Henry
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When Oxford had finished reading the solemn text, Henry’s father dipped his hand in the water, made a sign of the cross on his son’s shoulder and kissed it. It was a second, and perhaps higher baptism.
The same ritual was repeated with the other postulant knights. Meanwhile, Henry had been lifted from his bath into his bed and there dried. Then he was dressed in a rough hermit’s gown, and accompanied by his twenty-two companions in similar attire, led in procession to St Stephen’s Chapel on the east or river side of the palace. There, amidst its marble columns, gilded carving and superbly painted walls, Henry and the rest kept vigil till the small hours, before confessing, receiving absolution and hearing mass. They then returned to their beds and slept till daybreak.
When Henry was roused, he found Oxford, two earls and the lord treasurer by his bed. They proffered him his clothes and helped him dress, as they did with his companions. The knights-to-be then made their way through the private passages on the east side of the palace to New Palace Yard.
There the postulants, headed as always by Henry, took horse and rode across the yard into Westminster Hall. The hall still stands much as Henry saw it. Its vast interior is like the apotheosis of the railway station. Compared to it, the hall at Eltham must have seemed as small as his own chamber. At the foot of the dais, he dismounted. Clearly he found riding easier than walking, especially when encumbered with elaborate robes, for, with the lesser or White Hall still to traverse, he was carried by Sir William Sandys into the king’s presence. At Henry VII’s command, the duke of Buckingham put on his son’s right spur and the marquess of Dorset his left. The king himself girded him with the sword and dubbed him knight ‘in manner accustomed’.
Then he picked him up ‘and set him upon the table’. Was it fatherly pride? Or only a determination that everybody could see?
What, if anything, did the three-and-a-half-year-old Henry understand of all this, let alone remember? The higher symbolism – of physical cleansing, spiritual purification, sleep and awakening as a (re) new (ed) man – would have been beyond him, as indeed it was probably beyond most of his adult fellow-postulants as well. Perhaps instead the event lingered in his memory as a series of intense sensory experiences: cold and heat; wetting and being towelled dry; the scratchy fabric of his hermit’s gown; the mysterious gloom of the chapel in the small hours and the weariness of staying up later than he’d ever done before; and, in the morning, the exhilaration of showing, once more, that he could ride all by himself.
Or maybe there was more. Maybe he even understood, more or less, what was going on. For in fact he had heard it all before, so many times, in the tales told by his nurse, his lady mistress and his women: of knights, of oaths, of maidens in distress, of vigils, watches, disguises and transformations; of hermits, monsters and kings. It was the world of romance and chivalry that he had inhabited already in his imagination and dreams. Now he was part of it indeed.
He was a knight! He had sworn the oath. Kept vigil in the church. Ridden the horse. Been touched by the sword. He was a knight! He would be athlete, hero, icon.
He was a knight!
The next day was 1 November, All Hallows’ Day, and the day of high festival which had been chosen for Henry’s creation as duke of York. After hearing matins, the king came robed and crowned into the Parliament Chamber and took up his position on the dais under the cloth of estate. He was surrounded by the lords spiritual, headed by John Morton, the cardinal-archbishop of Canterbury, and the lords temporal, including two dukes, four earls, and ‘the substance of all the barons of this realm’. The assembled dignitaries also included the judges, the master of the rolls, the lord mayor and aldermen of London and a ‘great press’ of knights and esquires.
The place and the personnel (apart from the representatives of the City) were the same as for a parliament; the author of the ‘Black Book of the Garter’, a near contemporary, even mistook it for one,12 which was exactly what was intended. Richard of Shrewsbury had been created duke of York during a parliamentary session; Henry must at least appear to have been.
For the first of so many times, Henry was to meet the political elite of England. His procession formed in St Stephen’s Cloister, marched through the gallery and entered at the lower end of the Parliament Chamber. First came the heralds, with Garter king of arms carrying the letters patent of creation. Then followed three earls in their crimson parliament robes: the earl of Suffolk, bearing a rich sword pommel upwards, the earl of Northumberland a rod of gold, and the earl of Derby a cap of estate and a coronet. Behind them walked the earl of Shrewsbury, again robed, carrying Henry. When Henry came into the Parliament Chamber he was conducted to the king by the marquess of Dorset and the earl of Arundel, who were also robed. After they had all bowed to the king, Oliver King, the royal secretary, read the patent which created Henry duke of York, ‘with the gift of a thousand pound by year’. The king then invested his son with the sword, the rod, the cap and the coronet, and the whole company adjourned to St Stephen’s for a solemn mass celebrated by the cardinal-archbishop in cope and mitre, assisted by eight bishops and yet more abbots, also in pontificals.
The service ended and a grand procession was formed. This was joined by the ladies of the court, headed by the queen, also crowned, and Lady Margaret Beaufort, in her coronet, both of whom had heard the service in the queen’s closet or private pew.
At this climax of the ceremonies, Henry VII took direct charge. Standing in the dean’s stall of St Stephen’s Chapel, he settled two disputed cases of precedence on the spot and ‘ordered’ the procession himself. We can judge the result thanks to the reports of two very different observers. The first was that of Sir John Paston’s London agent, the priest Thomas Lyng, who must have joined the gaping throng in Westminster Hall. ‘The king and queen went crowned on Hallowmas Day last,’ he wrote, ‘and my lord of Shrewsbury bare My Lord Harry, duke of York, in his arms; and ten bishops, with mitres on their heads, going before the king that day round about Westminster Hall, with many other great estates.’13
Lyng’s may be the voice of everyman. But the picture he conjures up, of the red-robed figures in their crowns, mitres and coronets, processing round the half-lit spaces of Westminster Hall, is an unforgettable one. The professional’s judgment was more discriminating. The procession, in the view of the herald who drew up the account of the ceremonies, was ‘the best ordered and most praised of all the processions that I have ever heard of in England’.14
After the procession, the king changed out of his robes and dined. At the end of the second course, the heralds cried ‘largesse’ for the king and then for Henry in his new style. ‘Largesse,’ the cry went up in old French, ‘largesse of the most high, mighty and excellent prince, second son of the king our sovereign lord, duke of York, lieutenant-general of Ireland, earl marshal, marshal of England, lord warden of the Cinque Ports, largesse.’15
The careful preparations, the king’s own intervention and his son’s precocious ease and confidence in public had all had their effect. The result was that there was no doubt who had won the battle of ceremony: Henry, duke of York in London had faced down with ease the cardboard pretender in Malines.
But was ceremony enough? Henry’s father was far too wise to rely on it alone. Instead, on 7 November and again on the eleventh, the king took advantage of the presence of so many dignitaries for his son’s creation to hold two unusually large meetings of the council. The king himself presided and one of those present was Sir William Stanley, the lord chamberlain and Warbeck’s latest and most important recruit. Each, king and councillor, was acting a charade. But, being public men, they probably played it well.
The minutes (which rarely tell the whole story) note the setting up of a sub-committee to prepare draft legislation for the next parliament; while suitors complained that, because ‘there hath been so great council for the king’s matters’, Cardinal Morton, who was also the lord chancellor, had only sat in Star Chamber for one day out of seven.16
Was the consideration of future legislation really so pressing? Or, whatever the formal record may say, were Warbeck and his English adherents on the agenda as well?
Despite these backstage machinations – or perhaps indeed as a deliberate screen for them – the round of celebrations continued regardless, though a little later than planned. The joust had originally been announced as taking place on 4, 9 and 12 November. But the fourth turned out to be the ‘obit’ or anniversary of the death of ‘the full noble memor the king’s father’, Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond, out of respect for whom the whole series was put back five days, to the ninth, eleventh and thirteenth.17
There is no reason to suppose that the oversight was other than genuine. But it did leave useful time to prepare for the extraordinary meetings of the council.
Henry, no doubt, was frustrated at the delay. But on the ninth he took his place in the royal box alongside his parents as the first of the ‘great estates of the realm’. It was his first joust, and he was not to be disappointed. The second day, on the eleventh, was especially exciting. The challengers pranced on to the field under new-fangled pavilions made of sumptuous fabrics and embroidered with different mottoes: ‘For to accomplish’ or ‘Our promise made’. And they accomplished their promises indeed in the exuberant violence of the sport. Best was the tourney or mounted sword-fight between Sir Robert Curzon and Thomas Brandon. First their swords became locked together in Curzon’s gauntlet, and Curzon nearly dragged Brandon out of the saddle in his struggle to extricate it. Brandon saved the day by pulling off Curzon’s gauntlet, sword and all. Re-armed at the king’s command, they then both broke their swords on each other’s armour, before finishing the bout with new weapons.
And all this was done in his honour. The challengers wore his new ‘colours of the duke of York, that is to say, blue and tawney’. And, when the prizes were awarded after supper, special thanks were given to the contestants in his name: ‘the noble and mighty prince the second son of the king our sovereign lord, the duke of York, in the honour of whose creation this noble joust and tourney hath been holden’.18
Henry could hardly wait to take part as a combatant himself.
Only one other member of the royal family was permitted to share in his glory: his sister Margaret, with whom he had been brought up since birth. She presented the prizes to the contestants at the end of the first two days of the joust. And on the final day of the tournament she herself was the focus of attention. The tournament was a kind of ladies’ day: held, as the challenge stated, to give pleasure to the ladies of the court and in particular to ‘their redoubted lady and fairest young princess, the eldest daughter to our sovereign lord the King’. The day began with a pageant of four ladies leading four knights, and it ended with proclamation of the prizes. Garter, the other kings of arms, heralds and pursuivants, ‘standing on high on a form’, offered thanks in the name of ‘the right high and excellent princess the Lady Margaret’, who again presented the winners with their prizes of a diamond and a ruby ring.
She was taking her place as the first lady of the court, just as her younger brother was to be its first gentleman.19
* * *
The Christmas celebrations that year took place at Greenwich. Henry, rejoicing in his new dignity, may have made the short journey from Eltham to join his parents for the festivities. But he would not have stayed long, as the celebrations were kept to the bare minimum of twelve days, for the king had work to do.
Over the course of the holidays, Henry VII had received news that Sir Robert Clifford, one of Warbeck’s principal adherents in Malines, had been turned and was being escorted back to England with proof positive of the treasonable communications between the pretender and his adherents in England. On 7 January 1495, the day after Twelfth Day, the king returned to London and took up residence in the Tower, ‘in order’, Polydore Vergil claims plausibly, ‘that he might at once imprison in that safe place any members of the plot whom [Clifford] might name’. Clifford was brought to the king on 9 January and interrogated. Immediately afterwards, Sir William Stanley, who was discharging his duties as chamberlain at court, ‘suddenly was arrested and put under sure keeping’.20
The trap had snapped shut smoothly. Stanley, who had a powerful armed following and was well able to resist arrest, had entered the Tower voluntarily, in all his glory as lord chamberlain. He would leave it only as a condemned man. His trial took place on 6–7 February and he was executed nine days later. Lord Steward Fitzwalter’s trial followed at the end of the month. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, but within two years he too was executed, on pretext of having tried to escape.
What, the London chronicler wondered, had Stanley, with his wealth, his property and his power, been thinking of when he threw it all away ‘for a knave [Warbeck] that after was hanged’.21
Notes - CHAPTER 5: DUKE OF YORK
1. A. F. Pollard, ed., The Reign of Henry VII from Contemporary Sources, 3 vols (1913) I, 185.
2. CPR Henry VII I (1485–94), 214, 423; II (1494–1509), 26; GEC I, 249; I. Arthurson, The Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy (Stroud, 1994), 197; OxfordDNB, ‘Poynings’.
3. J. Gairdner, History of Richard III (1878), 282–3.
4. LP Hen. VII II, 388–9.
5. GEC III, 257–61.
6. GEC XII ii, 911; Schofield, Edward IV II, 94.
7. Condon, ‘Itinerary’.
8. TNA: E 404/81/4 (2 October 1494).
9. J. Gairdner, ed., The Paston Letters, 6 vols (1904) VI, 151–2.
10. LP Hen. VII II, 389; Condon, ‘Itinerary’.
11. Great Chronicle, 254.
12. J. Anstis, ed., The Register of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, 2 vols (1724) I, 236–7.
13. Gairdner, Paston Letters VI, 151–2.
14. LP Hen. VII I, 391–3.
15. Ibid., 394.
16. C. G. Bayne and W. H. Dunham, eds, Select Cases in the Council of Henry VII, Selden Society 75 (1958), 28–9; Gairdner, Paston Letters VI, 151–2.
17. LP Hen. VII I, 389, 394–6.
18. Ibid., 396–8.
19. Ibid., 389, 400–2.
20. Great Chronicle, 256; Vergil B, 73–5.
21. Great Chronicle, 258.
6
RIVAL DUKES
THE BLOODLETTINGS IN ENGLAND in early 1495 did nothing to dampen the ardour of Warbeck’s support in the Netherlands. The result was that for the next few years there were two rival dukes of York: Henry at Eltham, and Warbeck almost anywhere as his quest for his kingdom began in earnest. One thing the two had in common was their need for money: Henry to maintain his state, Warbeck to recover it.
At Henry’s creation as duke of York, his father had announced his intention to endow his second son ‘with the gift of a thousand pound by year’. He did so, however, at no direct cost to himself. The king’s uncle, Jasper Tudor, had received substantial land grants, both from his half-brother Henry VI, when he created him earl of Pembroke, and from Henry VII himself, when he promoted him to the duchy of Bedford. But Jasper was childless, while his wife was well provided for in her own right as dowager duchess of Buckingham.
This left the way clear for an act of parliament of 1495 which, in effect, made Henry his great-uncle Bedford’s heir: providing that, after his death, Bedford’s lands were to pass to Henry, duke of York ‘for the maintenance, supportation, relief and sustaining’ of his honours and offices. Despite his nonage, the act gave Henry power to grant leases and offices. But the grants required the agreement and signature of the king, the duke’s chancellor and three of his other councillors. In practice, the king seems to have kept the management of the duke’s estates very much in his own hands. Henry VII also protected the longer-term interests of the crown by stipulating that, if Henry became heir apparent by the death of his brother Arthur, ‘which God forbid’, Bedford’s lands were to revert directly to the crown.1
As Bedford died on 21 December 1495, the day that parliament was dissolved, the act t
ook immediate effect. In addition, Henry VII intended to add to his second son’s lands by purchase. Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor, who died in 1496, had no children. Even before his death it looks as though the king was angling to obtain his lands. Five years later, in 1501, Henry VII agreed to pay Lord Grey’s executors £1,000 for the castle of Codnor and other lands for the use of his second son, Henry. Codnor, in Derbyshire, is remote, and forty years later the castle was described as ‘all ruinous’. But at the time it looks as though it was intended to become an outpost of Henry’s dukedom.2
* * *
Estates on this scale were sufficient to maintain a substantial establishment. The figures in Kate Mertz’s The English Noble Household, 1250–1600 suggest that a lord with an income of about £1,000 a year would spend about £600 on his household. This tallies well with the fact that Henry VII assigned 1,000 marks (£666.13s.4d) ‘for the expenses of the household of our right dear and right well beloved son the duke of York’. The sum actually spent was usually a few pounds higher, and the difference was made up in arrears by annual payments from the exchequer and chamber. Expenditure at this level would support, again according to Mertz, a household of about fifty.3
We know the names of only a few. As usual, the financial staff are best documented. The receiver of Henry’s lands was John Heron, who was also treasurer of the chamber. In his capacity as Henry’s receiver, he was paid a fee of £10 from about 1497, though he did not obtain a patent formally granting him the office and fee until 1503. William Fisher was treasurer of Henry’s household in 1496, but he had been replaced by John Reading within a year. Reading received a commission to purvey, that is, obtain at preferential prices, victuals for the duke’s household in 1498. Other casual references give the names of one of Henry’s chaplains and of a couple of servants without specified duties. Finally there is mention of ‘the duke of York’s schoolmaster’, to whom the king gave a reward of £2 in 1502.4