CHAPTER VII

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.