Tudor (23 page)

A year after Margaret had said her goodbyes, Katherine of Aragon was pregnant again. Since sexual intercourse was considered dangerous for mothers-to-be, Henry had taken a mistress, the pretty nineteen-year-old Elizabeth Blount. She was at the celebrations following the betrothal that October of the two-year-old princess Mary to King Francis' heir: the culmination of the pursuit of peace with France. The ceremonies took place at Wolsey's bishopric palace, York Place near Westminster. Wolsey had a taste for the good things in life and the Venetian ambassador described the palace as ‘very fine'. You had to cross ‘eight rooms before reaching his audience chamber', and each was ‘hung with tapestry, which was changed once a week', while the sideboards were piled with silver worth an estimated 25,000 ducats. As for the cardinal (as Wolsey now was), his power had grown so much it seemed to the diplomat that he ruled ‘both the king and the entire kingdom'.
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Elizabeth Blount was one of a party of thirty-six masquers that night, each dressed in ‘fine green satin, all covered with cloth of gold'. She ‘excelled at singing, dancing, and in all goodly pastimes', and demonstrated her skills, with the masquers dancing one at a time. When she had finished she cast off her mask to reveal her fresh young face.
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The glow came not just from her youth and natural beauty, however: the king's mistress was in the early stage of pregnancy. A month later Katherine of Aragon delivered a stillborn daughter, ‘to the vexation of everyone'. To add insult to misery Elizabeth Blount's child, born the following June, proved, ‘a goodly man child of beauty like to the father and mother'.
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He was named Henry Fitzroy, and Wolsey was once again called upon to be godfather. Elizabeth Blount was married off later that summer to a young man called Gilbert Tailboys, who was a ward of the Crown.
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Henry still talked of Katherine having a son, but she was now thirty-three and people began to speculate on who might become king if Henry were to die. Henry VII had hoped that in the absence of Tudor male heirs the English would look to his daughter, Queen Margaret, to provide them with a king. Having been raised in Wales and Brittany Henry VII did not share English prejudice against the Scots, or fears that having a Scottish king would result in a loss of sovereignty. Scotland, he is said to have observed, would become subsumed into England ‘since the less becomes subservient to the greater'. But Queen Margaret's son, James V, was a mere seven years old and, as in 1501, when Henry VII was ill and his sons minors, many did not consider the young heirs of Tudor blood to be the best choice. In September 1519 the Venetian ambassador reported that one person who had been mentioned in 1501 as ‘a noble man [who] would be a royal ruler' was again being mentioned as a future King of England: Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham.

A descendant of Edward III's youngest son Thomas Woodstock, and of John of Gaunt, Buckingham lived like the royal ducal magnate he was. At the siege of Thérouanne in France he had caught attention dressed in a suit of purple satin embroidered with ‘antelopes and swans of fine gold bullion, and full of spangles and little bells of gold very costly and marvellous to behold'. He was currently in the process of building a vast pleasure palace at Thornbury in Gloucestershire. The ambassador noted that he was respected by the people, and ‘might easily obtain the crown' if the king died without male heirs.
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Anxiously, Henry asked Wolsey to keep a watch on Buckingham, which the cardinal was more than happy to do.
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Buckingham hated the low-born cardinal as a ‘base fellow' and despised his peace with France.
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In June 1520 Buckingham let it be known that he resented the expense of attending the feast of Anglo-French reconciliation Wolsey had organised near Calais. Such was the array of rich tents and pavilions that it became known as the ‘Field of Cloth of Gold', but Buckingham declared the fabulous display, the tournaments and
meetings, to be no more than a ‘spectacle of foolish speeches' or a ‘conference of trivialities'.

In November Buckingham infuriated Henry by retaining a royal servant, who was seen wearing his livery. This suggested the servant had a dual loyalty, and Henry was reported to have bellowed angrily that ‘he would none of his servants should hang on another man's sleeve'. Buckingham, fearing he might be sent to the Tower, blustered to his servants that he would rather kneel before the king in submission and then thrust him through with a dagger.
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Unfortunately a surveyor Buckingham had sacked then revealed these threats to Wolsey.

As the cardinal investigated further he discovered Buckingham believed that Henry VII's execution of the last male Plantagenet in 1499 had cursed the Tudor line. He had told his servants ‘that God would punish it, by not suffering the king's issue to prosper'.
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He also gloated to them that the prior of a Carthusian house at Hinton
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in north Somerset had prophesied that since Henry would have ‘no issue males of his body', he would one day be king adding, ‘that all the king's father did was wrong, and that he had always been dissatisfied with everything the king had done'. Henry VIII ‘gave fees and offices to boys rather than noblemen', while Wolsey was ‘the king's bawd, showing him [which w]omen were most wholesome, and best of complexion'.
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These complaints were reminiscent of Richard III's attacks on the immorality of Edward IV. Such, at least, was the case for the prosecution.

On 13 May 1521 Buckingham was tried on a charge of high treason and found guilty by his fellow peers of compassing and imagining the death of the king. They did so with heavy hearts. It was all too reminiscent of earlier bloodletting within the royal house, and when the jury members came to read their verdicts, they were too moved to speak. Bravely Buckingham urged them on, saying he was content to accept the punishment, ‘not for the crime laid to his account, which is utterly false, but for his very great sins'.
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Four days later, on 17 May,
two sheriffs and 500 infantrymen led Buckingham to the axe-man on Tower Hill. He died, the Venetian ambassador observed, ‘miserably, but with great courage'.
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It is a mark of how shocking Buckingham's death was considered to be that a lawyer, drawing up the usually dry-as-dust yearbook of legal cases, noted beside the entry for Buckingham's trial, ‘God in his love grant mercy, for he was a very noble, prudent prince, and the image of all that is courtly.'
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The great Stafford family was never again to attain the wealth and pre-eminence they had hitherto enjoyed. And Henry still did not have a son.

18

ENTER ANNE BOLEYN

H
ENRY WAS IN BED ON 9
M
ARCH 1525 WHEN A MESSENGER ARRIVED
with urgent news. Wolsey's efforts to keep Europe at peace had failed in the face of Franco-Imperial rivalry in Italy. Hoping to take advantage of this, Henry had allied with the twenty-five-year-old emperor, Charles V. His decision now seemed vindicated – King Francis had been defeated at the hands of the Imperial army at Pavia.
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His army was massacred, and the French nobility suffered their greatest slaughter since Agincourt. But Henry was also interested to learn from the messenger the fate of an Englishman amongst Francis' commanders: Richard de la Pole, third son of Edward IV's sister Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk, and the last ‘White Rose'.
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He had been killed in the battle. Less than four years after the execution of Buckingham, the last serious rival to Henry VII's heirs was dead. ‘All the enemies of England are gone', Henry cried out, and called for the messenger to be given more wine.
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Secure in England, Henry VIII believed his dream of a coronation in Paris was now within his grasp. He hoped to persuade Charles V to divide France between them, and reminded Charles that if he married his daughter, Mary Tudor, then on his death Charles could add England to his empire. But Charles was now out of money, and his need for peace was more urgent than any future prospects concerning the inheritance of England. Henry could not hope to
conquer France without him, and as Charles' peace treaty with France was being signed, Henry realised bitterly that his achievements lacked the greatness he had sought. He was no Henry V. His situation more closely resembled that of Henry VI. England's power in Europe was diminishing, and like Henry VI in 1453, with no legitimate sons, he needed to bolster his position by promoting what close male relatives he did have. Henry VI had created his non-royal half-brothers, Edmund and Jasper Tudor, England's premier earls. Similarly, Henry VIII was to promote his illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy into the highest ranks of the nobility.

On 18 June the six-year-old Fitzroy left his mother, Elizabeth Blount, for good, and was brought by barge to the king's newly rebuilt palace at Bridewell on the banks of the Fleet river. Henry's former mistress would henceforth only have occasional contact with their son. After landing at the water-gate Fitzroy was conducted through a chamber hung with gold and silver hangings to a gallery where he was clothed in the robes of an earl. Fitzroy was a lively child, but this was an awe-inspiring ceremony and a crowd was gathering in the chamber below where King Henry awaited his son, standing under a cloth of estate. At last the ushers cleared a path through the court, and at a signal from the king, the trumpets blew. Fitzroy took his cue, entered and approached his proud father, who then hung a sword over his slight neck and one boyish shoulder. No sooner had the patent of the earldom been read than the next ceremony took place and Henry Fitzroy was granted the unprecedented honour of the double dukedoms of Somerset and Richmond.
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Only afterwards could the boy relax, and there were ‘great feasts and disguisings' to celebrate his new rank.

The titles Fitzroy had been granted, together with wealth and offices, prompted speculation then, as well as later, that Henry was considering making the boy his heir.
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But these were not the titles of a Prince of Wales. Richmond was the title Henry VI had given Edmund Tudor in 1453, while Somerset was a Beaufort title. It signalled that his place
was as a member of the extended royal family and made Fitzroy a potentially valuable asset on the diplomatic marriage market, while acknowledging that this situation might change under extra ordinary circumstances – as it had for Edmund Tudor's heir, Henry VII. Katherine of Aragon was said to resent Fitzroy's elevation, and understandably so, for it was a public acknowledgement that she could no longer bear children. But for the time being the princess Mary was treated very much as Henry's heir, and it was as such that she was poised to play her part in Wolsey's new anti-Imperial stance.

Henry's bitterness towards the emperor Charles for ending his ambitions in France meant Wolsey was able to persuade him to re-establish his friendship with the French king. Negotiations began on yet another marriage for the princess Mary, this time to the widowed King Francis. As one foreign observer noted, ‘in time of war the English make use of the princess' as if she was a ‘lure' to hunt birds.
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Mary received the French delegation sent to conclude the terms of the alliance at Greenwich on 23 April 1527. The eleven-year-old was, like her father, an exceptional musician, and her accomplishments in this regard were much praised. She was proving clever too. Her translation of a prayer by St Thomas Aquinas was being circulated so that learned courtiers might ‘not only marvel at the doing of it, but further, for the well doing'.
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But Mary was still only a child, and the delegation judged her ‘so thin, spare and small as it to be impossible to be married for the next three years'.

When the ‘perpetual peace' was finally signed with France on 30 April, it was agreed Mary might be married instead to Francis' second son, the Duke of Orléans. The festivities celebrating the treaty culminated on 5 May when Henry took the French ambassadors to see Mary with her mother at Greenwich Palace. The slightly built princess looked very pretty as she danced with the French ambassador that night. Her dress shone in the ubiquitous cloth of gold favoured by royalty, flattering her auburn hair, and Henry danced with one of her mother's ladies. The young woman was rather sallow-skinned, with
a long narrow face and high-bridged nose, but she was graceful and striking with her dark hair and flashing black eyes.
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King Francis' ambassadors were impressed by her knowledge of their country and fluency in their language – but then Anne Boleyn had spent many years at the French court.
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It was quite usual for the children of the higher gentry to leave home between the ages of eight and twelve, to be raised and educated in a great household. But Anne, the younger daughter of the ambitious courtier Sir Thomas Boleyn, had been sent further away than most – to the court of Maximilian's daughter Margaret of Austria, in Mechelen. Sir Thomas wanted her to learn French and Anne did well there until, aged fourteen, she was called upon to attend Henry's sister Mary, the French queen, at her coronation. After the French queen returned to England Anne had remained in France – perhaps so she would not expose the scandal of Mary's secret second marriage to Brandon. Anne was recalled eventually late in 1521. By then she was hardly likely to talk about a scandal concerning the king's sister, given that her own sister, Mary Boleyn, had been sleeping with him.

Henry's relationship with Mary Boleyn has generated a lot of smoke, but we know little about the fire. Anne's leading biographer, Eric Ives, believed the affair would have followed a similar pattern to that of Henry's earlier affair with Elizabeth Blount. Henry had slept with Blount when Katherine of Aragon was carrying her last baby. When Blount became pregnant with Henry's son his attentions turned to Mary Boleyn. She, in turn, may have become pregnant – or thought she was. In any event she was married off, just as Blount had been, in February 1520 to a gentleman of the Privy Chamber called William Carey. The king was the principal guest.
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The affair may or may not have come to an end: the malicious gossip was that Henry fathered some of Mary Boleyn's children.
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