The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracy, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant (21 page)

Paradoxically, given Henry’s frequent illnesses, it was a firm belief amongst his subjects that the king had the power to cure scrofula, or tuberculosis of the lymph glands in the neck.
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This healing process was known as ‘The King’s Evil’ and sufferers merely had to touch his sacred person to be healed by the royal powers. The massive inventory of Henry’s possessions drawn up after his death includes ‘A black velvet bag … containing three rings, whereof one, a ruby, that the king wore at the healing of poor folk’
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that was used in this regularly staged ceremony.

In the spring of 1546, Henry’s mobility deteriorated considerably as his legs had become very swollen and made walking difficult: the king had become a semi-invalid and had to rely on other means to move around his palaces. In July that year, an entry in the meticulously kept household accounts for the Palace of Westminster records:

Stuff made by the king’s commandment and the same delivered in charge unto … Anthony Denny:

Item: two chairs called ‘trams’ for the king’s majesty to sit in, to be carried to and fro in his galleries and chambers covered with tawny velvet all over quilted with tawny silk with a half place
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underneath either of the said chairs and two foot stools standing on either side of the half place, embroidered upon the backs of them and the top of the high pommels on either of them with a rose of Venice gold fringed round about with tawny silk.

Item: one other like chair cover with russet velvet likewise quilted and embroidered with silk and gold and fringed with a like half place and like stools.
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A belief grew up amongst Victorian historians that some mechanical contrivance such as a lift or elevator was constructed to raise the corpulent king from floor to floor of his palaces. This view is based solely on the testimony of the Duke of Norfolk’s mistress, Mrs Elizabeth or ‘Bess’ Holland,
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at the trial of Henry, Earl of Surrey, in January 1547. This ‘churl’s daughter’, as the spurned and discarded Duchess of Norfolk bitterly called her,
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confessed to the court that the duke had told her

that the king was much grown of his body and that he could not go up and down stairs and was let up and down by a device. And that his majesty was sickly and could not long endure

– the last words alone condemning the duke for treason.

It seems very likely that the king’s ‘trams’ described in Denny’s accounts refer to some form of what later came to be called a sedan chair – fitted with horizontal poles and carried by four attendants, one at each corner. Indeed, the Spanish ambassador van der Delft in his dispatches reports Henry ‘passing in his chair’ on 7 October that year,
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probably in the Palace of Westminster. The chairs may have been fitted with wheels because of the king’s great weight, the Old English word ‘tram’ meaning not a vehicle in the modern sense, but a two-shafted
cart, wagon or hand-barrow. They were kept in the king’s study, now called ‘the chair house’ in the inventory of the contents of the Palace of Westminster. There is no mention of a lift or any other contrivance in the household accounts and probably there was little need of one: the king’s secret apartments were always on one floor.

Denny’s terse accounts of the time paint a vivid, human picture of Henry as an old man in constant pain, needing comfort for his ulcerated legs and frequent respites from the agony caused by standing for long periods or by prolonged periods of movement. Payments for the same month of July 1546 also include delivery of ‘two foot stools of wood … covered with purple velvet and fringed with silk’ and later there are frequent orders for ‘new made’ chairs and cushions of purple velvet and six more matching foot stools.
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The popular image of an elderly king seeking solace by resting his leg on the lap of a compassionate and caring Queen Katherine may not be so far from the truth.

Some of the last items ordered for the king before his death were new close stools, or commodes. William Green’s bill, dated 28 December 1546, totalled £4 10s 6d for making ‘a close stool for the king’s majesty’ covered with black velvet and 31 lb. of down for stuffing the seat, arms and sides, fixed with 2,000 gilt nails. Elizabeth Slanning was also paid 27s 6d for supplying silk fringes and ribbons to Green on 28 November for this commode, delivered to Anthony Denny.
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Early the following month, William Hustwayt was paid 5s to make ‘a great pewter cistern’ for one of Henry’s close stools at Westminster and another 5s for a similar very intimate utensil for Windsor. He was also paid 2s for mending an old cistern. On 14 January 1547, two weeks before the king’s death, his Privy Chamber purchased a yard and a half of black velvet ‘to make two pairs of large slippers newly devised’.
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By then, Henry’s medical condition had rendered such homely comforts too little, too late to benefit him.

Outside the bear pit of religious dispute and political argument that Henry’s Council had become lay the king’s Privy Chamber, increasingly now the real seat of power in the realm. This small group of ambitious men was closest to the royal person, not only always within hearing and sight of the king, but also privy to Henry’s innermost thoughts and changing moods. In addition, they were concerned with his most personal bodily needs. Such familiarity always spawns power. The members of this élite had constant, privileged access to Henry, and consequently the lucrative asset of royal patronage was very much in their hands. They also controlled the burden of his administrative load, doubly significant because of Henry’s notoriously low boredom threshold for paperwork.

The head of this small, very select organisation was the Chief Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and Groom of the Stool, Sir Thomas Heneage, who had made his mark as head of Cardinal Wolsey’s Privy Chamber back in the late 1520s before his promotion into this, the king’s most intimate service, in 1536. But Henry’s real ‘fixer’, his man-about-the-court, trusted messenger and true confidant was Anthony Denny, who had been knighted on the field of battle after the surrender of Boulogne in September 1544. Then Heneage was suddenly and summarily dismissed as Chief Gentleman in October 1546 for reasons that are unclear, but may have been the result of a deliberate palace
coup
by religious reformers.
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Denny’s relationship with the king was totally different from that enjoyed by the court fool, the shrewd Will Somers, who was there to cheer the king and distract him from his ever more frequent bouts of melancholy. His role was that of a discreet sounding board, with whom the king could safely discuss delicate issues of state, away from the vested interests and entrenched positions of his conspiratorial Privy Council and his government officers. Denny’s colleague William Herbert testified after Henry’s death that the king ‘would always, when Mr Secretary [Paget] was gone, tell us what passed between them’. As such a loyal adviser, upon whom Henry grew increasingly reliant, Denny rapidly became the true authority lurking behind the throne, a role only recently identified by historians.
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His talents and attributes were recognised by his contemporaries. Sir William Cecil, reporting the news from London in 1549, wrote that ‘Sir Anthony Denny is dead, whereof none have greater loss than very honest [and virtuous] men’.
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Denny was born in Howe, Norfolk, in January 1501, the second surviving son of Sir Edmund Denny, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, by his second wife Mary, of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire.
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He was educated at St Paul’s School under the famous humanist thinker William Lily and at St John’s College, Cambridge,
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before joining the household of the favoured courtier Sir Francis Bryan in 1531. When Bryan became a Chief Gentleman of the Privy Chamber in 1536, Denny followed him into Henry’s service, becoming King’s Remembrancer and a groom, a
Yeoman of Robes and then Keeper of the Palace of Westminster in September 1537. The king wrote to the Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, probably in December 1535, recommending Denny’s election as a Member of Parliament for the prosperous east coast port of Ipswich.
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When Bryan was ousted in late 1538 during Cromwell’s last purge of royal officials, Denny cheerfully replaced his mentor.
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He had good court connections.
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His youngest sister Martha married Sir Wymond Carew, former receiver-general to Anne of Cleves and later treasurer of the Court of First Fruits and Tenths
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in 1545–9; the widow of his eldest brother, Thomas, remarried Robert Dacres, Master of Requests
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and a Privy Councillor in 1542–4.
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He also had a reputation for the new learning and scholarship and was a close friend of the author Roger Ascham, tutor to Princess Elizabeth and later to Prince Edward. Denny apparently told Ascham: ‘If two deities did not command him to serve, the one the prince, the other his wife, he would surely become a student [again] in St John’s [College].’
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He was charming, level-headed and always more than sympathetic to Henry’s many trials and tribulations. Of the marriage charade with Anne of Cleves in 1540, Denny commented comfortingly:

The state of princes in matters of marriage is far worse a sort than the conditions of poor men. For princes take as is brought to them by others and poor men be commonly at their own choice and liberty.
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One can see why the king was so fond of him. There is no talk here of diplomatic imperatives or the strict requirements of protocol, such as Henry must have constantly heard from Cromwell and his other advisers. Sir John Cheke said that Denny was ‘able to mould Henry’s mind, now mixing the useful with the sweet, now weaving the serious things with the light ones, great with small’.
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But despite his skill in manipulating the king, the fear of Henry’s uncertain temper and his ever-changing moods, together with the stealthy machinations of those around him, must have caused Denny many a sleepless night.

He lived in Aldgate, on the eastern edge of the City of London, quite
close to Hans Holbein the Younger, who painted a portrait of his neighbour in 1541.
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The painting shows an intense, earnest face, bearded, with a lively expression and quizzical eyes peering out from beneath a sombre cap.
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Denny married Joan, daughter of Sir Philip Champernown, of Modbury, Devon, in February 1538, in a match probably encouraged by the king
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and eventually had twelve children. Joan was an attractive and intelligent woman and a strong adherent of the reformed religion. She became a lady-in-waiting, first to Anne of Cleves on her arrival in England in 1540 and later to Queen Katherine Parr.

Denny was an influential supporter of the evangelical party at court, although he took pains to discreetly hide his religious beliefs. He was certainly a friend of Thomas Cranmer.
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As he blossomed in Henry’s estimation, he began to amass considerable holdings of land and sinecure offices, thoughtfully provided by a grateful monarch. These included: the lucrative job of collector of tonnage and poundage in the port of London (1541);
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a grant of the dissolved priory of Hertford (1537); steward of the manor of Bedwell and Little Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, the manors of Butterwick and Great Amwell and the nunnery of Cheshunt in the same county (1539); lands belonging to the abbey of St Alban’s (1541); Mettingham College, Suffolk, with six manors in East Anglia (1542); and a thirty-one-year lease on more than 2,000 acres of Waltham Abbey land in Essex in 1544. He was also granted, for life, houses in close proximity to the Palace of Westminster, charmingly called Paradise, Hell and Purgatory, probably to enable him to be near his job as Keeper of the Palace, paid at the modest rate of 6d a day. After he died, his lands probably totalled about 20,000 acres in the counties of Hertfordshire and Essex alone, and his annual income amounted to around £750, or more than £220,000 a year at current prices.
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As the king’s reliance on Denny grew, the courtier set up a small administrative unit within the Privy Chamber. It was led by his brother-in-law John Gates, something of a thug and the original sixteenth-century ‘Essex’ man, who was used as the hard man to ensure that things got done around the court. The pen-pushers were William Clerk, who had charge of the ‘dry stamp’ that created a facsimile of Henry’s
signature, and Nicholas Bristow, who was the accountant overseeing the expenditure by the Privy Purse – Henry’s own private bank account. Denny and Gates had no compunction in exploiting their unique access to the king with the many subjects who wished to press their suits. Two examples vividly illustrate the patronage system:

5 September 1546
. John Dodge to Mr Gates, ‘steward to the right worshipful Mr Denny. The parson of Leyborne, Kent, with the consent of the archbishop of Canterbury, his patron, and bishop of Rochester … will lease to me a free chapel in Leyborne for as many years as the law will permit … The king has ordered his archbishops and bishops to make no such leases without his consent. I beg you to get the king’s confirmation of the lease and to move your master [Denny] to get the king’s commandment directed to the said bishops.’

22 November 1546
. Richard Norlegh to an unknown recipient. ‘As you are a friend to my master Mr Gates, I will do what otherwise I would not for £40, for honesty is to be esteemed above all things and thereto I never forsook my first client. I will not hinder you but cannot be a suitor for you that were too apparent. If you were not a friend to Mr Gates £100 would not stop my mouth but I should speak for my first client.’
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