Six Wives (23 page)

    Under the Queen and Council there was a skeleton administration. Warham's Chancery acted as a general secretariat, while the Chamber, under its Treasurer, John Heron, dealt with finance. Catherine as Regent was specifically authorized to issue instructions to both these bodies.

* * *

For Catherine, the first three weeks after Henry's departure were a period of phoney war. Her husband was still in Calais and Surrey was still in the south, busy raising his following from his own estates. Meanwhile she took up residence at Richmond and her Council busied itself organising Lord Admiral Thomas Howard's naval expedition. Its mission was to take the heavy guns of the royal artillery directly to Newcastle by sea, whence they would be deployed by land against the expected Scottish invasion. The warrants for payment were signed by Catherine; they were paid on 16 July and the force was to set sail on the 21st. The pace of events now quickened. Surrey had finished raising his men. They were a crack force of 500 'able men', part gentlemen, part tenant farmers. On 21 July, they paraded in London before Sir Thomas Lovell and, the following day, the Earl rode north to Doncaster to take up his command. On the 21st also, Henry left Calais to join the other divisions of his army under Shrewsbury and Herbert, who were already laying siege to the strongly fortified French town of Thérouanne.

    So three English expeditions – two by land and one by sea – left within twenty-four hours of one another. It was a remarkable example of combined operations and bade fair for the outcome. The English, helped by Catherine, had indeed learned from the previous year's disasters. Europe would have to sit up and take notice.

    But, despite this good start, Catherine now experienced the worries of every woman whose husband goes to the front. Letters became her lifeline and she set up a chain of messengers. As she explained on 26 July to Thomas Wolsey, the King's Almoner and the rising star in the Council, she had sent her servant to France with the present letter. He was 'to tarry there till another cometh and this way I shall hear every week from thence'. Understandably, Catherine's principal concern was for her husband's health and safety: 'for with his life and health there is no thing in the world that shall come to him amiss by the grace of God, and without that I can see no manner good thing shall fall'.
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    Catherine, as a war-wife, is hardly unique in having such thoughts. But her concerns have been misrepresented. In several accounts, Catherine is portrayed as showing herself to be more Henry's nanny than his wife, while the King himself appears as an overgrown schoolboy who had to be reminded to change his socks, wash behind his ears and avoid catching cold. Actually, there is nothing in Catherine's letters on such trivial topics. Instead, she was concerned lest Henry needlessly exposed himself to the enemy. These fears came to a head when he arrived at Thérouanne and joined the siege. Henry VIII had already played Henry V once, when he had stayed up all night, touring the camp to put his troops in good heart. Now he seems to have thought that he was at Harfleur, though the walls of Thérouanne were as yet unbreached. His Council in France warned him against such posturings. But the warning was quickly forgotten, and, during a later siege, Henry walked close to the walls, 'occasionally, for three hours and a half at a time'. Other royal women had similarly rash menfolk, and the Archduchess Margaret, Catherine's sometime sister-in-law, wrote to her father, the Emperor Maximilian, in a similar vein, after he had joined Henry on the campaign. 'As such things are not conducted without great danger,' she wrote following one engagement, 'she begs him to be careful.' But in the case of Catherine and Henry there was a special, unspoken fear. Henry had no heir. If he fell, his dynasty fell. And the reason for this state of affairs was Catherine's own failure to have children. On 1 August, Catherine took matters into her own hands and wrote directly to the Archduchess Margaret, to ask her to send Henry a physician.
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    But Catherine's letters were not only about wifely concerns and womanish fears. She wrote also as her husband's Regent and co-adjutor in policy. She commented on morale on the home front: 'everybody here is in good health, thanked be God, and the Council very diligent in all things concerning the expedition of the King's service'. She showed a shrewd managerial touch. It would be a good idea, she suggested, if the King wrote to the Council about her good reports of their conduct, 'that he is very well content therewith and give them thanks for it, bidding them so to continue'. She reported news, like the message which had just come from Lord Admiral Howard. And she did her best, even at a distance, to encourage Henry to stick to the 'England alone' policy which they had agreed upon after her father's third betrayal. 'I trust to God that the King shall come home shortly with as great a victory as any prince in the world; and this I pray God send him', she continued, '
without need of
any other prince
.'

    Catherine's next weekly letter is missing. But it would have told Henry of the continuing preparations to resist the impending Scottish invasion. She had already sent out letters to local notables in the southern shires and boroughs, requiring them to report on the numbers of men and quantities of harness or armour they could supply. The town of Gloucester failed to respond and was sent a sharp reminder on 4 August. 'Writings and news from the Borders show that the King of Scots means war,' she told them. They must send the required information within fifteen days. They did.

    On 9 August, Catherine transacted a more awkward piece of business. Responding to Henry's direct orders, she summoned Warham to appear before her and justify his conduct with Fox. It was an extraordinary occasion. Catherine, assisted by Lovell and another councillor, sat quasi-judicially. And Warham, Chancellor and Primate of All England, found himself demoted from judge to accused. The Queen demanded an answer. Warham took evasive action, promising to set out his case by letter. Both the Queen and the Archbishop found the meeting an uncomfortable one and Catherine, wisely, tried to avoid involvement as much as possible. For once, she emphasised that she was a mere agent, acting in her husband's name and according to his letters, 'for the matter was so new to me I would go no further in it'.
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    By the time of Catherine's next letter, on 13 August, the longthreatened war with Scotland had materialised. On the 11th, Lyon King had delivered James IV's declaration of war to Henry in person in France. High words had been uttered on both sides. But the exchange had ended with Henry dismissing the herald with a munificent reward. Back in England, Catherine had the wit to turn her labours into a joke: 'Ye be not so busy with the war, as we be here encumbered with it,' she told Wolsey. Morale remained good, she continued. Everyone was pleased that the phoney war was over 'and all [Henry's] subjects be very glad, I thank God, to be busy with the Scots, for they take it for a pastime'. For herself, 'my heart is very good to it, and I am horribly busy with making standards, banners and badges'. It is a prettily feminine picture: Catherine, sitting with her ladies, embroidering (perhaps a little more hastily than usual) lions, pomegranates and crosses of St George. Or it would be prettily feminine, were not the standards and banners to fly over Catherine's own army, to be led by the Queen in person.

* * *

Three days later, on 16 August, Henry had the victory that Catherine had prayed for. A large French cavalry force, made up of the crack
gendarmerie
, tried to force its way through the English besiegers in order to re-provision Thérouanne (by throwing sides of bacon over the walls!). But they were caught off guard by the English archers and guns, and they turned tail and fled. In their haste to escape, the knights slashed the heavy bards and trappers off their horses and flung away their weapons and horse-armour. It was a
sauve qui peut
, in which only one weapon was used effectively: the spurs which gave the battle its name. Even so, they did not ride fast enough and many distinguished prisoners were taken, headed by the Duke of Longueville, who was of the blood royal, and the seigneur de Bayard, the
chevalier sans peur et sans reproche
, who had been the hero of the Italian wars.

Henry did not fight himself. But he made up for it by his chivalrous magnanimity after the victory. He had Longueville clad in a gown of cloth of gold and summoned him to sup with him. The Duke said, 'Sire, I will not.' The King replied, 'You are my prisoner and must do so.' While Henry and his prisoner ate elegantly, the inhabitants of Thérouanne, deprived of their bacon, faced starvation. They had no hope now of relief and, a week later, they surrendered the city.
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    English historians, characteristically deprecating English achievement, are dismissive of the Battle of the Spurs. The French were not so foolish. They had done more than lose a battle and a city; they had lost their reputation. Henceforward, until they were redeemed by another victory under another king, the
gendarmerie
, once the flower of French chivalry, were known derisively as 'hares in armour'. And the reputation lost by the French now belonged to Henry.
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    Catherine knew this and her response was ecstatic: 'The victory hath been so great that I think none such hath been seen before. All England hath cause to thank God of it, and I specially.' But as important as the victory, Catherine thought, was the way that it had been won. For the Emperor Maximilian, the titular ruler of Christendom, had joined with Henry, not as an ally but as a paid soldier, wearing 'a cross of St George with a rose' and taking the King's shilling (in fact, rather more, since 70,000 crowns worth £14,000 were transported to Gravelines 'for use of the Emperor'). The two rulers met on 11 August. On the one side, the Emperor Maximilian and his suite wore black cloth as mourning for the late Empress; on the other, King Henry and his attendants shimmered in cloth of gold. Even the King's horse was harnessed with gold and trimmed with gold bells. The Emperor played the poor relation in behaviour as well as appearance: 'declaring publicly that he came to be of use to the King of England, and calling the King at one time his son, at another his King and at another his brother'. Catherine lapped up the contrast. 'I was very glad to hear the meeting of them', she wrote to Wolsey, 'which hath been to my seeming the greatest honour to the King that ever came to Prince.'
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    But, though she basked in her husband's glory, she never forgot that she was engaged in mighty enterprise of her own. 'Ye shall see', she told Wolsey, 'how Almighty God helpeth here our part as well as there.' The good news to which Catherine referred was the defeat of an advance Scottish raiding party under Lord Hume. Their losses were so heavy that it became known as the 'Ill Raid'.

    On 22 August, nevertheless, James IV and the main Scottish army crossed the border. At first, he carried all before him. He took Norham Castle (to the anguish of its proud owner, Thomas Ruthall, the PrinceBishop of Durham) and three smaller castles; then, about 4 September, he established himself in a strongly fortified camp on Flodden Edge. It was protected from the south (the likely direction of English attack) by a steep slope and it commanded the road north from Wooler through the valley of the Till. The English response, agreed in advance but coordinated on the ground by Catherine and her Council, was designed to provide cover in depth. Three armies were available. The first was the northern army commanded by Surrey. He had been in the north since the beginning of August, cajoling, organizing and winning hearts and minds. His plans now rolled smoothly into operation. The whole strength of the north was summoned to muster with him at Newcastle on 1 September. His son Thomas, the Lord Admiral, was already in the port with the fleet and the artillery. The guns were put ashore and Thomas, together with 1,000 men from the fleet, joined his father. The result was a formidably armed and disciplined force of 20,000 men which took the field at Bolton in Glendale.

    It was hard to think that even the flower of Scotland could defeat it and certainly the Howards, father and son, harboured no such doubts. But the English government
had
dared to think the unthinkable – and to provide for it. For if James won and if he broke the northern army he still had to face and overcome two more armies. The first was commanded by Catherine's right-hand man, Sir Thomas Lovell. Between 3 and 7 September, Lovell was empowered to raise the Midland counties, to punish all who resisted and to use martial law. All the commissions were signed by Catherine, and the fact that Lovell was 'subject to the commands of Queen Catherine, Regent' was made explicit. By 9 September, he was at Nottingham, with 15,000 men and marching north.

    Finally, if James had also broken through Lovell and the Midlanders, he would have had to deal with Catherine herself, who had taken the field with all the might of the south of England.
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    Like Surrey in the north, Catherine had spent August mustering and preparing her forces. On 2 September, 'the Scots being so busy as they now be', she was 'looking for my departing every hour'. On 8 September, she ordered the royal standards and banners to be issued from the Great Wardrobe. And shortly thereafter, Catherine marched out, from Richmond, with two 'standards of the lion crowned imperial', and with banners bearing the arms of England and Spain and images of the Trinity, the Virgin and St George. She had a herald, a pursuivant and six trumpets. Her artillery alone cost £100 to transport. She had 100 carriages, each with a pennant. She may even have worn armour, since in September Robert Amadas, the royal goldsmith, was paid for 'garnishing a headpiece with crown gold'. By 10 September she was at Buckingham, sixty miles north of London, with an army variously described as 'a numerous force' or 'a great power' and estimated (with probably spurious precision) at 40,000.

    Catherine's martial behaviour was widely commented on. Writing from the Venetian 'factory' in London, Lorenzo Pasquaglio turned English in his enthusiasm: bursting with pride he informed his brother that not only had 'our magnanimous King' won great victories, but 'our Queen' had also taken the field. But the man who was perhaps proudest and most understanding of Catherine's behaviour was her sometime director of studies, Peter Martyr. He kept a sharp eye on English affairs from his post at Valladolid and on 23 September reported that Catherine, 'in imitation of her mother Isabella', had made a splendid speech to the English captains. She told them 'to be ready to defend their territory, that the Lord smiled upon those who stood in defence of their own, and that they should remember that English courage excelled that of all other nations'. If we take Martyr's report literally, this speech must have been delivered on 21 July, when Surrey had mustered his men in London. But it seems unlikely that Catherine would not have made a similarly rousing oration to her own troops. She had indeed learned English, become English and made herself mistress of both the language and the people's hearts.
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