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In 1509, with remarkable prescience, a Venetian wrote of Henry VIII, “for the future, the whole world will talk of him.”1 In an age when monarchs ruled as well as reigned, a king’s personality could have a profound effect upon the land he governed, and few sovereigns have left a more indelible imprint on national institutions and the national consciousness than Henry. He inspired in his contemporaries “a pleasant and terrible reverence.”2
Sovereigns in the sixteenth century were perceived as semidivine beings; a king was not just a normal man but also the Lord’s Anointed, His deputy on earth, called “by divine right” to hold dominion over his subjects. Since mediaeval times, the King had been seen as two bodies in one: a mortal entity and “the King’s person,” representing unending royal authority; monarchs therefore referred to themselves in the plural form as “we.” A king was thus set apart from his people, 3 and was invested with an insight into the subtle mysteries of state denied mere mortals. “Kings of England,” Henry told his judges, “never had any superior but God.”4
So sacrosanct was the institution of monarchy that it was seen as near-sacrilege for a subject to question or criticise the acts of his sovereign. “Princes ought to be obeyed by the commandment of God; yea, and to be obeyed without question,” wrote Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. 5 A king was entitled to expect the same devotion and obedience from his people as he himself rendered to God, for there was a presumption that the King’s law was God’s law.6 The royal prerogative was the will of God working through the will of the King, and the King could do no wrong. This explains why treason was regarded as the most serious of crimes, and why it was punished so harshly.
The normal penalty for treason was hanging, disembowelling, and quartering, although the King usually commuted the sentence to beheading for peers of the realm. Traitors, as Henry declared, had to be punished severely “for the example and terror of others.”7In 1541, the King angrily censured his councillors for not committing to the Tower some felons who had robbed Windsor Castle, “as though you made no difference between the enterprise of robbing His Majesty and the attempting of the same towards any mean subject.”8 The thieves were forthwith sent to the Tower.
Since he governed “by the grace of God,” the King bore a weighty moral responsibility towards his subjects, of which Henry VIII was well aware, “being in the room that I am in.”9 Henry saw God as his ally; early on, he told a Venetian ambassador that no one kept faith in the world save him, “and therefore God Almighty, who knows this, prospers my affairs.”10 Kings were guaranteed a special place in Heaven, and were therefore expected to set a good example. The King’s chief duties, enshrined in his coronation oath, were to defend his realm, uphold the Church, and administer justice fairly. The King was also the fount of honour and, in times of war, the military leader of his armies.
Although they were not, strictly speaking, absolute monarchs, the Tudor sovereigns bore the entire responsibility for the government of the kingdom. Parliament, the Privy Council, the officers of state, judges, sheriffs, and mayors all exercised authority in the King’s name. Royal power was therefore the unifying force within the realm.
The Tudors elevated the English monarchy to unprecedented heights while extending the royal authority. Their prestige was enhanced by the increasingly elaborate ceremonial that attended every aspect of their highly public lives, as well as by pageantry and symbolism, calculated to enhance the royal image. The development of royal palaces and progresses were just two aspects of this policy: a king needed to be visible and to be in touch with his subjects, and also to impress them and foreigners with a display of magnificence. Henry VIII was the first English king to adopt the style “Your Majesty,” rather than the traditional “Your Grace” or “Your Highness”; foreign ambassadors were addressing him as such before 1520. Like other European sovereigns, Henry was influenced by humanist teachings on sovereignty, which emphasised strong, centralised rule, dynastic continuity, and the consolidation of royal power.
“The Prince is the life, the head and the authority of all things that be done in England,” wrote Sir Thomas Smith.11 More than a century before Louis XIV, the King was seen as the embodiment of the state.12
At the foundation of the Tudor monarchy was the concept of princely magnificence. The outward show of power and status, displayed by both king and court, was extremely important in an age of widespread illiteracy, and also in a culture that valued the trappings of rank, and it had the advantages of impressing foreigners and attracting talented and able men to the royal service. Magnificence, or majestas, was calculated to dazzle the beholder; it could create an illusion of wealth and power that might belie the reality, and was therefore very effective as a propaganda tool.
Mediaeval monarchs had certainly understood the value of outward display, but it was not until the reign of Edward IV (1461–1483) that the promotion of princely magnificence became official policy and the focus of Edward’s household ordinances. Edward IV had “the most splendid court that could be found in all Christendom.”13
Edward and his successors were merely emulating the fifteenth-century Valois dukes of Burgundy, who had created the cult of grandeur and set standards in taste, ceremonial, and culture for the rest of Europe. The Burgundian dukes impressed the services of architects, artists, musicians, and scholars, and in so doing enhanced their own prestige.
By Henry VIII’s reign, the court of Burgundy was no more,14 but its influence was everywhere to be seen. The Italian writer Baldassare Castiglione, in his book The Courtier, stated that the perfect ruler “should be a prince of splendour and generosity, giving freely to everyone. He should hold magnificent banquets, festivals, games and public shows.”
Henry VIII exemplified this ideal. His court was the most magnificent in English history. Henry was rich enough to lavish extravagant sums of money on his palaces, clothes, entertainments, and lifestyle, and on the open-handed hospitality that was expected of a great prince. He was determined from the first to outshine his European rivals, the King of France and the Holy Roman Emperor, each of whom had at least four times the resources he did. By clever bluffing, he managed to achieve this aim.
Henry himself embodied the virtues of magnificence. He was a big, impressive man and had a natural authority and assurance. He looked and acted like a king.
Henry made the most of his opportunities. He had a genius for choosing talented men to serve him, notably Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell. But while Henry delegated much of his power to these ministers, and left them to work out the details of his policies, he remained very much in control, and kept his own counsel. “If my cap knew my counsel, I would throw it in the fire,” he once said.15 It was indisputably he who directed the course of his reign. If any dared cross him, he threatened, “there was no head in his kingdom so noble but he would make it fly.” 16 Court factions might seek to influence the King, for he was not averse to intrigue, but he was not so suggestible as to let them utterly usurp his prerogative. He never forgot that his was the ultimate authority.
Many historians have claimed that Henry grew more ruthless and bloodthirsty only as he got older, yet in 1510 he coolly executed his father’s hated ministers, Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, in the interests of political expediency, and similarly eliminated the Earl of Suffolk in 1513. John Stow claimed that during his reign he executed seventy thousand people, although this is certainly a gross exaggeration. It proves, however, that Henry had gained a reputation for cruelty by the end of his life, and it is true that he did not scruple to remove—often by savage means—those who opposed him.
Henry had an eye for detail. “He wants to have his feet in a thousand shoes,” commented a Milanese envoy.17 Little escaped his scrutiny. His encyclopaedic knowledge was an advantage when it came to briefing ambassadors or intervening in disputes, and he made sure he was kept up-to-date on events. When told by French envoys that ten thousand Swiss troops had been killed at the Battle of Marignano in 1515, the King replied that that was remarkable, since only ten thousand soldiers had fought in the battle.18
Henry had international ambitions, and he was determined to play a prominent role in Europe. He was “rich, ferocious and greedy for glory,”19 desiring nothing more than to display his knightly skills at the head of an army and win honour and renown for himself by reopening the Hundred Years War and winning back the lands his predecessors had lost in France, lands Henry believed to be his by right. “The new King is magnificent, liberal, and a great enemy of the French,” commented a Venetian ambassador in 1509.20 At this time, Ferdinand of Aragon was Henry’s ally, but time would prove Ferdinand untrustworthy.
Henry’s hatred of the French festered. In 1510, learning that his councillors had written in his name to Louis XII offering friendship and peace, he shouted: “Who wrote this letter? I ask peace of the King of France, who dare not look me in the face, still less make war on me?” Then he stormed out of the room and proceeded to insult the French ambassador by inviting him to watch a tournament but making sure he had nowhere to sit. Eventually a cushion was provided, and the envoy had to watch the King displaying his martial prowess.21
Henry was a focus for the growing nationalism of his people, and he enjoyed an instinctive rapport with many of his subjects. “Love for the King is universal with all who see him, as His Highness does not seem a person of this world but one descended from Heaven,” observed a Venetian.22 In 1513, another Italian wrote, “He is very popular with his own people, and indeed with all, for his qualities.” 23 Henry’s hearty charm and affability won him golden opinions, although he was never referred to as Bluff King Hal in his lifetime, only later. Erasmus found him to be “more of a companion than a king.”
Henry revelled in his popularity; he was a consummate showman who understood the value of being accessible to his subjects, and who made sure, in his early years, that he had a highly visible profile. The public were allowed into his palaces to watch tournaments, processions, or the great court entertainments, and it was not unheard of for Henry to go into London in disguise to mingle among them. And of course a large number of his subjects saw him when he went on progress.
Many of those subjects brought the King gifts in the expectation of a reward; indeed, such largesse, or tipping, was expected of a monarch. Lots of the offerings were humble, such as herbs, green peas, or live foxes, and many were foodstuffs, such as orange pies, fruit, pheasants, salmon, or baked lampreys, which were known to be one of his favourite foods. The King gave 6d to a gardener who gave him a drink of water, £1 to a priest who preached before him, a total of £4.17s.4d to divers poor people who brought him “capons, hens, books of wax and other trifles,” and £2 to a man who won a wager by eating a whole buck at one sitting. 24 Wherever he went, the poor waited for his charity, and he would patiently listen to their tales of woe. One William Kebet had lost his job and was “fallen in poverty and decay,” and Henry succoured him with £5 on one occasion and £4 on another. He donated £5 to another man “like to be lost,” £3.6s to a needy father of thirteen, and a further sum of money so that a poor woman could redeem her husband from debtor’s prison. He also gave funds to his jester “for his surgery when sick in London,” and to his groom, Thomas, “to relieve him in his sickness.”25
Henry VIII’s popularity did not wane with time, and it survived his reforms and his cruelties: his subjects generally revered him as a great king who had England’s interests at heart.