The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracy, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant (29 page)

The king’s medicines included fomentations, glisters, plasters and sponges for the stomach and anus and eyebright water for bathing the eyes. The bewildering array of balms and potions, listed in dog Latin, yield few clues to the modern pharmacist about what Henry was prescribed to ease his sufferings, apart from the increasing use of the phrase
ut patet
, which implies that the prescription or formula was a new one and that it had been copied into a book, available for inspection by court officials.
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His physicians were becoming desperate and were willing to try anything new in the hope of keeping Henry alive. It was not just his legs that were sapping his stamina and casting a cloud of depression over him – the king was suffering from something far more insidious. The symptoms today seem clear enough: that huge royal bulk was probably a victim of an endocrine abnormality called Cushing’s syndrome,
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a rare affliction that still affects ten to fifteen people per million of today’s population.

The symptoms of untreated Cushing’s syndrome vary, but most sufferers have gross obesity in the body’s trunk, increased fat around their necks and sometimes a buffalo hump to the back. The face becomes distressingly swollen with substantial fat deposits on the lower half beneath the eyes, creating the so-called ‘moon face’ characteristic of the condition. The victim’s skin becomes fragile and thin, not only
bruising easily but also exhibiting slow, poor healing of wounds or lesions. It also takes on a deepening in pigmentation. The sufferer’s bones are weakened and any exercise, even something as simple as standing up from a chair, causes severe backaches, even fractures of the ribs. The muscles around the hips become wasted. Blood pressure is increased, as are blood sugar levels. There may be mild diabetes as a side effect, causing frequent thirst. Irritability, depression, anxiety, insomnia and sudden mood swings become commonplace in around twenty per cent of cases. The sufferer also becomes psychotic, exhibiting a paranoia that drives a deep suspicion of everything and everyone around them. Sometimes they become emotionally detached from their loved ones, or from those close to them. The victim, afflicted with recurrent headaches and chronic fatigue, is quarrelsome and frequently unnaturally aggressive. Men suffer reduced fertility and their desire for sex disappears entirely.

Of course, after the passage of nearly five centuries, no diagnosis on the basis of purely anecdotal reports from his courtiers and inquisitive foreign ambassadors can be 100 per cent certain; only in the unlikely event of a forensic examination of Henry’s bones could a more decisive conclusion be derived. Even then, most signs and symptoms of the syndrome are to be found in the body’s soft tissues, which would have long ago disappeared. All these symptoms, however, fit very well the descriptions that have come down to us of Henry’s condition in the last four or five years of his life. He did have gross obesity in his trunk and lower face; he did suffer prolonged periods of melancholy and severe headaches. He was psychotic, displaying irrational anger and aggression. He was sometimes detached from those he was fond of – as demonstrated by the death warrants he signed for Cranmer and Queen Katherine Parr. He did experience mood swings and sudden changes of mind – such as his subsequent decisions to inform them of the threats they faced. He even had the hump on his back, as suggested by the illustration of him in his
Psalter
. Add the agony of his ulcerated legs to the debilitation of the disease and you have a king suffering an exhausting purgatory of pain on earth.

Abnormally excessive levels of the hormone cortisol, secreted by the adrenal glands (located above the kidneys) over long periods of time, cause the disease. The hormone’s normal purpose is to help maintain blood pressure and cardiovascular functions and to reduce the body’s immune system’s inflammatory response. It balances the effects of insulin in breaking down sugar for energy and regulates the metabolism of proteins, fats and carbohydrates. It also helps to reduce stress.

Today, Cushing’s syndrome is treated by hormone-inhibiting drugs or, more drastically, chemotherapy or radiation treatment. In some cases, surgery may have to be performed to remove adrenal tumours. None of these recourses were available to Henry’s physicians, Doctors Wendy, Cromer and Owen, or to his apothecary Thomas Alsop, with the very basic medical science available to them in the mid-sixteenth century.

Thus we have before us the image of a remorselessly cruel monarch, totally ruthless in his hold on the reins of power; careless of the lives of his friends and subjects; always determined to get his own way; and rapacious in the accumulation of wealth, almost always at the expense of others. He was a psychotic, paranoid bully, perilously enjoying absolute authority. But if he did suffer from Cushing’s syndrome, perhaps somewhere even in the coldest of hearts we may find a few shreds of sympathy for the old ogre.

Henry’s life was patently drawing to an end and the thoughts and schemes of those around him became ever more focused on the future governance of the realm of England after his death.

The reformist party now held complete sway at court and some of the remainder of the Council were scrambling to realign to their new loyalties. Hertford and Dudley, reported van der Delft in December 1546,

have entirely obtained the favour and authority of the king.

A proof of this is, that nothing is now done at court without their intervention and the meetings of the Council are mostly held in the earl of Hertford’s house.

It is even asserted here that the custody of the prince and the
government of the realm will be entrusted to them and the misfortunes that have befallen the house of Norfolk may well have come from the same quarter.
¹⁰

Henry had returned to Westminster via his huge new Palace of Nonsuch near Ewell, Surrey, towards the end of December, still suffering from ‘some grief of his leg’ and the fever that it had caused. By now, he could hardly walk more than a few steps by himself.
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Van der Delft wrote on Christmas Eve:

The king is so unwell that considering his age and corpulence, fears are entertained that he will be unable to survive further attacks, such as he recently suffered at Windsor. God preserve him! If he should succumb there is but slight hope of the change for the better.
¹²

The Council deferred the ambassador’s planned interview with Henry ‘for two or three days on the pretext that they were very busy, but said they would send me word when they could see me’. The queen was banished to Greenwich Palace for Christmas. Van der Delft thought it was ‘an innovation for them to be separated during the festivities’.

The king himself must have suspected that the hour of his death was approaching. Henry wanted his queen out of the way whilst he made arrangements for the government of his young son. He had already been irritated by Katherine’s attempts to counsel him on religious reform; he did not want her to claim the regency of England until Edward came of age. On the evening of 26 December, he summoned his now most favoured courtiers and officials – Hertford, Dudley, Paget and Denny – to his bedchamber. He ordered Sir Anthony Denny to fetch the latest copy of his will, drawn up in early 1544 before he went off to the French wars. The wrong one was produced, an error quickly spotted by the king when Paget began to read its terms: ‘That is not it, there is another of a later making, written with the hand of Lord Wriothesley, being secretary,’ came the sharp words from the heavily pillowed great bed. The correct one was eventually brought to his bedside
and Henry wanted to make some changes to the list of executors, some ‘he meant to have in and some he meant to have out’. Paget was ordered to make the amendments, to ‘put in some that were not named before and to put out the Bishop of Winchester … a wilful man, not meet to be about his son, nor trouble his [Privy] Council any more’.
¹³

Gardiner, then, was still firmly in disgrace. Henry also had the name of Thomas Thirlby, Bishop of Westminster,
¹⁴
deleted because ‘he was schooled by the Bishop of Winchester’.
¹⁵
The next day, the king was said to be feeling better and planned an interview with the French ambassador Odet de Selve, who had been insisting on seeing him.
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That respite was short, however. On 9 January 1547, van der Delft reported that his access to Henry was still denied ‘owing to his indisposition’.
¹⁷

Several days later, Gardiner’s ally Sir Anthony Browne
¹⁸
knelt down by the side of the king’s bed and hesitantly suggested that the bishop’s name had been omitted by mistake from the will:

My lord of Winchester, I think by negligence is left out of your majesty’s will, who hath done your highness most painful, long and notable service and one without whom the rest shall not be able to overcome your great and weighty affairs committed unto them.

Henry, feeble and weak though he now was, and probably lapsing in and out of a pained sleep, snapped:

Hold your peace! I remembered him well enough and of good purpose have left him out.

For surely, if he were in my testament and one of you, he would encumber you all and you would never rule him, he is so troublesome a nature.

Marry, I myself could use him and rule him to all manner of purposes, as it seemed good to me – but so shall you never do.
¹⁹

When Browne tried to raise the issue again, the king angrily told him: ‘If you do not cease to trouble me, by the faith of God, I will surely despatch you out of my will also.’ Gardiner’s last ally was effectively silenced.

Paget had completed writing the new will
²⁰
by 30 December and, significantly, delivered it to Hertford. In the document, Henry expressed the hope that his final testament would be acceptable to ‘God, Christ and the whole company of heaven and satisfactory to all godly brethren on earth’. Reference to his sins, unsurprisingly for God’s deputy on earth, is pretty thin, merely that he repents ‘his old life’ and talks of his resolve never to return to its ways. In truth, he now had neither the time left to him, nor the strength, for any such wicked actions. The king, however, humbly bequeathed his soul to God, whose Son ‘left here with us in his Church Militant, the consecration and administration of his precious Body and Blood’. With predictable self-confidence, he desired the Blessed Virgin and the holy company of Heaven to pray for him while he lived and at his passing that he might ‘the sooner attain everlasting life’.

After instructions for his burial at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, alongside Queen Jane Seymour and for the pious embellishment of the tombs there of Henry VI and Edward IV, he directed that 1,000 marks
²¹
be paid in alms to the poor (though not to ‘common beggars, as much as may be avoided’) with injunctions for them to pray for his soul. The chantry chapel was to be endowed with lands worth £600 annually
²²
to pay for two priests to say Mass at the altar attached to his tomb and to keep four solemn obits every year, when £10 should be distributed to the poor. The thirteen Poor Knights of Windsor – a long-established charity for old soldiers – were each to be given 12d a day and a new gown of white cloth every year, together with the annual sum of £3 6s 8d.
²³

The meat of the will comes in the following section. The crown and the realms of England, Ireland and the title of France followed the Act of Succession of 1544.
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These would go directly to Prince Edward and any lawful heirs of his body and, in default, to Henry’s daughter Mary and her heirs, ‘upon condition that she shall not marry without the written and sealed consent of a majority’ of Edward’s surviving Privy Council. In the event of her childless death, the crown would pass to Elizabeth with a similar condition as to marriage. Finally, if none of this was applicable or went unfulfilled, the succession would be settled on the
heirs of Lady Frances, eldest daughter of Henry’s late sister, Mary, or to the fifth in line, Lady Frances’ sister, Lady Eleanor.

Together with the crown, Edward was left all Henry’s plate, ‘household stuff’, artillery and other ordnance, ships, money and jewels – a very substantial legacy indeed, valued at an estimated £1,200,000
²⁵
in the prices of the day, or nearly £325 million in 2004. Henry’s inventory of military equipment was also considerable: a total of 2,250 artillery pieces were located in the crown’s fortresses around the realm’s coastline and borders and a further 600 guns and 6,500 handguns were held at the Tower of London. The navy, which Henry had so patiently (and expensively) built up, now numbered seventy ships, displacing a total of 11,620 tons,
²⁶
a formidable fighting force and the forerunners of Elizabeth’s warships that defeated the mighty Spanish Armada four decades later.

Henry appointed sixteen executors to oversee his will: Archbishop Cranmer; Lord Chancellor Wriothesley; Lord St John (Lord Steward of the Royal Household); Hertford (then Great Chamberlain of England); Lord Russell (Lord Privy Seal); John Dudley, Viscount Lisle (Lord Great Admiral); Cuthbert Tunstall (Bishop of Durham); Sir Anthony Browne (Master of the King’s Horse); Sir Edward Montague (Chief Judge of the Common Pleas); Sir Thomas Bromley (Puisne Justice of the King’s Bench); Sir Edward North (Chancellor of Augmentations); Sir William Paget (Chief Secretary); Sir Anthony Denny and Sir William Herbert (Chief Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber); Sir Edward Wotton (Treasurer of Calais); and his brother Dr Nicholas Wotton (Dean of York and ambassador to France).

Debts – and Henry knew of none – were to be their first duty to settle after his burial. All grants and payments that he had made or promised but not undertaken were to be honoured generously. But, ever jealous of the Tudors’ dynastic wealth, he firmly instructed his executors not ‘to presume to meddle with our treasure’.

More importantly, these members of the ‘great and good’ were to form the new Privy Council that would operate the regency until Edward completed his eighteenth year. Knowing well the proclivity for dissension amongst his advisers, the king firmly stipulated: ‘None of them shall
do anything appointed by this will alone but only with the written consent of the majority.’