no Mary I), each with their motto. Elizabeth’s motto ‘Video taceo’ means ‘I see and remain silent’ -perhaps advice for tourists browsing the chapel? Of particular note, also, is the Lincoln Chapel with its sixteenth-century alabaster tomb of Edward Fiennes de Clinton, Earl of Lincoln KG, Lord High Admiral and Governor of the Tower of London under Elizabeth I. His third wife, Elizabeth FitzGerald, is buried with him. At her feet there is an unusual burial mascot: a monkey, which alludes to the role one played in rousing her family during a thirteenth-century fire.

  The central attraction is, however, plainer than all these fine effigies and decorations. Beneath the gorgeous fan-vaulted ceiling, a simple black marble slab on the floor at the centre of the quire is inscribed in gold letters:

  In a vault beneath this marble slab are deposited the remains of Jane Seymour, Queen of King Henry VIII 1537. King Henry VIII 1547. King Charles I 1648. And an infant child of Queen Anne. Memorial placed by William IV 1837.

  Henry VIII chose to be buried with his third wife, Jane Seymour. Her significance in his life was chiefly dynastic: she gave him his long-awaited legitimate male heir, but our knowledge of Henry’s favourite wife and a queen of England is otherwise rather limited.

  We know that Jane came from respectable, but not grand, parentage. Born in 1509, the year Henry became King, to Sir John Seymour and Margery Wentworth at their house, Wolf Hall, she was one of ten children. Two of her brothers would earn their own degree of fame and power; both would also die as traitors: the charming Thomas, Baron Seymour of Sudeley, fourth husband of Kateryn Parr [see SUDELEY CASTLE], was executed 1549 and the elder Edward, later Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector of England, was executed in 1552.

  Jane, on the other hand, seems to have been unremarkable. The Imperial ambassador to England, Eustace Chapuys, described her as ‘of middle stature and no great beauty, so fair that one would call her rather plain than otherwise’, and ‘not a woman of great wit’. Her pre-eminent quality was her docile, modest and amenable nature. Her motto, ‘Bound to obey and serve’, epitomises her nicely.

  It is possible that Henry met Jane in September 1535, when he visited Wolf Hall, but she is not mentioned in any accounts by name until 10 February 1536, when Chapuys reported that after Anne Boleyn’s miscarriage in January 1536 Henry had sent ‘great presents’ to Jane. In March, he records that she had refused a purse of coins and letter sent by the King. This last action, perhaps cunning in its coyness, has been taken by some historians to indicate that Jane was no mere submissive fool, and was manipulating Henry into marrying her, as Anne before her had done. But there is little other evidence of anything beyond a cheerful, bovine tractability to Jane. No doubt after the fierce, opinionated and passionate Anne, this demeanour was part of Jane’s appeal — she could hardly have been more different.

  Henry could literally not wait to marry her. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer issued a dispensation for marriage (Henry and Jane were fifth cousins) on 19 May 1536, the very day of Anne’s execution. The couple were betrothed the following day and married privately at Whitehall Palace on 30 May. She was the first wife to whom Henry could convince himself he was legitimately and unquestionably married (both his previous marriages, to Katherine and Anne, having been annulled). Henry may therefore have intended for her to be crowned, but an outbreak of plague in London and her subsequent pregnancy removed any opportunity.

  Of her short reign, we know that she went on progress with Henry to Kent in the summer of 1536, and spent an enjoyable Christmas at Whitehall. She encouraged Henry to be reconciled with Princess Mary, and rumour has it that she once begged Henry to save the abbeys during the huge rebellion of October 1536, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace [see PONTEFRACT CASTLE], but was warned by him not to meddle in politics as her predecessor had done.

  By February 1537, it was known that she was pregnant. The quickening — the first movement of the baby in the womb, thought by the Tudors to mark the beginning of life — was celebrated on 27 May, Trinity Sunday. On 16 September, she retired into her rooms on the second floor at Hampton Court, for her ‘lying-in’ (women in Tudor times retired to a closed, dark and warm environment to await the birth), and after a terrible labour of two days and three nights, she gave birth to a healthy son at 2 a.m. on 12 October. He was baptised Edward three days later. For Henry, it was the greatest gift Jane could ever have given him, but it cost her everything. She never rose from her childbed and died on 24 October 1537, probably of puerperal fever and septicaemia. She was twenty-eight.

  Henry was devastated. He wrote to Francis I of France, ‘Divine Providence has mingled my joy with the bitterness of the death of her who brought me this happiness.’ He wore black mourning clothes well beyond the expected time, until February 1538.

  Her body was eviscerated and embalmed (her heart and innards were
buried in the chapel at Hampton Court), and Jane lay in state until 12 November, when her funeral procession took her body to Windsor for burial. Through her untimely death, she earned a perpetual sanctity in the eyes of the King. It is no wonder, then, that Henry chose to be buried next to her. He joined her a decade later. Having died on 28 January, he was buried on 16 February 1547.

  There is a rather gruesome story about Henry VIII’s corpse. Two nineteenth-century writers, apparently quoting lost original documents, recorded that two weeks after Henry’s death, while his coffin lay in state at St George’s, his body exploded and the lead casing burst, leaking putrefied matter onto the floor, and stray dogs wandered in to lick up the fluids. It may be true — after two weeks, his decomposed body would have been swollen and could theoretically have exploded — but this rumour also circulated after the deaths of William the Conqueror, Pope Alexander VI and Elizabeth I.

  Other Tudor treasures to see at Windsor Castle: the quire aisle chantries have notable fifteenth-century panel paintings. In the State Apartments of the castle, look out for paintings by sixteenth-century artists including Pieter Brueghel and Lucas Cranach, and portraits of Henry VIII (by Joos van Cleve), Mary I (by Antonis Mor), Edward VI and Elizabeth I as a girl (by William Scrots). In the Lantern Lobby, you can see Henry VIII’s stout 1540 field and tilt armour, made at Greenwich. Look carefully to see the fine engraving and note the space for a codpiece. (German tourists standing behind me when I visited remarked, ‘Das ist nicht von Weight Watchers.’)

  ‘The Great Harry sailed as well as any ship that was in the fleet, and rather better, and weathered them all save the Mary Rose. And if she go by the wind, I assure your grace, there will be a hard choice between the Mary Rose and her.’

  Letter from royal servant William Fitzwilliam to Henry VIII, comparing the flagship Great Harry to the Mary Rose

  In 1982, the world watched as the hulk of the Mary Rose was lifted, in the world’s largest underwater excavation, from the seabed 437 years after she sank in the Solent during an encounter with an invading French fleet on 19 July 1545. Buried in the silt, the Mary Rose proved to be an invaluable time capsule of over 1,000 preserved artefacts that now give insight into the lives of the ordinary soldiers and sailors on board. Her surviving starboard side, which will be housed from autumn 2012 in a brand new museum in Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard, also reminds us that she was an English flagship, a symbol and example of Henry VIII’s innovative standing navy. It is for this reason that Henry VIII is considered the founding father of the Royal Navy, whose later rule of the waves was a key factor in establishing Britain’s global empire. The Mary Rose is also testament to Henry’s great desire for martial glory.

  The Mary Rose was built between 1509 and 1511, and was one of two ships that Henry ordered at the very start of his reign, signalling the new King’s intentions with regards to naval warfare and to defeating the French, England’s traditional enemy. Although Henry VIII had only inherited a small number of ships (between five and seven) from his father, when he died he left a navy of 57 ships of the 106 that had served during his reign.

  There are two myths about the Mary Rose: the first is that she sunk on her maiden voyage, and the second is that she was named after Henry VIII’s younger sister [see ST MARY’S, BURY ST EDMUNDS]. The first is an injustice, simple to disprove: Henry’s Mary Rose put in thirty-four years of active service after she was launched in 1511, while the clue to the real origins of her name can be found in the fact that the Mary Rose was built at the same time as the ship Peter Pomegranate. The rose and the pomegranate were the emblems of Henry and his new wife, Katherine of Aragon; the names Peter and Mary are likely to have been allusions to the saints, especially as Henry’s visit to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in January 1511 shows his allegiance to the Virgin Mary at this time.

  The Mary Rose, built from elm and oak, was a carrack: a four-masted ship with a high forecastle and aftercastle and a low waist, which meant she was excellent for hand-to-hand fighting alongside an enemy vessel. Besides her surviving hulk, we have a good idea of what she looked like in her prime because she is included in a set of depictions known as the Cowdray Engravings, which was the roll of Henry’s fleet made by Anthony Cowdray, a Clerk of the Ordnance in 1546. She is also portrayed in the Embarkation at Dover painting (at both LEEDS CASTLE and HAMPTON COURT PALACE) where Henry stands on his great warship, Henry Grace á Dieu. The Mary Rose is on the far right.

  The Cowdray Engravings show that she was indeed a flagship: she would have been decked with flags, banners and pennants, including the three gold lions of England, the three gold fleursde-lis of France (Henry’s paltry holdings in Calais meant he claimed to be the King of France too), the red cross of St George and impressive billowing pennants in the Tudor livery colours of green and white, up to fifty yards in length. Camouflage was not the overriding concern here.

  The Mary Rose first saw service in 1512, in the first of Henry VIII’s rather futile wars against France. The decision, unusual at the time, to keep her after the cessation of hostilities meant that she could be regularly recaulked and pumped out, ready to sail whenever Henry needed her, including to the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520. Or, as when Henry entertained the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, on board in May 1522.

  She was, however, a warship above all. According to an inventory of 1541, she was loaded with ninety-six guns in total, over three decks. These were the single-bored muzzle-loading guns preferred by the early Tudors; the largest recovered from the Mary Rose is a 4,7831b bronze cannon. Others are smaller and more ornate, decorated with the Tudor rose and inscriptions praising Henry VIII. Tudor warfare did not rely wholly on artillery: 172 longbows were also found in the ship, reminding us that by law, all English men were required to practise archery.

  Looking at some of these items of war, you can see the individuality of the men who wielded them. For example, the linstocks — carved poles along which a slow fuse was wrapped in order to ignite gunpowder from a safe distance — have been whittled into garish animal mouths by the gunners who owned them. There are personal items found on board, too, and now on view at the museum: more than eighty combs for brushing hair and removing lice, manicure sets, ear scoops for wax, wooden bowls, ballock knives (the suggestive shape of the hilt was intentional), tankards and sewing kits. Musical instruments, such as the shawm (an early type of oboe), dice for illegal gambling, Bibles and rosary beads attest to how the sailors on the ship spent their spare time. Although most of them slept uncomfortably on deck, their lot was better than that of most ordinary people in Tudor England, who faced the rising prices and rents, poor harvests and enclosure of common land that contributed to Kett’s Rebellion of 1549 [see KETT’S OAK].

  Having been ‘new made’ in 1536, the Mary Rose was brought out again in 1545 to face the French peril. The renewed threat from Catholic Europe after Henry VIII’s break with Rome and the subsequent publication of a papal decree authorising the invasion of England in 1538 was one reason why Henry VIII invaded France in 1544 and seized Boulogne. The other was his ongoing desire to achieve the legendary military glory won by former kings of England: Edward III and Henry V at Agincourt. The French responded by sailing into the Solent (the strait that separates the Isle of Wight from mainland England) in 1545 with a fleet of 324 vessels: more ships than the Spanish Armada. It was the single greatest foreign threat of Henry VIII’s reign, and it was during this battle that the Mary Rose sank.

  It has never been fully clear why. The French claimed it was a result of their cannon, but the recovered hulk shows this could not have been the case. One probable factor was the refitting of 1536 itself as she was made heavier, to nearly double her original tonnage, and over-laden with a large number of crew the morning of 19 July. The extra weight, high up in the ship, decreased her stability and manoeuvrability. She seems likely to have been either turning stern-on to face her eight large guns towards the French galleys, or trying to steer out of the way of their shot
, but in the violent act of manoeuvring the ship, this great weight may have overbalanced her, causing water to rush in through her open gunports and capsize her.

  Only thirty men were rescued. The vast majority of her crew, including the commander Sir George Carew, the captain Roger Grenville [see BUCKLAND ABBEY] and 500 other men unable to escape because of anti-boarding nets and heavy chain-mail jerkins, went down with her. From Southsea Common, Henry VIII, with Lady Carew besides him, watched helplessly as the tragedy unfolded. For years afterwards, the tops of her masts remained visible at low tide.

  Their loss is our great gain. The remains of the Mary Rose give us hints of just how impressive Henry’s ships were in their heyday, but what an irony that only by being destroyed can a warship be preserved.

  ‘She would be, while her father lived … the most unhappy Lady in Christendom.’

  The soaring, majestic and vast cathedral at Winchester was the setting of one of the most impressive weddings of the Tudor age: Mary I to Philip of Naples (later Philip II of Spain) on 25 July 1554. Built by a kinsman of William the Conqueror, William Walkelin, and transformed into a fine example of Gothic perpendicular architecture in the thirteenth century, this beautiful medieval cathedral would be a place of great hope for Mary, after a lifetime of painful trials.

  Mary’s decision to marry a foreign prince was not popular. Parliament and a number of her councillors had expressed their concerns, and a more violent reaction came in the form of an armed rebellion led Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger, which reached the walls of the Palace of Westminster in the early hours of 7 February 1554. Mary was, however, determined to marry the man of her choosing, and with excellent reason: not only because she wanted to join England to Catholic Europe once again, but because she had been moved around like a marital pawn from early childhood.