Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII (24 page)

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Authors: Robert Hutchinson

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In early August Howard sailed from Portsmouth, flying his flag aboard the newly commissioned
Mary Rose
,
40
at the head of twenty-five English warships. These included the aging but recently refitted
Regent
, 1,000 tons, commanded by Sir Thomas Knyvet, Howard’s brother-in-law and one of Henry’s jousting cronies. Their objective was Brest, the home base of the thirty-nine-strong French fleet.
On the morning of 10 August 1512 the enemy ships were stationed in the approaches to the port, south of Berthaume Bay, and were celebrating that day’s Feast of St Lawrence
41
when the English unsportingly attacked.
Regent
came alongside the French carrack
42
Marie la Cordelière
, 700 tons, and shackled herself to it by means of grappling irons and chains. The English boarded and as the furious fighting swept across the decks, Knyvet was cut in two by a cannon ball fired at close range and his second-in-command, Sir John Carew, mortally wounded by
gunfire.
43
The French ship caught fire and a frenzied French gunner, deep in the bowels of the
Cordelière
, set fire to her gunpowder magazine, choosing mass death rather than the dishonour of capture. Both ships blew up, killing most of the
Regent
’s seven-hundred-strong crew and all 1,200 enemy sailors.
44
Henry was stricken at the loss of one of his closest friends. Wolsey, in London, informed Bishop Fox of the loss of the English warship:
At the reverence of God, keep these tidings secret to yourself, for there is no living man knows the same here, but only the king and I … It is expedient for a while to keep the matter secret.
To see how the king takes the matter and behaves himself, you would marvel … [at] his wise and constant manner. I have not, on my faith, seen the like.
All this with heavy heart and sorrowful pen, I make an end.
45
Sir Edward Howard swore to avenge his brother-in-law, vowing to God ‘he would never look the king in the face until he had revenged the death of [this] noble and valiant knight’.
46
On 19 March 1513 Henry appointed him Lord High Admiral of England, Ireland and Aquitaine in succession to the Earl of Oxford (who had died nine days before) and paid him £66 for his services.
Howard was anxious not only to fulfil his oath but to provide the king with a swift, much needed victory. Within eight days, he sailed for the waters around Brest, running into fifteen enemy ships on 12 April. They ‘fled like cowards’ towards the port, which Howard then blockaded with his fleet.
French reinforcements – six shallow-draught, oared galleys – arrived in mid-April and put in at Conquet, fifteen miles (25 km) west of Brest, protected by powerful shore batteries. Anxious for action, an impatient Henry had penned an acerbic, taunting letter, commanding Howard ‘to accomplish that which appertained to his duty’.
That caustic goad was the admiral’s undoing. He planned a reckless assault in the face of superior firepower on 25 April. Because he could not deploy his large warships in the shallows near the shore, Howard decided to attack that morning using fifteen rowing barges, and accordingly
transferred his flag to the eighty-ton
Swallow
, leaving his fleet to maintain their blockade further out to sea.
In the teeth of furious and deadly fire from guns and crossbows, Howard came about under the bows of the French flagship, hurled grappling irons over her sides and secured one of the ropes to
Swallow
’s capstan. He clambered aboard over the forecastle accompanied by sixteen of his men and threw himself into the melee on the decks of the French galley
.
Disaster followed him. Either a French sailor severed the rope holding the two ships together with a boarding axe, or it was somehow let slip.
The
Swallow
drifted away on the tide, leaving the English commander marooned and grievously outnumbered on the enemy foredeck.
As the fighting and clamour raged about him, Howard faced imminent death and the dishonour of a failed mission. He lifted his admiral’s gold whistle from around his neck and calmly threw it into the sea. Then he followed his badge of rank into the water – either by jumping, or falling in the press of hand-to-hand combat. Encumbered by his armour and probably wounded, he sank quickly beneath the waves.
47
Howard’s elder brother Thomas, Lord Howard, that veteran of the sorry debacle in north-west Spain, was appointed in his place as Lord High Admiral. Seeking to placate Henry’s fury at the loss of both admiral and a naval victory, he wrote to the king from the
Mary Rose
, now safely at home in Plymouth:
As to the actual feats of all such noblemen and gentlemen as were pr[esent when] my brother, the admiral, was drowned (whom Jesu pardon), I assure your [highness so] far … as I can … anyway understand, they handled themselves as … men did to obtain their master’s pleasure.
It was the most dangerous enterprise [I have] ever heard of and the most manly handled.
48
Howard promised to punish the two men ‘who did their part very ill the day my brother was lost … Cooke the queen’s servant in a row[ing] boat [he was captain of
Swallow
] and Freeman my brother’s household servant’.
The fleet was filled with sick, wounded and despondent men, their
morale shot clean away. They were deserting in shoals. The new admiral, faced with Henry’s insistent demands to return to the fray, admitted to Wolsey that he had never seen ‘men in greater fear than all the masters and mariners be of the [French] galleys, insomuch that in a manner they were as lief [not unwilling] go into Purgatory [rather than] the Trade’ – the English name for the sea approaches to Brest.
49
In Edinburgh, James IV made an only half-serious offer of a truce to Henry, taking the opportunity to taunt him over the loss of Sir Edward Howard. He told his brother-in-law: ‘We think more loss is to you of your late admiral who deceased to his great honour and laud than the advantage which might have been of the winning of all the French galleys and the equipment.’ Days later, he decided to send a fleet of ships to reinforce France’s naval might.
50
Henry had earlier tried to disrupt the ‘Auld Alliance’ between France and Scotland. He suggested, rather disingenuously, to his elder sister Margaret, wife of the Scottish king, that he would, after four years, hand over her legacy bequeathed by their father – but only in return for a promise that the Scots would not invade England while he was away campaigning. Margaret contemptuously dismissed this unbrotherly offer:
We cannot believe that [is] of your mind or your command that we are so [unfriendly] dealt with in our father’s legacy … Our husband knows it is withheld for his sake and will recompense us. We lack nothing – our husband is ever the longer the better to us.
The letter was signed: ‘Your loving sister Margaret.’
51
With the exception of Poynings’ small-scale expedition to the Low Countries, all Henry’s military adventures had ignominiously and very publicly failed. His dreams of battlefield glory had faded like spectres at dawn; his ambitions had turned to ashes.
At least he had acquired one item of matchless international kudos. On 20 March 1512 his ally Pope Julius II had stripped Louis XII of both his sobriquet of ‘Most Christian King’ and also his realm of France, which were immediately conferred on Henry. He and his heirs were invested with the title of King of France, with only the small catch that
this should endure ‘for as long as they shall remain in faith, devotion and obedience to the Holy Roman Church and Apostolic See’.
52
Henry was delighted – ‘Most Christian King of England, France and Lord of Ireland’ carried a superior ring and his claim to his outstanding inheritance now had the backing of papal authority.
He became even more resolute to secure his kingdom across the sea in more than just name. Although James IV had promised Ferdinand ‘to be faithful to England’ he attacked Berwick in September 1512 and English forces were sent northwards to deter further aggression. Katherine of Aragon told Cardinal Bainbridge that Henry ‘has said openly he does not believe the Pope and the king her father will ever desert him, but if they were to do so, he himself would not desist from war until the schismatic king was removed’.
53
Two months later Henry suggested to the Spanish ambassador that English troops should invade northern France while Ferdinand simultaneously assailed Aquitaine from across the Spanish border. Henry would again supply assistance to his father-in-law – but this time only by paying for 5,000 German mercenaries to serve alongside the Spanish troops. Diplomatic efforts were also intensified to persuade Maximilian to launch an offensive from his dominions in the north and east, including the staged payment of handsome subsidies in gold from Henry’s exchequer.
54
Finally, Julius agreed to attack the French provinces of Provence and Dauphiné.
55
All southern England became a vast armoury, ringing with the sound of hammer upon anvil as the blacksmiths and other craftsmen worked frantically to fulfil a mountain of orders for military equipment. The price of war was prodigious: gunpowder cost up to four pence per pound (0.45 kg), shoulder-fired handguns nine shillings each and a large brass cannon £35. Twelve huge pieces of field artillery – nicknamed the ‘Twelve Apostles’ for the figures embossed on their barrels – were cast in Flanders. Each fired an iron ball weighing twenty pounds (9.1 kg) and consumed the same weight of gunpowder each time they were fired.
Wolsey, the king’s energetic almoner and now de facto Chief Minister, was at the heart of this frenzied activity. In May, Bishop Fox, the sidelined Lord Privy Seal, wrote to him from Southampton, concerned at his
‘outrageous charge and labour’. He warned Wolsey of overwork, ‘else you shall have a cold stomach, little sleep, pale visage and a thin belly’.
56
Much of the warlike stores were purchased from foreign merchants – the almoner, for example, bought 2,000 light armours from Florence at sixteen shillings apiece for the infantry, which included visored helmets.
57
In January 1513, 3,000 harnesses were ordered at the same price from the London mercer Robert Bolt, for delivery at the Tower by 30 April.
58
Wolsey also authorised payment of £6 13s 4d ‘in reward to a joiner which hath made certain secret engines [of war] for the King’ – probably wooden catapults or slings like the medieval trebuchets, designed to batter the walls of fortified towns with stone missiles to create breaches through which the besiegers could attack.
59
Henry’s troops would go into battle wearing white tunics, proudly emblazoned with the red cross of St George, over their armour. Arrangements were made to purchase ‘at reasonable price wheat, malt or oats and other victuals’ to feed them and a proclamation banned export of grain, on pain of forfeiture to the crown, as well as unlicensed provisioning. As a means of economic warfare, the importation of Gascon wine into England was also prohibited that December.
60
The soldiers of Henry’s ‘army royal’ were again fortified by another papal indulgence from Julius, provided they serve for at least six months, but its coverage this time was extended to all those who provided cash to pay for the expedition or prayed for its success.
61
Unfortunately the Pope died from a fever in February 1513 and Giovanni de Medici was proclaimed his successor as Leo X the following month.
During those early months of 1513, fears of a French invasion of England were whipped up by Henry’s government to create an aura of national danger. It was propaganda, pure and simple. Officially inspired rumours whispered of abortive French landings at undisclosed locations. A Venetian in London reported: ‘Lately a number of French ships sailed to attempt a landing in England, which would have been difficult enough, but they were overtaken by a storm and all swamped.’
62
Now a proclamation declared that the king, with ‘a tender zeal to the wealth, surety and defence of this, his realm of England and of his subjects …’, had learnt ‘that his ancient enemy the French king, continuing in his
perverse and malicious purpose, has prepared and put in readiness a great and strong navy to invade and enter this … realm’. Therefore, every man aged ‘between sixty and sixteen [should] be ready in harness [armour] at one hour’s warning to resort to such places as shall be assigned by the King’s commissioners’.
63
By May, final preparations for the invasion were underway and the vanguard of the army had crossed to Calais. The Milanese ambassador in Rome commented that Henry was ‘so eager over the enterprise that no one can put it out of his head, unless it be God Almighty’.
64
This time there were to be no mistakes. Henry was to lead his army himself, leaving his queen at home with full powers as regent of England in his absence.

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