Henry VIII (62 page)

58

“A Nest of Heretics”

By March 1542, the court was returning to normal. Within a week of Katherine Howard's execution, the King was hosting pre-Lenten banquets for his privy councillors, nobles, and men of law. One such banquet was given for a number of ladies, whose company Henry appeared to relish “as a man nurtured among them.” On the morning beforehand, he personally inspected the lodgings that had been prepared at court for the ladies, going from chamber to chamber checking the hangings and bedcoverings to ensure they were the best that could be provided. When his guests arrived, he received them “with much gaiety” and “made them great and hearty cheer, without showing special affection to any particular one.”
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In July, the court was diverted by news that the volatile Earl of Surrey had challenged Sir John Leigh, one of the King's servants, to a duel, provoking an angry Henry to consign him to the Fleet Prison in London. A fortnight later, after writing an abject letter to the Council admitting that “the fury of restless youth” had got the better of him, and pointing out that he was “not the first young man to have enterprised matters that he afterwards regretted,” Surrey was released on a surety of the huge sum of £6,666 (nearly £2 million).
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The young Earl was soon to replace Wyatt as the premier English poet. Wyatt, who was elected a Knight of the Shire for Kent in 1542, had grown weary of the diplomatic service, and longed to retire to the peace of his Kentish home, but in the autumn of 1542 the King sent him to Falmouth to welcome an imperial emissary and escort him to court. Wyatt never reached Falmouth: in October, he died of pneumonia at Sherborne, Dorset.

Few mourned him more sincerely than his fellow poet Surrey, who wrote in an epitaph:

A tongue that serv'd in foreign realms his King,
Whose courteous talk to virtue did influence
Each noble heart; a worthy guide to bring
Our English youth by travail unto fame.
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Surrey's works were already much admired at court. His broad knowledge of classical and Renaissance literature lent his work an elegance and form not yet seen in England. Surrey popularised the Petrarchan sonnet, adapting it to his own purpose as Wyatt had done; wrote a rhyming version of the Book of Ecclesiasticus as well as graceful love poems; and made a brilliant translation of Virgil's
Aeneid
, in which he introduced blank verse into the English language. His genius was to inspire the works of later generations of poets, among them Sir Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare, and John Milton.

In November, the Lady Mary presided over court feasts “in default of a queen.”
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The King, however, was preoccupied with deteriorating relations with Scotland, and in November sent north a military force under Norfolk to prevent James V and his army from crossing the border. This was the Duke's chance to regain his sovereign's confidence, and he and his son Surrey, who was seeing military service for the first time, acquitted themselves well.

During the campaign, one of the friends of Henry's youth, William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton, was killed fighting the Scots. His heir was his half-brother, Sir Anthony Browne, who inherited Southampton's house at Cowdray, Sussex. Sir Anthony, an ageing widower, celebrated his good fortune by marrying the fifteen-year-old Lady Elizabeth FitzGerald— “Fair Geraldine”—much to Surrey's distress,
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and began converting Cowdray into a great palace.
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Lord Russell had succeeded Southampton as Lord High Admiral in 1540, but was himself replaced in 1542 by John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, the son of Henry VII's unpopular minister Edmund Dudley, whom Henry VIII had executed as a sop to popular opinion in 1510. Dudley, now forty, had been restored in blood during youth and brought up by Sir Edward Guildford, whose daughter Jane he married, and in 1542 inherited the Lisle title from his mother. An excellent soldier, whose daring and horsemanship had made him renowned, he had hitherto served the King mainly in a military capacity. Now a Warden of the Scottish Marches alongside Suffolk, he was a pragmatic man of cold, calculating ambition. His able, sometimes devious, mind had impressed the King, who would in 1543 admit him to the Privy Council and Privy Chamber.

On 24 November 1542, the English won a great victory over the Scots at Solway Moss. Norfolk was quick to point out to his master that this was due to his own expert leadership, although Hertford, who had also been given a leading command, deserved some of the credit. The King was jubilant, and the court gayer than at any time since before Katherine Howard's fall.
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News of the death of James V on 14 December gave even further cause for rejoicing, because his heir was a week-old girl, the infant Mary, Queen of Scots. Scotland would be subject to yet another weakening regency—it had endured six during the past 150 years—and should give no further trouble. Henry now conceived the idea of marrying Queen Mary to Prince Edward and uniting the two kingdoms under Tudor rule, a plan the Scots were to resist violently.

The court was merry again that Christmas. Scottish nobles, taken hostage during the campaign, were honourably entertained at court, but not set free until they had sworn on oath to further the proposed marriage alliance.
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Early in the new year of 1543, Surrey disgraced himself again. In February, after arriving back south, he stayed in London with two companions, Wyatt's son Thomas and William Pickering, who would later become a distinguished Elizabethan courtier. One night, while celebrating the recent victory, they went on a drunken spree, outraging the citizens by rampaging through the streets, smashing the windows of churches and aldermen's houses, and throwing stones at passersby. The next night, they took a boat out on the Thames and shot pellets at the whores on Bankside.

They were also seen eating meat during Lent, which was strictly forbidden to Catholics. Surrey's friend George Blagge, a religious radical, warned him what people might infer from this, but the Earl complacently replied, “We shall have a madding time in our youth, and therefore I am very sorry for it.”

The Lord Mayor, however, complained to the Council, and the three miscreants were hauled before it at St. James's Palace. Surrey admitted breaching the King's peace by his misdemeanours, but pleaded in mitigation that he had only broken the windows of papists. He was nevertheless sent once more to the Fleet to learn to control his “heady will.” The King was exasperated, referring to Surrey as “the most foolish proud boy that is in England,” but his fondness for the young man was unabated.
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By the middle of May, Surrey was a free man, and doing his best to regain his master's favour. However, he never forgave Gardiner, Wriothesley, Browne, and Russell for their part in his interrogation, nor Sir Thomas Seymour, who had sanctimoniously pressed for a stiffer sentence.
¹⁰

By February 1543, the King had begun to betray an interest in Katherine Parr, the wife of John Neville, Lord Latimer. She was no giddy young girl, but a mature, well-educated woman of about thirty, whose intellectual gifts may have attracted Henry as much as her comely person. He had probably known her all her life: her father, Sir Thomas Parr, had served Katherine of Aragon until his death in 1517; her brother William was a prominent courtier; her sister Anne had waited on Katherine Howard; and Lady Latimer herself had visited court with her husband. Henry's first recorded gift to her—a package of “pleats and sleeves”— was paid on 16 February, while her ailing husband was still alive. It was followed by presents of fashionable gowns, cut in the Italian, French, and Dutch styles, and French hoods.
¹¹
Lord Latimer, who had been ill for some time, died on 2 March.

The Parrs were an ancient Westmorland family, distantly related to the Plantagenets and Tudors. Katherine had been born at Kendal Castle in 1511/12, but had been brought up in London. She had now buried two husbands, the first having been the elderly Edward de Burgh, Lord Borough, whom she married in 1526. He died in 1528 and she married Lord Latimer around 1530. There were no children from either marriage.

Katherine was “of small stature”
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and, although not beautiful, had a “lively, pleasing appearance.”
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She was dignified, “graceful and of cheerful countenance, and . . . praised for her virtue.”
¹⁴
The half-length portrait of her now in the National Portrait Gallery, shows a pleasant-faced matron with auburn hair
¹⁵
and hazel eyes, wearing a rich red gown with stand-up collar and jaunty feathered cap. She was kind, warmhearted, generous, and intuitive, although given to occasional rash impulses. In his Will, the King praised her for her devotion, obedience, chastity, and wisdom, but beneath the virtuous and godly exterior there beat a passionate heart.

There has been much recent scholarly debate as to the extent of Katherine's intellectual capabilities. There is no doubt that she was intelligent and well read, but she was pious rather than intellectual. She was well-educated for a woman of her time, imbued with the New Learning, and is known to have written at least two rather erudite devotional books. A good conversationalist, Katherine was fluent in French and Italian, could read and write Latin, and understood some Greek; although she had been taught French by her mother, she learned the other languages later in life rather than during childhood. Her handwriting was in the new Italianate style. Katherine had the utmost respect for scholarship, was well aware of her own shortcomings, and constantly sought to improve herself.

The King's interest in Lady Latimer may well have accounted for the preferment of her brother William, Lord Parr, to the Privy Council in March and his election as a Knight of the Garter the following month. The King also appointed him Warden of the Scottish Marches. Around this time, however, Parr's wife, Elizabeth Bourchier, deserted him, and he discovered that her children had been fathered by other men. Incensed, he urged the King to have her executed, which was the prescribed penalty for the adulterous wives of peers. Thanks to Katherine Parr's intercession with the King, Lady Parr escaped death, but Parliament granted her husband a divorce on 17 April and declared her children bastards and unfit to inherit the Essex estates, which were instead entailed upon Lord Parr.

Although Latimer had been a conservative, his widow held radical, if not Protestant, religious views, and had to be careful. The reformers Miles Coverdale and Hugh Latimer were guests at her house near the former London Charterhouse, but so also was the staunchly Catholic Lady Mary, who may have known Katherine Parr from childhood, and was a good friend.

It was a dangerous time to hold Lutheran opinions. Led by the energetic Gardiner, ably supported by Wriothesley, the conservative faction, in order to regain its ascendancy and discredit its rivals, was ruthlessly seeking out heretics and traitors within the royal household. In March 1543, they “uncovered a nest of heretics”
¹⁶
among the musicians of St. George's Chapel at Windsor. The gifted organist, composer, and Master of the Choristers, John Marbeck, a secret Calvinist, was sentenced to be burned at the stake after heretical writings were found in his house, but the King valued his playing so highly that he pardoned him.
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Three other members of the Chapel Royal were not so lucky.
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In April, Gardiner struck at Archbishop Cranmer, whose primacy he coveted, and had him accused of heresy. But the King again intervened. He arrived at Lambeth Palace in his barge and sent a message inviting Cranmer to accompany him on a trip along the Thames. When the Archbishop appeared, Henry said jovially, “Ah, my chaplain, I have news for you. I now know who is the greatest heretic in Kent.” He also hinted that he knew Cranmer had a wife. The Archbishop was thoroughly frightened, but the King, who was very fond of his primate, even though he must have suspected his Protestant sympathies, made it clear that he meant to protect him from his enemies, and authorised him to preside over the inquiry into his own alleged heresy. When the conservatives approached the King for permission to arrest Cranmer, he granted it, but then privily summoned the Archbishop and gave him a ring, which he was to produce when the Council came for him. The next day, Cranmer was able to confound his enemies, and was supported by Henry, who delivered a stern homily on the evils of faction politics and commanded the rival parties to make their peace.
¹⁹

The King also taught a lesson to Sir Thomas Seymour, who had accused the Archbishop of not maintaining a household, or entertaining in a style, appropriate to his dignity, and urged that his vast revenues be diverted to the Crown and replaced with a salary. After the heresy scandal had died down, Henry, probably having warned Cranmer what he was about, ordered Seymour to present himself at Lambeth Palace one afternoon. Seymour was astonished to find a lavish meal awaiting him. When he arrived back at Whitehall, the King asked him, “Had my lord dined before ye came? What cheer made he you?” A shamefaced Seymour had to admit that he had “abused Your Highness with an untruth.” Henry, who had personal reasons for wishing to discountenance Seymour, lectured him, then warned, “There shall be no alteration made while I live.”
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Later that year, the King sanctioned the return of Mistress Cranmer, who had been living in Germany, and in 1544 and 1545 he would again intervene to save Cranmer from those who wished to destroy him.

Thwarted of bigger fish, the conservatives next struck at the Privy Chamber, and draft indictments were drawn up by Gardiner's protégé, Dr. John London, against eleven of its members, among them the Master of the Revels; the diplomat and scholar Philip Hoby; Master Penny, the King's barber; and the royal cook. But Henry was not impressed or pleased: he ordered the arrest of London and pardoned those under suspicion. London was found guilty of perjury, made a public example of, then thrown in the Fleet, where he died the next year.
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