Henry VIII Read online

  The Queen confessed her sins every week and received the Eucharist on Sundays. Over the years, she made several pilgrimages to Our Lady of Walsingham, Our Lady of Caversham, and other shrines.14 She had a special devotion to the Franciscans. In later years, she wore the rough serge habit of the Third Order of St. Francis under her royal robes. 15 For the present, however, she was a young woman delighted with the sudden change in her fortunes and happily anticipating the future.

  In June 1509, the young King brought Katherine to Greenwich Palace, where they were to be married. Royal connections with Greenwich went back to the eleventh century, but the Thames-side palace, five miles down the river from London, had been built after 1433 by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, brother of Henry V. Humphrey had named it Bella Court; he also built a tower in Greenwich Park, on the site of the present Royal Observatory. Bella Court had been remodelled and luxuriously refurbished after 1447 for Henry VI’s queen, Margaret of Anjou, who renamed it Placentia or Pleasaunce, and stocked the surrounding park with deer.

  Between 1498 and 1504,16 Henry VII, probably inspired by reports of the palaces of the dukes of Burgundy at Princenhof and Ghent, virtually rebuilt Placentia around three great courtyards.17 He had the river frontage with its bay windows refaced in Burgundian-style red brick,18 and changed the palace’s name once more, to Greenwich. It was thereafter one of the chief and most splendid residences of the Tudor dynasty, the scene of many important historical events. Excavations have shown that the palace stood on the site of the present Royal Naval College, and that the royal apartments overlooked the river. All around were beautiful gardens with fountains, lawns, flowers, and orchards.19

  The design of Greenwich Palace was revolutionary. It had no moat, and although the royal apartments were stacked one above the other in a five-storey donjon, or keep, in the traditional castellar manner, there were no fortifications. This, like the Burgundian palaces, was first and foremost a domestic residence, and its design was to be repeated in many great houses of the early Tudor period.20

  The donjon was situated between a chapel to the east and the privy kitchen to the west. Although there are several external views of the palace, notably those executed by Anthony van Wyngaerde in the 1550s, we know very little about what the interior looked like. The complex included a great hall, with its roof timbers painted yellow ochre, a great chamber, and a range of domestic offices.21 Henry’s closet overlooking the Thames had murals depicting the life of St. John.22

  Henry VIII loved Greenwich; it was his birthplace, and during the first half of his reign he spent more time there than at any other palace. He could hunt and hawk in the two-hundred-acre park, or watch his ships being built at the dockyards he established at nearby Woolwich and Deptford in 1513. London was easily accessible by barge. The King spent lavishly on improving the palace, and in the 1530s the antiquarian John Leland wrote:

  Lo! with what lustre shines this wished-for place,

  Which, star-like, might the heavenly mansions grace.

  What painted roofs! What windows charm the eye!

  What turrets, rivals of the starry sky!23

  In 1478, Edward IV had established at Greenwich a community of the Observant Friars of St. Francis; Henry VII later built a similar friary beside his palace at Richmond. Henry VIII, like Katherine of Aragon, was deeply attached to the Observants “for their strict adherence to poverty, their sincerity, charity and devotion.”24 During the first half of the reign, the Order would benefit from royal patronage and provide several chaplains for the King and Queen. The Order’s church at Greenwich, built after 1482 and linked to the royal lodgings by a gallery,25 was a favourite place of prayer for Katherine, who wished one day to be buried there.

  It was at Greenwich, in the Queen’s closet, that Henry and Katherine were quietly married on 11 June 1509, with William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, officiating. There were no public celebrations; nor does the traditional ceremony of putting the bride and groom to bed seem to have been observed. When Katherine had married Prince Arthur in 1501, the ceremonial laid down by Margaret Beaufort was followed: the bed was prepared and sprinkled with holy water before the bride was led away from the wedding feast by her ladies, and undressed, veiled, and “reverently” laid in bed. Her young husband, “in his shirt, with a gown cast about him,” 26 was then escorted by his gentlemen and a host of merry courtiers into the bedchamber, to the sound of shawms, viols, and tabors. Then the music ceased to allow the bishops to bless the bed and pray that the marriage might be fruitful, and only then were the young couple left alone, with some wine and spices to fortify them.27 This is the only recorded instance of an English royal couple being publicly bedded together in the sixteenth century.

  The queen consort’s duties were to produce heirs to the throne, engage in charitable works, and act as a helpmeet to her husband and as a civilising influence over his court. She was not expected to play a political role, although most of Henry VIII’s wives did, even if it was merely to secure the advancement of their families and supporters.

  Until 1514, Katherine acted as an unofficial ambassador for King Ferdinand, and Henry respected her political judgement. But then her father tricked him, and he never again valued her advice as highly. Her influence was always greatest in the domestic sphere, overseeing the management of the royal household, administering her estates, presiding over the councils held by her chief officers, and attending to the charitable works that won her the love of the English people. Nor was she above sewing her husband’s shirts, living up to her motto, “Humble and loyal.”

  Katherine’s badges, the pomegranate of Granada and the arrow-sheaf of Aragon, were soon seen everywhere in the royal palaces, entwined with Tudor roses, crowns, and portcullises. A queen was expected to dress the part, and Katherine always appeared sumptuously attired, often with her hair falling loose over her shoulders—a fashion permitted only to unmarried girls and queens—or adorned with a Venetian cap. It was she who introduced into England the Spanish farthingale, a petticoat of linen or canvas stiffened with ever-increasing hoops of cane, whalebone, or steel into a bell shape. This was worn under the gown and kirtle, and remained fashionable until around 1520.

  Katherine’s badges also adorned many items in her vast collection of jewellery, which included the official jewels handed down from one English queen consort to the next. Like many people, she believed that some jewels had supernatural powers: one of her rings was said to cure fits. She owned a pomander with a dial in it—probably an early watch—as well as very costly ropes of pearls with jewelled crucifixes and pendants of St. George, and exquisite brooches with pendant pearls for her corsage.

  Katherine shared Henry’s enthusiasm for hunting and elaborate court entertainments, as well as his intellectual interests. She loved music, dancing, engaging in stimulating conversation, and watching tournaments; the King always sported her favours when he jousted. In true courtly tradition, he wrote poems and songs for her—for example:

  As the holly groweth green

  And never changeth hue,

  So I am, e’er hath been

  Unto my lady true.28

  Henry was fond of telling people that “he loved true where he did marry.”29 He wrote to Katherine’s father: “If I were still free, I would choose her for wife before all others.” 30 In Elizabeth of York’s missal, which he gave to his wife, he inscribed: “I am yours, Henry R., for ever.” After each midday meal he was usually to be found in the Queen’s apartments, discussing politics, theology, or books, receiving visitors, or just “taking his pleasure as usual with the Queen.”31 Often he took his supper there, and he always joined Katherine for Vespers. His chief desire was to please her.

  Katherine adored him. She referred to him variously as “Your Grace,” “my husband,” or even “my Henry.” Soon after her marriage, her confessor described her as being in “the greatest gaiety and contentment that ever there was.” 32 All that was needed to complete the royal couple’s happiness and
secure the succession was a son.

  Henry VIII inherited a great fortune—which has been estimated at £1,250,000 (about £375 million today)—from his careful father. His kingdom, “this fertile and plentiful realm of England, at that time flourished in all abundance of wealth and riches, and grace and plenty reigned” within it.33 Under Tudor rule, the realm had come to enjoy the benefits of peace after thirty years of dynastic struggles.

  Plans were soon in hand for the new King’s coronation, which was to be the first of the many displays of magnificent pageantry that would characterise Henry’s reign. Stocks of the scarlet, white, and green fabrics required for kitting out the entire court ran out, and the Keeper of the Great Wardrobe had to send to Flanders for further supplies. Tailors, embroiderers, and goldsmiths could hardly keep pace with the demand.34

  On 21 June, King and court moved to the Tower of London, where sovereigns traditionally stayed before being crowned. The Tower proper, or central keep—it became known as the White Tower in 1234, when it was whitewashed—had been built to defend London by William the Conqueror around 1080. The royal apartments had then occupied the upper floors of the keep. Successive kings had built further towers and a ring of outer fortifications, and in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries every monarch from Henry III to Richard II had helped to create a lavishly appointed palace.

  Henry III built a great hall and chambers on the east side of the inner ward between the White Tower and the Wakefield and Lanthorn Towers. The great hall had a steeply pitched timber roof, tall windows, and stone pillars (it was crumbling into ruin by the late sixteenth century). Edward I had constructed the original royal watergate beneath St. Thomas’s Tower; it has been called Traitors’ Gate since the sixteenth century. By then, the court was using the gate built by Edward III by the Cradle Tower. The Wardrobe Tower was used from mediaeval times to store royal robes and hangings.

  The Tower was a favourite residence of Edward IV, who divided Henry III’s great chamber into an audience chamber, privy chamber, and bedchamber. Henry VII added a gallery to the Cradle Tower and converted the Lanthorn Tower into a royal lodging with a bedchamber and a privy closet; Henry VIII would have a Renaissance-style altar in here, “wrought round about the edges with antique.”35 These rooms were later hung with tapestries depicting Antiochus, King of Syria, which are said to have been the work of Katherine of Aragon, Katherine Parr, and Mary I. Henry VII also built a tower to house a library next to the King’s Tower, in which was the bedchamber used by Henry VIII and from which projected a gallery traversing the garden below.36

  For centuries the Tower had housed a royal menagerie (in the sixteenth century lions were actually kept in the Lion Tower), the royal armouries, the royal mint, and the royal treasure. Until 1661, the crown jewels were housed at Westminster Abbey, not at the Tower.

  Although it had not yet acquired a sinister reputation, the Tower held unhappy associations for Henry. His mother had died in childbirth there, and her brothers, “the Princes in the Tower,” were widely reputed to have been murdered in the fortress by Richard III. Henry would rarely visit the Tower, although he carried out works there; it was he who added the decorative caps on the White Tower and who first had ordnance placed along the Tower wharf. As a royal residence, the Tower was old-fashioned, cold, damp, and malodorous: its moat was now a squalid refuse dump. Nevertheless, Henry had had the royal lodgings refurbished for his coronation, and they were gaily hung with cloths of red, green, and white—the last two being the Tudor colours.

  On 22 June, the King, in a ceremony instituted by Henry IV at his coronation in 1399, dubbed twenty-six new Knights of the Bath,37 many of whom were his closest friends and attended upon him in his privy chamber. All had been purified in the requisite ritual baths, served the King at dinner, and kept vigil throughout the night in the Norman Chapel of St. John in the White Tower, the earliest-surviving royal chapel. Prior to the Reformation, it boasted brilliant wall paintings, stained-glass windows, and a colourful rood screen (all had disappeared by 1550).

  The next day, 23 June, saw London rejoicing as the King and Queen went in a glittering procession through Cheapside, Temple Bar, and the Strand to Westminster Palace. London was still a walled, mediaeval city, although its suburbs were rapidly sprawling out beyond the walls: along the Strand, for example, were to be found the great houses of the nobility, with gardens leading down to the river. The city’s skyline was dominated by the spires of the Gothic cathedral of St. Paul and eighty other churches. London was prosperous, lively, and very congested, due to its narrow streets and crammed-in, jettied buildings; most citizens, therefore, used the Thames as the main thoroughfare.

  In honour of the coronation, buildings along the processional rouute were hung with tapestries, and free wine flowed from the conduits. Henry rode beneath a canopy borne by the barons of the Cinque Ports, with his heralds going before him. He was resplendent in a doublet of gold embroidered with precious stones beneath a robe of crimson velvet furred with ermine; across his shoulder was slung a baldrick of rubies. Katherine, in embroidered white satin and ermine, followed in a litter hung with white silk and golden ribbons. Her ladies, in blue velvet, rode behind on matching palfreys.38 Margaret Beaufort, watching from a window in Cheapside, wept for joy, overcome by the occasion.

  In the late afternoon, the King and Queen arrived at the Palace of Westminster, which had been the seat of royal government and the monarch’s chief London residence since the eleventh century. The palace was a sprawling complex of mediaeval stone and timber buildings that covered six acres. Much of it had been rebuilt in the thirteenth century by Henry III, although the magnificent Westminster Hall had been erected by William Rufus in 1097–1099; its impressive hammerbeam roof was installed by Richard II in 1394. The law courts of King’s Bench, Chancery, and Common Pleas sat here during the legal term, while the House of Lords met in the great hall—called the White Chamber—of the palace itself. There was therefore limited space for large-scale court ceremonials.

  The royal apartments, which had been refurbished by Edward IV and Henry VII, still bore signs of the faded splendour of a bygone age. Like his father, Henry VIII used as his bedchamber Henry III’s vast Painted Chamber, which measured eighty-six feet by twenty-six feet. Above the King’s bed was a thirteenth-century mural in red, blue, silver, and gold portraying the coronation of St. Edward the Confessor, and on the adjacent walls were vivid depictions of Old Testament battles. Being so close to the river, the palace was damp and difficult to heat; tapestry hung over the doors to keep out the draughts. Beggars thronged the rubbish-strewn forecourt with its clock tower and fountain. Yet Henry spent much time here in the first years of his reign.

  Throughout the night before their coronation, the King and Queen kept vigil in the Chapel of St. Stephen, founded by King Stephen in the twelfth century (Edward III had remodelled it in the fourteenth century and commissioned murals of himself and his large family).

  On Midsummer Day, Sunday, 24 June, Henry and Katherine, wearing royal robes of crimson and preceded by the nobility in furred gowns of scarlet, walked to Westminster Abbey along a carpet of striped cloth strewn with herbs and flowers.39 As soon as the King disappeared into the Abbey, the crowds ripped the carpet to pieces for souvenirs.40

  “This day consecrates a young man who is the everlasting glory of our age,” exulted Thomas More. “This day is the end of our slavery, the fount of our liberty, the beginning of joy. Now the people, liberated, run before their king with bright faces.”41

  After being acclaimed by the peers, Henry swore his coronation oath and was anointed with holy oil. He was then crowned by Archbishop Warham with the crown of St. Edward the Confessor.42 The choir burst into the Te Deum as the newly consecrated monarch was led by thirty-eight bishops to his throne to receive the homage of his chief subjects.

  Chief among the choristers that day was Dr. Robert Fairfax, who was to become renowned as “the prime musician of the nation.” 43 A Cambridge graduate
, Fairfax was the first man to take a degree in music at Oxford. Henry had heard of his fame as organist and choirmaster of St. Albans Abbey, and had already persuaded him to become a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. Fairfax was to write grand polyphonic masses and motets for the Chapel, as well as delightful secular ballads for the court. He was paid only £9.2s.6d (£9.12) a year, less than a royal gardener would earn, but he was handsomely rewarded each New Year’s Day for composing anthems and copying out music.

  In a much shorter ceremony, the Queen was crowned with a heavy gold diadem set with sapphires, rubies, and pearls.44 When the royal couple emerged from the Abbey, the King was wearing his lighter “imperial” or arched crown and a purple velvet robe lined with ermine. As the crowds cheered, the organ and trumpets were sounding, drums thundering, and bells pealing to signify that Henry VIII “had been gloriously crowned to the comfort of all the land.”45

  The King and Queen led the great procession back to Westminster Hall for the coronation banquet, which was to be “greater than any Caesar had known.”46 When all were seated, a fanfare sounded, and the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Shrewsbury rode into the hall on horseback to herald the arrival of the “sumptuous, fine and delicate meats [in] plentiful abundance.”47 When the second course was finished, the King’s Champion, Sir Robert Dymmocke, paraded up and down the hall on his courser before throwing down his gauntlet with the customary challenge to anyone who dared contest the King’s title. Henry rewarded him with a gold cup. After the banquet, “a tournament was held which lasted until midnight.”48

  The celebrations continued for several days:

  To further enhance the triumphal coronation, jousts and tourneys were held in the grounds of the palace of Westminster. For the comfort of the royal spectators, a pavilion was constructed, covered with tapestries and hung with rich Arras cloth. And nearby there was a curious fountain over which was built a sort of castle with an imperial crown on top and battlements of roses and gilded pomegranates. Its walls were painted white [with] green lozenges, each containing a rose, a pomegranate, a quiver of arrows or the letters H and K, all gilded.