XXII

God save his noble grace,

And grant him a place

Endless to dwell

With the devil of hell!

It took some time for the king and his court to return to normal after the disgrace and execution of Catherine Howard. For months the dejected king remained isolated and withdrawn, nursing his bad leg, listening to his harper and talking to his fool Will Somers. By the summer of 1542, though, he was coming out of his depression and seeking female company. His taste for “carousels and pageants,” and for “paying court to ladies” returned, and Mary was among the first to enjoy his attentions. In September he was “entertaining and feasting her beyond measure,” showering her with jewels, and asking her to come to court to take the place of a queen in entertaining the ladies he meant to invite for the holidays.¹ Hampton Court was renovated for the Christmas festivities, and workmen labored day and night to prepare apartments for Mary and the many women who would attend her. On December 21 Mary rode through the city “in triumphal manner,” and was received at Hampton Court gate by nearly all the courtiers and by the king himself, who “spoke to her in the most gracious and amiable words that a father could address to his daughter.”²

The king’s high spirits and enthusiastic cultivation of Mary continued throughout Christmas and New Year’s, and on into the early months of 1543. Amid the feasting and dancing he sought Mary out and “addressed her in the most endearing terms,” while giving her costly rings, chains and silver plate; among his gifts of jewelry were two large rubies “of inestimable value.” Mary was the gracious center of the lively court, overseeing the receiving and lodging of the courtiers and visiting guests and leaving her father free to “rejoice himself.”

Both the king and his daughter suddenly found themselves in unaccustomed roles: he a widower in need of a daughter to be his hostess, and she a twenty-seven-year-old spinster eager to be needed by an effusively affectionate father. Their relationship was cordial rather than intimate, and the old wounds he had given her would never heal, but in this interval between wives Henry was genuinely glad of Mary’s company, and he let her know it. If he behaved more like a suitor than a father, substituting gallantry, charming speeches and gifts for friendship and sincere affection, it was only that he had never learned to be a father to any of his children, and it was far too late for Mary to teach him.

It was being said that the primary object of the round of entertainments at court was to give the king a chance to choose a new wife. To Anne of Cleves, however, it seemed as if her hour had come again. Ever since Catherine Howard’s fall Anne had been hoping that Henry might take her back, and had recently come to live near Hampton Court in that expectation. The ambassador of Cleves, an obscure figure who lived in one room over a tavern with a single servant and was rarely seen at court, was rumored to be working for Anne’s restoration as queen, probably to offset stories of her ill treatment then circulating in the German courts. It was rumored that after her divorce Anne was kept in England against her will, cruelly bound in a dungeon. A woman claiming to be Anne, newly escaped from captivity, appeared at the court of the prince of Coburg, and it was some time before her imposture was discovered. In March of 1543 Anne herself was allowed to visit the court, perhaps to plead her own case. Henry saw her only once during her stay, though, and she spent her time with Mary instead.³ In fact Henry was paying more and more attention to Catherine Parr, a young widow of “lively and pleasing appearance” who not only liked to dance and provide convivial company but shared his taste for learning and Erasmian theology as well.

When he was not in her company, or visiting Mary in her chamber-something he now did two or three times a day—Henry was inspecting the coastal fortifications and choosing the sites or new ports for his warships. France and the empire had gone to war the previous summer, and in February Henry and the emperor became allied against the French. By June Henry was sending thousands of foot soldiers to the continent and putting more ships in the Channel, and war with the French was imminent.

The rapprochement between Charles and Henry had a good deal to do with Mary’s current high standing at court. As usual she kept herself well informed about continental affairs, and passed on to Chapuys anything she overheard that might be of use to the imperial side. Since the outbreak of war she had been sending to the ambassador for news ofCharles and Mary, regent of Flanders, and she toid Chapuys often “how displeased and sorry she was at the troubles and annoyances by which both were surrounded.” Her concern for the regent was especially great. “There is nothing in this world,” Chapuys wrote, “that the princess herself would not sacrifice and throw away for the sake of relieving the perilous situation of the queen’s affairs.”⁴ Beyond praying incessant prayers for their health and prosperity Mary did all she could to help in more practical ways. She kept herself informed about the activities of the French ambassador at court and in the Privy Council, and regularly reported to Chapuys what the king was saying about the French.⁵

Henry was enjoying himself thoroughly in these months, gearing himself and his forces for war, keeping his enemies and allies alike guessing what his real intentions were and uncertain about how well he guessed theirs. He amused himself with banqueting and entertainments, and surrounded himself with beautiful women, one of whom he had begun to woo in earnest. At fifty-two he was bald and paunchy, and the quantities of game, fowl, breads and sweets which he devoured at every meal had long since begun to make him mountainously fat. Armor made for him two years earlier measured fifty-four inches around the waist, and he was growing stouter every year. He was still vigorous, riding for hours, putting in long days of travel and walking across the fields when the condition of his legs allowed. He “crept to the cross” on Good Friday on his knees—a practice which, with typical inconsistency, he condemned at the very end of his life as romish and superstitious—and sometimes served at mass. He rode up and down the coast and through the countryside of Kent and Surrey, checking the fortresses and the warning beacons to be lit on the hillsides in case of invasion. He still kept as large a stable as ever, with eighty-eight coursers, stallions and geldings besides seventeen carriage and sumpter horses for his personal use.⁶ But though he continued to be a formidable hunter the game now had to be brought to him; on his progress in 1541 beasts of the northern forests were driven by the hundreds into vast enclosures where the king and his companions were waiting to slaughter them. Hawking replaced the chase as his principal sport, and he kept more fewterers and hawks than ever in his last years. He still loved to go “with his noblemen to the park to shoot the popinjay” and, when in a merry mood, he still “used himself more like a good fellow than a king.” But as he aged his dark moods were fearful, and they were made worse by his phobias and physical complaints.

Henry’s horror of the sweating sickness was now obsessive. When the sweat broke out in the summer of 1543 he gave strict orders that no one who had passed through the infected area of London could come within seven miles of his person. He tried to forestall sickness, and mischance in general, by consulting astrologers and hiring alchemists, and on at least oneoccasion hazarded the deep waters of the occult when a “stranger of Per-pignan” was paid to show the king “quintessences.” But the older he got the more his ailments multipled. The bills from his apothecary lay bare his afflictions. He was dosed with eyebright, stomach and liver plasters, rhubarb pills and “a fomentation for the piles.” He had a stomach bag of red sarcenet to ease indigestion, and took endless varieties of medicinal powders, oils and waters.⁷ As always Henry acted as his own apothecary as well, dosing himself and those around him, making up plasters to heal swelling in the ankles, ointments “to take away itch,” and an intriguing potion for Anne of Cleves “to mollify and resolve, comfort and cease pain of cold and windy causes.”⁸ Even his hawks and hounds were treated with horehound water, licorice and sugar candy.

What hampered and tormented the king most were his swollen legs, now so corrupted and sore that they kept him bedridden at times. One leg had to be kept elevated on a stool. The medical evidence indicates that the king’s condition started either as a varicose ulcer or a chronic septic infection of the thighbone. Treated with barbarous inefficacy and abused by constant overactivity for many years, the infection spread to both legs and led to severe complications.⁹ In 1538 a clot worked loose from one of the fistulas and became lodged in his lungs. He nearly suffocated; he couldn’t speak, went “black in the face,” and was obviously in great danger. The clot dissolved, but the infection continued to flare up time after time, and the compounds he mixed most frequently for himself were those intended to heal ulcers and “excoriations in the legs.” One plaster “to heal ulcers without pain” was made in part from powdered pearls.¹⁰

In July of 1543 this hulk of decaying manhood, limping on his throbbing leg, announced that he was about to marry his sixth wife. Catherine Parr was perhaps his best choice since Katherine of Aragon. She was thirty-one and had been twice widowed, and the king felt certain that she was free of the flaws that had destroyed his last two marriages. Unlike Anne of Cleves, Catherine would hold no sour mysteries in store for him in the bedchamber, and she was unlikely to indulge in the girlish indiscretions of Catherine Howard. In appearance Catherine Parr was quite ordinary, and if her portraits show perspicacity they reveal almost no charm. She was an intellectual, a woman of considerable common sense and earnest piety, a good companion and a sympathetic nurse. She was not ambitious, and—much to her credit—she was not afraid to marry a man who had doomed four of her predecessors either to the divorce court or to the block.

The wedding was arranged with impulsive haste. There was no time for the publishing of the banns, and Cranmer was called in to license the ceremony to take place without them. Then on July 12 the king, hisbride and the witnesses gathered in the queen’s privy closet at Hampton Court. Mary and Elizabeth were there, and many of the privy councilors. Anne of Cleves, understandably, was not invited though she made her views about the marriage clear to all who would talk to her. She was humiliated and hurt that Henry should marry Catherine, who in her opinion “was by no means so handsome as she herself is,” and whose barrenness during her two previous marriages seemed to confirm the general opinion that she would have no children by the king. But Anne’s views were little heeded. Henry was satisfied with the son he had, and the Seymours, Prince Edward’s uncles, were much in evidence at court. Jane Seymour’s brother Edward, now earl of Hertford and fast becoming the dominant figure in the Council, attended the wedding with his wife, though his brother Thomas was absent. Thomas Seymour, an extremely handsome man who had won Catherine Parr’s love and would have married her if the king’s preference had not supervened, saw to it that he was away on official business when the king married his sweetheart.

When all the witnesses were present Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, began the ceremony. He first asked whether anyone present knew of any impediment to the marriage—an ironic question in Henry’s case—and then turned to the king and asked him to recite his vows. Taking Catherine’s hand, Henry repeated them, “with a joyous look,” and then Catherine spoke hers. After the giving of the ring, the traditional offering of gold and silver, and the benediction, the witnesses signed the notarial document registering the proceedings and then gave hearty congratulations to the royal couple.¹¹ This marriage, as it turned out, would survive the king’s worsening temper, the factional struggles within his Council, the rumors of new favorites, and even an attempt to accuse the queen of heresy. Catherine Parr was to be Henry’s last wife.

Mary was so solidly in her father’s favor at this time that he insisted she go along on his honeymoon. Henry, Catherine, Mary and their suite started out to spend the summer visiting the king’s favorite hunting parks but before they had gone far Mary became sick and had to turn back. She spent the next months recuperating in the company of Elizabeth and Edward, and looking after her own servants, many of whom were more ill than she was. Her chamber woman Bess Cressy had to be boarded and cared for in a private house, as did Jane the Fool. Mary paid for their care, and looked after her gentleman usher Randal Dodd when he too was bedridden. By February of 1544, though, Mary had rejoined the court, and with a new standing.

Recognizing that he might not live much longer, and that even if he did the chances of his having more children were slim, Henry decided to restore to Mary and Elizabeth their succession rights. If Edward diedwithout heirs, Mary was to become queen, and Elizabeth was to be next in line if Mary had no children. Mary’s readmission to the succession, a change of momentous importance to her future, was accomplished with little fanfare. It was made to seem a natural result of Henry’s newfound rapport with his older daughter, and of the closer family feeling Catherine was working to create among the king and all his children. They had never before been brought together to live with him on a more or less permanent basis; now the new queen not only made a home for them at court but set about to make the royal nursery a training ground for the humane rulers the king’s children might someday be. She set them a personal example of serious, studious interest in the life of the mind, and brought in the humanist John Cheke to train them in the classics and in the felicitous if overly elaborate style of speaking and writing at which they all excelled.

As learned women Mary and her new stepmother shared a special bond. They belonged to that growing company of noblewomen that the scholar Nicholas Udall described as “given to the study of devout science and of strange tongues.” Catherine’s treatise The Prayers stirring the Mind unto Heavenly Meditations appeared two years after she became queen, and among her other projects was a translation of Erasmus’ Paraphrases on the Four Gospels. Udall served as editor of the book, and Mary was one of the translators; the queen financed its publication.

A Spanish visitor to Henry’s court in 1544, just before Mary’s twenty-eighth birthday, left a description of his meeting with the queen and princess in the queen’s apartments. He was the duke de Najera, a soldier in the service of the Emperor Charles, who on his way back to Spain came to pay his respects to the English king. The duke wanted to see at first hand this amazing prince, who, he noted, had ordered more executions of those who opposed his opinions than any other ruler “Christian or infidel.”

Arriving at Greenwich the Spaniard was escorted through three large halls hung with tapestry. The first was empty, the second held two long rows of halberdiers of the king’s bodyguard in red livery, and the third, the presence chamber, was full of sumptuously dressed nobles, gentlemen and knights. All of these courtiers paid reverence to an empty chair of estate whose customary occupant was nowhere to be seen. The king never did come into the presence chamber—because he feared assassination, the duke conjectured—but in time the Spaniard and two of his companions were summoned into Henry’s inner chamber. After an audience of half an hour the visitor was taken to the queen’s apartments, where he found Catherine, Mary and Henry’s niece Margaret Douglas flanked by dozens of gentlewomen and other attendants. Although Catherine was “a little indisposed” she wanted to dance “for the honor of the company,” and,taking as her partner her brother William Parr, she led a measure “very gracefully.” Then Mary, Margaret Douglas and the others danced, and a Venetian of the royal household danced some galliards with the spectacular agility the king had displayed twenty years earlier. After several hours of this pastime the duke took his leave. He kissed the queen’s hand and turned to kiss Mary’s, but she offered her lips instead—a gracious familiarity usually reserved for relatives or those of equal rank. In all he found both the queen and princess to be agreeable in their looks, dress and manners, and the impression left by his account is of an orderly court, centered on an increasingly inactive king yet enlivened and ornamented by two distinguished and accomplished women. Catherine was only four years older than Mary, and if as Chapuys noted she “did her all the favor she could,” it was more as a friend than as a stepmother.¹²

The calm, harmonious atmosphere the duke de Najera observed at court filled Mary’s life as a whole during her father’s final years. Apart from occasional periods of illness, including an episode of what Chapuys called “colic,” she lived the uneventful life of a royal favorite, haunted as ever by the seeming impossibility of marriage but outwardly content within the intimate circle of her women and household staff. She was an advocate for present and former servants in their lawsuits and property settlements. She saw her officials Charles Morley and John Conway well set up with rents and lands, and when her gentleman usher of the chamber, Robert Chichester, married Agnes Philip she arranged for the couple to receive lands and a manor in Suffolk by a royal patent. For her favored gentlewoman Susan Clarencieux she obtained first an annuity of thirteen pounds a year and later the manor of Chevenhall.

Mary’s contacts outside the court widened during these years. A Spanish nobleman wrote to ask her about an impostor who was traveling through England on the strength of a forged letter of recommendation in the nobleman’s name. An Aragonese noblewoman who heard of Mary’s fondness for Spanish gloves sent her ten pairs, with a letter. And Princess Mary, daughter of King Emanuel of Portugal, wrote to say she had heard so much about Mary’s “virtue and learning” that she hoped they might exchange letters and literary works from time to time. Whenever a messenger was available, she assured Mary, she would try to write again.¹³

Mary’s answers to these correspondents were brief and formal. Often she dictated them to be written by others, when the headaches or illness or exhaustion of which she complained made it impossible for her to write herself. Despite the opportunities that now presented themselves for contacts of a more expansive kind Mary preferred to turn her energies inward, above all toward her father. She stood beside him at christenings; she was in his sickroom when he took to his bed. Like Catherine she thought a good deal about his comfort and about how to please him.In the fall of 1543 she ordered work to begin on the most unusual New Year’s gift he would ever receive. She had a joiner build him an enormous chair, big enough to accommodate his girth, and had it upholstered in fine cloth. She hired a French embroiderer, Guillaume Brellont, to decorate it, and paid eighteen pounds for his elaborate designs and skilled craftsmanship.¹⁴ Next to his chair of state, Henry must have valued Mary’s gift as much as he did his golden walking stick or the stool on which he set his tortured leg.

In the spring of 1544 Henry rose above the limitations of his age, bulk and afflictions to lead his army to war against the French. It was agreed that he and his ally Charles would each equip more than forty thousand men and bring them to Calais and the Champagne frontier, respectively. Then Charles’ men would advance through Champagne along the Marne to Paris, while Henry’s forces would make their way south through Artois to meet them there. When he heard that Charles was to lead his army himself Henry made up his mind to do the same. He was still the envious, fiercely competitive monarch he had been a quarter of a century earlier. He considered it “a part of honor to do what the emperor does,” Chapuys wrote, and he begrudged Charles his slight advantage in age and his long experience in campaigning.

Henry’s advisers were dismayed at his decision. Even in the comfort of his palace his “chronic disease and great obesity” required “particular care.” How could he survive in a military camp, living in an unheated tent, eating and drinking rough food, vulnerable to extremes of weather and to all the hazards of warfare besides? Even if he survived these rigors, and the fatigue they brought, how could he ride into battle when he was reported to be “so weak on his legs that he could hardly stand?”¹⁵Everyone around Henry tried to dissuade him from going, both for the sake of his health and because he promised to present the worst kind of liability to the armies in the field. His commanders, Norfolk and Suffolk, threw up their hands; the emperor sent two envoys to urge him to change his plans, but without success. The only way out seemed to be for Charles to hand over command to one of his generals and retire from the campaign himself, allowing Henry to back out without dishonor. But this solution would impugn the emperor’s vigor and ability, and was unthinkable.

In confident disregard of the fears of everyone connected with the venture Henry continued his preparations for war. Some years earlier he had ordered cast the largest guns ever made in England; now he hired two foreign gunsmiths, Peter Bawd and Peter van Colin, to make mortars and shells. Ten warships, with the flagship the Great Harry, were loaded with the cast-iron pieces and other guns, hackbuts, pikes, baggagewagons and horse harness. Each ship carried hundreds of men, their horses, and much of their food. The beer brewers were told to keep a certain number of vessels loaded with filled casks, ready to sail with the fleet when the call came. To assure a plentiful supply of bread, the other staple of the army on the march, Henry ordered mills for grinding grain to be mounted on wagons, and constructed in such a way that they ground as the wheels of the wagon turned. There were portable ovens too, to be carried on wagons behind the mills.

Finally in June the “king’s great army on the sea” moved out into the Channel, augmented by long oared vessels of Henry’s own design whose deadly guns were placed for maximum advantage against the French galleys. The main force under Norfolk and Suffolk crossed first; Henry followed. He had decided to split his forces into three contingents, leaving the most burdensome objectives to his two commanders. Norfolk, with a singularly ill-equipped army, would besiege Montreuil; Suffolk, with an army that included two hundred seasoned Spanish troops under Beltrá n de la Cueva, was sent to take Boulogne. Henry would skirmish with the French in the vicinity of his headquarters at Calais.

He rode out of the city, “armed at all pieces” and mounted on a great courser, on July 25. Mounted drummers, fifers and trumpeters preceded him, and behind him a knight carried his headpiece and spear. The violent thunderstorm that drenched the camp that night left him undaunted. He rode and marched like a young man during the following days, and made the thirty-mile journey from Calais to Boulogne in a single hard day of riding. He spent long hours in the fields, looking over the lay of the ground and planning where to put his troops and guns. He even found time and energy to keep a journal. To the amazement of his men, his captains and the diplomats who watched his every move this arduous life seemed to rejuvenate Henry. After weeks of campaigning he appeared to be in better health than when he started out, and more determined than ever to remain in personal command. All his life, he told the imperial agent De Courrieres, he had been “a prince of honor and virtue, who never contravened his word.” He was “too old to begin now, as the white hairs in his beard testified.” His weeks of effort were rewarded when with the help of de Cueva Suffolk took Boulogne in mid-September. The king entered the city in triumph, reliving his victorious conquest of Thérouanne thirty years before, and stayed on for a week to celebrate his success.

Then, forgetting everything but that he had spent a season marching and maneuvering on French soil, that he had besieged a city and proven wrong those who said he was too feeble to fight again, Henry returned home. The emperor, for reasons of his own, had already made peace with the French. The campaign ended badly, with Norfolk struggling to keepcommand of his mutinous soldiers and Suffolk abandoning Boulogne when he heard that a French army was about to attack. In the end there was little to show for the staggering cost of the expedition, but Henry, at least, had kept his honor and proved his remarkable stamina.

Two years later he was dying. In the fall of 1546 his ulcerated leg gave rise to a fever which, though he tried to shake it off by exercising, hunting and meeting with ambassadors as usual, persisted. By December he thought it prudent to make his will.

His last months had been filled with intrigue, as the men around him prepared for the transfer of power they knew could not be delayed for long. Along with John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, who had become Lord Great Master of the household, Edward Seymour was the controlling presence in the Privy Council. Both the bishop of Winchester and the powerful duke of Norfolk had been ousted from their positions of influence, and as the king slowly lost ground to his fever Norfolk lay in the Tower under sentence of death.

Mary was untouched by these shifts of power. Henry continued to show her every sign of favor, showering her with so many jewels that the French were saying she might rule when Henry died and not the nine-year-old Edward. One of the last entries in the king’s household accounts is the purchase of a horse for Mary, a “white grey gelding.” Catherine Parr was less fortunate. An attempt was made to remove her on the grounds that she held heretical opinions, and the king signed the bill of articles drawn up against her. Catherine fainted from fear when she found out what was being planned, but when she asked Henry to pardon her religious fervor and forgive any erroneous views she innocently held he pardoned her, and protected her when the chancellor Wriothesley came to make the arrest.

The legend of Henry’s amorous disposition remained with him to the end, and it was rumored that Catherine might be put aside not for her supposed heresy but for another woman. Charles Brandon’s beautiful fourth wife, Katherine, was the object of these speculations. Brandon’s death in 1545 left her a widow, and it was said that the king was showing her “great favor” in her bereavement. The rumors were persistent enough to annoy Catherine considerably, and as far away as Antwerp merchants were wagering “that the king’s majesty would have another wife.”¹⁶ Henry and his matrimonial changes had become a fixture of European political life, and it seemed as if both would go on forever.

The king grew dramatically worse in January of 1547. Very early in the morning of January 28 he died. News of his death was kept from everyone but the Council members for three days. In the banquet hall his meals were brought in to the sound of trumpets as usual, and envoys who requested audiences with him were told that he was overwhelmed withbusiness or indisposed. Finally the announcement came that he was dead, and his will was read out in Parliament. Henry lay in state in the chapel of Whitehall for twelve days, surrounded by candles and mourners, and at the Leadenhall and St. Michael’s churchyard in Cornhill a dole of one groat apiece was given to some twenty thousand paupers of the city.¹⁷Next to the coffin was a lifelike waxwork figure of the king, dressed in costly robes covered with jewels. An Italian traveler who left a description of the scene counted nearly five hundred gems on the effigy.

The funeral procession that followed the corpse to Windsor was four miles long. The wax figure too rode in its own chariot, drawn by eight horses trapped in black velvet and attended by pages in black livery.¹⁸According to the terms of Henry’s will he was to be buried with Jane under a monument in the chapel at Windsor. His design for the monument called for a large base with statues of himself and Jane, the latter in repose, “sweetly sleeping.” At the corners of the tomb he wanted the sculptor to carve children, seated, throwing down jasper, cornelian and agate roses from baskets they held in their hands. The monument was begun but never finished. Henry’s long coffin was buried in Jane’s tomb, under the floor of the chapel, in the center of the choir. After it was lowered into place his household officials took their staves of office, broke them over their heads, and threw them into the grave.

At the news of Henry’s death the French king panicked. He had long since come to believe that his life and Henry’s were mystically linked; if Henry died he would soon follow him. Francis tried to throw off his apprehension by exhausting himself in his hunting park, but he caught a fever and died two months after his lifelong rival of England.¹⁹

The ambassadors who had reviled, feared, mistrusted and yet admired Henry now outdid one another in formulating expansive tributes to his greatness. They called him “a mirror of wisdom for all the world,” and lamented his passing with the sincerity of men seasoned in professional deceit. “He is a wonderful man and has wonderful people about him,” a French envoy had written several years earlier, yet the same man conceded that Henry was “the most dangerous and cruel man in the world.”

Henry VIII ended his reign as a dark enigma, and it was as such that he entered popular folklore. In the 1540s the English swore “by the king’s life” as if it were sacred, but after Henry’s death they gave his name to the devil. Along with “Old Nick” and “Old Scratch,” “Old Harry” became synonymous with the Evil One in the north of England, among the men and women of York and Lincoln who cursed his memory.