The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracy, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant (42 page)

42
CPR,
Philip & Mary
, Vol. IV, pp.450–1. Wendy’s funeral in Cambridge on 27 May 1560 was a grand affair, recorded by the merchant tailor and undertaker Henry Machyn, with ‘a great dole’ provided for the poor: ‘500 people had great plenty of meat and drink … Great store has been seen for a middle-rank gentleman and a great moan made.’ Machyn, pp.235–6.

43
His inscription fulfilled the Protestant requirement for just factual information: ‘Here lieth/THOMAS WENDYE Doctor in Phesicke/and was buried the xxvij daye of Maye 1560.’ See Munk, Vol. I, p.50.

44
Munk, Vol. 1, p.37.

45
MacNalty, p.149.

46
Cited by Weir, p.457 and Furdell, p.28.

47
He died in 1556 and was buried in St Michael, Bassishaw, Basinghall Ward, London, where his epitaph, now lost, read:

In surgery brought up in youth

A knight here lieth dead

A knight and also a surgeon such

As England seld[om] hath bred

For which so sovereign gift of God

Wherein he did excel

King Henry VIII called him to court

Who loved him dearly well.

48
MacNalty, pp.69–70.

49
Henry had grown a beard a number of times during his reign: Catherine of Aragon persuaded him to shave it off, and the golden beard familiar from his portraits appeared only after 1535 when he ordered his courtiers to grow whiskers and cut their hair short.

50
Furdell, p.35.

51
Furdell, p.30.

52
LP, Vol. X, p.71. The writer Chapuys pondered whether he should ask destiny for ‘what greater misfortune’ was reserved for Henry ‘like the other tyrant who escaped from the fall of the house in which all the rest were smothered and soon after died’.

53
Scarisbrook, p.485, suggests that the headaches may have been due to persistent catarrh.

54
Park, p.44.

55
LP, Vol. XII, pt.i, p.486.

56
LP, Vol. XIII, pt.i, p.368.

57
LP, Vol. XIII, pt.ii, p.313.

58
‘Lisle Letters’, Vol. V, p.1415. This demonstrates Henry’s adherence to Catholic liturgy: ‘On Holy Thursday, his Grace went [on] procession about the Court at Westminster. And the high altar in the chapel [Royal] was [decorated] with all the apostles and [there was] mass by note and the organs playing with as much honour to God [as] might be devised to be done. Upon Good Friday last, the King’s grace crept to the cross from the chapel door upward, devoutly, and so served the priest to mass that same day, his own person kneeling on his grace[’s] knees.’

59
Boned and pressed white meat, served cold in aspic.

60
Cited by Neville Williams, p.186.

61
Copeman, pp.156–7. Potatoes were not eaten in England until the vegetable was introduced from the West Indies by Hawkins in 1564.

62
Portulaca oleracea
.

63
See Kybett, pp.19–25.

64
LP, Vol. XIV, pt.ii, p.45. 12 September 1539, ‘between 10 and 11 am’.

65
Faced with the prospect of the thrill of the chase, Henry sometimes woke up at four o’clock in the morning to go hunting.

66
LP, Vol. XVI, p.284. 3 March 1541.

67
Ibid.

68
Ibid.

69
LP, Vol. XVI, p.285.

70
Now in Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery, the Museo Thyssen, Madrid, and elsewhere.

71
The Walker Art Gallery portrait, by Hans Holbein the Younger, was painted when the king was forty-six and was probably derived, like the portrait at Petworth House, Sussex, from the mural painted in the Palace of Westminster. Holbein employed considerable artistic licence to create an imposing figure: by lengthening the figure’s legs, for example, he created a slimmer image.

72
LP, Vol. X, p.117.

73
An oil on panel painted by an unknown artist. National Portrait Gallery 496. Now on display at Montacute House, Somerset. Other versions are at Castle Howard, Yorkshire, St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, and Hever Castle, Kent.

74
MacNalty, p.126.

75
Printed and published in London, 1608. Armin is listed amongst the actors in the Folio Edition of Shakespeare’s plays. He was a comic player, probably performing the roles of Touchstone in
As You Like It
, Feste in
Twelfth Night
and the Fool in
King Lear
.

76
The source for this is a reference in the Revd James Granger’s
Biographical History
of 1779. Fermer gained some influence at court as a result and was appointed Sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire in 1532–3. However, he incurred royal displeasure in 1540 for his determination to comfort his former chaplain and confessor, Nicholas Thayne, then a close prisoner in Buckingham Gaol for denying the king’s religious supremacy, although nothing was proved except Fermer’s provision of a paltry 8d and several clean
shirts. Fermer was briefly jailed in the Marshalsea Prison, Southwark, and his extensive estates were confiscated for the king’s use (his lands are listed in BL Royal MS Appendix 89, fol.158) but he recovered them after Henry’s death in 1549, possibly after an intervention by Somers with Edward VI. See Robert Hutchinson and Bryan Egan,
Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society
, 16 (1999), pp.247–8, and NA E 318, Court of Augmentations, Particular of Grants, Edward VI.

77
The Protestant John Bale takes Somers’ name in vain in an attack on an unreformed priest who performed a service ‘with no small strutting and stammering, turning his arse to the people after the old popish manner … More apish toys and gawdy feats [were showed] at the communion. He turned and tossed, lurked and licked, snored and snorted, gaped and gasped, kneeled and knocked … with both his thumbs at his ears and other tricks more that he made me twenty times to remember Will Somer[s]’. Nichols, ‘Narratives’, p.318.

78
Doran, p.137.

79
Ibid.

80
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.401. The ferryman was paid at the rate of 1d per horse. The accounts were marked ‘1546’ but probably refer to the previous year, as they also talk of Henry moving from Westminster to Hampton Court. The king remained at Westminster for Christmas 1546.

81
BL Royal MS 2A xvi, fol.63b.

82
He is mentioned in the household accounts as ‘orator in the French tongue’ in 1540–1.

83
BL Royal MS 2A xvi, fol.3, illustrating Psalm 1.

84
Cited by Weir, p.483.

85
LP, Vol. VIII, pp.366–7.

86
Now in the Royal Collection.

87
Queen Katherine Parr provided three geese and hens for Jane to look after in the Privy Garden. See Southworth, p.103. A skin infection contracted in 1543 necessitated a barber shaving her hair every month. Another school of thought believes the figure is ‘Mistress Jak’, Edward’s wet nurse, but given the iconography of the picture, this seems unlikely.

88
A picture of Henry painted towards the end of his life, showing him wearing a jewelled cap and holding a staff in his right hand, with his three children and Will Somers in the background, was in the possession of the Earl of Bessborough in 1800. See Nichols, ‘Literary Remains’, Vol. I, p.cccliii.

89
LP
Addenda
, Vol. I, pt.ii, p.618.

90
It was a healing power believed to be possessed by later Tudor and Stuart monarchs as well, acquired from God through the holy oil used to anoint kings and queens at their coronations.

91
Starkey, ‘Inventory’, p.75, item 2524.

92
A small upholstered area.

93
NA E 315/160, fol.133v. Virtually the same descriptions appear in the inventory of Henry’s goods made after his death. They were listed under ‘Refuse Stuff at Westminster in the charge of James Ruffoth’. See Starkey, ‘Inventory’, p.263.

94
She was the daughter of Norfolk’s steward at Kenninghall. When the duke separated from his wife during Lent 1534 to live with his mistress, Bess, the duchess moved to Redbourne, Hertfordshire, constantly complaining about her husband’s behaviour. On 24 October 1537, she wrote: ‘I have been his wife twenty-five years and borne him five children and because I would suffer the bawd and the harlots that bound me to be still in the house, they pinnacled [manacled] me and sat on my breast till I spat blood, all for speaking against the woman in the court, Bess Holland. It is four years come Tuesday in Passion week since he came riding all night and locked me up in a chamber and took away my jewels and apparel and left me with but £50 a quarter … to keep twenty persons in a hard country.’ On another occasion she wrote: ‘I reckon if I come home I shall be poisoned.’ See LP, Vol. XII, pt.ii, p.342. Her complaints about ‘hard usage’ by Norfolk are contained in a letter to his enemy, Cromwell, in BL Cotton MS Titus B i, fol.388.

95
See Robinson, p.26.

96
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.110.

97
NA E 315/160, fol.135.

98
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.325. Slanning was paid on 11 January 1547, receipting the document with her mark.

99
LP, Vol. XXIII;
Addenda
, Vol. II, p.610.

1
Ordinances of the Royal Household
, Society of Antiquaries, London, 1790, p.159.

2
He died in 1553. His tomb, which re-uses stonework from older monuments, is at Hainton, Lincolnshire. Its iconography clearly reflects Heneage’s adherence to the old faith.

3
See David Starkey,
The King’s Privy Chamber 1485–1547
, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1973, and Starkey,
The Reign of Henry VIII
, pp.109–12.

4
Thynne Correspondence TH/VOL/II, at Longleat House, Wiltshire, dated Westminster, 8 August 1549. This was a premature report of his death, as an addition to Denny’s will is dated 7 September (written while he was ‘lying sick, but of good mind and memory’). He probably died on 10 September.

5
Sir Edmund married three times and had eighteen children. Of the sons, only two survived.

6
His father left him £160 in his will to purchase land and the income from a property in Kent to fund his ‘exhibition and learning’ at Cambridge.

7
The letter directed the Sheriff to elect Denny – ‘one of our privy chamber’ – as Burgess to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Thomas Alvred. The year is not indicated. See Ipswich Borough Correspondence HD36/A, Suffolk Record Office, Ipswich.

8
Shakespeare has Denny as one of his characters in his play
King Henry the Eighth
. During its first performance, on 29 June 1613, the Globe theatre was burnt to the ground.

9
Another sister, Joyce, first married William Walsingham and was mother to Francis, who
would go on to become Elizabeth’s Secretary of State and spymaster. She later married Sir John Carey of Pleshy, Essex.

10
This handled the exchequer revenues from the Church, including the Oxford and Cambridge colleges, after the break with Rome and following the passing of the Act annexing papal revenues in 1534 (26 Henry VIII cap.3).

11
The Court of Requests, established in 1483, was a kind of ‘small-claims court’ of the time, intended specifically for legal cases brought by the poor and by women. Its judges were called ‘Masters’.

12
Sil, p.191.

13
Ellis, ‘Eminent Men’, p.14. Ascham’s letter to William Cecil, dated 23 March 1553.

14
Cited by Neville Williams, p.171.

15
Strype, ‘Cheke’, p.168.

16
A copy of the painting is in the Courtauld Institute in London.

17
Holbein also designed the combined clock and table salt given by Denny to Henry as a New Year’s present in 1544, but now sadly lost. Holbein’s clever design in a Renaissance style also included a compass and two sundials. His drawing of the object survives in the British Museum. Holbein died in London in 1543 of the plague.

18
Martienssen, p.113.

19
Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. V, p.562.

20
He was represented by a deputy.

21
See Robert E. Brook,
Early Tudor Courtiers in Society, Illustrated from Select Examples
, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1963, pp.271–3.

22
LP
Addenda
, Vol. I, pt.ii, pp.588–9.

23
LP, Vol. XVIII, pt.i, pp.334 and 406.

24
LP
Addenda
, Vol. I, pt.ii, p.593.

25
Three card tables are recorded in the Inventory of Henry’s goods, together with gaming dice and chessboards. See, for example, Starkey, ‘Inventory’, items nos. 2613, 10480, 15842 and 16672.

26
Sil, p.194.

27
See Cunich, ‘Revolution and Crisis in English State Finance 1534–47’, and tables.

28
In 1542, Henry ordered wardrobes full of new clothes such as: ‘A gown of purple satin furred with the sleeves and border set with 130 diamonds and 131 clusters of pearls … set in gold, and in every cluster is four green pearls.’ Then there was a new mantle for Parliament: ‘crimson velvet partly furred with powdered ermine and a cap; three mantles for the order of St George; two of blue velvet, the other of purple velvet, lined.’ And there were precious, sacred objects: ‘An image of Our Lady standing upon an angel, St Edward having an arrow in his hand, weighing 33 ozs; an image of St Peter in gilt standing upon a base of silver and gilt with a book and two keys in his hands, weighing 124 ozs. An image of St Paul standing upon a base with a sword and a book in his hands, weighing 135 ozs.’ And so the purchases went on. See NA PRO 31/17/40.