The Last White Rose, page 24
‘A year ago I wrote to Your Majesty the same thing,’ Chapuys wrote on 3 November 1534, replying to a query from Charles about a letter from the Spanish consul at Venice, which he enclosed in cypher. (The consul was suggesting that Reginald Pole might be able to take over England, and save Queen Katherine and Princess Mary from King Henry.) Chapuys repeated that Katherine was most anxious for her daughter to marry Pole, insisting the English would at once show strong support for him, ‘especially as there are innumerable good personages who hold that the true title to this Kingdom belongs to the Duke of Clarence’s family’. He urged an immediate invasion. Affairs were in such a state, he said, that everyone in England would welcome an imperial army, ‘especially if the said Lord Reynold were in it’.
Chapuys then mentioned Reginald’s younger brother, Sir Geoffrey Pole, who often came to see him – rather too often thought the ambassador, who had warned him to keep away for fear of attracting the attention of Cromwell’s spies. ‘He does not cease, like so many others, to beseech me to write to Your Majesty of the facility with which this King might be conquered, and that all the people look for nothing else.’ Chapuys had been careful to mention Reginald to Geoffrey on only one occasion: ‘long ago, I told him that Reginald would do better to beg for his bread than come back to all the trouble over here, where he might easily be given the same treatment as the Bishop of Rochester or worse.’ But he was shrewd enough to realize that Sir Geoffrey was a lightweight, dangerously unstable and indiscreet, if an extremely useful source of information.11
Two elderly but formidable peers, who had been young men when Richard III was king, became more influential with the White Rose party at this time. Steady supporters of Queen Katherine, both would have liked to see the deposition of the present monarch. One, already mentioned, was Lord Darcy de Darcy, KG.
Born in the 1460s, Darcy was a fierce old veteran of ancient family from Templehurst in Yorkshire, ennobled by Henry VIII. For many years the steward to the young Earl of Westmorland, whose widowed mother he married, as Warden of the East Marches he had seen plenty of fighting on the Scottish Border. A Northener to his fingertips, Darcy was called the ‘Key to the North’ because he understood its people so well.12 Although he had signed a petition to the pope for Henry’s divorce, he was horrified by it, as well as by the king’s religious policies, which he attributed to his new minister Thomas Cromwell – the ‘vicegerent’. In 1532 at a private meeting of notables held by the Duke of Norfolk, Darcy insisted that the pope was the supreme judge in all spiritual matters, later telling the House of Lords that Parliament had no right to meddle with religion.
The second important recruit was John Hussey, whose father had been a judge in Edward IV’s day. Now in his sixties, he himself had first risen to prominence by helping to put down Lord Lovell’s rising in 1486. A former henchman of Messers Empson and Dudley, Hussey had then made himself so useful to Henry VIII that he had been rewarded with large grants of land and created a peer. He was sufficiently trusted to be appointed chamberlain to the recently bastardized Lady Mary in 1533, after which he and his wife had become indignant at the girl’s shabby treatment.13
During the summer of 1534 Lord Darcy and Lord Hussey dined together at Hussey’s house in London, with Darcy’s friend, Sir Robert Constable of Flamborough – a wealthy Northern magnate who was a Knight of the Body to the king although his father had fought for Richard at Bosworth. The main topic discussed was their shared revulsion at a sermon given by the chaplain to an evangelical Yorkshire landowner, Sir Ralph Bigod, in which the priest – a keen follower of the New Learning – had attacked the cult of the Virgin Mary. All agreed that they could never be heretics but were going to live and die as Christian men.14
On another occasion, in the garden of his house at Sleaford in Lincolnshire, when discussing the appearance of heresy in Yorkshire, Hussey confided to an acquaintance, that although the new doctrines did not appear to be making much progress there, ‘a few particular persons’ were nonetheless hoping to make the king bring them in, to such a point that one day it would clearly become necessary to take up arms in defence of the Catholic Faith, because the situation ‘will never mend without we fight’.15
By autumn both Darcy and Hussey were in touch with Eustache Chapuys, urging him to persuade the emperor to invade England where his troops would be certain of an enthusiastic welcome, especially in the North Country where, so Darcy claimed, there were at least 600 lords and rich gentlemen who shared their opinions. In September Darcy proposed to the ambassador that Charles should send a small expedition up the Thames to rescue the Lady Mary, who was then at Greenwich, while his own men would free Queen Katherine from Kimbolton. In addition, he asked to be given a small force of arquebusiers and money to pay them, so that he could start a rising as soon as he was able to obtain permission from the authorities to return to Yorkshire. The English were so discontented with Henry’s regime that they would rush to join the revolt. Even if both Darcy and Chapuys exaggerated, this was the first suggestion of armed action by the White Rose since the death of Richard de la Pole.
Lords Darcy and Hussey were far from alone among English peers in hoping for a revolt that would topple Henry VIII. The Earl of Northumberland’s doctor brought Chapuys a secret message from his master, saying the king was about to lose his throne. (Once betrothed to Anne Boleyn, the earl had fainted when she was condemned to death, while he had other reasons for hating Henry.) A similar message arrived from Darcy’s brother-in-law, Lord Sandys, the Lord Chamberlain and Deputy of Calais, who had a considerable reputation as a soldier. Other peers must have thought the same way without caring to inform Chapuys, for example the earls of Derby and Essex, and perhaps the Lords Dacre of the North and Bray. It was the same mood of discontented neo-feudalism that, in the previous century, had helped to bring about the Wars of the Roses.
At about this time, ‘the good old lord’ (Darcy’s name in the imperial code book) presented Chapuys with an enamelled gold pansy and, as that well-informed ambassador must have known, the pansy was the badge of the Pole family. At Christmas Darcy sent him a magnificent sword, which Chapuys interpreted as meaning the time had come for an armed rising. The old warrior was the sort of man who spoke to everyone in his neighbourhood, of every class, and he realized that the North was seething with indignation: if the commons rose in sufficient numbers, the gentry and clergy should be able to take command. But just as Richard de la Pole, Perkin Warbeck and the Earl of Lincoln had known – and Henry Tudor in 1485 – Darcy realized that foreign troops and foreign money were needed if there was to be any chance of success.
The Emperor Charles was not convinced of the viability of Darcy’s plan, however. While he wanted his cousin Mary to inherit the throne and disapproved of Henry VIII, he was equally anxious to avoid the Anglo-French alliance that would almost certainly result if he meddled too much in English affairs. He therefore did nothing, although he told his ambassador to encourage ‘the good old lord’. But while the authorities had no inkling of Darcy’s intentions, they were suspicious of him because of his open opposition to the king’s policies and he was not allowed to return home until the summer of 1535.
23. 1533–4: Rebellion?
1. LP Hen VIII, op. cit., vol. VI, 1164.
2. CSP Ven, op. cit., vol. V, 575.
3. LP Hen VIII, op. cit., vol. VI, 508.
4. G.R. Elton, Reform and Reformation: England 1509–1558, London, Edward Arnold, 1977, p. 122.
5. LP Hen VIII, op. cit., vol. VI, 1164.
6. Ibid., 1164.
7. LP Hen VIII, op. cit., vol. VII, 136.
8. LP Hen VIII, op. cit., vol. VI, 1540.
9. J.J. Scarisbrick, ‘Fisher, Henry VIII and the Reformation Crisis’, in B. Bradshaw and E. Duffy (eds), Humanism, Reform and the Reformation: The Career of Bishop John Fisher, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 163.
10. CSP Spain, V (i), 86..
11. LP Hen VIII, op. cit., vol. VII, 1095.
12. Oxford DNB.
13. Oxford DNB.
14. LP Hen VIII, op. cit., vol. XII (i), 576.
15. LP Hen VIII, op. cit., vol. VIII, 35.
24
1535–6: The Lady Mary and the White Rose
‘The finger of God in those men’s blood.’
Reginald Pole, Apologia to Charles V1
In 1536 during a tournament at Greenwich the king, who had put on weight in recent years, fell heavily from his horse. For several hours he remained unconscious so that there were grave fears for his life. He never jousted again. He also gave up hunting, and instead had deer driven past a stand from where he could shoot them with a bow.
Earlier falls may have inflicted cumulative brain damage of the type suffered by boxers. Since 1519 his concentration had been hindered by headaches that became increasingly severe, while he was tormented by a sore on his leg, an ulcerated vein or a bone infection. When he ceased to take exercise after his fall, his already gross body swelled to a truly vast size, making him feel even more ill. It affected his temper, his furious rages causing him to aim blows at anyone within reach: Cromwell was beaten about the head at least twice a week. Yet this ferocity – he became the only English monarch to burn women alive for treason – owed more to an already unbalanced temperament than brain damage. The collapse of his health did not so much change his personality as aggravate an innate savagery.2 Even before the fall, he had been fearsome enough. His religious revolution had gathered pace after the Act of Supremacy of 1534 completed the break with Rome and created him ‘Supreme head on earth of the Church of England’. Gifted with an insight denied to previous English monarchs, Henry had realized during the impasse over his divorce that the Bishop of Rome possessed no more authority outside his diocese than any other bishop, and that the provinces of York and Canterbury formed a separate Church. Anyone who disgreed with this revelation risked losing his life.
A new Treason Act proscribed the death penalty for anyone who should ‘deny’ the king any of his titles, or who stated in writing or by word of mouth that he was ‘a heretic, a schismatic, a tyrant or an infidel’. (A testimony to what many people thought of Henry VIII and his policies.) Also denounced in the Treason Act was anyone who declared ‘our sovereign lord’ was ‘a usurper of the crown’. Generally overlooked, this can only refer to Yorkists.3
England soon realized that it had become a very dangerous place. In April 1535 three Carthusian priors were executed at Tyburn with spectacular cruelty for refusing to accept Henry as head of the Church. Opposition or criticism infuriated him. When Pope Paul III made Bishop John Fisher a cardinal in May as a reward for his uncompromising loyalty to Rome, the enraged king had him beheaded the next month – although he did not carry out his threat of sending Fisher’s skull to Rome so that it could wear the red hat.
Sir Thomas More, the former Lord Chancellor, a brilliant scholar and writer who was admired not just in England but all over Europe, followed the bishop to the scaffold in July. Once upon a time he had been among Henry’s closest friends. They were keen astronomers and had watched the stars together from the roof of Greenwich Palace. The king had liked to arrive unannounced at his house in Chelsea, to dine and then stroll around the garden with him arm in arm. However, because of his reputation Sir Thomas was capable of rallying massive opposition, so that it made political sense to eliminate him.
While the pair undoubtedly died for their consciences, the king’s decision to kill them was prompted by more than their loyaty to Rome. Where Fisher was concerned, Cromwell was only stating the facts when he told Sir John Wallop to tell Francis I they had been executed because of ‘their treasons, conspiracies and practises secretly practised as well within the realm as without’ – for planning ‘the destruction of the King’. Although Cromwell could not produce any evidence, by now he had plainly learned something about Fisher’s attempts to start a rebellion. As for More, even if he had not been actively involved he would certainly have approved whole heartedly of Henry’s replacement by the impeccably Catholic Lady Mary.4
Behind the executions, the White Rose party saw a message from on high that Henry was too wicked to remain King of England. Devout Catholics, both Lady Salisbury and Lady Exeter must already have been shocked by the spread of the ‘New Learning’. The break with Rome horrified them. Attributing it entirely to Henry’s passion for Anne Boleyn, they felt, as Elizabethan papists would put it, that the reformed Church of England had come out of the king’s codpiece.
Although Bergavenny’s death in June 1535 was a heavy blow for the White Rose, Lord Darcy remained determined to overthrow Henry. It says volumes that for many months the authorities would not let him return to the North. They knew he was planning something but could not discover what. While detained in London, Darcy sent an aged kinsman to Chapuys, probably Dr Marmaduke Waldby, a prebendary of Carlisle, who told the ambassador he was going to see the emperor and find out if he really meant to help them – if not, they would rise by themselves. Warned that such a mission might alert Henry’s government, the old man answered that once Darcy was back in the North Country there would be no need to worry. Yet when Lord Darcy finally went home he reluctantly decided that he could do nothing without imperial assistance.
The Lady Mary was widely pitied for being disowned by her father and kept away from her mother. It was said that the new queen was constantly urging Henry to have the ‘Princess Dowager’ and her daughter put to death, and that she was humiliating Mary in all sorts of petty ways: ordering a lady-in-waiting to box her ears, trying to have her made a servant to the little Princess Elizabeth. Mary had become a key figure in the White Rose programme and a latent threat to the king.
As it was, Henry grew increasingly irritated by Mary’s refusal to accept the Acts of Supremacy and Succession. At the end of 1535 Lady Exeter warned Chapuys that she had heard that the king was telling his councillors he was tired of all the trouble the princess dowager and her daughter were causing him, and meant to do something about it when Parliament met, which sounded as if he was thinking of getting rid of them by legal murder. It may have been no more than bluster, but it frightened their friends. ‘The Marchioness swears this is true as the Gospel and begs me to inform your Majesty and prays you to have pity on the ladies,’ reported Chapuys.6
Chapuys had grown devoted to the ex-queen and her daughter, and not merely because they were his master’s kindred. In dispatches he stressed how popular Queen Katherine remained, not only among the upper classes but with the common people, who were constantly risking their lives to cheer her. He invariably referred to Henry’s new consort as the ‘whore’ or the ‘concubine’ and called her daughter Elizabeth ‘the little bastard’. He himself was only too anxious for Emperor Charles to rescue Katherine and Mary, yet at the same time had grown nervous about recommending an invasion.
Chapuys spent several days with the princess dowager at Kimbolton Castle, just before she died in January 1536 – expressing her sadness that she could not see her husband for a last farewell. Even her daughter was not allowed to visit her. The king and Queen Anne greeted the news of her death with unseemly delight, dressing in yellow as soon as they heard, instead of wearing mourning. ‘God be praised!’ cried Henry. ‘We are free from all suspicion of war’ – by which he meant that Charles V was unlikely to invade England now that his aunt was dead. No doubt the White Rose folk thought so too and that there was no longer even a faint hope of being rescued by the emperor.
The King’s tournament fall took place shortly after this, making him more dangerous than ever. Despite her rejoicing at Katherine’s death, by now Anne Boleyn was terrified of him, and with reason. On 29 January she suffered another mis carriage, producing a stillborn male child. Not only had she lost her looks and grown painfully thin but, far worse, she had failed to bear the long-desired son and ensure the succession. Moreover, Henry had belatedly discovered, after their marriage, that she was really a rather horrible woman – vindictive, arrogant, domineering and vile-tempered. In any case, he had half fallen in love with one of her ladies-in-waiting, Jane Seymour.
Besides anatagonizing her uncle Norfolk and a whole host of other courtiers, Anne was stupid enough to make an enemy of Thomas Cromwell, who decided his survival depended on destroying her. Somehow, he learned she had not been a virgin when Henry married her and this discovery had angered the king, especially after her long refusal to become his mistress. Together with Norfolk, for once his ally, Cromwell planted misgivings about her fidelity in the perennially suspicious mind of Henry, who in April set up an official commission to investigate Anne’s private life. Cromwell seized the opportunity to fabricate a list of scabrous accusations.
On 2 May Queen Anne was sent to the Tower, and that evening, bathed in tears, Henry told the Duke of Richmond and the Lady Mary that she had been planning to poison them. Later, he claimed that since her marriage Anne must have committed adultery with at least a hundred men. His lack of balance is apparent from Chapuys’s description of how, after giving vent to frenzied outbursts about being betrayed, he passed his evenings in joyous musical parties on the river in a gilded barge filled with ladies, returning to Greenwich or York House during the small hours of the morning, in an age when most men and women rose at 4 a.m.
A fortnight later, Anne was tried at the Tower before an audience of over 2,000, to be found guilty of preposterous charges of adultery with four lovers and of incest with her brother, despite her convincing rebuttals. She was even accused of plotting her husband’s death, together with her alleged paramours. (The five unfortunate men had already gone to the scaffold.) Her sentence was burning or beheading, at the king’s pleasure. Henry graciously settled for the latter. She went to the block on 19 May, less than three weeks after her arrest, dying under the sword instead of the axe with admirable courage.
