Henry (33 page)
Authors: David Starkey
It was rather like the catechism of pithy sayings which Henry’s old teacher Skelton had administered in his
Speculum
Principis
and had probably got him to learn by rote as well. But, unlike Skelton’s meandering list, Wolsey’s maxims of state all pointed to a single, irresistible conclusion: ‘That Henry should put Wolsey in charge of affairs’.
11
Perhaps. The account is of course highly coloured and we only have Polydore’s word for it. But everything that can be checked – Wolsey’s appointment as almoner, his admission to the council, the role of the young favourites, the Howards’ dramatic accretion of power, Henry’s determination to enjoy himself – is accurate. Even ‘the temple of all the pleasures’ sounds like one of the luxurious private closets that were to be such features of Wolsey’s palaces and later of Henry’s own.
Even so, something is missing. This emerges more clearly from Cavendish’s parallel, if more pedestrian, narrative of Wolsey’s rise. ‘He was’, Cavendish writes, ‘most earnest and readiest among all the council to advance the king’s only will and pleasure without respect to the case.’
The king therefore, perceiv [ing] him to be a meet instrument for the accomplishment of his devised will and pleasure, called him more near unto him and esteemed him so highly that his estimation and favour
put all other councillors out of their accustomed favour that they were in before.
12
Wolsey’s role, in other words, was the same as Compton’s: to get done what the king wanted to be done. But Compton dealt with the personal and the petty; Wolsey with power and politics on an increasingly grand scale.
But it started at the same point: the subversion of his council’s tutelary control. Henry used Compton to end the council’s ban on his participation in jousting; he used Wolsey to signal an end to its control over his free disposition of patronage. On 26 May 1511 Wolsey turned up in the chancery with a signed bill for the appointment of a certain John Whetwood to a Lincolnshire rectory. Lincolnshire was Wolsey’s backyard. The signed bill, which stated that it was to be a sufficient warrant to the chancellor for the making and sealing of the patent, was the death-knell for conciliar control of patronage. Warham, conscientious and rigid, demurred. Wolsey insisted. And then he delivered the
coup de
grâce
: he was giving him the letters, he informed Warham, ‘by the royal command’.
That was unanswerable. Warham’s only riposte was to have the incident written up with the enrolment of the grant, together with the note ‘
ut asseruit dictus Dominus
Wul [s] ey
’ – ‘as the said Master Wol [s] ey claimed’.
13
* * *
Wolsey was teaching Henry a new lesson: to know his own power. This was the beginning. Where would it end?
And when would it extend to policy?
Over the next few years, Wolsey enabled Henry to fight and win wars and impose peace. It was, as has been well observed, a partnership that, between them, turned Henry into a northern Caesar who (as not only he thought) bestrode Europe. Wolsey also taught Henry what he could do, as opposed perhaps to what he should do. In so doing, he laid the foundations for the older, greater, badder Henry.
He also destroyed himself in the process.
1
.
The Chronicle
, 515.
2
. Siemens,
Lyrics of Henry VIII
.
3
.
LP
I i, 442, 520, 546/27, 31.
4
.
LP
I i, 546/42.
5
. Vergil B, xiii–xvii.
6
. Ibid., 152–3.
7
.
OxfordDNB
, ‘Wolsey’.
8
. Vergil B, 194–5;
CSP Sp
. II, 44 (p. 42);
LP
I i, p. xiv.
9
. Hughes and Larkin,
Tudor Royal Proclamations
I, plate 2; Vergil B, 195–6; Huntington Library, Ellesmere MS 2655, fo. 8v. I owe this transcription to the kindness of John Guy.
10
. Vergil B, 196.
11
. Loc. cit.
12
. R. S. Silvester and D. P. Harding, eds,
Two Early Tudor Lives
(New Haven and London, 1962), 12.
13
. LP I i, 784/44.
| AR | F. Grose, ed., The Antiquarian Repertory , 4 vols (London, 1807–9) |
| Beaufort Hours | F. Madden, ‘Genealogical and historical notes in Ancient Calendars’, Collectanea Topographia et Genealogica I (1834), 277–79. |
| BL | British Library |
| The Chronicle | E. Hall, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke [The Chronicle] (1809) |
| CIPM | Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem |
| CPR | Calendar of Patent Rolls |
| CS | Camden Society |
| CSP Sp . | Calendar of State Papers, Spanish |
| CSP Ven . | Calendar of State Papers, Venetian |
| Collectanea | J. Leland, De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea , ed. T. Hearne, 6 vols (1770) |
| CWE | Complete Works of Erasmus (Toronto, 1976–) |
| OxfordDNB | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |
| EETS | Early English Text Society |
| EHR | The English Historical Review |
| GEC | G. E. Cokayne, Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, etc Extant, Extinct, or Dormant , rev. ed. V. Gibbs and later H. A. Doubleday, 13 vols (London, 1910–49) |
| Great Chronicle | A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley, eds, The Great Chronicle of London (1937) |
| HKW | H. M. Colvin et al ., eds, The History of the King’s Works , 6 vols (London, 1963–82) |
| HR | Historical Research |
| LP | J. S. Brewer et al ., eds, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII , 1509–47 , 21 vols and addenda (London, 1862–1932) |
| LP Hen. VII | J. Gairdner, ed., Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, 2 vols (Rolls Series, 1861, 1863) |
| Memorials | W. Campbell, ed., Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII, 2 vols (Rolls Series, 1873, 1877) |
| Materials | J. Gairdner, ed., Memorials of King Henry the Seventh (Rolls Series, 1858) |
| PPE Elizabeth of Yourk | N. H. Nicolas, ed., The Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York: Wardrobe Accounts of Edward Fourth (London, 1830) |
| Queens of England | A. Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England , 8 vols (1854) |
| Queens of Scotland | A. Strickland, Lives of the Queens of Scotland , 2 vols (1852) |
| RP | Rotuli Parliamentorum (1278–1504), 6 vols, London, 1767–77 |
| Vergil A | H. Ellis, ed., Three Books of Polydore Vergil’s English History , CS old series 29 (1844) |
| Vergil B | D. Hay, ed. and trans., The Anglica Historia of Polydore Vergil , CS third series 74 (1950) |
| TNA | The National Archives |
1.
LP
IV iii, 5791.
2. K. Staniland, ‘The Royal Entry into the World’, in D. Williams, ed.,
England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of
the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium
(Woodbridge, 1987), 299, n. 8;
AR
I, 304–6, 333–8.
Collectanea
IV, 179–84.
The Ryalle Book
itself is discussed by D. Starkey, ‘Henry VI’s Old Blue Gown: The English Court under the Lancastrians and Yorkists’,
The
Court Historian
4 (1999), 1–28.
3. TNA: E 404/81/1 (1 September 1491).
4. For instance, in
The Great Chronicle
, 248, the entry concerning Henry’s birth is not only an insertion, made long after the event (‘This year on Saint Peter’s Day in June was borne Henry, duke of York, the king’s second son which reigned after him’), it also appears under the wrong year. The ‘Beaufort Hours’, 279, notes Henry’s birth only with the bare date; in contrast, for both Arthur and Margaret, the place and the exact hour of birth are given as well.
1. D. R. Carlson, ‘The Latin Writings of John Skelton’,
Studies in
Philology
88 (1991) IV, 1–125, 40.
2. J. E. Powell and K. Wallis,
The House of Lords in the Middle
Ages
(1968), 363.
3. GEC XII ii, 905 n.g.
4. Vergil A, 135.
5.
Great Chronicle
, 212 and 431n.; J. Warkworth,
Chronicle of the
first thirteen years of Edward IV
, ed. J. O. Halliwell, CS old series 10 (1839), 11.
6. C. L. Schofield,
Edward IV
, 2 vols (1923) I, 546; H. Ellis, ed.,
Original Letters illustrative of English History
, 1st s. 3 vols (1824), 2nd s. 4 vols (1827), 3rd s. 4 vols (1846), I, 140;
OxfordDNB
, ‘Millyng’.
7. Schofield,
Edward IV
I, 546;
Great Chronicle
, 213; GEC XI, 545. 373
8. J. Bruce, ed.,
History of the Arrival of Edward IV
, CS old series 1 (1838), 17.
9. A. Wroe,
Perkin
(2003), 471.
10.
RP
VI, 278.
1.
Memorials
, 39.
2. Loc. cit.
3. For all this, see D. Starkey, ‘King Henry and King Arthur’ in J. P. Carley and F. Riddy, eds,
Arthurian Literature
,16 (Cambridge, 1998), 171–96, pp. 177–8.
4.
Collectanea
IV, 204, 206.
5. Beaufort Hours, 279.
6.
Collectanea
IV, 204.
7. Ibid., 206.
8. Vergil A, 208.
9. Ibid., 207; BL Add. MS 4617, fo. 186; Staniland, ‘Royal Entry’, 307 n. 60.
10.
Materials
II, 349, 459; BL Add. MS 4617, fo. 202; CPR
Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III
(1476–85), p. 241.
11.
Materials
II, 298, 343, 394, 404, 437, 553, 556.
12.
Materials
II, 343, 349, 370, 459; BL Add. MS 4617, fo. 205.
13.
OxfordDNB
, ‘Alcock’.
14. N. Orme, ‘The Education of Edward IV’, HR 57 (1984), 119–30, 126–30.
15.
OxfordDNB
, ‘Courtenay’.
16. N. Pronay and J. Cox, eds,
The Crowland Chronicle
Continuations
:
1459–1486
(1986), 181; W. Jerdan, ed.,
Rutland
Papers
CS old series 21 (1842), 10.
17. M. Condon, ‘Itinerary’ (unpublished);
CPR Henry VIII
I (1485–94), 152;
Materials
II, 115.
18.
Original Letters
, 1st s. I, 18–19 (misdated to the later crisis of 1492).
19.
Collectanea
IV, 212; Condon, ‘Itinerary’.
20.
Collectanea
IV, 236.
21. Ibid., 249–57.
22.
Collectanea
IV, 249–54.
1. TNA: E 404/81/1 (31 December 1491); for Anne and her first husband, Geoffrey Uxbridge, see
CPR Henry VII I
(1485–94), 212, 214, 242, 276, 281, 294 and
CPR Henry VII
II (1494–1509), 11. Anne was widowed between 1494 and 1496 and remarried Walter Luke by 1504 (ibid., 46, 345).
2.
AR
I, 306, 336–7.
3.
AR
I, 337.
4. See above, p. 51–2;
Collectanea
IV, 250.
5. TNA: E 404/80, warrants dated at Greenwich, 1 and 29 June and 3 July 1491.
6. TNA: E 404/81/1 (31 December 1491 and 20 July 1492).
7.
Queens of England
, II, 369–70, 436;
PPE Elizabeth of York
, p. lxxxv.
8. TNA: E 404/81/3 (17 September 1493).
9.
CPR Henry VII
I (1485–94), pp. 401, 407–8; M. M. Condon, ‘An Anachronism with Intent? Henry VII’s Council Ordinance of 1491/2’, in R. A. Griffiths and J. Sherborne, eds,
Kings and Nobles
(Gloucester, 1986), 228–53.
10.
CPR Henry VII
I (1485–94), pp. 434, 438–9, 441, 453; F. Hepburn, ‘Arthur, Prince of Wales and Training for Kingship’, in
The Historian
55 (1997), 4–9.
11. TNA: E 404/81/3, warrants dated 17 September 1493 and 13 March 1494;
LP Hen. VII
I, 391, 393;
Great Chronicle
, 254.
12. TNA: E 101/414/8, fos. 11, 32, 43; E 101/413/11, fo. 31.
13.
Memorials
, 58–60.
14. TNA: E 404/81/3, warrant dated 13 March 1494; E 404/82, warrants dated 12 April 1496, 29 July 1497 and 15 March 1498.
15. TNA: E 101/414/8, fo. 27;
PPE Elizabeth of York
, 88, 99.
16. TNA: E 404/82, warrant dated 26 October 1495;
Queens of
England
II, 439; J. Stow,
A Survey of London
, ed. C. L. Kingsford, 2 vols (1971) II, 109.
17. The ‘Beaufort Hours’, 278, gives the date as ‘xv. kl Apr … 1495’, that is 18 March 1496 as the compiler of the calendar in the ‘Hours’ follows the usual practice of starting the new year on 25 March; TNA: E 101/81/4 (3 February 1495), E 101/82 (23 March 1497).