The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracy, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant (43 page)

29
NA E 315/160, fol.136r.

30
Master of the Revels at Henry’s court from 1544.

31
Appointed Treasurer and Master of the Mint in 1546.

32
NA E 315/160, fol.265v.

33
For example, the accounts for 1554–5 have ‘ten pair of spectacles at 4d the pair, 3s. 4d’. See LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.400.

34
See Starkey,
The Reign of Henry VIII
, p.112.

35
NA SP 4. Signatures by stamp, Henry VIII, 1545–7, 1 vol.

36
The dry-stamp system was revived in the last months of Mary’s reign in 1558 when she became too sick to cope with signing the amount of paper laid before her ‘without distress and peril of her body’. In her case, licensees to ink in her signature ‘as surely as [the documents] had been signed with the queen’s own hand’ were John Boxall, Dean of St George’s Chapel, Windsor (her secretary), Anthony Kempe (one of the Gentlemen of her Privy Chamber), Barnard Hampton (a clerk of the Privy Council) and John Clyff (one of the Clerks of Signet). The stamp was to be used in the presence of Mary and any two of her Councillors, which number would include Sir William Petre, who would also authenticate the use of the dry stamp by signing in a special book. See CPR,
Philip & Mary
, Vol. IV, pp.453–4.

37
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.i, p.767.

38
Ibid.

39
Hall, p.867. Edward had written to the queen on 12 August enquiring in advance about the admiral’s skill in Latin. ‘If he is so skilled, I should rather learn better how to speak with him, when I come into his presence.’ See BL Harleian MS 5,087, no.17.

40
Nichols, ‘Literary Remains’, Vol. I, p.lxxviii.

41
Wriothesley, Vol. I, p.173.

42
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.i, pp.694–5.

43
Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. V, p.568.

1
Convincingly ascribed to her by James, ‘Devotional Writings’, pp.137–8.

2
End of the session, with dissolution of Parliament.

3
LP, Vol. XX, pt.ii, p.513. Petre said that the bill had been ‘driven to the last hour and yet then passed only by division of the House’.

4
A jibe based on the ancient Jewish sect that strictly adhered to traditional laws and had pretensions to superior sanctity.

5
Hall, pp.864–6. The chronicler wrote it down ‘word for word as near as I was able to report it’.

6
Meaning ‘perhaps’.

7
LP, Vol. XX, pt.ii, pp.513 and 522.

8
Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. V, p.562.

9
LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, p.425.

10
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.i, p.135.

11
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.i, p.169.

12
Martienssen, p.210.

13
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.i, p.271.

14
NA E 314/22, fol.44.

15
James, ‘Kateryn Parr’, p.268.

16
Strype, ‘Ecclesiastic Memorials’, Vol. I, pt.ii, pp.597–8.

17
APC, Vol. I, 1542–7, p.400.

18
Ellis, ‘History’, Vol. II, p.176.

19
Nichols, ‘Narratives’, p.42, fn.

20
Strype, ‘Ecclesiastic Memorials’, Vol. I, pt.ii, p.599.

21
According to her nephew, Edward Ascu, in his
History Containing the Wars
, London, 1607, p.308.

22
Nichols, ‘Narratives’, p.309.

23
Anne, second wife of Henry Ratcliffe, Second Earl of Sussex. She separated from her husband between May 1547 and June 1549 and was charged with wanting to marry Sir Edmund Knyvett. She was imprisoned in the Tower in 1552 on charges of sorcery.

24
Anne Stanhope, wife of Hertford, afterwards Duchess of Somerset.

25
Jane Fitzwilliam, third wife of the London Alderman Sir William.

26
Nichols, ‘Narratives’, p.311.

27
Nichols, ‘Narratives’., p.304, fn.

28
Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. V, pp.553 ff.

29
Ibid.

30
Cited by Martienssen, p.218.

31
Strickland, Vol. III, p.246.

32
Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. V, pp.559–60.

33
Cited by Martienssen, p.220.

1
Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. VI, p.36.

2
Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. VI, p.163.

3
Ponet, Book XLVI, p.78.

4
Nichols, ‘Narratives’, pp.209–10.

5
Muller,
Stephen Gardiner and Tudor Reaction
, p.133.

6
He may have been a bastard son or brother of Sir Thomas Wyatt. After the defeat of the rebellion, Sir Thomas was executed on 11 April 1554, when the French ambassador reported that people crowded the scaffold to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood. See Anthony Fletcher and Diarmaid MacCulloch,
Tudor Rebellions
, London, 1997, p.90. There is no record of the fate of Edward Wyatt.

7
Strickland, Vol. III, p.247.

8
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.252, and Muller, ‘Letters’, pp.246–7.

9
Muller, ‘Letters’, p.248.

10
Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. VI, p.138.

11
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.173. Letter from the French ambassador Odet de Selve to the Admiral of France, 24 November 1546.

12
An Act for Murder and Malicious Bloodshed within the Court was passed in 1542 (33 Henry VIII cap. 12), imposing a mandatory punishment of amputation of a hand for drawing blood within the precincts of the court, although noble courtiers were not liable to such penalties if they had merely struck their servants for the purposes of chastisement.

13
Surrey was called thus in 1539 by Constantine Barlow, Dean of Westbury. See
Archaeologia
, Vol. XXIII, p.62.

14
It turned out to be an unconsummated union, probably because of the Duke of Richmond’s contraction of tuberculosis, and he died, aged seventeen, in 1536.

15
A tennis court.

16
Poems of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
, Aldine edn, London, n.d., p.19.

17
He was to succeed his grandfather as the Fourth Duke of Norfolk on 25 August 1554. He was executed on 2 June 1572 and attainted for his attempt to marry Mary, Queen of Scots.

18
Poems of Henry Howard
, op. cit., pp.xxvii–xxviii.

19
Poems of Henry Howard
, p.xxix.

20
Son of the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt, who died in 1542. Wyatt the Younger was later the leader of the rebellion in Kent against Mary in 1554.

21
Poems of Henry Howard
, op. cit., p.xxxi, fn.

22
Poems of Henry Howard
, pp.68–9.

23
Brenan and Statham, Vol. II, p.383.

24
His squire Thomas Clere saved his life but later died from his wounds, Robinson, p.46. He was buried in the Howard Chapel of St Mary’s Lambeth, Surrey, under a monumental
brass depicting him in armour. Surrey wrote a poetical epitaph to him, once displayed on the wall above the slab in the north chapel, now lost:

At Montreuil gates, hopeless of all recure [recovery]

Thine Earl, half dead, gave in thy hand his will

Which cause did thee this pining death procure.

25
Nott, Vol. I, p.178, fn.1.

26
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.i, p.16.

27
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.i, p.175.

28
Poems of Henry Howard
, op. cit., pp.xlv–xlvii.

29
Ibid.

30
Robinson, p.47.

31
Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury,
Life and Reign of King Henry VIII
, London, 1649, p.562.

32
‘Spanish Chronicle’, p.144.

33
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.277.

34
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.273.

35
BL Cotton MS Titus B i, fol.94.

36
Executed by Henry in 1521 on trumped-up charges of disloyalty.

37
BL Cotton MS Titus B i, fol.94.

38
Thomas Darcy, Baron Darcy, who surrendered Pontefract Castle to the rebels during the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536 and who was betrayed by an intercepted letter to one of the rebel leaders. Beheaded for treason 1537.

39
One of the leaders of the Pilgrimage of Grace who seized Hull but was pardoned. He refused to come to London and was executed in Hull in 1537.

40
Another rebel in the Pilgrimage of Grace. He was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn as a traitor in 1537. His wife, ‘a very fair creature and beautiful’ according to the herald and chronicler Wriothesley, was burnt at Smithfield in London after being dragged through the streets on a hurdle.

41
Robert Aske, attorney and fellow of Gray’s Inn who led the Pilgrimage of Grace insurrection in Yorkshire, was hanged in chains in York in 1537 after apparently being pardoned by Henry.

42
His stepmother Agnes, Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, implicated in the downfall of Queen Katherine Howard.

43
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, no.554.

44
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.273. Norfolk was then aged seventy-three and suffered regularly from indigestion and chronic rheumatism, the latter probably not helped by his imprisonment in the dank, damp Tower, fronting the River Thames.

45
LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, p.533.

46
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.310.

47
He was questioning their humanity.

48
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.313.

49
‘Spanish Chronicle’, pp.145–6.

50
The charges, dated 10 January 1547, in Latin, are contained in the roll NA KB 8/14.

51
Robinson, p.49.

52
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.285.

53
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, pp.284–5.

54
Knyvett was no friend of Surrey’s. He was threatened with amputation of his right hand as a punishment for striking the earl’s squire, Thomas Clere, and drawing Surrey’s blood on the tennis court at Greenwich in February 1541. He was pardoned as he faced the block and the serjeant surgeon.

55
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.287.

56
LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, p.533.

57
Byrne, pp.422–3.

58
LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, p.533.

59
LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, pp.533–4.

60
Ibid.

61
BL Harleian MS 297, fol.256. See also Herbert, p.567.

62
‘Spanish Chronicle’, p.146.

63
NA E 101/60/22 contains details of the cash owing on Surrey’s board at the Tower, including attendants, candles, coals and an allowance for hangings and plate in his room, totalling £24. The cost of the new coat ‘against his arraignment’ is also included.

64
Under 28 Henry VIII cap.7.

65
Decorated with fleur-de-lis at the terminations of each arm of the cross.

66
A ‘merlett’ or ‘merlion’ is a heraldic bird. This is an old term for martlet, or swallow, often displayed in arms without legs or feet, in the belief that the bird could not perch on the ground. Edward the Confessor’s arms actually had doves. See J. P. Brooke-Little,
Boutell’s Heraldry
, London, 1970, p.206.

67
The label is a heraldic device similar to a riband, with several shorter ribands hanging down, which overlays arms to indicate those of an eldest son.

68
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.365.

69
‘Spanish Chronicle’, p.146, a reference to the merchant’s earlier account of Surrey’s attempted escape.

70
Probably East Winch, near King’s Lynn, which housed a monument to the Howards that bore the arms of Edward the Confessor. See discussion in Moore.

71
‘Spanish Chronicle’, p.147.

72
A cap of crimson velvet and ermine, generally belonging to a duke but in this sense clearly signifying that part of royal regalia carried before the monarch at coronations.

73
LP Spanish, Vol. IX, p.4.

74
‘Spanish Chronicle’, p.147.

75
‘Spanish Chronicle’. p.148.

76
Surrey’s body was removed to the Howard Chapel in Framlingham Church, Suffolk, in 1614 and reburied there. The monument to him and his wife includes his coronet, which is not worn on the effigy’s head but rather laid separately on a cushion by his legs to indicate his attainder. See Robinson, p.52. Construction of the mortuary chapel was begun by his father after 1545 but the work was not completed until a few years later.

77
‘Spanish Chronicle’, p.148.

78
NA E 101/60/22.

79
BL Harleian MS 5,087, no.31, and LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.360.

80
BL Cotton MS Nero C x, fol.6. A rough draft in Latin.

81
BL Harleian MS 5,087, no.32.

1
Byrne, p.418.

2
LP Spanish, Vol. VIII, p.320.

3
Ibid.

4
Cited by Weir, p.495.

5
LP, Vol. XXI, pt.ii, p.52.