by David Field
The death, at the tender age of fifteen months, of the third royal prince, Edmund, in June 1500, forced Henry, the following year, to divert his attention from the state of the royal finances to dynastic matters. It was time to cash in on the Treaty of Medina del Campo. The heir to the throne, fourteen-year-old Arthur, Prince of Wales, was now a prepossessing young man of above average height, slim, with reddish hair that betrayed his Angevin ancestry, his father’s small eyes and a high-bridged nose that suggested high intellect and gentle breeding. He had been raised like a delicate hothouse bloom with his own household inside Westminster Palace, with tutors of the quality of John Rede, formerly headmaster of Winchester College, and Thomas Linacre, a former royal physician. In addition to his intellectual accomplishments he was, like his younger brother Henry, a good dancer and a sturdy archer.
A Papal dispensation had been acquired in order to allow Arthur and Katherine of Aragon to be formally betrothed at eleven and twelve years old respectively, below the canonical age of consent, in 1497. A marriage by proxy had been conducted in 1499, and now it was time for the fifteen-year-old Infanta to travel to England and claim her fourteen-year-old bridegroom. She was met at Plymouth by a royal delegation headed by Arthur’s younger brother Henry, and she and her retinue were escorted first to a mansion in Hampshire where bride and groom met for the first time. Then it was a breath-taking entry into London across the ancient London Bridge, with massive crowds craning their necks for a first view of the young girl who was to become their Queen in due course.
Less than a week later, the bride and groom both wore white satin for the marriage ceremony in St. Paul’s Cathedral conducted by the Archbishops of Canterbury and London, and then it was on to a sumptuous wedding feast at nearby Baynard’s Castle, followed by a formal bedding ceremony stage-managed by the royal grandmother Margaret Beaufort.
Arthur had been granted many vast estates in Wales and the Welsh Marches, and the royal couple established their Court at Ludlow Castle, overlooking the River Teme in Shropshire. However, even before they reached it, Arthur was beginning to exhibit symptoms of the ‘the sweating sickness’.
By the time they were due to set off for Ludlow, Arthur had become so weak, and so dreadfully afflicted by what was popularly regarded as a new form of Plague, that Katherine was in two minds whether or not to hang back, and remain at Tickenhill Manor in Worcestershire, where they had resided for the first month of their marriage. She was sternly instructed by Henry that her wifely duty required that she remain by her husband’s side.
Henry, at Westminster, awoke from a fitful sleep in which he had dreamed of crowds of enraged subjects dressed in full battle armour and hacking at him with battle-axes, to find his confessor shaking him gently by the shoulder.
‘You must brace yourself for bad news, Your Majesty, for inasmuch as God giveth, God also taketh away.’
‘Meaning?’ Henry demanded sleepily, as he rubbed his eyes.
‘Meaning, Your Majesty, that your dearest and most precious of sons has been taken from us.’
‘Arthur? What of Arthur?’
‘Your Majesty, he died of the sweating sickness yesterday evening.’
Henry sat up fully, temporarily stunned. His first thought was of what this meant to the succession, then an image floated before his eyes of his radiant wife beaming up at him from her childbed, snuggling a red-faced bundle lovingly to her breast. His emotions as a father broke through his concerns as a monarch, and the first warning signs reached him of what was about to follow.
‘It is in these greatest moments of personal loss than we turn to God for comfort, and the strength to continue,’ his confessor suggested hopefully, but there was no stemming the tide of genuine grief that was about to breach the royal dam wall. Henry choked as he tried to prevent the flow of tears, then reminded himself that his confessor had seen him in worse states, and gave in to the unstoppable wave of emotion. He howled like an animal in pain, flung himself face down on the crumpled bedding and began beating his fists on the pillows.
A few minutes later, a loose robe over her nightdress, Elizabeth placed a cool hand on Henry’s forehead, red with the energy of expended grief, then leaned forward and kissed his tear-ravaged cheek.
‘My sweet,’ she urged him, ‘do not take on so — you will make yourself ill.’
‘You do not yet know why I grieve,’ Henry spluttered.
‘Arthur is dead,’ she confirmed calmly. ‘The tidings are all over the Palace.’
Henry forced himself up on one elbow and looked at Elizabeth disbelievingly.
‘Do you not grieve?’ he asked.
‘The time for motherly grief is not yet. My first duty is to my husband, and my King.’
‘How shall we survive this?’ Henry croaked.
‘God will ease our burden, as ever,’ Elizabeth reassured him in a voice that was beginning to waver. ‘Now, if you will permit, I must dress appropriately before the members of the Court come calling with their pretended sympathies.’
‘Yes, of course, my sweet. I shall join you once I am a sight fit to behold.’
Elizabeth slipped quietly from the bedchamber, and Henry forced himself out of bed. In his closet he found a suitable tunic edged in black, with matching black hose, and waved away the Groom of the Chamber who had sidled in to perform his morning duties.
‘I would be left in peace,’ he ordered.
He was silently coming to gloomy terms with the terrible news, his head on his chest while seated on a chair at the side of the bed, when from under lowered eyelids he saw the chamber door open again.
‘I said leave me in peace!’ he bellowed.
When the door did not close on his command, he looked up, and in the open doorway stood Katherine Hussey, wife of Reginald Bray and one of Elizabeth’s Ladies.
‘You must come to the Queen’s chamber immediately, Your Majesty,’ she urged him. ‘Her Majesty has had some sort of seizure.’
Henry raced down the staircase, rushed past the guards who barely had time to uncross their halberds, and scurried into the Queen’s Bedchamber, where Elizabeth was sobbing hysterically, and being held upright by Catherine Gordon. Henry gestured with his head that Catherine was to stand aside, and he enfolded Elizabeth in the fullest embrace they had shared for some weeks, as he repeatedly kissed the top of her head and uttered the most soothing words he could think of.
Eventually she regained control, and pushed him gently away as she rose to her feet.
‘Forgive me, Your Majesty,’ she said.
‘Do not call me “Your Majesty”,’ Henry replied as the tears began to flow down his cheeks. ‘Today I am Henry, your husband, and I am here to comfort a grieving mother.’
Henry gave orders that the Council meeting scheduled for that day was cancelled, and that he and the Queen would sit in the White Chamber in the late afternoon in order to receive the formal condolences of all those who cared to attend. He also sent messengers to Ludlow, to order that Arthur be buried in Worcester Cathedral, with the Earl of Surrey as chief mourner, representing the King. By tradition Katherine his widow would not attend the burial, but would hear a private Mass for Arthur’s soul in the parish church of Ludlow, prior to his body being removed from there down river to Worcester. Dirges were ordered to be sung in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and every parish church in the city, and Arthur’s body was to be embalmed and sprinkled with holy water before its internment. Then, after a brief midday meal of cold meats and fruits, Henry sent for Reginald Bray, now a Knight of the Garter.
The man was now into his early sixties, and was somewhat stooped and frail, in contrast to his sturdiness in previous years. Henry’s mind had dwelt on human mortality for the entire morning, and he first urged Bray to lose no time in commencing the planning of a new chapel at Westminster in which Henry himself hoped to be buried, before turning to a topic of more immediate concern.
‘The death of Prince Arthur...’ Henry began.
Sir Reginald bowed his
head and interrupted, ‘If I might be permitted to offer my condolences on your sad loss, Your Majesty? My wife tells me that the Queen is greatly affected.’
‘She is a mother first, and a queen second,’ Henry replied. ‘But I am a king first, and I did not summon you here to receive your condolences. We need to consider what is to be done in the matter of the succession.’
‘Surely, the Prince Henry?’ Bray suggested.
‘Of course the Prince Henry,’ Henry responded testily, ‘since he is the only royal prince left. But what of the Infanta Katherine, widowed at fifteen?’
‘There are two issues there, as I see it,’ Bray observed, ‘and indeed they are closely related. The first is whether or not she is to be returned to Spain, along with her dowry, and the second is whether or not a suitable replacement husband may be found.’
‘Which brings us back to Prince Henry,’ Henry observed. ‘Would we need a Papal dispensation, were he to marry Katherine?’
‘But surely, Your Majesty, since he is not yet ten years of age...’
‘His brother was little older, when we first concluded the treaty with Ferdinand,’ Henry pointed out, ‘and we would surely only need a betrothal in order to be allowed to retain the first instalment of her dowry, which I have little doubt you have already spent.’
‘Some of it, certainly,’ Bray conceded, ‘but only on the marriage celebrations. The larger part of it remains in the Chamber accounts, which currently display a healthy credit balance, as you will have observed from the latest roll that was sent to your chamber but yesterday.’
‘It lies there still, the seal unbroken,’ Henry observed sadly, ‘since the death of Arthur has somewhat disrupted my normal routine. But you evade my question — shall we need a Papal dispensation?’
Bray’s reply was so immediate that Henry made a mental note that he must have been considering it already. As ever, Bray’s mind had been working ahead of events.
‘If the marriage was not consummated, Your Majesty, then we would need only the general impedimentary dispensation. But if there was congress...’
‘You seriously suggest that one could put two lusty fifteen-year-olds in bed together without congress?’ Henry grinned for the first time that day. ‘Assuming that there was congress, then what?’
‘Then we would need Papal dispensation for Prince Henry to marry the widow of his older brother, Your Majesty, since the impediment would be classed as one of “affinity”. I am advised that the Bible forbids a man to have congress with his brother’s wife.’
‘And his widow?’
‘Likewise, Your Majesty. We would also need to involve the Spanish Ambassador in the matter, or so I am advised. Then, of course, we would need to persuade Henry himself.’
‘He will be the next through that door,’ Henry replied, nodding towards the chamber entrance. ‘In the meantime, take you to the Spanish Ambassador, to seek his counsel on the matter.’
Prince Henry entered at the summons from the usher, dressed as if for horse-riding. He was still only nine years old, but with the height of a thirteen-year-old, and his ruddy cheeks and generally athletic bearing were the result of not having been confined, like his older brother, indoors studying to be a king. Nevertheless, his sweeping bow was that of an experienced Courtier as he stood before his father, awaiting paternal orders.
‘You will know, of course, that Arthur has died,’ Henry said sadly. ‘Have you considered the many ways in which that unhappy event has turned your life upside down, young Hal? It makes you the next King of England.’
‘I was planning on going hunting this afternoon,’ Prince Henry replied as his face fell. ‘There is a splendid lodge at Egham, and Sir Manvers always keeps a fine table.’
‘Silence!’ Henry bellowed. ‘I was not proposing to make you King this afternoon, you poltroon! Apart from aught else, I intend to live until your brain is capable of absorbing matters other than the condition of the royal deer. You are already Constable of Dover Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. You have been Earl Marshall of England since you were three years old, at which age you also became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Fortunately, those tasks are performed in your name by men who know what they are doing. In addition to all this, you are Duke of York and Warden of the Scottish Marches. To your existing Order of the Garter I intend to add the Order of the Bath, and you will shortly discover that you are also Duke of Cornwall and Prince of Wales, titles you must inherit from your poor dead brother as a sign that you are my heir apparent.’
‘Thank you, Father,’ Prince Henry replied dutifully.
‘But with rank comes responsibility,’ Henry reminded him, ‘and the greater the rank, the greater the responsibility. You must learn all the arts of statecraft, and all the secrets of finance. The Crown is much richer than it was when I won it from Richard of Gloucester, but it is still not so wealthy that I can summon an army without either begging Parliament for money, or relying on nobles to bring out retainers that they are not supposed to have anyway. And you must, of course, marry, since a long succession line cannot be constructed using only bastards for bricks.’
‘There are many comely Ladies at court from whom I might choose,’ Prince Henry replied.
‘That is something else that a king soon learns to his cost,’ Henry advised him. ‘We cannot marry whomsoever we wish, but must take, for a queenly bride, someone whose position in the world enhances the throne, whether by wealth, or — for preference — by virtue of connection with another royal house.’
‘And you chose that Spanish pudding for Arthur because she will inherit Spain one day?’
‘You do not find the Infanta comely?’ Henry enquired.
‘She has a face like one of those lamprey dumplings that are served from the kitchens on holy days.’
Henry was inclined to agree with him, but this was hardly the time. ‘You would not wish, therefore, to marry her?’ he enquired.
The young prince’s face screwed up in distaste. ‘I would rather marry my horse,’ he replied, ‘and if inheriting your crown means that I must share a bed with her, as you do sometimes with mother, then I would rather continue with my hunting, and let someone else be King.’
Henry sighed, and waved for his fool of a son to leave him, after one final piece of advice. ‘You must therefore pray for another brother. And pray that your father lives long enough to sire another boy who can become King in your place while you slaughter the game in the royal parks. Take yourself off, but give serious thought to what we have discussed.’
Something at least came out of the dreadful events of that month. In accordance with strict protocol, one of Elizabeth’s Ladies informed Henry’s official Groom of the Chamber that it was the Queen’s wish to resume sleeping with her husband in the royal bedchamber, and it was a sweet reunion in which the couple cried in each other’s arms, renewed their intimate embraces, and rekindled a fire that had almost dwindled to embers in the cold douche of national politics.
One night several months later, as they sank back on the feather bolster, breathless with spent passion, Elizabeth reminded Henry that she was still of child-bearing age, and that there was every prospect of another son and royal heir, should God choose to bless them.
‘God grant us that at least,’ Henry muttered up at the ceiling. ‘Hal is fit only for hunting and roistering with those wild youths who cling to him like oysters in a shell because they believe that he will be King, when in truth he could not run a nunnery, given his dismal Latin and other book-learning. Would that he could acquire someone like Bray to advise him, as I was fortunate to do. Now that Bray has taken to his bed, I fear that even I am without a rudder to steer the ship of State.’
‘What say the physicians regarding his prospects?’ Elizabeth enquired.
Henry sighed. ‘It depends which leech jockey you enquire of, but all say with one voice that he will not make another year, such is the state of his innards. He is in much pain, so his passing would be a blessing for
him and those who gather dolefully around his sick bed. But I am in sore need of his wise counsel. It is not like the days when Morton would be at my elbow, guiding my every action, and now that Foxe is taking his clerical duties more seriously since he smells death swirling around his cassock, I must make my decisions alone. We must press on with the Scottish alliance before another year is out.’
There was a sharp intake of breath from the pillow next to his, and Elizabeth reached out to grab his arm. ‘You do not intend to give little Margaret to him so soon, surely? She is yet but twelve years old, and has not yet commenced her monthly flow. And James of Scotland is a lusty man of thirty-two.’
‘My mother bore me when she was only a year older than that, and she was married at twelve, when my father was twice her age,’ Henry countered.
Elizabeth snorted quietly. ‘Believe me, she never tires of reminding me of what an ordeal your birth was to her, which is one of the reasons why I implore you, as Margaret’s father, not to hand her over to be violated by a fully grown man before her maidenly parts are fully developed to take the strain.’
‘As I told Hal only recently,’ Henry replied, ‘when one is of royal lineage, duty comes before either comfort or pleasure.’
‘Talking of both,’ Elizabeth replied quietly, ‘unless my flow comes as it ought to next month, you may look forward to another of royal lineage. Our joint pleasure, my duty, as usual, but I missed last month. Pray God, if I am right in this, that it is another boy.’
‘Amen to that,’ Henry whispered as he grasped her hand in grateful thanks for some good news for once. ‘This nation is in dire need of an heir to the throne who knows what he is about.’
XI
Henry stood to one side with Bishop Richard Foxe while architect Robert Janyns waved an expressive hand upwards in order to explain the concept of a pendant fan vault ceiling. Reginald Bray had, a few minutes earlier, laid the foundation stone of the new ‘Henry VII Lady Chapel’ that he had commissioned, and financed from the Chamber account. Although he bravely claimed to be in remission from his recurrent stomach ailment, he was still clearly not well, and immediately after the ceremony he had been excused further presence and had been carried home on a litter.