The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracy, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant (37 page)

Within two years, Edward was dead. Despite a plea in the minutes drafted for his will by his secretary, Sir William Petre, that ‘the King, my father’s tomb to be made up’, nothing was done. Modena’s carving skills were diverted into the urgent task of making a wax effigy of Edward VI to lie atop his coffin.
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Even the chantry priests intended to pray for Henry and Jane Seymour’s souls were denied by Edward’s government’s Protestant policies after just one year.
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His half-sister Mary, on her accession to the throne, also nurtured the good intention to complete her father’s tomb, but reportedly ‘dared not for fear a Catholic should seem to countenance the memory of one dying in schism with the Church of Rome’.
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She therefore took no action. Or did she? There is an intriguing account that one of her Privy Councillors, Sir Francis Englefield, had witnessed the opening of the vault by Henry’s arch-enemy Cardinal Reginald Pole,
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now Mary’s Archbishop of Canterbury. According to the account, the king’s body was
removed and ignominiously consigned to the flames – on her orders.
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Whether this was Catholic propaganda, or merely wishful thinking, remains a matter of conjecture. But, as we will see, Henry’s body remained safely in his grave.

Five years after Elizabeth became queen, her conscience must have prodded her about the king’s tomb. Her Lord Treasurer William Paulet, Marquis of Winchester, wrote to Sir William Cecil from Chelsea about Henry’s monument, listing the parts still needed to complete it
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after a through survey had been made of the components still lying at Westminster and Windsor.
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These included three bronze figures, each 4.5 ft. in height, two pillars, eight friezes, twenty-five small statues intended to stand on the pillars and four metal doors, or gates, to the enclosure.

More[over] there doth lack a number of small things [such] as leaves, small dragons and lions and other small beasts with diverse and sundry things, the which is overmuch to trouble your Lordship with …

However, it confirms that Henry’s effigy was finished, weighing eight hundredweight
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in gilt-bronze of the total twenty hundredweight
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of metal already used in the tomb.

Paulet was clearly drawing up a revised design for the queen to approve, based on the completed components and incorporating new pillars. With an eye on economy, the Lord Treasurer trusted that Elizabeth would like the design, to avoid seeking an expensive ‘workman’ or sculptor from Europe to draw up another version.

She did not like it. Two years later, in 1565, Richard Rowlands
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had prepared new plans and a model of the tomb, at a cost of £13 6s 8d.
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Lewis Stockett, Surveyor of the Queen’s Works, transported the remaining parts from Westminster to Windsor and work started again on completion of the monument in the centre of the eastern chapel at St George’s. There was still more discussion about its final design, however, and more plans were sent to Cecil by Paulet in 1567 – the debate was no doubt motivated by the pressing need to save money.
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In 1573–4, the Dutch Protestant refugee sculptor Cornelius Cure was called in to
make yet another plan of the monument at a cost of £4 and Rowlands was also paid for carving figures, presumably for the pedestals.
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Elizabeth was being finicky and had in her mind a grand plan for the erection of a sumptuous tomb for her half-brother as well.
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But after Paulet’s death in 1572, other pressing issues of state distracted Elizabeth and all idea of these dynastic monuments disappeared from her mind and those of her advisers. The stock of white marble purchased for these tombs and stored in Scotland Yard was later used up by Cure, by 1586–7, for other more prosaic purposes, such as the great fountain at Hampton Court.
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A German cleric, Canon Paul Hentzner, visited St George’s in 1598 and saw the partially completed tomb in ‘the quire or appendage of this chapel’. He counted

about eight great pillars of brass: nearer the tomb, four made in the form of candlesticks. The tomb itself is of white and black marble. All which things, it is reported, are being reserved for the burial of Queen Elizabeth. The expenses already made in this matter are reckoned at over £60,000.
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Disputes followed between the government and the Dean and Chapter of St George’s as to who was responsible for the chapel, its keys and the unfinished tomb.
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Clearly, the structure had become a tourist attraction and whoever held the keys no doubt had access to an enviable income from visitors like Hentzner wishing entry to view the interior. A Chapter meeting in May 1613 rather sniffily declared that they had nothing to do with the chapel
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and in 1618, William Herbert, Third Earl of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlain, wrote to them, saying:

Whereas the keeping of the keys of the tombhouse by his Majesty’s free chapel of St. George in Windsor Castle where the tomb of King Henry the Eight lies has usually been in the hands or keeping of the verger of the same free chapel.

These are therefore to require you, the Dean and Canons of the same free chapel, to command those who have the keeping of
the same keys of the Tombhouse aforesaid to deliver to this bearer, John Darknall, now verger there, the said keys that he may have the keeping and custody thereof and these shall be your sufficient warrant and discharge in that behalf.
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The official injunction to allow Darknall, a gentleman, to ‘freely and quietly enjoy the said keys together with the custody of the said Tombhouse in as free and beneficial manner as he or any other of his predecessors have ever enjoyed’ had to be sternly repeated on 21 March 1626 in another missive from Whitehall.

With the arrival in power at Westminster of the Commonwealth, even the incomplete tomb of Henry VIII was not safe. It seems apparent that Parliamentary soldiers had already damaged the tomb when ‘scandalous monuments and pictures’ were removed from the churches and chapels of Eton and Windsor in accordance with a Commons ordinance of 20 December 1643. Worse was to come. The
Journal
of the House of Commons for 19 September 1645 records the appointment of a three-man committee to consider ‘a statue of brass at Windsor and its condition, and to report their opinions concerning it to the House’. That gilt-bronze statue was Henry’s effigy, still lying on its black marble sarcophagus, and the MPs’ intention was to sell it to raise much-needed cash. Their requirement was urgent and only two days later, the House resolved

that the brass statue at Windsor Castle and the images there defaced and the other broken pieces of brass be forthwith sold to the best advantage of the State and that the committee formerly appointed do take care of the sale thereof.

On 7 April 1646, the Commons decided that they would be seeking a price of £400 in cash for Henry’s effigy, which would be paid to ‘Colonel [Christopher] Whichcot, governor of Windsor Castle, to be by him employed for the pay of that garrison’.
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The Lords agreed with the plan three days later, and both Houses resolved that the purchasers of the metal from Henry’s tomb should ‘have the liberty to transport them
beyond the seas for making their best advantage of them’. A keen buyer must have been found who wanted to export the despoiled metal. Probably more than the required sum had been offered, perhaps as much as £600.
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Four candlesticks from the tomb, bearing Henry’s royal arms supported by dragons and greyhounds, found their way to the Cathedral of St Bavo in the city of Ghent, Belgium, apparently presented by Anthony Triest, Bishop of Ghent from 1622 to 1657.
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They remain there today.
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Of the great gilt-bronze effigy of the king there is now tragically no trace, but there seems every reason to suppose that his sarcophagus and its base remained in position for another 150 years.

After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II and his Attorney-General were keen to repair the monument and recover some of the lost statues and there was an agreement for ‘Robert Clarke (of Blackman Street in Southwark, next door to the Woolsack) and John Gerard (brasier at the Frying Pan in Basinghall Street)’
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to undertake some work, although this is likely to have been more tidying up than restoration. The remains of the tomb are marked on a plan of St George’s Chapel published in 1672.
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But the chapel containing the monument was in a state of decay in James II’s reign and its ruinous condition continued for some decades to come. In 1749, it was stated:

Pity it is that this chapel which might be an ornament, should be suffered to run to ruin and stand a work of publick Resentment for being once employed in a service disagreeable to a Protestant people but certain it is since that Prince’s [James II] reign, it has been entirely neglected, though the care and repair of it is peculiar to the Crown, being no appendage to the Collegiate Church.
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More than a half a century later, the final act of destruction was to be wreaked on Henry’s hopes and plans for a monument reflecting his imperial status. In 1804, plans were announced for the construction of a huge new royal mausoleum or catacombs beneath the chapel and work began under the fashionable architect James Wyatt. This involved
the destruction of the chapel floor in order to construct the new vault beneath, and the last remnants of the king’s empty tomb were removed and put into storage. The black sarcophagus and its base were sent to London in 1808 for re-use in the huge monument to Lord Nelson in St Paul’s, where it remains today – commemorating its third person after Wolsey and Henry VIII.
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Henry and his beloved Jane Seymour were also not allowed to rest in peace: their unmarked burial chamber in the middle of the choir was opened up several times over the centuries.

The first occasion was during the burial of Charles I in February 1649, after his execution by Parliament outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall. Colonel Whichcot, Governor of Windsor Castle, had prepared a shallow grave on the south side of the chancel of St George’s, but Charles’ faithful courtiers wanted to bury the body in a royal vault.
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A resident of Windsor told them of the existence of Henry’s vault, which they found by stamping on the pavement and listening out for the hollow sound reverberating back. A slab was levered up with crowbars and in the gloom beneath they could see the velvet palls still covering the coffins of Henry and Jane Seymour. These ‘seemed fresh, though they had laid there above 100 years’.
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Puddifant, the sexton, was ordered to lock the chapel while Charles’ grave was prepared, but Isaac, the sexton’s man, reported

that a foot soldier had hid himself, so as he was not discovered, and being greedy of prey, crept into the vault and cut so much away of the velvet pall that covered the great body as he judged would hardly be missed and wimbled a hole through the said coffin that was largest, probably fancying that there was something well worth his adventure.

The sexton at his opening the door espied the sacrilegious person who being searched, a bone was found about him with which he said he would haft a knife.

The governor being … informed, he gave him [the sexton] his reward and the lords and others present were convinced that a real body was in the said great coffin which some before had scrupled.
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This was obviously Henry’s coffin and the soldier had stolen one of his bones.

According to manuscript notes held in the archives of St George’s Chapel, the vault was examined when the pavement was broken up for re-laying with squares of new black and white marble on 7 February 1686:

The vault … is about eight or nine feet wide, encompassed on all sides with brick and a brick arch turned over the top of it. It is about seven or eight feet deep, neither is there any passage by steps or otherwise as some do conjecture.

On the North side of it lies the body of the Lady Jane Seymour and next to her the body of King Henry VIII, both of them lying in coffins of lead and standing upon wooden trestles.

On the south side of the vault lyeth the body of King Charles the first in a coffin of lead …
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The vault was again opened at the end of the seventeenth century for the interment of the body of a stillborn child of Princess George of Denmark (later Queen Anne), whose tiny mahogany coffin was laid diagonally across the lower end of King Charles’.
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Another opening was made on 1 April 1813, in the presence of the Prince Regent, later George IV, and the Duke of Cumberland.
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After examining Charles’ coffin, they turned to those of Henry and Jane Seymour. Henry’s coffin was made of lead, enclosed in an elm shell one or two inches thick.

But this was decayed and lay in small fragments near it.

The leaden coffin appeared to have been beaten in by violence about the middle and a considerable opening of it exposed a mere skeleton of the king. Some beard remained on the chin but there was nothing to discriminate the personage contained in it.

The smaller coffin, understood to be that of queen Jane Seymour was not touched, mere curiosity not being considered by the Prince Regent, as sufficient motive for disturbing these remains.
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The witness, Sir Henry Halford, physician to both George III and his son, the Prince Regent, said the damage to Henry’s coffin could have been caused ‘by the precipitate introduction of the coffin of King Charles’ after a funeral ‘without any words or other ceremonies than the tears and sighs of the few beholders’.
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Other notes, written in 1888 when the then Prince of Wales deposited some relics of Charles I in a small casket in the vault through an 18 in.-wide hole in the floor, discount this theory. A light, lowered into the vault, disclosed that