Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII (28 page)

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Authors: Robert Hutchinson

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All the company are in good health. The
Mary Guilford
with all her [crew are safe] thanks be to God.
Went northward till we came to [latitude] 53° where we found many islands of ice and deep water [where] we found no sounding [and] dared go no further for fear of ice …
Went southward … [and] landed at Cape de Bas, a good harbour with many small islands and a great fresh river going up far into the mainland. The land is wilderness, mountains and woods and no habitation or people. In the woods we found the footing [tracks] of diverse great beasts but we saw none, not in ten leagues.
59
In the harbour, they found eleven boats from Normandy and one from Brittany, together with two Portuguese barques, all fishing the nearby cod grounds.
60
Rut then sailed south to Florida and into the Caribbean, reaching the Spanish town of Santa Domingo on the island of Hispaniola (the present-day Dominican Republic) in November. Faced with deep suspicion, and perhaps encouraged by a mortar shot fired across his stern, Rut hastily departed within twenty-four hours. The Spanish report on the incident said:
They had sailed [as] far north as fifty and some degrees where certain persons died of cold; the pilot had died and one of the vessels lost.
The ship being so anchored … that from the fortress of this city there was fired at it a small lombard loaded with a stone which passed close to the ship which at once cleared on a course for Castile.
The ship was well equipped for war with much heavy brass artillery in two tiers [and] that she was ready for action.
61
Despite all the romance and adventure of this voyage, its ultimate failure to find the passage to China may have convinced the king that his true destiny lay in Europe. He still wanted the throne of France.
We have vivid descriptions dating from this period of Henry VIII in his proud, swaggering prime – the living embodiment of imperial splendour.
A harness of engraved silver armour especially made for him in 1515
indicates he was at least 6 ft 1 in. (1.84 m) in height, with broad shoulders and a trim waist measurement of 35
1/2
in. (0.9 m). As such, he was taller than most of those around him.
62
Sebastian Giustinian, who left London as the Venetian ambassador in August 1519, painted a detailed word picture of the then twenty-eight-year-old Henry (Plate 11). The king was:
much handsomer than any other sovereign in Christendom – a great deal handsomer than the King of France.
He is very fair and his whole frame admirably proportioned.
Hearing that King Francis wore a beard, he allowed his own to grow and as it was reddish, he … got a beard that looked like gold.
63
The beard at this stage in Henry’s life did not survive long as Katherine of Aragon objected strongly to it, apparently nagging her husband daily until his barber shaved it off (Plate 12).
64
During the first half of his reign, Henry’s hair was bobbed, but later it was cropped closer to his head.
[He is] very religious, hearing three Masses daily when he hunted and sometimes five on other days, besides hearing vespers and compline daily in the queen’s chamber.
65
He is extremely fond of hunting and never takes the diversion without tiring eight or ten horses which he causes to be stationed along the line of country he means to take.
In August 1520 while on progress, Henry rose daily at four or five o’clock ‘and hunts to nine or ten at night. He spares no pains to convert the sport of hunting into martyrdom’ complained one weary courtier.
66
Giustinian described how the king loved playing tennis, ‘at which game it was the prettiest thing in the world to see him play – his fair skin glowing through a shirt of the finest texture’.
67
In 1527 he hurt his foot during one energetic match, probably at the Palace of Westminster, and the next month was forced to wear a black velvet slipper to ease the pain still troubling him.
68
Like his father, he had a passion for gambling, placing wagers on the outcomes of jousts, tennis and archery contests, as well as betting on games of dice, playing cards and chess. He ‘gambled with the French hostages to the amount occasionally … of from 6,000 to 8,000 ducats
[£2,750 – £3,680] in a day’, according to the Venetian envoy.
69
Dice or cards normally occupied him during late evening sessions after court masques or plays and often went on into the small hours. Large sums changed hands: in 1511 ‘crafty persons’, knowing Henry’s love of gambling, ‘brought in Frenchmen and Lombards to make wagers with him and so he lost much money but when he perceived their craft he eschewed their company and let them go’.
70
Henry had plenty of money to fund these excesses. Giustinian believed him to be very rich:
His father left him ten millions of ready money in gold, of which he is supposed to have spent one half in the war against France.
His revenues amounted to about 350,000 ducats annually [£165,000, or £66.5 million at current prices] … [and] his majesty’s expenses might be estimated at 100,000 ducats … [including] 16,000 for the wardrobe, for he is the best dressed sovereign in the world. His robes are very rich and superb and he put on new clothes every holiday.
71
Henry certainly knew how to dress to impress: ‘His fingers were one mass of rings and around his neck he wore a gold collar from which hung a diamond as big as a walnut,’ gasped one diplomatic visitor.
72
Lorenzo Pasqualigo, another Venetian, echoed Giustinian’s enthusiastic praise for Henry’s good looks. He watched Henry taking part in a St George’s Day procession in Richmond in 1515:
The king is the handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on. [He is] above the usual height with an extremely fine calf to his leg, his complexion very fair and bright with auburn hair combed straight and short in the French fashion and a round face so very beautiful that it would become a pretty woman.
73
The Venetian had seen Francis I in Paris, and Henry, three years his senior, was curious about his brother king. Dressed (yet again) in a Robin Hood costume for the bucolic May Day festivities at Shooter’s Hill, near Greenwich, Henry asked Pasqualigo about his rival monarch’s physical attributes:
‘Is the King of France as tall as I am?’ I told him there was little difference. ‘Is he as stout?’ I told him he was not.
‘What sort of legs has he?’ I replied: ‘Spare.’
Whereupon he opened the front of his doublet and placing his hand on his thigh said, ‘Look here. I have a good calf to my leg.’
74
The king maintained his love of music, frequently playing for hours on a variety of instruments and continuing to compose his own music: ‘After dinner, he took to dancing and playing on every musical instrument, ’ reported a diplomat after enjoying a splendid evening at the court. Nicolo Sagudino, Giustinian’s secretary, no mean musician himself, attended a soirée at Greenwich Palace in June 1515 when
Two musicians … in the king’s service played the organ but very badly. They kept bad time, their touch was feeble and their execution not very good.
The prelates who were present said the king would certainly desire to hear me as his majesty practises on these instruments day and night.
75
Henry decided to hire a maestro and lured Friar Dionysius Memo, the organist of St Mark’s Cathedral in Venice, to London in September 1516 and made him his head musician and chaplain. Giustinian told the Signory in Venice:
[Memo] brought a most excellent instrument with him at great expense.
The king … sent for him after dinner and made him play before his lords and all his
virtuosi
.
He played to the incredible admiration of everybody, especially the king.
76
The king was also both predatory and ruthless in hiring sweet-singing choristers from other colleges and chapels to augment the choir of his own Chapel Royal. Henry was jealous of the quality of plainsong sung in Wolsey’s chapel at York Place, his opulent London palace, as Richard Pace, his secretary, warned the cardinal in March 1518:
My lord, if it were not for the personal love that the king bears your grace, surely he would have out of your chapel, not children only but also men.
His grace has plainly shown unto [William] Cornish
77
that your grace’s chapel is better than his and proved the same by this reason – that if any manner of new song should be brought into both the chapels to be sung
ex improviso
then the song should be better and more surely handled by your chapel than by his grace’s.
78
Henry was always scrupulous in putting on a good show, knowing full well that pomp and circumstance symbolised England’s growing importance on the European political stage. In June 1517, Francesco Chieregato, the Apostolic Nuncio in England, was impressed by the king’s appearance, dressed in white damask ‘in the Turkish fashion with a robe embroidered with roses made of rubies and diamonds in accordance with his emblems’.
After hearing Mass the royal party went on to the joust where forty gentlemen, members of the Spears’ bodyguard, opened proceedings, dressed in silk livery and wearing gold chains formed by the initials ‘H’ and ‘K’. These chains were ‘of five fingers’ breadth [and] upwards of 2,000 ducats [were] melted [down] to make each’. They all rode white horses, also decorated with the gold initials, which ‘cost the king a mint of money as during the last four months all the London goldsmiths have wrought nothing but these trappings’. The bridles and girths and the pommels of the saddles were made of pure silver.
Henry was drawn that day against Suffolk:
They bore themselves so bravely that the spectators fancied themselves witnessing a joust between Hector and Achilles.
The king appeared on a tall white horse trapped from head to foot with little bells … and on his head a very large feather quite full of jewels.
[He] presented himself before the queen and the ladies, making a thousand jumps in the air and after tiring one horse, he entered the tent and mounted another of those ridden by the pages, doing this constantly and reappearing in the lists until the end of the joust.
Afterwards, there was a buffet set out, thirty feet in length and twenty feet high (9.14 m by 6.01 m), ‘with silver gilt vases and vases of gold, worth vast treasure. All the small platters used for the table service and
the goblets were of pure gold.’ The meal took seven hours to serve and consume:
The removal and replacing of dishes the whole time was incessant, the hall in every direction full of fresh viands on their way to table.
Every imaginable sort of meat known in the kingdom was served and fish in like manner, even down to prawn pasties but the jellies of some twenty sorts surpassed everything.
They were made in the shape of castles and animals of various descriptions as beautiful and as admirable as can be imagined.
The Nuncio ended this breathless paean of praise to the opulence and glamour of Henry’s court with a valediction – which would have come as music to Henry’s ears:
The wealth and civilisation of the world are here and those who call the English barbarians appear to me to render themselves such.
I here perceived very elegant manners, extreme decorum and very great politeness.
There is this most invincible king, whose acquirements and qualities are so many and excellent that I consider him to excel all who ever wore a crown.
Blessed and happy may this country call itself in having as its lord so worthy and eminent a sovereign.
79
Henry’s court was a magnificent, well-ordered institution. Two of his Privy Chamber Gentlemen always slept on a pallet inside the royal bedchamber and all had to be ready for service at seven o’clock in the morning to help him dress – ‘in [a] reverent, discreet and sober manner’. None were allowed to touch the king’s sacred person without his special command. Regulations ordained that members of the Privy Chamber were
to be friendly to each other and keep secret all things done there; not to enquire in the king’s absence where he is going or talk about his pastimes and if anyone uses unfitting language [about] the king, it is to be immediately reported.
They must not exploit their position for special pleading on behalf of others: ‘the nearer they are to his person the more humble they must show themselves.’ One groom, called Peter Malvesey, was recruited especially for ‘tennis play’ – Henry’s coach, perhaps?
Penney, the royal barber, attended Henry

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