Tudors (History of England Vol 2) (24 page)

He did not die alone. In a triumphant reassertion of his ‘middle way’ the king burned two other reformers, who were believed to be part of Cromwell’s supposed conspiracy, and hanged three ‘papist’ priests who had denied the royal supremacy. Henry was proclaiming that he was not a sovereign of one faction or another; he dispensed justice equally to all. There was one difference; it was said that those who supported the papacy were hanged, while those who opposed it were burned.

From this time forward, in fact, he no longer employed one pre-eminent minister. The years of Wolsey and of Cromwell were over. Now the king decided to supervise the affairs of the realm. He described himself as ‘old’ but he was not too old to control the business of the council or to read the dispatches of his ambassadors. The king’s council was established upon a more formal basis; it had a membership of approximately nineteen peers or prelates, and met each day at court. A minute book was to be kept. The privy council now fashioned policy in partnership with the king; it supervised the workings of the law and the operations of the exchequer. Some counsellors were superior to others, of course, and the most prominent among them were now Stephen Gardiner, Thomas Cranmer and the duke of Norfolk.

Norfolk had another advantage. At the end of the previous year he had brought his pretty niece to court, as one of the
maids-in-waiting to Anne of Cleves. Katherine Howard was perhaps sixteen, perhaps twenty-two – her date of birth is not known for certain – and not at all demure. It was one of her family’s mottoes that marriage must provide more than ‘four bare legs in a bed’. A marriage, in other words, must bring with it other advantages. Katherine Howard was schooled in all the arts and tricks that might appeal to the king, and it seems that she was not averse to using them. On 28 July, just nineteen days after his union with Anne of Cleves was formally annulled, Henry married her. It proved to be her day of doom.

She soon became acquainted with her husband’s formidable temper. The ulcer on his leg once more became infected, and the pus was drained from it in a sometimes painful operation. He became morose and depressed. He began to regret the execution of Cromwell, and complained that he had been deceived about him by some of his councillors who ‘by false accusations had made him put to death the most faithful servant he ever had’. He often blamed others for the faults of his own actions. It was reported that he had ‘formed a sinister opinion of some of his chief men’, and dispatched so many people from court that it ‘resembled more a private family than a king’s train’. He fell into foul fits of temper, and refused even to listen to music. He would not allow the new queen into his presence for ten days.

A respite was at hand. By the spring of 1541 his ulcer had healed and on 10 April the French ambassador reported that ‘the Queen is thought to be with child’. The rumour proved to be false, however, and it is possible that Katherine Howard miscarried. It was the old curse that seemed to hang over the king. It was reported, by the same ambassador, that Henry was displeased with his wife and was ‘avoiding as much as possible her company’.

On 30 June, however, the king and queen led a great progress to the north. He had never travelled to those regions before, and had really known them only in the context of riot and rebellion. This was his opportunity to impress the northern people with his might and magnificence. He led 5,000 horse and 1,000 foot-soldiers so that it seemed an armed camp was on the march from Grafton to Northampton, Lincoln to Boston, Doncaster and Pontefract and York. He dressed in cloth of gold, and graciously
accepted the submission of erstwhile rebels. His was the theatre of power.

Yet behind the scenes of this theatre another drama was being performed. Katherine Howard, perhaps vexed and unsatisfied by her ageing lover, was proving to be unfaithful. Even as the progress went further northward she began a liaison with a gentleman, Thomas Culpeper, and with the connivance of her ladies-in-waiting arranged to meet him at secret venues; she sought the back doors and the back stairs to expedite her passion. He became her ‘sweet little fool’.

At the same time it was rumoured that, five years before, Katherine had been intimate with her instructor on the virginal. Henry Manox had boasted that she had promised him ‘her maidenhead though it be painful to her’. This fault was compounded when another former lover from the same period, Francis Dereham, now came forward. It was believed, at a later date, that he was in fact her common-law husband. It is possible that he threatened her with some disclosure. At all events she appointed him as her private secretary and usher of her chamber. It was a woeful mistake.

Cranmer was approached by an informant who knew all about Katherine Howard’s previous indiscretions. The archbishop summoned certain members of her former household, who only confirmed the stories. It was imperative that the king be told, but no one wished to be the messenger of such tidings. If the news proved to be false, the result would be fatal. On 1 November, in the royal chapel, the king gave public thanks to God for having been ‘pleased to give me a wife so entirely conformable to my inclinations’. While the service continued the archbishop left a sealed letter for the king with the details of the queen’s previous indiscretions.

Henry refused to believe them. He insisted that the reports were the work of a faction determined to bring down the duke of Norfolk as well as the queen. He demanded that Cranmer investigate this plot and ‘not to desist until you have got to the bottom of the pot’. Whereupon the king’s guards interrupted Katherine and her ladies while they were dancing together, insisting that this was ‘no more the time to dance’. The young queen was then
confined to her apartments, where she remained in fear and trembling. She must have suspected that certain inconvenient facts were about to emerge.

When Cranmer and the council questioned more deeply into the affair, it was clear that the queen was in fact deeply compromised. Manox and Dereham were interrogated, in the course of which interview Manox confessed how he ‘had commonly used to feel the secrets and other parts of the queen’s body’. Dereham also confirmed that he ‘had known her carnally many times, both in doublet and hose between the sheets and in naked bed’.

Cranmer interviewed Katherine on at least two occasions but found her ‘in such lamentation and heaviness as I never saw no creature’. She screamed with panic at her likely fate. There were times when she seemed about to fall ‘into some dangerous ecstasy, or else into a very frenzy’. She lied to Cranmer about her previous lovers, alleging that Dereham had raped her ‘with importunate force’. She admitted a few days later that he had indeed given her tokens. He knew ‘a little woman in London with a crooked back, who was very cunning in making all manner of flowers’ out of silk. She also admitted that he called her ‘wife’. On their nights of love-making he would bring with him wine, apples and strawberries. But ‘as for these words,
I promise you, I do love you with all my heart
, I do not remember that ever I spake them’. She wrote out a full confession to the king, which seems to have cheered him a little. She had, at the very least, never been unfaithful to him in the course of their marriage.

Yet rumour has a thousand tongues, and the royal court is its proper home. Once the queen’s former frailties were known, it was hard to conceal more recent examples. The name of Thomas Culpeper was mentioned. The gossip about the young courtier soon reached the ears of the privy council which, in the words of its proceedings, ‘weighed the matter and deeply pondered the gravity thereof’. They called some of the queen’s ladies and interrogated them about her behaviour. One of them, Margaret Morton, said that there passed a look between the queen and Culpeper ‘of such sort that I thought there was love between them’. She also alleged that the two had been alone in the queen’s closet for five or six hours, and ‘for certain they had passed out’ –
the sixteenth-century phrase for orgasm. Another lady-in-waiting confirmed that there was much ‘puffing and blowing’ between them. The queen’s principal lady, Lady Rochford, the perfidious sister-in-law of Anne Boleyn, had already been ‘seized with raving madness’; she had eased the passage of Culpeper into her mistress’s chamber. She would be brought, insane, to the scaffold.

The privy council next interrogated Culpeper. His was the crucial case, since the queen’s adultery would be considered to be high treason. He denied any actual intercourse but agreed that ‘he intended and meant to do ill with the queen and that in like wise the queen so minded to do with him’. The privy council did not believe him. He and the queen must have passed out. ‘You may see what was done before marriage,’ Cranmer told them. ‘God knows what has been done since!’ It was suggested that Katherine had also been dallying with Dereham on the progress to the north.

Henry attended a secret night session of the council at the London residence of the bishop of Winchester. When the full account was put to him, he raged so violently that it was feared he would go mad. He called for his sword, with the intention of killing his young wife. He swore that she would never ‘have such delight in her lechery as she should have pain and torture in her death’. Then he broke down and wept, which was considered ‘strange’ for one of his ‘courage’. The news of the queen’s disgrace was soon known everywhere. The duke of Norfolk, her uncle, declared to the French ambassador that she ‘had prostituted herself to seven or eight persons’ and that she ought to be burned.

On 1 December Culpeper and Dereham were both brought to Westminster Hall on the charge of treason. In the course of the charges Katherine herself was described as a ‘common harlot’. The two men were found guilty and sentenced to the traitor’s death of hanging and disembowelling. Henry Manox, having offended long before Katherine had become queen, was reprieved. Culpeper, a gentleman, had his punishment commuted to a simple beheading.

On 13 February 1542 Katherine Howard followed him to the scaffold. She had been married to the king for less than two years. She panicked when she embarked on the Thames for her final journey, and had to be manhandled onto the boat. A flotilla
of vessels then carried her from Syon to the Tower, where she was received with all the honours due to a queen. She was beheaded three days later, on Tower Green, and was said to have been meek and repentant at the end. She had in fact rehearsed her death and had asked for the block to be brought to her prison chamber so that she could learn how to put her neck upon it gracefully. Her body was buried close to that of Anne Boleyn in the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula. Many of her family were sent to the Tower but were eventually released. The duke of Norfolk stayed on his estates and avoided the court. But from this day forward Henry never really trusted him.

On the day of his wife’s execution the king held a great banquet, with twenty-six ladies at his own table, and over the succeeding days gave many such feasts. He was eating so much that his vast bulk grew ever heavier, and his bed was enlarged to a width of 7 feet. Yet in private he was cast down. In the margin of a translation of Proverbs, the king made a double mark beside the following passage: ‘For the lips of a harlot are a dropping honeycomb, and her throat is softer than oil. But at the last she is as bitter as wormwood, and as sharp as a two-edged sword.’

In the summer of 1542, Pope Paul III established the Holy Office of the Inquisition, with six cardinals as inquisitors-general. ‘Even if my own father were a heretic,’ the pope declared, ‘I would gather the wood to burn him.’ The paths of religious faith were perilous. Henry, now that he had broken with the papacy, was eager to see Charles V follow his example; it was the English king’s wish to see a great general council held in which the differences of religion could be debated and perhaps resolved.

The diplomatic situation seemed to be working in his favour. He was contemplating an alliance with Charles V against France, a joint invasion that would not in fact take place until the summer of 1544. Yet in the meantime it was important to secure his northern territories. He had agreed to meet the king of Scotland, James V, at York towards the end of his northern progress in the summer of 1541; but James, perhaps fearing kidnap or assassination, did not arrive. The king’s father, James IV, had been killed by Henry’s army at Flodden Field less than thirty years before. This rebuff served only to augment Henry’s anger at the increasing number of border raids by the Scots, who still considered parts of northern England as their proper home. When a Scottish raiding party seized one of the king’s representatives, in the summer of 1542, the matter came to open war.

The French king and his court were delighted. Francis I told the English ambassador that ‘your majesty [Henry] had begun with the Scots, and the Scots had given you your hands full’. He had nothing to fear from the English while they were distracted by the ancient enemy. The Scots were also now in full cry. ‘All is ours,’ they said. ‘The English are but heretics.’ In the autumn of 1542 the duke of Norfolk, partly returned to favour, led 20,000 men into the Lothians where he laid waste to the harvest; he also left towns and villages in ruins. The army then retired to Berwick.