29 Muller, ‘Letters’, pp.185–6.
30 Wriothesley, Vol. I, p.156.
31 50 metric tons.
32 The English Admiral Lord Lisle had 160 ships and 12,000 men at sea.
33 The accidental firing of a gun on board ignited a firkin of gunpowder, killing three sailors instantly, burning four others who later died, while another drowned after he jumped into the river. See Wriothesley, Vol. I, p.157.
34 LP, Vol. XX, pt.i, p.7
35 LP, Vol. XX, pt.i, p.516.
36 2,000 French soldiers did arrive in Scotland.
37 LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, p.104.
38 LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, p.106.
39 LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, p.109. These incidents may figure in a letter, dated 23 June, from the Bishop of Ajaccio in Caen, in which he reports that the Chevalier de’Ans, ‘captain of the galleys which have been made here, was lately at anchor off Boulogne when six English ships, aided by the tide, came upon him so unexpectedly that he was forced to cut his cables with great difficulty’. See LP, Vol. XX, pt.i, p.492.
40 They had been alerted of the French approach by English fishermen.
41 The ship, technically a four-masted carrack, was the first purpose-built warship and was named after Henry’s sister, then aged thirteen. Laid down at Portsmouth in 1509 with a sister ship, the Peter Pomegranate, she fought against the French off Brest in 1512. The Mary Rose was refitted in 1536 to carry a greater load of ordnance and so increase firepower. After her loss, two Venetian sailors were immediately hired to salvage the ship but the unsuccessful operation was abandoned about a month after the sinking. The hulk was raised in the autumn of 1982 and is now on display in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, together with a host of recovered artefacts revealing what life and combat were like aboard a Tudor warship.
42 Pollard, p.279.
43 Wriothesley, Vol. I, p.158. The main propulsion method of the French galleys was oars, so they could manoeuvre without the wind. Each galley had a small gun mounted in the bows.
44 New forts were afterwards built at Sandown and Yarmouth to protect against a repeat of the incursion.
45 Hastily gathered forces of English levies and gentlemen drove off the French. At Seaford, the invaders fled to their boats after a skirmish with militia led by a local magnate, Sir Nicholas Pelham (d.1559), whose monument in St Michael’s Church, Lewes, contains this tortuous pun:
What time ye French sought to sack Seaford
This PELHAM did repel ’em back aboard.
46 He was buried in the south choir aisle. The present inscription was carved in 1947–8. Elias Ashmole, in his Antiquities of Berkshire, London, 1719, Vol. III, p.131, reported that the duke’s achievements – his coat of arms, shield, helmet and crest – hung within the fifth arch of the aisle in the seventeenth century. The first inscription over Brandon’s grave had disappeared by 1749 and a second was laid down in 1797 that survived until the latest addition was made. See Bond, p.23.
47 LP, Vol. XX, pt.i, pp.372, 464, 517 and 561, and LP, Vol. XX, pt.ii, pp.130, 168, 243–4, 250, 254, 263, 269–70, 278–9, 292–3, 304–5, 307–8, 331–2, 334, 358 and 431–2.
48 Cited by Ridley, Henry VIII, p. 388.
49 LP, Vol. XX, pt.i, p.372.
50 LP, Vol. XX, pt.ii, p.334.
51 £12,500, or £4.5 million in 2004 spending power.
52 Reiffenberg was last heard of in the defence of Augsburg against the imperial forces in January 1547. See LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.374.
53 LP, Vol. XX, pt.ii, pp.304–5.
54 LP, Vol. XX, pt.i, p.489.
55 Wriothesley, Vol. I, pp.159–60. Each coat cost 4s and each man was paid 2s 6d in ‘conduct money’ to fund the journey to Dover, where they would join the king’s payroll.
56 LP, Vol. XX, pt.i, p.43.
57 Wriothesley, Vol. I, p.156.
58 Wriothesley, Vol. I, p.157. The tempest was so vehement and terrible that the Parisians ‘thought the day of doom had come’.
59 LP, Vol. XX, pt.ii, p.71.
60 Cited by Scarisbrook, p.453. See: F. Dietz, ‘English Public Finance 1485–1558’, University of Illinois Studies in Social Sciences, 9 (1920), p.149.
61 Lehmberg, p.201.
62 LP, Vol. XX, pt.i, pp.44–5.
63 LP, Vol. XX, pt.ii, p.471. Beaton was assassinated by sixteen Scottish Protestant gentlemen on 29 May 1546 at his castle of St Andrew’s.
64 SP, Vol. I, p.840, and LP, Vol. XX, pt.ii, pp.338–9.
65 Cited by Lehmberg, p.232.
66 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.i, p.374.
67 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, pp.462–3.
68 Now called Campagne-les-Guisnes.
69 The Treaty of Ardres was ratified by Francis I at Fontainebleu on 1 August 1546; Francis even styled Henry ‘Defender of the Faith and Supreme Head of the Church of England’. Diplomacy can sometimes mask many differences. See Scarisbrook, pp.463–4.
CHAPTER 5 ‘Anger Short and Sweat Abundant’
1 LP, Vol. XIII, pt.ii, p.317. Under the Treasons Act of 1534, it was high treason ‘maliciously to wish, will, or desire by words or writing’ or to ‘imagine, invent, practise or attempt any bodily harm’ to the king, queen or their heirs apparent. Montague was executed for these words. See Tanner, p.379.
2 Moriarty, p.13.
3 Although recent research has revealed the purchase of a pair of boots for playing football early on in his reign.
4 Kybett, p.22.
5 Moriarty, p.13.
6 Brewer, p.120.
7 MacNalty, p.67. Vicary, who died in 1561, was a member of the Barber’s Company in 1525, becoming master in 1530. He was appointed a governor of St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London in 1548, living in a house provided by that institution, and that year published his Anatomy of the Body of Man. Vicary is seen receiving the charter of the new Barber Surgeons’ Company from Henry in the cartoon by Holbein. See Furdell, p.33.
8 First suggested by the obstetrician A. S. Currie. See his ‘Notes on the Obstetric Histories of Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn’, Edinburgh Medical Journal, 1 (1888), 34pp. The syphilis theory was also propounded by the gynaecologist and surgeon C. MacLaurin in ‘The Tragedy of the Tudors’ in Post Mortems of Mere Mortals, 1930, pp.50–102. He writes of Henry and his court (p.68): ‘The general atmosphere of lust, obscenity, grandiose ideas … and violence combined with cowardice especially about disease, is all very typical of syphilis, one might almost call it diagnostic.’
9 Born 1519. Died in 1536 of tuberculosis, a disease particularly fatal to the Tudors, which also claimed the king’s eldest brother, Prince Arthur, in 1502 and his father, Henry VII, in 1509. Henry’s legitimate son, Edward VI, died in 1553 from a suppurating pulmonary infection and generalised septicaemia with renal failure, although Brewer (p.130) strongly suggests that the cause of death was pulmonary tuberculosis, aggravated by an attack of measles. See Moriarty, p.12, and Loach, Edward VI, pp.160–2.
10 For example, see Brinch.
11 Park, p.36.
12 MacNalty, p.161.
13 A letter from Augustine to the Duke of Norfolk, dated Ghent, 3 June 1531, reporting several audiences with Charles V and the discussions about religion at the English court, is in BL Cotton MS Galba, B x, fol.8.
14 MacNalty, p.161.
15 Brewer, p.129.
16 LP, Vol. XII, pt.ii, p.27. Henry was explaining his reasons for postponing a visit to the restive North of England after the Pilgrimage of Grace had been brutally put down.
17 3 Henry VIII cap.11. See Bloom and James, p.1.
18 BL Sloane MS 1,047, a book containing 230 prescriptions in ninety-four pages, including contributions by Drs Chambre, Butts, Cromer and Augustine. See Blaxland Stubbs, ‘Royal Recipes for Plasters, Ointments and other Medicants’, Chemist & Druggist, 114 (1931), pp.792–4.
19 A brown-flowered plant of the genus Sanguisorba or Poterium.
20 A feathery-leaved herb, Chrysanthemum parthenium.
21 An evergreen shrubby plant, Ruta graveol
ens, used in herbal medicine as a cure for coughs, colic and flatulence. It is strongly anti-spasmodic and stimulating.
22 Juice or resin of the dragon tree, Dracaena draco.
23 A vessel holding two quarts or four pints of liquid.
24 ‘Medicine for the pestilence of King Henry VIII which has helped diverse persons.’ Ellis, ‘History’, Vol. I, p.292.
25 See MacNalty, p.126.
26 Roberts, p.221.
27 Copeman, p.117.
28 32 Henry VIII cap.42.
29 Copeman, p.131.
30 Copeman, p.148.
31 Copeman, p.149.
32 Furdell, p.24. His accepted biography is William Osler’s Thomas Linacre, Cambridge, 1908.
33 Dugdale, p.56.
34 Furdell, p.25.
35 He was sent to the Tower in April 1534, but his crime is not known. His imprisonment may have been a result of his sympathies with Catherine of Aragon and Princess Mary. He retained friends in high places, however. Sir William Paulet, then Comptroller of the Household, wrote to Cromwell a few weeks later seeking Augustine’s release: ‘Be good to Mr Augustine that he may be relieved of his charge.’ See Hammond, p. 234.
36 LP, Vol. XII, pt.ii, p.340.
37 The Lord Privy Seal was now Sir William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton, appointed in June 1540 in succession to Cromwell.
38 LP Spanish, Vol. VI, pt.i, p.285.
39 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, pp.285–6.
40 For a detailed account of Augustine’s mysterious life, see Hammond, pp.215–49, who suggests that permission was sought for Augustine to carry weapons with which to defend himself in Venice.
41 Butts’ tomb was an altar monument made from Purbeck marble close against the south wall of the chancel of Fulham Church, with a effigy in brass on top and his arms – azure, three lozenges gules on a chevron or between three etoils or – and a scroll inscribed: ‘Mine Advantage.’ The inscription was three elegiac Latin verses written by Sir John Cheke, tutor to Prince Edward. The lost brass is engraved in Faulkner, p.78, and the inscription transcribed in BL Redgrave Hall Papers 40,061, fol.8. A small alabaster and black marble tablet was erected in the north aisle of the church in 1627 by a descendant, Leonard Butts.
42 CPR, Philip & Mary, Vol. IV, pp.450–1. Wendy’s funeral in Cambridge on 27 May 1560 was a grand affair, recorded by the merchant tailor and undertaker Henry Machyn, with ‘a great dole’ provided for the poor: ‘500 people had great plenty of meat and drink … Great store has been seen for a middle-rank gentleman and a great moan made.’ Machyn, pp.235–6.
43 His inscription fulfilled the Protestant requirement for just factual information: ‘Here lieth/THOMAS WENDYE Doctor in Phesicke/and was buried the xxvij daye of Maye 1560.’ See Munk, Vol. I, p.50.
44 Munk, Vol. 1, p.37.
45 MacNalty, p.149.
46 Cited by Weir, p.457 and Furdell, p.28.
47 He died in 1556 and was buried in St Michael, Bassishaw, Basinghall Ward, London, where his epitaph, now lost, read:
In surgery brought up in youth
A knight here lieth dead
A knight and also a surgeon such
As England seld[om] hath bred
For which so sovereign gift of God
Wherein he did excel
King Henry VIII called him to court
Who loved him dearly well.
48 MacNalty, pp.69–70.
49 Henry had grown a beard a number of times during his reign: Catherine of Aragon persuaded him to shave it off, and the golden beard familiar from his portraits appeared only after 1535 when he ordered his courtiers to grow whiskers and cut their hair short.
50 Furdell, p.35.
51 Furdell, p.30.
52 LP, Vol. X, p.71. The writer Chapuys pondered whether he should ask destiny for ‘what greater misfortune’ was reserved for Henry ‘like the other tyrant who escaped from the fall of the house in which all the rest were smothered and soon after died’.
53 Scarisbrook, p.485, suggests that the headaches may have been due to persistent catarrh.
54 Park, p.44.
55 LP, Vol. XII, pt.i, p.486.
56 LP, Vol. XIII, pt.i, p.368.
57 LP, Vol. XIII, pt.ii, p.313.
58 ‘Lisle Letters’, Vol. V, p.1415. This demonstrates Henry’s adherence to Catholic liturgy: ‘On Holy Thursday, his Grace went [on] procession about the Court at Westminster. And the high altar in the chapel [Royal] was [decorated] with all the apostles and [there was] mass by note and the organs playing with as much honour to God [as] might be devised to be done. Upon Good Friday last, the King’s grace crept to the cross from the chapel door upward, devoutly, and so served the priest to mass that same day, his own person kneeling on his grace[’s] knees.’
59 Boned and pressed white meat, served cold in aspic.
60 Cited by Neville Williams, p.186.
61 Copeman, pp.156–7. Potatoes were not eaten in England until the vegetable was introduced from the West Indies by Hawkins in 1564.
62 Portulaca oleracea.
63 See Kybett, pp.19–25.
64 LP, Vol. XIV, pt.ii, p.45. 12 September 1539, ‘between 10 and 11 am’.
65 Faced with the prospect of the thrill of the chase, Henry sometimes woke up at four o’clock in the morning to go hunting.
66 LP, Vol. XVI, p.284. 3 March 1541.
67 Ibid.
68 Ibid.
69 LP, Vol. XVI, p.285.
70 Now in Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery, the Museo Thyssen, Madrid, and elsewhere.
71 The Walker Art Gallery portrait, by Hans Holbein the Younger, was painted when the king was forty-six and was probably derived, like the portrait at Petworth House, Sussex, from the mural painted in the Palace of Westminster. Holbein employed considerable artistic licence to create an imposing figure: by lengthening the figure’s legs, for example, he created a slimmer image.
72 LP, Vol. X, p.117.
73 An oil on panel painted by an unknown artist. National Portrait Gallery 496. Now on display at Montacute House, Somerset. Other versions are at Castle Howard, Yorkshire, St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, and Hever Castle, Kent.
74 MacNalty, p.126.
75 Printed and published in London, 1608. Armin is listed amongst the actors in the Folio Edition of Shakespeare’s plays. He was a comic player, probably performing the roles of Touchstone in As You Like It, Feste in Twelfth Night and the Fool in King Lear.
76 The source for this is a reference in the Revd James Granger’s Biographical History of 1779. Fermer gained some influence at court as a result and was appointed Sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire in 1532–3. However, he incurred royal displeasure in 1540 for his determination to comfort his former chaplain and confessor, Nicholas Thayne, then a close prisoner in Buckingham Gaol for denying the king’s religious supremacy, although nothing was proved except Fermer’s provision of a paltry 8d and several clean shirts. Fermer was briefly jailed in the Marshalsea Prison, Southwark, and his extensive estates were confiscated for the king’s use (his lands are listed in BL Royal MS Appendix 89, fol.158) but he recovered them after Henry’s death in 1549, possibly after an intervention by Somers with Edward VI. See Robert Hutchinson and Bryan Egan, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, 16 (1999), pp.247–8, and NA E 318, Court of Augmentations, Particular of Grants, Edward VI.
77 The Protestant John Bale takes Somers’ name in vain in an attack on an unreformed priest who performed a service ‘with no small strutting and stammering, turning his arse to the people after the old popish manner … More apish toys and gawdy feats [were showed] at the communion. He turned and tossed, lurked and licked, snored and snorted, gaped and gasped, kneeled and knocked … with both his thumbs at his ears and other tricks more that he made me twenty times to remember Will Somer[s]’. Nichols, ‘Narratives’, p.318.
78 Doran, p.137.
79 Ibid.
80 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.401. The ferryman was paid at the rate of 1d per hors
e. The accounts were marked ‘1546’ but probably refer to the previous year, as they also talk of Henry moving from Westminster to Hampton Court. The king remained at Westminster for Christmas 1546.
81 BL Royal MS 2A xvi, fol.63b.
82 He is mentioned in the household accounts as ‘orator in the French tongue’ in 1540–1.
83 BL Royal MS 2A xvi, fol.3, illustrating Psalm 1.
84 Cited by Weir, p.483.
85 LP, Vol. VIII, pp.366–7.
86 Now in the Royal Collection.
87 Queen Katherine Parr provided three geese and hens for Jane to look after in the Privy Garden. See Southworth, p.103. A skin infection contracted in 1543 necessitated a barber shaving her hair every month. Another school of thought believes the figure is ‘Mistress Jak’, Edward’s wet nurse, but given the iconography of the picture, this seems unlikely.
88 A picture of Henry painted towards the end of his life, showing him wearing a jewelled cap and holding a staff in his right hand, with his three children and Will Somers in the background, was in the possession of the Earl of Bessborough in 1800. See Nichols, ‘Literary Remains’, Vol. I, p.cccliii.
89 LP Addenda, Vol. I, pt.ii, p.618.
90 It was a healing power believed to be possessed by later Tudor and Stuart monarchs as well, acquired from God through the holy oil used to anoint kings and queens at their coronations.
91 Starkey, ‘Inventory’, p.75, item 2524.
92 A small upholstered area.
93 NA E 315/160, fol.133v. Virtually the same descriptions appear in the inventory of Henry’s goods made after his death. They were listed under ‘Refuse Stuff at Westminster in the charge of James Ruffoth’. See Starkey, ‘Inventory’, p.263.
94 She was the daughter of Norfolk’s steward at Kenninghall. When the duke separated from his wife during Lent 1534 to live with his mistress, Bess, the duchess moved to Redbourne, Hertfordshire, constantly complaining about her husband’s behaviour. On 24 October 1537, she wrote: ‘I have been his wife twenty-five years and borne him five children and because I would suffer the bawd and the harlots that bound me to be still in the house, they pinnacled [manacled] me and sat on my breast till I spat blood, all for speaking against the woman in the court, Bess Holland. It is four years come Tuesday in Passion week since he came riding all night and locked me up in a chamber and took away my jewels and apparel and left me with but £50 a quarter … to keep twenty persons in a hard country.’ On another occasion she wrote: ‘I reckon if I come home I shall be poisoned.’ See LP, Vol. XII, pt.ii, p.342. Her complaints about ‘hard usage’ by Norfolk are contained in a letter to his enemy, Cromwell, in BL Cotton MS Titus B i, fol.388.
The Last Days of Henry VIII Page 31