On the day Cromwell died, 28 July 1540, the King secretly married Katherine Howard at Oatlands Palace, with Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, officiating. The wedding night was spent in an ornate “pearl bed,” which Henry had specially commissioned from a French craftsman,1 and there were no more consultations with the royal doctors about impotence. The marriage was made public on 8 August, when Katherine was “showed openly” and prayed for as Queen in the chapel royal at Hampton Court.2
Henry was besotted with his young bride, and “so amorous of her that he knows not how to make sufficient demonstrations of his affection, and caresses her more than he did the others.”3 He showered her with gifts, including lands that had once belonged to Cromwell, took delight in showing her off, and indulged her every whim: “the King had no wife who made him spend so much money in dresses and jewels as she did, and every day [she had] some fresh caprice.”4 He seemed like a man reborn: his health improved, and so did his temper.
Whether Katherine was as enamoured of Henry is another matter, for at forty-nine, his increasing infirmity, bouts of enforced inactivity, and addiction to rich food had made him old before his time and grossly overweight. 5 Suits of field and, optimistically, tilt armour made for him at Greenwich in 15406 have a chest measurement of fifty-seven inches and a waist measurement of fifty-four inches—seventeen inches greater than it had been in 1536. Despite his obesity and his sore legs, he rode or hunted whenever possible, and still dressed in gorgeous clothes, although his accounts show regular payments to his tailors for letting out doublets and jackets. 7 It now became fashionable for gentlemen of the court to affect bulky styles of dress in emulation of their sovereign, wearing puffed and padded short gowns that were almost as wide as they were long.
The French ambassador, Marillac, accurately summed up the King’s character in middle life, or in what Henry himself was soon to refer to as old age: “This Prince seems tainted with three vices: the first is that he is so covetous that all the riches of the world would not satisfy him. Thence proceeds the second, distrust and fear. This King, knowing how many changes he has made, and what tragedies and scandals he has created, would fain keep in favour with everybody, but does not trust a single man, expecting to see them all offended, and he will not cease to dip his hand in blood as long as he doubts his people. The third vice [is] lightness and inconstancy.”8 To these three Marillac might also have added deviousness and perversity, for his predecessor Castillon had written of Henry: “He is a wonderful man and has wonderful people about him, but he is an old fox.”9 Secrecy and surprise were his watchwords; he kept his own counsel, spun his own webs of intrigue, set traps, then pounced on the unsuspecting. He ruled on the precept that fear engenders obedience.
Henry’s seventeenth-century biographer, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who had access to several lost sources, described the King as “opinionate and wilful” and highly suggestible, “inasmuch as the impressions given him by any court whisperer were hardly or never effaced. This wilfulness had a most dangerous quality annexed to it, especially towards his later end, being an intense jealousy of all persons and affairs, which predisposed him to think the worst.” Advancing paranoia and attacks of excruciating pain permanently soured Henry’s temper, and he was given to such unpredictable and terrifying explosions of rage that those about him concluded they had to deal with “the most dangerous and cruel man in the world.” 10 On days when he was in an irritable mood, his courtiers had to keep their wits about them, for “when he came to his chamber he would look [around] angrily, and after fall to fighting.”11 Few dared contradict him, since his egotism was such that he was unable to conceive that he might be in the wrong.
No one at court ever felt truly safe, for the King had amply demonstrated that he “never made a man but he destroyeth him again, either with displeasure or with the sword.”12 Even his outward bonhomie could be sinister, for he often showed a smiling face to those whom he meant to destroy. Abroad, he was known as “the English Nero,” 13 and it was said that “in England, death has snatched everyone of worth away, or fear has shrunk them up.”14 Despite Henry’s enduring popularity among his own subjects, a growing number were becoming disaffected: a man arrested in Kent for slandering him was not exaggerating when he said, “If the King knew every man’s thought, it would make his heart quake.”15
There were still flashes of the golden youth Henry had once been. He could yet exert his famous charm, or show kindness and generosity. If he felt he had been overharsh with his ministers, he would summon them into his privy closet and reassure them that it was the matter under discussion, and not they themselves, that had aroused his anger.16 Even if he did not live up to them, his ideals of kingship are evident in the passages he marked in his copy of The Book of Solomon: “Let mercy and faithfulness never go from thee,” and “Cast down the people whose delight is to have battle.” He was not devoid of emotion, and when touched, would weep openly. His sentimentality became more overt with the advancing years.
Although Henry had become more diligent at attending to business than he had been in his earlier years, and was now an exceptionally hardworking monarch, he still hated making decisions, insisting on taking a long time “to maturely advise and peruse instructions.” “As ye know,” Sadler had written to Cromwell, “His Grace is always loath to sign.” 17 Incompetence irritated the King: Norfolk was reprimanded for sending useless letters full of “extreme and desperate mischiefs and remiss in honest remedy,”18 and Sir William Petre for failing to go into sufficient detail in his dispatches from France,19 while Cranmer was praised for his directness and brevity. The King outlaid large sums of money on efficient postal messenger services: dispatches sent from Calais reached court and were dealt with by the end of the following day. 20 An astonished Marillac reported that Henry “speaks as if he had men all over the world who did nothing but write to him.” 21 Certainly he was better informed than most European monarchs.
His role as Supreme Head of the Church had made the King more sanctimonious and high-minded than ever and more certain of his special relationship with God. Marillac observed that he had become “not only a King to be obeyed on Earth, but a veritable idol to be worshipped.”22 Demonstrating how self-deluded he could be, Henry constantly compared his own honesty, openness, simplicity, and chivalry with the perfidy and deceit of others. For him, as for many middle-aged people, there was no middle ground, only moral absolutes.
The King still remained devout in his religious observances. Once, when his leg was paining him, it was put to him that he need not kneel to “adore the body of Our Saviour,” but could receive the Sacrament sitting in a chair. He refused, saying, “If I lay not only flat on the ground, yea, and put myself under the ground, yet in so doing I should not think that I have reverence sufficient unto His blessed sacrament.” 23 He insisted on creeping painfully on his knees to the cross every Good Friday until 1546.
Yet he was reluctant to abandon the title Fidei Defensor, even though it had been conferred upon him by the Pope, and in 1543 Parliament passed the Act of the King’s Style, making the title an hereditary one, “anexed for ever to be the imperial crown of this His Highness’s realm of England.” 24
The books purchased by Henry VIII in the 1540s were chiefly Bibles, devotional works, and scholastic texts.25 A beautiful psalter was commissioned by him around 1540–1542 from the French illuminator Jean Mallard, who had once worked for Francis I. It contains seven exquisite miniature scenes, two of which portray the King in his favourite role as King David: in one he is slaying Goliath, and in others he appears as a penitent or reading in his bedroom. More of Henry’s annotations appear in the margins: against verse 25 of the Thirty-seventh Psalm— “I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken”—he wrote in Latin, “Dolus dictum” (A painful saying).26
If the young Queen felt any distaste for her ageing husband, she hid it well and played the role of dutiful, loving wife to perfection. Each evening at six, Si
r Thomas Heneage, Groom of the Stool, brought her news of the King, 27 to her evident satisfaction.
Her days were one long round of pleasure: she did “nothing but dance and rejoice.”28 She was too young and inexperienced to concern herself with state or administrative matters. The only book dedicated to her as Queen was Richard Jonas’s tract on midwifery, The Birth of Mankind. 29 Although her education had been neglected, she could read and write, and the dubious Manox had taught her to play the virginals.
The King made no plans for Katherine’s coronation. She made a state entry into London by river, arriving in her new barge, which was manned by twenty-six bargemen and strewn with rushes scented with rosemary. The Lord Mayor and Corporation rode out in their own craft to welcome her, and a salute of guns echoed from the Tower.
Henry settled Baynard’s Castle on Katherine as her jointure. Many of those who had served Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves were appointed to her household, along with a horde of her Howard relatives. Lady Margaret Douglas was senior Lady of the Privy Chamber, and under her were the Dowager Duchesses of Richmond and Norfolk; Katherine’s aunt and namesake, the Countess of Bridgewater; her widowed stepmother, Lady Margaret Howard; her sisters, Margaret, Lady Arundel, and Isabella, who was married to the Queen’s Vice Chamberlain, Sir Edward Baynton; Lady Rochford, Jane Seymour’s sister; Elizabeth, Lady Cromwell; Lady Rutland, wife of the Queen’s Chamberlain; Lady Edgecombe; and William Parr’s sister Katherine, wife of John Neville, Lord Latimer. Among the maids of honour were his other sister, Anne Parr; Anne Basset; and Surrey’s favourite, Lady Elizabeth FitzGerald. Joan Bulmer, Margaret Morton, Katherine Tilney, and Agnes Restwold, who had been with Katherine in her grandmother’s household and were all privy to the secrets of her past, were found posts as chamberers. There is some evidence that Bulmer, at least, used blackmail to obtain her post. Katherine’s household cost Henry £4600 (over £2.5 million) a year to maintain.
Katherine dressed “after the French fashion” and insisted that all the other ladies at court do so, too.30 Every day she appeared in a new gown. The jewels Henry lavished on her were magnificent; they included a gold brooch with scenes from the life of Noah picked out in diamonds and rubies, a rich collar with her initial set in diamonds, heavy gold chains, ropes of pearls, gem-studded crosses, a necklace of table diamonds, black-enamelled gold beads, emeralds set in gold lozenges, pomanders, clocks, and a jewellery casket. The King also gave her a black velvet muff lined with sables and ornamented with rubies, hundreds of pearls, and tiny gold chains; it hung round her neck from a gold and pearl chain.31
Katherine’s personal badge was a crowned rose. She adopted as her device the motto “Non autre volonté que le sienne” (No other will than his), and had it embroidered in gold around her sleeves. 32 The King ordered that her badge and other emblems be set up in place of those of Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves in the royal palaces.
The Howards, led by Norfolk, now dominated the court. Katherine’s brother Charles was appointed to the Privy Chamber, where her uncle, Lord William Howard, was already influential as one of the King’s Gentlemen. Norfolk’s brother-in-law, Robert Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex, was given Cromwell’s former office of Lord Great Chamberlain and thus gained control of the Chamber. Surrey, despite his youth, became a Knight of the Garter.
The ascendancy of the conservatives provoked great resentment and jealousy on the part of their enemies, who were mostly of the reformist persuasion, and gave rise to the most vicious factional divisions of the reign. Two distinct parties emerged at this time: the conservatives, led by the reactionary Gardiner and Norfolk, who were supported when in the ascendant by the self-seeking Wriothesley, and wished to see a return to more traditional forms of religion; and the reformists, headed by the autocratic Hertford and backed by Cranmer, William Parr, and Hertford’s staunch friend and political ally, the honest and able Sir William Paget (who became the first ever Clerk to the Privy Council in 1540). This party was keen to see even more change. Surrey sided with his father and, like him, hoped to bring about the overthrow of upstarts like the Seymours, but he was a liability, not only because of his wild, unpredictable streak, but also because his religious views were probably more radical than Hertford’s. In the reformist party, there were frequent squabbles on account of the unpopular Hertford’s high-handedness and criticism of his colleagues.33 Suffolk, meanwhile, managed to remain on good terms with both Norfolk and Hertford.
The dominance of first Wolsey and then Cromwell had prevented the emergence of such factions in the past, but now that there was no chief minister, there was nothing to stop them from attempting to gain ascendancy in Council, achieve control of the Privy Chamber, and manipulate an oversuggestible King. The power struggle between these factions, which was to dominate the 1540s, was essentially political, but was fought over religious differences.
Later writers, such as John Foxe and Nicholas Sander, would claim that Henry was easily led by these factions; Sander even went so far as to claim that they waited to approach him “in the evening, when he was comfortably filled with wine, or when he had gone to the stool, for then he used to be very pleasant.” Even though some historians still accept this view today, the evidence is largely against it. It is true that, while Henry played off rival factions against each other and manipulated individuals for his own ends, following a policy of divide and rule, his apparent mastery hid a degree of “irresolution and despondency,”34 but this was because he was unsure whom he could trust. He also suspected that Lutheran ideas were taking hold in the minds of some of those around him, under the cloak of an interest in reform. There was also the problem of an age difference: many men now in power at court were of a younger generation, ambitious and aggressive,35 and although Henry liked to surround himself with youth and bask in its reflected glamour, the age gap was too wide to be easily breached.
On the other hand, neither faction could ever be sure of the King, who in 1540 was burning both Catholics, for supporting the Pope, and Protestants, for heresy. Although there was a clear logic in this, many took it to mean that Henry was unsure of his religious position, and sought to influence him, with only varying degrees of success, since he was ever watchful for courtiers who tried to blind his “eyes with mists” or manipulate him “for their own profits.”36 Nor, according to Chapuys, was it usual for councillors to enter into “secret communication” with each other, for it was something they “were not accustomed to do, even in matters of no importance or suspicions.”37 In the main, Henry remained firmly in control of affairs until his death, and his authority was absolute and final. Jealous of his prerogative, he kept his own counsel and would allow no man or faction to rule him. Rival parties did manage to sway him on occasion by exploiting his suspicious nature and poisoning his mind against their enemies, which was what had brought about the falls of Anne Boleyn and Cromwell, but in each case they had presented convincing evidence. They even encouraged him to marry their own candidates, although he allowed none of his last four wives to wield any political influence. As will be seen, more often than not, Henry knew what they were up to, and sometimes turned the tables on them.
During these latter years, the King was more politically active, powerful, and despotic than at any previous time, and kept a firm grip on administrative matters, scrutinising state documents, dispatches, letters, accounts, service records, and check rolls, and making numerous notes in the margins and changes where necessary: his secretaries were instructed to leave two-and-a-half-inch margins and one inch between lines to enable him to do so.38 Each Sunday evening, Henry was given a list of the matters to be discussed by the Council in the coming week, and always drew up the agenda himself. Every Friday, his Principal Secretary would write a summary of the meetings, which was presented on Saturday for Henry’s decisions or approval. If a decision was needed more urgently, the Lord Chancellor would seek audience of the King in the privy lodgings. 39
Very little escaped Henry’s notice—“there is not a sin
gle bruit anywhere which he does not hear among the first, even to little private matters, which princes care but little to hear.”40 Sir William Paget later revealed that, in diplomatic reports, he was always careful to include “matters of no great importance,” since he felt it “meet that His Majesty should know all.”41 Henry’s encyclopaedic memory, which could retain details of every grant made to numerous petitioners, 42 stored up every snippet of information that might prove useful in the future. Thanks to his experience, his eye for detail, his erudition, and his sharp mind, he was able to dominate those who sought to influence him.
The summer of 1540 was very hot; no rain fell between June and October, and there was plague in London. In August, the King took his young bride on a honeymoon progress, an extended hunting trip through Surrey into Berkshire, where they stayed at Reading before moving north to Ewelme, Rycote, Notley, Buckingham—where the King held a Council meeting at the old Castle House, which dated from Saxon times—and Grafton, arriving on 29 August. A week later, the King began riding south towards Ampthill, where he stayed for a fortnight until 1 October. Here, Katherine’s Vice Chamberlain, Sir Edward Baynton, disgraced himself by appearing drunk in the King’s presence, which prompted Henry to issue a stern injunction to all household servants “concerning the sober and temperate order that His Highness would have them use in his chamber of presence and the Queen’s.”43
While at Ampthill, Henry fell sick with a tertian fever—probably malaria—and his legs became infected. His doctors expressed great concern, but he suddenly rallied. Then it was on to Dunstable, for another Council meeting, and the More, and so back to Windsor on 22 October. Prior to the King’s arrival, persons who had been in contact with the plague were made to leave the town, and although they were promised compensation by the Privy Council, payment was long deferred.