The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracy, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant (28 page)

The servile twelve-man jury, made up of Norfolk knights and squires, had been handpicked to include some of his enemies. Surrey pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the indictment, which ran as follows:

Whosoever, by words, writings, printing or other external act, maliciously shall procure anything to the peril of the king’s person or give occasion whereby the king or his successors might be disturbed in their possession of the crown, shall be guilty of treason.
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And whereas Henry VIII is true King of England and Edward, formerly king of England, commonly called Saint Edward the Confessor in right of the said realm of England used certain arms and ensigns, namely,
azure, a cross fleury
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between five merletts
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gold
, belonging to the said king Edward and his progenitors in right of the crown of England, which arms and ensigns are therefore appropriate to the king and no other person.

And whereas Edward, now prince of England, the king’s son and heir apparent, bears … the said arms and ensigns with three labels called
three labels
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silver
.

Nevertheless, one Henry Howard, late of Kenninghall, knight of the Garter, otherwise called Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, on October 7, 1546, at Kenninghall, in the house of Thomas duke of Norfolk, his father, openly used and traitorously caused to be depicted, mixed and conjoined with his own arms and ensigns, the said arms and ensigns of the king, with
three labels silver
.
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The earl stood defiantly at the bar facing his justices, three of them the very architects of his downfall: alongside Lord Mayor Hobberthorne sat Wriothesley, Hertford and Dudley. Their number also included the Earls of Arundel and Essex and professional judges like Sir William Shelley, there to lend legal verisimilitude to the proceedings. Paget and Sir Anthony Browne were also present as commissioners.

The king’s lawyer opened his prosecution:

My lords, for either of the offences the earl has committed he deserves death. First for usurping the royal arms which gives rise to suspicion that he hoped to become king and the other for escaping from prison, whereby he showed his guilt.
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Surrey, ‘with manly courage’, interrupted:

You are false and to earn a piece of gold, would condemn your father. I never sought to usurp the king’s arms, for everybody knows that my ancestors bore them. Go to the church in Norfolk and you will see them there, for they have been ours’ for five hundred years.
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Paget, fearing Surrey’s eloquence and the impact on public opinion of what was rapidly becoming a strong defence, shouted at Surrey:

Hold your peace, my lord! Your idea was to commit treason and as the king is old, you thought to become king.

The earl snapped back:

And thou catchpole! What hast thou to do with it? Thou had better hold
thy
tongue, for the kingdom has never been well since the king put mean creatures like you into government.

The jibe was born out of Surrey’s uncontrollable contempt for the
nouveau riche
who had come to power, displacing the rightful role of the nobility. ‘Catchpole’ was street slang at the time for a bailiff and the stinging insult was hurled at Paget because his father was said to have been a humble constable. Whatever the truth of his parentage, Paget was now suddenly silenced, ‘very much abashed’. Dudley then questioned Surrey about why he had attempted to escape from the Tower. Surrey replied:

I tried to get out to prevent myself from coming to the pass in which I am now and you my lord know well that however right a man may be, they always find the fallen one guilty.
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Hard, realistic words from a man despairing of his certain terrible fate. Surrey was also accused of possessing a painting of himself that demonstrated ‘malicious thoughts’ and that he proposed his father to be Lord Protector of the young king after Henry’s death. His sister, the Duchess of Richmond, also signed one of the depositions, or witness statements. After her husband’s death, which left her a penniless widow, she had harboured deep resentment against both father and brother for her painful impecuniosity. Now she told how Surrey had altered his arms and placed over them the cap of maintenance,
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with the royal crown with the king’s cipher ‘H. R.’ for
Henricus Rex
beneath. When this was read out in court, Surrey burst out: ‘Must I then be condemned on the word of a wretched woman?’
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After six hours of hearing the depositions, Paget hurriedly left the court to see the king at Westminster. When he returned hotfoot, probably with the royal order for Surrey’s condemnation tucked safely inside his doublet, the jury dutifully retired to consider their verdict. One wonders what they talked about. After a decent interval – the niceties had to be observed – they returned and Hertford stood up to speak for them all.
Asked whether they found Surrey guilty or not guilty, Hertford replied in a loud voice: ‘Guilty’ – a brief pause – ‘And he should die.’
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He hardly finished speaking before the court erupted in a tumult ‘and it was a long while’ before the people in the court could be silenced.

Even with death staring him in the face, Surrey’s irrepressible prejudices burst out. The prisoner at the bar spat out:

Of what have you found me guilty? Surely you will find no law that justifies you! But I know the king wants to get rid of the noble blood around him and employ none but low people.
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Wriothesley, his voice rising above the excited babble, then pronounced sentence: that Surrey was to be ‘taken back to the Tower and thence led through the city of London to the gallows of Tyburn and hanged and disembowelled’ and his body quartered, the traitor’s usual ignominious death. He was led out of the Guildhall under heavy guard, with the axe turned towards him as a sinister sign of his condemnation. It was, commented the Spanish merchant de Guaras, ‘shocking to hear the things that he kept saying and to see the grief of the people’.

The Bill of Attainder against Norfolk and Surrey was introduced into Parliament on Tuesday 18 January, presaging their deaths and, as usual, forfeiting their lands and fortunes to the crown, backdated to 7 October 1546. No details of their high treason were mentioned within the Bill.

There were many at Westminster who cast envious eyes on the Howards’ ample estates, vastly augmented by the proceeds of dissolved religious houses, and no doubt the vultures were already circling, waiting for the rich pickings to be distributed after the deaths of Surrey and Norfolk. Henry promised Paget that these assets would be ‘liberally disposed and given to his good servants’, no doubt with the Seymour clan at the front of the line of those waiting to be enriched. The king said he had drawn up a list of beneficiaries, which he had put ‘in the pocket of his nightgown’. Ironically, it was not found after his death, despite frantic searches by those self-seeking men at Westminster who
surrounded the king during his last hours. This may have been Henry’s last laugh at his senior courtiers.

Surrey’s downfall was predicated on a heraldic technicality, a dubious charge at best. His father’s confession was vague and tenuous, much of the substance being only the swift abandonment of his son to the axeman. What truly destroyed the Howards was the testimony of the Duchess of Richmond – Norfolk’s daughter and Surrey’s sister – and Norfolk’s mistress ‘Bess’ Holland. The family was a house divided against itself. Both women harboured grudges, even hatred, against one or other of the men and it was these volcanic domestic tensions that enabled the destruction of probably the richest, the proudest and, at times, the most powerful noble family in England.

On 19 January 1547, Henry having generously commuted the sentence of his ‘foolish proud boy’ to mere beheading, Surrey was executed on Tower Hill and was buried immediately in the Church of All Hallows, Barking, close by in Upper Thames Street.
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On the scaffold ‘he spoke a great deal but said he never meant to commit treason. They would not let him talk any more.’
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Just over a week later, on 27 January, Wriothesley presided over a joint session of both Houses of Parliament and announced the Royal Assent to the Bill of Attainder, as Henry was too ill to attend in person. The last legal hurdles before the father’s execution had been jumped. For Norfolk, still in the Tower, it seemed only a matter of hours or days before his own lonely march to the scaffold. At least he was relatively comfortable, lodged in the Constable’s apartments. The accounts of Walter Stonor, the Lieutenant of the Tower, for 12 December to 6 February show £210 (£56,000 in today’s money) spent on the board and lodging of the duke and his attendants, including the cost of coals and candles.
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Away from the drama and excitements of this intense jockeying for power and position within the court, as the king’s health slowly worsened, at least a public face of normality was being maintained by other members of the royal family.

Edward dutifully wrote to his father from Hertford on 10 January, thanking him for his New Year’s gift and promising to follow his example
in ‘virtue, wisdom and piety’.
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He also politely wrote to the queen and to Princess Mary, thanking them for their presents – Katherine’s was a miniature portrait of Henry and herself. She was

gratified by his appreciation of her little … gift, hoping that he will meditate upon the distinguished deeds of his father, whose portrait he is so pleased to have, and to consider [Henry’s] rare virtues, whenever he should examine it, with rare attention.
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Edward also wrote belatedly (on 24 January) to Archbishop Cranmer, thanking him for his present of a cup, which bore testimony ‘that his loving godfather wishes him many happy years’ and for his letters exhorting him to the study of good, no doubt Protestant, literature ‘which may be useful to him in manhood’.
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Prince Edward was probably unaware just how serious his father’s decline was. Henry’s health had been steadily growing worse during the course of 1546, confining him more and more to his secret apartments. In March that year, the king was ‘indisposed with a slight fever for two or three days’
²
and he passed the listless hours of convalescence playing cards with Dudley and his other court intimates. The imperial ambassador van der Delft reported to Charles V: ‘I do not know what will come of it, as his principal medical man, Dr Butts, died this [last] winter. I will inquire daily and will report to your majesty.’
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Three months later, Henry was again ill, this time with colic, and was taking his prescribed medicine.

The frustration resulting from his immobility and the pain from his legs worsened his temper and he grew ‘exceedingly perverse and intractable’. He could still ride, with some difficulty, and during the summer of 1546 he spent much time hunting at Chobham, Guildford, and elsewhere in Surrey, with most of the kills probably stage-managed by his huntsmen. A ramp had been constructed in the grounds of Otelands, one of his houses in that county, to help him climb into his horse’s saddle.
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However, by September he was physically exhausted and the delights of the chase had to be curtailed. Henry journeyed to Windsor to recover, accompanied by Queen Katherine.

Once there, he was again taken ill, but Wriothesley said reassuringly on 17 September that he had ‘only a cold and was now cured’.
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Van der Delft heard differently and believed that Henry had been very sick indeed – that his life had been in great danger and his physicians had given up all hope of his recovery. But recover he did, and within three weeks he was back in the saddle in the hunting field. The king returned to London in November ‘for certain baths which he usually has at this season’ and then moved back to Otelands. The Spanish ambassador saw him there on 5 December, when Henry told him he had suffered a ‘sharp attack of the fever, which lasted in the burning stage for thirty hours, but now he was quite restored’. But the ambassador had his doubts: ‘his colour does not bear out [this] statement and he looks to me greatly fallen away.’
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Henry’s last feeble foray into the hunting field came on 7 December. Three days later, he was due to see the French envoy Odet de Selve, but the audience was postponed because of a royal cold. However, the king was able to meet Scottish ambassadors three times in mid-December, after the 16th of that month, and de Selve and van der Delft on the 17th.

Some vital clues to Henry’s condition and its treatment come from the apothecaries’ bills submitted for the drugs and medicines supplied and approved by his doctors, George Owen and Thomas Wendy. Thomas Alsop, chief apothecary to the court, had been joined at Michaelmas 1546 by another called Patrick Reynolds.

Alsop’s bill for the last five months of the king’s life jumped in value
as potions and medicines were increasingly prescribed by the royal physicians: from £5 in August (£1,247 in today’s values) to £25 for December (£6,239). But this was not all for Henry’s medicinal needs. Alsop also had to supply a huge range of different products for various uses by the court – including liquorice and barley sugar for the king’s hounds; horehound water, sugar candy and rhubarb for his hunting hawks; and perfumes and fragrances to sweeten the atmosphere of the royal apartments and banquets. (The king’s apothecary also had to deliver disposable pottery urinals for use during Privy Council meetings at 3d a time, so that calls of nature did not interrupt the important proceedings. The bill for Hampton Court in August alone for these very personal items was two shillings.)
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