The King is Dead Page 9
In addition, recent research by Dr Joanne Paul suggests that Baldwin Smith was wrong to assume that rule by council did not represent contemporary political ideas in the sixteenth-century: instead, the idea of a council was being turned to with ever greater frequency. She notes that Thomas Starkey, in his Dialogue Between Pole and Lupset (circulating in manuscript in 1529–32), had proposed a specifically English conciliar solution to the question of the highest form of political rule. Moreover, Machiavelli had warned against depending too much on a single counsellor, and while we cannot be sure that Henry ever read The Prince (published 1532), the ideas contained within it were well known in England by the 1530s and 1540s.14 A draft bill by Christopher St Germain, although never passed, had proposed a ‘great standing council’ in 1531, and the King’s Privy Council had acquired its new importance and footing in 1540. Abroad too – in Spain and Venice – the large, structured council had become an increasingly important institution of power. In theory and practice, the council as a solution to rule was at the cutting-edge of political thought by the mid-sixteenth century.15 It was the most practical and sensible scheme that Henry could have concocted. A regency council with the full and unfettered authority of the crown gave Edward’s minority the best chance of succeeding.
So that is what Henry intended. But it is not what happened.
Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, painted by François Clouet. This portrait shows the fabled beauty of Mary Stuart (1542–87), who became Queen of Scotland at just eight days old. It was probably painted shortly before, or during, Mary’s marriage to the Dauphin of France (1558–60), who became King Francis II of France in 1559. Despite being the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s sister, Margaret, she was excluded from the English line of succession by Henry’s last will and testament. Nevertheless, her son, King James VI of Scotland – whose father (Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley) was also a grandchild of Margaret Tudor, by a different marriage – would inherit the English throne from Henry’s daughter, Elizabeth, in 1603.
Henry VIII may have died at around 2 o’clock on the morning of Saturday 28 January 1547; but for several days, his death was kept a secret.1 Everything carried on as normal. Parliament, which should instantly have dissolved upon the death of the king, remained in session. Food continued to be conveyed with all the usual ceremony and trumpet fanfare to the king’s chambers. Ambassadors were kept in the dark.2 This was not unusual – Henry VII’s death had been concealed in the same way – but it was crucial to the ambitions of two men: it gave Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford and Sir William Paget a chance to lock down power and to implement a hastily conceived plan.
Although there had been no conspiracy over the contents of Henry’s will, and the old king had remained in full, and capricious, control of events until he lay on his deathbed, it seems to have dawned on Hertford and Paget near the very end that if they placed a wager on the hand that fate had dealt them, they had potential to win big. The power of the king – and, especially, the 1534 Act that made it treason to speak of the death of the monarch – meant that Hertford and Paget did not dare to engage in the irrevocable act of plotting their place in a post-Henrician world until they could be convinced that his deterioration was irreversible. Until such time, it was too risky to bet against his sudden recovery – they had seen him rally on many occasions. But at some point in those very last days, they became confident enough to chance their arm.
We know this because of a later letter written by Paget to Hertford, from July 1549. This is a vital piece of evidence, because it was a private letter in which Paget had no reason to dissemble.3 The context was that Paget was writing, in a state of high emotion, to offer advice on how to deal with a rebellion in the West Country. Fearful that this revolt would bring the end of Edward VI’s reign and the ruin of Hertford (who by now was Duke of Somerset and pre-eminent as England’s Lord Protector), Paget urged him to remember that he had once promised to follow Paget’s advice in all things:
Remember what you promised me in the gallery at Westminster, before the breath was out of the body of the King, that dead is. Remember what you promised immediately after, devising with me concerning the place which you now occupy, I trust, in the end to good purpose, howsoever things thwart now. And that was, to follow mine advice in all your proceedings, more than any other man’s. Which promise I wish Your Grace had kept. For then I am sure thing had not gone altogether as they go now.4
So it is clear that, as the king lay dying, Paget and Hertford had whispered together in the long gallery at Westminster and made promises to each other about what the future would hold. During that night of 27/28 January 1547, immediately after Henry’s death, they had begun to plot together to elevate Hertford to ‘the place which you now occupy’: the position he came to assume as Lord Protector of England. There was one condition: that Paget would become his right-hand-man, his chief adviser, to be heeded in all things.5 This was the deal they struck as Henry VIII gasped his way into the grave, and before his body turned cold.
The two men were in prime position to capitalize on Henry’s death: Paget and Hertford were Henry’s trusted confidants – his chief secretary and his brother-in-law, his closest of friends. They were also immensely capable and ambitious. On 29 January, the former Imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, who was briefly visiting England – and still unaware that Henry was dead – speculated that if the king were to die, ‘it is probable that these two men will have the management of affairs, because, apart from the king’s affection for them, and other reasons, there are no other nobles of a fit age and ability for the task’.6
Edward Seymour (1500–52), Earl of Hertford, depicted by Hans Holbein. This portrait, painted when Hertford was Great Chamberlain of England, allows the viewer to see the whites of the eyes of the man who would become Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector of England.
Hertford and Paget were thick as thieves. In another letter, from May 1549, Paget told him that he loved him ‘so deeply in my heart as it cannot be taken out’, while in his letter of July 1549 Paget would not only compare their relationship to that between a master and servant, but also to that between spouses: ‘I have ever desired your authority to be set forth, ever been careful of honour and surety; both for now and for evermore, ever glad to please you, as ever was gentle wife to please her husband, and honest man his master I was.’7
Finally, they were well placed to seize control on Henry’s death because Hertford had possession of the pivotal constitutional document at the time of the transition: Henry’s last will and testament.
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When Henry breathed his last, Hertford and Paget swung into action with one accord. Speed and boldness were of the essence. Within hours of Henry dying, the earl left with Sir Anthony Browne, Master of the Horse, to secure the person of the new king, Edward, who was at that time at the town of Hertford, some twenty-five miles from Westminster.8 By the next evening, Sunday 29th January, Hertford had transported the young monarch thirteen miles south to Enfield, where Princess Elizabeth was living. It was at this juncture that Hertford told Edward and his half-sister of their father’s death, and, according to Edward VI’s first biographer Sir John Hayward, ‘they both brake forth into such unforced and unfeigned passions… never was sorrow more sweetly set forth’.9
Three letters, two from Hertford himself, give us our only clues as to how the process of assuming power was managed between the time of Henry’s death and its public proclamation. The letters demonstrate the way in which Paget and Hertford were carefully controlling the flow of information and managing the unfurling of events. That much business, which no longer survives, was being done – or at least, that Hertford was sleepless and agitated – is also betrayed by his first letter, written between 3am and 4am on Sunday 29th, after receiving an urgent note from Paget between 1am and 2am – just twenty-four hours after Henry’s death. The matter so pressing as to prevent sleep was Henry’s will.
In Hertford’s haste to reach Edward, he had forgotten
to give Paget the key to the box in which the will was stored. As the will was the vital document on which their access to power was based, Paget’s letter asked for the key and Hertford’s thoughts on whether the contents of the will should be made public. Hertford replied that they should consider very carefully how much of it ‘were necessary to be published for divers respects I think it not convenient to satisfy the world’. Hertford suspected it would be sufficient when making Henry’s death known for Paget to have the will with him and to be able to name Henry’s councillors and executors. They would then deliver its contents in Parliament on Wednesday morning. Before that, Hertford urged, the two of them should meet and agree precisely what the contents purported, so that ‘there may be no controversy hereafter’. They needed to decide a party line. Hertford also enclosed the key. The urgency and gravity of this communiqué was conveyed by the endorsement on its exterior: ‘To my right loving friend, Sir William Paget, one of the King’s Majesties Two Principal Secretaries. Haste, post haste, haste with all diligence, for thy life, for thy life.’10
This anxious-looking man, dressed in very rich blacks and sporting a fashionable sugarloaf beard, is Sir William Paget (1506–63), formerly Chief Secretary to Henry VIII and, at the time of this picture, co-architect of England’s protectorate with Edward Seymour. He carries a roll of paper in honour of his position. The portrait is attributed to an unknown Flemish artist and dated to 1549.
Hertford’s second letter is dated 11pm on Monday 30 January. He wrote to the Council discussing the possibility of instantly offering a general royal pardon, which they had raised in their letter, and instructed them to wait until Edward’s coronation so that the new king would benefit from the praise and thanks of the people.11 Hertford was already starting to act as though he were in charge. He noted, in the first time this phrase was used of Edward in the surviving papers, that he intended to have ‘the king’s majesty’ ‘a-horseback tomorrow by xi of the clock’ – 11am – so that by 3pm on 31 January they should be at the Tower of London.12 He also urged the Council to inform Anne of Cleves of the king’s death; we do not know when Henry VIII’s widow, Kateryn Parr, learnt of the news.13
Our final clue as to the handling of those days comes from another letter from 1549, written by a former servant of Sir Anthony Browne. Hertford evidently decided to use the opportunity to persuade his travelling companion, as they arrived at Enfield with Edward, to accept the arrangement that he and Paget had agreed:
…communing with my Lord’s Grace [Browne] in the garden at Enfield, at the King’s Majesty’s coming from Hertford[,] gave his frank consent [in] communication in discourse of the State, that his Grace should be Protector, thinking it (as indeed it was) both the surest kind of government and most fit for that Commonwealth.14
Hertford now had two members of the Council onside.
On the morning of 31 January, Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, in tears, announced the king’s death to Parliament and read out the sections of the king’s will containing the details of the succession.15 Later that day, Edward was proclaimed king, and when he and his uncle rode into London, the new monarch was saluted by cannon-fire from ships and from the Tower, where apartments had been lavishly dressed for the young king.16
That very afternoon, the regency council, as constituted by the will, gathered for its first meeting, even though three of the sixteen members were not in attendance: Dr Nicholas Wotton, still resident at the French court; Sir Edward Wotton, who remained in Calais; and Sir Thomas Bromley. The minutes of this meeting noted that Henry’s will had given them ‘full power and authority… to do any act or acts whatsoever that may tend to the honour and surety of our said Sovereign Lord’s person, or the advancement of his affairs’.17 They noted that having ‘reverently and diligently considered the great charge committed unto us’, they had ‘fully resolved and agreed with one voice and consent… to stand to and maintain the said last will and testament of our said master… and every part and article of the same to the uttermost of our powers, wits and cunnings’. A day later, they would swear oaths promising to uphold the will faithfully.18
This loyal adherence to the terms and conditions of the will did not, however, prevent them from concluding that for the honour and surety of the government – a reference to the carte-blanche clause in Henry’s will empowering them to make any decisions they saw fit for this purpose – and to ensure order and direction in the king’s affairs, ‘some special man… should be preferred’ among them to be their leader. This person, they noted, should be one of ‘virtue, wisdom and experience’, one able to be ‘a special remembrancer’ and keep a certain account of all things, or else they might quickly fall into disorder and confusion. Who should this person be? Of course, it should be Edward’s only blood-relative on the Council, the Earl of Hertford, whom they gave ‘first and chief place among us’ and ‘the name and title of Protector of all the realms and dominions of the King’s Majesty’.19
Hertford and Paget had executed their plan beautifully. In so doing, had they breached Henry’s will, by breaking the terms of an equal and unified government by council that Henry had decreed? Historians have been divided over whether or not the events of 31 January – just three days after Henry’s death – constituted a violation of both the spirit and letter of the will, or a perfectly acceptable implementation of its provisions.20 The councillors themselves swore that they had abided by Henry’s terms, for Hertford became Protector with their ‘one whole assent, concord and agreement’ and on ‘this special and express condition’ that ‘he shall not do any act but with the advice and consent of the rest of the co-executors’, according to the terms of the will.21
A thin veneer of legitimacy had been maintained. But it was soon to be entirely shattered.
The power that Hertford and Paget acquired on Henry VIII’s death rested entirely on the late king’s will. It did not rest, however, just on their status within it as executors and regency councillors. Instead, their ability to grasp the opportunity offered to them depended on the gifts left to them by the king, those both written and unwritten.
After his lengthy list of provisions for the succession and his naming of the executors, Henry, in conformity now with other royal wills, made his bequests. He charged his executors to pay and fulfil any outstanding debts and promises, and he explained how his property should be divided. This was mostly straightforward: there are frustratingly few personal gifts, and we search largely in vain for the legacies of individual items and statements of affection found in many wills of the period, such as Stephen Gardiner’s effusive donation to Queen Mary I in his will, which stated that he could in no part recompense her great favour to him ‘if I should live many lives [so] I have and do for witness thereof leave unto her a cup of gold with a sapphire in the top’ or his bequest to ‘my Lord Legate’s Grace a ring with a diamante, not so big as he is worthy to have’, or Kateryn Parr’s bequest of all her possessions to her fourth husband, Sir Thomas Seymour, ‘wishing them to be a thousand times more in value than they were’.1 Henry VIII’s is far more prosaic; but what is interesting is what the will hints at but does not say – what has come to be known as Henry’s ‘unwritten will’.
Henry VIII did have certain stated destinations for his great wealth, however, which give us an insight into whom, and what, he held dear. In total, he left bequests to sixty-six individuals. He gave the responsibility for ensuring these were given out to Sir Edmund Peckham, who had been cofferer (treasurer) of the royal household since 1524 (folio 17).
His son Edward was the main beneficiary. Henry bequeathed him ‘all our plate, stuff of household, artillery, ordnance, munitions, ships, cabettes and all other things and implements to them belonging, and money also and jewels’ (folio 19) – everything, in short, that he had not gifted to someone else in the will.2 When Henry died, an inventory was made of his possessions, across all his palaces, and its recent editors estimate that the total value of his gift to Edward was worth around £1,20
0,000 in 1547: an extraordinarily huge bequest.3 Its 17,813 itemized entries include 9,150 guns, cannons or other pieces of artillery; over 2,000 pieces of tapestry; 2,028 pieces of plate; jewellery; armour; books, including volumes by Aquinas, Augustine, Cicero, Livy, Seneca and Erasmus, and New Testaments in English, Latin and French, along with many primers, prayer books and books of songs; horses; salt clocks; maps; chandlery; carpets; perfumes; regalia; ships; the crown imperial; medical equipment; gemstones; paintings; globes; miniatures; games; ivory; musical instruments; mother of pearl; spice holders; mirrors; goblets; toys; furnishings; terracotta; embroidery; carvings; and all items from the king’s wardrobe. There was even ‘a piece of a unicorn’s horn’ (see Appendix III for more highlights).4
The ostensible condition for Edward’s receipt of this enormous inheritance was a solemn order to be bound by the advice of Henry’s nominated councillors in all matters:
…charging and commanding him on pain of our curse, seeing that he hath so loving a father of us and that our chief labour and study in this world is to establish him in the crown imperial of this realm after our decease… that he be ordered and ruled both in his marriage and also in ordering of the affairs of the realm as well outward as inward, and also in all his own private affairs, and in giving of offices of charge by the advice and counsel of our right entirely beloved councillors (folios 19 and 20)