Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII (49 page)

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Authors: Robert Hutchinson

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77
William Cornish (1465 – 1523) was the Master of the children of Henry’s Chapel Royal. He was also a composer, dramatist and actor, and responsible for the musical and dramatic entertainments at the royal court. See Anglo,
Spectacle
, pp.118 – 21 and 203 – 4.
78
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 2, p.1,246.
79
CSP Venice
, vol. 2, pp.397 – 404.
80
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 4, pp.869 – 72.
81
Lambeth Palace Library MS 602, p.59.
82
Roper, pp.67ff.
83
Ackroyd, p.226.
84
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 3, pt. 1, p.468.
85
BL Cotton MS
Vitellius B IV
, f.111.
86
Ayot, p.70, fn.
87
BL Cotton MS
Vitellius B IV
, f.226.
88
Scarisbrick,
Henry VIII
, p.116.
89
35 Henry VIII cap. 3. It was repealed during the reign of Catholic Mary I but restored under Elizabeth (1 Elizabeth cap. 1) and has remained part of the style and title of the English crown ever since.
90
Fuller, book v, p.168.
91
CSP Venice
, vol. 2, p.560.
92
A felt hat, worn by doctors of divinity in the sixteenth century, the name probably derived from the Latin
pileus
, a conical hat.
93
A red felt cardinal’s hat lined with silk, sixteenth century, once owned by Horace Walpole and kept in the Holbein Chamber at Strawberry Hill, was said to have been Wolsey’s, having been discovered by Bishop Burnet when he was Clerk of the Closet in the seventeenth century. It is now at Christ Church, University of Oxford.
94
Singer, pp. 96 – 101 and 104 – 7.
95
The only English Pope was Adrian IV, or Nicholas Breakspear, who occupied St Peter’s throne from 1154 to 1159.
96
Adrian VI was the last non-Italian pope to be elected until John Paul II, 456 years later.
97
See D. S. Chambers, pp.20 – 30.
98
Guy, p.47.
99
Erasmus to Paulus Bombasius; Basle, 26 July 1518 (Nichols, vol. 3, epistle 805).
100
Roper, p.20.
101
Hall, pp.597 – 8. See also Walker, pp.1 – 16.
102
Harris, p.168.
103
His personal accounts for January – April 1521 show income totalling £8,274 for the
four months, or £3·2 million in current spending values (
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 3, pt. 1, pp.500 – 1). His lands had an annual value of £4,905 15s 5¼d. However, in 1520, he had debts of £10,535 19s (Harris, p.172).
104
In 1500, Buckingham had married Alianore, eldest daughter of Henry Percy, Fourth Earl of Northumberland. Their second son Henry married the daughter of Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, and their eldest daughter Elizabeth wed Thomas Howard, later Earl of Surrey and Third Duke of Norfolk.
105
CSP Venice
, vol. 2, p.561.
106
Ellis, 3rd ser., vol. 1, pp.214 – 18.
107
BL Harley MS 283, f.70.
108
Scarisbrick,
Henry VIII
, p.120.
109
B L Add. MS 19,398, f.644.
110
Thornbury Castle is now a hotel.
111
For example, see Vergil, pp.262ff.
112
Tothill Fields were a marshy tract of land between Millbank and Westminster Abbey.
113
Hall, p.622.
114
In 1560, merchant tailor Richard Hall gave £500 for the purchase of the property in Suffolk Lane, off Thames Street, for use as a school. This building was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and a new school, housing two hundred boys, was built on the site in brick in 1675.
115
BL Cotton MS
Vitellius B IV
, f.96.
116
The roll and file of the Court of the Lord High Steward is in TNA KB/8/5.
117
The Statute of Treasons of 1352 (25 Edward III cap. 2) included ‘compassing or imagining the king’s death’ as a treasonable offence. See discussion in Tanner, pp.375 – 81.
118
Under English law, commoners have the right to a trial by a jury of their equals and a statute of 1341 (15 Edward III cap. 1) gave the nobility the right to be tried by their peers. From the Tudor period, the Lord High Steward heard cases when Parliament was not sitting, otherwise trials were conducted in the House of Lords. The last peer to be tried by his peers and executed was Laurence Shirley, Fourth Earl Ferrers, who was hanged for murder in 1760. The last trial in the Lords was of Edward Russell, Twenty-sixth Baron de Clifford, who was acquitted of manslaughter in 1935. The right of the nobility to trial by peers was abolished in 1948.
119
Hall, p.623.
120
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 3, pt. 1, pp.490 – 1.
121
Ibid., p.492.
122
BL Harley MS 283, f.70.
123
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 3, pt. 1, pp.cxxxi – iii.
124
Harris, p.185.
125
Surrey had married Buckingham’s daughter Elizabeth early in 1513. It was not a happy marriage. See Hutchinson,
House of Treason
, pp.63 – 76.
126
BL Cotton MS
Vitellius B IV
, f.84v.
127
BL Stowe MS 163, f.3.
128
Hall, p.624.
129
Ibid.
130
Shorn was rector of North Marston around 1290 and the waters of his holy well were believed to cure cases of malaria and the gout. See Richard Marks, ‘A Late Medieval Pilgrimage Cult: Master John Shorn of North Marston and Windsor’ in L. Keen and E. Scarff (eds.),
Windsor Medieval Archæology … British Archæological Association Conference Proceedings
, vol. 25 (2002), pp.192 – 207.
131
BL Cotton MS
Caligula D VIII
, f.83. The Emperor Maximilian was a little surprised at Buckingham’s fate. He told the English envoy Sir Richard Wingfield that ‘he knew [Henry’s] great virtue and wisdom too well to suppose he would have had the duke executed without great and just cause’ (BL Cotton MS
Vitellius B XX
, f.234).
132
14/15 Henry VIII cap. 20.
133
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 3, pt. 1, p.406.
134
The Battle of Pavia was fought early on the morning of 24 February 1525.
135
Robert Macquereau,
Histoire générale de l’Europe depuis la naissance de Charle-quint jusqu’als cinq juin 1527
, Louvain, 1725, p.231.
CHAPTER 9: THE KING’S ‘SCRUPULOUS CONSCIENCE’
1
Hall, p.755.
2
Davies & Edwards, p.895. MacNalty (p.162) gives the sex of the child as male but the date as November 1513.
3
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 1, 2nd ed., p.1,486. On 4 October 1514, the Wardrobe was ordered to deliver a cradle covered with scarlet ‘for the use of a nursery, God willing’ (ibid., p.1,403).
4
CSP Venice
, vol. 2, p.285.
5
BL Harley MS 3,504, f.232.
6
Henry bought New Hall from Thomas Boleyn in 1516 at a cost of £1,000 and spent a further £17,000 on rebuilding it in 1517 – 21. It is now New Hall School.
7
Illustrated in Thurley, p.102.
8
BL Cotton MS
Vespasian F III
, f.73.
9
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 2, pt. 2, p.1,328.
10
‘Dispatches’, vol. 2, p.236.
11
Ibid., p.240.
12
Hutchinson, ‘Henry’s Reproductive Woes’.
13
See Alan Bideau, Bertrand Desjardins and Hector Pérez Brignoll,
Infant Mortality in Britain: A Survey of Current Knowledge on Historical Trends and Variations in Infant and Child Mortality in the Past
, Oxford, 1997.
14
CSP Venice
, vol. 2, p.1,287.
15
‘Sanuto Diaries’, vol. 5, xxvii, p.276.
16
Elizabeth Blount received an annual salary of 100 shillings in 1513.
17
Her copy is BL Egerton MS 1,991.
18
BL Cotton MS
Caligula D VI
, f.149.
19
Philippa Jones, p.79.
20
BL Cotton MS
Vitellius B II
, f.183.
21
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 6, p.241.
22
See the Revd Alfred Suckling’s
Antiquities and Architecture … of the County of Essex
, London, 1845, p.27. He adds: ‘It is a very remarkable situation to have chosen for the purposes of debauchery as it not only abuts upon the churchyard but is actually within a stone’s [throw] of the residence of the monks.’
23
14/15 Henry VIII, cap. 34; Mattingly, p.123. This income was derived from Talboys’ father who was declared a lunatic in 1517. Gilbert Talboys was knighted in 1524 and was appointed Sheriff of Lincolnshire the following year. Bessie Blount had two sons and a daughter with Gilbert before his death in 1530. After 1533 she married Edward Clinton and had three daughters by him. She was a lady-in-waiting to Henry’s fourth wife Anne of Cleves and died in 1541, probably from tuberculosis.
24
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 4, p.2,558.
25
BL Add. MS 8,715, f.220v.
26
BL Cotton MS
Caligula B I
, f.232. Margaret told Henry that she knew she would ‘never get good from Scotland by fair means and will never willingly stay there with those who do not love her’.
27
Angus wrote to Henry on 19 October 1519, thanking him for sending the friar to Stirling who had ‘discharged his mission so well’ that Margaret was willing (then) to stay with him (BL Cotton MS
Caligula B I
, f.141). It took seven or eight weeks to convince her (BL Cotton MS
Caligula B II
, f.333). Henry inherited his father’s respect for the Greenwich Friar Observants. He wrote to Pope Leo X declaring his ‘deep and devoted affection’ for them and finding it impossible to ‘adequately describe their zeal, night and day, to win back sinners to God’. Many suffered during the 1530s for refusing the take the Oath of Succession.
28
Byrne, p.68. She married Stewart on 3 March 1528.
29
J. S. Brewer, vol. 2, p.161.
30
Lady Margaret Douglas was the daughter of the king’s sister Margaret by her second marriage.
31
Hutchinson,
House of Treason
, pp.77 – 9.
32
He was entitled to keep four servants and two horses at court (‘Rutland Papers’, p.101).
33
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 4, p.991.
34
Warnicke, ‘The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn’, pp.35, 237 – 8 and A. G. L’Estrange,
Palace and Hospital or Chronicles of Greenwich
, 2 vols., London, 1889, vol. 1, p.192.
35
Flügel, ‘On the Character …’, p.146.
36
Hoskins, pp.347 – 8.
37
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 8, p.215.
38
Ibid., p.214.
39
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 12, pt. 2, pp.332 – 3; Hutchinson,
Thomas Cromwell
, pp.141 – 2.
40
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 4, pp.1,932 – 3.
41
Henry later ordered Sir Thomas Boleyn to house and maintain Mary – but at least assigned her the annuity of £100 formerly enjoyed by her husband.
42
BL Cotton MS
Vespasian C III
, f.176.
43
After a fire which destroyed large portions of the Palace of Westminster in 1512,
Henry took over Wolsey’s building operations at Bridewell and in 1523 completed the brick-built house with two courtyards and a long gallery leading to a water gate on the Thames. See Thurley, pp.40 – 1.
44
BL Add. MS 6,113, f.61.
45
‘State Papers’, vol. 1, p.161. Wolsey had two illegitimate children by his mistress Joan Larke: Thomas Winter, born around 1510, and Dorothy, born
c
.1512.
46
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 4, p.677.
47
Croke (
c
.1489 – 1558) was educated at Eton College and was recruited by John Fisher to teach Greek at Cambridge.
48
BL Cotton MS
Vespasian F III
, f.44.
49
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 4, pt. 2, p.1,721; Ellis, 3rd ser., vol. 2, p.117.
50
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 4, pt. 2, p.2,595.
51
‘Sanuto Diaries’, vol. 5, xxxix, p.167.
52
Plowden, p.54.
53
BL Cotton MS
Vespasian F XIII
, f.140.
54
Paul, p.59. A new translation of
The Education of a Christian Woman
, edited by Charles Fantazzi, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2000.
55
CSP Spain
, vol. 3, pt. 1, p.1,018.
56
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 4, p.1,049.
57
‘Sanuto Diaries’, vol. 5, xi, p.613.
58
Roper (1496 – 1578) was the eldest son of John Roper (d.1524), Attorney General to Henry VIII. He was later Clerk of the Pleas to the Court of King’s Bench and a Member of Parliament. Roper wrote a biography of his father-in-law Sir Thomas More.
59
More’s first wife was Jane Colt. She died in 1511 and within a month he remarried, this time to Alice, the widow of the merchant John Middleton who had died in 1509.
60
Roper, pp.20 – 1.
61
The ladies kept their bonnets and their headdresses. One had to be repaired at the cost of two shillings.
62
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 3, p.1,559. The cost of the pageant was £20 16s 4d.
63
Hall, p.631.
64
Sander, p.25.
65
Singer, p.424.
66
Ibid., pp.426 – 7.
67
It may have been even earlier – in October 1525, as a French envoy, John Brinon, told Louise of Savoy of a conversation with Wolsey, the subject of which ‘I cannot write to you, as he made me promise not to mention them’ (
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 4, p.769). Whether that subject was the king’s marriage must remain a matter of conjecture.
68
Matilda, daughter of Henry I, had at that time been the only female ruler of England – and only for a few months in 1141, before a civil war broke out against her cousin Stephen, a rival claimant to the throne.
69
Hall, p.674 and MacNalty, p.73.
70
Moriarty, p.13 and Hutchinson,
Last Days
, p.127. Vicary was rewarded with a medical
appointment in the royal household at a salary of twenty shillings a year and was promoted to sergeant surgeon in 1536, a post worth £26 13s 4d. Out of this sore leg was born the widespread belief that the king suffered from syphilis – contracted whilst he was campaigning in France – and that as this venereal disease can damage foetuses, it was a factor in Katherine’s poor natal record. However, the thigh is an unusual location for a
gumma
or swelling – a symptom of tertiary syphilis – and these are not normally painful, yet Henry suffered agonies. Moreover, there is no evidence of syphilis amongst his children. Treatment of this disease consisted of six weeks of sweating the patient and the administration of doses of (poisonous) mercury which made gums red and sore and created copious flows of saliva. There are no reports of a prolonged absence of the king from public life or of these symptoms. Therefore Henry having syphilis looks like mere black propaganda.
71
Hall, p.697.
72
MacNalty, p.57. Fear stalked the streets but this outbreak was hardly comparable to the 250,000 who died in Britain during the Spanish Influenza epidemic of March 1918 – June 1920.
73
‘Love Letters’, pp.30 – 2.
74
Ives,
The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn
, pp.100 – 1.
75
BL Royal MS 1 E iv.
76
Vergil, p.324; Harpsfield, p.41.
77
CSP Spain
, vol. 3, pt. 1, p.293.
78
Stow, p.543.
79
Richard Sylvester, ‘Cardinal Wolsey’, p.179.
80
Harpsfield, p.31.
81
BL Cotton MS
Vitellius B IX
, f.36.
82
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 4, p.2,588.
83
Mattingly, p.191.
84
J. S. Brewer, vol. 2, pp.187 – 8 and Scarisbrick,
Henry VIII
, p.155.
85
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 4, p.1,434.
86
Ibid., vol. 4, p.1,450.
87
CSP Spain
, vol. 3, pt. 2, p.276.
88
LP Henry VIII
, vol. 4, pt. 2, p.1,504.
89
‘State Papers’, vol. 1, p.194.
90
Ibid., pp.230 – 1.
91
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticano Vat. Lat. 3731A, f.5.
92
‘Love Letters’, pp.32 – 4.

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