A Journey Through Tudor England (11 page)
Read A Journey Through Tudor England Online
Authors: Suzannah Lipscomb
The carving of the royal arms over a doorway is thought to mark the entrance to Henry’s chambers on the three occasions that he stayed at The Vyne and, like the gallery as a whole, is a proud demonstration of Sandys’s close alliance with the King and his court: Sandys included so many badges of honour to Henry in his house that were this practice to be replicated by someone today, we might suspect them of an unhealthy obsession! But such shrines to living people were not uncommon for Tudors: a grown man of the court would think nothing of inscribing and carving his monarch’s symbols or initials into his own residence. (Many of Elizabeth’s male courtiers had whole manor houses built in the shape of an ‘E’ [see M
ONTACUTE
H
OUSE
].)
In the Stone Gallery, you will find a stunning terracotta roundel of a Roman emperor, likely to be Probus, which is a real treasure, as it has survived in remarkably good condition. He was probably chosen for The Vyne because Probus was famous for introducing viticulture — the vine — to England. He has looked down on visitors
to The Vyne for nearly 500 years and now, as then, is a visual association with Wolsey and Henry VIII, and a symbol of Sandys’s artistic patronage and powerful connections. It was sculpted in the 1520s by the Italian craftsman Giovanni da Maiano: the same man who carved matching roundels at Wolsey’s Hampton Court Palace.
Finally, Sandys commissioned one last piece of brilliant art to reflect his relationship with Henry VIII. In 1525, he ordered three wonderful stained-glass portraits of the royal family to be made for the chapel. These vivid, colourful depictions were created just down the road in Basingstoke, and show Katherine of Aragon in the left window, Henry VIII in the centre and his sister, Margaret, Queen of Scotland, on the right. The portrayal of a barefaced king with long, ginger hair is particularly interesting. All are kneeling in prayer, and Henry VIII himself would have knelt to pray in this chapel when he visited in 1531, and again with Anne Boleyn in 1535.
Although Sandys had been something of an Aragon supporter, he was first and foremost loyal to Henry: he both faithfully attended Anne’s coronation on 1 June 1533, and served as one of the jurors at Anne’s trial three years later. His role as eyewitness to history did not stop there: he was one of only three barons to receive gifts of monastic land from Henry VIII during the period of the dissolution; he was present at the baptism of Henry’s long-awaited heir Edward in October 1537 at Hampton Court; and, a month later, attended Jane Seymour’s funeral at Windsor Castle; he even tried those involved in the Exeter conspiracy of 1538—9. Only death — his wife’s in March 1539, and his own in December 1540 — could end his extraordinary talent for ubiquity.
Other Tudor sights to see at The Vyne: the chimneypiece in the Tapestry Room is almost certainly Tudor; it was moved from the Dining Parlour in the 1840s. Concealed behind the panelling in
the Strawberry Parlour, there is a small Tudor doorway. Parts of the original, larger Tudor house were found in the lake, and are displayed in the Stone Gallery. The panelling in the Dining Parlour is Tudor too, and there are some lovely pictures here, all copies, depicting Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk; Mary Neville, Lady Dacre; Henry VIII; and my favourite, the six-year-old Chrysogona Baker, Lady Dacre in 1579, looking like a little Elizabeth I. The choir stalls in the Chapel are of early Tudor design; look out for the give-away roses and pomegranates.
ROYAL PROGRESSES
The Tudor monarchs never stayed in one place for long, and especially not during the summer months. Their peregrinations had more one than purpose. To some extent, it was a logistical and hygienic necessity. Moving around was seen as a way to avoid the seasonal bouts of plague or the ‘sweating sickness’ in London. Moreover, the court could number over 1,000 people — the population of a small town — and ate such vast quantities of food that they easily exhausted an area’s resources. Meanwhile, their waste and rubbish mounted up. As a friend wrote to Sir John Harington in the 1590s, Elizabeth’s ‘palace at Greenwich and other stately houses … are oft annoyed with such savours as where many mouths are fed, can hardly be avoided’: the court needed to move to another palace to escape its own excrement.
Progresses were also an important opportunity to be seen. In an age before mass communication, these progresses
fulfilled the crucial political function of displaying a monarch’s magnificence to his or her subjects, and allowing local gentry and officials a chance to access and display loyalty to their sovereign. The chronicler Edward Hall wrote of Henry VIII in 1515:
This summer the King took his progress westward & visited his towns, castles there & heard the complaints of his poor commonality & ever as he rode, he hunted & liberally departed with venison; & in the middle of September he came to his manor of Woking & thither came to him the Archbishop of York whom he heartily welcomed and showed him great pleasures.
Hall also reveals another key purpose of the progress: pleasure. Henry VIII travelled in order to hunt; Elizabeth to enjoy the hospitality and extraordinary entertainments of her subjects. The Imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, wrote in June 1531 that he had ‘sent one of [his] men to Hampton Court to ask for an audience from the King, but he was already gone to Windsor and other places to amuse himself and pass away the time … For the last fortnight he has done nothing else but go from place to place …’
The crucial difference between the progresses of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I was that Henry stayed, for the most part, in his own houses. By the time of his death, Henry VIII had acquired or built over sixty great houses and palaces in which he stayed as he travelled around his realm. This is one reason why Henry VIII seldom left the south and east of his kingdom,
although there were exceptions. Henry’s long progress to the West Country in 1535 took him as far as Gloucestershire where, as well as staying in his castle at Thornbury (acquired from the Duke of Buckingham in 1521), he also stayed with Sir Nicholas Poyntz, who built an entire new wing onto his manor house, Acton Court, for the occasion: quite an undertaking given that Henry rarely remained in one place for longer than a few days. Henry VIII’s furthest progress north was in 1541 when he travelled to York to meet James V. Not only did the Scottish King not show up, but soon after he returned home, Henry discovered that his wife, Katherine Howard, had betrayed him en route [see P
ONTEFRACT
C
ASTLE
].
Elizabeth I was even more enthusiastic about travel. She went on progress every summer of her forty-five-year reign, but she too confined her expeditions to twenty-five of England’s forty counties. Elizabeth, however, preferred to stay in her courtiers’ houses. Clergyman William Harrison wrote in 1577 of Elizabeth I, ‘when it pleaseth her in the summer season to recreate herself abroad, and view the estate of the country, every nobleman’s house is her palace’.
Although technically a sign of favour and an opportunity to seek patronage, having the Queen to stay was something of a dubious honour. It put one to great expense and inconvenience, did not necessarily result in new offices or grants and could easily go disastrously wrong.
The Queen did not travel light. Foreign visitor Jacob Rathgeb commented in 1592 that ‘when the Queen breaks up her Court with the intention of visiting another place, there commonly follow more than three hundred carts laden with
bag and baggage’. Others estimated the figure to be nearer 400 or even 600 carts. Elizabeth brought with her a minimum of 150 people, who needed to be housed and fed, and this demanding Queen also required lavish entertainment, often at great cost. William Cecil, Lord Burghley knew this well: Elizabeth visited his house at Theobalds thirteen times; her ten-day visit in 1591 cost him £1,000 (equivalent today to more than £125,000). The most extravagant example is Elizabeth’s nineteen-day visit to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester’s, house in 1575 [see K
ENILWORTH
].
Elizabeth’s lack of tact could also prompt further outlay. When Elizabeth visited Sir Nicholas Bacon’s house at Gorhambury in 1572, she remarked, ‘My Lord, what a little house you have gotten.’ By the time she returned five years later, he had built a new wing. Sir Thomas Gresham was quicker to act. Elizabeth came to his house at Osterley, Middlesex, in 1578, and opined that the courtyard would look better if divided by a wall. Gresham sent immediately for workmen from London who quickly and quietly built the wall during the night as a surprise for Elizabeth when she awoke. Some men went further. It was Elizabeth’s love of progresses that led to the building of the great ‘prodigy’ houses of the age. Sir Christopher Hatton built the huge and magnificent Holdenby House in the hope that Elizabeth would visit. The building of it bankrupted him [see K
IRBY
H
ALL
], and the house waited ten years for a queen who never came.
‘Le temps viendra / Je anne boleyn.’ (‘The time will come / I Anne Boleyn)
S
et in the midst of the beautiful countryside of the Weald of Kent, and with landscaped grounds that include a lake, a walled rose garden and playful animal topiary, Hever Castle makes an excellent day out. It is also a must for Anne Boleyn’s acolytes. Despite the fact that one of Henry VIII’s other wives, Anne of Cleves, owned this house from after her ‘divorce’ settlement of 1540 until her death in 1557, it is as the childhood home of Anne Boleyn that Hever is chiefly memorialised. It was substantially remodelled and restored by William Waldorf Astor in the early twentieth century.
Unfortunately for Hever, Anne was very probably not born here but at Blickling in Norfolk. Anne’s date of birth is unknown: historians have quarrelled over 1501 or 1507 as the most likely date, deciding recently on the former because of a sophisticated letter sent by Anne from France in 1513: the handwriting is not that of a five or six-year-old, and Anne was abroad as a maid-of-honour (an unmarried lady-in-waiting), a post suitable for a young adolescent. The Boleyn family moved to Hever in 1505. This does
mean, nonetheless, that Anne spent a good eight years in the moated manor house at Hever as a child, and she also returned to her parents’ home at certain times during the 1520s. There is a bedroom on the first floor with a fifteenth-century half-domed ceiling that is thought to have been Anne’s bedroom as a child. It is this close association of Anne and Hever that makes this the ideal place to tell her tale.
In 1513, Anne went to be maid-of-honour to Margaret, Archduchess of Austria, in Brussels, but remained in her service for a mere fifteen months before joining the court of Henry VIII’s younger sister, Mary, on her marriage to King Louis XII of France. At Hever, there is a tapestry in the Book of Hours room dating from 1525 which commemorates this marriage; as one of Mary’s ladies at the time, Anne may well feature. When the eighteen-year-old Mary was widowed three months later, Anne chose to stay in France at the court of the French Queen Claude. These years were pivotal in Anne’s development and character: she not only learnt exquisite French, but all the cosmopolitan glamour of the French court — from dancing and singing, to witty banter and a taste for fine clothes. It was this sophistication that would later make the black-haired, dark-eyed Anne so attractive to Henry VIII.
She returned to England in 1521, and is first recorded as appearing at the English court on 1 March 1522, rather aptly playing the part of ‘Perseverance’ in a masque called the ‘Château Vert’. At this time, it was, however, another Boleyn girl who had caught Henry’s eye: Anne’s sister, Mary, was the King’s mistress from around 1522 to 1525. (In later years, Henry VIII was charged with having had a relationship with Anne’s mother and sister. He replied gruffly, ‘Never with the mother.’) In these years, while negotiations were being made for Anne to marry her Irish cousin, James Butler, a ‘secret love’ grew between her and Lord Henry Percy, the son of the Earl of Northumberland. Exactly how
this love manifested itself is unknown — Percy and Anne would both later deny exchanging promises to marry — but the King’s minister, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, intervened to prevent the match (acting for Percy’s parents who wanted him to marry Mary Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, instead). For two years, Anne returned to Hever to nurse her wounds.