Weir A. Henry VIII: The King and His Court

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clothes, and hangings, and allocated a suitable household composed mainly of her German servants.

Her marriage was annulled by convocation on 9 July, on the grounds of the King’s lack of consent to it

and Anne’s alleged precontract with the son of the Duke of Lorraine.

Anne told her brother, “God willing, I purpose to lead my life in this realm.” Freed from the ties that

had bound him to her, Henry discovered that he quite liked her, and invited her to court on several

occasions. He also visited her at Richmond. Anne made the most of her independence, looking more

“joyous” than ever and putting on a new gown every day, “each more wonderful than the last.”

In the

years to come, she would establish a considerable reputation as a good hostess, and entertained many

courtiers at Richmond. Rarely had a royal divorce had such a happy outcome.

“I Have Been Young, and Now Am Old”

On the day Cromwell died, 28 July 1540, the King secretly married Katherine Howard at Oatlands

Palace, with Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, officiating. The wedding night was spent in an ornate

“pearl bed,” which Henry had specially commissioned from a French craftsman,

and there were no

more consultations with the royal doctors about impotence. The marriage was made public on 8

August, when Katherine was “showed openly” and prayed for as Queen in the chapel royal at Hampton

Court.

Henry was besotted with his young bride, and “so amorous of her that he knows not how to make

sufficient demonstrations of his affection, and caresses her more than he did the others.”

He showered

her with gifts, including lands that had once belonged to Cromwell, took delight in showing her off,

and indulged her every whim: “the King had no wife who made him spend so much money in dresses

and jewels as she did, and every day [she had] some fresh caprice.”

He seemed like a man reborn: his

health improved, and so did his temper.

Whether Katherine was as enamoured of Henry is another matter, for at forty-nine, his increasing

infirmity, bouts of enforced inactivity, and addiction to rich food had made him old before his time and

grossly overweight.

Suits of field and, optimistically, tilt armour made for him at Greenwich in 1540

have a chest measurement of fifty-seven inches and a waist measurement of fifty-four inches—

seventeen inches greater than it had been in 1536. Despite his obesity and his sore legs, he rode or

hunted whenever possible, and still dressed in gorgeous clothes, although his accounts show regular

payments to his tailors for letting out doublets and jackets.

It now became fashionable for gentlemen

of the court to affect bulky styles of dress in emulation of their sovereign, wearing puffed and padded

short gowns that were almost as wide as they were long.

The French ambassador, Marillac, accurately summed up the King’s character in middle life, or in what

Henry himself was soon to refer to as old age: “This Prince seems tainted with three vices: the first is

that he is so covetous that all the riches of the world would not satisfy him. Thence proceeds the

second, distrust and fear. This King, knowing how many changes he has made, and what tragedies and

scandals he has created, would fain keep in favour with everybody, but does not trust a single man,

expecting to see them all offended, and he will not cease to dip his hand in blood as long as he doubts

his people. The third vice [is] lightness and inconstancy.”

To these three Marillac might also have

added deviousness and perversity, for his predecessor Castillon had written of Henry: “He is a

wonderful man and has wonderful people about him, but he is an old fox.”

Secrecy and surprise were

his watchwords; he kept his own counsel, spun his own webs of intrigue, set traps, then pounced on the

unsuspecting. He ruled on the precept that fear engenders obedience.

Henry’s seventeenth-century biographer, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who had access to several lost

sources, described the King as “opinionate and wilful” and highly suggestible, “inasmuch as the

impressions given him by any court whisperer were hardly or never effaced. This wilfulness had a most

dangerous quality annexed to it, especially towards his later end, being an intense jealousy of all

persons and affairs, which predisposed him to think the worst.” Advancing paranoia and attacks of

excruciating pain permanently soured Henry’s temper, and he was given to such unpredictable and

terrifying explosions of rage that those about him concluded they had to deal with “the most dangerous

and cruel man in the world.”

On days when he was in an irritable mood, his courtiers had to keep

their wits about them, for “when he came to his chamber he would look [around] angrily, and after fall

to fighting.”

Few dared contradict him, since his egotism was such that he was unable to conceive that

he might be in the wrong.

No one at court ever felt truly safe, for the King had amply demonstrated that he “never made a man

but he destroyeth him again, either with displeasure or with the sword.”

Even his outward bonhomie

could be sinister, for he often showed a smiling face to those whom he meant to destroy. Abroad, he

was known as “the English Nero,”

and it was said that “in England, death has snatched everyone of

worth away, or fear has shrunk them up.”

Despite Henry’s enduring popularity among his own

subjects, a growing number were becoming disaffected: a man arrested in Kent for slandering him was

not exaggerating when he said, “If the King knew every man’s thought, it would make his heart

quake.”

There were still flashes of the golden youth Henry had once been. He could yet exert his famous charm,

or show kindness and generosity. If he felt he had been overharsh with his ministers, he would summon

them into his privy closet and reassure them that it was the matter under discussion, and not they

themselves, that had aroused his anger.

Even if he did not live up to them, his ideals of kingship are

evident in the passages he marked in his copy of The Book of Solomon: “Let mercy and faithfulness

never go from thee,” and “Cast down the people whose delight is to have battle.” He was not devoid of

emotion, and when touched, would weep openly. His sentimentality became more overt with the

advancing years.

Although Henry had become more diligent at attending to business than he had been in his earlier

years, and was now an exceptionally hardworking monarch, he still hated making decisions, insisting

on taking a long time “to maturely advise and peruse instructions.” “As ye know,” Sadler had written to

Cromwell, “His Grace is always loath to sign.”

Incompetence irritated the King: Norfolk was

reprimanded for sending useless letters full of “extreme and desperate mischiefs and remiss in honest

remedy,”

and Sir William Petre for failing to go into sufficient detail in his dispatches from France,

while Cranmer was praised for his directness and brevity. The King outlaid large sums of money on

efficient postal messenger services: dispatches sent from Calais reached court and were dealt with by

the end of the following day.

An astonished Marillac reported that Henry “speaks as if he had men all

over the world who did nothing but write to him.”

Certainly he was better informed than most

European monarchs.

His role as Supreme Head of the Church had made the King more sanctimonious and high-minded than

ever and more certain of his special relationship with God. Marillac observed that he had become “not

only a King to be obeyed on Earth, but a veritable idol to be worshipped.”

Demonstrating how self-

deluded he could be, Henry constantly compared his own honesty, openness, simplicity, and chivalry

with the perfidy and deceit of others. For him, as for many middle-aged people, there was no middle

ground, only moral absolutes.

The King still remained devout in his religious observances. Once, when his leg was paining him, it

was put to him that he need not kneel to “adore the body of Our Saviour,” but could receive the

Sacrament sitting in a chair. He refused, saying, “If I lay not only flat on the ground, yea, and put

myself under the ground, yet in so doing I should not think that I have reverence sufficient unto His

blessed sacrament.”

He insisted on creeping painfully on his knees to the cross every Good Friday

until 1546.

Yet he was reluctant to abandon the title Fidei Defensor, even though it had been conferred upon him

by the Pope, and in 1543 Parliament passed the Act of the King’s Style, making the title an hereditary

one, “anexed for ever to be the imperial crown of this His Highness’s realm of England.”

The books purchased by Henry VIII in the 1540s were chiefly Bibles, devotional works, and scholastic

texts.

A beautiful psalter was commissioned by him around 1540–1542 from the French illuminator

Jean Mallard, who had once worked for Francis I. It contains seven exquisite miniature scenes, two of

which portray the King in his favourite role as King David: in one he is slaying Goliath, and in others

he appears as a penitent or reading in his bedroom. More of Henry’s annotations appear in the margins:

against verse 25 of the Thirty-seventh Psalm— “I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen

the righteous forsaken”—he wrote in Latin, “Dolus dictum” (A painful saying).

If the young Queen felt any distaste for her ageing husband, she hid it well and played the role of

dutiful, loving wife to perfection. Each evening at six, Sir Thomas Heneage, Groom of the Stool,

brought her news of the King,

to her evident satisfaction.

Her days were one long round of pleasure: she did “nothing but dance and rejoice.”

She was too

young and inexperienced to concern herself with state or administrative matters. The only book

dedicated to her as Queen was Richard Jonas’s tract on midwifery, The Birth of Mankind.

Although

her education had been neglected, she could read and write, and the dubious Manox had taught her to

play the virginals.

The King made no plans for Katherine’s coronation. She made a state entry into London by river,

arriving in her new barge, which was manned by twenty-six bargemen and strewn with rushes scented

with rosemary. The Lord Mayor and Corporation rode out in their own craft to welcome her, and a

salute of guns echoed from the Tower.

Henry settled Baynard’s Castle on Katherine as her jointure. Many of those who had served Jane

Seymour and Anne of Cleves were appointed to her household, along with a horde of her Howard

relatives. Lady Margaret Douglas was senior Lady of the Privy Chamber, and under her were the

Dowager Duchesses of Richmond and Norfolk; Katherine’s aunt and namesake, the Countess of

Bridgewater; her widowed stepmother, Lady Margaret Howard; her sisters, Margaret, Lady Arundel,

and Isabella, who was married to the Queen’s Vice Chamberlain, Sir Edward Baynton; Lady Rochford,

Jane Seymour’s sister; Elizabeth, Lady Cromwell; Lady Rutland, wife of the Queen’s Chamberlain;

Lady Edgecombe; and William Parr’s sister Katherine, wife of John Neville, Lord Latimer. Among the

maids of honour were his other sister, Anne Parr; Anne Basset; and Surrey’s favourite, Lady Elizabeth

FitzGerald. Joan Bulmer, Margaret Morton, Katherine Tilney, and Agnes Restwold, who had been with

Katherine in her grandmother’s household and were all privy to the secrets of her past, were found

posts as chamberers. There is some evidence that Bulmer, at least, used blackmail to obtain her post.

Katherine’s household cost Henry £4600 (over £2.5 million) a year to maintain.

Katherine dressed “after the French fashion” and insisted that all the other ladies at court do so, too.

Every day she appeared in a new gown. The jewels Henry lavished on her were magnificent; they

included a gold brooch with scenes from the life of Noah picked out in diamonds and rubies, a rich

collar with her initial set in diamonds, heavy gold chains, ropes of pearls, gem-studded crosses, a

necklace of table diamonds, black-enamelled gold beads, emeralds set in gold lozenges, pomanders,

clocks, and a jewellery casket. The King also gave her a black velvet muff lined with sables and

ornamented with rubies, hundreds of pearls, and tiny gold chains; it hung round her neck from a gold

and pearl chain.

Katherine’s personal badge was a crowned rose. She adopted as her device the motto “Non autre

volonté que le sienne” (No other will than his), and had it embroidered in gold around her sleeves.

The King ordered that her badge and other emblems be set up in place of those of Jane Seymour and

Anne of Cleves in the royal palaces.

The Howards, led by Norfolk, now dominated the court. Katherine’s brother Charles was appointed to

the Privy Chamber, where her uncle, Lord William Howard, was already influential as one of the

King’s Gentlemen. Norfolk’s brother-in-law, Robert Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex, was given Cromwell’s

former office of Lord Great Chamberlain and thus gained control of the Chamber. Surrey, despite his

youth, became a Knight of the Garter.

The ascendancy of the conservatives provoked great resentment and jealousy on the part of their

enemies, who were mostly of the reformist persuasion, and gave rise to the most vicious factional

divisions of the reign. Two distinct parties emerged at this time: the conservatives, led by the

reactionary Gardiner and Norfolk, who were supported when in the ascendant by the self-seeking

Wriothesley, and wished to see a return to more traditional forms of religion; and the reformists, headed

by the autocratic Hertford and backed by Cranmer, William Parr, and Hertford’s staunch friend and

political ally, the honest and able Sir William Paget (who became the first ever Clerk to the Privy

Council in 1540). This party was keen to see even more change. Surrey sided with his father and, like

him, hoped to bring about the overthrow of upstarts like the Seymours, but he was a liability, not only

because of his wild, unpredictable streak, but also because his religious views were probably more

radical than Hertford’s. In the reformist party, there were frequent squabbles on account of the

unpopular Hertford’s high-handedness and criticism of his colleagues.

Suffolk, meanwhile, managed

to remain on good terms with both Norfolk and Hertford.

The dominance of first Wolsey and then Cromwell had prevented the emergence of such factions in the

past, but now that there was no chief minister, there was nothing to stop them from attempting to gain

ascendancy in Council, achieve control of the Privy Chamber, and manipulate an oversuggestible King.

The power struggle between these factions, which was to dominate the 1540s, was essentially political,

but was fought over religious differences.

Later writers, such as John Foxe and Nicholas Sander, would claim that Henry was easily led by these

factions; Sander even went so far as to claim that they waited to approach him “in the evening, when he

was comfortably filled with wine, or when he had gone to the stool, for then he used to be very

pleasant.” Even though some historians still accept this view today, the evidence is largely against it. It

is true that, while Henry played off rival factions against each other and manipulated individuals for his

own ends, following a policy of divide and rule, his apparent mastery hid a degree of “irresolution and

despondency,”

but this was because he was unsure whom he could trust. He also suspected that

Lutheran ideas were taking hold in the minds of some of those around him, under the cloak of an

interest in reform. There was also the problem of an age difference: many men now in power at court

were of a younger generation, ambitious and aggressive,

and although Henry liked to surround

himself with youth and bask in its reflected glamour, the age gap was too wide to be easily breached.

On the other hand, neither faction could ever be sure of the King, who in 1540 was burning both

Catholics, for supporting the Pope, and Protestants, for heresy. Although there was a clear logic in this,

many took it to mean that Henry was unsure of his religious position, and sought to influence him, with

only varying degrees of success, since he was ever watchful for courtiers who tried to blind his “eyes

with mists” or manipulate him “for their own profits.”

Nor, according to Chapuys, was it usual for

councillors to enter into “secret communication” with each other, for it was something they “were not

accustomed to do, even in matters of no importance or suspicions.”

In the main, Henry remained

firmly in control of affairs until his death, and his authority was absolute and final. Jealous of his

prerogative, he kept his own counsel and would allow no man or faction to rule him. Rival parties did

manage to sway him on occasion by exploiting his suspicious nature and poisoning his mind against

their enemies, which was what had brought about the falls of Anne Boleyn and Cromwell, but in each

case they had presented convincing evidence. They even encouraged him to marry their own

candidates, although he allowed none of his last four wives to wield any political influence. As will be

seen, more often than not, Henry knew what they were up to, and sometimes turned the tables on them.

During these latter years, the King was more politically active, powerful, and despotic than at any

previous time, and kept a firm grip on administrative matters, scrutinising state documents, dispatches,

letters, accounts, service records, and check rolls, and making numerous notes in the margins and

changes where necessary: his secretaries were instructed to leave two-and-a-half-inch margins and one

inch between lines to enable him to do so.

Each Sunday evening, Henry was given a list of the matters

to be discussed by the Council in the coming week, and always drew up the agenda himself. Every

Friday, his Principal Secretary would write a summary of the meetings, which was presented on

Saturday for Henry’s decisions or approval. If a decision was needed more urgently, the Lord

Chancellor would seek audience of the King in the privy lodgings.

Very little escaped Henry’s notice—“there is not a single bruit anywhere which he does not hear among

the first, even to little private matters, which princes care but little to hear.”

Sir William Paget later

revealed that, in diplomatic reports, he was always careful to include “matters of no great importance,”

since he felt it “meet that His Majesty should know all.”

Henry’s encyclopaedic memory, which could

retain details of every grant made to numerous petitioners,

stored up every snippet of information that

might prove useful in the future. Thanks to his experience, his eye for detail, his erudition, and his

sharp mind, he was able to dominate those who sought to influence him.

The summer of 1540 was very hot; no rain fell between June and October, and there was plague in

London. In August, the King took his young bride on a honeymoon progress, an extended hunting trip

through Surrey into Berkshire, where they stayed at Reading before moving north to Ewelme, Rycote,

Notley, Buckingham—where the King held a Council meeting at the old Castle House, which dated

from Saxon times—and Grafton, arriving on 29 August. A week later, the King began riding south

towards Ampthill, where he stayed for a fortnight until 1 October. Here, Katherine’s Vice Chamberlain,

Sir Edward Baynton, disgraced himself by appearing drunk in the King’s presence, which prompted

Henry to issue a stern injunction to all household servants “concerning the sober and temperate order

that His Highness would have them use in his chamber of presence and the Queen’s.”

While at Ampthill, Henry fell sick with a tertian fever—probably malaria—and his legs became

infected. His doctors expressed great concern, but he suddenly rallied. Then it was on to Dunstable, for

another Council meeting, and the More, and so back to Windsor on 22 October. Prior to the King’s

arrival, persons who had been in contact with the plague were made to leave the town, and although

they were promised compensation by the Privy Council, payment was long deferred.

During this progress, the King had some traders who had followed the court put in the pillory for

overcharging for food. Henry was equally wrathful, on his return, to hear gossip that his niece, Lady

Margaret Douglas, had become involved in yet another clandestine affair, this time with the Queen’s

brother, Charles Howard. Upon finding out that it was true, he packed Margaret off to the recently

dissolved Syon Abbey at Isleworth for “over much lightness,” and warned her that she would stay there

until she had learned to “wholly apply herself to please the King’s Highness.”

Margaret remained at

Syon for a year, and would only be released to make way for a far more important prisoner.

“Is Not the Queen Abed Yet?”

After the progress, the King seemed a new man. At Woking in December, he rose between 5 and 6

A.M., attended mass at 7 A.M., and rode out early to hunt, returning at 10 A.M. for dinner. In the

afternoon, he attended to business. He told Marillac that he felt better in the country than when he

stayed all winter in London, and that his leg was much better. The ambassador was of the opinion that

he had adopted his “new rule of living” in order to lose weight.

Henry’s desire for increasing privacy, which was exacerbated by increasing ill health, was becoming an

obsession and leading to significant changes within the inward lodgings. Recently it had resulted in

many of the functions of the presence chamber and council chamber being shifted to the privy chamber,

which meant that the presence chamber was used only on rare state occasions, and that the privy

chamber was now frequently crowded and no longer a place to which the King could withdraw into

seclusion with his favoured intimates. By 1540, access to the privy chamber was no longer the prize it

had once been, because the King was extending his inward lodgings to accommodate his need for

privacy and spending more time in them, allowing only Gentlemen and Grooms of the Chamber to

serve him.

Those who were permitted beyond the privy chamber door were privileged indeed. By the

end of his reign, a new subdepartment was emerging, the Bedchamber, upon which the King’s private

life now increasingly centred.

Henry’s so-called secret lodgings were aptly named, for access to them was so restricted that very little

information about them survives. The plans which survive for the works carried out at Hampton Court,

Whitehall, and Greenwich show a network of small rooms beyond the King’s bedchamber, with some

leading off his privy gallery. It is clear that at some lesser houses there was only one such room. The

evidence for secret lodgings for the Queen and Prince Edward is sparse, but suggests that their

apartments were extended in line with the King’s.

At Hampton Court, the new secret lodgings led off a ground-floor gallery on the east side of Cloister

Green Court; the King’s presence and privy chambers remained on the first floor of the south side,

while the Queen’s apartments were extended on the north side. Eventually the first floor of the

connecting east range was converted into a private suite with bedchambers and reception rooms for the

royal couple to share. At Whitehall, the new secret lodgings were off the privy gallery, which was from

henceforth out of bounds to courtiers.

The King might remain in his secret lodgings for days on end; when he was ill, no one would be any

the wiser or doubt that he was retaining his grip on affairs. He had also ceased to be as accessible to

petitioners, insisting that “they should no longer molest his person with any suit” and send all claims in

future in writing to the Privy Council.

By 1540, Whitehall was badly in need of refurbishment. The tiltyard and gardens were overgrown, the

Queen’s apartments needed redecoration, and the tapestries and hangings were either moth-eaten or

“foul and greasy.”

After his marriage to Katherine Howard, Henry embarked upon a programme of

improvements, building a new east front along the riverside, a privy lodging above for the Lady Mary,

a banqueting house, the “preaching place,” and the King Street Gate at the palace’s southern approach.

He also laid out an orchard and a great garden, and refurnished the palace with spoils of Acts of

Attainder, among them purple velvet counterpanes and bed-hangings from Beddington Park, the former

home of Sir Nicholas Carew, and embroidered cushions from the house of Lord Montague. Many of

Wolsey’s furnishings were still in use. An elaborate design attributed to Holbein for a massive, richly

carved classical chimneypiece with antique and heraldic details,

once thought to have been built at

Bridewell Palace or Nonsuch, was probably commissioned for Whitehall, given its estimated scale—

fourteen feet high and nine feet six inches wide—which suggests that it was destined for a great

outward chamber; its Tuscan and Ionic pillars have similarities to those in the Whitehall family group

painting. Nicholas Bellin of Modena is known to have worked on the banqueting house, preaching

place, and gardens at Whitehall, and to have built chimneypieces there based on those in Francis I’s

gallery at Fontainebleau.

By the time of the King’s death, although the works he had begun were unfinished, the Whitehall

Palace site would extend over twenty-six acres as a result of further compulsory purchases of property

from local residents and the reclamation of 12,600 square yards of the Thames foreshore.

At Hampton Court, in 1540, Henry VIII set up the famous astronomical clock, which was designed by

Nicolaus Kratzer and made by a Frenchman, Nicolas Oursian, Deviser of the King’s Horologies.

shows not only the hours but the month, the date, the number of days since the beginning of the year,

the phases of the moon, the movement of the constellations in the Zodiac, and the time of high water at

London Bridge—useful in the days when most courtiers travelled to London by barge. The clock also

shows the Sun revolving around the Earth, a mediaeval theory that was yet to be debunked by

Copernicus and Galileo. In an age not renowned for precision in timepieces, visitors were astounded by

this remarkable piece of technology.

In 1540, John Ponet, a fellow of Queen’s College, Cambridge, and future Bishop of Winchester,

presented the King with a marvellous sundial he had himself designed, which showed “not only the

hour of the day, but also the day of the month, the sign of the moon, the ebbing and flowing of the sea,

with divers other things as strange.”

This, too, was installed at Hampton Court.

Henry acquired only one new property in 1540, and that was the ancient castle at Westenhanger, near

Folkestone in Kent, which he got by exchange with Sir Thomas Poynings. The castle had long been

famed for its romantic association with Rosamund de Clifford, the mistress of Henry II. Henry VIII

used it only rarely, although he kept it in repair and built a new lodging for his daughter Mary.

The Christmas revels of 1540, held at Hampton Court, were exceptionally magnificent. At New Year,

the King lavished gifts on his young wife, among them two pendants containing 26 “fair table

diamonds,” another with 27 diamonds, 158 “fair pearls,” a rope of 200 large pearls, and 26 clusters of

pearls.

On 3 January, Anne of Cleves arrived at court, bringing with her two superb horses

caparisoned in purple velvet for the King and Queen. There was no rancour between her and her

successor or her former husband: the King greeted her with a fraternal kiss, and the Queen welcomed

her warmly, as Anne knelt respectfully before her. That evening, after they had supped together and the

King had retired to bed, Anne and Katherine “danced and drank together.” The next day, when Anne

dined with the King and Queen, there was a great deal of “conversation, amusement and mirth.” Henry

presented Katherine with a ring and two lapdogs, then looked on with approval as she gave them to

Anne. That night, Katherine and Anne danced together again.

In January 1541, the conservative faction pounced on three respected courtiers who had been closely

associated with Cromwell, whose activities they had been doggedly investigating. Sir Thomas Wyatt,

who had been away on a diplomatic mission to the Low Countries in 1540, was arrested, bound, and

borne off to the Tower along with Ralph Sadler and Sir John Wallop, himself a conservative. The King

had been persuaded that all three held subversive religious views—Wyatt was said to be a Lutheran,

while Wallop had praised the Pope—and that they had all been guilty of treasonable misconduct while

serving on embassies abroad. There seems to have been little basis to the charges, and in March, after

the Queen had interceded for them, all three were freed, Wyatt on condition that he take back his first

wife, Elizabeth Brooke. Soon, they were restored to favour, although Wyatt never fully regained the

King’s trust. Sadler, however, was knighted later that year and admitted to the Privy Council.

Another courtier who incurred the royal displeasure was a Serjeant Porter, Sir Edmund Knyvet, who in

February 1541 assaulted and injured Thomas Clere, one of Surrey’s retainers, during a fight in the royal

tennis court at Greenwich. Knyvet had been brought by the Knight Marshal before the Court of the

Verge in the great hall of the palace, where the White Sticks sentenced him to lose his right hand and

forfeit his lands and possessions for having drawn blood within the verge of the court.

On the day the sentence was to be carried out, a grim pageant of household officials gathered with

awesome ceremony designed to impress upon the watching courtiers that breaching the King’s peace

within the precincts of his palace was a very serious crime indeed. The Serjeant Surgeon, who was to

amputate the hand, arrived with his instruments, followed by the Serjeant of the Woodyard with a

mallet and block and the King’s Master Cook with a sharp knife. It would be the duty of the Serjeant of

the Larder to position this on the prisoner’s wrist. After the sentence had been carried out, the wound

would be seared with irons provided by the Serjeant Farrier and heated by a Yeoman of the Scullery in

a firepan, while a Yeoman of the Chandlery would be ready with sear-cloths with which to dress the

stump, assisted by a Yeoman of the Ewery, who had with him a basin, ewer, and towels. For some

obscure reason, the Serjeant of the Poultry arrived with a live cockerel “which shall have his head

smitten off on the same block with the same knife.” Finally, the Serjeant of the Cellar brought wine,

ale, and beer to be served to those who had come to view the gruesome spectacle.

When all were assembled, the Knight Marshal brought in Knyvet, who confessed his crime and threw

himself on the royal mercy, begging that someone go and ask the King if he might lose his left hand

rather than his right, “for if my right hand be spared, I may hereafter do much good service to His

Grace.” The proceedings were halted while a messenger sped off to the privy lodgings, then returned

with the joyful news that the King had been so impressed by Knyvet’s loyalty and courage that he had

graciously pardoned him. Knyvet, who was “more frightened than hurt,”

was restored to his former

post and held it till his death five years later. In 1542, Parliament passed “an Act for Murder and

Malicious Bloodshed within the Court,” making the sentence of amputation mandatory, although

noblemen who drew blood while chastising their servants were exempt.

Masques were staged at Hampton Court on 21 and 22 February, but the King did not attend. To his

“great alarm,” the ulcer on his leg had suddenly become “clogged,” leaving him feverish and black in

the face, and his doctors feared for his life. The surgeons had to drain off fluid to relieve the swelling,

but this was a painful process, and Henry’s temper suffered accordingly. He snapped irritably at

everyone, grew morose and depressed, and “formed a sinister opinion of some of his chief men,”

declaring bitterly that “he had an unhappy people to govern.” He accused many of his councillors of

being lying timeservers and flatterers who looked only to their own profit, adding that he knew what

they were plotting, “and if God lent him health, he would take care that their projects should not

succeed.” He mourned the loss of Cromwell, having perceived that his councillors, “upon light pretext,

by false accusations, had made him put to death the most faithful servant he ever had.” His misery was

so great that he would not even listen to music, and remained shut away in his lodgings. Court life

ground to a standstill, and so many members of the household were sent home that the court

“resembled more a private family than a King’s train.” For over ten days, Henry even refused to let the

Queen visit him in his pitiable state, and this gave rise to gossip that there was a rift between them.

By Easter, which fell on 19 March, Henry’s leg was better and his depression beginning to lift. On 22

March, he was at Rochester, inspecting the work on the converted priory and no doubt expressing his

dissatisfaction, since less than a year later the great hall that had been fashioned from the monks’

refectory was rebuilt as two great chambers. The King moved on via Otford and Knole—his only

recorded visits after he acquired these houses—to Penshurst. On his return to court, he appears to have

had good cause for rejoicing, for on 10 April, Marillac reported: “the Queen is thought to be with child,

which would be a very great joy to this King, who, it seems, believes it and intends, if it be found true,

to have her crowned at Whitsuntide. The young lords and gentlemen of this court are practising daily

for the jousts and tournaments to be then made.”

Even hopes of an heir did not mitigate Henry’s savage reaction to news of a minor rebellion in

Yorkshire, which gave him the excuse he needed to eliminate yet another of his Plantagenet relatives.

Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, still languished in the Tower under sentence of death, but despite

her great age—she was sixty-eight—and the fact that she had nothing to do with the rebellion, the King

ordered her execution. The headsman was inept, and the Countess was butchered in the most slovenly

fashion.

One Londoner wrote: “I do not hear that any of the royal race are left, except a nephew of

Cardinal [Pole] and the son of the Marquess of Exeter. They are both children, and in prison and

condemned.”

Even Henry VIII did not stoop to executing children, and the boys remained in the

Tower.

Either Katherine had had a false alarm, or her pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. By the end of June, as

preparations went ahead for the long-deferred progress to the north, the King was displeased with her,

“avoiding as much as possible her company” and seeking his pleasures elsewhere, while the Queen

kept to her lodgings. Marillac still believed her to be pregnant and, having learned that Henry was

taking with him to the north his richest clothing and the most sumptuous tapestries and plate from

Whitehall, surmised that Katherine was to be crowned at York, since the citizens were eagerly

anticipating the birth of a duke of York, the title customarily given to the second son of the monarch.

This all fitted in with the King’s stated purpose of reinforcing the royal authority in the parts of his

realm that had been infected with rebellion, and where, never having visited these parts, he was just a

name to the people. This was not to be just a hunting progress, but a display of calculated magnificence

and majesty designed to overawe and impress disaffected subjects, and in case that were not enough,

Henry was taking with him such a strong military presence that his train seemed “more like a military

camp” than a court.

Not since the Field of Cloth of Gold, twenty-one years earlier had the King

amassed such a retinue. There were five thousand horses, one thousand soldiers, most members of the

court, and two hundred tents and pavilions in which to accommodate those for whom there was no

room in the houses where the King was to stay. The Queen and the Lady Mary were of the company, as

were several ambassadors, but Prince Edward was left behind and Cranmer, Audley, Hertford, and

Sadler remained in London to attend to matters of state.

On 30 June, the King led his vast company northwards towards Hatfield, Dunstable, Ampthill, and

Grafton, hunting and hawking on the way. At every town and city he visited, people flocked to see him

in gaily bedecked streets, and there were speeches, lavish receptions, and banquets. Henry won hearts

by exerting his compelling charm and making himself accessible to all who “grieved for lack of

justice.”

On the road, food provided by the various Household departments, supplemented by game,

fish, and fowl caught by the hunting parties, was prepared in field kitchens. Progress was slow and

initially hampered by stormy weather: the roads became impassable, the baggage carts got stuck in the

mud, and the Queen was unwell for a time.

It took the court almost three weeks to reach Grafton, but

after that the weather cleared, and the vast train was able to press on to Northampton at a faster pace.

On 9 August, after visiting Stamford and staying with the Suffolks at Grimsthorpe Castle, Henry

arrived at Lincoln wearing a suit of Lincoln green; he was preceded by his archers marching with

drawn bows, the Yeomen of the Guard with their pikes and axes, and trumpeters and drummers. Having

changed in a pavilion into splendid outfits of cloth of gold and silver, the King and Queen went in

procession up the hill to the cathedral, where Henry formally pardoned the citizens for their

disobedience during the Pilgrimage of Grace and Te Deum was sung in celebration.

Then it was on to Boston, and so into Yorkshire. At Hatfield Chase, the King and his companions shot

nearly four hundred deer in two days and enjoyed a picnic in the open air.

Having visited Doncaster

and Pontefract, the royal entourage moved towards York, and was welcomed there on 16 September by

the Archbishop of York and three hundred clergy. Then two hundred men who had rebelled against the

King and been pardoned came to make further submission, kneeling in the street before him and

offering purses stuffed with gold.

While in York, Henry stayed in a house now known as the King’s

Manor, which either had been specially built for him next to the former abbot’s lodging of St. Mary’s

Abbey, or was a refurbished building of the erstwhile Benedictine monastery.

An army of fifteen

hundred workmen had rebuilt the great hall of the abbey and furnished it with the tapestries and plate

from Whitehall, in readiness for the arrival of James V, King of Scots, who had arranged to meet his

uncle in York. Tents had been erected in the grounds of the abbey to accommodate the members of both

courts.

Henry waited in York until 29 September, but James did not show up, much to his chagrin. Apart from

this, the progress had been a triumphant success,

and the King, generally well satisfied, moved east to

Hull to plan fortifications. He stayed there five days in Hull Manor House, which he had had converted

into a small palace.

He then returned south via Kettleby, Grimsthorpe, Collyweston, Ampthill, the

More, and Windsor to Hampton Court, arriving on 30 October.

He would have been horrified had he known what the Queen had been up to during the progress.

During the King’s illness in the spring, Katherine had rashly begun a secret flirtation with Thomas

Culpeper, which soon developed into something more serious. At every stop made by the court on

progress, they contrived to meet, after Katherine had made a point of “seeking for the back doors and

back stairs herself.”

This was done with the connivance of Lady Rochford, who acted as a bawd, and

some of the Queen’s maids of honour. At Hatfield, Margaret Morton saw such significant “looks pass

between the Queen and Culpeper” that she thought “there was love between them.”

At Lincoln,

Katherine “went two nights out of her chamber, when it was late, to Lady Rochford’s chamber.”

Margaret Morton acted as lookout, and did not retire until 2 A.M., when Katherine Tilney awoke and

asked, ‘Jesus! Is not the Queen abed yet?”

All these women must have been aware of the danger they

were courting: at Pontefract Castle, they were thrown briefly into a panic by unfounded fears that the

King had discovered what was going on and had ordered his guard to watch them.

On 27 August, while the court was still at Pontefract, the net tightened around Katherine still further

when her former lover, Francis Dereham, came to her seeking employment, with a recommendation

from the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. Perhaps bowing to blackmail, the Queen made him her private

secretary and usher of her chamber, but he proved a liability because he was prone to boasting

arrogantly that, if the King died, he was certain that Katherine would marry him. He also hinted at the

favours she had already granted him

and aroused Culpeper’s jealousy. Dereham had a violent temper:

he attacked another gentlemen usher, John Fell, who had objected to his remaining seated at table after

the Queen’s Council had risen, and laid him out. It was fortunate for Dereham that this escaped the