Part 2 (1/2)

CHAPTER III

1509-1527

KATHARINE THE QUEEN--A POLITICAL MARRIAGE AND A PERSONAL DIVORCE

”Long live King Henry VIII.!” cried Garter King of Arms in French as the great officers of state broke their staves of office and cast them into the open grave of the first Tudor king. Through England, like the blast of a trumpet, the cry was echoed from the hearts of a whole people, full of hope that the n.i.g.g.ardliness and suspicion which for years had stood between the sovereign and his people were at last banished. The young king, expansive and hearty in manner, handsome and strong as a pagan G.o.d in person, was well calculated to captivate the love of the crowd. His prodigious personal vanity, which led him to delight in sumptuous raiment and gorgeous shows; the state and ceremony with which he surrounded himself and his skill in manly exercises, were all points in his favour with a pleasure-yearning populace which had been squeezed of its substance without seeing any return for it: whilst his ardent admiration for the learning which had during his lifetime become the fas.h.i.+on made grave scholars lose their judgment and write like flattering slaves about the youth of eighteen who now became unquestioned King of England and master of his father's h.o.a.rded treasures.

As we shall see in the course of this history, Henry was but a whited sepulchre. Young, light-hearted, with every one about him praising him as a paragon, and his smallest whim indulged as a divine command, there was no incitement for the exhibition of the baser qualities that underlay the big, popular manner, the flamboyant patriotism, and, it must be added, the real ability which appealed alike to the gentle and simple over whom he was called to rule. Like many men of his peculiar physique, he was never a strong man morally, and his will grew weaker as his body increased in gross flabbiness. The obstinate self-a.s.sertion and violence that impressed most observers as strength, hid behind them a spirit that forever needed direction and support from a stronger soul. So long as he was allowed in appearance to have his own way and his policy was showy, he was, as one of his wisest ministers said in his last days, the easiest man in the world to manage. His sensuality, which was all his own, and his personal vanity, were the qualities by means of which one able councillor after another used him for the ends they had in view, until the bridle chafed him, and his temporary master was made to feel the vengeance of a weak despot who discovers that he has been ruled instead of ruling. In Henry's personal character as sketched above we shall be able to find the key of the tremendous political events that made his reign the most important in our annals; and we shall see that his successive marriages were the outcome of subtle intrigues in which representatives of various parties took advantage of the King's vanity and lasciviousness to promote their own political or religious views. That the emanc.i.p.ation of England from Rome was the ultimate result cannot fairly be placed to Henry's personal credit. If he could have had his own way without breaking with the Papacy he would have preferred to maintain the connection; but the Reformation was in the air, and craftier brains than Henry's led the King step by step by his ruling pa.s.sions until he had gone too far to retreat. To what extent his various matrimonial adventures served these intrigues we shall see in the course of this book.

That Henry's marriage with Katharine soon after his accession was politically expedient has been shown in the aforegoing pages; and the King's Council were strongly in favour of it, with the exception of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor Warham, who was more purely ecclesiastical than his colleagues, and appears to have had doubts as to the canonical validity of the union. As we have seen, the Pope had given a dispensation for the marriage years before, in terms that covered the case of the union with Arthur having been duly consummated, though Katharine strenuously denied that it had been, or that she knew how the dispensation was worded. The Spanish confessor also appears to have suggested to Fuensalida some doubts as to the propriety of the marriage, but King Ferdinand promptly put his veto upon any such scruples. Had not the Pope given his dispensation? he asked; and did not the peace of England and Spain depend upon the marriage? The sin would be not the marriage, but the failure to effect it after the pledges that had been given. So the few doubters were silenced; young Henry himself, all eager for his marriage, was not one of them, nor was Katharine, for to her the match was a triumph for which she had worked and suffered for years: and on the 11th June 1509 the pair were married privately by Warham at Henry's palace of Greenwich.

Rarely in its long history has London seen so brave a pageant as the bride and bridegroom's triumphal pa.s.sage through the city on Sat.u.r.day the 21st June from the Tower to Westminster for their coronation. Rich tapestries, and hangings of cloth of gold, decked the streets through which they pa.s.sed. The city companies lined the way from Gracechurch Street to Bread Street, where the Lord Mayor and the senior guild stood in bright array, whilst the goldsmiths' shops in Chepe had each to adorn it a figure of the Holy Virgin in white with many wax tapers around it. The Queen rode in a litter of white and gold tissue drawn by two snowy palfreys, she herself being garbed in white satin and gold, with a dazzling coronet of precious stones upon her head, from which fell almost to her feet her dark russet hair. She was twenty-four years of age, and in the full flush of womanhood; her regular cla.s.sical features and fair skin bore yet the curves of gracious youth; and there need be no doubt of the sincerity of the ardent affection for her borne by the pink and white young giant who rode before her, a dazzling vision of crimson velvet, cloth of gold, and flas.h.i.+ng precious stones. ”G.o.d save your Grace,” was the cry that rattled like platoon firing along the crowded ways, as the splendid cavalcade pa.s.sed on.

The next day, Sunday, 24th June, the pair were crowned in the Abbey with all the tedious pomp of the times. Then the Gargantuan feast in Westminster Hall, of which the chronicler spares us no detail, and the endless jousts and devices, in which roses and pomegranates, castles and leopards jostled each other in endless magnificence, until a mere catalogue of the splendour grows meaningless. The death of the King's wise old grandmother, the Countess of Richmond, interrupted for a time the round of festivities; but Henry was too new to the unchecked indulgence of his taste for splendour and pleasure to abandon them easily, and his English councillors, as well as the watchful Spanish agents, began before many weeks were over to hint gravely that the young king was neglecting his business. Katharine appears to have entered fully into the life of pleasure led by her husband. Writing to her father on the 29th July, she is enthusiastic in her praise. ”We are all so happy,” she says; ”our time pa.s.ses in continual feasting.” But in her case, at least, we see that mixed with the frivolous pleasure there was the personal triumph of the politician who had succeeded. ”One of the princ.i.p.al reasons why I love my husband the King, is because he is so true a son to your Majesty. I have obeyed your orders and have acted as your amba.s.sador. My husband places himself entirely in your hands. This country of England is truly your own now, and is tranquil and deeply loyal to the King and to me.” What more could wife or stateswoman ask? Katharine had her reward. Henry was hers and England was at the bidding of Ferdinand, and her sufferings had not been in vain. Henry, for his part, was, if we are to believe his letters to his father-in-law, as much enamoured of his wife as she was satisfied with him.[19]

And so, amidst magnificent shows, and what seems to our taste puerile trifling, the pair began their married life highly contented with each other and the world. The inevitable black shadows were to come later. In reality they were an entirely ill-matched couple, even apart from the six years' disparity in their ages. Henry, a bluff bully, a coward morally, and also perhaps physically,[20] a liar, who deceived himself as well as others, in order to keep up appearances in his favour, he was just the man that a clever, tactful woman could have managed perfectly, beginning early in his life as Katharine did. Katharine, for all her goodness of heart and exalted piety, was, as we have seen, none too scrupulous herself; and if her ability and dexterity had been equal to her opportunities she might have kept Henry in bondage for life. But, even before her growing age and fading charms had made her distasteful to her husband, her lack of prudence and management towards him had caused him to turn to others for the guidance that she might still have exercised.

The first rift of which we hear came less than a year after the marriage.

Friar Diego, who was now Katharine's chancellor, wrote an extraordinary letter to King Ferdinand in May 1510, telling him of a miscarriage that Katharine had had at the end of January; the affair he says having been so secret that no one knew it but the King, two Spanish women, the physician, and himself; and the details he furnishes show him to have been as ignorant as he was impudent. Incidentally, however, he says: ”Her Highness is very healthy and the most beautiful creature in the world, with the greatest gaiety and contentment that ever was. The King adores her, and her Highness him.” But with this letter to the King went another to his secretary, Almazan, from the new Spanish amba.s.sador, Carroz, who complains bitterly that the friar monopolises the Queen entirely, and prevents his access to her. He then proceeds to tell of Henry and Katharine's first matrimonial tiff. The two married sisters of the Duke of Buckingham were at Court, one being a close friend of Katharine whilst the other was said to be carrying on an intrigue with the King through his favourite, Sir William Compton. This lady's family, and especially her brother the Duke, who had a violent altercation with Compton, and her sister the Queen's friend, shocked at the scandal, carried her away to a convent in the country. In revenge for this the King sent the Queen's favourite away, and quarrelled with Katharine. Carroz was all for counselling prudence and diplomacy to the Queen; but he complains that Friar Diego was advising her badly and putting her on bad terms with her husband.

Many false alarms, mostly, it would seem, set afloat by the meddling friar, and dwelt upon by him in his letters with quite unbecoming minuteness, kept the Court agog as to the possibility of an heir to the crown being born. Henry himself, who was always fond of children, was desperately anxious for a son; and when, on New Year's Day 1511, the looked-for heir was born at Richmond, the King's unrestrained rejoicing again took his favourite form of sumptuous entertainments, after he had ridden to the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham in Norfolk to give thanks for the favour vouchsafed to him. Once again Westminster glittered with cloth of gold and gems and velvet. Once again courtiers came to the lists disguised as hermits, to kneel before Katharine, and then to cast off their gowns and stand in full panoply before her, craving for leave to tilt in her honour. Once again fairy bowers of gold and artificial flowers sheltered sylvan beauties richly bedizened, the King and his favourites standing by in purple satin garments with the solid gold initials of himself and his wife sewn upon them. Whilst the dazzling company was dancing the ”scenery” was rolled back. It came too near the crowd of lieges at the end of the hall, and pilfering fingers began to pluck the golden ornaments from the bowers. Emboldened by their immunity for this, people broke the bounds, swarmed into the central s.p.a.ce, and in the twinkling of an eye all the lords and ladies, even the King himself, found themselves stripped of their finery to their very s.h.i.+rts, the golden letters and precious tissues intended as presents for fine ladies being plunder now in grimy hands that turned them doubtless to better account.

Henry in his bluff fas.h.i.+on made the best of it, and called the booty largesse. Little recked he, if the tiny heir whose existence fed his vanity throve. But the babe died soon after this costly celebration of his birth.

During the ascendency that the antic.i.p.ated coming of a son gave to Katharine, Ferdinand was able to beguile Henry into an offensive league against France, by using the same bait that had so often served a similar purpose with Henry VII.; namely, the reconquest for England of Guienne and Normandy. Spain, the Empire, the Papacy, and England formed a coalition that boded ill for the French cause in Italy. As usual the showy but barren part fell to Henry. Ferdinand promised him soldiers to conquer Normandy, but they never came. All Ferdinand wanted was to keep as many Frenchmen as possible from his own battle-grounds, and he found plenty of opportunities for evading all his pledges. Henry was flattered to the top of his bent. The Pope sent him the blessed golden rose, and saluted him as head of the Italian league; and the young king, fired with martial ardour, allowed himself to be dragged into war by his wife's connections, in opposition to the opinion of the wiser heads in his Council. A war with France involved hostilities with Scotland, but Henry was, in the autumn of 1512, cajoled into depleting his realm of troops and sending an army to Spain to attack France over the Pyrenees, whilst another force under Poynings went to help the allies against the Duke of Gueldres. The former host under the Marquis of Dorset was kept idle by its commander because it was found that Ferdinand really required them to reduce the Spanish kingdom of Navarre, and after months of inactivity and much mortality from sickness, they returned ingloriously home to England. This was Henry's first experience of armed alliances, but he learned nothing by experience, and to the end of his life the results of such coalitions to him were always the same.

But his ambition was still unappeased, and in June 1513 he in person led his army across the Channel to conquer France. His conduct in the campaign was puerile in its vanity and folly, and ended lamely with the capture of two (to him) unimportant fortresses in the north, Therouenne and Tournai, and the panic flight of the French at the Battle of the Spurs or Guingate.

Our business with this foolish and fruitless campaign, in which Henry was every one's tool, is confined to the part that Katharine played at the time. On the King's ostentatious departure from Dover he left Katharine regent of the realm, with the Earl of Surrey--afterwards Duke of Norfolk--to command the army in the north. Katharine, we are told, rode back from Dover to London full of dolour for her lord's departure; but we see her in her element during the subsequent months of her regency. Bold and spirited, and it must be added utterly tactless, she revelled in the independent domination which she enjoyed. James IV. of Scotland had threatened that an English invasion of France would be followed by his own invasion of England. ”Let him do it in G.o.d's name,” shouted Henry; and Katharine when the threat was made good delivered a splendid oration in English to the officers who were going north to fight the Scots.

”Remember,” she said, ”that the Lord smiled upon those who stood in defence of their own. Remember that the English courage excels that of all other nations upon earth.”[21] Her letters to Wolsey, who accompanied Henry as almoner, or rather secretary, are full of courage, and as full of womanly anxiety for her husband. ”She was troubled,” she wrote, ”to learn that the King was so near the siege of Therouenne,” until Wolsey's letter a.s.sured her of the heed he takes to avoid all manner of dangers. ”With his life and health nothing can come amiss with him, without them I see no manner of good thing that shall fall after it.” But her tactlessness even in this letter shows clearly when she boasts that the King in France is not so busy with war as she is in England against the Scots. ”My heart is very good of it, and I am horribly busy making standards, banners, and badges.”[22] After congratulating Henry effusively upon the capture of Therouenne and his meeting with the Emperor, Katharine herself set forth with reinforcements towards Scotland, but before she had travelled a hundred miles (to Woburn) she met the couriers galloping south to bring her the great news of Surrey's victory at Flodden Field. Turning aside to thank Our Lady of Walsingham for the destruction of the Scottish power, Katharine on the way sent the jubilant news to Henry. James IV. in his defeat had been left dead upon the field, clad in his check surcoat, and a fragment of this coat soaked with blood the Queen sent to her husband in France, with a heartless gibe at his dead brother-in-law. We are told that in another of her letters first giving the news of Flodden, and referring to Henry's capture of the Duke of Longueville at Therouenne, she vaingloriously compared her victory with his.[23] ”It was no great thing for one armed man to take another, but she was sending three captured by a woman; if he (Henry) sent her a captive Duke she would send him a prisoner king.” For a wife and _loc.u.m tenens_ to write thus in such circ.u.mstances to a supremely vain man like Henry, whose martial ambition was still una.s.suaged, was to invite his jealousy and dislike. His people saw, as he with all his boastfulness cannot fail to have done, that Flodden was the real English victory, not Therouenne, and that Katharine and Surrey, not Henry, were the heroes. Such knowledge was gall and wormwood to the King; and especially when the smoke of battle had blown away, and he saw how he had been ”sold” by his wife's relations, who kept the fruit of victory whilst he was put off with the sh.e.l.l.

From that time Katharine's influence over her husband weakened, though with occasional intermission, and he looked for guidance to a subtler mind than hers. With Henry to France had gone Thomas Wolsey, one of the clergy of the royal chapel, recently appointed almoner by the patronage of Fox, Bishop of Winchester, Henry's leading councillor in foreign affairs. The English n.o.bles, strong as they still were territorially, could not be trusted with the guidance of affairs by a comparatively new dynasty depending upon parliament and the towns for its power; and an official cla.s.s, raised at the will of the sovereign, had been created by Henry VII., to be used as ministers and administrators. Such a cla.s.s, dependent entirely upon the crown, were certain to be distasteful to the n.o.ble families, and the rivalry between these two governing elements provided the germ of party divisions which subsequently hardened into the English const.i.tutional tradition: the officials usually being favourable to the strengthening of the royal prerogative, and the n.o.bles desiring to maintain the check which the armed power of feudalism had formerly exercised. For reasons which will be obvious, the choice of both Henry VII. and his son of their diplomatists and ministers fell to a great extent upon clergymen; and Wolsey's brilliant talents and facile adaptiveness during his close attendance upon Henry in France captivated his master, who needed for a minister and guide one that could never become a rival either in the field or the ladies' chamber, where the King most desired distinction.

Henry came home in October 1513, bitterly enraged against Katharine's kin, and ripe for the close alliance with France which the prisoner Duke of Longueville soon managed to bring about. What mattered it that lovely young Mary Tudor was sacrificed in marriage to the decrepit old King Louis XII., notwithstanding her previous solemn betrothal to Katharine's nephew, young Charles of Austria, and her secret love for Henry's bosom friend, Sir Charles Brandon? Princesses were but pieces in the great political game, and must perforce take the rough with the smooth. Henry, in any case, could thus show to the Spaniard that he could defy him by a French connection. It must have been with a sad heart that Katharine took part in the triumphal doings that celebrated the peace directed against her father. The French agents, then in London, in describing her say that she was lively and gracious, quite the opposite of her gloomy sister: and doubtless she did her best to appear so, for she was proud and schooled to disappointment; but with the exception of the fact that she was again with child, all around her looked black. Her husband openly taunted her with her father's ill faith; Henry was carrying on now an open intrigue with Lady Tailebois, whom he had brought from Calais with him; Ferdinand the Catholic at last was slowly dying, all his dreams and hopes frustrated; and on the 13th August 1514, in the palace of Greenwich, Katharine's dear friend and sister-in-law, Mary Tudor, was married by proxy to Louis XII.

Katharine, led by the Duke of Longueville, attended the festivity. She was dressed in ash-coloured satin, covered with raised gold embroidery, costly chains and necklaces of gems covered her neck and bust, and a coif trimmed with precious stones was on her head.[24] The King at the ball in the evening charmed every one by his graceful dancing, and the scene was so gay that the grave Venetian amba.s.sador says that had it not been for his age and office he would have cast off his gown and have footed it with the rest.

But already sinister whispers were rife, and we may be sure they were not unknown to Katharine. She had been married five years, and no child of hers had lived; and, though she was again pregnant, it was said that the Pope would be asked to authorise Henry to put her aside, and to marry a French bride. Had not his new French brother-in-law done the like years ago?[25] To what extent this idea had really entered Henry's head at the time it is difficult to say; but courtiers and diplomatists have keen eyes, and they must have known which way the wind was blowing before they talked thus. In October 1514 Katharine was borne slowly in a litter to Dover, with the great concourse that went to speed Mary Tudor on her loveless two months' marriage; and a few weeks afterwards Katharine gave birth prematurely to a dead child. Once more the hopes of Henry were dashed, and though Peter Martyr ascribed the misfortune to Henry's unkindness, the superst.i.tious time-servers of the King, and those in favour of the French alliance, began to hint that Katharine's offspring was accursed, and that to get an heir the King must take another wife. The doings at Court were still as brilliant and as frivolous as ever; the King's great delight being in adopting some magnificent, and, of course, perfectly transparent disguise in masque or ball, and then to disclose himself when every one, the Queen included, was supposed to be lost in wonder at the grace and agility of the pretended unknown. Those who take pleasure in the details of such puerility may be referred to Hall's _Chronicle_ for them: we here have more to do with the hearts beneath the finery, than with the trappings themselves.

That Katharine was striving desperately at this time to retain her influence over her husband, and her popularity in England, is certain from the letter of Ferdinand's amba.s.sador (6th December 1514). He complains that on the recommendation of Friar Diego Katharine had thrown over her father's interests in order to keep the love of Henry and his people. The Castilian interest and the Manuels have captured her, wrote the amba.s.sador, and if Ferdinand did not promptly ”put a bridle on this colt”

(_i.e._ Henry) and bring Katharine to her bearings as her father's daughter, England would be for ever lost to Aragon.[26] There is no doubt that at this time Katharine felt that her only chance of keeping her footing was to please Henry, and ”forget Spain,” as Friar Diego advised her to do.

When the King of France died on New Year's Day, 1515, and his young widow--Katharine's friend, Mary Tudor--clandestinely married her lover, Charles Brandon, Katharine's efforts to reconcile her husband to the peccant pair are evidence, if no other existed, that Henry's anger was more a.s.sumed than real, and that his vanity was pleased by the submissive prayers for his forgiveness. As no doubt the Queen, and Wolsey, who had joined his efforts with hers, foresaw, not only were Mary and Brandon pardoned, but taken into high favour. At the public marriage of Mary and Brandon at Greenwich at Easter 1515 more tournaments, masques and b.a.l.l.s, enabled the King to show off his gallantry and agility in compet.i.tion with his new brother-in-law; and on the subsequent May Day at Shooter's Hill, Katharine and Mary, who were inseparable, took part in elaborate and costly _al fresco_ entertainments in which Robin Hood, several pagan deities, and the various attributes of spring, were paraded for their delectation. It all sounds very gay, though somewhat silly, as we read the endless catalogues of bedizenment, of tilts and races, feasting, dancing, and music that delighted Henry and his friends; but before Katharine there ever hovered the spectre of her childlessness, and Henry, after the ceremonial gaiety and overdone gallantry to his wife, would too frequently put spurs to his courser and gallop off to New Hall in Ess.e.x, where Lady Tailebois lived.

A gleam of hope and happiness came to her late in 1515 when she was again expecting to become a mother. By liberal gifts--”the greatest presents ever brought to England,” said Henry himself--and by flattery unlimited, Ferdinand, almost on his death-bed, managed to ”bridle” his son-in-law, to borrow a large sum of money from him and draw him anew into a coalition against France. But the hope was soon dashed; King Ferdinand died almost simultaneously with the birth of a girl-child to his daughter Katharine.

It is true the babe was like to live, but a son, not a daughter, was what Henry wanted. Yet he put the best face on the matter publicly. The Venetian amba.s.sador purposely delayed his congratulations, because the child was of the wrong s.e.x; and when finally he coldly offered them, he pointedly told the King that they would have been much more hearty if the child had been a son. ”We are both young,” replied Henry. ”If it is a daughter this time, by the grace of G.o.d sons will follow.” The desire of the King for a male heir was perfectly natural. No Queen had reigned independently over England; and for the perpetuation of a new dynasty like the Tudors the succession in the male line was of the highest importance.

In addition to this, Henry was above all things proud of his manliness, and he looked upon the absence of a son as in some sort reflecting a humiliation upon him.