Catherine Howard (12 page)

Much of the full impact of Tudor pretentiousness has vanished with the weathering and darkening of timber and the fading and flaking of brilliant paints, so that the effect has become one of gloomy panelled chambers and impressive but ill-contrived Gothic Perpendicular. Today, where the eye perceives shapeless shadows, the mind should paint in gilded heraldic beasts, initials entwined with lovers’ knots, and armorial emblems. The ornamental and ornate ceilings were once alive with colour, and the papiermâché ribs and pendent balls of Tudor design were painted in gold and blue, the octagonal and lozenge-shaped depressions in the ceilings each enclosing a gaudy escutcheon. Where today stands the grey stone of a heraldic badge or the chipped terracotta of some long-forgotten motto, there were once rich and gilded forms, while whole palaces were ablaze with the vivid colours of Tudor heraldry. Rooms were hung with costly and marvellous tapestries of ‘pure gold and fine silk’ garnished with pearls and precious stones, and at Hampton Court there were entire suites done in blue and crimson cloth and lush velvets of green, and brown, and yellow.
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It is hardly surprising that a papal legate remarked that, ‘the wealth and civilization of the world are here.’
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The image that comes to mind is that of the rich fantasy and sensuous extravagance of costume jewellery. Inside and out the aim was the same – exuberant display and primitive hues.

As if to rival the décor, polite society presented a merry dance of noblemen in velvets, prelates in silks, and courtiers in cloth of clashing colours. Slashed doublets with artfully padded shoulders, carefully tapered waists, and extravagant codpieces, were all contrived to enhance the personality, magnify the vanity, and display individuality. ‘Whole estates’ were worn on courtiers’ backs; cloak, doublet, pleated shirt, and hose were cut from the most expensive materials, embroidered with gold, and studded with jewels. Sir Nicholas Vaux’s garments were valued at £1,000, and the Duke of Buckingham dressed in a cloak wrought with gold and lined with satin that cost £1,500.
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The ‘excess of apparel’ was such that Bishop Skip complained that ‘a man cannot well discern a gentleman from a yeoman, a lord from a gentleman, a prince from a lord,’ and he warned that more than one young gallant had ended his life in a debtor’s prison or dangling from a gibbet for having squandered a fortune on the silly vanity of dress.
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In marked contrast to gilded ceilings, costly tapestries and princely attire were stark floors covered with rushes, trestle tables, and wooden benches in the great hall and draughty corners. Chairs were a rarity and reserved for women, who generally preferred to sit on pillows and cushions on the floor. Sanitation at court, in an age that could scarcely conceive of cleanliness rivalling godliness, was on a level with Horsham. The slush bucket continued to be the standard method of disposal, and people were not particular about throwing refuse on the floor. It is not surprising that Cardinal Wolsey, when he ventured either into the lower regions of his own residence or risked the pervasive odours of the streets of
London
, commonly carried a spice-ball to counteract the stench. In fact, the Cardinal’s sense of smell need not have been very acute, since immediately outside the great door of St Paul’s was an open urinal which induced one visitor to comment that it gave ‘a pleasant odour to the passers-by’!
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Catherine’s world and the society of the court was a strange mixture of richness and squalor, of sumptuousness and primitiveness. Perhaps the final paradox is found in the description of the materials used in the construction of Henry VIII’s close-stool. It cost £4, and was covered in black velvet, stuffed with 3 pounds of down for the seat, arms and side, and was held together with 2,000 gilt garnishing nails and 26 ‘bullion’ nails, but no matter how it was decorated, it still remained a chamber-pot.
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In an atmosphere of prodigious confusion and magnificent filth, which neither gold nor precious jewels could entirely cloak, and in a society where passions were close to the surface, rigid discipline and brittle ceremony became essential to a well-ordered organization. Both Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell endeavoured to introduce into the snarl of the royal household some slight notion of routine, so as to mitigate the laxity and dishonesty that flourished in the rich soil of confusion. They aimed at introducing at least a minimum of restraint that might bridle the violence, wantonness, and dangerous neglect for hygienic principles, within the court.

The officers of the household were strictly commanded to search for strangers at meal-times and for ‘rascals and vagabonds’ who were constantly creeping into the system and passing themselves off as servants of the Crown.
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Efforts to achieve a certain degree of economy and system were not limited to denying food and board to those who had no right at court. Strenuous, if not always successful, attempts were made to curb the number of menials who surrounded every person of rank. Labour shortage was still a curse of the future, and every gentleman or nobleman was waited upon by a clamorous throng of hangers-on who endured a hungry existence on the periphery of a great man’s following. The desire to keep servants had more to do with prestige than with service, and if the court regulations had not strictly limited the number, the household would have been hopelessly jammed. The allocation was carefully made according to status. The King’s councillors, the lord chamberlain, the captain of the guard and the master of the horse, plus the six gentlemen of the privy chamber were each allowed to keep ‘one page to attend upon the court so that always he be a gentleman born, well mannered and apparelled, and well conditioned’. Other more lowlyborn servants were ordered ‘to remain in town or elsewhere out of the court’, and sergeants-at-arms, heralds, messengers, minstrels, falconers, and the like were commanded not to bring boys, rascals, or others of their servants into the court, on pain of severe fine and possible expulsion.
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Likewise the number both of beds and of horses was limited according to title. A duke could claim twenty-four horses and nine beds for his retainers, and an earl could have eighteen horses and seven beds. The gradations were minutely worked out: a dowager duchess could command seven beds, the Queen’s maids, three; the master of the jewels, one; the lord chamberlain, seven; and the grooms of the privy chamber were given two between the four of them.
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Laxity and simple laziness plagued every branch of the organization, and efforts were made to root out or at least to curb the natural lassitude of mankind. Strict orders were issued that those who had duties to perform should execute them promptly and not delegate them to their servants. The highborn grooms of the privy chamber were ordered to refrain from using their ‘pages and servants and other mean persons’ to ‘make ready the fire, dress and straw the chamber, purging and making clean the same of all manner of filthiness’, so that the King’s Highness might find the ‘chamber pure, clean, wholesome and meet without any displeasant air or thing’. All these tasks were assigned to the grooms of gentle and noble blood, and they were commanded to be in the King’s chamber by six and seven in the morning so as to complete their menial duties. At the same time that the grooms were sweeping and cleaning, the gentlemen of the chamber were to attend to the ‘apparel and dress’ of the monarch, ‘putting on such garments in reverent, discreet, and sober fashion’
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Fines were levied if the groom-porter failed to collect the remains ‘of torches and other wax remaining overnight by nine of the clock in the morrow’. A signing in and out system was introduced for those who attended upon the King’s person, so that there would always be the correct number of gentlemen and grooms to minister to Henry’s desires. Even the members of the royal council had to be disciplined, and the lord steward, the lord treasurer, and the comptroller were evidently not above playing truant, since they were commanded to be daily ‘in the Comptinghouse between the hours of eight and nine in the morning’. Finally the tendency for courtiers to shirk their ceremonial duties and to seek a certain degree of privacy had to be curtailed, for ‘sundry noblemen, gentlemen, and others do much delight and use to dine in corners and secret places not repairing to the King’s chamber nor hall’, and consequently orders were given that all should eat at their allotted dining-places.
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Efforts were also made to discourage the chronic dishonesty and peculation which plagued the court. Decrees were issued that the clerks of the greencloth were to:

View and see that the said meat be served forth wholly and entirely and in due proportion, to such places as it is provided for, without fraud, embezzling or diminution of any part thereof as they will answer to their uttermost perils.

The practice of petty stealing to supplement insufficient wages was almost universal. The yeomen of the pantry were sorely tempted to cut off pieces of bread and sell them back to those in charge of feeding the royal mastiffs, while the ordinances of the household noted that ‘the relics and fragments of such meat and drink as daily hath been spent in the King and Queen’s chamber and household, have not been duly distributed unto poor folks by way of alms.’ Instead, they were ‘embezzled and purloined’ to the profit of dishonest servants. In fact, commands had to be given that, when the King ventured forth on progress visiting the houses of his subjects, strict vigilance be observed that ‘locks of doors, tables, forms, cupboards, trestles and other implements of household be [not] carried, purloined, and taken away by such servants and others as be lodged in the same houses and places.’
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Strict control, in theory at least, was maintained over infection and disease. Greyhounds, mastiffs and hounds were barred from the court, to keep the household ‘sweet, wholesome, clean, and well furnished’. The only exception to this regulation was that ladies’ spaniels and lap-dogs were sanctioned, since it was thought ‘wholesome for a weak stomach to bear such a dog in the bosom’.
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Likewise, the royal barber was commanded to take:

Especial regard to the pure and clean keeping of his own person and apparel; using himself always honestly in his conversation, without resorting to the company of vile persons or of misguided women in avoiding such dangers and annoyance, as by that means he might do unto the King’s most royal person.

These rudimentary hygienic measures were extended to the kitchen, where the three master-cooks received twenty marks a year to pay the scullery boys, so that they should ‘not go naked or in garments of such vileness as they now do, and have been accustomed to do’, and should have a place to sleep other than the kitchen hearth. Moreover, sanitary principles were recognized to the extent that the cooks were enjoined to have the kitchens scrubbed and swept twice daily to free them from ‘noisome filth’.
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To what extent these regulations were enforced or observed is difficult to say. Probably the rules remained nominal, considering the natural inertia of any large and traditionridden establishment. Brutality, violence, and slovenliness were far too prevalent at all levels of society to be checked merely by a written code of household etiquette. As with the law of the realm, the enforcing agencies were not very effective, and sloth as well as passion and brutality went unpunished.

For those who were inaccurately, if flatteringly, called polite society, there was a more subtle variety of restraint upon passion, viciousness and crudity. It has been said that ‘nothing but ceremony, rigid and complicated, will be strong enough to prevent mere nastiness of behaviour.’
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One might add to this formula that nothing but ceremony was able to curb a society which lacked most of our modern methods of social control, and in which animal instincts of survival were dangerously close to the surface. Rather like some monster lightly chained, cruelty and violence were checked by nothing except the slender constraint of ceremony.

Gentlemen were swift to anger and unrestrained in the use of the dagger. Justice Anthony Sonds on one occasion fell out with Mr Culpeper, while at supper, over the disposition of certain monastic estates. Strong words ensued: Culpeper accused the justice of lying ‘like a fool’, while Sonds rejoined that Culpeper ‘lied like a knave’. Words spoken in anger led to drawn daggers and bloodshed until the two were forcibly separated by friends. The argument was prevented from being settled next morning on Fynnesbery Field only by Mr Anthony Sonds’s timely recollection that he was a justice of the peace.
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It was customary that both master and servant should go armed with dagger and rapier, and nothing was more common than the sight of fighting ‘about taking the right or left hand, or the wall, or upon any unpleasing countenance’.
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Clashing swords furnished daily music in the streets, and men were wont to act first and ask questions afterwards, as when the Duke of Norfolk with twenty retainers attacked and murdered a kinsman of the Duke of Suffolk, over a supposed slight to the Duke’s honour.

The code of fair play had few if any rules that might curb a man in anger. Paid assassins were not uncommon, and John Stanhope did not hesitate to attempt the liquidation of his opponent, Sir Charles Cavendish, by overpowering him with twenty professional murderers.
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The days of private feuds and clan wars had not completely vanished from
England
’s broad and pleasant lands, and the ugly spectre of bloody encounters besmirched society with alarming regularity. One need only contemplate the fate of Marlowe in a Tavern brawl to sense the truth that violence in Renaissance
England
was regarded ‘as a characteristic of greatness’.
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