Tudor_Passion. Manipulation. Murder. the Story of England's Most Notorious Royal Family

by Leanda de Lisle

  With Mary and Elizabeth now illegitimate, James V of Scots became Henry’s heir under the usual rules of primogeniture and Margaret Douglas followed her half-brother in line of succession.10 It was, however, possible – even probable – that if Margaret were married to an English nobleman her claim would be preferred in England over that of the Scottish James. Significantly, Henry was having it written into a new Act of Succession that if he died without legitimate children, he could appoint his heirs so James V could be excluded, if Henry wished it. Astonishingly on 4 July, when the new Act was ready, it emerged that Henry had chosen not to name an heir. The Act explained that he feared ‘such person that should be so named, might happen to take great heart and courage, and by presumption fall into inobedience and rebellion’. It further stated that anyone who attempted to stake their own claim in preference to any heir he might appoint in the future, would not only be guilty of treason, their heirs would also forfeit any right to the throne. This reflected Henry’s extreme anxiety that he would not be able to pull off what he was now considering, which was to appoint his illegitimate children over the legitimate royal heirs born to his sisters.

  Foreign ambassadors had picked up rumours that Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond would be the leading beneficiary of Henry’s will. Fitzroy’s name had been raised in council at the beginning of June when it was argued that of the king’s three illegitimate children he was, at least, a boy.11 But Fitzroy was terminally ill with ‘a rapid consumption’. This left the way clear for Mary, whose submission – and carefully composed letters to her father – led, seemingly, to her rehabilitation.12 On 6 July, Henry and Jane Seymour visited the princess and gave her 1,000 crowns ‘for her little pleasures’, as well as a diamond.13 Henry also promised that she would soon be restored to a full household and be received at court. Nothing further would be done until he felt she had proved her loyalty; however, Henry still hoped for a son.

  Two days later Henry learned of Margaret Douglas’ betrothal. His daughters, illegitimate and unmarried, would make weak claimants: far weaker than the legitimate Margaret Douglas if she married into the powerful Howard family. Even if Henry had a son, the boy would be vulnerable until he reached adulthood. Henry ordered the couple arrested and taken to the Tower. The twenty-five-year-old Thomas Howard admitted to his interrogators that he had been in love with Margaret Douglas for a year; that they had been betrothed at Easter and that he considered Margaret to be his ‘sweet wife’.14 She described the gifts she had given him. In their youthful naivety they hoped that when the king’s anger had abated their promise of marriage would be recognised. After all, they had not committed any crime under prevailing law. In the Tower, Thomas Howard composed romantic verses describing the pain of seeing ‘her daily whom I love best in great and intolerable sorrows’. Margaret, in turn, celebrated having ‘the faithfullest lover that ever was born’ and kept a couple of Thomas Howard’s servants to wait on her, as a mark of her good faith.15 But they were about to discover just how angry and fearful Henry was.

  On 18 July an Act of Attainder proclaimed it was ‘vehemently suspected and presumed’ (i.e. there was no proof) that Thomas Howard, having been ‘led and seduced by the devil’ had ‘contemptuously and traitorously contracted himself by crafty, fair and flattering words to and with the Lady Margaret Douglas’. His object, it was decreed, was to usurp the throne, trusting people would prefer the English-born Margaret to her half-brother, the King of Scots, ‘to whom this Realm has, nor ever had, any affection’.16 The attainder sped through Parliament and created the law for which Thomas Howard was to be convicted. Marrying into royal blood, or for those of royal blood to marry without the king’s consent, was now treason. On 23 July Chapuys reported that Thomas Howard had been condemned to death and that the twenty-year-old Margaret Douglas was spared only because the marriage had not been consummated.17 There was, in fact, a further reason. The annulment of the marriage of Margaret’s parents had left her legitimacy intact. The attainder nevertheless referred on several occasions to Margaret Douglas as being her mother’s ‘natural [i.e. bastard] daughter’. This was a clear attempt to demote her in the succession, and ensure Henry’s children had the superior claim.18 Henry’s sensitivity on the issue was the more acute because Henry Fitzroy had just died. Anxious to downplay the significance of this Henry had ordered Norfolk – Fitzroy’s father-in-law – to take the body out of London in a closed cart and bury his beloved son without any public ceremony.

  Margaret’s father, Angus, who was living in England on a pension from the king, could or would do nothing to help her. But in August her mother, the dowager Queen of Scots, wrote to Henry crossly observing that she believed her daughter’s betrothal had taken place ‘by your grace’s advice’.19 Queen Margaret could not understand why, therefore, Henry should mind if she ‘should desire or promise such’. If he was angry with her daughter he should, she suggested, return the girl to Scotland forthwith. Instead, Henry sent Cromwell to Margaret Douglas to offer her advice. Margaret believed Cromwell was responsible for the king’s decision not to have her condemned and so she paid close attention to what he had to say. After their meeting she agreed to send away Thomas Howard’s servants and promised she would ensure that no one thought ‘that any fancy remains in me touching him’.20 In November, when Margaret fell ill in the Tower, Henry was sufficiently mollified to permit her to be released into the care of the nuns at nearby Syon Abbey.21 The following month he also allowed parcels to be sent of ‘deep crimson silk’, ‘fringe of silver’ and ‘crimson velvet’ to upholster a suitable chair for her. Henry promised Queen Margaret that her daughter would continue to be well treated provided she remain ‘convenient’.22 But she remained under arrest as Henry now faced a major political crisis provoked by the succession issues, and his associated religious policies.

  Promoting the jurisdiction of the Pope had been made an offence and informers were being encouraged to report anyone suspected of it. People were expected to accept that they would do as well to pray to Christ as to any saint. Purgatory had ceased to exist by name and praying for the dead was endorsed, less as a means of helping souls pay for their sins and go to heaven and more as a matter of ‘custom’. When Owen Tudor’s son, Sir David Owen, had died the previous year, he had left money to be lavished on Masses to be said for his soul, those of his parents, for his half-brothers Edmund and Jasper Tudor, and for his nephew, Henry VII. Already this was largely wasted, as were his other bequests to the church at the priory of Easebourne where he was buried: gold and silver gilt crucifixes, silver bells and candlesticks, fine chalices and Mass books in parchment, paper and vellum, rich fabrics of green damask with red roses, swallows and wolves for altar hangings and vestments. The priory was dissolved, granted in July 1536 to the Treasurer of the Royal Household, Sir William Fitzwilliam.23

  The trigger for the revolt, which began in Lincolnshire on 1 October, was a visitation of the churches by Henry’s church commissioners with instructions against ‘superstitious’ practices concerning the cult of saints. The local people loved their saints and the Henrician regime was now widely regarded as avaricious, sacrilegious, and led by evil men. A nearby Cistercian abbey had recently been closed and the congregation of St James’s in Louth were convinced that their church was about to be stripped of the treasures their ancestors had bequeathed for generations. As they gathered that day for a religious procession behind their valuable processional crosses, a member of the choir called out bitterly, ‘Masters step forth and let us follow the crosses this day. God knows whether we shall follow them again.’ This despairing cry lit the touchpaper; by the end of October rebellion had convulsed northern counties from the river Don in Yorkshire to the Scottish border.

  The scale of the rebellion against Henry VIII had not been seen since the shattering Peasants Revolt of 1381. The most serious uprising, the so-called Pilgrimage of Grace, called for the reversal of religious change and the overthrow of the king’s ‘heretical’ councillors, but
also for the repeal of the ‘statute of illegitimacy’ against Mary and the king’s new power to leave the ‘crown of this realm by will’. Ordinary people, as well as courtiers, were united in seeing the princess Mary as the champion of traditional religion, because, as the legitimate child of her parents’ valid marriage, she embodied resistance to the break with Rome. They also saw her as the king’s rightful heir. Since Henry VII and Henry VIII both drew their royal blood through female lines, people believed the princess could play a similar role, and be married to a suitable nobleman of royal blood. The rebels blamed Cromwell in particular for his role in the recent changes. It was even being said he was behind Thomas Howard’s attainder and wanted to marry the beautiful Margaret Douglas himself: in short, that he aspired to the crown.

  On 16 October rebel nobility, gentry, clergy and commoners entered York under their badge of the five wounds of Christ. On the 19th, Hull capitulated. With over 30,000 people involved the Pilgrims were too powerful to be defeated in battle. Henry bought them off instead with promises of pardons and the answering of grievances. It was a humiliation for the king, but Henry was biding his time to gain revenge. When it emerged in the New Year that Henry would not keep his promises, further unrest followed, but it was fragmented, disorganised and easily defeated. In the spring of 1537 the gentry leaders of the rebellions were brought to London for trial. Over 144 executions followed in the capital, with the beautiful young wife of one rebel burned alive. In the north there were further executions, with Henry demanding that ‘the inhabitants of every town, village, and hamlet that have offended’ should suffer such ‘dreadful’ deaths ‘as they may be a fearful spectacle to all others hereafter’. The Duke of Norfolk chose to keep the numbers of the deaths down; nevertheless six abbots and thirty-eight monks were amongst those executed.

  Henry now saw the monasteries as foci of resistance to the break with Rome, and instead of the programme of reform that he had previously intended, every monastery, large and small, good, bad or indifferent, was to be suppressed. The process took only four years. They had all gone by the end of January 1540, and their works of art, relics and libraries were either pillaged or destroyed. Out of 600 books in the library of Worcester Priory, only six remain. Three volumes survived the destruction of the Augustinian friars of York out of a total of 646. Amongst the greatest losses were many unique manuscript books of English church music.

  Some of the empty buildings were converted into houses for new owners (including Easebourne Priory) and a few monastic churches continued as cathedrals or were bought by a parish to serve as their local church. Amongst them is Tewkesbury Abbey, bought for £453, the value of the bells and lead roof that otherwise would have been salvaged for the king. A brass plaque in the choir today commemorates Prince Edward of Lancaster, the son of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou, who is buried there. For the most part, however, all that was left of the monasteries by the end of the Tudor period were Shakespeare’s ‘bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang’.

  Most monks and nuns were retired with a pension, although the remaining Carthusians from the London Charterhouse were not to be so lucky. There were to be no trials or public executions, which might stir up further unrest. They were simply taken to Newgate that May, chained to wooden posts in their cells and left in their own filth to die of starvation. Henry did not give them much thought. On 27 May 1537, two days before the monks were taken to Newgate, the great hymn of thanks, the ‘Te Deum’, was sung at St Paul’s Cathedral ‘for joy at the queen’s quickening with child’. After all the years of disappointment, the king was to have a son at last.

  24

  THREE WIVES

  THE CHRISTENING OF THE KING’S SON EDWARD AT HAMPTON COURT on 15 October 1537 was a subdued affair. There was an outbreak of plague in the London suburbs, and guests who had stayed recently in those areas had been asked to stay away. Edward’s half-sisters Elizabeth and Mary were there, however. The four-year-old Elizabeth was carried in a courtier’s arms, clutching the chrism cloth which was to be laid on his head during the baptism, while Mary made a happy godmother. She was relieved that the burden of being the king’s ‘true’ heir was taken from her, and those of all religious persuasions rejoiced with her that England now had a legitimate prince.

  A few days later the prince’s mother, Jane Seymour, haemorrhaged in her rooms. She died on 24 October, to Henry’s great sadness. It was said she had once angered Henry by begging him to save the monasteries. If the story is true it was a rare foot wrong. Her motto, ‘Bound to Obey and Serve’, expressed a similar understanding of Henry’s psychological needs to that Katherine of Aragon had possessed as a young wife. Jane Seymour had been an intelligent and astute woman and came from what would prove a clever – if not always astute – family. For over a year Jane had shared Henry’s bed, hunted with him and ridden in royal processions, she had been kind to his daughters Mary and Elizabeth, and at Christmas her pale, placid face had been ever present at the court celebrations and ceremonies. Writing to King Francis of the birth of their son, Henry confessed that ‘Divine Providence has mingled my joy with the bitterness of the death of her who brought me this happiness.’ She was to be the only one of his wives to be honoured with a state funeral.

  Jane’s stepdaughter Mary acted as chief mourner that November, riding solemnly behind the chariot that bore Jane’s coffin in procession to Windsor. Behind Mary, in the first of the chariots bearing the great ladies of the court, sat her cousin, Frances Brandon, the twenty-year-old elder daughter of the late French queen. Named after King Francis, she was married to Harry Grey, Marquess of Dorset, a ‘young, lusty’ nobleman ‘of great possessions’, who was a descendant of Katherine Woodville’s first marriage to a Lancastrian knight.1 The couple had a baby daughter, aged about six months, who they had named Lady Jane Grey after the queen. And although no one could have guessed it, little Jane Grey was destined also to be a queen.2 Lady Margaret Douglas, who had been freed from arrest earlier that month, should have been sharing her cousin Frances’ carriage, but she was absent from the funeral.3 Her lover, Thomas Howard, had died ‘of an ague’ in the Tower and she had taken the news ‘very heavily’.4 Her last entry in her collection of poetry expressed the hope she would soon be with ‘him that I have caused to die’.5 Clearly she was in no fit state to appear in public just yet, let alone to consider why Henry had chosen to bury Jane at Windsor and not the Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey. But it was to prove a highly significant decision – for it was at Windsor that Henry also intended to be buried.

  Henry had stopped work on his tomb in the Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace the previous year.6 The old divisions of the Wars of the Roses were being replaced by religious strife, but faced with the evidence of the turmoil he had created, Henry remembered the promise of the union rose – of national healing – and associated it with himself. He would be buried in St George’s Chapel at Windsor because it was there that his Lancastrian great-uncle, Henry VI, and his Yorkist grandfather Edward IV were buried. The name chosen for his son should be seen in this context. The boy had been born on the eve of the Feast of Edward the Confessor after whom it is often claimed he was named. But Henry showed little attachment to this royal saint, whose shrine at Westminster he stripped of its valuables. Rather, he was doing what his father had never done: honouring his mother’s family.

  The evidence of a psychological break with his father is still more evident in the fresco Henry now commissioned from Hans Holbein. When completed it covered most of one wall at Whitehall (formerly Wolsey’s York Place). It was a family portrait, but one that boasted how much better Henry VIII had done than his father. At the centre of the fresco was an enormous altar. Above were the slight figures of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Below, to the left of the altar was Jane Seymour, the mother of the prince, and to the right the much larger figure of Henry VIII standing astride, his oversized codpiece thrust forward, ‘so majestic in his splendo
ur, [and] so lifelike that the spectator felt abashed, annihilated in his presence’, one viewer commented.7 The Latin inscription on the altar asked who was the greatest, Henry VII or Henry VIII? ‘The former often overcame his enemies and the fires of his country and finally gave peace to its citizens’; but ‘the son, born indeed for greater tasks, drives the unworthy from the altars and brings in men of integrity. The presumption of popes has yielded to unerring virtue and with Henry VIII bearing the sceptre in his hand, religion has been restored.’8

  Although Henry wished for further sons he was in no hurry to remarry. His priority was to build on this claim to greatness. Henry was now determined to forge a new religious unity within a reformed English Catholic church that was humanist, Christo-centric, anti-papal and biblical. Where Henry VII had commissioned a silver gilt image of himself in the shrine of Thomas Becket, and another at the famous shrine to the Virgin at Walsingham, Henry VIII had the tomb of Thomas Becket fired out of cannons and the towers of Walsingham with their ‘golden, glittering tops’ were levelled to the ground.9 Yet Henry was ready to create as well as destroy, commissioning a new Bible in English by Miles Coverdale. It was to have an image of Henry at the top of the page, as the Vicar of Christ, handing the Word of God to Cranmer and Cromwell, who would in turn pass it on to his subjects. There were concerns an English Bible would encourage heresy with individuals interpreting what they had read in their own way, but Henry was prepared to police the beliefs of his subjects personally.