Weir A. Henry VIII: The King and His Court

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

armour for the King and his horse. All are now displayed in the Tower. The armoury may also have

made armour to Henry’s own designs, which were “such as no armourer before that time had seen.”

Henry’s armour was stored at Greenwich, where it could easily be maintained. In 1521, “Old Martin”

van Royne was succeeded as Master Armourer by Erasmus Kyrkenar.

The King was fascinated by weapons, especially guns and cannon, and was keen to find ways in which

their range and accuracy could be improved. He set up a foundry in Houdsditch to make firearms to

new specifications, and restocked the arsenal at the Tower. He also designed new weapons for his

bodyguards, including an early form of bayonet and a gunshield, both of which are in the Royal

Armouries.

The King enjoyed shooting with handguns; he shot duck on Plum-stead Marshes with a party of

favoured companions, or practised firing at the wooden target shaped like a man that was made for him

in 1538.

Unfortunately, on one of his shooting forays in the 1530s at Greenwich, Henry

underestimated the range of his firearm and blasted off the roof of the house of his Groom of the Stool,

Sir Henry Norris.

Henry also collected weapons; he owned ninety-four swords, thirty-six daggers, fifteen rapiers, twelve

woodknives, seven crossbows,

and one hundred breech-loading arquebuses. Only one arquebus

survives in the Royal Armouries; it bears his monogram and the date 1537. Henry’s wooden lance,

painted red, gold, and black with motifs of leaves and latticework, is also in the Tower, as is a dagger

etched with roses and pomegranates, which probably belonged to him. His crossbow, bearing the royal

arms and dating from around 1527, is in Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum, while his sword and

scabbard are in the Royal Collection at Windsor.

“This Cardinal Is King”

In the summer of 1515, “the King took his progress westwards, and visited his towns and castles there

and heard the complaints of his poor commons; and always, as he rode, he hunted and liberally gave

away the venison. And in the middle of September, he came to his manor of Woking.”

Here he was joined by Wolsey, who that month was made a cardinal by the Pope. The symbolic red hat

arrived at Dover in November and was conveyed to London “with such triumph, as though the greatest

prince of Christendom had come into the realm.”

The new Cardinal was invested with it in a glittering

ceremony in Westminster Abbey that approached in pomp “the coronation of a mighty prince or king.”

Afterwards there was a sumptuous banquet at York Place.

Wolsey aspired to a lifestyle rivalling that of the King himself. In the spring of 1515, he had begun

building the most splendid palace yet seen in England. After consulting his physicians as to the most

healthy site within a twenty-mile radius of London, he acquired from the Knights Hospitallers of the

Order of St. John of Jerusalem a lease of their manor at Hampton by the Thames, fifteen miles from

Westminster.

It boasted a fifteenth-century courtyard house which had perhaps been built by the

previous tenant, Giles, Lord Daubeney, Lord Chamberlain to Henry VII, who had visited him there

with Elizabeth of York shortly before the latter’s death in childbirth in 1503.

Wolsey demolished this building; the only remnant of it is the clock in the campanile above Clock

Court, which bears the date 1479.

In its place he raised a grand red-brick double-courtyard house with

mullioned windows, turrets, tall chimneys, a moat,

gardens, a large service complex, and an advanced

system of conduits and sewers. It was designed by Ellis Smith on a collegiate plan, and decorated with

antique work in terracotta: there are putti supporting Wolsey’s coat of arms above the clock-tower

gateway,

and medallions of Roman emperors with exquisite decorative borders, which were carved in

1521 by the Florentine sculptor Giovanni di Maiano

and based on those commissioned by the Cardinal

of Amboise for his palace at Gaillon, near Rouen. Hampton Court was ready for occupation by 1517,

when Wolsey first entertained the King and Queen there, and finally completed in 1525. By then, it was

said to contain a thousand rooms. Wolsey lived there in princely magnificence.

The palace was entered by an imposing five-storey gatehouse with octagonal towers surmounted by

lead cupolas at the corners and a large oriel window.

In the Base Court was accommodation for

Wolsey’s household and forty-four guest lodgings;

280 beds with silk hangings were kept made up in

in readiness for visitors. A second gateway led to Clock Court, where the Cardinal’s great hall,

banqueting chamber,

gallery, and chapel were located.

Wolsey spared no expense in making Hampton Court the most luxurious residence in England. His own

apartments were panelled and sported moulded ceilings and rich friezes and paintings, while the

outward chambers were adorned with priceless tapestries, sixty large carpets presented by the Venetian

Senate,

and furnishings of unprecedented splendour, including five chairs of estate; one tapestry

owned by Wolsey, The Triumph of Fame over Death, based on a work by Petrarch, still hangs at

Hampton Court in the great watching chamber. A special lodging in a three-storey donjon in Clock

Court was reserved for the King and Queen. The palace lay within two thousand acres of parkland

surrounded by a brick wall, part of which remains today. The Kingston Road divided the park into the

Home Park and Bushy Park.

Wolsey had begun building another house in 1515, on land he had been granted by the King near the

Dominican priory of Blackfriars in London, in the parish of St. Bride. When, however, he started work

on Hampton Court, he lost interest in this project and signed over the land to the King. Henry

thereupon seized the opportunity of providing himself with a new residence in London to replace

Westminster. He took over the building works and built the palace of Bridewell. Constructed of red

brick with octagonal towers, it stood between Fleet Street and the River Thames,

and was connected

by a bridge across the River Fleet to the priory, which was used as an annexe whenever extra

accommodation was needed. Bridewell Palace had two courtyards; in the inner one was the donjon

housing the royal lodgings, which were accessed by a novel processional stair. A long gallery led to the

river frontage and a watergate; a tennis play and terraced gardens were on the river side. There was no

great hall or chapel, since both the lofty hall and the chapel in the Blackfriars’ convent were at the

King’s disposal. The palace was completed by 1522, and cost Henry £20,000 (£6 million).

On 29 October 1515, the King attended the launching of another new ship, The Virgin Mary, which

became popularly known as the “Princess Mary” in honour of Mary Tudor. She was a huge vessel with

120 oars, 207 guns, and the capacity to carry one thousand men. Accompanied by the Queen, who was

pregnant again, the Suffolks, and the whole court, Henry himself, dressed in a sailor’s coat and

breeches of cloth of gold, piloted the ship along the Thames to the sea, blowing his large gold whistle

as loudly as a trumpet. After Bishop Ruthall of Durham had celebrated mass, the vessel was formally

named by the Queen. Then the King hosted a feast on board.

Matters of state were pressing. Archbishop Warham, who had several times clashed with Wolsey, was

finding it increasingly difficult to assert his authority as Lord Chancellor and Primate of England in the

face of the Cardinal’s superior power and overt hostility. According to Thomas More, Warham was

weary of public life and wished to retire to his diocese. On 22 December 1515, he resigned his office.

On Christmas Eve, at Eltham Palace, the King appointed Wolsey Lord Chancellor in his place and

delivered to him the Great Seal of England.

No subject had ever before held so many high offices in both Church and state, nor commanded an

income that enabled him to live like royalty. “The Cardinal of York is the beginning, middle and end,”

commented Giustinian in 1516.

Nevertheless, Wolsey worked hard for his rewards, being “constantly

occupied with all the affairs of the kingdom.” The King, busy amusing himself “day and night,” was

happy to leave all government business to the Cardinal, “who rules everything with consummate ability

and prudence,” one observer noted. “It is essential to speak first of all serious matters to the Cardinal

and not to the King.”

Soon, power seemed to be centred on the Cardinal’s household at York Place, where he resided during

the legal term, rather than the King’s court, with visitors going to kiss Wolsey’s hand before they

sought an audience with Henry. Wolsey’s increasing autocracy soon became evident to Giustinian, who

noted that, whereas in 1515 the Cardinal would have told him, “His Majesty will do so and so,” within

a year or so he was saying, “We shall do so and so,” and by 1519 it was “I shall do so and so.” The

envoy concluded: “This Cardinal is king, nor does His Majesty depart in the least from the opinion and

counsel of His Lordship.”

Francis I thought that Wolsey “held the honour of his king in small

account,” while ambassadors felt they were dealing “not with a cardinal but with another king.”

Court factions quickly found themselves disempowered. Wolsey dominated the Privy Council and the

royal household, and exercised royal patronage on the King’s behalf. “He chooses,” wrote an imperial

envoy, “to interfere in everything.”

Yet he remained a remote figure with whom even noblemen found

it hard to obtain an audience. So complete was the King’s confidence in him that none dared challenge

his power. Naturally, it was bitterly resented by many.

That bitterness was fuelled by Wolsey’s lavish lifestyle, which was financed by his ecclesiastical

revenues and his fees as Lord Chancellor, which amounted to perhaps £35,000 (£10,500,000) a year.

He lived like “a glorious peacock”

in luxurious palaces attended by a thousand servants wearing a

crimson velvet livery emblazoned with a cardinal’s hat; his cook was rumoured to dress “daily in

damask, silk or velvet, with a chain of gold about his neck.”

When Wolsey went forth in procession, he was accompanied by a large entourage, preceded by silver

crosses and pillars, poleaxes and a mace, and noblemen bearing the Great Seal on a cushion and

Wolsey’s cardinal’s hat, “raised up like some holy idol or other.”

As he approached, his Gentlemen

Ushers cried, “Make way for My Lord’s Grace!” The Cardinal, in robes of silk, velvet, and ermine, and

holding a pomander or an orange stuffed with spices to his nose to ward off the smell of the unwashed

populace, would ride by on a mule, as churchmen did, in emulation of Christ; yet this mule was trapped

in red and gold. At Wolsey’s table, where he dined alone beneath a rich cloth of estate, there were more

dishes than were permitted to a nobleman. He dispensed alms that were far more lavish than the King’s,

and at New Year, he sometimes outlaid greater amounts than his master did on gifts. He danced,

hunted, and kept—very discreetly—a mistress, one “lusty”

Joan Lark, who bore him two children.

Queen Katherine in particular deplored his “voluptuous life” and “abominable lechery.”

Many

considered his lifestyle inappropriate for a man of the Church, but there is no evidence that Henry VIII

resented the splendour in which his minister lived; on the contrary, it reflected well upon his greatness

to have such a distinguished servant.

Although there is evidence that Wolsey did his best to manipulate the King by distracting him with

novelties,

Henry VIII never fully relinquished power to him. He was happy to off load administrative

affairs and routine state business onto his shoulders, but everything the Cardinal did was “by

authority.”

The King retained his royal prerogative in having the ultimate veto, and all important

decisions were made by him. Sometimes he intervened when he did not agree with the Cardinal’s

actions, and he frequently exhibited an incisive grasp of affairs. Wolsey kept his “loving master” well

informed, writing out summaries of the letters and documents that the King did not have leisure to read

in their entirety, and even drafting replies for him to sign. Jealous of his power, the Cardinal did his

best to undermine the role of the royal secretaries who had to deal with these papers, whom he

perceived as threats to his position. When crossed, he could be ruthless and violent: he once hit the

papal nuncio, Chieregato, and swore at him. Most of the time, however, he exercised “rare and unheard

of affability.”

Except on ceremonial occasions, king and minister met infrequently— during the legal term, Wolsey

visited the court only on Sundays,

and he usually stayed in London while the King moved from house

to house— but they remained in daily contact by letter and messenger. Richard Pace described how

Henry read each dispatch from Wolsey three times, sometimes letting his supper go cold as he did so;

he would mark each item requiring attention, then dictate his responses to his secretaries, often keeping

them up late in the process. He would remind Pace “not further to meddle” with his replies in case his

meaning became distorted.

Wolsey laboured to a punishing schedule, often rising at 4 A.M. and sitting at his desk for twelve hours

without stopping once to eat or relieve himself.

Henry was aware of how hard and diligently Wolsey

worked for him. “Mine own good Cardinal,” he wrote in 1518, “take some pastime and comfort to the

intent that you may longer endure to serve us.”

He was genuinely fond of Wolsey and enjoyed his

company. When the Cardinal wrote to him, “Your realm, our Lord be thanked, was never in such peace

and tranquillity,” Henry was aware of whom he had to thank.

“The Pearl of the World”

Henry spent the Christmas of 1515 at Eltham Palace, which had been one of the most favoured

mediaeval royal residences since 1305. Its crowning glory was the magnificent buttressed great hall,

which was built by Edward IV in 1475–1483 and still survives today; it measures one hundred feet by

thirty feet and has an impressive hammerbeam roof,

bay and oriel windows, and a minstrels’ gallery.

Around 1490, Henry VII refaced most of the palace with red brick, rebuilt “the fair front over the

moat,”

and added many features, including tiled floors and new glass in the windows. The royal

lodgings, which dated from the reign of Henry IV, were in a donjon in the inner or Great Court, behind

which were five smaller service courtyards, and there was a separate lodging for the Lord Chancellor

and a tiltyard. The whole was surrounded by a forested deer park.

Eltham was one of Henry VIII’s greater houses, and he used it frequently during the first half of his

reign. Between 1510 and 1522, he built a new chapel with two first-floor holyday closets, and made

many improvements to the royal lodgings, enlarging the Queen’s Side, providing a study for himself,

and safeguarding his privacy with high brick walls and hedges.

He also had a hill flattened so as to

improve the view from his windows.

At Christmas 1515, the Chapel Royal performed a comedy, Troilus and Pandarus, in the great hall at

Eltham. This was followed on Twelfth Night by a pageant, dancing, and a feast comprising two

hundred dishes.

Temporary kitchens had had to be erected so that the Master Cooks could make jellies

and gingerbread.

There were outdoor pastimes as well. The King and Suffolk amused themselves by running at the ring,

Henry wearing a wreath of green satin embroidered with the Queen’s pomegranate badge. He had

provided all the clothes for the competitors at a cost of £142 (£42,600), and at the end of the day each

man was told he might keep what he was wearing; Suffolk was also given the horse, armour, and saddle

he was using. The courtiers watched from elaborate pavilions with chivalric names: Flower-delice,

White Hart, Harp, Greyhound, Leopard’s Head, and Ostrich Feather.

The King had recently acquired another house, New Hall, which stood in the village of Boreham, four

miles from Chelmsford in Essex. It was a mediaeval hall house once owned by the Abbots of Waltham,

and later acquired by Edward IV. Henry VII had granted it to Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormonde, who

had entertained Henry VIII there in 1510 and again just before his death in 1515. His daughter

Margaret, mother of Sir Thomas Boleyn, inherited it, and Boleyn, as Ormonde’s executor, sold it to the

King before January 1516 for £1,000 (£300,000).

Between 1516 and 1523, Henry converted New Hall into a sumptuous palace at a cost of £20,000 (£6

million), and renamed it Beaulieu, although the old name stuck. Faced with brick, his new residence

had a gatehouse leading into a main courtyard with a fountain, a hall, gallery, integral tennis play, and

chapel. A gilded and painted panel of the King’s arms that once adorned its gatehouse

is now at

Hampton Court.

The only figural window to survive from Henry’s palaces was originally at Beaulieu. Crafted by Dutch

glaziers, it depicts the Crucifixion with the crowned and kneeling figures of the King, Katherine of

Aragon, and their patron saints, and is now in the east window of St. Margaret’s Church at Westminster,

where it was moved in the eighteenth century.

The court was at Greenwich when, on 18 February 1516, after a difficult labour in which she clung to

the holy girdle of her patron saint, St. Catherine, the Queen at last bore a healthy child. But it was a

girl, not the hoped-for son. The King, however, was delighted with his daughter. “The Queen and I are

both young, and if it is a girl this time, by God’s grace boys will follow,” he told Giustinian,

and he

gave a handsome reward to Dr. Vittoria, who had assisted at the birth.

When she was three days old the infant Princess was christened in the church of the Observant Friars

and given the name Mary. The ceremonial followed the procedure laid down by the Lady Margaret

Beaufort in the Household Ordinances. The silver font had again been brought from Canterbury, rich

carpets were laid along the processional route, and the church was hung with tapestries. The ceremony

was conducted with great solemnity, the baby being divested of her rich robes and cloth of gold train

furred with ermine in a specially erected closet furnished with a brazier and towels, then immersed

naked into the font, which was set on a raised platform so that all the congregation could witness the

baptism. After the baby had been anointed with holy oil, the white chrisom cloth was wrapped around

her head to protect it. Then a lighted taper was put into the tiny fist and the child carried to the high

altar, where she was confirmed by Archbishop Warham. While she was being dressed, refreshments

were served to her godparents, Cardinal Wolsey, the Countess of Devon, and the Duchess of Norfolk,

who then presented her with the usual gifts of plate. The procession re-formed, and the Princess was

carried to the King and Queen, who were waiting in the latter’s presence chamber, to receive their

blessing. Parents were not, by tradition, expected to attend their child’s christening: the mother would

not yet have been churched, and it was the godparents who were central to the occasion.

Afterwards,

there were jousts to celebrate the event, and when the Queen was up and about again she made a

pilgrimage to Walsingham to give thanks for her safe and successful delivery.

The Princess Mary was immediately given into the care of a Lady Mistress, the widowed Lady

Margaret Bryan, daughter of Lord Berners and mother of Francis Bryan and Lady Carew; Lady Bryan

was granted £50 (£15,000) a year for life. Mary was not immediately assigned a separate household,

but lived in her own apartments at court for the first years of her life, with her own servants, including

four rockers.

Henry enjoyed showing off his daughter, carrying her about in his arms and assuring courtiers and

ambassadors that she never cried.

She was his “pearl of the world,” he told them.

Mary was a bright,

precocious child, “joyous and decorous in manners”;

she had inherited many of her parents’

intellectual and musical gifts and mastered the virginals by the age of four.

By 1519, Mary had been given her own household, which cost her father £1,400 (£420,000) a year. It

was based mainly at Ditton Manor in Buckinghamshire,

and was presided over by Margaret Pole,

Countess of Salisbury, with Lady Bryan remaining as Lady Mistress. The Princess had her own

Chamberlain, Treasurer, Cofferer, Clerk of the Closet, chaplains, and gentlewomen. Ditton Manor, a

large, moated house in a beautiful park, had been royal property since the time of Edward IV. Henry

VIII had modernised it between 1511 and 1515, possibly with a view to using it as a nursery palace.

Hot upon the heels of Mary’s christening there followed that of the Suffolks’ first son, who was born on

11 March 1516 at Bath Place in London. The King himself attended the lavish ceremony as a godfather,

and the baby was named Henry in his honour. The other sponsors were Wolsey and the Countess of

Devon. Henry gave his nephew a saltcellar and cup of pure gold.

Eight weeks later, he played host to his elder sister, Queen Margaret of Scotland, widow of James IV

and mother of the three-year-old James V. In 1514, Margaret had married her second husband,

Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, but the following year, the little King’s cousin and heir, John

Stewart, Duke of Albany, had been chosen as Regent by the Scottish Parliament and seized custody of

young James. Margaret had been driven out of Scotland and sought refuge in England; just south of the

border, at Harbottle in Northumberland, in October 1515, she had given birth to a daughter, the Lady

Margaret Douglas.

On 3 May 1516, Margaret arrived at Tottenham in an impoverished state and suffering from sciatica.

She rested at Bruce Castle

as the guest of Sir William Compton, until the King, whom she had not

seen for thirteen years, came to escort her in a state procession into London, she mounted on a white

palfrey, which had been sent by the Queen. Margaret was initially lodged at Baynard’s Castle.

Later

that year, Wolsey arranged for her to move to Scotland Yard, once the ancient London residence of the

Kings of Scotland, but now incorporated into York Place. Margaret was formally received by the King

and Queen at Greenwich, and reunited with her sister Mary; she was overwhelmed by the splendour of

her brother’s court and “could not take her eyes off’ the gowns and gifts he showered upon her.

Henry

was very taken with his niece, Margaret Douglas, or “Little Marget,” as he called her, and arranged for

her to be brought up at court with the Princess Mary.

The rest of the month was given over to tournaments and festivities in honour of Margaret’s visit. On

19–20 May, there were “two solemn days of jousts” at Greenwich in the presence of the three queens.

On the first day, although “every man did well, the King did best,”

while on the second day, Henry

won applause when he succeeded in unhorsing Sir William Kingston, “a very tall, strong knight” whom

few had excelled. In the evening, there was “a great banquet for the welcome of the Queen of Scots” in

the Queen’s apartments.

But the King was not happy. Although Suffolk had performed valorously as usual in the lists, the young

gentlemen who had fought against Henry had been so incompetent that he had been unable to score

many blows, which he considered detrimental to his honour and reputation. In future, he announced, he

would “never joust again except it be with as good a man as himself.”

Thereafter, he usually chose

proven men such as Suffolk or Carew as his opponents.

That May, Bishop Foxe resigned as Lord Privy Seal and was replaced by Thomas Ruthall, Bishop of

Durham. Foxe retired to his See of Winchester, “thinking of all the souls I never see.”

Despite

increasing blindness, he devoted the last years of his life to religion—making up for “eighteen years’

negliegence

—and education; he founded Corpus Christi College at Oxford and rebuilt the choir of

Winchester Cathedral. He died in 1528.

The worldly influence of Wolsey was counterbalanced by the rise to power of Thomas More. Much

against his inclinations, More had been persuaded to enter the King’s service in 1515 after successfully

completing two diplomatic missions for him. “You would hardly believe how unwilling I am,” he told

Erasmus. More was unlike most courtiers in that he was an intellectual who understood the

superficiality of court life and disdained the trappings of wealth and power. Henry liked and respected

him, valued his opinions, and would often ask him to join him in his private apartments to discuss

astronomy, geometry, divinity, and other subjects; sometimes at night he would take him up onto the

leads of the palace, “there to consider with him the diversities, courses, motions and operations of the

stars and planets.”

On other occasions, the King and Queen would invite More to make merry with

them, and Henry might tease him about his dislike of the court. More got on well with Wolsey, even

though he may not have fully approved of him, but the contrast between the two men could not have

been greater.

In 1516, More’s Utopia was published. It described the ideal state: a neo-Platonic, quasi-fascist

republic with laws based on the central tenets of humanism. It was a powerful critique of the political

system in England and the vicious machinations of monarchs and courtiers, but such was More’s

international reputation, and the eloquence of his Latin prose, that the book won him praise

everywhere. More was already working as an unofficial secretary to the King, and in 1517, his

admiring master preferred him to the Privy Council.

In June, the Queen’s favourite lady-in-waiting, Maria de Salinas, left her service to marry William,

Lord Willoughby d’Eresby, who was Master of the Royal Hart Hounds; Maria was granted letters of

denization beforehand, and Katherine ensured that she was provided with a handsome dowry. The

wedding took place in the church of the Observant Friars at Greenwich. After Maria had taken up

residence at Parham Park in Sussex, Queen Katherine invited her frequently to court; she may have

attended the christening of Maria’s son in 1517, and was probably a godmother to her daughter

Katherine, who was born in 1519 and named in her honour.

After a joust on 7 July in honour of the translation of the relics of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury, the

King set off on his summer progress, visiting Winchester and spending two nights at The Vyne,

sleeping in a great bed hung with green velvet, which his host, Sir William Sandys, had bought for him;

in commemoration of this visit, Sandys built a long gallery lined with linenfold panelling embellished

with the royal arms and the devices of Queen Katherine, and a chapel lit by windows depicting Henry

VIII, Katherine of Aragon, and Margaret Tudor at their devotions, with their patron saints. This glass,

which was crafted in the Italian Renaissance style, appears to have been based on designs by Bernard

van Orley, and was probably originally commissioned for the Chapel of the Holy Ghost at Basingstoke,

which the King visited in 1516, and brought to The Vyne around 1522.

Perhaps the greatest foreign musician to grace the royal musical establishment arrived at court in 1516

“to wait upon the King in his chamber.” He was Friar Dionysio Memmo, who had been organist at St.

Mark’s Basilica in his native city of Venice. Henry VIII had invited him to England, and he brought

with him a fine organ, “at great expense.”

The King was enraptured at hearing him play—he has “a

greater opinion of him than words can express”—and promoted him at once to chief musician. At

Henry’s request, the Pope released Memmo from his vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and he

became a royal chaplain. Memmo gathered about him a group of highly talented musicians, among

them a young Venetian lutenist to whom the King “never wearied of listening,” and who would

entertain Henry and his court for up to four hours at a time. Knowing his own worth, Memmo

composed a song with lyrics hinting that an increase in salary would be welcome; Henry took the hint,

and rewarded him with the lucrative benefice of Hanbury, Staffordshire. Memmo left England for

Portugal in 1525, and died around 1533.

Another virtuoso organist, Benedict de Opitiis of Antwerp, joined the musicians of the Chamber at this

time, at a salary of about £20 (£6,000) a year,

which was much more than that paid to most court

musicians. Together with Richard Sampson, the gifted Bishop of Chichester, he composed exceptional

sacred music for the Chapel Royal.

The Christmas of 1516, which was kept with the usual lavish festivities at Greenwich, was graced by

the presence of the three queens. Margaret Tudor, who was unable to afford New Year’s gifts, was

saved from embarrassment by Wolsey, who gave her £200 (£60,000) to pay for them. On Twelfth

Night, there was a pageant entitled The Garden of Esperance,

with an entire artificial garden on a

pageant car.

It was now nearly a year since the birth of the Princess Mary, and still the Queen had not conceived the

hoped-for son. In the spring of 1517, she made another pilgrimage to Walsingham,

accompanied by

the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk. Katherine was becoming more devout with every passing year, and

with the loss of each child had turned increasingly to her faith for solace. She had aged and grown

stouter, although ambassadors still remarked upon her fine complexion. She no longer participated so

enthusiastically at court revels, but often withdrew early, although she never shirked her duties on state

occasions. Clearly, she and Henry were growing apart.

On what would come to be known as Evil May Day, the King rode from London with a train of

courtiers to the woods at Kensington to bring in the May. But back in the City there were riots, as large

gangs of apprentices joined in a concerted rising, attacked foreign merchants and craftsmen, and

threatened to kill the Lord Mayor and his aldermen. There were several injuries, and many arrests; the

ringleaders were executed, and on 22 May, four hundred others were brought before the King and his

lords in Westminster Hall, wearing halters around their necks. In a beautifully stage-managed charade,

Wolsey and Queen Katherine knelt and pleaded for their lives, whereupon Henry graciously pardoned

them, at which all the apprentices threw their caps in the air for joy, and their mothers called down

blessings on the King’s head.

Some modern writers assert that Henry’s sisters also interceded for the

apprentices, but Mary was then in Suffolk and Margaret had left for Scotland with her daughter on 18

May. Henry never saw Margaret again.

“Multitudes Are Dying around Us”

The spring of 1517 brought with it the outbreak of a severe epidemic of the sweating sickness, a

terrifying disease that could kill with devastating speed. “One has a little pain in the head and heart;

suddenly, a sweat breaks out, and a physician is useless, for whether you wrap yourself up much or

little, in four hours—sometimes within two or three— you are despatched without languishing.”

Apart

from the violent sweats and shivering fits, the symptoms could include stomach pains, vertigo, a rash,

headaches, and nervous prostration. Most casualties succumbed on the first day: a man could be “merry

at dinner and dead at supper.”

But “once 24 hours are passed, all danger is at an end.”

Many cases

seem to have been purely psychosomatic: one rumour might cause “a thousand cases of sweat,”

and

Chieragato observed that people “suffered more from fear than others did from the sweat itself.”

Tudor medicine was a mixture of the received wisdom of the ancient Greeks, superstition, and old-

fashioned common sense. Andrew Boorde recommended that sufferers be tucked up warmly in bed in a

room with a roaring fire to sweat out the illness; other physicians recommended treacle and herbs, or

exotic potions made from powdered sapphires or gold. The truth was, none of them had any real

understanding of the sweating sickness, nor the slightest idea of what might cure it. The only thing they

all agreed upon was that the patient should be kept awake and not allowed to lapse into a coma.

The sweating sickness had first appeared in England in 1485, when it was seen by some as a judgement

of God upon Henry Tudor for usurping the throne; at that time, “scarcely one in a hundred escaped

death.”

There had been another, less severe, outbreak in 1508. Europeans called the disease “the

English sweat” because it was more prevalent in England than elsewhere. There were no cases after

1551, and today it is hard to be certain what the sweating sickness was. Some have speculated that it

was a military fever—a particularly virulent form of prickly heat—others that it was a strain of

influenza or typhus. Given the fact that bacteria can mutate, it was probably a viral infection which in

time ceased to be fatal.

Plague in several forms, notably bubonic, was endemic in Tudor times. There were outbreaks most

summers, some much worse than others, and the people who died were mainly the poor, who had not

the means to escape the pest, as their betters could. Plague spread rapidly in hot, crowded, dirty cities,

and London, which had about seventy thousand inhabitants crammed inside its walls, was invariably

the worst-afflicted place. In 1513, three hundred to four hundred people a day died of plague in the

capital.

Henry VIII was inordinately fearful of disease, and especially of any form of plague. He was “the most

timid person in such matters you could meet with.”

The mere words “sweating sickness” were “so

terrible to His Highness’s ears that he dare in no wise approach unto the place where it is noised to have

been.”

No one who had been in contact with any infected person was allowed to enter his court.

In the spring of 1517, when the worst epidemic of the sweating sickness that England had yet

experienced broke out in London, the King removed with the court to Richmond—where he was joined

by the Suffolks—and thence to Greenwich. While there, he was invited by Giustinian to a banquet on

board the Venetian flagship, which lay in the Thames, and accepted the invitation on condition that

most of the crew, who might be be infected with plague, would stay away.

The ship’s main deck had been adorned with tapestries and silk hangings, and along each side were

tables bearing a lavish buffet for the King and three hundred courtiers, who were rowed out to the ship

in small boats. When Henry went on board, he was conducted to the poop deck, where he was offered

wine, little sponge cakes, and other delicacies. He was full of praise for his hosts, and also for the

sailors who performed daring acrobatic feats high up on the rigging, and was so impressed with the

ship’s guns that he asked to return the next day to see them all fired. At the end of the banquet,

everyone was allowed to take home the exquisite Venetian glasses in which their wine had been

served.

Henry was now revelling in the role of international peacemaker. Having temporarily given up any idea

of winning victories against the French—he had told Giustinian he was content with what he had and

wished only to govern his own subjects

—he set himself to maintaining the balance of power between

Francis I and Maximilian. In early July, the King received Spanish ambassadors who had come to press

for a defensive alliance with King Charles I of Spain, who had succeeded Ferdinand the previous year,

and the Pope against the King of France. The envoys were escorted to Greenwich by a deputation of

four hundred nobles, and shown every honour. At their first audience, the whole court “glittered with

gold.”

The King regaled them with a programme of masses, pageants, and jousts, which culminated

on 7 July with a splendid tournament in the new tiltyard complex in front of an audience of fifty

thousand. Henry had wanted to take on all comers separately, but was persuaded that this would take

too long, so, after giving a breathtaking display of horsemanship before his wife and his sister, he ran

eight courses against Suffolk instead, “shivering their lances every time, to the great applause of the

spectators.”

Among the other contestants who distinguished themselves in the four-hour contest, in which 506

spears were broken, were a group of young gentlemen of the Privy Chamber of whom the King had

grown increasingly fond, and who wore outfits similar to his own. One was Nicholas Carew; it was on

this occasion that he performed his feat with the tree trunk.

The rest included Sir William Compton,

Francis Bryan, Anthony Knyvet, and William Coffin. All were intelligent, articulate young men of

gentle birth who were inclined to intemperate and often wild behaviour; they were known at court as

“the King’s minions.” Wolsey resented this little clique because, although they held no political offices,

they had the King’s ear, shared his leisure hours, and were therefore much too influential for comfort.

The tournament was followed by a banquet which lasted seven hours, after which Henry danced with

the ladies until dawn broke.

When the ambassadors left England, the King gave them rich gifts of

horses and clothing.

By August, the plague had crept too near to Greenwich for comfort, so Henry sent home most members

of his household and moved to Windsor, where he shut himself up with the Queen, Dr. Linacre,

Dionysio Memmo, and only three of his favourite gentlemen (the latter group almost certainly included

Compton and Carew). No one else was allowed to come near him, not even foreign ambassadors, and

all but the most necessary government business was held in suspension. Meanwhile, Wolsey, who had

suffered four attacks of the sweat and survived,

had gone on pilgrimage to Walsingham to give thanks

for his recovery.

Although the giests had been drawn up, Henry was forced to abandon all plans for a progress.

August 1517, More wrote to Erasmus: “Multitudes are dying around us. Almost everyone in Oxford,

Cambridge or London has been ill lately.” At Windsor, “some of the royal pages who slept in His

Majesty’s chamber” succumbed,

and the King fled with his small entourage to “a remote and unusual

habitation,” which has not been identified. Thereafter, he moved from house to house to escape the

contagion, but not fast enough. Lord Grey, a German servant, and several of those who worked in the

royal kitchens and stables caught the sweat and died, as did the King’s Latin secretary, Andrea

Ammonio, three days after he had left court to seek refuge in the countryside.

Back in London, there

was civil disorder due to the absence of both king and cardinal.

By the autumn, only a skeleton staff were in attendance upon the King. As sickness was seen as a

visitation from God and a punishment for sinfulness, Henry became more assiduous at his devotions,

attending mass and receiving communion more frequently than usual.

He kept fear at bay by hawking,

making music with Memmo, or concocting his own remedy for the sweat; this was made up of sage,

herb of grace, and elder leaves infused together.

Over the years, Henry devised more than thirty such remedies— medicines, plasters, lotions, and

ointments—using a wide range of ingredients that included plants, raisins, linseed vinegar, rose water,

worms, wines, ammonia, lead monoxide, ivory scrapings, crushed pearls, coral, marshmallows,

“dragon’s” blood, and animal fat. His “cure” for bubonic plague consisted of an infusion of marigolds,

sorrel, meadow plant, feverfew, rue, and snapdragon, sweetened with sugar. He also thought up plasters