THIRTY-ONE
‘HIS FAME SHALL STRIKE THE STARRES’
Maurice of Nassau had no daughter to offer, although his nephew, Frederick of the Palatine, was to marry Elizabeth. Maurice courted the prince in order to keep Henry firmly in the Calvinist camp. In March 1612, Maurice introduced one of his own engineers, Captain Abraham van Nyevelt, to St James’s. Van Nyevelt was of that generation of brilliant military engineers to emerge from the Protestant side in the Dutch-Spanish war.
Maurice told Henry the captain was writing a book on fortifications and wanted to dedicate it to him. Henry accepted the man and his book. For Van Nyevelt to appear just now meant Sir Edward Cecil must have briefed Maurice about the prince’s desire to modernise Henry VIII’s garrison forts. The prince had Waymouth’s recent plan of the fortress at Jülich, Coryate’s account of Schenkenschanz and the drawings of the Venetian fort of Palma, ‘the finest in the world as far as fortification goes’, said Henry. His own theoretical knowledge was extensive. He commissioned Van Nyevelt to make ‘patterns’ for England’s new fortifications.
As well as putting forward his thoughts on defence plans and marriage proposals, Henry was deeply embroiled in renovation schemes for his royal palaces, particularly Richmond, as he strove to create the right settings in which to display his prestigious collections of art, coins, gems, antiquities, books, maps, plans and drawings, and scientific instruments, and showcase his court. He had already created a new gallery at St James’s, where he displayed the fine collection of Renaissance bronzes given to him by the Grand Duke of Tuscany.
Sir Edward Cecil wrote from Utrecht to say he had the chance of getting a superb army in miniature for Henry. The models had been created by a soldier called Edward Helwis, who served under King Henry VIII at Boulogne. Maurice of Nassau used these ‘engines’ to plan and review some of his greatest battles, said Sir Edward. They were perfect for ‘the very practise of everything either defensive or offensive’. However, the present owner wanted £1,000 for it, a huge sum.
The imprimatur of Henry VIII’s and Maurice’s connection to this army sold it to Henry. Crates and crates of models arrived. Toy army as it was, the models were quite a size, including ‘15 pieces of brass ordnance, each 22 inches long’, ‘one model of a beacon’, ‘one model of a bridge’, ‘an engine for driving piles’, ‘one scaling ladder’, ‘17 boards with foot companies’, ‘16 small boards with carriages’, ‘one table with a camp of horse and 3 pavillions’, ‘one table with 3 boats, on a cart 2 carriages for mortar pieces; one sledge’.
Henry gathered his military salon and set out ‘battles of Head-men appointed both on horse and foot’, on huge tables, ‘whereby he might, in a manner, view the right ordering of a battle, how every troop did aid and assist another, as also the placing of the Light Horsemen, Vauntguard, main battle, with the assisting wings, and rearwards, & c’. At St James’s he could practise being Maurice, until he took on his mantle, and like Henry VIII before him, be an English king leading his troops into continental Europe.
The salon then repaired to the tiltyard or the riding school to improve the skills Henry’s war games showed them they needed, by ‘tilting, charging on horseback with pistols, after the manner of the wars, with all other the like inventions’. Before, during and after, the men reconvened as Henry delighted to ‘confer both with his own [people] and other strangers, and great captains, of all manner of wars, battles, furniture, arms by sea and land, disciplines, orders, marches, alarms, watches, stratagems, ambuscades, approaches, scalings, fortifications, incampments’ and so on. He ordered ‘new pieces of ordnance to be made’, and spent time ‘learning to shoot, and level them right to the Whist: No less provident was he to have great horses, and those of the best, which were sent to him from all Countries.’
Michael Drayton demanded that ‘Britain’ look at ‘Henry, thy best hope, and the world’s delight’:
Ordained to make thy eight great Henries nine …
Thus in soft peace, thus in tempestuous warres,
Till from his foot, his Fame shall strike the Starres.
Henry rewarded the poet with an annuity of £10 a year.
Isaac Oliver painted a miniature of Henry, in profile, dressed as a Roman general with breastplate and a scarlet toga. The profile pose in classical garment gave a timeless, dislocated feel to the image, as Henry gazes forward at his destiny, somewhere beyond the range of ordinary mortals. It created him as a being set apart, while the red toga connected him to the classical world and his fabulous collection of classical gems, coins, medals and miniatures. In another he was painted in one of his suits of armour, with an army camp in the background that seems to be peopled with both Roman and contemporary soldiers.
In reality, rising eighteen, he was a little over medium height for the day. Five foot eight inches tall, he was broad-shouldered and, while not fat, ‘his habit [was] rather full’. His hair had now darkened to the auburn Stuart hair of his father and grandmother, Mary, Queen of Scots. When he spoke, he spoke slowly, deliberately – so slowly in fact he may have had some speech impediment. His father had a speech disorder and his brother Charles stammered badly. Henry used ‘otftimes say of himself that he had the most unserviceable tongue of any man living’. Yet he welcomed those wits at his tables whose words tumbled from their mouths like acrobats. Though not a rapid-fire banterer, Henry spoke to the point and with certainty. His measured delivery suggested forethought, not mental incapacity; he had been educated to concentrate for hours.
Francis Bacon thought Henry’s bearing and movements showed real grace, ‘his countenance composed, and the motion of his eyes rather sedate than powerful’. The young man had poise. Hawkins, Henry’s bedchamberer, agreed. His master had ‘a close disposition, not easy to be known or pried into’.
Presenting your poker face to the world was admired as a strength in itself. The stern face gave nothing away. Too much grinning and laughing dented one’s virtue. It looked ingratiating. The neo-Stoic court at St James’s praised rectitude. Henry’s self-mastery inferred the authority to exert mastery over others. ‘His forehead bore marks of severity and his mouth had a touch of pride.’ Yet, ‘beyond those outworks’, those catching Henry’s interest with ‘due attention and seasonable discourse … found him gentle and easy to deal with; so that he seemed quite another man in conversation than his aspect promised’. Guarded in public, but a good man to know in private, did not seem a bad way for the prince to strike people at this stage of his life.