Margaret Beaufort: Mother of the Tudor Dynasty (25 page)
Mem. how that the like commission that my lady the king’s grandam had was tried and approved greatly to the king’s disadvantage in stopping of many lawful processes and course of h laws at Westminster Hall; and also his subjects thereby susteined great losses, mischances, charges and vexations thereby, and none gains commonly by any such commission but the clerks which for their proper lucres doth upon every light surmise make out processes, etc.
Margaret was given the power to hear matters and set up her own courts. This accords with the decision of the University of Cambridge to ask for her judgement in its dispute with the townsmen and, again, is evidence of Margaret’s semi-regal powers. Margaret also wrote a letter to her son from Calais in around 1501. Calais was the last English possession on the Continent, and Henry had visited it in 1500 with Elizabeth of York. Although no details of Margaret’s visit survive, it may be that she went there specifically on her son’s business or in order to provide, once again, a royal presence for the town.
By the last few years of Henry VII’s life, his health was visibly failing. As early as 1498, the Spanish ambassador commented that ‘the king looks old for his years, but young for the sorrowful life he has led’. The chronicler Edward Hall commented that the King was prematurely aged due to the domestic strife he had faced. A postscript to Henry’s letter to Margaret in July 1504, which was written around the time of Lord Stanley’s death, also shows that his health was failing:
Madam, I have encumbered you now with this my long writings, but, methinks, that I can do no less, considering that is so seldom that I do write, wherefore, I beseech you to pardon me, for verily, Madam, my sight is nothing so perfect as it has been; and I know well it will impair daily; wherefore, I trust that you will not be displeased though I write not so often with my own hand, for on my faith, I have been three days or [before] I could make an end of this letter.
The news that Henry’s eyesight was deteriorating must have been deeply worrying for his mother, and she was one of the few people he confided in. In the spring of 1507, he fell dangerously ill, and whilst he recovered, he was again unwell early the following year. By July 1508, he appears to have been suffering from consumption. Henry’s ill health and his melancholy had increased with the loss first of his eldest son and then his wife, and he came increasingly to rely on his mother and his surviving son. As early as 1504, the Spanish ambassador commented in a letter to Isabella of Castile that
the Prince of Wales is with the king. Formerly the king did not like to take the Prince of Wales with him, in order not to interrupt his studies. It is quite wonderful how much the king likes the Prince of Wales. He has good reason to do so, for the Prince deserves all love. But it is not only for love that the king takes the Prince with him, he wishes to improve him. Certainly there could be no better school in the world than the society of such a father as Henry VII. He is so wise and so attentive to everything; nothing escapes his attention. There is no doubt that the Prince has an excellent governor and steward in his father. If he lives ten years longer he will leave the Prince furnished with good habits, and with immense riches, and in as happy circumstances as man can be.
Henry VII was a fond father, and his motives for keeping his only surviving son with him may have been that he was lonely. Both he and Margaret were also deeply afraid for the future of their dynasty and knew that its survival rested only on the life of one boy. To this end, Henry made attempts to remarry in the last few years of his life, apparently first considering his daughter-in-law, Catherine of Aragon, who was conveniently still living in London. He later considered Catherine’s cousin, the Queen of Naples, before discounting her due to her lack of wealth. As late as 1507, he induced Catherine of Aragon to write to her father in favour of his suit to marry her widowed sister, who had succeeded their mother as Queen of Castile. This also came to nothing, and Henry was still unmarried when he fell ill again in March 1509.
Henry was at Richmond when he suffered his final collapse. As soon as Margaret heard the news, she moved her household to Coldharbour in order to be close to him and visit him daily. In 1509, Henry was only in his early fifties, but it soon became clear that he was dying. For a woman as religious as Margaret, she must have had mixed feelings on the death of her only child, and whilst she was certainly devastated, she was consoled to some extent by the fact that the King was determined to make a good end. According to
Hall’s Chronicle
, as his health grew worse, Henry, ‘desiring to exhibite some gratuitie to his people that he might be had in memory after disease [decease]’, ordered that a general pardon be granted to all prisoners, save those that had been convicted of murder or theft. He also paid the fees of all prisoners in London and some of the debts of the city. Henry lingered for some days, and likely to Margaret’s gratification, public processions were held in a number of parishes in order to pray for his restoration to health.
Henry VII was a pious man, in spite of his reputation for covetousness, and John Fisher, making a sermon in his memory, confirmed that he made a good end:
The sacrament of the auter he receyved at Mydlent, and agayne upon Easterday, with so grete reverence that all that were present were astonyed therat; for at his first entre in to the closet where the sacrament was, he toke of his bonet, and kneled downe upon his knees, and so crept forth devoutly tyl he came unto the place selfe where he receyved the sacrament. Two dayes nexte before his departynge, he was of that feblenes that he myght not receyve it agayn; yet nevertheless he desyred to se the monstraunt wherin it was conteyned. The good fader, his confessor, in goodly maner as was convenyent, brought it unto hym; he with suche reverence, with so many knockynges and betynges of his brest, with so quyche and lyfely a countenance, with so desyrous an harte, made his humble obeysaunce therunto; with so grete humblenes and devocyon kyssed, not the selfe place where the blessed body of our lorde was conteyned, but the lowest parte of the fote of the monstraunt, that all that stode aboute hym scarsly myght conteyn them from teres and wepynge.
Margaret may have been one of those who witnessed the King’s piety and wept. She certainly heard all the details of her son’s last hours, even if she was not actually present. On the day of his death, Henry asked to hear Mass, and on seeing the crucifix, he ‘dyd beholde with grete reverency, lyftynge up his heed as he myght, holdyng up his handes before it, and often embrasynge it in his armes, and with grete devocion kyssynge it, and betynge often his brest’. Henry’s thoughts remained with his mother until the end, as, when he made his Will on the last day of March, he appointed her as the first named, and thus the chief, of his executors. To his mother’s devastation, he died on 21 April 1509.
It is not recorded whether Margaret was with her only child when he died, but she may have been. She was certainly a regular visitor to his deathbed. For Margaret, the loss was greater than any she had previously suffered. In ill-health herself, she knew that she had only to live long enough to see her grandson, Henry VIII, securely established on the throne before she too could die content in the knowledge that she had helped to preserve the dynasty that she and her son had founded. For Margaret, Henry’s death was the cruellest turn of Fortune’s Wheel, from which she never recovered.
MY LADY, THE KING’S GRANDMOTHER: 23 APRIL-29 JUNE 1509
With Henry VII’s death, Margaret was the only adult member of the immediate royal family living in England. Henry’s heir, Prince Henry, was immediately proclaimed king as Henry VIII. He did not reach his eighteenth birthday until 28 June 1509 and, although at seventeen, was widely considered old enough to rule, he was legally, at least, still a minor on his accession.
There is no doubt that Margaret, who had devoted most of her life to her child, was devastated at his death. By making her the chief of his executors, Henry VII showed his mother the faith he had in her. He left strict instructions for his executors in his Will, in particular regarding his burial, in which he asked to be buried in the new chapel he had built at Westminster Abbey beside the body of Elizabeth of York. Margaret took her responsibilities as Henry’s executor seriously, and she signed warrants for his funeral. She also personally requested that John Fisher preach a sermon in memory of her son at St Paul’s Cathedral on 10 May 1509 and was so pleased with the result that she ordered it to be printed, so that the text of the sermon, in which Henry’s piety and charitable nature were especially extolled, would be known to as wide an audience as possible.
Although she played a role in the organisation of Henry’s funeral, the bulk of the work was left to others. Margaret had made her Will on 6 June 1508, which suggests that she was in such ill health that she considered herself close to death. She evidently rallied, but at the beginning of 1509, she was again so ill that estimates for her funeral expenses were drawn up. She recovered but, from that date, delegated a number of affairs, allowing John Fisher and two other men who were named as executors in her Will to sign her cofferer’s accounts in her place, for example. Margaret’s ascetic lifestyle did not help her health, and Fisher recorded in his sermon dedicated to her after her death that she continued to fast on the days prescribed by the Church even though ‘for aege and feebleness albeit she were not bounde’. Her one concession to her ill health appears to have been that she would only wear her penitential hair shirts and girdles during weeks when she was ‘in helthe’. Otherwise, her strict religious observance continued unchanged, and for a considerable time before her death, her hours at prayer meant that ‘her knelynge was to her paynful, and so paynful that many tymes it caused in her backe payne and dysease’. Whilst she was able to physically leave her bed, she continued with her severe routine.
In the weeks following Henry’s death, Margaret’s health began more rapidly to fail, and it is likely that grief played a part. According to Fisher, it was soon apparent to everyone that she was dying, but like the Biblical Martha before her, she refused to complain of her suffering:
And in lyke maner, the soul of this noble Prynces, which had the Body adjoyned unto it in favour and love, as Syster and Brother, it myghte complayn for the dethe of the body, sythe every part of the same body had ben so occupyed in the servyce of God before. Her eyes in wepynges and teares, sometyme of devocyon, sometyme of repentance; her eares herynge the worde of God and the Devyne Servyce, which dayly was kept in her Chappel with grete nombre of Preests, Clerckes, and Chyldren, to her grete charge and cost; her tongue occupyed in Prayer moche parte of the daye; her legges and fete in vysytynge the Aulters and other holy places, going her statyons customably whan she were not let; her handes in gyvynge almes to the poore and nedye, and dressynge them also whan they were syke, and mynystrynge unto them mete and drynke. These mercyfull and lyberall hands to endure the moost paynful cramps, so greveously vexynge her and compellynge her to crye, O Blessyd Jhesu helpe me! O blessyd Lady socoure me! It was a mater of grete pyte. Lyke a spere [spear] it perced the hertes of all her true servants that was about her, and made them crye alsoe of Jhesu for helpe and socoure, with grete haboundence of teares.
Margaret was very aware in the spring of 1509 that her body was rapidly beginning to disintegrate, and again according to Fisher, she lived in fear of losing her sight, her hearing or the use of her legs, ‘which thynges sholde have ben mater to her of grete discomforte’. With Henry’s death, Margaret finally lost her strong will to live, although she knew that, in order to ensure the safety of her dynasty, she still had one more secular act to perform.
The accession of Margaret’s grandson, Henry VIII, was widely welcomed in England, and he was viewed by many as the likely bringer of a new and prosperous future to England. Henry VII had been a capable king, leaving the crown solvent at his death, something that had not been the case for a considerable time. He was never beloved by his people, however. His son, Henry VIII, on the other hand, resembled more his handsome Yorkist forebears than his father and grandmother, and he was welcomed by many in England as a king that they could be proud of. An Italian visitor to Henry VIII’s court in 1515 recorded a description of the King that would have been similar to how he appeared on his accession. Henry was athletic and ‘above the usual height, with an extremely fine calf to his leg, his complexion was fair and bright, with auburn hair combed straight and short, in the French fashion, and a round face so very beautiful, that it would become a pretty woman, his throat being rather long and thick’. In a Europe that was, in 1509, ruled mainly by old men, Henry was a star. Lord Mountjoy, who notified the scholar Erasmus of Henry’s accession, voiced the hopes of many when he wrote,
I have no fear, my Erasmus, but when you heard that our Prince, now Henry the Eighth, whom we may well call our Octavius, had succeeded to his father’s throne, all your melancholy left you at once. For what may you not promise yourself from a Prince, with whose extraordinary and almost divine character you are well acquainted, and to whom you are not only known but intimate, having received from him (as few others have) a letter traced with his own fingers? But when you know what a hero he now shows himself, how wisely he behaves, what a lover he is of justice and goodness, what affection he bears to the learned, I will venture to swear that you will need no wings to make you fly to behold this new and auspicious star. Oh my Erasmus, if you could see how all the world here is rejoicing in the possession of so great a Prince, how his life is all their desire, you could not contain your tears for joy. The heavens laugh, the earth exults, all things are full of milk, of honey and nectar!