Tudor (34 page)

Foxe described how Katherine enjoyed debating religion with the king. But one day, after they parted, he had expressed irritation over it. Foxe then claims that conservative councillors seized the opportunity to fan Henry's anger and a warrant for her arrest was drawn up. Henry, however, decided to warn Katherine about his displeasure through one of his doctors. She took the hint, and when she went to Henry that night she reassured him humbly that she had only debated with him for her own instruction and to take his mind off the pain in his leg. ‘And is it even so sweetheart?' Foxe records him as asking her, ‘then perfect friends we are now again'. Katherine Parr had indeed survived danger, much as Foxe's story later relayed, but the source of the danger was Henry, not the dark forces of conservatism that Foxe preferred to blame. Henry had made a point, as well as indulging his cruel streak: religious policy came from him alone.
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Katherine Parr proved immune from the ferocious heresy hunts that followed. But while Henry countenanced, and even encouraged, the zeal of conservatives in this regard, he also chose this moment to break the intellectual leader of religious conservatism in England: the Bishop of Winchester, Stephan Gardiner. Hitherto the bishop had been one of his most effective servants, but Henry believed that the only man who could control a figure as brilliant as Gardiner was Henry himself, and he did not want Gardiner coming to dominate his son, or those around him. Although Gardiner had helped frame the arguments for the Royal Supremacy, Henry may also have suspected (rightly) that Gardiner would come to question its ability to protect England from heresy. In November 1546 Gardiner discovered Henry was mysteriously angry with him over the exchange of some lands. The king would never see him again.

It was, however, to be the Duke of Norfolk's eldest son, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who unwittingly provoked Henry's deepest fears for his son. One of the great poets of his generation, Surrey was the brother of Margaret Douglas' friend Mary Fitzroy, Duchess of Richmond (widow of the king's bastard son), and was close to their fellow poet, Mary Shelton. He was, however, also known with good reason as ‘the most foolish, proud boy that is in England'. Surrey had quartered the royal arms into his own heraldic bearings, and made it plain he believed his father, as England's premier nobleman, should be Protector when Henry died. The king had not forgotten that the last Protector was Richard III, in whose cause Surrey's grandfather had fought and his great-grandfather had died. Henry's son Edward, now aged nine, was three years younger than Edward V had been when he disappeared with his brother. On 12 December 1546, the glamorous Surrey was arrested on suspicion of treason and shortly afterwards he and Norfolk were sent to the Tower.

On 26 December, shut up away from all but his closest servants, Henry called for his will to draw up his final plans for Edward's protection. He knew he was now dying and that this was his last opportunity to ensure Edward's survival. His daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, had been nominated as Edward's heirs under the Act of Succession. This would remain the case. Being illegitimate and female, they posed no threat to Edward – unless they married – and Henry's will now added the proviso that their inheritance depended on them marrying only in accordance with the wishes of the executors of his will. Henry was to name sixteen men as his executors, whom he envisaged sharing the authority of the crown equally until Edward reached the age of eighteen. He was not going to trust any one individual with the powers of either a Protector or a regent.

To prevent factions Henry further instructed that no one would be allowed to join his privileged circle of oligarchs before Edward's majority, and none was to be expelled. It was a sealed entity. Those who were on the king's list included Edward's senior maternal uncle,
Edward Seymour, supported by his chief ally on the council, John Dudley. They had been key figures in the king's recent wars, as well as pivotal members of the evangelical and reformist grouping at court. Another was Katherine Parr's brother-in-law, the flame-haired William Herbert, who was expected to guarantee the interests of a child born to the queen, should she prove to be pregnant after Henry's death.
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Henry also now settled the unresolved matter of the long-stop heirs – the successors to a childless Elizabeth.

Henry's great-niece Mary, Queen of Scots – daughter of James V – was the most senior heir in blood. But whom she married was outside the control of anyone in England. It was likely to be a King of France or Spain, and Henry was not going to give a foreign monarch any help in laying claim to Edward's throne. Edward was born while England was in schism with Rome, so it was possible to argue he was not legitimate. To protect Edward, Mary, Queen of Scots and her heirs were therefore ignored in his will.
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The claims of Margaret Douglas, who was next in line, also went unmentioned. Historians have said Henry's decision followed a quarrel Margaret had with her uncle that autumn, and have suggested it was over religion. The numerous payments Margaret and her husband made that year to chantry priests, who prayed for souls in purgatory, indicate they were conservative.
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But Henry VIII asked in his will for Masses to be said for his soul (albeit on nothing like the scale of his father). There is no evidence that Margaret ever quarrelled with Henry over his religious policies, and the sole basis for the claim of there being any quarrel at all is a much later, self-serving story spun by a disgruntled former Lennox servant.
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In reality the evidence is that Henry had wished to demote Margaret in the line of succession since 1536 when she was referred to as her mother's ‘natural' child. Her claim to the English throne was now united with her husband's claim to the crown of Scotland, making it potentially powerful enough to draw support in England, Scotland and France (where Lennox had spent many years). Alone amongst Henry's nieces Margaret also had a son,
Henry, Lord Darnley. Margaret was not named in Henry's will to limit the potential threat she posed, not because of any quarrel.
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In place of the descendants of his elder sister, Margaret of Scotland, Henry looked to those of his younger sister, Mary, the French queen. The senior heir was his niece Frances, but her husband was denied a place on Henry's list of executors and her name was passed over in favour of her young daughters, Lady Jane, Katherine and Mary Grey. These three unmarried girls, all under the age of ten, and with only a distant claim under Common Law, were chosen because they were weak candidates who posed little threat to Edward.

With the matter of the succession decided on, the dying king moved to complete the destruction of the Howards. It proved difficult to persuade a jury to convict Surrey of treason and Henry intervened personally to convince them to do so. The ‘proud boy' was executed on 19 January. A final Act of Attainder was used to deal with the still trickier case against Norfolk, who Surrey had argued should be Protector. The execution was due to take place on 28 January, but by the evening of Thursday 27 January it was clear to all around the king that his death was imminent. Henry was asked if he wanted to confess his sins, but he was not troubled by his conscience in the way his father had been. Henry was as sure as ever that his actions as king had had the purest motives, and that all those he had destroyed had received their just merits. ‘I will first take a little sleep', he said. ‘And then, as I feel myself, I will advise [you] upon the matter.' Henry VIII never woke.

26

ELIZABETH IN DANGER

I
N THE THIN LIGHT OF THE NEW DAY, LEADING COURTIERS ARRIVED
at Whitehall to view the royal corpse. Henry's body lay on the vast state bed expanded in 1542 to bear his weight. It was the most valuable piece of furniture in the palace. Six craftsmen had worked for ten months to carve its gilded frame and the rich hangings cost even more than the bed itself.
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It was in Henry's waxy face, however, that the power he had wielded was best recalled. ‘If all the pictures and patterns of a merciless prince were lost in the world, they might again be painted to the life out of the story of this king', the Elizabethan Sir Walter Raleigh would later write. Now that power was gone Henry's trusted servants were free to ignore his dying commands.

If Henry could have walked during the last night of his life he would have seen two figures in the gallery outside his chamber door: his private secretary, Sir William Paget, instantly recognisable by his forked frizzy beard, and the tall, fair figure of the young Edward's uncle, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford. Henry had wanted a council of equals to rule during Edward's minority, but Paget believed this was impossible in a kingdom so used to being ruled entirely by the will of one man, and for weeks he had helped prepare the ground for Edward Seymour to take charge of the council as Lord Protector of England. He had pressed the king to grant land and titles to potential supporters, and as the instructions were always verbal Paget could
mishear or misunderstand them in such a way as helped their cause. His price, he had told Edward Seymour, was to be his principle adviser. As the king drew his last breaths the deal had been sealed and now they were ready to gain the agreement of other key figures.

All that day, as the great men came and went, the usual ceremonies continued without interruption. No news was released of the king's death, and at dinner a choice of fish and fowl was delivered to the sound of trumpets. The following morning, as the same rituals were repeated, Edward Seymour arrived at the medieval palace of Hertford to collect his royal nephew and escort him to London. Henry had been poised to make Edward the Prince of Wales, and the grey-eyed boy believed this was the purpose of their journey.
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Only when they stopped at the Princess Elizabeth's residence at the plain brick quadrate palace of Enfield, were he and his thirteen-year-old sister told that their father was dead. The children wept bitterly in each other's arms. Neither had yet faced the dangers and physical threats that their sister Mary had known. Edward was Henry's longed-for son, and despite some physical resemblance between Elizabeth and her disgraced mother, Henry had always loved her, sending her his ‘heart blessings' when he was away at war in France.
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Without their father, they were both now extremely vulnerable.

At 8 a.m. on Monday 31 January 1547, the Lord Chancellor announced Henry's death in Parliament, and an hour later Edward was proclaimed king. That afternoon, with carefully synchronised timing the new Edward VI arrived at the Tower in front of the watching crowds, together with Edward Seymour. There were brave salutes from cannon fired from the fortress and battleships on the Thames to greet the new king, but the fact that Edward was a child was a cause for national anxiety. While some in the crowds rejoiced, at least inwardly, that Henry was dead (with pro-papal Catholics claiming visions of the king surrounded by fire), most grieved that he had died too soon. Their fears would soon prove justified. Henry's executors had already organised the first meeting of the new reign. There they renamed
themselves the ‘Privy Council', added Edward VI's younger uncle Thomas Seymour to their number, and made Edward Seymour Protector of England.

The term ‘Privy Council' had first been used in 1540 when Henry VIII had given the old, more informal council a fixed membership, a hierarchy based on the ranking of offices, a secretariat and an official record, as well as powers to summon individuals before it by legal process. It had met more or less daily for the rest of Henry's reign and had proved an extremely effective executive body.
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Nevertheless, recreating it had broken the closed circle of equals Henry had envisaged ruling during Edward's minority. For all the terror Henry had instilled, his will had been overturned before he was even buried.

Preparations now began for Henry's funeral. On the Wednesday night, the feast of Candlemas, Henry VIII's coffin was carried from the Privy Chamber to the royal chapel. There a huge ‘hearse' had been built. The term then referred to a static structure big enough to hold the coffin and to allow the principal mourners to sit within it. Each corner was adorned with the banners of saints beaten in fine gold on damask, and it held forty candles. As the coffin was set within the hearse, the light bounced off the precious stones glittering in the cover of cloth of gold.

Following medieval royal tradition, Mass was said in the royal chapel continually for the next ten days. Behind the scenes, however, was a less spiritual mood. Details were still being thrashed out about who was going to get what in the distribution of land, office and titles being used to bolster the Protectorate. Edward Seymour was to be made Duke of Somerset, the family title of the Beauforts through whom Henry VII had claimed his right to the throne. The new Protector Somerset's close ally, John Dudley, became Earl of Warwick, a title that had been held by the last male Plantagenet.

The carve-up of royal property and appointment of honours paused only as the funeral began on Sunday 13 February. Three bishops took it in turns to officiate at three Masses: the first in white in honour of
the Virgin, the second in blue to celebrate the Trinity, the last in black for the requiem. But Henry was not to be buried just yet. The next day his body began a two-day journey to Windsor, with hundreds of official mourners assembling at Charing Cross at first light.

Two gentleman porters began the march at eight o'clock, on that clear winter's morning. Each carried a black stave, ‘to stay, that neither cart, horse, nor man should trouble or cumber them in this passage'. Behind walked the sergeant of the vestry with his verger carrying a huge cross: then the singing children and priests of the Chapel Royal; then 250 poor men in long hooded gowns, each carrying a burning torch. These were the traditional ‘beadsmen' paid to pray for the soul of the deceased.
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They were followed by the royal standards, and behind them other mourners were grouped in ascending order of precedence. The most senior, François van der Delft, the ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, walked with Archbishop Cranmer close to the chariot carrying Henry's coffin. It was covered with blue velvet and cloth of gold, the colours of the Order of the Garter, and the coffin was surmounted with its life-size representation of the king, dressed as a Garter knight and wearing ‘a crown imperial of inestimable value'.