by Linda Simon
When Henry died, a great part of Margaret Beaufort died. She watched his body laid in a black velvet-lined coffin, marked by a white satin cross from end to end. She watched as the body was transported to Westminster Abbey and laid in the vault Henry had commissioned. She heard the heavy doors shut and saw the king’s heralds strip off their tabards, hang them on the rails of the hearse, and exclaim in French, “The noble King Henry VII is dead!” Then they put on their tabards, and their cry resounded in Margaret’s ears: “Vive le noble Roy Henry VIII!”
For the sixth time, Margaret witnessed the rise of a new king in England. This king, like the last, was of her own blood, a Tudor. She had seen him born and had watched over him as he grew into a tall, broad-shouldered, strong youth. But she did not feel the deep affinity with her grandson that she had with her son. This young king seemed to grow apart from her as he grew up. He was completely unlike the quiet, well-mannered, docile Arthur. He seemed to have inherited little from his father, a man all admitted was “sobre, moderate, honest, affable, courteous,” and temperate in all things. At times she was in awe of the young Henry, at times frustrated by her inability to bring him close to her.
The king lived, but it was not the king to whom she could give her whole heart. Her great love, her only joy, was gone. She turned obsessively to religion, hardly appearing in public except at the coronation of Henry VIII.
XII - The Legacy
DESPITE THE PAIN of arthritis and the fatigue of illness, Margaret Beaufort devoted her final years entirely to religious causes. She was informed that in a certain convent the prioress and nuns were incontinent and living a dissolute life. She had them expelled, and converted the convent into a college for one master and six fellows, with however many scholars could be accommodated at any one time. The scholars were to be instructed in grammar and were required to pray daily for the king, his family, his ancestors, and his heirs.
The founding of such chantries was common among the nobility, who, for the price of an endowment, could have their souls prayed for eternally: effusive prayer was believed to shorten one’s time in purgatory. Among Margaret’s founded chantries were those at Collegiate Church in Wymbourn, in Salisbury, and at the University of Cambridge.
Margaret’s concern for her mortality extended beyond the chantries to the making of her will, in June 1508. She provided that more than £133 be distributed among the poor, that £200 be set aside for funeral clothes, that her twelve poor men and women at Hatfield be maintained at her cost for the rest of their lives, that her servants be fairly rewarded, and, most important to her, that a new college be founded at Cambridge, to be called St. John’s. The college would be established by the conversion of the Hospital of St. John, a task that Margaret assigned to John Fisher. “Forsooth … it was sore laborious and painful unto me that many times I was right sorry that ever I took that business upon me,” Fisher wrote fourteen years later.
Besides the arduous task, Margaret left Fisher a pair of gilt pots, engraved with marguerites and the Beaufort portcullis, and a small cellar of gold, decorated with a chevron design and encrusted with pearls and a sapphire. Her aides were bequeathed various items of furnishings; one was given a volume of poetry by John Gower; another, a cup of gold.
To her son, alive when the will was written, she left five “of my best cuppes of gold with their covers”[158] and four books: a French book that began with the Book of Genesis and included “diverse stories,” the second volume of Froissart’s chronicles, a volume by one John Bokas, and “a grette volume of velom of the siege of Troye yn Englissh.”[159] Her granddaughter Mary was to be given a girdle of gold with twenty-nine links and a large pomander at the end.
To her grandson Henry, she knew she was leaving the most precious and at the same time most onerous bequest: the kingdom of England. In June 1509, when she knew she was dying, Margaret called Henry to her bedside and begged him to accede to her last request. She urged him to obey John Fisher in all things, to heed his counsel and depend on his wisdom, to remember, too, her own teachings and the example of his father in conducting himself as king. She exhorted him to treat with reverence the Tudor legacy. Perhaps, when she died on June 29, 1509, she believed his hasty promises.
Henry VIII, now in early manhood, was as unlike his grandmother and father as anyone could be. “In the eighth Henry such beauty of mind and body is combined as to surprise and astonish,” wrote Ludovico Falieri, the Venetian ambassador. “Grand stature, suited to his exalted position, showing the superiority of mind and character; a face like an angel’s so fair it is … He is accomplished in every manly exercise, sits his horse well, tilts with his lance, throws the quoit, shoots with his bow excellent well; he is a fine tennis player, and he practises all these gifts with the greatest industry … He has been a student from his childhood; he knows literature, philosophy, and theology; speaks and writes Spanish, French, and Italian, besides Latin and English …”[160] Henry was grand in stature and flamboyant in dress. In imitation of the king of France, he decided to let his beard grow, and the shimmering red-gold whiskers gave him a special distinction in his land of clean-shaven men.
He soon grew impatient with the righteous, virtuous, diligent Bishop Fisher. Instead, he took as his aide and confidant his father’s chaplain, Thomas Wolsey. First bishop of Lincoln, Wolsey became archbishop of York, then abbot of St. Albans. Unlike Fisher, he coveted not only power but wealth. The king became closely allied with another prelate, James Stanley, Margaret’s stepson and bishop of Ely. Despite his kinship with Margaret, James Stanley contradicted all that his stepmother had believed in.
Stanley had been a poor scholar from boyhood, much to the dismay of his father and stepmother. Still, plans were made to train him for the clergy — if only he could become minimally literate. He was incorrigibly lazy, however, and no progress was made in his education in England. The family decided to send him to Paris, where he was instructed to seek out Erasmus and become his pupil. No doubt his parents believed that some inspiration from the famous scholar might spur the mind of the indolent James. But Erasmus refused to teach him, convinced that he could never bring credit to his master’s name, and James returned to England older but otherwise unchanged.
Through his stepmother’s ecclesiastical influence, he was ordained and eventually promoted to the see of Ely. Bishop Morton’s seat was thereby stained by the infamous James Stanley, whose licentious behavior scandalized the town and its environs even as far as London.
As the foremost executor of Margaret’s will, John Fisher was forced to confront both Wolsey and Stanley when he attempted to establish St. John’s College. Henry VIII’s representative, Wolsey, was opposed to the establishment of the college because it diverted funds from the king’s future inheritance. Stanley, like Wolsey, had no sympathy for the projected conversion of the Hospital of St. John, located within Ely and therefore under his jurisdiction. For no reason other than subbornness, Stanley refused to allow the hospital to be touched.
Though it would seem that the executors of Margaret’s will might have exerted a certain strength and influence, not all were actively involved in their legal duties. Thomas Lovell, a man in high favor with the king, was a busy politician whose interest was in issues he considered much grander and potentially more lucrative. In addition, he was executor of the will of Henry VII, to his mind a weightier responsibility. Richard Fox, though he was a friend of Fisher’s, was also a close friend of Wolsey’s. He too had been educated at Oxford, as had most of the influential men of the period, and his sympathies lay there. Hugh Ashton, though he later became more active in Cambridge, was not a prime mover in the execution of Margaret’s will. Only Henry Hornby was a strong supporter of Margaret’s plan, and his influence was much below that of John Fisher’s.
In all ways, Fisher stood alone. Many believed he faced the impossible, but for seven years he did not give up hope of realizing Margaret’s dream. At first he won a great triumph when a papal bull was obtained that di
ssolved the hospital. This usurpation of Stanley’s power was seen as a moral victory, and Fisher believed his task could proceed. But Wolsey, in the name of the king, still mightily opposed Fisher’s efforts. The executors were forced to prove the will at the Court of Chancery and the Court of Arches. Initially they won their right to proceed with the execution of the will, yet Wolsey persisted, and it was clear to Fisher that a second suit would be lost. He abandoned his claim to the hospital, but not his determination to establish a college in Margaret’s name.
Though no one knew then where the money came from, he somehow found revenues and appropriated three religious houses — the Hospital of Ospringe in Kent, the nunnery of Higham, with its three dissolute nuns, and the nunnery of Bromehall. In 1516 St. John’s College opened. In his preamble to the statutes, Fisher finally revealed his source of funds: “The noble princess, Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond, the foundress of this college, in her great condescension had a great desire to procure me a richer bishopric. But when she saw that her approaching death would frustrate this desire, she left me no small sum of money to use for my own purposes, which I mention lest anyone think that I have made this large endowment with other people’s money.”[161]
A portrait of Margaret Beaufort was hung in the college. She wears black, like the habit of a nun, with a wimple of white linen over her chin and neck. With her hands in prayer, she kneels before a desk on which lies an open book resting on a scarf of cloth of gold. A canopy of cloth of gold, with a red rose in the center, extends over her head. The arms of France and England appear at the back, with a ducal coronet flanked by an eagle on one side, a tiger on the other, and the Beaufort portcullis beneath.
Later, when Fisher was declared a founder of the college, he replied that he had acted only as Lady Margaret’s servant, that he was only fulfilling his duty. She, for her part, had hoped that the youth who passed through the college would then go out and spread the word of God throughout England “with abundant fruit.”
The statutes for the college were almost identical with those that Margaret had approved for Christ’s College. Theology was of foremost importance, but the humanities were sanctioned: the scholars must not “turn aside to any Faculty other than Philosophy [which included the arts] and Theology.”[162] The students must devote themselves to “the worship of God, the increase of the faith, and probity of morals.”[163] They were expected to be serious and diligent. They could not have dogs or fly falcons for sport; they could play at dice or cards only during Christmas and only if they were fellows, not lowerclassmen. Hunting and hawking could be indulged in, but only outside the confines of the university.
Fisher was concerned that St. John’s did not have the continuing interest of a rich benefactor, as had Christ’s College. Because the school sorely needed appointments and books, he donated his own considerable library and the hangings, furnishings, and even the plate and drinking vessels from his apartments. These were legally owned by the college during Fisher’s lifetime, but by a special indenture Fisher was given use of his belongings during the remainder of his life.
Fisher lived continuously with the memory of Margaret Beaufort. One month after her death, Fisher offered the traditional “mornynge remembraunce,” which attests to his love for her and to her singular personality.
She was bounteous & lyberall to every persone of her knowledge or aquayntaunce. Averyce and covetyse she moost hated. And sorowed it ful moche in al persones, But especyally in ony that belonged unto her. She was also of singular easynes to be spoken unto, & full curtayse answere she wolde make to all that came unto her. Of mervayllous gentylnesse she was unto all folkes, but specyally unto her owne, whom she trusted and loved ryghte tenderly. Unkynde she wolde not be unto no creature, ne forgetefull of ony kyndes or servyce done to her before, whiche is no lytel parte of veray noblenes. She was not vengeable, ne cruell, but redy a none to forgete and to forgyve injuries done unto her at the leest desyre or mocyon made unto her for the same. Mercyfull also & pyteous she was unto suche as was grevyd & wrongfully troubled And to them that were in puverty or sekenes or ony other myserye.[164]
Margaret Beaufort’s wonderful gentleness, her piety, her kindness were not inherited by her grandson. Henry had grown corpulent in the first twenty years of his reign, and his ego seemed to burgeon proportionately. He styled himself “His Majesty,” as did the emperors of Europe, and in foreign and domestic policy was impetuous and imperious. Fisher, with his unflagging sense of righteousness, was bound to conflict with his king’s self-styled morality.
After some five years of marriage, Henry became bored with his twenty-nine-year-old wife and took his first lover, Elizabeth Bloundt, a lady in waiting to Catherine. The liaison lasted at least five years.
Elizabeth was not to keep her lover’s affections. In 1521, Henry became enamoured of Mary Boleyn, recently married to William Carey, and the daughter of one of Henry’s counselors. Mary did not allow her husband to stand in the way of her relationship with the king, nor did Carey presume to interfere. This affair also seems to have lasted some five years. By then, Henry had taken a strong liking to Mary’s younger sister, Anne.
Despite his dalliances, Henry did not absent himself from his wife’s bed, probably more from a desire to produce a legitimate male heir than from a desire for Catherine. In February 1516, Catherine had given birth to a daughter, Mary, who fared better than her other offspring. But though Mary was legally able to inherit the crown, Henry could not invest his hopes in a female, believing that the Tudor claim to the throne was not secure enough to enable a woman to succeed as ruler. There would be dissension; there might even be a civil war if that unprecedented act occurred.
In the fall of 1517 Catherine miscarried. In the fall of 1518 another infant was stillborn. Despite the efforts of her husband, she did not become pregnant again, and by 1527, when she was forty-two, it seemed unlikely that she would provide a male heir for Henry.
Catherine of Aragon had grown matronly. The plump young woman was now stout, her auburn hair had lost its luster, the succession of pregnancies had made her pale and appear older than her years. She gave herself over to religion and attempted to live a life that Falieri, the Venetian ambassador, described simply as “very good.”[165]
She could not compete for Henry’s affections against the young and vibrant Anne Boleyn, dark-haired, strong-willed, and totally captivating to the king. Like Elizabeth Woodville before her, Anne refused to become a king’s mistress. She would be his wife — or nothing. He could not have her as he had had her sister. Her refusal made her only more desirable, and by 1527 Henry had decided that he must have her. She would, he was sure, bear him the son he so ardently craved. She would be his queen.
But to have Anne, Henry must rid himself of Catherine, no easy task. The plan, which seemed so simple when he conceived it, grew into one of international complexity and caused the deaths of some of Henry’s loftiest subjects. Catherine would not be calmly set aside, living out her years in a nunnery, as Henry had fatuously imagined. She would be destroyed. Wolsey would be declared guilty of treason; John Fisher would be beheaded, followed by Thomas More. Anne would never have a son, and eventually she too would die by her husband’s command.
But disaster and destruction were not in Henry’s mind in 1527. He was the paragon of virtue and sincerity as he broke the news to his closest confidants: he had been living in a state of sin for eighteen years. He had had no right to marry Catherine. The papal dispensation that permitted his marriage with his brother’s wife had been a fraud. The pope could not contradict the actual holy text, upon which all Church teachings were based. Henry supported his argument on two passages from Leviticus: “Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife: it is thy brother’s nakedness” (18:16), and “If a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless” (20:21). Perhaps, offered Henry, Catherine’s miscarriages, her stillborn sons, her
inability, finally, to conceive were proof of God’s wrath against two sinners.
If Leviticus alone spoke against the peculiar situation of one brother marrying another’s widow, Henry’s case would have been vastly more simple than it was. But opponents to the divorce cited the words of Deuteronomy: “If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband’s brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband’s brother unto her” (25:5). If Henry’s argument was to be based on theology, Deuteronomy would have to be deftly contradicted.
Henry’s court was filled with able theologians, Cardinal Wolsey and Bishop Fisher among them. While Wolsey, predictably, wholeheartedly supported the king’s move to divorce, Fisher, when asked to comment on the theological basis for the dissolution of the marriage, found Henry’s assertions nonsense. He explained that Leviticus referred only to a dead brother’s wife with children, Deuteronomy to a dead brother’s childless wife. Moreover, all general prohibitions have exceptions, Leviticus included, and should not be taken as absolute and inviolable dicta.
Marriage with a dead brother’s wife had been practiced by the Jews, with no detriment to anyone concerned; a man often married his dead wife’s sister, an analogous relationship, without condemnation by religious law or by society. Fisher argued further that many precepts of the Bible were outdated for sixteenth-century society and must be re-evaluated. He conclude that the pope had indeed had the right and the ability to dispense permission for Henry to marry Catherine in 1509, and that the marriage was valid then and valid still in 1527.
Fisher, in his apparent naïveté — or perhaps out of loyalty to Catherine, who respected and admired him — believed that he was preventing the dissolution of a happy union.