Henry VIII: The King and His Court

  30

  “Next in Rank to His Majesty”

  If Will Somers had dared, he could probably have made his audience see the comic aspects of an accident that befell the King in 1525. But in fact this was no laughing matter, for, once again, Henry was nearly killed. When he was “following of his hawk” near Hitchin, he tried to pole-vault over a ditch, but the pole snapped and he landed headfirst in the muddy water. Stuck fast in the clay, he would have drowned had it not been for a footman, Edmund Mody, who leapt into the stream and hauled him out.1 This accident (or the one in the tiltyard a year before) might have accounted for the headaches he suffered later on, but its immediate effect was to bring home to the King, more forcibly than ever, the fact that the problem of the succession must be solved as a matter of urgency.

  It was now known that the Queen would never bear him a son. Of course, Henry already had a son, his bastard Henry Fitzroy, and it was at this time that he seriously began to consider making him his heir. Although bastardy was then a serious bar to inheritance, such children could be legitimated in certain circumstances. The first step was to bring the boy, now six and living in Durham House on the Strand, into the public eye and gauge whether or not he would be acceptable to the people.

  At a chapter meeting of the Knights of the Garter on 23 April, Fitzroy was elected to the Order; he was solemnly installed on 7 June in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor and given the second stall on the Sovereign’s side. The Queen, who had long been aware of his existence and seems to have held no personal rancour towards the little boy, watched the ceremony from her closet above Edward IV’s chantry.

  On 18 June, in the first multiple peerage creations since 1514, Henry elevated his son to the high dignity of Duke of Richmond and Somerset and Earl of Nottingham. The earldom of Richmond had been held by Henry VII prior to his accession, and the title Duke of Somerset had been bestowed by that King on his youngest son, Edmund, who died aged fifteen months in 1500; prior to that it had been held by the Beauforts. These royal titles did not denote an heir to the throne, yet they underlined the new Duke’s high status and royal blood. His coat of arms was designed by the King himself.

  On the same day, the King’s nephew, Henry Brandon, was created Earl of Lincoln; Henry Courtenay, Earl of Devon, was created Marquess of Exeter; Henry, Lord Clifford, became Earl of Cumberland;2 Thomas Manners, Lord Roos, was created Earl of Rutland;3 and Sir Thomas Boleyn, now one of the King’s most influential advisers, was created Lord Rochford. The investiture of the new peers took place in the presence chamber at Bridewell Palace, where the King stood under his cloth of estate attended by Cardinal Wolsey, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, and the Earls of Arundel and Oxford. The room was packed with courtiers, and it was intolerably hot. Henry Fitzroy entered first, to a fanfare, knelt before his father, and was clothed in the crimson and blue mantle, sword, cap of estate, and coronet of a duke, as the patent of creation was read out. Then he took his place beside the King on the dais, taking precedence over every other peer in the room.4

  The message was loud and clear. “He is now next in rank to His Majesty, and might yet be easily by the King’s means exalted to higher things,” observed a Venetian envoy.5 But the Queen took great exception to the boy’s promotion, seeing it as a threat to the position of her daughter, the Princess Mary.6 The new Lord Rochford was not very happy either, for he had been forced, on advancement to the peerage, to resign his office of Lord Treasurer to Sir William Fitzwilliam without any financial compensation, and for this he blamed Wolsey.

  Henry Courtenay, the new Marquess of Exeter, was riding high in the King’s favour. At this time he was appointed to serve as a nobleman in the Privy Chamber7 and made Constable of Windsor Castle and High Steward of the Duchy of Cornwall. A rich man with vast estates in the west, he lived in considerable splendour chiefly at Horsley in Surrey and his London house, The Red Rose. His wife was Gertrude Blount, daughter of the humanist Lord Mountjoy, the Queen’s Chamberlain. Gertrude, who was half Spanish, was one of the Queen’s ladies, and very dear to her.

  Wolsey’s dominance was still unchallenged. Yet his enemies were growing ever more powerful, which left him no choice but to take account of their opinions. The King, although he still relied heavily on Wolsey, was now a mature man with a changing outlook, and it is possible that he was beginning to look askance at the Cardinal’s wealth. In June 1525, Wolsey made the grand—and politic—gesture of presenting to Henry his newly completed palace of Hampton Court with all its contents,8 receiving in exchange Richmond Palace, which was nowhere near as big or magnificent. Apparently the King, seeing that the lodgings Wolsey had built at Hampton Court were far better than any in his own palaces, had dropped a few heavy hints. 9 The Cardinal, however, was still allowed to make use of Hampton Court on occasion, especially for official entertaining.

  Wolsey just then had his mind on other matters. He had commissioned an imposing tomb for himself from the Italian sculptor Benedetto di Rovezzano. It was to be erected in the small chapel built by Henry VII to house the tomb of the canonised Henry VI,10 to the east of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. But Henry VI had not achieved sainthood, and Henry VIII’s tomb, which was to have been built there instead, had never been finished. In 1524, Henry had made the empty chapel available to Wolsey for his own tomb, which was planned to reflect the Cardinal’s status and fame.

  In 1525, Wolsey’s foundation at Oxford, Cardinal College, opened its doors to students. Housed in splendid buildings built by master masons who had worked for the King, it was richly endowed by Wolsey from the proceeds of dissolved religious houses. The Master of its Choristers was the eminent musician and composer John Taverner, whose services were so highly valued by the Cardinal that he would escape punishment when convicted of heresy in 1528. The Queen had taken an interest in the new college; in January Dr. Longland had briefed her at length on its aims and functions and told her “how it would draw students from all over England and how students and masters alike would remember to pray for her welfare.”11

  But Katherine was no friend to Wolsey and he knew it. She blamed him for the advancement of Fitzroy. In June 1525, his spies in her household reported to him that three of her Spanish ladies were encouraging her to make a fuss about the boy’s recent elevation. The Cardinal immediately had them dismissed, and when the Queen asked the King to rescind the order, he refused. Katherine, who was “obliged to submit and have patience,” 12 was thus made painfully aware of her isolated position. Nearly forty, no longer in the best of health, and unable to trust her own servants, she knew that her wishes no longer counted with her husband.

  To make matters worse, the Emperor had jilted her daughter. Offered the chance of marrying the beautiful Isabella of Portugal, who brought with her a dowry of £1 million, he had decided that it was not worth waiting for Mary to grow up. A coolness had naturally developed between Henry and his former ally, and Katherine’s dream of a Spanish marriage for Mary seemed unlikely to be fulfilled.

  The child who was the innocent cause of her trouble was soon to be removed from the Queen’s orbit. The summer of 1525 witnessed the worst outbreak of bubonic plague in ten years; in London, fifty people a day perished, and the King removed as usual to safe houses. In July, the young Duke of Richmond, who was that month appointed Lord High Admiral, Warden General of the Northern Marches, and Lord Lieutenant of England with command of all military operations north of the Trent (the last two offices having been held by Henry VIII before his accession), was sent north to Yorkshire, where his quasi-royal household was established in Sheriff Hutton Castle. 13 This property had recently been granted to him along with eighty other manors, scattered throughout England, which yielded a total annual income of £4,000 (£1,200,000).14 Sheriff Hutton had been the residence of Richmond’s grandmother, Elizabeth of York, before her marriage to Henry VII, and the young Duke was housed in the luxurious domestic range. His chapel was furnished at the expense of his godfather, Wolsey.15

  His princ
ely household comprised 245 persons, who wore his livery of blue and yellow, and was maintained by his father at an annual cost of £3,200 (£960,000). Its Master was Thomas Magnus, Archdeacon of the East Riding, who had been England’s ambassador in Scotland. Sir Edward Seymour was Master of the Horse;16 this young gentleman came from an old-established Wiltshire family. His father, Sir John Seymour, “a gentle, courteous man,”17 was a favoured courtier of the King, whom he had attended to France in 1513 and again to the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520; he had also been present at Canterbury during the Emperor’s visit in 1522. His wife, Margaret Wentworth, to whom John Skelton had once addressed a poem, was descended from Edward III. Edward, one of their ten children, had been page to Mary Tudor when she was Queen of France, then transferred to Wolsey’s service. A brave and able soldier, he had been knighted by Suffolk during the French campaign of 1523, and the following year was made an Esquire of the Body to the King. He was therefore admirably qualified for service to the young Duke.

  It was not unusual for princes to advance their bastards, but there was little doubt that this boy was being groomed for kingship. He was “well brought up like a prince’s child” and kept “the state of a great prince.”18 He held court from a rich chair of cloth of gold set under a canopy of estate, and was addressed as royalty. While in Yorkshire, he was the nominal president of the former Council of the North, now renamed the Council of the Duke of Richmond, although the actual responsibility devolved upon Thomas Magnus. Furthermore, Henry was considering marrying Richmond to a Portuguese princess.

  The young Duke was also to receive a princely education. Richard Croke, an eminent classical scholar from St. John’s College, Cambridge— who had once given Henry VIII lessons in Greek—was appointed his tutor, for it was the King’s desire that the boy should benefit from the New Learning.

  Henry cherished his son “like his own soul,” referring to him as “my worldly jewel,”19 and the evidence suggests that Richmond loved and revered his father. The two corresponded regularly. Henry sent gifts, among them a lute: the boy had inherited the Tudor talent for music. Richmond also wrote regularly to Wolsey, and once told him, “I have written unto the King’s Highness, making my most humble intercession for an harness to exercise myself in arms.” The letter, signed “Harry Richmond,” was perhaps written in the hope that his godfather might put in a good word for him. In his letter requesting the harness, which was addressed to “my most dread and sovereign lord,” Richmond implied that Julius Caesar would have smiled upon his request. He also stressed to Henry, “I give my whole endeavour, mind and study to the diligent appliance of all sciences and feats of learning,” and ended as usual by craving the paternal blessing.20 History does not record whether or not he got his harness, but it seems likely that he did.

  Given the Queen’s dissatisfaction with his treatment of his son, Henry could do no less than provide a similar establishment for his daughter. For Katherine this proved a mixed blessing, for it took Mary away from her. In August 1525, the Princess was sent to Ludlow Castle on the Welsh Marches, in the care of Lady Salisbury, who had regained the King’s favour and been restored to her place as Lady Governess. Mary’s tutor, Dr. Fetherston, was among the 304 members of the Princess’s household who accompanied her, many sporting her livery of blue and green.21

  Katherine missed her child dreadfully, but kept in touch by letter, trying to be positive about the separation for Mary’s sake: “As to your writing in Latin, I am glad that you shall change from me to Master Fetherston, for that shall do you much good to learn from him to write right.” 22

  Like Richmond, Mary was to learn the art of government; in her case, she was to nominally preside over the Council of the Marches, as two Princes of Wales had done before her: Edward V and Arthur Tudor. Lady Salisbury saw that the Queen’s instructions regarding her daughter’s upbringing were obeyed to the letter: she was to have plenty of fresh air, “moderate exercise,” and good, pure food “served with comfortable, joyous and merry communication,” and everything about her was to be “sweet, clean and wholesome.” As well as attending to her lessons, the Princess was to have time for practising her music and dancing.23 If she became ill, her new physician, Dr. William Butts, would attend her. This Norfolk gentleman, now forty and an eminent humanist scholar, had studied at Cambridge, qualified as a doctor in 1518, and been appointed the principal of St. Mary’s Hostel at Cambridge in 1524. Butts wore Mary’s livery and was assigned two servants and an apothecary. 24 His wife, Margaret Bacon, was also a member of the Princess’s household. 25

  Mary rarely resided at Ludlow, which was the official seat of the Council of the Marches. Instead, she stayed at the manor house of Tickenhill which stood on a hill overlooking nearby Bewdley; this was where her mother had lodged with Prince Arthur during the months before his death in 1502. The original thirteenth-century house had been updated and enlarged by Edward IV in 1473–1474 for his son, the future Edward V, and further extended by Henry VII in 1490; it was refurbished in time for Mary’s arrival. Tickenhill was a timber-framed building with brick chimneys, solid oak beams, and a great hall.26

  Around this time, the King acquired another house, which would one day become one of Mary’s favourite residences. Fifteenth-century Hunsdon Manor in Hertfordshire was purchased from the Duke of Norfolk as a place of retreat from the plague because of its “wholesome air.” 27 During the next nine years, Henry would spend £2,900 (£870,000) improving it, creating a moat, building royal lodgings with heraldic windows by Galyon Hone, and partly refacing the house in brick.28 A painting of Hunsdon as it appeared in 1546 appears in the background of a portrait of the future Edward VI, now at Windsor.29

  31

  “The Establishment of Good Order”

  Because the plague was still rampant in London, Henry did not observe the usual Yuletide festivities at the end of 1525, but spent what became known as “the still Christmas” quietly and fearfully at Eltham with very few courtiers in attendance; no one was allowed to “come thither but such as were appointed by name.”1 At Richmond, however, Wolsey, well supplied with the oranges that were said to ward off infection, “kept open household to lords, ladies and all others that would come, with plays and disguisings in most royal manner.”2 Mary remained safe at Ludlow, far from the pestilence.

  The threat of plague lasted right into the summer of 1526, and the disease carried off at least two members of Henry’s entourage. After Christmas, Wolsey joined the King at Eltham, where together they drew up the famous Eltham Ordinances—“Articles devised by the King’s Highness, with the advice of his Council, for the establishment of good order and reformation of sundry errors and misuses in his most honourable Household and Chamber.” 3 These Ordinances were aimed at reforming the royal household, saving money, and eliminating waste. As far back as 1519, probably when he was feeling virtuous in the wake of the minions’ expulsion, Henry had communicated to Wolsey his pleasure that his entire household “be put in honourable, substantial and profitable order without any further delay.”4 As with many of his ideas, nothing had been done. Now, prompted by a looming financial crisis caused by the ruinous cost of the war with France, the King and the Cardinal had no choice but to implement drastic changes.

  Servants surplus to requirements were pensioned off, and hangers-on summarily ejected; the Yeomen of the Guard were reduced to one hundred, and their court duties shared with the Gentlemen Pensioners, who were now provided with ceremonial battle-axes; tighter controls over expenditure on food and other provisions were imposed; and stricter codes of discipline and new curbs on absenteeism were introduced. Henceforth all members of the household were to be appointed on merit, and those who gave good service would benefit from new channels of promotion.

  The Eltham Ordinances not only recognised the Privy Chamber as a household department in its own right but also reformed it, and in these reforms it is possible to ascertain the extent of Henry’s thralldom to Wolsey. The King had been overgenerous in
finding posts for his favourites and their clients, all of whom brought their own servants to court with them. The Cardinal now seized his chance to minimise the threat to his authority posed by the one power centre at court over which he lacked influence. Numbers were cut, ostensibly in the interests of economy: the Gentlemen of the Chamber were reduced from twelve to six, Sewers were reduced from forty-five to six, and Grooms of the Chamber from fifteen to four. “Alas, what sorrow and lamentation was made when all these persons should depart the court,” observed Hall.

  The Cardinal also took measures to curb the ambitions of the members of the Privy Chamber by decreeing that they render “humble, reverent, secret and lowly service, not pressing His Grace, nor advancing themselves, either in further service than His Grace will assign them unto, or also in suits, or intermeddle of any causes or matters whatsoever they be.” 5 Much to Wolsey’s chagrin, these injunctions would be largely ignored.

  Naturally, the first to go were Wolsey’s enemies, among them the Groom of the Stool, Sir William Compton, Sir Francis Bryan, Sir Nicholas Carew, Lord Rochford, and George Boleyn.6 Among the displaced there was burning resentment against the Cardinal, and many were resolved to recover their former positions. Nevertheless, the King had allowed himself to be persuaded that their removal was for the best, although he had insisted on retaining as chief “Nobleman of the Privy Chamber,” without remuneration, his cousin Exeter, who was no friend to the Cardinal. To balance his influence, Wolsey brought in his own adherent, Sir John Russell, an ambitious courtier, soldier, and diplomat, who had begun his career in 1506 as Gentleman Usher to Henry VII. Henry VIII had knighted him during the French campaign of 1513, and thereafter sent him on several embassies to France and Italy. In 1522, during the war with France, Russell had lost an eye at the Battle of Morlaix. Around the time of his appointment to the Privy Chamber, he married and acquired his country seat, the fifteenth-century house known as Chenies in Buckinghamshire.