Tudor Dawn

by David Field

  ‘I would expect nothing less of you,’ Henry replied, ‘but with that position has traditionally been coupled another, that of Lord Chancellor. I would also wish you to accept that, although the day-to-day financial work of the office would be carried out by a Treasurer who I have yet to appoint. However, it would be in matters of high diplomacy where I would be relying upon you, most notably in negotiations with foreign monarchs, of which you have had ample experience already.’

  ‘Your Highness surely does me too much honour,’ Morton replied, his head bowed in humility.

  ‘We shall see whether or not it be too much,’ Henry replied with a smile. ‘Now prepare yourself for a journey to Rome immediately after the coronation, since I will have need of your services in order to obtain a papal dispensation for my marriage. However, this will need to wait until after the crown is finally on my head.’

  The following day Henry was quietly studying his bible when a shadow fell across the door to his chamber, and there, unannounced, was his mother. He jumped up in surprise and walked over to embrace her. Before he could do so, she thrust a bunch of flowers into his hand.

  ‘These are from the princess to whom you are spoken in marriage, who is in no small manner put out that you do not summon her to your presence, since you have yet to meet.’

  ‘You would have me summon her to the Tower?’ Henry asked, grinning. His mother’s frosty glare did not melt.

  ‘And why not? It is secure, is it not? Although, given the ease with which I gained access to this chamber without so much as a challenge, I might equally well have been an assassin.’

  ‘I must apologise for the lack of courtesy in announcing your arrival,’ Henry replied submissively, ‘and the matter of security shall be dealt with immediately following your departure.’ He looked down at the flowers in his hand, adding, ‘These are beautiful — please thank the princess for her kindness.’

  Margaret tutted. ‘I can only conclude that the days of chivalric romance are over. In my youth, it was the man who sent flowers and other tokens of affection to the lady. Your father wooed me with such gestures, and — as I hope you would agree — no harm came of it.’

  ‘Red roses with white roses — symbolic indeed,’ Henry observed.

  ‘Do not seek to evade the issue,’ Margaret replied in her sternest motherly tone. ‘Why do you not receive your bride-to-be?’

  ‘Do please sit down, Mother, and I will explain my reasons. It is important that there be no challenge to my throne. The first challenge — that of military might — has been done away with. The second comes from possible rival claimants, and if the royal princes truly be dead — in this very place, if rumour be correct — then that leaves, apart from Elizabeth of York, only Edward of Warwick, who now takes his meals in the White Tower. But how strong is my claim in my own right? It comes in two lines from Edward III, both of them from the wrong side of the marital bed. One of those lines comes through you, and, dear mother that you are, you are still a woman, and this counts for little in our world.

  ‘My only other claim would be through my wife, should she be my wife at my coronation. Am I to receive the crown of England on my head amid whispers that I only became entitled to it through my mother and my wife? Far better, surely, that I become King first, then take a wife? Nor can I risk rumour that the daughter of Elizabeth Woodville inherited her mother’s fabled power to seduce men in high positions, and by this means so bedazzled a young man so innocent of the ways of the world that it may be doubted whether he has the wit to rule a nation.’

  ‘A pretty set of excuses to cover your shyness with the opposite sex,’ Margaret replied, unconvinced by any of this.

  ‘I have found you a house in which to live,’ Henry blurted out, in order to stem Margaret’s indignant wrath before it had time to gather any further momentum.

  ‘Indeed? That at least is some comfort,’ Margaret conceded somewhat huffily. ‘Where is it, pray?’

  ‘Thames Street, just down the road from here. In fact, you may almost see it from the outer wall. Until last week it housed the Garter King of Arms, who has now been ordered to Westminster, along with his tribe of scribblers. The house is already a burden on the royal accounts, and is called “Coldharbour”. Hopefully it will provide a warm harbour for you against the “sweaty fumblings” of the brother of my recently appointed Chamberlain, who is, by his office, responsible for the security within the Tower of which you so recently complained.’

  ‘If the drains be sour, you shall hear more from me,’ Margaret warned him with the suggestion of a renewed smile.

  ‘If the drains be sour, have resort to Uncle Jasper,’ Henry replied cheekily, ‘since he was the one who chose the house.’

  ‘In the belief that I will be farewelled with the same ceremony with which I was admitted,’ Margaret said as she rose to leave, ‘I will leave you now. But you are required at Eltham a week today to meet with the Princess Elizabeth.’

  A week later Henry dressed in his favourite blue and silver surcoat, donned a new feather bonnet and joined Jasper for the ride out to Eltham, accompanied by half a dozen mounted men from the new royal bodyguard, still wearing Stanley livery. He had insisted that his uncle accompany him and had jokingly threatened to exile him if he did not, but Jasper could sense that his nephew was as nervous as he had been before his first experience of the battlefield, but for different reasons.

  Henry and Jasper were shown into the reception room, where they stood edgily awaiting their hosts. Henry had just announced in a whisper that ‘I need a piss’ when there was a rustle of movement in the doorway, and in walked Margaret with a vision of loveliness on her arm.

  ‘May I introduce my god-daughter, the Princess Elizabeth of York?’

  Henry stood, transfixed, as he took in the long pure white gown with gold filigree from head to foot, and a matching gold gorget from which her long hair, the colour of burnished gold, flowed promiscuously to cascade onto her shoulders. Instantly forgetting all the Courtly compliments that Uncle Jasper had been teaching him, Henry opened his mouth in astonishment and blurted out, ‘But you are beautiful!’

  Elizabeth blushed, almost giggled, but dropped her eyes to the floor, before replying, ‘Is it not meet that a future Queen of England be comely?’

  ‘If you were the daughter of the Palace fishmonger, you would still be beautiful.’

  ‘Hopefully I do not smell of fish,’ Elizabeth fired back from under her eyelids. At this point Margaret decided that this conversation was proceeding in entirely the wrong direction, and coughed loudly.

  ‘I believe that His Majesty has something of yours.’

  Jasper dug him sharply in the ribs, and Henry remembered the pouch in his surcoat pocket, which he hastily withdrew as he walked towards Elizabeth with an outstretched hand.

  ‘I return the ring you sent me during my exile in Brittany. As a simple token of my deep regard for your act of kindness, I have had it encrusted with diamonds by a royal jeweller. Please accept it as a token of my troth.’

  ‘Gladly, my lord. I shall wear it on our wedding day.’

  Shortly afterwards, as Henry and Elizabeth stood, their heads bowed closely together, at the chamber window that overlooked the ornamental garden beyond, the pages began laying the single table, while the serving girls followed behind them with the trenchers, occasionally looking up furtively at the handsome young man who was their new King, and secretly envying Elizabeth both her looks and her future marriage partner.

  As they took their seats at the table, Jasper pulled Henry grumpily to one side.

  ‘Your mother is not pleased by your forward behaviour towards the Princess Elizabeth. She has chosen to blame me for that, and as penance has insisted that I sit at table alongside yon spider in green.’

  Henry looked across towards his mother, who was engaged in conversation with a somewhat gaunt-looking, but still attractive, lady in her late twenties who so closely resembled the young Elizabeth in her facial structure that He
nry had little difficulty in identifying her as Katherine Woodville well before his mother effected the introductions. Then, as a delicious aroma of roast suckling pig permeated the room, the kitchen servers entered in a line with dishes of cooked meats, pots of salmon soup and a selection of fruits, while several young girls stood by with pitchers of wine.

  Jasper had been seated to Margaret’s right, with Katherine at the far end of the line, to Jasper’s right. Henry was seated with his mother to his right and Elizabeth to his left, and to Jasper’s consternation, and Margaret’s barely concealed delight, Henry and Elizabeth behaved, throughout the meal, like long-lost childhood friends on an adventure without benefit of parental supervision. They laughed and giggled in conversations that Margaret feared might be bordering on the lewd, and Elizabeth found several excuses to let her cool, ringed hand rest on Henry’s for longer than was either necessary or accidental.

  After a while, Margaret was sufficiently convinced that the young couple would need no further encouragement to lay joint claim to a marriage bed, and concentrated instead on occasionally reviving the stilted conversation that was taking place to her right. Jasper was striving manfully to display interest in the inevitably limited tittle-tattle of which Katherine was capable, given her long period of enforced absence from the Court since the execution of her late husband for treason.

  ‘That was one of the most tedious women I have ever had the misfortune to encounter,’ Jasper complained to Henry as they cantered over Peckham Common with the lowering sun in their eyes.

  ‘But she was comely enough, surely?’ Henry suggested.

  ‘Comely enough for what?’ Jasper asked. ‘And what did your mother say as we were leaving?’

  ‘She wishes me to order you to make her the Duchess of Bedford,’ Henry grinned.

  Jasper was thunderstruck. ‘You would sully the image of your throne by ordering me to tup an old crow like her?’

  ‘You need not tup her — simply marry her. And she is not an old crow. While your tastes might run to young serving girls who have barely reached the age of their monthly leaking, some would say that she has retained a certain amount of her youthful beauty, albeit that the cares of recent years have begun to leave their lines. But examine the matter this way; the uncle of the King marries an aunt of the Queen, thus completing the family circle, and — as an additional benefit — drawing the Woodvilles further into the royal camp.’

  ‘So it is now a matter of State that I must share my bed with Methuselah’s mother?’

  ‘If you see it that way. I will decree it if I must, but my mother insists.’

  Jasper spat to the side of the track. ‘The great and noble King Henry makes state policy under dictation from his mother — how well that will go down when you call your first Parliament!’

  ‘The mere suggestion of that, and I truly will have you exiled,’ Henry joked, but the humour seemed to be lost on Jasper.

  Later that evening, Henry sat in his private chamber, thanking God for his good fortune, and fantasising about his wedding night with the beautiful, spirited young girl who had taken his emotions hostage. His gaze wandered towards the vase in which one of the valets had placed the red and white roses a week earlier. Henry was in the process of praying that their marriage did not wilt as quickly as the flowers had done when his attention was gripped by the way in which the petals had fallen. An entire flower head from a red rose lay on the cabinet on which the vase had been placed, and several petals from a white rose had landed on top of it.

  He got up and took a closer look. Then he reached up to the plants that had not yet completely wilted, and removed more white petals, which he arranged around the centre of the red rose. He laughed out loud in sheer delight, and summoned a page, who stood uncertainly in the doorway after answering the loud call.

  ‘Yes, Your Majesty?’

  ‘Have the Garter King of Arms attend me tomorrow. He lodges now at Westminster Palace, and I would speak with him as a matter of urgency. I have an idea for a new coat of arms for my coronation. It shall be called “the Tudor Rose”.’

  III

  Early on 30th October of that year, the entire city seemed to be stirring long before the sun appeared over distant Gravesend. Grooms of the Household were preparing baths in various noble houses, including the Tower and Coldharbour, where Elizabeth was now residing in a suite of chambers all of her own, while her generous godmother Margaret confined herself to the ground floor. Grooms of the Stable were ensuring that pedigree mounts were rubbed down and gleaming, pages were dabbing last-minute stains off liveried tunics, while other pages were entering withdrawing rooms with trays of sustenance while their lords and ladies dressed, in the bedchambers beyond, in the clothes that seamstresses and ladies-in-waiting had carefully laid out.

  The crowds were ten deep along Thames Street, Blackfriars and Whitehall long before the procession formed up on Tower Green and commenced its stately procession with the Lord High Constable of England at its head, carrying his mace of office, while the royal orb and sceptre were held by lesser officials, each mounted on a royal grey charger that was draped with cloths bearing the royal standard. Behind, in the order of seniority of their ancient titles, rode the dukes, earls and other nobles of the houses of England, and behind them those senior clergy who were not required for the service itself. There was then a noticeable gap before Henry rode into sight on a huge warhorse, dressed in his robes of State, and followed immediately by the newly created royal bodyguard, resplendent in their hastily commissioned tunics featuring the Tudor Rose for the first time that it would be seen in public.

  There were hundreds of ordinary foot soldiers with halberds holding back the massive crowd outside Westminster Abbey, most of whom cheered at their first sight of Henry, who smiled as they called out ‘God Bless Your Majesty!’ ‘Long Life and Happiness to Your Highness!’ and ‘God Speed King Henry!’ The procession dismounted some hundred yards back from the open cathedral doors, and wound its way, on foot, into the cool of the Abbey stonework, down the long nave towards the raised platform that had been specially erected for the occasion behind the main altar.

  The senior nobles, including Jasper, Duke of Bedford, took their seats among the choir stalls behind the altar, while Henry sat in the ornate chair in front of Archbishop Thomas Bourchier, to whom, by tradition, fell the solemn task of anointing a new king. Henry gazed down at the crowded ranks of those who sat in the nave, smiling up at him. On the front row was his mother, looking as solemn as she was able while fighting back tears of joy; next to her sat Elizabeth, smiling back at him proudly with a look of profound love in her eyes. He looked beyond them, to the men who had risked their lives for this moment, some of them bearing the healing scars of the encounter that they would carry for the rest of their lives.

  The ceremony began with a High Mass, everyone except Henry moving to the altar in strictly prescribed order to take the sacrament. Then the Archbishop presented Henry to the assembled company, which with a united voice yelled back the traditional response of ‘So be it King Henry!’ The Archbishop then beckoned Henry forward to the altar, where he prostrated himself while the Bishops of Exeter and Ely moved silently to their places on either side of the senior prelate of the realm.

  The rest of the ceremony was conducted in accordance with the Liber Regalis that had governed previous coronations. Henry was anxious that it should be so, since he had broken with that tradition in not having ridden, bare-headed, through the streets of London from the Tower to Westminster Palace the previous day, but had elected to commence the procession at the Tower. This was on the strong urging of Sir William Stanley, who was anxious about Henry’s personal security at a time when it was believed that his accession was still resented by a few remaining Yorkist hotheads.

  Henry was raised to his knees by the Archbishop, who extracted from him the promises to ‘grant and keep the laws and customs’ of the realm, to respect the Church, and to grant ‘equal and rightful justice’ to all
, regardless of rank. He was then given the sacrament, and anointed with holy oil while the choir moved discreetly in from a side chapel and sang ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’ before withdrawing. The Archbishop then took the crown from the Bishop of London, who had been holding it as he stood at Henry’s side, and placed it reverently on Henry’s bowed head. Then with a broad smile he turned to face the congregation, made the sign of the cross high in the air, and pronounced that Henry of Richmond had now become ‘Henry, by the Grace of God, King of England, France and Lord of Ireland.’

  Almost as important to Henry as the coronation itself was the swearing of fealty to him by as many nobles of the land as could be persuaded, under pain of attainder or imprisonment, to declare their allegiance to the young man upon whose head the Archbishop had placed the crown of England. Henry was just as interested in their revenues as he was in the loyalty of those who enjoyed them, particularly after Reginald Bray (now Sir Reginald Bray) had taken one look at the royal accounts and advised Henry that he was nearly bankrupt.

  It was therefore of considerable satisfaction to Henry that the vast majority of the leading nobles attended one or other of several ceremonies in the weeks following his coronation, in order to bend the knee and swear the oath that went back centuries. Perhaps one of the most reassuring heads he saw bowed before him was that of John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, nephew of the former Richard III, and the man who had been all but declared his successor following the death of Edward of Middleham, Prince of Wales and Richard’s natural heir, the year before the battle. With the only other remaining potential Yorkist heir, Edward, Earl of Warwick, safely installed in the Tower, and the Earl of Lincoln a popular and influential figure among those at Court who might still retain fond memories of the halcyon days of Edward IV, it was as well to have him on one’s side.