The Last Days of Henry VIII

by Hutchinson, Robert

  95 See Robinson, p.26.

  96 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.110.

  97 NA E 315/160, fol.135.

  98 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.325. Slanning was paid on 11 January 1547, receipting the document with her mark.

  99 LP, Vol. XXIII; Addenda, Vol. II, p.610.

  CHAPTER 6 The New Levers of Power

  1 Ordinances of the Royal Household, Society of Antiquaries, London, 1790, p.159.

  2 He died in 1553. His tomb, which re-uses stonework from older monuments, is at Hainton, Lincolnshire. Its iconography clearly reflects Heneage’s adherence to the old faith.

  3 See David Starkey, The King’s Privy Chamber 1485–1547, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1973, and Starkey, The Reign of Henry VIII, pp.109–12.

  4 Thynne Correspondence TH/VOL/II, at Longleat House, Wiltshire, dated Westminster, 8 August 1549. This was a premature report of his death, as an addition to Denny’s will is dated 7 September (written while he was ‘lying sick, but of good mind and memory’). He probably died on 10 September.

  5 Sir Edmund married three times and had eighteen children. Of the sons, only two survived.

  6 His father left him £160 in his will to purchase land and the income from a property in Kent to fund his ‘exhibition and learning’ at Cambridge.

  7 The letter directed the Sheriff to elect Denny – ‘one of our privy chamber’ – as Burgess to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Thomas Alvred. The year is not indicated. See Ipswich Borough Correspondence HD36/A, Suffolk Record Office, Ipswich.

  8 Shakespeare has Denny as one of his characters in his play King Henry the Eighth. During its first performance, on 29 June 1613, the Globe theatre was burnt to the ground.

  9 Another sister, Joyce, first married William Walsingham and was mother to Francis, who would go on to become Elizabeth’s Secretary of State and spymaster. She later married Sir John Carey of Pleshy, Essex.

  10 This handled the exchequer revenues from the Church, including the Oxford and Cambridge colleges, after the break with Rome and following the passing of the Act annexing papal revenues in 1534 (26 Henry VIII cap.3).

  11 The Court of Requests, established in 1483, was a kind of ‘small-claims court’ of the time, intended specifically for legal cases brought by the poor and by women. Its judges were called ‘Masters’.

  12 Sil, p.191.

  13 Ellis, ‘Eminent Men’, p.14. Ascham’s letter to William Cecil, dated 23 March 1553.

  14 Cited by Neville Williams, p.171.

  15 Strype, ‘Cheke’, p.168.

  16 A copy of the painting is in the Courtauld Institute in London.

  17 Holbein also designed the combined clock and table salt given by Denny to Henry as a New Year’s present in 1544, but now sadly lost. Holbein’s clever design in a Renaissance style also included a compass and two sundials. His drawing of the object survives in the British Museum. Holbein died in London in 1543 of the plague.

  18 Martienssen, p.113.

  19 Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. V, p.562.

  20 He was represented by a deputy.

  21 See Robert E. Brook, Early Tudor Courtiers in Society, Illustrated from Select Examples, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1963, pp.271–3.

  22 LP Addenda, Vol. I, pt.ii, pp.588–9.

  23 LP, Vol. XVIII, pt.i, pp.334 and 406.

  24 LP Addenda, Vol. I, pt.ii, p.593.

  25 Three card tables are recorded in the Inventory of Henry’s goods, together with gaming dice and chessboards. See, for example, Starkey, ‘Inventory’, items nos. 2613, 10480, 15842 and 16672.

  26 Sil, p.194.

  27 See Cunich, ‘Revolution and Crisis in English State Finance 1534–47’, and tables.

  28 In 1542, Henry ordered wardrobes full of new clothes such as: ‘A gown of purple satin furred with the sleeves and border set with 130 diamonds and 131 clusters of pearls … set in gold, and in every cluster is four green pearls.’ Then there was a new mantle for Parliament: ‘crimson velvet partly furred with powdered ermine and a cap; three mantles for the order of St George; two of blue velvet, the other of purple velvet, lined.’ And there were precious, sacred objects: ‘An image of Our Lady standing upon an angel, St Edward having an arrow in his hand, weighing 33 ozs; an image of St Peter in gilt standing upon a base of silver and gilt with a book and two keys in his hands, weighing 124 ozs. An image of St Paul standing upon a base with a sword and a book in his hands, weighing 135 ozs.’ And so the purchases went on. See NA PRO 31/17/40.

  29 NA E 315/160, fol.136r.

  30 Master of the Revels at Henry’s court from 1544.

  31 Appointed Treasurer and Master of the Mint in 1546.

  32 NA E 315/160, fol.265v.

  33 For example, the accounts for 1554–5 have ‘ten pair of spectacles at 4d the pair, 3s. 4d’. See LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.400.

  34 See Starkey, The Reign of Henry VIII, p.112.

  35 NA SP 4. Signatures by stamp, Henry VIII, 1545–7, 1 vol.

  36 The dry-stamp system was revived in the last months of Mary’s reign in 1558 when she became too sick to cope with signing the amount of paper laid before her ‘without distress and peril of her body’. In her case, licensees to ink in her signature ‘as surely as [the documents] had been signed with the queen’s own hand’ were John Boxall, Dean of St George’s Chapel, Windsor (her secretary), Anthony Kempe (one of the Gentlemen of her Privy Chamber), Barnard Hampton (a clerk of the Privy Council) and John Clyff (one of the Clerks of Signet). The stamp was to be used in the presence of Mary and any two of her Councillors, which number would include Sir William Petre, who would also authenticate the use of the dry stamp by signing in a special book. See CPR, Philip & Mary, Vol. IV, pp.453–4.

  37 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.i, p.767.

  38 Ibid.

  39 Hall, p.867. Edward had written to the queen on 12 August enquiring in advance about the admiral’s skill in Latin. ‘If he is so skilled, I should rather learn better how to speak with him, when I come into his presence.’ See BL Harleian MS 5,087, no.17.

  40 Nichols, ‘Literary Remains’, Vol. I, p.lxxviii.

  41 Wriothesley, Vol. I, p.173.

  42 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.i, pp.694–5.

  43 Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. V, p.568.

  CHAPTER 7 The Plot to Burn the Queen

  1 Convincingly ascribed to her by James, ‘Devotional Writings’, pp.137–8.

  2 End of the session, with dissolution of Parliament.

  3 LP, Vol. XX, pt.ii, p.513. Petre said that the bill had been ‘driven to the last hour and yet then passed only by division of the House’.

  4 A jibe based on the ancient Jewish sect that strictly adhered to traditional laws and had pretensions to superior sanctity.

  5 Hall, pp.864–6. The chronicler wrote it down ‘word for word as near as I was able to report it’.

  6 Meaning ‘perhaps’.

  7 LP, Vol. XX, pt.ii, pp.513 and 522.

  8 Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. V, p.562.

  9 LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, p.425.

  10 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.i, p.135.

  11 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.i, p.169.

  12 Martienssen, p.210.

  13 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.i, p.271.

  14 NA E 314/22, fol.44.

  15 James, ‘Kateryn Parr’, p.268.

  16 Strype, ‘Ecclesiastic Memorials’, Vol. I, pt.ii, pp.597–8.

  17 APC, Vol. I, 1542–7, p.400.

  18 Ellis, ‘History’, Vol. II, p.176.

  19 Nichols, ‘Narratives’, p.42, fn.

  20 Strype, ‘Ecclesiastic Memorials’, Vol. I, pt.ii, p.599.

  21 According to her nephew, Edward Ascu, in his History Containing the Wars, London, 1607, p.308.

  22 Nichols, ‘Narratives’, p.309.

  23 Anne, second wife of Henry Ratcliffe, Second Earl of Sussex. She separated from her husband between May 1547 and June 1549 and was charged with wanting to marry Sir Edmund Knyvett. She was imprisoned in the Tower in 1552 on charges of sorcery.

  24 Anne Stan
hope, wife of Hertford, afterwards Duchess of Somerset.

  25 Jane Fitzwilliam, third wife of the London Alderman Sir William.

  26 Nichols, ‘Narratives’, p.311.

  27 Nichols, ‘Narratives’., p.304, fn.

  28 Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. V, pp.553 ff.

  29 Ibid.

  30 Cited by Martienssen, p.218.

  31 Strickland, Vol. III, p.246.

  32 Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. V, pp.559–60.

  33 Cited by Martienssen, p.220.

  CHAPTER 8 Protestants Ascendant

  1 Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. VI, p.36.

  2 Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. VI, p.163.

  3 Ponet, Book XLVI, p.78.

  4 Nichols, ‘Narratives’, pp.209–10.

  5 Muller, Stephen Gardiner and Tudor Reaction, p.133.

  6 He may have been a bastard son or brother of Sir Thomas Wyatt. After the defeat of the rebellion, Sir Thomas was executed on 11 April 1554, when the French ambassador reported that people crowded the scaffold to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood. See Anthony Fletcher and Diarmaid MacCulloch, Tudor Rebellions, London, 1997, p.90. There is no record of the fate of Edward Wyatt.

  7 Strickland, Vol. III, p.247.

  8 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.252, and Muller, ‘Letters’, pp.246–7.

  9 Muller, ‘Letters’, p.248.

  10 Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. VI, p.138.

  11 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.173. Letter from the French ambassador Odet de Selve to the Admiral of France, 24 November 1546.

  12 An Act for Murder and Malicious Bloodshed within the Court was passed in 1542 (33 Henry VIII cap. 12), imposing a mandatory punishment of amputation of a hand for drawing blood within the precincts of the court, although noble courtiers were not liable to such penalties if they had merely struck their servants for the purposes of chastisement.

  13 Surrey was called thus in 1539 by Constantine Barlow, Dean of Westbury. See Archaeologia, Vol. XXIII, p.62.

  14 It turned out to be an unconsummated union, probably because of the Duke of Richmond’s contraction of tuberculosis, and he died, aged seventeen, in 1536.

  15 A tennis court.

  16 Poems of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Aldine edn, London, n.d., p.19.

  17 He was to succeed his grandfather as the Fourth Duke of Norfolk on 25 August 1554. He was executed on 2 June 1572 and attainted for his attempt to marry Mary, Queen of Scots.

  18 Poems of Henry Howard, op. cit., pp.xxvii–xxviii.

  19 Poems of Henry Howard, p.xxix.

  20 Son of the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt, who died in 1542. Wyatt the Younger was later the leader of the rebellion in Kent against Mary in 1554.

  21 Poems of Henry Howard, op. cit., p.xxxi, fn.

  22 Poems of Henry Howard, pp.68–9.

  23 Brenan and Statham, Vol. II, p.383.

  24 His squire Thomas Clere saved his life but later died from his wounds, Robinson, p.46. He was buried in the Howard Chapel of St Mary’s Lambeth, Surrey, under a monumental brass depicting him in armour. Surrey wrote a poetical epitaph to him, once displayed on the wall above the slab in the north chapel, now lost:

  At Montreuil gates, hopeless of all recure [recovery]

  Thine Earl, half dead, gave in thy hand his will

  Which cause did thee this pining death procure.

  25 Nott, Vol. I, p.178, fn.1.

  26 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.i, p.16.

  27 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.i, p.175.

  28 Poems of Henry Howard, op. cit., pp.xlv–xlvii.

  29 Ibid.

  30 Robinson, p.47.

  31 Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury, Life and Reign of King Henry VIII, London, 1649, p.562.

  32 ‘Spanish Chronicle’, p.144.

  33 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.277.

  34 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.273.

  35 BL Cotton MS Titus B i, fol.94.

  36 Executed by Henry in 1521 on trumped-up charges of disloyalty.

  37 BL Cotton MS Titus B i, fol.94.

  38 Thomas Darcy, Baron Darcy, who surrendered Pontefract Castle to the rebels during the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536 and who was betrayed by an intercepted letter to one of the rebel leaders. Beheaded for treason 1537.

  39 One of the leaders of the Pilgrimage of Grace who seized Hull but was pardoned. He refused to come to London and was executed in Hull in 1537.

  40 Another rebel in the Pilgrimage of Grace. He was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn as a traitor in 1537. His wife, ‘a very fair creature and beautiful’ according to the herald and chronicler Wriothesley, was burnt at Smithfield in London after being dragged through the streets on a hurdle.

  41 Robert Aske, attorney and fellow of Gray’s Inn who led the Pilgrimage of Grace insurrection in Yorkshire, was hanged in chains in York in 1537 after apparently being pardoned by Henry.

  42 His stepmother Agnes, Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, implicated in the downfall of Queen Katherine Howard.

  43 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, no.554.

  44 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.273. Norfolk was then aged seventy-three and suffered regularly from indigestion and chronic rheumatism, the latter probably not helped by his imprisonment in the dank, damp Tower, fronting the River Thames.

  45 LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, p.533.

  46 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.310.

  47 He was questioning their humanity.

  48 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.313.

  49 ‘Spanish Chronicle’, pp.145–6.

  50 The charges, dated 10 January 1547, in Latin, are contained in the roll NA KB 8/14.

  51 Robinson, p.49.

  52 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.285.

  53 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, pp.284–5.

  54 Knyvett was no friend of Surrey’s. He was threatened with amputation of his right hand as a punishment for striking the earl’s squire, Thomas Clere, and drawing Surrey’s blood on the tennis court at Greenwich in February 1541. He was pardoned as he faced the block and the serjeant surgeon.

  55 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.287.

  56 LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, p.533.

  57 Byrne, pp.422–3.

  58 LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, p.533.

  59 LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, pp.533–4.

  60 Ibid.

  61 BL Harleian MS 297, fol.256. See also Herbert, p.567.

  62 ‘Spanish Chronicle’, p.146.

  63 NA E 101/60/22 contains details of the cash owing on Surrey’s board at the Tower, including attendants, candles, coals and an allowance for hangings and plate in his room, totalling £24. The cost of the new coat ‘against his arraignment’ is also included.

  64 Under 28 Henry VIII cap.7.

  65 Decorated with fleur-de-lis at the terminations of each arm of the cross.

  66 A ‘merlett’ or ‘merlion’ is a heraldic bird. This is an old term for martlet, or swallow, often displayed in arms without legs or feet, in the belief that the bird could not perch on the ground. Edward the Confessor’s arms actually had doves. See J. P. Brooke-Little, Boutell’s Heraldry, London, 1970, p.206.

  67 The label is a heraldic device similar to a riband, with several shorter ribands hanging down, which overlays arms to indicate those of an eldest son.

  68 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.365.

  69 ‘Spanish Chronicle’, p.146, a reference to the merchant’s earlier account of Surrey’s attempted escape.

  70 Probably East Winch, near King’s Lynn, which housed a monument to the Howards that bore the arms of Edward the Confessor. See discussion in Moore.

  71 ‘Spanish Chronicle’, p.147.

  72 A cap of crimson velvet and ermine, generally belonging to a duke but in this sense clearly signifying that part of royal regalia carried before the monarch at coronations.

  73 LP Spanish, Vol. IX, p.4.

  74 ‘Spanish Chronicle’, p.147.

  75 ‘Spanish Chronicle’. p.148.

  76 Surrey’s body was removed to the Howard Chapel in Framlingham Church, Suffolk, in 1614 and reburied there. The monument to him and his wife includes his coronet, which is not worn on the effigy’s head but rath
er laid separately on a cushion by his legs to indicate his attainder. See Robinson, p.52. Construction of the mortuary chapel was begun by his father after 1545 but the work was not completed until a few years later.

  77 ‘Spanish Chronicle’, p.148.

  78 NA E 101/60/22.

  79 BL Harleian MS 5,087, no.31, and LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.360.

  80 BL Cotton MS Nero C x, fol.6. A rough draft in Latin.

  81 BL Harleian MS 5,087, no.32.

  CHAPTER 9 The Mystery of the Royal Will

  1 Byrne, p.418.

  2 LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, p.320.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Cited by Weir, p.495.

  5 LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.52.

  6 LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, p.533.

  7 See: LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, pp.394–9; Matthews, pp.172–3; and Bayles, pp.794–6.

  8 Bayles, p.796.

  9 First suggested by Brewer, pp.123–4.

  10 LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, p.534.

  11 Dale, p.31.

  12 LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, p.535.

  13 Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. VI, p.163.

  14 Burnet describes Thirlby as a ‘learned and modest man’ but ‘of so fickle and cowardly a temper that he turned always with the stream in every change that was made’.

  15 Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. VI, p.163.

  16 LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, p.537.

  17 LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, p.542.

  18 Some accounts say it was Sir Anthony Denny. This seems highly unlikely.

  19 Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. V, pp.691ff., and Burnet, Vol. I, book iii, p.255.

  20 NA E 23/4/1.

  21 About £1,300 in the money of the time, or £324,450 in today’s values.

  22 The bequest is worth around £165,000 in 2004 spending power.

  23 The ‘Poor Knights’ was a charitable foundation created by Edward III for those of his followers captured during the French wars and bankrupted by ransom fees. It exists today as ‘the Military Knights’ and is open to any British army officer under the age of sixty-five. They are still provided with grace and favour accommodation in the lower ward of Windsor Castle and every year take part in the ceremonials of many state occasions. They claim to be the oldest military establishment on the Army List.