The Rose both white and rede
In one Rose now doth grow;
Thus thorow every stede
Thereof the fame doth blow;
Grace the sede did sow:
England now gather flowers,
Exclude now all dolours.
The new King of England was seventeen years old and the whole country promptly went wild with delight over ‘our natural, young, lusty and courageous prince and sovereign lord, King Harry the Eighth’. Foreign diplomats sat down to write glowing reports of his magnificence and liberality, while John Skelton, the Poet Laureate, who had been the prince’s first tutor – ‘the honour of England I learned to spell’ – hurried into enthusiastic verse:
Noble Henry the eight
Thy loving sovereine lorde,
Of Kingis line moost streight,
His titille dothe recorde:
In whome dothe wele acorde
Alexis yonge of age,
Adrastus wise and sage.
Adonis of fresh colour,
Of youthe the godely flower,
Our prince of high honour,
Our paves [shield], our succour,
Our king, our emperour,
Our Priamus of Troy,
Our welth, our worldly joy.
Noble ‘Henry the eight’ certainly seemed to have every advantage. Thanks to his father’s statesmanship and careful housekeeping, he had succeeded unopposed to a secure and solvent throne – and that was something which had not happened to an English king for a long time. The second Henry Tudor was also of ‘truly royal stock’, embodying as he did the celebrated union of the red and white roses. But there was nothing of the pale, ascetic Lancastrian about Henry VIII. In him the Yorkist genes predominated and as a physical type he strongly resembled his maternal grandfather, Edward IV, who had been ‘very tall of personage, exceeding in stature almost of all others … of visage lovely, of body mighty, strong and clean-made. Howbeit in his latter days, with over-liberal diet, somewhat corpulent and burly …’
Looking at portraits of the young Henry it is not easy to equate them with modern standards of male beauty, but his contemporaries were unanimous in their opinion that Nature could not have done more for the King. ‘His Majesty’, wrote the Venetian Piero Pasqualigo, ‘is the handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on; above the usual height, with an extremely fine calf to his leg; his complexion fair and bright, with auburn hair combed straight and short in the French fashion, and a round face so very beautiful that it would become a pretty woman, his throat being rather long and thick.’ Ten years after his accession, Henry was still being described as ‘much handsomer than any other sovereign in Christendom … very fair and his whole frame admirably proportioned’.
This splendid red-headed young giant, with his round baby face and glowing pink and white skin had inherited more than good looks from his Yorkist grandfather. Edward IV had been a very popular king with the knack of making himself agreeable in all sorts of company. According to Polydore Vergil, he ‘would use himself more familiarly among private persons than the honour of his majesty required’ but Edward had known instinctively that popularity is often more valuable to a king – especially an English king – than majesty and his Tudor grandson knew it too, just as he knew how easily and cheaply it could be acquired. Henry VIII possessed the precious gift of personal magnetism which Henry VII had lacked and his charm, when he chose to exert it, was irresistible. Thomas More, an acute observer of human nature, put his finger on the secret when he wrote: ‘The King has a way of making every man feel that he is enjoying his special favour, just as the London wives pray before the image of Our Lady by the Tower till each of them believes it is smiling upon her.’
The new King had also inherited the abundant energy of his Plantagenet forbears and he made tireless use of his superb athlete’s body. He was a capital horseman, reported the Venetians, passionately addicted to hunting, who wore out eight or ten horses in a single day. He ‘jousted marvellously’, was a keen tennis player and could draw the bow with greater strength than any man in England. He loved hawking, was a good dancer and a crack shot who, at archery practice, surpassed the archers of his guard. In all the popular forms of mock combat and trials of strength – in wrestling and tilting, running at the ring and casting of the bar, in throwing a twelve foot spear and wielding a heavy, two-handed sword – the King soon proved himself more than a match for his competitors. He was, in fact, a first-rate, all-round sportsman and nothing could have been better calculated to endear him to a nation which idolized physical courage and physical prowess; which cared little for politics but a great deal for sport.
At the same time, there was more to Henry than a well co-ordinated hunk of brawn and muscle. He had a good brain and had been given a good education. He liked to display his own learning and enjoyed the company of scholars, so that the intellectuals were as excited as everyone else over the appearance of ‘this new and auspicious star’, this lover of justice and goodness. Lord Mountjoy in particular could hardly contain himself. He wrote to his protégé in Rotterdam in May 1509:
Oh my Erasmus, if you could see how all the world here is rejoicing in the possession of so great a Prince, how his life is all their desire, you could not contain your tears for joy … Our King does not desire gold or gems or precious metals, but virtue, glory, immortality. I will give you an example. The other day he wished he was more learned. I said: ‘That is not what we expect of your Grace, but that you will foster and encourage learned men.’ ‘Yes, surely’, said he, ‘for indeed without them we should scarcely exist at all.’
No more splendid saying, thought Mountjoy, could have fallen from the lips of a prince.
There really seemed no end to the gifts and graces of this marvellous youth and it is hardly surprising that a great wave of optimism should have swept the country. In the spring of 1509 many people genuinely believed that a new era, ‘called then the golden world’, was dawning and that under the beneficent rule of an apparently ideal Christian monarch the bad old days of faction, suspicion and heavy taxes would be gone for ever.
Almost the first act of the ideal Christian monarch was to get married, and after all it was the despised and neglected Spanish princess who carried off the prize. The reasons behind this startling volte-face remain a little obscure. The bridegroom’s own explanation, given in a letter to Margaret of Austria, was that his father, as he lay on his death-bed, had expressly commanded him to fulfil his obligations to the Lady Catherine and as a dutiful son he had no choice but to obey. Another account of the old King’s last hours maintains that he expressly assured his son he was free to marry whom he chose and Don Gutierre Gomez de Fuensalida, the Spanish envoy who had been sent to England on a fence-mending mission, attributed the dramatic transformation of Catherine’s affairs entirely to the direct, personal intervention of the new King, who imperiously swept aside all the pettifogging obstacles which had been holding up the marriage for so long and ordered Fuensalida to complete the financial arrangements as quickly as possible – something that much-tried individual had been trying his best to do for the past year.
Henry had seen very little of his fiancée for some time, so it is not likely that any tender feelings were involved. It looks very much as if he was simply impatient to prove his manhood by taking a wife, and the quickest and easiest way to achieve that was to marry the girl he was already engaged to, who was on the spot and patiently waiting his pleasure. Fortunately, King Ferdinand was now in a position to produce the second half of Catherine’s dowry and Catherine, who had been at her wits’ end to find the wherewithal to clothe herself and feed her servants, was caught up almost overnight in a whirl of wedding preparations, with nothing more serious to worry about than ordering a new trousseau.
As the King had set his heart on having his Queen crowned beside him, there was no time to be lost. On 10 May Henry VII was buried with all due ceremony in Westminster Abbey, to dwell ‘more richly dead than he did alive’, and as soon as the funeral was over Henry VIII bore his bride off to Greenwich. They were married very quietly in the church of the Observant Friars by the palace wall and although (at least so it was said later) the Archbishop of Canterbury had his doubts about the legality of this marriage of brother and sister-in-law, any scruples he may have felt were not strong enough to prevent him from performing the ceremony.
The coronation had been fixed for 24 June, four days before the King’s eighteenth birthday. London was filling up with people who had come to town to see their monarch ‘in the full bloom of his youth and high birth’ and the City, which had not been en fête since Prince Arthur’s wedding eight years before, was busy sweeping and sanding the streets and hanging out streamers and banners of tapestry and cloth of gold; while tailors, embroiderers and goldsmiths worked round the clock to fill orders for furred robes, new liveries, coats of arms and elaborate horse trappings.
On 23 June, the King made his ritual journey from the Tower to Westminster – a resplendent figure in crimson and gold, flashing with diamonds, rubies and emeralds and with a great golden baldric slung round his neck. As for his retinue, Edward Hall, that indefatigable chronicler of Tudor pageantry, declares ‘there was no lack or scarcity of cloth of tissue, cloth of gold, cloth of silver, broderie or of goldsmiths’ works: but in more plenty and abundance than hath been seen or read of at any time before’. The Queen’s procession followed, with Catherine sitting in a litter draped with white cloth of gold and carried between two white palfreys trapped with the same material. She wore embroidered white satin and had a coronet ‘set with many rich orient stones’ on her head. Her marvellous russet-coloured hair hung loose down her back and Hall specially noticed that it was ‘of a very great length, beautiful and goodly to behold’.
The next day Henry and his Queen were anointed and crowned by Archbishop Warham ‘according to the sacred observance and ancient custom’, and afterwards all the quality crowded into Westminster Hall for a banquet ‘greater than any Caesar had known’. A grand tournament had been organized ‘for the more honour and ennobling of this triumphant Coronation’ and the next few days were given over to jousting, feasting and dancing.
The celebrations were brought to a temporary halt by the sudden death of the King’s grandmother. Margaret Beaufort had been staying in the Abbot’s house at Westminster for the coronation and she died there on 29 June at the age of sixty-six. The death of the foundress of the royal Tudor family broke another link with the past which everyone was now so busy forgetting and although she was given a suitably grand funeral and buried, according to her wish, beside her son and daughter-in-law in the Henry VII Chapel, the new King did not allow her passing to interfere with his pleasures any longer than was decently necessary.
Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby, is remembered for her piety, for her generosity in almsgiving, for her patronage of learning and as the founder of St John’s College, Cambridge. It is possible, though, that her grandson’s memories of this formidably virtuous grande dame were not particularly cheerful ones. Lady Margaret had always played an active part in the upbringing and education of her grandchildren and she would certainly have been associated in the King’s mind with the last few years of his father’s reign when, at least according to Fuensalida, the teenage Henry had been guarded as strictly as a young girl. He spent most of his time studying in a room leading off his father’s chamber; he was only allowed out to exercise through a private door into the park and was surrounded by attendants chosen by his father. No outsider, wrote the ambassador, could approach or speak to him and he scarcely opened his mouth in public.
Fuensalida may well have been exaggerating the case but it is certainly true that the old King never permitted the Prince of Wales to take even the most minor independent share in government and made sure that, as he began to grow up, he stayed well out of the limelight. Whether this was simply because Henry VII considered his only surviving son too precious an asset to be let out of his sight, whether he doubted the boy’s readiness to cope with independence or whether he was increasingly afraid of being outshone by his handsome, athletic heir we have no means of knowing. The fact remains that the future Henry VIII was kept a schoolboy under the constant surveillance of either his father or his grandmother until the moment of his accession. The prince seems to have borne this stultifying regime with exemplary patience, but it is hardly surprising that the moment he was free he should have thrown off all restraint – stating his intentions with engaging frankness.
Pastance with good company
I love and shall until I die
Grudge who will, but none deny,
So God be pleased this life will I
For my pastance,
Hunt, sing, and dance,
My heart is set;
All goodly sport
To my comfort
Who shall me let?
Who indeed? Here was a young man with the world at his feet, his father’s money to spend and a good deal of boredom to make up for. He meant to enjoy himself and enjoy himself he did. For the rest of that first carefree summer the Court settled into a round of ‘continual festival’, with revels, tilts and tourneys, pageants, banquets and ‘disguisings’ following one another in an endless, glittering and expensive stream, and with the King always in the thick of the fun.
Henry had an insatiable passion for dressing up, and for charades. On one occasion, he and a bunch of cronies burst unannounced into the Queen’s chamber ‘all appareled in short coats of Kentish Kendal, with hoods on their heads and hosen of the same, every one of them [with] his bow and arrows and a sword and buckler, like outlaws or Robin Hood’s men’. The Queen and her ladies, though ‘abashed’ by this invasion, knew what was expected of them and danced politely with the strangers. Another time the King suddenly vanished in the middle of a banquet, to reappear ‘appareled after Turkey fashion’ in a gold turban and hung round with scimitars. His companions were dressed up as Russians and the torch-bearers had their faces blacked ‘like Moriscos’.
The Queen’s part in these merry pranks was to provide an admiring audience and she never failed to play up – to be suitably astonished and appreciative of the joke when Robin Hood, or the Saracen, or the mysterious Muscovite revealed himself as her husband. The King was delighted with her and, after less than two months of marriage, wrote to his father-in-law in elegant Latin, assuring him of ‘that entire love which we bear to the most serene Queen, our consort’. When, on 1 November 1509 he was able to tell Ferdinand that ‘the Queen, our dearest consort, with the favour of heaven, hath conceived in her womb a living child and is right heavy therewith’, the young couple’s happiness seemed complete.
Catherine was twenty-three now – a very different being from the shy, homesick child who had landed at Plymouth in 1501. During the seven lean years of her widowhood she had learnt some hard but useful lessons in patience, discretion, self-reliance and self-control and she had matured into a responsible, serious-minded and capable young woman. In the early years of their marriage Henry was not only devoted to her, he relied heavily on her judgement and experience, he respected her opinions and listened to her advice. It seemed an ideal match. Husband and wife shared many interests, both loved music and dancing, both had intellectual tastes, both were deeply religious. In addition, Catherine’s good breeding and perfect natural dignity made an excellent foil for Henry’s exuberance and her gently restraining influence saved the Court from any taint of vulgarity – attracting members of the older aristocratic families (some of whom became her special friends) who might otherwise have been repelled by the rollicking young men who flocked round the King.
But admirable creature though the Queen might be – and no one denied her many good qualities – her real business was to bear children, the sooner the better. No thinking man could forget that all the splendour and prosperity and high hopes of the new reign rested on the fragile foundation of one life. If the King were to have an accident in the tiltyard or the hunting field; if he were to fall victim to the sweating sickness, which notoriously attacked the upper classes; then the whole Tudor achievement would collapse overnight and the country revert into an anarchy far worse than any it had known under the faction fights of the rival Roses.
In May 1510 Catherine was delivered of her first child. It was a girl, born dead. Within a matter almost of days she was pregnant again and at Richmond Palace on 1 January 1511 she gave birth to a boy, alive and apparently healthy. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The Tower cannon fired a royal salute. Bells pealed and bonfires blazed in the streets of London. There were processions and Te Deums in the City churches and the authorities provided a ration of free wine for drinking the baby’s health, while the baby’s father dashed off impulsively to offer up his gratitude at the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.
As soon as the Queen was up and about again, the Court moved to Westminster where there was to be an extra special tournament to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Wales. The proceedings opened with a pageant of quite spectacular ingenuity. A whole ‘mock forest’ complete with rocks, hills and dales, its trees and flowers cunningly constructed of green velvet and damask and coloured silks, with a castle made of gold in the middle and concealing four armed and mounted knights was drawn in says Hall, ‘as it were by strength of two great beasts: a lion and an antelope. The lion flourished all over with damask gold. The antelope was wrought all over with silver of damask, his beames and horns and tusks of gold.’
The King, not unlike some gorgeous heraldic beast himself in his gilded armour, entered the lists as Sir Loyal Heart. The royal pavilion of cloth of gold and purple velvet was lavishly decorated with the initials H and K embroidered in fine gold and, as a further compliment to the Queen, her badge, the pomegranate, was featured prominently among the display of Tudor roses.
The following night a great banquet was held in the White Hall during which Henry performed his famous vanishing act – reappearing with five companions and a chosen band of ladies in another pageant, this time ‘a garden of pleasure’. The ladies were in Tudor white and green, Sir Loyal Heart and his friends in slashed purple satin heavily encrusted with ornaments of solid gold. But when the King began to distribute these as souvenirs to certain favoured guests, the common people, watching the fun from a distance, broke in to demand their share. They snatched the gold lace and spangles off the pageant, despite the efforts of the Lord Steward and his officers to stop them, and stripped the King and his companions to their doublets and hose. Eventually the guard had to be called to put the intruders out, but there was no ill-feeling. Nothing could spoil such a happy occasion and by the time the Court sat down to supper ‘all these hurts were turned to laughing and game’.
The triumph at Westminster ended with ‘mirth and gladness’, but the gladness was pitifully short. On 22 February little Henry of Richmond was dead. He had lived just seven weeks. It was a dreadful blow, to the King and Queen and to the whole nation, but especially to the Queen. In the words of Hall’s Chronicle, Catherine, ‘like a natural woman, made much lamentation. Howbeit, by the King’s persuasion, she was comforted but not shortly.’ Henry’s own grief had been genuine and violent, while it lasted, but it was not in his nature to be despondent for long. There would, after all, be plenty of time to beget more sons. The cloud on the horizon was as yet no bigger than a man’s hand and the King quickly forgot his first serious disappointment in the thrill of preparing for his first war.
Henry VII had been a pre-eminently civilian monarch. His foreign policy had been concerned with drawing up commercial treaties and trade agreements, with forming useful and profitable alliances with other royal houses, and with keeping out of other people’s wars. No one expected his son to continue along these sensible but unexciting lines. A king was still, in practice as well as theory, the war leader of his people and a fine upstanding young king like the second Henry Tudor would have to prove himself in battle as a matter of honour.
The second Henry Tudor was only too anxious for a chance to prove his mettle, but when he came to the throne he had found himself boringly at peace with all his neighbours – even with France who remained the ancestral enemy to every right-thinking Englishman. This was a state of affairs which the new King meant to change as soon as he could. Young Henry’s head was stuffed with romantic dreams of the glorious past, dreams of Crécy and Agincourt and of reconquering England’s lost empire. He saw himself as another Henry V and in the first summer of his reign, to the acute embarrassment of his Council, had hurled defiance at a surprised French ambassador in a scene which had only needed a tun of tennis balls to be complete.
But, to the King’s irritation, France would not play. Louis XII was a middle-aged man intent on consolidating his recent territorial gains in Northern Italy. He was not in the least interested in the noisy challenges of a beardless boy or in becoming involved in a pointless war with England, and Henry was sulkily obliged to contain his impatience. Even he needed a casus belli, however slight. He also needed allies. Not even he was rash enough to take on an adversary twice his size singlehanded.
As it turned out, he did not have to wait very long for either of these two necessary adjuncts of military adventure. The Pope, becoming alarmed by the strength of the French armies on his doorstep, provided the first. The King of Aragon provided the second. Ferdinand had noted his son-in-law’s bellicosity and Francophobia with quiet satisfaction and was only waiting for a favourable opportunity to use them for his own advantage. By the summer of 1511 this opportunity seemed to be at hand. Franco-Papal relations had deteriorated sharply and in October a Holy League directed against the ‘schismatic’ King of France was signed in Rome. Henry could now go to war well buttressed by allies and when Ferdinand suggested they should make a start by mounting a joint invasion of Gascony from the south, he fell in eagerly and quite unsuspectingly with his father-in-law’s plans, though, oddly enough, he did not accompany the army which sailed from Southampton in April 1512.
From the Spanish point of view, the summer’s campaign went off very nicely indeed. While the presence of some ten thousand English archers kept the French pinned down in Bayonne, Ferdinand was able to annexe the small neutral kingdom of Navarre on his north-western frontier. He showed no visible sign of being prepared to cross the frontier and the English expeditionary force received neither the co-operation nor the supplies they had been expecting. Marooned in the neighbourhood of San Sebastian with no fighting to do, the climate, the food and the harsh local wine played predictable havoc with their tempers and their stomachs. By the end of August the men were openly mutinous. By September the army was on its way home, leaving two thousand dead from fever and dysentery and having achieved precisely nothing. Ferdinand, keeping a perfectly straight face, accused his ally of deserting him – and just as the main operation had been about to begin! Other people passed unkind remarks on the subject of the sad decay of English military virtues, and Henry smarted under a devastating public humiliation. Next year, though, it would be different. Next year he would take the field himself and then these insufferable foreigners would see what an English army could do.
That winter was spent in hectic preparation for the forthcoming campaign and in working out a new strategy. Henry had now acquired another ally in the person of the Emperor Maximilian who, after a good deal of dickering about, had finally declared himself ready to join the anti-French league in return, naturally, for a handsome subsidy; and it was agreed that while Ferdinand, also subsidized to the tune of a hundred thousand English crowns, crossed the Pyrenees to conquer the duchy of Guienne for his daughter’s husband, Henry and Max would make a joint assault on King Louis from the north. It was not until April 1513 that it became clear that the King of Aragon had once again defaulted on his obligations by arranging a year’s truce with the enemy. This was treachery of the most blatant kind, but according to Ferdinand it had all been due to a most unfortunate misunderstanding – entirely the fault of his fool of an ambassador in London. Next year he would be only too pleased to help but just at the moment he was not at all well, in fact he had been practically at death’s door and his confessor had urged him to make peace with his enemies for the sake of his soul.
Henry was understandably disappointed and aggrieved but Catherine, always loyal to her father and to Spain, was at hand to help smooth over any unpleasantness. In any case, the King was determined to go ahead with his own plans for a landing in Northern France. The Emperor, at least, was still loyal, though, as he mournfully explained, his financial difficulties were such that he would not, after all, be in a position to provide the troop contingents he had promised. However, the King of England could have all the German and Burgundian mercenaries he cared to pay for, while Max himself would consider it an honour to fight under Henry’s banner and would charge only a mere trifle, say a hundred crowns a day, just to cover his expenses.
By late spring everything was ready, but before Henry could feel free to leave the country there was a piece of unfinished business to be dealt with and on 4 May Edmund de la Pole was brought out of the Tower to his execution. When Philip of Burgundy had surrendered the White Rose seven years before, Henry VII had guaranteed the prisoner’s life and had honoured his promise. His son was not so squeamish and information that Richard, the only remaining de la Pole still unaccounted for, was serving with the French army had sealed Edmund’s fate.
There was another danger threatening the King’s absence, and one a good deal more serious than the unhappy White Rose. Relations with Scotland had become increasingly strained during recent months and it seemed only too probable that, in spite of the treaty between the two countries, in spite of the fact that he was married to the King of England’s sister, James IV would follow traditional practice by leading his army across the Border as soon as the English were otherwise engaged. Henry left the seventy-year-old Earl of Surrey with orders to guard the North, but otherwise he paid little attention to the rumbling noises coming out of Scotland. Nothing was going to deflect him now from his long looked-forward-to adventure and the fulfilment of his burning ambition to emulate and, if possible, exceed the rugged deeds of his ancestors.
The King set out from Greenwich on 15 June accompanied by the Queen, who was pregnant again, and a personal entourage which included a duke, two bishops and a score of noblemen, as well as minstrels, heralds, trumpeters, choristers, clerks and six hundred archers of the guard in new green and white liveries. The royal baggage-train contained suits of armour for every occasion, an enormous carved bed and enough gold-embroidered tents to accommodate the population of a small town. Henry never did anything by halves. The unwieldy, gorgeously dressed cavalcade made its way by easy stages to Dover, where the King created his wife Governor of the Realm and Captain General of the home forces before setting sail for Calais to join the main body of the army. Such a sight had not been seen since the days of the Hundred Years’ War and the bosoms of those gentlemen of England with enough sense to stay at home swelled with vicarious pride.
Henry had a perfectly splendid time in France and duly astonished everyone by his courage and endurance in the face of the enemy. It is true that the enemy proved disappointingly elusive and it was bad luck that the King should have missed the best bit of action – a scrambling cavalry skirmish near Guinegate, later dignified as The Battle of the Spurs – but on the whole it was a very nice little war. Henry, firing a cannon with his own hands, dubbing knights on the field of battle and riding round the camp at night in full armour, enjoyed himself so much that he quite failed to notice that the two fortified frontier towns of Thérouanne and Tournai which, on Maximilian’s advice, the allied army besieged and captured, were of strategic value only to Maximilian – forming as they did two awkward salients jutting into Hapsburg territory. But the Emperor was gratifyingly deferential towards his young commander and the King spent a charming month in Lille being royally entertained by the Hapsburg family.
While Henry was playing soldiers in Picardy, events in England were taking their expected course. King James had discovered that his country’s ancient friendship with France carried more weight than any treaty with England and Catherine, left in charge with only a skeleton staff of councillors to help her, was soon ‘horribly busy’ organizing the defence of the northern counties and sewing badges and standards for the hastily mobilized home guard. She still found time, though, to worry about her husband, to send him supplies of clean shirts, to beg him not to ‘adventure himself’ too rashly, and to be sure and remember to change his clothes if he got wet or overheated. Henry, of course, was far too busy to write letters but Catherine received regular bulletins from his Almoner, Master Thomas Wolsey, and assured him in return that the King need not worry about the Scots. She and his subjects would deal with them gladly and ‘take it for a pastime’.
By the end of August a formidable Scottish army had crossed the Tweed and on the afternoon of Friday 9 September came face to face with the Earl of Surrey’s forces in the wild Border country at Flodden, a few miles south-east of Coldstream. The result, after some three hours of bloody fighting, was a shattering defeat for the Scots. James himself was killed ‘within a spear’s length’ of the English commander and with him died nearly a third of his army and the flower of the Scottish aristocracy.
In real terms, of course, the victory at Flodden, which crippled Scotland for a generation, was worth more than a dozen French towns – a fact which did not escape experienced observers of the political scene – but Catherine was careful not to crow. Writing to Henry on 16 September and sending him a piece of the Scottish King’s coat, she tactfully attributed ‘the great victory that our Lord hath sent your subjects in your absence’ entirely to the Lord, and, since Henry always took the deity’s personal interest in his affairs very much for granted, he had no hesitation in accepting the credit.
The Queen was still busy dealing with the aftermath of victory. There was, for example, the embarrassing problem of what to do with James’s body. He had died under a papal interdict and so could not be buried in consecrated ground. Catherine had the corpse embalmed and stored at the Carthusian monastery at Sheen pending further instructions. Then there was the widowed Queen of Scotland to be considered. This, too, was not without its awkwardness. How to condole with your sister-in-law when her husband has just been killed by the army under your command is not a situation normally covered in books of etiquette – not even sixteenth-century books of etiquette. But Margaret Tudor, who was understandably distracted with anxiety about her own future and that of her small son, now James V, had to be hastily soothed with assurances that she could continue to count on her brother’s protection and support.
The campaigning season in France was coming to an end and on 20 October Henry, suddenly impatient to be home, slipped away from Tournai with a light escort. Three days later he was taking the Queen by surprise at Richmond, and husband and wife were reunited in ‘such a loving meeting that every creature rejoiced’. The King was in high spirits and full of plans for next year’s conquests. Before leaving Lille he had signed another treaty with Spain and the Hapsburgs binding the allies to make a three-pronged invasion of France in the summer of 1514, and had also settled that his sister Mary should marry Max’s grandson, Charles of Castile, by the fifteenth of May. The only shadow lying across that triumphant autumn was the ending of the Queen’s third pregnancy in a miscarriage.
The year 1514 marked an important stage in the development of young Henry Tudor. At any rate it marked his emergence from a fantasy world of knights in shining armour re-fighting the Hundred Years’ War and brought him face to face with the realities of international diplomacy. The King owed this somewhat overdue awakening to Ferdinand of Aragon who had spent the winter quietly preparing to sell his son-in-law down the river for the third time. The plan, beneath its elaborate camouflage of verbiage, was simple enough. The King of France, having been suitably softened up by the Treaty of Lille and by the implacable hostility and growing military might of England, was offered a bargain: if he would relinquish his claims to Milan and Genoa, then Ferdinand and Max would be delighted to live like brothers with him for the rest of their days and would, naturally, come to his aid in the event of an English invasion!
But dealing with the guileless Henry seems to have made Ferdinand over-confident and he failed to take account of the fact that the King of France was also a poker player. Louis had no intention of submitting to a Spanish protection racket. On the other hand, he was perfectly prepared to pay any reasonable price for English neutrality. Accordingly he adopted the classic technique of stringing the King of Aragon along until that enterprising individual had been drawn into exposing his hand for all to see. Louis, of course, was hoping to catch England on the rebound and his expectations proved fully justified. Henry might still be inexperienced, but he was nobody’s fool. By the spring of 1514 his opinion of Ferdinand was much the same as his father’s had been, if not more so, and his one idea was to strike back.
This was the moment Louis had been waiting for and he went smoothly into action, using as intermediary the Duke of Longueville, who had been taken prisoner at the Battle of the Spurs and was now most conveniently residing at the English Court. In his present mood Henry was reluctant to trust anybody, but when the French offered peace on very gentlemanly terms, he was ready to listen. When Louis himself offered marriage to the Princess Mary, it opened up a prospect of so exquisite a revenge on his former allies that it was scarcely to be resisted.
This abrupt reversal of English foreign policy was made easier by the fact that Louis had now made his peace with Rome and that there was now a new and pacifically inclined Pope, anxious to see the Christian princes compose their differences. In any case, Henry’s conscience was clear. He alone of the members of the Holy League had kept his word. ‘I do not see any faith in the world save in me only’, he told the Venetian ambassador, ‘and therefore God Almighty, who knows this, prospers my affairs.’
There was quite a flurry of diplomatic activity between London and Paris during July and August as the peace treaty and the marriage contract were signed. The King and Thomas Wolsey, now rapidly becoming the King’s right-hand man, could congratulate themselves on a very satisfactory outcome. Mary Tudor was less enthusiastic. Not that she had any reason to regret Charles of Castile, an unappealing pasty-faced boy of fourteen; but Louis, a widower in his fifties and unkindly described by some as ‘old, feeble and pocky’, could scarcely be said to offer a much more alluring prospect to a high-spirited nineteen-year-old who was generally conceded to be an exceptionally beautiful girl.
In the five years since her father’s death Mary had experienced a degree of fun and freedom most unusual for an unmarried princess. But the King was very fond of his young sister. He liked her company and saw no reason why she should not enjoy herself. Mary shared his passion for parties and dancing and dressing-up and played a vigorous part in the hectic social life of the Court. The dangers inherent in this situation were obvious enough – it was not for nothing that princesses were normally shipped off to their husbands the moment they reached puberty. Mary was a warm-blooded young woman surrounded by all the best-looking young men in the kingdom – inevitably she had formed an attachment of her own, the object of her affections being Henry’s closest friend, Charles Brandon, newly created Duke of Suffolk.
Charles Brandon owed his start in life to the fact that his father had been Henry VII’s standard-bearer, killed at Bosworth by King Richard himself. The orphan obviously had a strong claim on the Tudor family, but it was pretty certainly his sporting prowess that had earned him admission to the charmed circle of intimates surrounding the new King. Charles was a tall, good-looking young man, like Henry a fine all-round athlete, tireless in the hunting field and a skilful and courageous performer in the jousts. A cheerful, good-natured extrovert, without very much in the way of intellectual equipment, he stood in no danger of out-shining his master, whom he followed about like a large, faithful dog. Henry found him excellent company, lavished favours on him and treated him as an honorary member of the family. Mary would, of course, have known him since childhood and, by the summer of 1514, what had most probably begun as a young girl’s hero worship for one of her brother’s lordly friends was ripening into something deeper.
There was no scandal – not a whisper of gossip linking the princess’s name with the Duke of Suffolk reached the outside world – but inside the family circle the affair seems to have been an open secret. Indeed, Mary herself had confided in her brother, telling him frankly that she loved Charles Brandon and was only prepared to marry the ‘aged and sickly’ King of France on condition that, as soon as she was free again, Henry would allow her to make her choice as her own heart and mind should be best pleased. ‘And upon that your good comfort and faithful promise’, she wrote later, ‘I assented to the said marriage; else I would never have granted to, as at the same time I showed unto you more at large.’
Whether this compromise was Mary’s own idea, or whether it had been hammered out in a family conference we have no means of knowing. Nor do we know how seriously Henry took it. But he was particularly anxious that nothing should interfere with the smooth running of the new alliance. Mary was no longer a child and it would make things very awkward with the French if she turned difficult now. In the circumstances, he was ready to promise anything she wanted – anything to avoid tears and scenes and keep her happy until she was safely across the Channel.
The proxy marriage was celebrated at Greenwich on 13 August in the presence of the King and Queen and all the dignitaries of the Court. The Archbishop of Canterbury officiated and the Duke of Longueville acted as Louis’ proxy. As soon as the solemn vows had been exchanged per verba de praesenti and the ring had been placed on the fourth finger of her right hand, Mary retired to put on an elaborate ‘nightgown’. She and Longueville then lay down side by side and he touched her with his naked leg. After this rather curious piece of play-acting – intended to symbolize intercourse – the Archbishop pronounced the marriage consummated and Mary went off to change again, into a gown of chequered purple satin and cloth of gold worn over a grey satin petticoat. There was the usual great banquet with the usual display of expensive ‘subtleties’ and afterwards the floor was cleared for dancing. According to the Venetian ambassador, who was present by special invitation, ‘the musical accompaniment was provided by a flute, a harp, a violetta and a certain small fife which produced a very harmonious effect’. The King and several other English lords danced in their doublets, and everyone was so gay and the music was so catchy that the ambassador felt distinctly tempted to throw off his own gown and join in. Prudently, though, he remembered his age and his dignity and abstained.
Wedding presents and letters of congratulations were now flowing in from all over Europe – Louis sent his bride a magnificent diamond and pearl known as ‘The Mirror of Naples’, valued by the London jewellers at sixty thousand crowns – and Mary was kept so busy during her last few weeks at home, receiving deputations, attending receptions and entertainments given in her honour, having fittings for her trousseau and undergoing a crash course in French that she had very little time for repining. At any rate, she was presenting a resolutely cheerful face to the world and one Italian observer remarked cattily that the princess did not appear to mind that the King of France was a gouty old man and she ‘a young and beautiful damsel’, so great was her satisfaction at becoming Queen of France.
Everything was French that year. There was even talk that the King was thinking of divorcing his Spanish wife, who could not give him an heir, and marrying a French princess. But by the late summer of 1514 Catherine was once more visibly pregnant. New linen and curtains were being ordered for her lying-in and Henry, joyfully trumpeting the news abroad, had invited King Louis to stand godfather to the new arrival – none of which sounds as if he was contemplating divorce.
From across the Channel came reports of Louis’ eager impatience to see his bride. In spite of his age and his gout, he was said to ‘yearn hourly for her presence’ and according to the Earl of Worcester, who had gone over to France to act as Mary’s proxy at the betrothal ceremonies, he had ‘a marvellous mind to content and please the Queen’. It seemed the French king had shown Worcester ‘the goodliest and richest sight of jewels’ he had ever seen, telling him they were all for the Queen but that she should not have them all at once, ‘for he would have at many and divers times kisses and thanks for them’. Worcester, much impressed by this lover-like attitude, told Thomas Wolsey he had no doubt that, by the grace of God, Mary would have a good life with her husband.
By mid-September everything was ready for her journey. There was a final outburst of entertaining and Mary herself gave a farewell reception to which all the foreign merchants in London were invited. Wearing a French gown of woven gold with the Mirror of Naples flashing on her bosom, the new Queen of France was very affable and gracious to her guests, giving her hand to everyone. She was obviously in her best looks, one witness going so far as to describe her as ‘a nymph from heaven’, but even allowing for a certain amount of over-enthusiasm there is no doubt that Mary Tudor was quite outstanding. Of slightly above average height, slender and graceful, she had a clear glowing complexion and a glorious mane of red-gold hair. Equally important, she had all the infectious gaiety and outgoing charm of manner which made her brother so attractive.
Mary left London on 19 September, accompanied by the King and Queen and an escort which, according to the Venetian merchant Lorenzo Pasqualigo, included ‘four of the chief lords of England, besides four hundred knights and barons and two hundred gentlemen and other squires.’ For the second year running the people of Kent were able to enjoy the spectacle of the royal family – the King riding with his sister, the Queen, because of her interesting condition, travelling by litter – pass through on their way to Dover. The Court on the move was always an impressive sight and seldom more so than on this occasion when, as Pasqualigo told his brother, ‘the lords and knights were all accompanied by their wives and there were so many gowns of woven gold and with gold grounds, housings for the horses of the same material, and chains and jewels that they are worth a vast amount of treasure.’
The cavalcade reached the coast before the end of the month, but the September equinox was not the best time of year to choose for a Channel crossing. The weather was appalling and Henry rapidly got bored with waiting for it to improve. Dover in a howling gale and pouring rain offered few attractions and he was never a man to put other people’s comfort before his own. So, when the wind dropped temporarily on the evening of 1 October, it was decided that the fleet should sail on the early tide, in spite of a forecast of more storms to come. Mary was woken in the small hours next morning and Henry went with her to the quayside. As they said their goodbyes in the chill grey damp of that dismal morning, Mary, in tears by this time, clung to her brother and rather desperately extracted from him a renewal of his promises about the future. He kissed her and committed her to God, the fortune of the sea (which, considering the look of the sea at that moment, can scarcely have been very cheering) and to the governance of her husband. Mary and her noble company then went on board while the King rode back to Dover Castle and a good breakfast.
The sea fully lived up to its unappetizing appearance. Of the fourteen ships conveying the Queen of France, her wardrobe and her retinue to Boulogne, only four arrived on schedule – the rest fetching up at various points along the coast from Calais to Flanders. The bride’s own vessel made Boulogne but ran ingloriously aground just inside the harbour. Mary had to be transferred to an open boat and, soaked to the skin and prostrate with seasickness, was finally carried ashore through the waist-high surf by one of her gentlemen.
It was not a very auspicious start, but with the resilience of youth and health she recovered quickly and was soon winning golden opinions from the French, who were greatly struck with their new Queen’s beauty, pretty manners and elegant, expensive clothes. For the journey from Montreuil to Abbeville she wore cloth of gold on crimson with tight English sleeves and a shaggy hat of crimson silk cocked over one eye. Her first meeting with Louis took place by carefully pre-arranged ‘accident’ on the outskirts of the town, and the King threw his arms round her neck and ‘kissed her as kindly as if he had been five-and-twenty’. In Abbeville itself a royal welcome had been prepared and here on 9 October, amidst much lavish display by both nations, Mary was finally married to the King of France in person.
Not surprisingly such an oddly assorted couple were made the butt of unkind jokes in certain quarters – in Spain it was being freely predicted that his young wife would soon be the death of a bridegroom in his dotage who constantly licked his lips and gulped his spittle! However, to the outward eye, Louis appeared very jovial and in love. He had temporarily quite thrown off his invalidish habits and boasted that on his wedding night he had ‘crossed the river’ three times and would have done more had he chosen.
Apart from a brief unpleasantness over the dismissal of some of Mary’s English attendants, Louis proved an indulgent and a generous husband and the newly-weds had established quite a cosy relationship by the time Charles Brandon paid a visit to France in November. The Duke of Suffolk had come over accompanied by the Marquis of Dorset and a number of other gentlemen, ostensibly to take part in a tournament forming part of the celebration for Mary’s forthcoming coronation, but he also had certain confidential matters to discuss with the French government. Suffolk visited the King and Queen at Beauvais, where he found Louis lying on a couch with Mary sitting beside him, and was able to report to Henry ‘that never Queen behaved herself more wisely and honourably, and so say all the noblemen of France’. Charles Brandon was clearly impressed by Mary’s dignity and restraint which, he told Henry, ‘rejoiced me not a little’, adding significantly, ‘your Grace knows why’. It sounds as though he had been afraid Mary might embarrass him in public – this was their first meeting since her marriage. He need not have worried. The Queen of France knew what was due to her position and whatever her inner feelings on seeing Suffolk again, her self-possession was faultless.
It had been an eventful and generally satisfactory year for the Tudor family, but it was to end with an all too familiar disappointment. Queen Catherine was brought to bed at the beginning of December, but the baby, another boy, was either stillborn or lived for only a few days.