The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracy, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant (45 page)

49
NA SP 10/6/9.

50
Damaged by Parliamentary forces in 1649.

51
An anthropoid lead coffin.

52
Nash, p.2.

53
It was carved by the sculptor John Birnie Philip (1824–74) and was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1859. The work was paid for by J. C. Dent, then owner of the castle.

54
Her obsequies were the first royal funeral solemnized according to Protestant rites.

55
Tytler, Vol. I, p.133.

56
SPD,
Edward VI, 1547–53
, p.88.

57
SPD,
Edward VI, 1547–53
, Vol. IX, p.332.

58
NA SP 10/6/10.

59
SPD,
Edward VI, 1547–53
, Vol. IX, p.340.

60
Cecil Papers 133/4/2.

61
Loach,
Edward VI
, p.163.

62
‘Montague Papers’, p.4.

63
NA SP 11/1, fols.16–17v.

64
Morant, Vol. II, pp.450–4.

65
One of the first suits to be presented to Mary after she became queen was from one of her yeomen of the guard, Philip Gerrard, who sought a review of rents. He had made a similar plea in Edward’s reign, but Gates, his captain, ‘nothing at all favouring the effects thereof, would not deliver it’. See BL Royal MS 17B xl.

66
The inventory of his possessions is in NA E 154/2/45.

67
His will is NA PCC PROB 11/32 F 37 Populwell, dated 7 September 1549.

68
Burnet, Vol. I, pt.i, p.339.

69
Clad in armour.

70
Described by Machyn, pp.97 and 100–1.

71
For an interesting discussion of the legacy of Cranmer, see MacCulloch.

72
Feuilleist, pp.xii and 73–7.

73
Southworth, p.78.

1
NA E 23/4/1.

2
LP, Vol. III, pt.i, p.2. Torrigiano was still living in the precincts of St Peter’s Westminster, Westminster Abbey. He completed Henry VII’s tomb sometime around 1515. Margaret Whinney (
Sculpture in Britain: 1530–1830
, Harmondsworth, 1964, p.4) calls it ‘
the
major Renaissance work created in England’. (An earlier design, in 1506 by Guido Mazzoni, for Henry VII’s tomb was for a gilt-bronze kneeling figure on a monument to be located at Windsor; see B. M. Meyer, ‘The First Tomb of Henry VII of England’,
Art Bulletin
, 58 (1976), pp.358–67.) Torrigiano also designed and erected a monument with a gothic-style effigy to Margaret Beaufort, Henry VIII’s grandmother, in the south aisle of the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster. See Philip Lindley, ‘Sculptural Functions and Forms in Henry VII’s Chapel’, in Tatton-Brown and Mortimer, p.268.

3
Alfred Higgins, ‘On the Work of Florentine Sculptors in England in the Early Part of the Sixteenth Century with Special Reference to the Tombs of Cardinal Wolsey and King Henry VIII’,
Archaeological Journal
, 51 (1894), p.143.

4
Archaeologia
, 16 (1812), pp.84–8.

5
Annual Report of Friends of St George’s
, 5, 1 (1970), p.35.

6
Colvin
et al
, Vol. IV, p.24.

7
£7,896,763 in 2004 cash terms.

8
Margaret Mitchell,
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute
, 34 (1971), pp.189–90.

9
London, 1623, pp.796–7. See also
Walpole Society
, 18 (1930), pp.40–1.

10
John Flaxman,
Lectures on Sculpture … as Delivered before the President and Members of the Royal Academy
, 2nd edn, London, 1838, p.47.

11
Born 1474, died
c
.1554 in Florence. He had been working on the base of the monument to the Dukes of Orléans in France in 1502.

12
Known thereafter as ‘Wolsey’s Tombhouse’. Now the Albert Memorial Chapel.

13
He died in Leicester and was buried in the Augustinian abbey there ‘before day’ on 30 November 1530. At the burial, ‘such a tempest with such a stench arose that all the torches went out and so he was thrown into the tomb and there laid’. See Foxe, ‘Acts’, Vol. IV, p.616.

14
Maiano was also responsible for ten terracotta medallions fitted to the exterior walls of Hampton Court. See Colvin
et al
, Vol. IV, pt.ii, p.25.

15
Hope, Vol. II, pp.483–6.

16
Hope, Vol. II, p.483.

17
See Higgins. A conjectural drawing of this canopy forms plate VII, facing p.172. Higgins’ drawing of the whole tomb is to be found facing p.190.

18
Higgins, p.164. Privy Purse accounts for the tomb for 1531 are reprinted in full on pp.207–19 and for 1534–5 on pp.214–15.

19
Higgins, p.164.

20
NA E 336/27. Portinari later went abroad. On 7 September 1552, the Duke of Northumberland wrote to Sir William Cecil of the high estimation in which Portinari was held at the French court. The Italian, however, was ready to return to England as he ‘is at the king’s command’ and spoke of ‘the devotion he bears … this realm’. NA SP 10/15/3, and SPD,
Edward VI 1547–53
, p.257.

21
NA E 23/4/1.

22
‘Henry the Eighth, King of England and France, Lord of Ireland. Defender of the Faith.’

23
NA E 315/256, fol.90. Allowance for expenses ‘about the tomb’, 1547. See also Biddle, p.115.

24
He was working in England as early as 1537, as there are records of payments of an annual salary of £10 a year to him and for the provision of a livery gown.

25
This was located in the area of today’s Dean’s Yard.

26
APC, n. s., Vol. III, p.347.

27
He was called ‘Fill Sack’ by his contemporaries for his propensity for accumulating wealth.

28
APC, n.s., Vol. III, p.380. On p.347 are details of a warrant, dated 9 July 1551, to Sir Raffe Sadler for eight yards of damask to make a gown for Modena, four yards of velvet for a coat and three yards of satin to make him a doublet.

29
Archaeologia
, 39 (1863), p.37.

30
A deputation of Edward’s councillors, led by Richard Rich, met Princess Mary at the end of August 1551 and told her that the young king wished to ‘forbid her chaplains to say mass or any other unlawful service’. A defiant Mary replied that ‘she would rather die on the block than use any services other than those in use at her father’s death’ and that she would obey Edward’s instructions on religion ‘only when he was old enough to judge’. See NA SP 10/13/35.

31
Thomas Fuller,
Church History of Britain
, London, 1655, p.254.

32
Cardinal Reginald Pole (1500–58). Nominated papal legate to England in 1537, but while he was
en route
, Henry urged Francis I to arrest him as a rebel. Pole returned safely to Rome and accepted a mission from Pope Paul III to form an alliance of Christian princes against Henry. Pole’s mother and eldest brother were executed in England on charges of treason. On Mary’s accession, he was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury in March 1556.

33
Cited by Scarisbrook, p.497, quoting the Jesuit Robert Parsons,
Certamen Ecclesiae Anglicanae
, Joseph Simons (ed.), Assen, 1965, p.273.

34
BL Lansdowne MS 6, no.31, 12 September 1563. See also Colvin
et al
, Vol. IV, p.321. Higgins has the letter wrongly addressed to Burghley.

35
BL Lansdowne MS 116, no.13.

36
406.4 kg.

37
1,016 kg.

38
Alias
Verstegen, fl. 1565–1620.

39
NA E 351/3,203.

40
NA SP 12/43, fol.73.

41
NA E 351/3,209.

42
A drawing, probably by Cure, for Edward’s tomb survives in the Bodleian Library in Gough Maps 45, 17,554, no.63. It was never built.

43
NA E 351/3,221. See also Colvin
et al
, Vol. IV, p.321.

44
Paul Hentzner,
Itinerarium, etc
., Breslau, 1617, p.148. Translated from the Latin.

45
It was, of course, a mere cenotaph as Henry’s body lay alongside that of Jane Seymour in the vault in the centre of the choir of St George’s Chapel.

46
St George’s Chapter Acts VI B:2, fol.31b.

47
St George’s Chapter Acts XI F:6. Darknall was appointed verger on 28 January 1618 and later signed a number of property transactions involving the Chapter as a witness.

48
Journal
of the House of Commons, 7 April 1646.

49
William Sanderson,
Complete History of the Life and Reign of King Charles
, London, 1658, p.888.

50
Higgins, pp.177–80. The original casting, from moulds, of the candlesticks was not well done: several patches have been inserted to cover defects. See fn. p.180.

51
There is a cast in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

52
St George’s Chapter Acts VI B:3, p.11, and Bond, p.111.

53
Elias Ashmole,
The Institution, Laws and Ceremonies of the Most Noble Order of the Garter
, London, 1672.

54
Pote, p.62.

55
Queen Victoria restored the chapel in memory of the Prince Consort. The cost of the sarcophagus and its transportation was not to exceed £1,000.

56
C. V. Wedgwood,
The Trial of Charles I
, London, 1964, p.204.

57
Anthony Wood,
Athenae Oxonienses
, Vol. II, London, 1721, p.703.

58
Ibid. The last statement about the contents of the great coffin is a reference to the story that Henry VIII’s body had been removed and destroyed in Mary I’s reign.

59
On p.362 of the hand-foliated and heavily annotated copy of Pote’s
History and Antiquities of Windsor Castle
, given to the Chapter by Dr Joseph Goodall, Provost of Eton, in 1814. It was previously owned by a G. Wingfield; the MS notes are by a Capt. Wingfield. (Pote, a Windsor bookseller, is traditionally believed to have written the
History
; this copy is signed by the true author, John Stapletoft.) The cost of the re-laying of the choir was met by William Childe, organist.

60
Pote, p.362.

61
They were seeking to prove that Charles I was buried there.

62
Halford, p.10. The wall at the west end of the vault had been partly pulled down and repaired again ‘not by regular masonry but by fragments of stones and bricks, put rudely and hastily together without cement’.

63
Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon,
History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England
, Oxford, 1807, Vol. III, pt.i, p.393.

64
Bound at the back of the copy of Halford in the Chapter Archives of St George’s Chapel, Windsor.

65
Annual Reports of the Friends of St George’s 1933–1950
, p.10.

66
St George’s Chapter Acts VI B:9, p.109.

Manuscript Sources

Add. MS 4,724 –
Orationes
or Declamations in Latin and Greek written by Edward VI, 1548–52.

Add. MS 6,059 – Astronomical calendar in Latin, owned by Sir John Cheke and later by William Cecil, First Baron Burghley.

Add. MS 27,402, fol.47 – ‘A list of such were executed in Henry VIII’s time.’

Add. MS 30,536, Vol. 1, fol.194b – Account of obsequies observed in Paris after Henry VIII’s death (in French in an eighteenth-century hand).

Add. MS 32,655, fols.98 and 100 – Letter from Francis Talbot, Lord Shrewsbury, and others to Queen Katherine Parr and the Council relating to Scottish Border issues, 14 and 18 July 1544; fol.168 – Letter from Queen Katherine Parr to the Wardens of the [Scottish] East and West Marches, 2 September 1544.

Add. MS 45,368 – Inventory of jewels and plate belonging to Henry VIII.

Add. MS 45,716 A –
Book of New Ordering of the King’s Most Honourable Household
, fols. 12–15 – Details of the ceremonial for the christening of Prince Edward, 15 October 1537.

Add. MS 46,348, fols.168b–171b – Inventory of Queen Katherine Parr’s jewels; fol.206 – Details of pet dog’s collar.

Cotton MS Galba B x, fol.8 – Letter from August de Augustini to the Duke of Norfolk reporting several audiences with Charles V, Ghent, 3 June 1531.

Cotton MS Nero C x, fol.6 – Rough draft of a letter from Queen Katherine Parr to Prince Edward, January 1546.

Cotton MS Nero C x 4, fol.3 – Prince Edward to Henry VIII, from Hatfield, 27 September 1546, and to Katherine Parr from Hertford, 10 January 1547.

Cotton MS Otho C x – Matters relating to the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Queen Anne of Cleves.

Cotton MS Titus B i, fol.94 – Letter from Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, to the Privy Council from the Tower of London.

Cotton MS Titus B i, fol.388 – Letter from the Duke of Norfolk’s wife to Thomas Cromwell, complaining of her ‘hard usage’ by him.

Cotton MS Titus B ii 25, fol.51 – Letter, 31 January 1547, from Henry Ratcliff, Earl of Sussex, to his wife, announcing the death of Henry VIII.

Cotton MS Vespasian F iii, fol.18 – Letter from Prince Edward to Queen Katherine Parr, from Hunsdon, 24 May 1546.

Cotton MS Vitellius C i, fol.65B – Instructions from Henry VIII to Sir William Sidney and Sir John Cornwallis for the arrangements of Prince Edward’s household.