Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England

by Thomas Penn

  Henry’s plans for this revival of chivalry, with his son at its centre, were plainly evident in the most exclusive club of all, the Order of the Garter. Membership of the twenty-four-strong Garter was a rare honour, one coveted by nobles and kings across Europe: recent members included the king of Naples and Emperor Maximilian. With its rituals and sacred oaths to the king, it was a potent weapon of royal control – and Henry, unsurprisingly, had a healthy respect for it. Knights of the order included members of Henry’s inner circle: his chamberlain Giles lord Daubeney, and aspirational counsellors like Bray and Lovell; the Garter’s prelate was another architect of his regime, Richard Fox. They rubbed shoulders with glamorous noble jousters of more uncertain loyalty: Buckingham, Northumberland, Suffolk – who had been unceremoniously turfed out of the order following his flight – and Henry Bourchier, earl of Essex, whose involvement in Suffolk’s conspiracy had been suspected, but never proved. In the year that Prince Henry came to court, changes in the Garter’s membership were quite clearly made with him in mind.

  In April 1504 the longstanding Garter king-of-arms John Writhe died. Garter was the senior, most prestigious heraldic office and Writhe, who had held it under Edward IV, had fulfilled it to perfection – not least, as far as Henry was concerned, in resigning from his post under Richard III. Writhe had combined the herald’s pedantic obsession with protocol and genealogy with an appetite for that other key heraldic function, diplomacy. Ten years before, on a mission to Margaret of Burgundy’s court at Malines at the height of the Warbeck affair, he had stood outside her palace bellowing out a denunciation of the pretender’s claim to all who cared to listen. Following Writhe’s death, Henry was minded to confer the post on another highly experienced herald, Roger Machado, a Portuguese who had joined Henry in exile, and whose public role as Clarenceux king-at-arms merged with the twilit world of misinformation and espionage.29 But when the ageing Machado declined, probably feeling that Garter herald was a younger man’s job, Henry settled on Writhe’s son Thomas. As Wallingford pursuivant, Thomas Writhe had been principal messenger to Prince Arthur, and then to Prince Henry. But the rank of pursuivant was below that of the most junior herald. The following January, Thomas Writhe was parachuted into the office of Garter king-of-arms. His promotion, which undoubtedly put noses out of joint among the heraldic community, had evidently involved some kind of arrangement with Machado, who pocketed a large slice of his salary.30

  Henry, though, knew exactly what he was getting in Thomas Writhe. He was a chip off the old block, a meticulous compiler and documenter of pedigrees and precedents. He was, too, a keen draughtsman, and developed a burgeoning workshop of artists and painters, based in the family home in Cripplegate, in the north of the city. Over the next decades, his studio would churn out the paraphernalia of heraldry that formalized the Tudor regime, from brilliantly illuminated pedigrees and tournament rolls to the armorial decorations of the great royal ceremonies at court.

  Thomas Writhe was, too, perfectly attuned to Henry VII’s upwardly mobile regime. He seemed to have a particularly sophisticated sense of his role, not just in codifying traditions and creating new ones, but in creatively manipulating them, manufacturing the convincing family pedigree that transformed a thrusting arriviste into a permanent, highly respected member of the political elite. One of the first people he made over in this way was himself. Once installed in his new post he changed his surname, because he ‘disliked the shortness of it’. After a few experiments, he settled on Wriothesley, a name that seemed to him to have the appropriate gravitas, and which his contemporaries found as entertaining as it was unpronounceable. He then retrospectively conferred it on his forebears, for whom he contrived a new lineage, knighting his deceased father for good measure. Wriothesley, in other words, was a herald for the emerging generation, the perfect candidate to create and document the chivalric revival around the prince.31

  Henry’s efforts to bolster his son’s profile were evident, too, in his wardrobe accounts. On 1 February 1505, he ordered a new set of clothes for the prince: an arming doublet of black satin, with fashionable detachable sleeves, and with it an arming partlet or under-collar, pairs of arming spurs and arming shoes, and two dozen silk points or laces. Henry was fitting out his son for the tiltyard and for the jousts in which, the prince hoped, he would soon take an active part. There was more to it than that, though. Arming doublets, heavily padded jackets stuffed with horsehair, were worn tightly laced under plate armour as a first layer of protection. But they were, too, worn on their own – and, increasingly, as a courtly fashion statement. This was how the prince’s black satin doublet was intended to be seen. Henry VII was not just indulging his son’s passion for sport; he was making him look like a chivalrous leader, at the centre of a group of loyal knights. With the doublet and its accessories came an order for a matching saddle and harness in black velvet, with gilt buckles and pendants, in the latest ‘Almain’ – German – fashion. It was the kind of thing Henry would never have been seen in, but that he was all too happy to buy for his son.32

  The prince’s arrival did indeed seem to bring a new vigour to court. When, in April 1505, Henry selected two new Garter knights from the nominees put forward, he chose young noblemen in their mid-twenties, cousins to the prince: Lord Henry Stafford, the duke of Buckingham’s impecunious younger brother, and Richard Grey, the delinquent young earl of Kent, whose very name provoked rueful head-shaking and rolling of eyes among the king’s administrators. Henry, typically, had little use for both men in government, but as enthusiastic jousters they could add to the lustre of his court and learn loyalty to his son – more to the point, he could keep an eye on them. That same month, the celebrations of the feast of St George, the patron saint of the Order of the Garter, were particularly emphatic. The king processed through London to St Paul’s. Before him, the bishop of Chester bore a relic of considerable status: the leg of St George himself, encased in parcel gilt, a recent gift from the Emperor Maximilian. Following behind in their heavy, ermine-bordered robes of crimson velvet came the assembled members of the order, at their head ‘my lord prince’. But perhaps the most significant change came in the tiltyard itself.

  In the years following Arthur’s death, the summer jousts seemed to have been performed with a certain listlessness. They were, at least, unremarkable enough to go unmentioned in the chronicles that documented every event at court in meticulous detail; neither was there any sign that the king attended them at all. But by the summer of 1505, the mood had changed. Infused with new blood, the jousting set at court went about its work with renewed vigour, and at the jousts held at Richmond that July Henry was back in his accustomed role as arbiter, distributing gold rings to the combatants. For the jousters, in particular the king’s spears and new Garter knights, there was somebody new to impress: the prince who, dressed in his arming clothes, ate, drank and slept chivalry.33

  As Prince Henry settled into life in the royal household, he appeared the very model of a young prince. Charismatic, gifted, devout, he stuck dutifully to his educational programme: studying with William Hone; sitting in on meetings of his council in the rooms above the exchequer of receipt in Westminster Palace; listening deferentially to his father’s disquisitions on government and statecraft. He was being moulded in his father’s own image. But for a rapidly growing boy, emerging into the world and settling into his new role, it was a restricted, confined environment, one in which his movements were constantly monitored, in which he was gently but firmly told what he could not do. Conscious of all that he needed to be and, increasingly, of what he had not yet achieved, he would come to challenge his father’s way of doing things. What was more, he would find the means to do so in the apparently controlled, secure world that had been built around him: that of schoolroom and tiltyard. A gap was opening up between what his father wanted him to be, and what he would become.34

  Null and Void

  Towards the end of summer 1504 the dean of St Paul’s, Robert Sherborne
, arrived in London from Rome. The man nominated by Julius II to bring to England the papal dispensation for Prince Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon had made the long journey over the Alps, down the Rhine, through the Netherlands and across the English Channel in terrible health. And he had come empty-handed.1 On 28 November, the king fired off a letter whose courteous formalities could not mask his distinctly irritable tone. Despite the pope’s promises – and Henry’s lavish palm-greasing, which included a £4,000 donation to the ‘crusade’, or papal slush fund – it appeared that ‘nothing at all has been done in Rome in this matter’. Actually, Henry was wrong. Julius had finally been persuaded to dispatch the bull – but to Spain, which, as one of the major players in Italy, was, after all, rather more important than England. He had sent it, ‘under seal of secrecy’, as a ‘consolation’ to Queen Isabella, who was seriously ill. What Isabella read did not improve her health. Contrary to what she had heard from Catherine’s duenna, Doña Elvira, the bull clearly stated that her daughter’s previous marriage had been consummated. Catherine, it proclaimed loud and clear, was no virgin.

  Behind Isabella’s spluttering moral indignation lay a more calculated financial objection. A payment of 100,000 scudos to Henry VII hung on the question of Catherine’s virginity, and on this wording the money was his. When the final draft of the bull was prepared, there was a small but highly significant alteration, presumably to silence the mutterings emanating from Medina del Campo. Inserted into the opening sentence of the document, which stated that Catherine had contracted a marriage with Arthur ‘and that this marriage had been consummated’, was the word forsan: ‘perhaps’. Julius had contrived a phrasing that would suit the interpretation of both England and Spain, and washed his hands of the affair. In the event, it was a formula that satisfied neither Henry VII nor Ferdinand. Some quarter-century later, its ambiguity would be bitterly contested as Henry VIII sought to detach himself from his wife and from the Church of Rome.2

  Meanwhile, at a wintry Richmond, Catherine was miserable. On 26 November, she had written two letters in quick succession to her parents, and had given them to de Puebla to include in his diplomatic bag. The letters speak volumes for Catherine’s sense of isolation amid the stream of dispatches flowing between England, Rome and Spain. She had, she wrote, hardly any news from them – indeed, she had not received a single message from Ferdinand ‘for a whole year’ – but rumours were circulating at Richmond that her mother was very ill indeed. For once, the rumours were no exaggeration. That day, the bedridden Isabella had died at Medina del Campo. Her death would change the face of Europe. It would also turn Catherine’s world upside-down.3

  With Isabella’s death, the question of the Spanish succession suddenly came into sharp focus. Queen of Castile, her marriage to Ferdinand had created a united Spain; now, her demise threatened to pull it apart, and to wreck Catherine’s prospects in the process. The heir to Castile was Catherine’s older sister Juana, wife to the Habsburg ruler of the Low Countries, Emperor Maximilian’s son Archduke Philip of Burgundy. The fruit of Philip and Juana’s tempestuous marriage, their infant son Charles of Ghent, stood to inherit a sprawling empire that spanned much of eastern and central Europe, the Low Countries, Castile, and – unless Ferdinand could remarry and produce a male heir – the rest of Spain and Spanish Italy. Hearing the news of Isabella’s death, Archduke Philip was determined to lay claim to Castile on his wife’s behalf.4

  A marriage alliance with Aragon, rather than with a united Spain, was a very different and far less attractive proposition. Ferdinand knew it. On the very day of Isabella’s death, he sent a letter informing Henry of the ‘greatest affliction’ that had befallen him and emphasizing that Isabella’s dying wish was that he, Ferdinand, should rule Castile on their daughter Juana’s behalf. On this view, Philip of Burgundy’s ambitions were on ice. But as Ferdinand probably knew, it was asking a lot to expect Henry to accept this version of events. Henry knew exactly what it was like to lose a wife on whose inheritance his dynasty and his kingdom depended, and the precariousness which resulted.5 Moreover, he had other irons in the fire. The Habsburg family, which, with its imperial pretensions, its financial and mercantile powerhouse of the Netherlands and its potential for European expansion through its Spanish claims, looked an increasingly attractive proposition for a dynastic alliance. Besides which, the Habsburgs still controlled the earl of Suffolk.

  Even before Isabella’s death, animosity between the Castilian and Aragonese factions had always simmered. Earlier that year, the tensions had manifested themselves among Spanish diplomats at the Burgundian court over Suffolk, still kicking his heels in Aachen and waiting for Maximilian and Philip to provide him with funds and men. Ferdinand and Isabella had been trying to get hold of him – ostensibly to help Henry; in reality to get hold of a bargaining chip in their negotiations with England – and in February 1504, they had come within a hair’s breadth of getting him extradited to Spanish-controlled territories in Naples. Suffolk, however, had been tipped off.

  Leaving behind his younger brother Richard as surety for the debts he had piled up with the city’s merchants, Suffolk fled to the nearby principality of Guelders, whose duke, ringed by hostile Habsburg-Burgundian territory, was an ally of France. Suffolk’s informant, it transpired, had been none other than the Spanish ambassador resident at the court of Philip of Burgundy. Don Juan Manuel was an outstanding diplomat. He was also, if reports are to be believed, a Castilian loyalist whose allegiances stood as much with Philip – and with his wife Juana of Castile and their infant son Charles, Castile’s heir – as with Ferdinand and Isabella. And Don Manuel’s sister was Doña Elvira, who ran Catherine’s household at Durham House on the Strand.

  The effects of Catherine’s cloistered upbringing had been exacerbated by her increasingly uncertain isolation in England. She remained ingenuous and her English was poor; beneath a fragile self-confidence, she remained desperate for affection. This, as de Puebla had delicately remarked to Ferdinand and Isabella, was a recipe for disaster in Catherine’s disordered household. She was, he wrote, impressionable, and a soft touch, ‘very liberal’ with her wealth. There were plenty of people hanging around Durham House who were looking for every opportunity to ‘strip her of her gold and silver’. Henry, too, was concerned. As her prospective father-in-law, he paid Catherine a monthly stipend of £100, a generous sum designed to keep her and her household in a manner befitting a future queen of England; she could, he said, keep whatever was left over after having paid her expenses. But it proved nowhere near enough. Her wardrobe keeper, Juan de Cuero, who watched over the collection of jewels and plate that formed part of her contested dowry, complained that pieces would mysteriously go missing, pawned to pay for Catherine’s lavish lifestyle, or given away as gifts.

  With its runaway expenditure and its servants involved in open infighting, Catherine’s household was out of control – something to which the young princess seemed oblivious or was unable to do anything about. Henry wrote to her that he was sorry that the few servants she had ‘cannot live in peace with one another’, and urged her to put her house in order with help from her parents. Because Catherine’s servants were all Spanish, he was careful to add, the problem was out of his jurisdiction. But in confusion, Henry had, as ever, seen opportunity.

  Confronted with a stream of reports detailing the breakdown of order in Catherine’s household, Isabella had decided a firm hand on the tiller was needed. Following Catherine’s betrothal to Prince Henry, the influence of her duenna Doña Elvira had slackened. But by October 1504 Doña Elvira was back in charge and Catherine was once more on a short leash. What was more, when Catherine and her servants rejoined the royal household at Westminster that Christmas, she was kept in the ‘same rule, seclusion and observance as in her own house’. Even de Puebla, who detested Doña Elvira and her latent Castilian tendencies, agreed that this increased discipline was a good idea – and Henry, he wrote, particularly approved. But the king had done mo
re than approve the new arrangements. Behind the scenes, he had evidently been lobbying hard for Doña Elvira’s reappointment. He insisted to de Puebla both that Catherine should not find out about his involvement and that the changes in the running of her household remain concealed. To reinforce the princess’s public image and authority, Henry sent her a magnificent gold headdress – but there was no doubt who was pulling the strings. After Isabella’s death that winter, Doña Elvira’s ascendancy brought Henry further benefits. Her close ties to her brother, Don Manuel, meant that Durham House was now a useful diplomatic back-channel to the Burgundian court – and hence to Castile.6

  Throughout the first half of 1505, Henry kept up appearances with Ferdinand. Apart from anything else, he was preoccupied with his own remarriage, and Catherine’s parents had proposed a bride for him. That May, he dispatched two of his privy servants, Hugh Denys’s sidekick James Braybroke and the diminutive Breton Francis Marzen, to the Aragonese court at Valencia, to look into the state of the twenty-seven-year-old Giovanna, queen of Naples. They took with them a questionnaire drawn up by the king himself, who was determined not to accept her ‘if she were ugly, and not beautiful’. This meticulously compiled document covered everything from Giovanna’s finances to her personal attributes: her figure, her face – including eye colour, complexion and breath – to neck, breasts and facial hair. Marzen and Braybroke studied her carefully and compiled the answers minutely. The young queen wore a mantle, concealing much of her body. She was short and plump, making her appear ‘somewhat round’, but vivacious and attractive, with grey-brown eyes, clear, fair skin, and ‘great, full’ breasts – though they could not approach close enough to find out whether she had bad breath. But if all this appealed to Henry, her financial assets were less enticing.7