Read Online The Last White Rose by Desmond Seward - Free Book Online
Authors: Desmond Seward
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limbs and even of her eyesight. In July, unable to walk, she was taken to Smithfield in a litter to be burned at the stake with other evangelicals.
The perpetually suppurating ulcer on the king’s leg had turned into one among many, all giving him excruciating pain whenever the bandages were changed, which presumably happened several times a day. Sometimes he was in such agony that he could not speak. Because of his monstrous obesity (it was said that three men could have fitted inside his doublet) he needed a ramp if he wanted to mount a horse. He found walking difficult, having to lean on a stick, and in his palaces had to be carried about in a special chair. He suffered regularly from exhausting ‘fevers’ caused by the ulcers.
Yet although he had been hated by large sections of the population only a few years earlier – and even now the North could never forgive him – this rotting, moribund hulk of a man had become idolized as a benevolent colossus by many of hissubjects, who turned a blind eye to his selfishness, cruelty and tyranny. Part of their veneration came from his having reigned over them for so long, yet most of it was due to the overwhelming impact of his extraordinary personality, shallow as it may have been. Clearly, he knew how to assume a grave and kindly air when necessary. Describing the king’s last speech to Parliament, Richard Grafton (continuing Hall’s chronicle) said his address gave ‘his subjects there present such comfort that the like joy could not be unto them in this world’. There is no reason to doubt Grafton. 2
Because of his ailments, Henry’s temper had grown more dangerous than ever. Aware that he might have only a very short time left to live, he worried even more about what was going to happen when his young son – still only nine in 1546 – succeeded him as a minor. Although he had ensured that no more Yorkist pretenders were left in England, he was afraid that some other magnate might try and seize the throne. Richard of Gloucester’s example can never have been very far from his mind.
In particular, he did not trust the aged Duke of Norfolk. A pleasant-spoken and sly little man, always blandly reassuring while lying through his teeth, Norfolk could never forget what Bosworth, fought when he was a boy of twelve, had meant for his family: his grandfather was killed and his father taken prisoner, while the Howards forfeited their duchy. 3 It had taken them years to recover their position. In consequence, no one possessed a keener sense for survival or for the main chance than Thomas Howard, who was completely without principles. ‘It was merry in England afore the New Learning came up,’ he famously declared in 1540. ‘Yea, I would all things were as hath been in times past.’ Yet despite his Catholic instincts, he was the man who had put down the Pilgrimage of Grace so mercilessly. Loathing Cromwell as he did, he had treated him with oily subservience, and then played a major part in destroying him.
Having employed Norfolk so often, Henry had no illusions about his lack of scruples, while he blamed him for the disastrousmarrage to his niece Katherine Howard. Nor could the king fail to have been aware that Norfolk filled the place once occupied by Buckingham as the last remaining duke and the richest man in England, with an income verging on £ 4,000. He lacked Plantagenet blood, but through marrying Buckingham’s daughter had acquired it for the Howards. Worse still, he possessed an alarmingly dangerously unstable son. 4
What made the situation explosive was that the Howards stood in the way of a man who was secretly determined to rule England during the looming minority. Brother of the late Queen Jane and uncle to the Prince of Wales, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford knew how to make the most of his relationship to the king’s favourite wife. The duke tried to defuse the situation by offering Seymour’s brother the hand of his daughter Mary, the late Duke of
The perpetually suppurating ulcer on the king’s leg had turned into one among many, all giving him excruciating pain whenever the bandages were changed, which presumably happened several times a day. Sometimes he was in such agony that he could not speak. Because of his monstrous obesity (it was said that three men could have fitted inside his doublet) he needed a ramp if he wanted to mount a horse. He found walking difficult, having to lean on a stick, and in his palaces had to be carried about in a special chair. He suffered regularly from exhausting ‘fevers’ caused by the ulcers.
Yet although he had been hated by large sections of the population only a few years earlier – and even now the North could never forgive him – this rotting, moribund hulk of a man had become idolized as a benevolent colossus by many of hissubjects, who turned a blind eye to his selfishness, cruelty and tyranny. Part of their veneration came from his having reigned over them for so long, yet most of it was due to the overwhelming impact of his extraordinary personality, shallow as it may have been. Clearly, he knew how to assume a grave and kindly air when necessary. Describing the king’s last speech to Parliament, Richard Grafton (continuing Hall’s chronicle) said his address gave ‘his subjects there present such comfort that the like joy could not be unto them in this world’. There is no reason to doubt Grafton. 2
Because of his ailments, Henry’s temper had grown more dangerous than ever. Aware that he might have only a very short time left to live, he worried even more about what was going to happen when his young son – still only nine in 1546 – succeeded him as a minor. Although he had ensured that no more Yorkist pretenders were left in England, he was afraid that some other magnate might try and seize the throne. Richard of Gloucester’s example can never have been very far from his mind.
In particular, he did not trust the aged Duke of Norfolk. A pleasant-spoken and sly little man, always blandly reassuring while lying through his teeth, Norfolk could never forget what Bosworth, fought when he was a boy of twelve, had meant for his family: his grandfather was killed and his father taken prisoner, while the Howards forfeited their duchy. 3 It had taken them years to recover their position. In consequence, no one possessed a keener sense for survival or for the main chance than Thomas Howard, who was completely without principles. ‘It was merry in England afore the New Learning came up,’ he famously declared in 1540. ‘Yea, I would all things were as hath been in times past.’ Yet despite his Catholic instincts, he was the man who had put down the Pilgrimage of Grace so mercilessly. Loathing Cromwell as he did, he had treated him with oily subservience, and then played a major part in destroying him.
Having employed Norfolk so often, Henry had no illusions about his lack of scruples, while he blamed him for the disastrousmarrage to his niece Katherine Howard. Nor could the king fail to have been aware that Norfolk filled the place once occupied by Buckingham as the last remaining duke and the richest man in England, with an income verging on £ 4,000. He lacked Plantagenet blood, but through marrying Buckingham’s daughter had acquired it for the Howards. Worse still, he possessed an alarmingly dangerously unstable son. 4
What made the situation explosive was that the Howards stood in the way of a man who was secretly determined to rule England during the looming minority. Brother of the late Queen Jane and uncle to the Prince of Wales, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford knew how to make the most of his relationship to the king’s favourite wife. The duke tried to defuse the situation by offering Seymour’s brother the hand of his daughter Mary, the late Duke of
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