by Linda Porter
The king’s other major concern after the death of Prince Arthur was the preparation of his surviving son, Henry, to succeed him. The prince had been brought up with his mother and sisters, spending most of his time in recent years at Eltham. He made occasional visits to court and had participated in several great ceremonies of state: his own creation as duke of York, the marriage of Katherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur, and the proxy wedding of his sister Margaret to James IV at Richmond. He seems to have been something of an extrovert, especially at his brother’s wedding, but then the expectations of him as second in line to the throne were quite different from those on the slender shoulders of Arthur. He had been well educated, as befitted a prince, but, again, without pressure. Life at Eltham was pleasant and he was close to his mother. Her death, when he was not quite twelve, dealt him a considerable blow, and one which lingered. Writing to the Dutch scholar Erasmus some years later, he described ‘the news of the death of my dearest mother’ as ‘hateful intelligence’.7
Preoccupied with his losses, of Arthur, Elizabeth and then Margaret to her new life in Scotland, Henry VII took his time to decide how best to proceed in respect of his new heir. Precedent would have suggested setting him up in an independent household where he could learn the skills of kingship within his own personal court. But there were always problems with this rarefied approach and the experience of sending Arthur off to Ludlow had been such a miserable one that the king decided not to repeat it. Perhaps he also recalled what had happened to Edward V, whose isolation in the Welsh Marches had greatly facilitated the coup d’état of Richard III in 1485. If his own health was to fail suddenly, Henry VII did not want his son several days’ journey from the centre of power. He had subdued Yorkist claimants but not entirely erased them and Buckingham was ever conscious of his own proximity to the throne.
So it was that in June 1504, when England was in the grip of a terrible heatwave, Prince Henry and his retinue arrived to take up permanent residence at court. In the remaining five years of his reign, the king would keep his son close by his side. With the help of his own mother, whose talent for such organization was unsurpassed, the king had introduced a number of changes into his son’s household, one of the most notable being the retirement of his tutor, John Skelton, who was replaced briefly by John Holt and then William Hone. Another main influence in the prince’s education was William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, an admirer of Erasmus. This connection with one of the greatest humanists of the age was to have a profound influence on the course of Prince Henry’s development and education.8 The king and Lady Margaret chose Sir Henry Marney, from an old Essex family, to be chamberlain of the prince’s household and the king also gave a court pension to Arthur Plantagenet, Edward IV’s illegitimate son and half-brother to Queen Elizabeth, who had been a member of her household. Both the king and his son were very fond of Plantagenet.
The young prince suddenly found himself constantly in his father’s company, watching as he dealt with day-to-day matters of state, sitting in on council sessions, receiving ambassadors, learning first-hand what it meant to rule. His father intended to mould him very much in his own image. It was an intense schooling that the prince found stifling as time went by. His contemporaries regarded him as a virtuous prince, a good son of the Church who loved learning but was open to new ideas. Although he and his father shared an interest in physical activities such as hunting and loved the tournament and the tennis court, they were, in many respects, very different. The younger Henry had been shielded from the threats to the throne that had so plagued the first fifteen years of his father’s reign. He knew nothing of financial hardship or exile. Together with the young men who were his companions at court, he inevitably began to form a focus of attention that may not have been in overt opposition to a style of government that was increasingly resented but did certainly provide a vision of a different future. Sadly, in seeking to bind his son so close to him in order to ensure that the succession passed smoothly, Henry VII alienated him. Young Henry, like Shakespeare’s Prince Hal in Henry IV, wanted the crown himself.
From 1507, it became obvious that his wait would not be interminable. The king’s health was deteriorating badly. Three successive springs brought on severe illness, which may have been tuberculosis though we do not know the precise cause. By February 1509 it was apparent that Henry VII did not have long to live. Still, with the strong will and courage that had characterized his life, he lingered until after Easter, having literally crawled from his bed to his private chapel to receive the sacrament on Easter Sunday. He died, emaciated, unable to breathe and in great pain, on the evening of 21 April. Twenty-four years after his improbable victory at Bosworth, he left his son a full treasury and a peaceful country. Perhaps he did belatedly repent of the harsh manner in which he had achieved financial security but one suspects that even if he acknowledged that he had been unnecessarily severe in the latter years of his reign, he believed it had brought stability for his heir. He had successfully established the Tudor dynasty.
Lady Margaret Beaufort lived on for a scant two months after her son. She saw her grandson crowned but succumbed soon afterwards. At the time, this was put down to overeating at Henry VIII’s coronation feast, an explanation that sounds entirely out of character with her careful, measured approach to life. She was sixty-nine, a good age for the times in which she lived, and had become increasingly frail. Perhaps her end was hastened by the mixture of joy and sorrow she would have felt, but she had every reason to be proud of what she had achieved since she was taken in, as a pregnant and frightened thirteen-year-old widow, by her concerned brother-in-law.
The new king sought immediately to distance himself from his father’s style of government by beheading two of its most loyal servants. Eager and full of fun as the young Henry VIII is often depicted, these were but the first of many political executions that came to characterize his reign. He started early. He was also determined to make his mark in Europe. When he finally married the neglected Katherine of Aragon a few weeks before his coronation, he took England once more into the orbit of Spain and the Habsburgs and away from the peaceful relations with France that his father had maintained after the early 1490s. This course, underpinned by his addiction to the old medieval ideals of chivalry and warfare, would also bring him into direct conflict with his brother-in-law, James IV of Scotland, with tragic consequences for his elder sister, Queen Margaret, and the entire Scottish nation.
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IT WOULD BE misleading, however, to put the blame for the deterioration in Anglo–Scottish relations entirely on Henry VIII. There had been concerns about Scottish intentions towards the north of England as early as 1505, shortly after the last portion of Margaret’s dowry was paid. Three years later Henry VII had been sufficiently concerned about the possible renewal of a treaty between France and Scotland to send his almoner, an able young diplomat named Thomas Wolsey, to Edinburgh on a diplomatic mission to avert any such rapprochement. Wolsey was made to wait after his arrival until the persuasion of the queen managed to get him an audience. James, in a wonderfully dismissive snub, had claimed he was too busy making gunpowder and shooting. When the king and English envoy did meet, James assured him that all his council were keen on renewing the French alliance but when his brother-in-law agreed to release the earl of Arran, who was imprisoned in England for travelling without an official safe-conduct, the surface tensions died down.
Despite renewal of the 1502 Treaty of Perpetual Peace on the accession of Henry VIII, and James’s public avowal at the end of November 1509 that he would abide by the terms of the agreement, it soon became apparent that friendly relations would be subject to severe strain by Henry VIII’s determination to renew the conflicts of the Hundred Years War. For despite the image he undoubtedly wanted to project of a young, vigorous Renaissance prince, Henry VIII’s foreign policy and his obsession with past feats of English glory looked backwards, not forwards. The Europe into which he now intended to thrust himself w
as, though, a complex and unpredictable place. New dynastic alliances, a belligerent pope, the encircling Habsburgs and the ever-present threat of Ottoman incursions were a highly combustible mix. Britain sat on the fringes of this continent, both its kingdoms wanting to exert influence in it while trying to deal with their own conflicting aims. By 1511, when Henry VIII entered into the Holy League, he had already signed an alliance with Spain. Now he joined with the Emperor Maximilian and the Warrior Pope, Julius II, whose resentment of French land-grabbing in Italy fuelled the general opposition to France. Louis XII had caused revulsion by allying with the Turks and attempting to undermine papal authority by calling a general council of the Church to meet in Pisa in May 1511. Isolated and defiant, Louis called upon the support of his ancient ally, Scotland. James IV’s military support, particularly his fine navy, might be crucial in defending French interests.
Thus were Henry VIII, ‘an egocentric teenager whose tantrums and petulance bespoke an inferiority complex’,9 and the middle-aged James IV, successful king and hardened fighter, drawn into the European drama. But there was another, more personal edge to what happened. The exchange of ‘loving letters’ that followed on Henry’s accession was soon replaced by an underlying rivalry. The English king and his Spanish wife, nearly six years his senior and inclined to think that she could direct him, ostentatiously set up a court modelled on the Arthurian legend of Camelot, full of brave knights, fair ladies and endless amusement, intended to eclipse anything that James and Margaret could aspire to in Edinburgh. The English court feasted, laughed and jousted its way to war, while anti-French diplomats like Christopher Bainbridge, Henry’s highly partial envoy to the papal curia, fuelled the flames. And on New Year’s Day 1511, Katherine seemed to have trumped the still childless king and Queen of Scots when she produced a son. But he lived less than six weeks and the following year it was Margaret who proved the better breeder, when she at last gave birth to a healthy boy of her own. She was almost immediately pregnant again, losing a premature child at the end of 1512. By the summer of 1513 she was expecting once more, in what seems like an increasingly concerted effort by her and James and to establish their dynasty and its wider future in Britain. Henry and Katherine could only wait. Until they were successful, Margaret was her brother’s heir. No doubt mindful of this, Henry was determined not to acknowledge it.
His resentment found expression in ways that hurt his sister and infuriated her husband. Margaret had been left money and goods in the wills of Prince Arthur and her father, but these were never paid, despite repeated requests. Though the money would undoubtedly have been welcome to the depleted Scottish exchequer, the principle irked as much as the cost. At the end of 1512, Margaret told Lord Dacre, a Border lord with whom she would have much contact in coming years, that she was ‘sorry for any grudge between you [Henry VIII] and her husband’. The following spring she expressed herself more strongly in a letter to her brother:
We cannot believe that of your mind or by your command we are so unkindly dealt with in our father’s legacy, whereof we would not have spoken nor written had not the doctor [Nicholas West, Henry’s envoy] now spoken to us of the same … Our husband knows it is withholden for his sake and will recompense us … We are ashamed therewith and wish God word had never been thereof. It is not worth such estimation as in your divers letters of the same and we lack nothing; our husband is ever the longer the better to us, as knows God.10
This was written in May 1513, when Margaret was with her son at Linlithgow. It gives a clear picture of her anger and her loyalty to her husband. Henry had evidently been disparaging about James’s ability to support her in an appropriate manner, but she would have none of this. She was firmly on his side.
England and France were, by then, at war, and though Ferdinand of Aragon had already backed out and made a separate peace with France (the first of many betrayals that Henry VIII would suffer from his allies in the course of his long reign), the conflict continued. Indeed, Henry was about to lead an invading force of some thirty-five thousand men across the English Channel in person. James IV, meanwhile, having avoided a final commitment to France for nearly a year and sidestepping any involvement with Louis XII’s attempts to undermine the pope, waited until he had promises of sufficient money and weaponry to be confident that he could enter the war on the French side. So the treaty of peace between England and Scotland was finally shattered and James prepared to invade his brother-in-law’s kingdom.
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ALTHOUGH THERE RAN a deep undercurrent of mistrust and even hatred between England and Scotland, it had ebbed and flowed over time. Now it was resurrected as part of a European war. The priorities of the early sixteenth century were different from those of the thirteenth, when the Scots had fought Edward I for their independence. James IV was not trying to keep the English out of Scotland as he made his military preparations in the summer of 1513 but rather to undertake a diversionary tactic intended to embarrass and limit Henry VIII, keeping to his part of the bargain struck with the king of France. Of course, it was a move James relished – he saw himself as a warrior king and he had taken the Scottish host over the border with considerable success in support of Perkin Warbeck in the 1490s – but he was now the ally of a major European power and the context was much broader. The stakes were also higher and James had already suffered the indignity of being excommunicated by the choleric Pope Julius II at the start of 1513 because of his renewal of the treaty with France. He does not, however, seem to have been unduly distressed by this, viewing it, no doubt correctly, as a manoeuvre by the English that would, in time, be overturned – by the early sixteenth century, excommunication was more of a political tactic than a spiritual attack.11
Fuelled by the colourful and doom-laden texts of the Scottish chroniclers written after the event, hindsight has painted an entirely misleading picture of the background to the Flodden campaign. James was no hothead bent on glory. There was widespread support in Scotland for war with England and the king, far from haranguing his dubious advisers into submission, consulted at length with a general council before the final decisions were made. The stories of portents – of a mysterious man in a blue gown appearing to James as he prayed in the church of St Michael at Linlithgow, warning him not to go to war, or of Queen Margaret’s dreams of disaster – have no contemporary corroboration. James’s preparations were considered and orderly and he had every reason to believe that he would succeed.
The die was effectively cast at the end of July. On three successive days, the king despatched his fleet to aid Louis XII, sent the Lyon Herald to Henry VIII’s camp at Thérouanne in northern France with an ultimatum to desist in his designs against the French or bear the consequences and then, presupposing the young English king’s negative response, summoned the Scottish host to muster at two points – at Burghmuir, the moorland to the south of Edinburgh, and Ellem in Berwickshire. Seventeen years had passed since King James last brought his army together. This time it was nearly forty thousand strong, probably the largest force of men ever assembled to fight the English.
James’s personal commitment was everywhere evident. He accompanied the fleet on the first part of its voyage, sailing on his pride and joy, the huge warship the Michael, as far as the Isle of May in the north of the Firth of Forth. The ships, under the command of the earl of Arran, continued north and then down the west coast of Scotland, making a foray across to Ireland, where they bombarded the English stronghold of Carrickfergus. This diversionary tactic may or may not have been authorized by the king but it had the effect of delaying the fleet’s progress. Subsequent bad weather meant that the combining of the Franco–Scottish navy did not take place until September. It was unable to inflict any damage on Henry VIII and played no further part in the war of 1513.
The last diplomatic exchange took place when Lyon Herald, Sir William Cumyng of Inverallochy, arrived at Henry VIII’s camp on 11 August bearing an uncompromising message from the King of Scots. Henry was required t
o ‘desist from further invasion and utter destruction of our brother and cousin the Most Christian King’ to whom James was ‘bounden and obliged for mutual defence the one of the other … and we will,’ he went on, ‘do what thing we trust may cause you to desist from pursuit of him.’12 It was further pointed out that Henry’s invasion had caused the French king to withdraw his army from Milan and that this should be a sufficient cause of satisfaction to warrant the return home of the English army.
Henry was not impressed. He was twenty-two years old, his blood was up and he was revelling in the campaign, the surroundings of his ‘rich tent’ and his alliance with the Emperor Maximilian. ‘The king, standing still with sober countenance, having his hand on his sword, said “Have ye now your tale at an end?” The herald of arms said “nay”. “Say forth then,” said the king. “Sir, he summoneth your grace to be at home in your realm in the defence of his ally.”’ But Henry VIII was not about to be pushed around and told to go home by his brother-in-law. His indignation overflowed. He told Lyon Herald:
It ill becometh a Scot to summon a king of England. And tell your master that I mistrust not so the realm of England but he shall have enough to do whensoever he beginneth; and also I trusted him not so well but that I provided for him right well, and that he shall well know. And he to summon me, now being here for my right and inheritance! It would be much better agreed with his honour to have summoned me being at home, for he knew well before my coming hither that hither would I come. And now to send me summons! Tell him there shall never Scot cause me to return my face. And where he layeth the French king to be his ally it would be much better agreed and become him, being married to the king of England’s sister, to recount the king of England his ally. And now for a conclusion, recommend me to your master and tell him if he be so hardy to invade my realm or cause to enter one foot of my ground, I shall make him as weary of his part as ever was man that began any such business.