The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracy, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant (39 page)

71
LP, Vol. XVI, p.466.

72
Wriothesley, Vol. I, p.73.

73
LP, Vol. XVI, p.608.

74
A story recounted by a London merchant in a letter to Germany after Culpeper’s execution. See ‘Original Letters’, Vol. I, pp.226–7.

75
The rack was named after the fifteenth-century duke who introduced this method of extracting information into England during the reign of Henry VI. It was also known as ‘the brake’.

76
LP, Vol. XVI, p.620.

77
LP, Vol. XVI, p.616.

78
LP, Vol. XVI, p.649.

79
LP, Vol. XVI, p.611.

80
Scarisbrook, p.430.

81
LP, Vol. XVI, pp.665–6.

82
Smith, ‘A Tudor Tragedy’, pp.178 ff.

83
LP, Vol. XVI, pp.670–2.

84
LP, Vol. XVI, p.610.

85
Ibid.

86
Ibid.

87
Burnet, Vol. II, p.cccxci.

88
Ominously, he was also vice-chamberlain to Anne Boleyn at the time of her disgrace.

89
LP, Vol. XVI, p.610.

90
Wriothesley, Vol. I, pp.130–1.

91
LP, Vol. XVI, p.620.

92
LP, Vol. XVI, p.628.

93
LP, Vol. XVI, p.613.

94
LP, Vol. XVII, p.44.

95
LP, Vol. XVI, p.534.

96
LP, Vol. XVI, p.628.

97
LP, Vol. XVI, p.646. The pre-contract would have rendered any children she had with Henry illegitimate.

98
Smith, ‘A Tudor Tragedy’, pp.166–7.

99
Their heads were set on spikes on one of the turrets of London Bridge and were still there in 1546 when they were seen by the Greek traveller Nicander Nucius. See Revd J. A. Cramer (ed.),
The Second Book of Travels
, Camden Society, London, 1841, p.48: ‘The skulls are even at this time to be seen, denuded of flesh,’ he observed. See also Wriothesley, Vol. I, p.32. Culpeper was buried in St Sepulchre’s Church, Newgate, near the Old Bailey.

100
LP, Vol. XVI, p.677.

101
Concealment of knowledge of treason or treasonable intent.

102
LP Spanish, Vol. VI, pt.i, p.409.

103
33 Henry VIII cap.21.

104
Lehmberg, pp.146–7.

105
LP Spanish, Vol. VI, pt.i, p.472.

106
Ibid.

107
Ibid.

108
Passed on 4 February. 33 Henry VIII cap.21.

109
Seven attended, absentees being the Duke of Suffolk, who was ‘indisposed’, and,
significantly, the Duke of Norfolk. Norfolk’s son, the Earl of Surrey, was, however, amongst the crowd of noble spectators.

110
LP Spanish, Vol. VI, pt.i, p.473.

111
Strickland, Vol. III, pp.84–5. They were reprimanded for their indelicate words. See also LP, Vol. XVI, p.655.

112
LP Spanish, Vol. VI, pt.i, p.409.

113
LP, Vol. XVI, pp.678–9, and SP, Vol. I, p.716.

114
Mary of Guise.

115
LP Spanish, Vol. VI, pt.ii, p.31.

116
Twenty-four Scottish guns were captured in the battle. Seventeen ‘Scottish guns of brass’ of various types were listed at the Tower of London in the inventory of Henry’s possessions made after his death. See Starkey, ‘Inventory’, p.102.

117
LP Spanish, Vol. VI, pt.ii, p.223.

118
LP Spanish, Vol. VI, pt.ii, p.224.

119
Her orthodox Catholic stepfather Lord Lisle, who had spent twenty months imprisoned in the Tower, had just been released and pardoned. He died shortly afterwards. His wife had gone mad in his absence. See Ridley,
Henry VIII
, p.363.

120
Herbert had the reputation of being a rough, rowdy soldier. In 1533, he was involved in a brawl and the murder of John Thomas, ‘one honest man’, in Newport, South Wales. See LP, Vol. VI, p.670. On 23 February 1533, while George ap Morgan was ‘uncoupling his hound … Herbert struck him in the arm [and] into the body so that he would have been in great danger had he not got into a house to save himself’. Four days later, Herbert, with ‘an inordinate company’, made a second assault on ap Morgan. During the mêlée, Thomas was murdered.

121
John Weever,
Ancient Funerall Monuments
, London, 1631, p.371. Sir William Dugdale, in his
History of St Paul’s Cathedral
, 2nd ed., London, 1716, p.48, records Latimer’s tomb as having been destroyed during the reign of Edward VI or Elizabeth. Probably it was a monumental brass.

122
It is also possible that she had been pregnant during one of her previous marriages. See James, ‘Kateryn Parr’, p.113.

123
An estimate based on the length of her coffin discovered in the ruins of the chapel of Sudeley Castle in 1782. See Nash, p.2.

124
LP, Vol. XV, p.243.

125
Dent-Brocklehurst Papers, D2579, Gloucester Record Office.

126
LP, Vol. XVIII, pt.i. p.418.

127
NA E 30/1,472/6.

128
This was an élite force of, initially, fifty mounted troops called ‘the spears’, founded in December 1539 by Cromwell and normally drawn from good families. They were responsible for the king’s personal security and with typical Tudor parsimony were expected to provide their own weapons – the ‘noble’ pole-axe and a sword. Their strength was later
expanded to 150. On Sir Anthony Browne’s death in 1548, the Marquis of Northampton became captain.

129
Meaning yielding, polite and gentle.

130
LP, Vol. XVIII, pt.i, p.483.

131
See Flugel, p.277.

132
LP, Vol. XVIII, pt.ii, p.18.

133
LP Spanish, Vol. VI, pt.ii, p.436.

134
The plague was so bad in London that the law courts were moved to St Albans in Hertfordshire for the Michaelmas Term. See Hall, p.859.

135
LP, Vol. XVIII, pt.i, p.498.

136
LP Spanish, Vol. VI, pt.ii, p.447.

137
‘Spanish Chronicle’, p.108.

138
LP Spanish, Vol. VI, pt.ii, p.447.

139
BL Add. MS 46, 348, fol.206. Inventory of jewels and plate of Henry VIII.

140
BL Add. MS 46, 348, fol.168b

141
Ibid.

142
BL Add. MS 46, 348, fol.169a.

143
Listed in Starkey, ‘Inventory’, pp.77–80.

144
James, ‘Kateryn Parr’, p.24.

1
‘Imp’ is used in the sense of ‘outcome’. See Tanner, p.49, fn.

2
Burnet, Vol. II, p.lxxxvi.

3
Kaulek, pp.350–4, and LP, Vol. XVI, p.598.

4
Modern historians have rejected this version of a delicate child. See Hester Chapman,
The Last Tudor King: A Study of Edward VI
, Bath, 1958, and Loach,
Edward VI
.

5
Kaulek, p.302, and LP, Vol. XVI, p.396.

6
LP, Vol. XVI, p.598.

7
Kaulek, pp.408–10.

8
Cited by Loach,
Edward VI
, p.11.

9
Wriothesley, Vol. I, pp.66–7.

10
Margaret, Marchioness of Dorset, was due to have the honour of carrying the prince at the ceremony. She wrote to the king thanking him for her appointment to ‘bear my lord prince’ but apologising for being ‘banished from court by the sickness here [at Croydon]’. Clearly, that sickness – it was the plague – put paid to her role. See LP, Vol. XII, pt.ii, p.317.

Gertrude, a devout Catholic, was imprisoned in the Tower in 1538 and attainted in July the following year. Her husband Henry was beheaded as an aspirant to the crown on 9 December 1538.

11
Great care was taken to guard the royal baby from dangerous draughts. Temporary barriers, draped with rich hangings, were erected along the route of the procession where there were no protective walls.

12
Strype, ‘Ecclesiastic Memorials’, Vol. II, pt.i, p.4.

13
The robe was still displayed at Hampton Court in 1600. See Thurley, ‘Hampton Court’, p.69.

14
The number attending was severely restricted by the household because of the risk of infection from the plague then raging in the City of London and the suburbs. The proclamation limiting the size of the nobility’s entourages warns of the king’s ‘most high indignation and displeasure’ for any breach of the stipulated numbers. The text of the proclamation is at BL Harleian MS 442, fol.149.

15
Strype, ‘Ecclesiastic Memorials’, Vol. II, pt.i, p.6.

16
On the day of the christening, Mary received £100 from Mr Heneage of the king’s Privy Chamber, probably to recompense her for expenditure on her gift.

17
LP, Vol. XII, pt.ii, p.319. See also BL Add. MS 45,716 A, fols.112–15, and BL Egerton MS 985, fol.33, for sixteenth-century accounts of the ceremonial for the christening.

18
They had been firm friends since Brandon was appointed an esquire of the body to Henry in 1509.

19
The debate continues as to whether or not Edward was born by caesarean section. No contemporary source mentions any such operation, let alone the conversation reported by Nicholas Sanders in 1581 that Henry, asked by his doctors whether the mother or child should be saved, chose the boy because he ‘could easily provide himself with other wives’. (See R. L. de Molen, ‘The Birth of Edward VI and the Death of Queen Jane: Arguments for and Against Caesarean Section’ in
Renaissance Studies
, 4 (1990), pp.359–91.) The story’s veracity is undermined by the sex of the child being known before birth, which would have been impossible in the sixteenth century. Indeed, Jane is believed to have come through the birth relatively well: John Husee (Lisle’s agent in London) wrote to Lord Lisle expressing the hope that the king would have many more sons (see ‘Lisle Letters’, Vol. IV, p.425). Loach (
Edward VI
, p.5) believes delivery by caesarean cannot totally be eliminated but that it ‘seems very implausible’.

20
BL Cotton MS Nero C x, fol.1. The document was sealed rather than signed.

21
The word ‘tyrant’ is used advisedly. Henry was the head of, in modern terms, a totalitarian state. Only the previous July, he had admonished the Justices of the Peace in Cornwall for their laxness in prosecutions, threatening to correct the ‘lewdness of the offenders’ himself. He especially instructed the JPs to search out all those ‘who in spite of the usurped powers of Rome having been with great travail and labour expelled from the kingdom, retain their old fond fantasies and superstitions, muttering in corners as they dare’. They also had to arrest all spreaders of rumours against the king and the state of the realm; punish all vagabonds and valiant beggars; and have ‘special regard’ that no man be involved in unlawful games, but instead should ‘apply himself to use the longbow, as the
laws require’. Religion, propaganda, law and order and defence were Henry’s concerns in this missive. See BL Stowe MS 142, fol.14.

22
Rebuilt in 1886 after the fire in Chapel Court.

23
A sweet liqueur wine from Smyrna, flavoured with aromatic spices and then filtered.

24
LP, Vol. XII, pt.ii, p.325.

25
LP, Vol. XII, pt.ii, p.342.

26
LP, Vol. XII, pt.ii, p.339. Signed: ‘[Your] sorrowful friend T Norfolk.’

27
LP, Vol. XII, pt.ii, p.348, and SP, Vol. VIII, p.1. Cromwell had received a report from Thomas Rutland and five other doctors regarding Jane’s ‘extreme illness’ dated 17 October. See BL Cotton MS Nero C x, fol.2.

28
LP, Vol. XII, pt.ii, p.339.

29
LP, Vol. XII, pt.ii, p.360.

30
BL Cotton MS Vitellius C i, fol.65B.

31
LP, Vol. XIII, pt.ii, pp.360 and 505.

32
Simon Thurley, ‘Henry VIII and the Building of Hampton Court: A Reconstruction of the Tudor Palace’,
Architectural History
, 31 (1988), pp.1–58.

33
Thurley, ‘Hampton Court’, pp.68–9.

34
BL Cotton MS Vitellius C i, fol.65. A modern copy. The original draft had corrections and additions in Cromwell’s hand. Sir John Cornwallis died at Ashridge, while the prince was in residence there, in 1544. Sir William Sidney succeeded him as steward and Sir Richard Page became chamberlain.

35
Neville Williams, p.165.

36
LP, Vol. XVI, pp.179 and 699. Joan was the wife of Peter Mewtes, a member of Henry’s Privy Chamber and Controller of the Mint.

37
LP, Vol. XIII, pt.ii, p.120.

38
LP, Vol. XIII, pt.ii, p.373.

39
In comparison, the Civil List spending by Queen Elizabeth II in 2002–3 (the latest figures available at the time of writing) amounted to £8,153,000. This represents the contribution by the taxpayer in funding the queen’s royal duties and the costs of her official household.

40
LP, Vol. XII, pt.ii, p.348.

41
They were still receiving pensions of £10 each in 1553, at the end of Edward’s reign.

42
LP, Vol. XIII, pt.i, p.474.

43
LP, Vol. XIII, pt.i, p.372.

44
BL Royal MS Appendix 89, fol.41.