HENRY VIII
On the night of Wednesday, 27th January 1547, Henry Tudor lay dying on
that huge fourpost bedstead which Andrea Conti, an Italian traveller
who visited Whitehall a few years after the King’s death, described as
“looking like a High Altar,” so costly were its hangings of crimson
velvet and cloth of gold, so dazzling its rich embroideries.[92]
The vast apartment was hung with rare Flemish tapestry glistening
with gold thread; the furniture, of carved oak and inlaid ebony, was
upholstered in glorious Florentine brocade. Curtains of “red velvet on
velvet” draped the numerous windows overlooking the Thames, and the
Eastern carpets that covered the floor muffled the sound of footsteps
cautiously moving about the mighty couch.
The once puissant and magnificent Henry VIII, King of England,
France, and Ireland, and Defender of the Faith, was now a mass of
deformed flesh, eaten up and disfigured by a complication of awful
disorders--gout, cancer of the stomach, rheumatism, ulcers, and dropsy.
So swollen were the miserable man’s hands, arms, and legs that he could
only move with great pain, and then only with the aid of a mechanical
contrivance. But his immense head tossed restlessly from side to side
and he groaned piteously, often praying those about him to cool his
parched lips with a drop of water. Though little over fifty-six years
of age, the dying monarch’s hair had turned quite white, and his
beard, formerly so well trimmed, had grown scant and straggling. His
steel-grey eyes looked as small in proportion to the broad, bloated
face as those set in the elephant’s enormous mask, but they still
retained their ophidian glitter.[93]
The dying King had been unusually irritable throughout the weary day.
At times indeed he was delirious, but on the whole his mind remained
fairly clear. At about six o’clock in the afternoon he awakened out of
a deep sleep or lethargy and asked for a cup of white wine, which was
given him. Presently he wandered again,--the result, perhaps, of the
draught of wine,--and shouted, “Monks, monks!” imagining, so it would
seem, that he saw cowled forms hovering about his bed. Three times,
too, and very distinctly, he cried out the name “Nan Boleyn.” After
that he kept his eyes fixed on a certain spot near his bedside, where,
it may be, his fancy showed him the menacing wraith of his murdered
wife. This outburst of feverish excitement was followed by a lull, and
presently the King grew calmer and fell into a profound slumber.
The principal persons about the death-bed were the Earl of Hertford
and his brother, Sir Thomas Seymour; Henry’s Chief Secretary, Sir
William Paget; and his Master of the Horse, Sir Anthony Browne, the
only non-schismatic present. The physicians in attendance upon the King
were Dr. Wendy and Dr. Owen, who had brought the Prince of Wales[94]
into the world, and who subsequently assisted at the death-beds of
Edward VI[95] and Mary. With them was Dr. John Gale,[96] the King’s
surgeon-in-ordinary, who had waited upon Henry and his army when
in France. Notwithstanding the number of priests attached to the
Chapel Royal, there were no clergymen in the room. The Catholic party
afterwards declared they had been purposely kept out of the way lest
the King, whose hatred of the Papacy was purely political, might
recant and make a death-bed submission to Rome. The elimination of
the clerical element from the death-chamber is significant, and we
have no certainty as to whether the King, who clung so tenaciously to
the theory of the Church as to her Last Sacraments, ever personally
received them.
Another very remarkable fact is that neither in the State Papers nor
in any other contemporary accounts of the death of Henry VIII is there
any mention of the Queen’s presence at this time. Her Majesty had
certainly been her husband’s assiduous nurse until early in January,
but after that we hear no more of her, and except for one or two hints
to the contrary in documents connected with the household effects of
the King, we might almost conjecture she had left the palace before
the King passed away. The _Spanish Chronicle_, introduced to English
readers by Martin Hume, which contains a great deal of what would now
be called back-stair gossip, informs us, however, that Katherine Parr
was summoned to the King’s bedside the day before he died, and that “he
thanked her for her great kindness to him,” adding that he had “well
provided for her.” The good Queen, falling on her knees, burst into
such loud sobbing that she had to be removed and conveyed back to her
apartments. From the same source we learn that Princess Mary saw her
father three or four days before the end, and received his blessing. Of
these statements there is no confirmation in the English State Papers;
they are confirmed, however, by documents in the Simancas archives
and in a pamphlet published at Valladolid some three years after
Queen Mary’s death entitled _La Muerte de la Serenissima Reyna Maria
d’Inglaterra_ (Valladolid, 1562).[97]
The last we hear of Katherine Parr as Queen-Consort is in a letter
addressed to her from Hertford on 10th January by her stepson, Prince
Edward, in which he thanks her for a New Year’s gift.[98]
If we trust the _Acts and Monuments_, there is direct evidence that
Henry VIII deliberately omitted Gardiner’s name from his testament. In
the afternoon of the day before his death, Sir Anthony Browne asked
him directly if “My Lord of Winchester was left out of His Majesty’s
will by negligence or otherwise?” He was kneeling at the moment by
the King’s bed and endeavouring to recall to him the Bishop’s long
services. The broad face of the dying King turned towards him, and he
said angrily, “Hold your peace. I remember him well enough, and of good
purpose have I left him out; for surely if he were in my testament
and one of you, he would cumber you all and you should never rule
him, he is of so troublesome a nature.” If this be a truthful account
of the scene, there can be no doubt that Henry realised the omission
of Winchester’s name from the will, which would imply a truckling to
the Seymour faction; for there was now no one left to oppose their
influence or expose their intrigues.
Between seven and eight in the evening of 27th January, Sir Anthony
Denny, who had been watching his master very closely, thought he
perceived signs that the end was approaching. Stooping over him, he
whispered into the dying ear a message especially dreadful to one who,
like Henry, held the mere mention of death in horror, warning him
that his hour was very near, and that “it was meet for him to review
his past life and seek God’s mercy through Jesus Christ.” The King,
although in great agony, evidently understood what Denny had said,
and is reported to have answered that he would suffer no ecclesiastic
near him but Cranmer, who was immediately sent for. The Archbishop
was at Croydon, but, being an excellent horseman, he galloped up to
London, and reached Whitehall about one o’clock in the morning of
Thursday, 28th January.[99] He found the King almost speechless but in
full possession of his faculties, and exhorted him, in a few words, to
repent him of his sins and “to place his trust in Christ only.” Henry
pressed the Churchman’s hand, and muttering the significant words, “All
is lost!” immediately expired.
So passed into eternity Lady Jane Grey’s great-uncle and the most
extraordinary of all our kings. Even at this date it is impossible
to define his true character, for whereas, on the one hand, his
cousin Pole, who knew him well, likened him unto Nero and Tiberius,
that painstaking historian Froude has endeavoured to prove him a
well-intentioned man, whose political and whose domestic troubles
especially were not of his own making, but the result of circumstance
and of Court intrigues beyond his control. Between these two
appreciations the truth doubtless lies. Henry VIII was beyond question
a wonderful being--in whom were reflected, nay, absorbed, all the good
and evil qualities of the subjects whose very Church he contrived to
dominate. With all his treachery, his lust, and his cruelty, he may
well have been a necessary evil, a tool in the guiding Hand that has
shaped the destinies of the British Empire. He tore down the last
vestiges of the Middle Ages; and if the light so suddenly admitted was
too dazzling for the eyes that first beheld it, in due time it mellowed
into the slowly developed liberty and progress that have placed our
country at the forefront of civilisation. Our eighth Henry was the
tyrant who inadvertently forced open the gate whereby Freedom was to
enter.
Much as we loathe his sensuality and his cruelty, his personal
extravagance that emptied the overflowing treasury left by his father
and led him to debase the coin of the realm in order to replenish it,
much as we may deplore his iconoclasm that destroyed a thousand abbeys,
priories, and noble churches and dispersed the art treasures of ages,
as Englishmen we still entertain a surreptitious liking for Bluff King
Hal. His magnificent appearance and the Oriental side of his nature,
his six wives, his fantastic and gorgeous pageants, his outbursts of
bad language, his masterfulness, his love of art and music, all appeal
to the imagination and help us to convert a monarch, a very weak and
poor specimen of humanity, who really had much of the vile criminal
about him, into a hero of romance, and cast over his strange career
something of the legendary glamour that so fascinates all students of
the reign of the illustrious daughter who inherited so many of his good
and evil qualities and carried on much of his chosen policy. To King
Henry we owe the formation of our Army and the creation of our Navy. He
abused his Parliament, but he was its first and greatest organiser. He
shaped it to his own will; and it eventually shaped itself to the will
of the nation.
Earlier in the evening of that momentous 27th of January Hertford and
Paget had spent slow hours pacing up and down the long corridor outside
the King’s chamber, and consulting as to what it would be best to do
as soon as the monarch was dead. Parliament, then in session, had been
busy with the alleged treasonable transactions of the Duke of Norfolk,
now lying in the Tower under sentence of death. His Grace, therefore,
was one of the only three members of the Privy Council absent from the
death-chamber: the other two were Dr. Thirlby, Bishop of Westminster,
then resident Ambassador at the Court of Charles V; and Dr. Nicholas
Wotton, Dean of Canterbury, recently dispatched on a diplomatic mission
to France. Gardiner, whose name had been erased from the Council list,
had lately returned from Brussels, and must have been communicated with
at once, for to him were eventually entrusted all the arrangements for
the late King’s obsequies. An improvised Council was held immediately
after Henry’s death, and decided that the event should be kept a
profound secret until the Prince of Wales was brought to London. This
was cleverly managed by putting all the immediate attendants in the
King’s private apartments under oath; and the multitudinous household
in the outer rooms performed its usual vocations as though Henry, who
had long been absent from his general courtiers’ sight, were still
alive. The sentinels were changed, and everything at Whitehall went
on with clockwork regularity, as if nothing unusual had happened. At
about four o’clock in the morning of 28th January Hertford and his
brother, Thomas Seymour, stole out of the palace, took horse, and
galloped towards Hertford, where the young heir was then residing. By
an oversight--or was it done purposely?--Hertford put in his pocket the
key of the coffer in which the King’s will was kept, and Paget had to
ride out into the dark after him to obtain possession of it. At about
dawn the Seymours were joined by Sir Anthony Browne, an accession which
greatly elated them, for he was one of the most important leaders of
the Catholic party. They reached Hertford[100] a little after daybreak,
and the boy Edward was instantly roused from his slumbers. They did
not at once inform him of his father’s decease, but rode with him to
Enfield Chase, where his sister, the Princess Elizabeth, was residing
with her governess, Mrs. Ashley. Here they broke the news to both of
the dead King’s children, who burst into tears, the Princess Elizabeth
holding her young brother’s hand the while. The company stayed all
Sunday at Enfield, their suite being in the meantime reinforced by a
numerous bodyguard, attended by which they started on the following
morning for London, the boy-King riding on a milk-white palfrey between
Lord Hertford and Sir Anthony Browne. As the procession passed through
the villages on its way to London, the inhabitants were informed of
King Henry’s death. We have proof, however, that it was not known in
the metropolis on the Sunday. On that day the Grey Friar’s Church,
which had been closed for some years and converted into a wine-vault,
was restored to public worship by order of the late King, and his
“munificence and generosity” were fulsomely eulogised by the preacher,
who, however, never alluded to the sovereign’s demise. Towards evening,
the fact that the King was dead began to circulate among the upper
classes, and next morning it was pretty generally known all over London.
At three o’clock on the Monday afternoon King Edward VI entered the
capital through Aldgate, where he was met by the Lord Mayor and a great
assembly of the nobility and gentry. Cranmer greeted him at the Bridge
and read him an address, after which he was conducted in state to the
Tower, being only fairly well received by the populace. Meanwhile, his
father’s body, still at Whitehall, after being “spunged,” cleaned,
disembowelled, and embalmed with spices, was exhibited, covered with a
silken garment, to the great nobility. This done, it was sealed up in
a leaden coffin and brought down into the Privy Chamber, where it lay,
“with all manner of lights thereto requisite, having divine service
about him with Masses, obsequies, and prayers,” until 3rd February,
when it was conveyed into the Chapel Royal, where Mass was said between
nine and ten in the morning.
The _Chapelle Ardente_ was hung with black cloth and with banners of
St. George and England. Eighty huge silver candlesticks with tall wax
tapers in them were ranged on either side of the catafalque. On the
Tuesday, and for five following mornings, Norreys stationed himself
at the entrance to the chancel and cried out at intervals to the
congregation, “Of your charity pray for the soul of the most high and
mighty Prince Henry VIII, our late Sovereign Lord and King.” Watch was
kept day and night by the chaplains and gentlemen of the Privy Chamber.
Then began the saying of Masses for the benefit of the King’s soul, and
these were “as numerous as they were on the occasion of the funeral of
his father, Henry VII.” They were continued until the 13th February.
Tens of thousands of Masses were said throughout the country, both in
the capital and the provinces, in the cathedrals as well as in the
parish churches.[101] The ritual was everywhere absolutely Latin. In
London Gardiner was the celebrant at High Mass each day, assisted by
the Bishops of Durham, London, Ely, St. David’s, Gloucester, Bangor,
and Bath. Archbishop Cranmer was present but did not officiate. Low
Masses were said in the chapel at Whitehall, at an altar erected at
the foot of the catafalque, from four o’clock in the morning until
ten, when High Mass was chanted, the Marquis of Dorset acting as chief
mourner. In the evening there were Vespers for the Dead and Dirge and
“a great attendance of noblemen and gentlemen mourners.” The Queen and
the King’s nieces, the Marchioness of Dorset and her daughters, the
Ladies Jane and Katherine Grey, the Lady Eleanor Brandon, Countess of
Cumberland, the Lady Margaret Lennox, the Duchess of Richmond, the
Duchess of Suffolk, and all the great ladies[102] of the Court, were
present, not only at High Mass, but at countless other Masses in the
Chapel Royal. They were, however, not in the body of the Chapel, but
in an upper gallery overlooking it--mourning cloaks being provided for
them out of the Wardrobe.
Queen Katherine may have left the palace somewhat hurriedly,[103] for
in the inventory taken immediately after the King’s death there is an
account of the seals being on one chamber described as full of female
attire of the most sumptuous description, presumably belonging to
the Queen, who certainly left behind her the jewels given her by the
King to wear at the reception of M. d’Annebault, the French Envoy--an
oversight that gave rise to terrible subsequent dissensions between
Sir Thomas Seymour and his eldest brother.
Lord Chancellor Wriothesley dissolved Parliament early on Monday,
1st February, in a neatly turned speech declaring that “their most
puissant master was dead.” The eventful news was received with every
demonstration of sorrow, some members even bursting into tears, or
pretending to do so. Then followed the reading of that portion of the
King’s will which concerned the Royal Succession.
By this famous testament[104] Henry provided that in case Edward died
childless, and Henry himself had no other children by his “beloved
wife Katherine or any other wives[105] he might have hereafter,” King
Edward was to be succeeded by his eldest sister Mary; and if she in
her turn proved without offspring, she was to be succeeded by her
sister Elizabeth. Failing heirs to that princess, the crown was to
pass on the same conditions to the Lady Jane Grey and her sisters
Katherine and Mary Grey, daughters of the King’s eldest niece, the
Lady Frances Brandon, Marchioness of Dorset. In the eventuality of the
three sisters Grey dying without issue, the throne was to be occupied
successively by the children of the Lady Frances’ younger sister, the
Lady Eleanor, Countess of Cumberland. The Scotch succession was set
aside, from no personal ill-will, however, to Henry’s eldest sister,
the Dowager Queen of Scotland, Margaret Tudor, for he left her daughter
a handsome legacy. Henry most probably omitted the name of the young
Queen of Scots as heiress to the throne, and gave his preference to the
daughters of his two nieces, because, although at war with the Regent
of Scotland, he still hoped that the betrothal of his grand-niece,
Mary Stuart, then only six years of age, to his son Edward might be
arranged, and thus eventually bring about the desired union of the two
crowns in a natural manner. Moreover, there was the religious question
to be considered. The Regent, Mary of Guise, was an ardent Papist,
using all her influence, both in England and in Scotland, to thwart the
English King’s anti-papal policy.
Henry VIII mentioned Queen Katherine in the following eulogistic
manner: “And for the great love, obedience, chastity of life, and
wisdom being in our forenamed wife and Queen, we bequeath unto her
for her proper life, and as it shall please her to order it, three
thousand pounds in plate, jewels, and stuff of household goods, and
such apparel as it shall please her to take of such as we have already.
And further, we give unto her one thousand pounds in money, and the
amount of her dower and jointure according to our grant in Parliament.”
Henry appointed the Earl of Hertford Protector of the Realm during the
minority of his son, and mentioned as his colleagues all those persons
who were interested in keeping him in power in order to share it with
him. Gardiner’s name was omitted, as already stated. The provisions of
the will opposed a serious obstacle to the Earl of Hertford’s ambition,
for they made him fifth in order of precedence, thus placing him on a
footing of equality with other executors; recognising no claim arising
out of his kinship to the young Prince. Sir Thomas Clere declared
that the original will was stamped, a fact which inclined so careful
a writer as Mr. Pollard to conclude that the idea that a stamped will
was illegal must have flashed across somebody’s mind, and suggested the
hasty drawing up of another, for the King to sign in autograph. The
form now in the Record Office is doubtless this second one. It displays
no trace of a stamp, and the two signatures at the beginning and end
are not sufficiently uniform to have been impressed mechanically. In
the last the up-strokes are very unsteady, and on comparing them with
other signatures of Henry VIII one is justified in thinking that both
were forged. It must not be forgotten, however, that the King was very
ill, and failing; his hand may well have trembled.[106]
In those days the funeral of a sovereign and the coronation of his
successor took place almost simultaneously, occasionally with strange
results, considerable confusion arising as to the arrangements for
the two ceremonies: the sombre preparations for the obsequies of King
Henry, for instance, clashed weirdly with the festivities organised
for the accession of his son. Matters became so confused at last that
Bishop Gardiner found himself obliged to appeal to “My Lord of Oxford’s
Players,” who were already at Southwark preparing to act a pageant and
a comedy. It would be more decent, His Lordship pointed out, to sing
a solemn Dirge for their master than to perform a merry play, and he
besought them to desist until after the King’s funeral.
In the end the Bishop had his way, and the grandeur of Henry’s
obsequies suffered nothing from the counter-attractions of the “green
men,” “morris dancers,” and “mountain for the gods,” which were among
the items promised by the players, who produced their performance in
the hall of the ex-monastery of Blackfriars immediately after Edward’s
coronation--doubtless to their own satisfaction and that of the public,
albeit they seem to have had hard work to get the necessary cash for
their “properties” out of Sir William Carwarden or Carden, the official
in charge of such matters, to whom they had to frequently apply for
payment.[107]
On Monday, 31st January, the young King entered London, and passed
direct to the Tower, where, in accordance with traditional etiquette,
he was to remain in semi-seclusion until after his coronation. The next
day, Tuesday, 1st February, the late King’s executors assembled in the
great hall of the Tower, and having heard the will read from beginning
to end, took the oath for the King, and Hertford[108] was proclaimed
Protector during the coming minority. On 4th February the Protector
proceeded in state to Westminster Hall, where he assumed the offices
of Lord Treasurer and Earl Marshal, rendered vacant by the attainder
of the Duke of Norfolk. He subsequently relinquished his post as Lord
Great Chamberlain to John Dudley, Viscount de Lisle, who in his turn
surrendered his place as Lord High-Admiral to Sir Thomas Seymour.
On Sunday, 13th February, High Mass was again sung in the Chapel Royal
by Gardiner, assisted by the Bishops of London and Bristol, and the
royal coffin was removed “from the Chapell to the Chariot; over the
coffin was cast a pall of rich cloath of gold, and upon it a goodly
ymage like to the Kyng’s person in all poynts, wonderfully richly
aparrelled with velvet gold and precious stones of all sorts, holding
in ye right hand a Sceptre of gold, in the left hand the ball of the
world with a crosse; upon the head a crown imperial of inestimable
value, a collar of the Garter about the neck and a garter of gold about
the leg, with this being honourably conducted as aforesaid, was tied
upon the said coffin by the Gentlemen of his Privy Chamber upon rich
cushions of cloath of gold and fast bound with silk ribands to the
pillars of the said Chariot for removing.” It seems, however, that this
image was not quite complete, for it had presently to be removed and
“touched up.”
The gorgeous funeral procession, which is said to have been four miles
long, left the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, at about eleven o’clock on 14th
February for Sion _en route_ for Windsor. The weather was very fine,
and immense crowds lining the streets, people of every class, holding
lighted candles. Over a thousand “lights,” or torches, were held by
the mourners who preceded or followed the hearse containing the King’s
body and upon which was placed the waxen image already described.
This hearse was drawn by eight black horses emblazoned with the Arms
of England and of the house of Tudor, and surrounded by noblemen and
knights in mourning robes, some on horseback and others on foot,
holding lights and banners, images of saints, and other glistening
devices and symbols. The procession passed through the streets of
London by Charing Cross, Knightsbridge, Hammersmith, Chiswick, and
Brentford, and, owing to its enormous length, did not reach Sion until
twilight. It is gratifying to note that the vast assemblage of nobles
and gentry was plentifully supplied with refreshments, wine, and beer
throughout the whole of these very elaborate and costly obsequies, to
the tune of about £10,000 of our money.
At Sion the coffin stood all night within the ruined walls of that
erstwhile monastic house which had been the prison of Katherine Howard,
the second of Henry’s murdered consorts. The ravages of ruin to be
seen there were now hidden by hangings of fine black cloth and by two
great altars blazing with lights and jewels. By a curious coincidence,
the body arrived at Sion on the day after the fifth anniversary of
the Queen’s execution, a fact which lends additional horror to the
following story, related in a contemporary document now in the Soane
Collection: “The King’s body rested in the ruined Chapel of Sion,
and there, the leaden coffin[109] being cleft by the shaking of the
carriage, the pavement of the church was wetted with Henry’s blood. In
the morning came plumbers to solder the coffin, under whose feet, I
tremble while I write it,” says the author, “was suddenly seen a dog
creeping and licking up the King’s blood. If you ask me how I know
this, I answer, William Greville, who could scarce drive away the dog,
told me so, and so did the plumber also.”
The coffin had most likely been abandoned by the mourners, who had
retired to rest for the night, and probably some gaseous explosion led
to this uncanny incident, the report of which greatly increased the
superstitious terror in which the late King’s name was held. Thus was
fulfilled, so the people said, Friar Peyto’s denunciation from the
pulpit of Greenwich Church in 1553, when that daring friar compared
Henry to Ahab, and told him to his face “that the dogs would in like
manner lick his blood.”
This horrible occurrence, if it really took place, does not seem to
have made any very deep impression on Bishop Gardiner, for no more
fulsome sermon was ever preached than that delivered by him at Windsor
on 16th February. He took for his text, “Blessed are the dead who
die in the Lord,” and, enlarging on the virtues of the late monarch,
lamented the “loss both to high and low by the death of this most good
and gracious King”; for whom, Sir Anthony Browne declared, “there was
no need to pray, for he was surely in Heaven.” Queen Katherine Parr,
the King’s nieces, the Lady Frances, Marchioness of Dorset, and the
Lady Eleanor of Cumberland and their daughters and other noblewomen
attended the obsequies at Windsor from a closet or chamber looking into
the chapel, much such a one as Queen Victoria used in the Chapel Royal,
Windsor, on similar occasions.
Some weird stories of supernatural apparitions were circulated all over
London, especially among the Catholics. The “old King” had appeared,
wreathed in flames, to an ex-Carthusian friar. Folks at Windsor had
beheld him fleeing along the battlements and corridors of the castle,
blazing like a meteoric ball; and he had even, so it was rumoured, paid
a warning visit to his widow in the still hours of darkness.