Satisfied that he had then made Thomas Howard an example of what could be expected by anyone aspiring to advance themselves by marriage to a person even distantly connected to the Tudor dynasty, Henry then sanctioned the passing of yet another statute by which it became high treason for anyone to marry or seduce any lady related to the royal blood. The penalty for doing so being that whoever attempted it would be:
… deemed a traitor to the King and his realm, and with his abettors shall suffer the pains of execution and death, loss of privilege and sanctuary, and forfeiture of lands and hereditaments to all intents as in the cases of high treason … And be it enacted that the Woman (after the last day of this Parliament) so offending, being within the degrees so specified, shall incur like danger and penalty as is before limited and shall suffer such-like death and punishment as appointed to the Man offending.3
Margaret, although secretly petrified, as she certainly must have been, nonetheless managed to maintain her dignity and hide her feelings, much as can be imagined, to the chagrin of the uncle, who was bent on destroying the spirit of his once favourite niece. Overwhelmed by all that was happening to her, she became extremely ill, and that Henry did have some feeling for her is shown by his sending first his apothecary, Thomas Aske, ‘with certain medicines for her use’ and then, on these failing to show any improvement, his own doctor, a man named Cromer. It must have been some satisfaction to Margaret to learn that these visits cost £14 6s 4d, a sum which Henry himself was forced to pay.
The illness from which Margaret suffered is said to have been ‘Tower Fever’; this was in fact malaria, then common in the south east of England, particularly in the damp district of the Fens, from whence it inevitably spread to London, carried by the many travellers and merchants who frequented the city. It seems to have been highly infectious within the confinement of the Tower, because Thomas Howard soon sickened with it, to Margaret’s great fear and concern. Although supposed to have no communication with each other, the lovers smuggled letters and poems by means of gaolers or servants, who conveyed them in secret ways. Margaret wrote to Thomas:
I may well say with joyful heart,
As never woman might say before,
That I have taken to my part
The faithfullest lover that was ever born.
Great pains he suffers for my sake
Continually night and day
For all the pains that he does take
From me his love will not decay.
With threatening great has he been paid
Of pain and eke of punishment,
Yet all fear aside he has laid:
To love me best was his content.
Thomas, and one supposes Margaret, are known to have been much influenced by Thomas Wyatt, the lyrical poet who was the first to write sonnets in England. Wyatt, an exceptionally tall and handsome man, who had first entered Henry’s service in 1516, was suspected of being one of Anne Boleyn’s lovers, for which reason he had also been imprisoned in the Tower very shortly before her execution. Known to have been a friend and great admirer of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, himself a poet of some fame, he may have had some access, again by surreptitious means, to Surrey’s younger half-brother, Thomas, who now, in his bouts of fever, was scarcely able to write.
Notes
1 Statutes of the Realm, Vol.III, p.610
2 Ibid., p.680
3 Statutes of the Realm, Henry VIII, June 1536, pp.680–1
10
BARGAINING
COUNTERS OF THE KING
Meanwhile, in Scotland, the news of Margaret’s cruel and manifestly unjust imprisonment did at least invoke, to some extent, the sympathy and anger of her mother. It was now eighteen years since Queen Margaret had even seen her daughter, let alone contributed towards her welfare. Despite protests to her father that he would not return her ‘for our comfort’, she would seem to have banished her from her mind. Now, when she had parted from her third husband, the man she had created Lord Methven, contemptuously referred to by Henry as Lord Muffin, she suddenly became solicitous for the daughter she had virtually abandoned. Her renewed maternal affection, however, barely concealed her wish for her brother to invite her to England.
On 12 August, from Perth, she wrote to Henry, strongly reproaching him for his cruelty and imprisonment of her daughter and Thomas Howard, whose betrothal he had first encouraged, which she knew that he could not deny. Demanding that her daughter be sent back to Scotland, she assured him that should this happen she would never trouble him again. Henry did not reply, and later she was to claim that his treatment of Margaret had made her so angry that she had actually forsworn her intention of visiting her brother and of remarrying Margaret’s father, the Earl of Angus, whom she knew to be at his court.
Henry, for his part, had no sympathy for her marital problems, despite their similarity to his own. He had better uses for Angus than to see him once again united to the sister, whose fickle mind he distrusted, as by now he had good reason for so doing. He would certainly not allow Margaret Douglas to return to Scotland, it being all too obvious that once there she could become a political pawn to be used against him, as her mother must well have known.
Ironically, it proved to be fortunate for Margaret that her uncle refused to let her leave England, where, at least, she was comparatively safe. In Scotland, her half-brother, King James, was furious that her father Angus had given allegiance to Henry; while unable to punish him in person, he was venting his anger to all those connected with him, in particular his sister Janet.
Janet, who had married firstly John Lyon, Lord Glamis, and then on his death Archibald Campbell of Skipness, was arrested for the crime of witchcraft on the orders of the king. Together with her second husband, she was imprisoned in the dreadful dungeons of Edinburgh Castle, from which, no doubt by bribing the jailers, he managed to escape, while she was left incarcerated to face a terrible death. James was merciless. Some of her relations and servants were tortured until they screamed out confessions, which were enough to convict her of the crime of sorcery of which she was accused. In July 1537, she was burned at the stake on the esplanade of the castle, her young son being forced to watch her dreadful death.
Incarcerated in the Tower since the month of July, Margaret, Henry was suddenly informed by the keeper, had become dangerously ill. The former intermittent fever had returned.
The king was placed in a predicament: he did not want to release Margaret but neither did he want her to die. Therefore he ordered Thomas Cromwell, his Lord of the Privy Seal, to request Agnes Jourdan, the abbess of the magnificent abbey of Sion (which, because of its usefulness for female prisoners, he had not attempted to destroy) to accommodate the Lady Margaret Douglas and her servants for as long as should be required.
The abbess replied from Sion on 6 November, to the effect that ‘As touching the Lady Margaret Douglas’ she would be glad to receive her ‘to such lodging, walks, and commodities as may be to her comfort’, but she did ask that someone ‘such as you do trust and think apt’ might be sent to make the decision as to which part of the building would be ‘most convenient for the purpose’. This being complied with, Margaret, it would seem, was allowed to leave the Tower in the second week of November.
Once installed in Sion Abbey, in its beautiful site above where the branches of willows reached down towards the Thames, Margaret had a degree of the freedom she had lacked so greatly in the Tower. Walking between the ancient mulberry trees overhanging garden paths, she could at least take some exercise and regain the strength of her limbs. And even in the damp mists above the river, she could breathe in country air. Always she thought of Thomas, first as she once had known him, a young man full of life and the love of riding, jousting in the lists at full tilt; then, from what her servants told her from gossip with others they had met, she thought of him lying thin and consumed with fever in a cell, which in the months of winter was hardly warmer than the ice-bound streets outside.
It was no
t long before those servants of Thomas’ brought her yet further news. Their master, they said, was dying. The fever had turned into consumption. He could not have long to live. As for themselves, they were starving. Thomas had no money and the keeper, apparently acting on the king’s orders, refused to feed them in the Tower. Margaret said she would lodge them and, as in the parable of the loaves and fishes, they could share her own servants’ food.
This, while to her seeming reasonable – it was all she could do to help Thomas now so ill and alone – was not viewed as such by the abbess, Agnes Jourdan, with whom Margaret was now on bad terms. The abbess, in all fairness, would seem to have had some reason why such charity should not be given. Margaret’s servants at this period, from her own description, seem to have been largely men. Amongst them were her chaplain, a gentleman ‘that guarded her chamber’, plus another gentleman and the groom of her wardrobe, who is thought to have been Peter, he so dextrous with his needle, who mended his lady’s gowns. In addition she appears to have had visitors, or so Agnes Jourdan claimed; if this was true, it must have meant much extra provisioning at a time when, due to bad harvests, there is known to have been a shortage of food.
Complaints were made to Cromwell by the abbess, who told him that, in addition, Margaret was giving shelter to Thomas Howard’s servants as a means of keeping in touch with him in the Tower. Henry, predictably furious when told of this by his Lord Privy Seal, immediately ordered him to write to Margaret, berating her of her generosity, inevitably at his own expense, and again listing the offences of which she had been charged. Then, surprisingly, and to her it must have seemed almost miraculously, he informed her that the king had promised to restore her to favour if she would renounce her betrothal to Thomas Howard, still held on a charge of treason for his presumption in trying to make her his wife.
Margaret’s spirit was broken: her defiance was at an end. Her uncle had achieved his object in making her obedient to his will. Knowing that however much she loved him, she could now never marry Thomas, she longed only to regain the freedom that towards the end of her imprisonment she had thought she would never achieve. In proof of her contrition, deeply as it must have hurt her pride, she replied to Cromwell, swearing obedience to her uncle. Also, in denial of all the rumours which she knew he must have heard, she affirmed that she was still virgin, so that, according to her own word, her supposed marriage had not been consummated, even if it had actually taken place.
My Lord
What cause have I to give you thanks, and how much bound am I unto you, that by your means hath gotten me, as I trusted, the King’s grace and favour again. Besides that it pleaseth you to write and give me knowledge wherein I might earn his Grace’s displeasure again, which I pray unto the Lord to sooner send me death than that. I assure you, my Lord, I will never do that thing willingly that should offend his Grace.
And my Lord, whereas it is informed you that I do share the house with greater numbers than is convenient, I assure you that I have but two more than I had at the Court, which were indeed Lord Thomas’ servants. The cause I took them for was for the poverty I saw them in, and for no cause else. But seeing, my Lord, that it is your pleasure that I shall keep none that did belong to my Lord Thomas, I will put them from me. And I beseech you not to think that any fancy doth remain in me touching him, but that all my study and care is how to please the King’s Grace and to continue in his favour.
And, my Lord, whereas it your pleasure that I shall keep but few here with me, I trust you will think that I can have no fewer than I have; for I have but a gentleman and a groom that keeps my apparel, and another that keeps my chamber, and a chaplain that was with me always in the Court.
Now my Lord, I beseech you that I shall know your pleasure, if you would that I should keep fewer. Howbeit, my Lord, the servants have put the house to small charge, for they have nothing but the remains of my board, nor do I call for nothing but that which is given me, however I am very well entreated.
And, my Lord, as for resort, I promise you I have none, except it be gentlemen that cometh to see me, nor never had sin I came thither. If any resort of men had come, it would neither have become me to have seen them nor have kept them company, being a maid as I am.
Now, my Lord, I beseech you to be so good as to get my poor servants their wages, and thus I pray our Lord to preserve you, both soul and body.
By her that has her trust in you.
Margaret Douglas.’1
Whether or not he believed Margaret to be as contrite as she claimed, Henry allowed her freedom as part of the general rejoicing when, on 12 October 1537, his longed for son, Prince Edward, was born. Queen Margaret, up in Scotland, writing to Lord Herbert of Cherbury on the 30th of the month, told him that ‘it was a comfort to hear that her daughter had been released from the Tower’.2
Amazingly, she does not appear to have realised either that Margaret’s very severe illness had been the reason for this happening or that, for the space of nearly a year, she had been held again in custody at Sion Abbey.
Margaret may have been freed from there, or was on the point of departure, when, on 31 October, the day after her mother’s letter had been written, she was told that Thomas Howard had died.
Historians are in agreement that his death was caused by illness brought on by his close confinement and almost total lack of exercise. His nephew, the Earl of Surrey, swore that he had died for the loss of Margaret, with whom he had been so greatly in love.
Thomas, who had written so many poems to Margaret while they were both in prison, sending her words of promise of the future they would now never share, finally wrote his epitaph as he knew he was soon to die.
For you yourself doth know,
It is not long ago,
Sith for his love one of our race
Did end his life in woe.
In Tower both strong and high,
For his assured truth,
Wherein with tears he spent his breath,
Alas, the more the truth!
Thomas’ mother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, begged the king to be allowed to bury her son. Henry replied through Edward, brother of the queen, who he had had just made Earl of Hertford; he, in turn, informed Thomas Cromwell of what the king had decreed.
My Lord
I have showed the King’s highness of my Lord Thomas’ death, as master Wriothesley desired me, as also my lady his mother’s request for the burying of him. His Grace is content she hath him according to your advice, so that she bury him without pomp.3
Thus, in obedience with the king’s orders, Thomas Howard was buried by his mother. Probably buried at night by the light of a lantern, he lies in some quiet corner, where a stone laid to his memory, if ever there was one, has long since disappeared.
Notes
1 Cotton MS., Vesp., F. XIII. Holograph.
2 Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Vol.II, p.212 (Perf.Hist)
3 State Paper Office, miscellaneous letters
11
THE SECOND LADY
IN THE LAND
The birth of Henry’s longed for son, Prince Edward, changed Margaret’s proximity to the throne. Now that she was no longer heir apparent, the king, in the magnanimous mood which followed the birth of his son, restored her to court favour as, through her mother, his sister, she became the second lady in the land.
Then, when Queen Jane died of puerperal fever just ten days after the birth of the prince, Margaret’s station was again elevated above that of both of his daughters, now declared illegitimate, by his previous wives.
Margaret herself was hardly aware of this and cared less even if she knew. Only four days before she had been told of the death of Thomas Howard, and now she was ordered by Henry to ride from Hampton Court to Windsor in the funeral procession of the recently deceased Queen Jane.
Her feelings can only be imagined, as dressed in deepest black, she rode on a palfrey, specially trained to carry a side saddle, with trappings of the same colour of mourning,
led by her squire behind the cortege. Depressed and miserable, her face mercifully hidden behind a black veil, her sorrow was only lessened by the presence of Princess Mary, who, restored to her father’s favour through the influence of Queen Jane, was now chosen by him as chief mourner as his wife was carried to her grave. Behind, in a carriage pulled by horses draped in black, came their cousin Frances, eldest daughter of the Queen Duchess Mary, as the Duchess of Suffolk had been known. Frances, who had much of the beauty of her mother, the aunt whom both of her nieces had both so greatly loved, was now the Marchioness of Dorset and herself the mother of a son.
Queen Jane was buried in St George’s chapel, Windsor, where later, at his express wish, her husband King Henry was to lie beside her, the acknowledged favourite of his wives.
The court was dull that summer of 1538. Not only was it in mourning but England was in a state of crisis, threatened with invasion from the combined armies of Austria, Spain and France.
The Catholic countries of Western Europe had united, threatening Protestant England: the King of France, Francis I, having come to terms with the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Taking advantage of their alliance, the Pope had sent his ambassador, Cardinal Pole, son of Lady Salisbury, to persuade the emperor to invade England. Theirs would be a Catholic crusade against King Henry, whose excommunication three years earlier had not yet come into effect.
Henry reacted to the threat by imprisoning leading Catholic families: Cardinal Pole’s relations being special targets for revenge. Firstly, in August 1538, his brother Geoffrey Pole was arrested and sent to the Tower. Questioned, probably with torture, he revealed family secrets which led to the arrest of his older brothers, Lord Montague, whose son disappeared in the Tower aged 12, and the Marquess of Exeter, held a state prisoner together with his wife and a young son.
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