Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England

by Thomas Penn

  Five days before, Philip and his wife Juana, together with a large retinue of Burgundian nobles and two thousand German mercenaries, had set sail from the Dutch port of Arnemuiden on their long-delayed journey to lay claim to the kingdom of Castile. The couple were barely on speaking terms. When Philip’s early passion for her had faded to apathy, and he began to resume his bachelor lifestyle of jousting and womanizing, Juana’s love turned to a neurotic jealousy, lashing out at his servants for conniving in his amorous exploits. According to the Venetian ambassador to the Burgundian court, she could barely countenance her husband ‘except on those nights when he sleeps with her’.3 When, on Isabella’s death, Juana refused to sign her Castilian inheritance away to her estranged husband, things deteriorated further. Philip forged her signature and exacted a horrible revenge. He destroyed her credibility as queen, withholding her household expenses and closeting her away, all the while insisting it was for her own good. His wife, he said, was insane. By 1506, Juana’s life at the Burgundian court had become a living hell. If Catherine felt that she had it bad as a prisoner in England, the situation of her older sister, manipulated, abandoned and deeply depressed, was immeasurably worse.

  The twenty-eight-year-old Philip, however, had the world at his feet. A chivalric icon, archduke of Burgundy and heir to the Habsburg Empire, he was now about to lay claim to Castile. Unfortunately for him, his wife, as queen of Castile, had to come with him.

  Philip had been itching to get going. After last-minute delays due to bad weather, the fleet of some forty ships weighed anchor on the morning of 10 January. The weather was fine, and that night, as the fleet passed Calais on its port side, there was a party atmosphere on board, the ships lit up with torches, trumpets blaring, cannons firing. In the following two days, they made fast progress, strong easterly winds driving them west down the Channel to where it opened out into the Atlantic; there, they were briefly becalmed. Then, the southwest hurricane roared in. The fleet was scattered and forced back towards the English coast. In pitch darkness, Philip and Juana’s ship was chaos. The guns were thrown overboard; the mainsail, which collapsed, dragged the ship half underwater before it was cut free; three times, fires broke out. Towards the end of the night, the winds finally abated, and as dawn broke through a dense, freezing fog, the ship dropped anchor off the little port of Melcombe Regis on the Dorset coast.

  Looking around them, they could see only two other vessels looming out of the mist, similarly wrecked. Detached from his main fleet, which had limped into the Cornish port of Falmouth some hundred miles west, and mentally and physically shattered, Philip went ashore to recuperate. He was met by a knot of curious locals and, pushing his way through the crowd, the local dignitary Sir Thomas Trenchard, who offered the archduke hospitality at his nearby home.

  As the Burgundians made themselves comfortable, Trenchard sent men to secure their landing craft, and messengers with hastily scribbled notes to the king, before gently but firmly relocating Philip further inland to a place which, he said, could better accommodate him in the manner to which he was accustomed. Resigning himself to the inevitable, the archduke dispatched his own secretary to Henry who, summoned into his presence at Richmond, bowed low, and communicated his master’s respects and his request that the reception be ‘as brief and simple as possible’. Beneath the diplomatic language, both kings understood the situation perfectly well. Philip would be the most honoured of guests – but he was also a prisoner. He would stay in England until Henry had Suffolk firmly in his grasp; and, Henry was determined, a lot more besides. In the meantime, Henry would overwhelm the self-styled king of Castile with hospitality, and he chose the location for Philip’s reception with typical care. Perched on a chalk cliff above the Thames valley, its crenellated drum keep dominating the surrounding countryside, Windsor Castle was resonant with chivalric overtones, the spiritual home of the Order of the Garter: a perfect venue, in other words, to welcome Europe’s most glamorous knight.4

  As they progressed through the wintry countryside, Philip and his weatherbeaten nobles were greeted by an advance party led by the earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Brandon, and smothered with attention, including menus prepared by the king’s clerk of the kitchen, and hawks for Philip to hunt with as he rode. At Winchester, they were received with luxuries and fine wines at the castle by its bishop, Richard Fox. The choice of Winchester, widely believed to be King Arthur’s Camelot and which resonated with chivalric romance, was deliberate. Some two decades earlier, Queen Elizabeth had given birth to Prince Arthur there, and Henry had milked the association up until his son’s untimely death. Now, it would be resurrected.5

  Supervised by Fox, Winchester would be the scene for a new chivalric encounter between England and Habsburg Burgundy. It would, too, provide a perfect setting for Prince Henry’s international debut. To welcome his guest and to accompany him on the last stage of his journey to Windsor, Henry VII had sent his son.

  The point at which the prince starts to emerge from his chrysalis, no longer the small carrot-haired boy but the young man whose presence and physicality would astound Europe, is difficult to pinpoint. The transformation, though, had surely begun to occur by January 1506, midway through his fifteenth year. Henry remained a master of stage-management: he would only have sent his son to a meeting of such significance if he had thought the prince could carry it off.

  If he was awestruck on meeting Philip and his nobles, the flower of sophisticated Burgundian chivalry, Prince Henry hid it well. Clattering into the courtyard at the head of a glittering company, wearing a riding gown of black velvet, a cloth-of-gold doublet and scarlet hose, he dismounted and made straight for the archduke; the pair greeted each other, one of Philip’s entourage noted, like old friends, or blood brothers.6 As they dined, the prince, chatting away fluently in French, undoubtedly drew his guest’s attention to the painted Round Table, which hung in the castle, inscribed with the glorious deeds of its knights. For all the prince’s insouciance, Philip would make a deep impression on him.7

  On 31 January, at around 3 p.m., the two kings met at Clewer Green, outside Windsor. Philip pushed his horse slowly forward towards Henry, down an avenue formed by horsebacked members of the king’s spears, dressed in their coats of green and white cloth-of-gold. The king himself was surrounded by a thicket of nobles, all of whom had dressed to impress. Most conspicuous among Henry’s attendants were the two twentysomethings on whom he had bestowed the Order of the Garter a year previously, and whom he kept close to him at court: the duke of Buckingham’s younger brother Lord Henry Stafford, whose hat of ‘goldsmith’s work’ was encrusted with diamonds and rubies, and Richard Grey, the slack-jawed earl of Kent, dressed in a coat of cloth-of-gold and crimson velvet, together with the latter’s cousin Thomas Grey, marquis of Dorset, on a horse with a large white feather fixed to its crupper. Set off against his gaudy retinue, the king was swathed in his robes of estate, a gown and hood of deep velvet; around his neck he wore the Garter collar of linked gold esses, from which suspended a figure of St George, made entirely of diamonds. Underneath a hood of purple velvet and his customary black felt hat, his face was split by a smile of welcome. For his part, Philip’s party numbered barely a dozen men. Dressed almost entirely in black, their apparel, one observer noted, was markedly ‘sad’.8

  The kings embraced. Henry, it was clear, was in an exceptionally good mood. His guest was, he said, as dear to him as his own son, and he had never been so happy since the day he was crowned; he then dismissed his unaccustomed expansiveness with a brisk ‘anyway, this isn’t the time for a long sermon’. As the short winter afternoon faded the party processed to the nearby castle, Philip sandwiched between Prince Henry, on his left, and the king. Brass fanfares sounded as the party rode through Windsor’s great gate, past the chapel of St George and the keep.9 An elaborate game of precedence began as they climbed the stairs to the royal lodgings: Henry, it was clear, was determined to prove to his guest that English courtliness could outdo that of
the sophisticated Burgundians themselves.

  Inside, he had put on a spectacular show. Before them unfolded the royal apartments, a succession of four chambers, richly decorated according to Henry’s own exacting directions, lined with arras and hung in cloth-of-gold, sideboards filled with gleaming plate. The centrepiece of each room was a ceremonial royal bed, its frame intricately carved and painted, richly upholstered with matching drapery: a sure statement of wealth, given that such beds were the most valuable pieces of furniture kings owned. Guiding his guest through the rooms, each filled with courtiers of greater rank than the last, Henry announced that his own newly built lodgings would be at Philip’s disposal. He himself would stay in the queen’s apartments, interconnected with those of his guest by a series of galleries and closets.10

  It was Candlemas, the time of year when Henry’s memories of his wife were particularly keen. But that Candlemas, he seemed momentarily transformed. His procession to the chapel to hear mass was a far cry from the usual heavily guarded remoteness, the uniformed yeomen, halberds in hand, who pushed back the crowds and made sure that no man was ‘so hardy to sue, nor to put bill, nor to approach nigh to him during the said procession’. Instead, he lingered, milking his triumph. It was ‘long time’ before the royal entourage managed to weave its way through the crowded apartments and galleries.11

  Among the press of people loitered men like William Makefyrr, scribbling down details of Philip’s reception for his friends the Pastons, down in London from Norfolk and staying at the fashionable George Inn on Lombard Street; Robert Plumpton’s servant George Emerson, and Conway’s spy, pairs of eyes and ears hired to ‘lie about the court’ and inform their employers ‘how the world goeth’. One of Lady Margaret’s men sent frequent dispatches via a rider to her at Croydon, where she waited for updates. The whole spectacle, he wrote to her, could not be conveyed in words: the messenger bearing his note ‘can show your grace better than I can write it.’12

  Philip, however, took some time to thaw out. Following his arrival, he had spent as much time as possible closeted away, as he came to terms with Henry’s enforced hospitality. After mass, the king progressed to his guest’s apartments for a lengthy fireside chat, pouring on the charm, followed by an elaborate public leave-taking. Finally, Philip said with pointed politesse: ‘I see right well that I must needs do your commandment, and to obey as reason will.’ He had got the message. If he was ever going to leave this gilded prison, it would be on Henry’s terms. And that meant, first and foremost, the surrender of Suffolk.13

  Later that afternoon, Henry managed to entice Philip out of his apartments for an afternoon’s entertainment, hosted by Catherine – his sister-in-law – and Henry’s youngest daughter, Mary. Taking Philip by the arm, Henry led him through a succession of galleries and rooms to a ‘dancing chamber’, where the princesses and their gentlewomen were waiting. The presence of Catherine, an uncomfortable reminder to Philip of his own wife – who he had brusquely left behind in Hampshire – and her family, was like a red rag to a bull. Irked by her eager efforts to get him to dance, he refused repeatedly and with growing irritation, finally bursting out with a curt rejection before turning back to Henry. Mortified, Catherine retreated. But the focus of the entertainments, it was clear, was not Catherine but Mary. At the centre of a new Anglo-Habsburg treaty, Henry planned, would be Mary’s betrothal to Philip’s son Charles, the infant Habsburg heir.

  The afternoon, which Catherine’s miserable anxiety and Philip’s petulance had threatened to ruin, was salvaged by Mary who, it was clear, had inherited her mother’s empathic gregariousness. Even at the age of eleven, Mary had a self-possession about her, an awareness of the power of her looks – alabaster skin, grey eyes and golden hair inclining to auburn – coupled with the effortless charisma she shared with her brother. That afternoon, nobody could take their eyes off Henry VII’s poised daughter, first dancing, then sitting in quiet solidarity with Catherine, before playing the lute and clavichord with dexterity. Given centre stage, Mary had grasped the opportunity with both hands. She was ‘of all folks there greatly praised’, one of the onlookers later recorded. In everything she did ‘she behaved herself so very well’.14

  In the next days, Henry and Philip rode out into the forested royal parkland that stretched away south of the castle. Duly impressed by the five thousand acres of well-stocked game reserves – he hadn’t, he said, really known ‘what deer meant’ before his arrival in England – Philip set to work, shooting some ten or twelve deer. Henry himself was still the keenest of huntsmen, but his ever-worsening sight made him a liability with a crossbow – on one occasion, his servants had to compensate an outraged farmer whose cockerel the king had shot, mistaking it for game. No match for Philip, instead he took the opportunity to lay on a display of military prowess, thirty green-and-white uniformed yeomen of the guard dazzling the king’s guests with a co-ordinated display of archery.15

  By the middle of the week, foul weather made further hunting impossible. The party was kept indoors, heightening the sense of intense diplomatic activity. As rain lashed at the windows, Henry was closeted away with his counsellors in a working party headed by his chief negotiators, Richard Fox and Nicholas West. The constant scurrying to and fro, the whispered lobbying and horse trading, could not disguise the fact that Henry would dictate the terms of the forthcoming treaty.16

  In the intervening days, as the weather cleared, the outdoor entertainments resumed. On Saturday afternoon, after watching a horse being baited by dogs, Henry and Philip strolled over to the tennis courts opposite the royal lodgings, where Thomas marquis of Dorset was partnering Thomas lord Howard, eldest son and heir to the earl of Surrey, in a game of doubles. Henry, who followed the game compulsively, had installed tennis courts at all his houses, playing, betting – and usually losing – with gusto. But since his first major illness six years previously he had been content to watch and lay bets, which he continued to lose. Philip, though, grew restless. Removing his cloak, hat and jacket, he asked Dorset for a game; the short, wiry Howard retired, thin-lipped. The pair played until the light started to go. Henry, meanwhile, stayed in the tapestry-lined gallery, lounging on cloth-of-gold cushions, his eyes flickering over the participants.17

  Monday 9 February came, and with it the day for Philip to pay his bill for Henry’s lavish hospitality. That morning, Henry, the prince and the Garter knights assembled in the presence chamber, dressed in the order’s ermine-fringed, crimson velvet gowns, where they were joined by Philip and his knights.18 Riding the short distance to St George’s Chapel, the party dismounted, progressing through the church to the choir where Philip was to be invested with the Garter. One of Philip’s attendants was overwhelmed; he had, he wrote, never seen anything like it. Burning tapers illuminated a vision of gold: gold plate, gold chains, relics in their gilt reliquaries including, at the king’s elbow, a piece of the True Cross on a cushion of cloth-of-gold; uniformed heralds-of-arms everywhere. In his capacity as master of ceremonies, Thomas Wriothesley had excelled himself. The rather overcooked opulence – ‘excessive’, thought the Burgundian writer – positively exuded tradition and timelessness. In fact, he added, it was the kind of thing you might have seen in a king’s palace a hundred years previously. It was precisely the kind of permanence that Henry liked to convey.19

  Following the kissing of relics and swearing of chivalric oaths, Philip was invested with the order’s accoutrements, a kneeling Prince Henry buckling the garter eagerly round the archduke’s leg, the king placing the heavy gold collar around his neck, murmuring ‘my son’ as he did so. Then came the prince’s turn. Invested with the Order of the Golden Fleece, its golden gown billowing out on the floor behind him, he pronounced the oath excitedly in resounding and fluent French, and was kissed by Philip ‘in sign of fraternal love’.

  Sandwiched between the two investitures was the meat of the ceremonial: Henry’s treaty. In his capacity as the Garter’s prelate, Richard Fox, hovering at Philip’s elbo
w, indicated wordlessly where he should sign. This mutual defence pact – which included, of course, the extradition of each other’s rebels – paved the way for further agreements: Henry’s betrothal to Margaret of Savoy, and a new trade agreement whose main feature was to allow English merchants to import cloth duty- and tax-free into the Low Countries, with few concessions in return. Unsurprisingly, it quickly became known in the Netherlands as the intercursus malus: the wicked treaty.

  The treaty, however, underscored everything that Henry was now working for. With it, he turned decisively away from Ferdinand and from Aragon, and aligned England’s future with the Habsburgs. Its secrecy, however – it went unmentioned in eyewitness reports heavy on the ceremonial detail – meant that the only people who knew about its terms were the negotiators themselves, although Ferdinand and the French, who had recently signed a similar treaty of their own, probably had their suspicions. Days later, Philip turned to Henry in a moment of choreographed spontaneity and, ‘unasked’, offered to hand over the earl of Suffolk – or, as the official chronicler dismissively called him, ‘Ed. Rebel’. Henry, keeping up the charade, graciously accepted.20

  With business concluded, Henry, Philip and the prince retreated to a ‘little chamber’ within Philip’s apartments to dine. Flushed with success, the king was in loquacious mood. Over dinner, he expatiated on the new treaty, seeing it as the latest in a line of glorious deeds stretching back to King Arthur – whose table, he reminded Philip, he had seen hanging in the hall at Winchester. Warming to his theme, Henry said that his achievements and those of his son would be documented alongside those on the table; then, whenever people saw it, they would think of this ‘true and perpetual friendship between the empire of Rome, the kingdom of Castile, Flanders, Brabant, and the kingdom of England.’ Turning to his son, Henry then embarked on a fatherly lecture of the ‘watch and learn’ variety.