6

“The King’s House”

Inside his palaces, Henry VIII lived in unprecedented splendour. The Tudor age was one in which outward show counted for a great deal: if you had wealth, you flaunted it. The interior decor of the period was rich, vivid, even gaudy. The walls, ceilings, tapestries, and furnishings of the King’s apartments gleamed with gold and bright colours; everything that could be gilded, or shot through with gold thread, was so adorned. Next in importance came silver, then baser metals. The decoration of a room was determined by its status. Everything in the King’s inward and outward chambers was carefully coordinated to delight the eye and create a magnificent setting.

Henry VIII was determined to be at the forefront of fashion, and as the reign progressed and Renaissance influence grew stronger, the interior decoration of the palaces became increasingly European in style. After January 1516, when the term is first mentioned,¹“antique” decoration began to proliferate.² “Antique work” was supposed to derive from the classical art and sculpture of ancient Greece and Rome, but it had a sixteenth-century quality all its own; it has been suggested that the word “antique” (or “antick,” as it was often spelt) should read “antic,” because the style was whimsical and sometimes mischievous in concept.³

Henry VIII decorated his palaces and banqueting houses with antique ornament and motifs; such decoration was perhaps out of place in mediaeval buildings, where it sat side by side with heraldic emblems and mottoes, yet it lent Henrician interiors a Renaissance patina and rendered them unique.

One of the most popular types of antique work was grotesque decoration. It derived from first-century paintings discovered in the 1490s in the grottoes (Italian, grottescio) on the sites of the Golden House of Nero and the baths of Titus in Rome. Grotesque decoration was highly mannerist, extravagant, and often absurd: it took the form of painted or carved borders, friezes, panels, and pilasters featuring human figures, flora and fauna, weapons, masks, and decorative plates, all arranged in a formal yet fantastic composition around a spinal candelabrum.⁴ Such work often featured elaborate gilding. The craze for grotesque decoration reached France before 1510, but it was not until the 1520s and 1530s that it became common in Henry VIII’s palaces.

The ceilings in Henry’s palaces normally were flat and featured moulded fretwork with pendants; some were lavishly gilded and embellished with battens and bosses bearing colourful badges and heraldic devices. Sometimes the ground between the battens was painted or filled in with painted leather-mâché panels, as in the so-called Wolsey Closet at Hampton Court. The Whitehall family group painting features a battened ceiling in the antique style. Ceilings in large rooms such as halls and kitchens sometimes had exposed timbers. ⁵

The walls in the palaces were mainly of plastered brick; in utilitarian rooms they were painted, while those in important chambers were often clad with the linenfold panelling so characteristic of the age. More elaborate and ornate panelling, often embellished with grotesque motifs, adorned the royal apartments, as may be seen in the Whitehall family group painting. A few rooms had murals or painted grotesque work at the centre of their decorative schemes. Grotesque work also ornamented the pillars flanking the thrones in some of Henry’s presence chambers.⁶ Many rooms had moulded friezes and cornices. At Hampton Court, there was a frieze of putti in the King’s Long Gallery; some fragments are still extant.⁷

Most important rooms were hung with tapestry or fabrics, the richest being reserved for the royal apartments. Henry’s sets of Italian silk hangings were among his most priceless possessions, while at Hampton Court he had hangings of cloth of gold and velvet embroidered with royal emblems. ⁸ Some hangings were fringed, some lined: they were hung either taut or in folds.

Henry VIII owned over two thousand tapestries,⁹ of which about four hundred had been inherited from his father; some were extremely valuable. The display of tapestries denoted great wealth, since they were made of costly silk and wool thread dipped in expensive dyes, and each one took a team of skilled weavers some three years to complete. In 1528, the King paid £1,500 (about £450,000 today) for one ten-panel set of tapestries depicting the life of King David.

Twenty-eight of Henry’s tapestries survive at Hampton Court. They include the ten-panel set The Story of Abraham, which was commissioned by Henry in the 1530s or 1540s for the great hall, where it still hangs today; this set, the most expensive in his collection and woven entirely of silk and silver-gilt thread, came from Brussels and is thought to have been based on paintings or designs by the Flemish master Bernard van Orley. Other sets, including the three panels of The Seven Deadly Sins and the four panels of The Triumph of Petrarch, had been originally owned by Cardinal Wolsey. Henry VIII also owned four sets of tapestries portraying the story of Esther, and others entitled The Story of Youth and The Seven Ages, as well as several showing hunting scenes.¹⁰ Armorial tapestries were popular: a Flemish tapestry bearing the arms of Henry VIII is at Hever Castle.

Many early sixteenth-century tapestries were Flemish; usually they were fashioned by master weavers and combined new classical trends with traditional chivalric themes. In 1515, however, the Italian artist Raphael set a new trend when he designed a set of tapestries, The Acts of the Apostles, for Pope Leo X. What was novel about them was the minute detail in Raphael’s cartoons, which left no scope for improvisation by the master weavers. Unfortunately, enthusiastic patrons, anxious to follow this new method, often commissioned artists of a lesser calibre than Raphael, with the result that tapestry design deteriorated during the sixteenth century. Henry VIII managed to acquire a set of tapestries copied from Raphael’s designs for the Pope, which he probably hung at Windsor Castle.¹¹

Before 1542, the King commissioned for his new lodgings at Whitehall Palace another set of outstanding Brussels tapestries on a classical theme, The Triumph of the Gods; only two panels survive of the original seven, “The Labours of Hercules” and “The Triumph of Bacchus,” which may be seen today in William III’s presence chamber at Hampton Court. Such tapestries, with their Italian mannerist designs, complemented the antique décor in the palace rooms.

Tapestries were frequently changed around, the best being displayed on state occasions; when not in use, they were stored in huge presses: one at Greenwich was fifty-five feet long.¹² The Master of the King’s Great Wardrobe was responsible for their maintenance and repair. Tapestries were rubbed clean with bread, and the crumbs then brushed away. They were usually hung with hooks and eyes, or nailed to battens attached to the walls.

Painted cloths, which were much cheaper than tapestries, were sometimes hung on the walls of rooms of lesser status.

Window frames and mullions were usually whitewashed, and the window bars painted red or black, as at Hampton Court.¹³ Mottoes or heraldic decorations were sometimes carved or painted on the sills or in a border around the window. The windows of the King’s inward chambers were hung with curtains or blinds, often both,¹⁴ and sometimes with tapestries or carpets. His curtains were chiefly of satin or silk stiffened with buckram; one pair was “of purple, white and black satin paned together.” ¹⁵ Curtains were hung from gilded rings over fixed rods; tall poles were used for drawing curtains at high windows.¹⁶

Miniatures in Henry VIII’s Psalter,¹⁷ which dates from around 1540, show Italian Renaissance interiors, with marbled walls, columns, and arched doorways and gaily tiled floors. One picture features a classically styled bed with a blue and gold tester and drapes. It has been suggested that these rooms are the invention of a fanciful artist, but many items— the bed itself, the floor tiles, and the X-framed chair—are typical of the period, so it is possible that these rooms did exist, perhaps at Nonsuch Palace, Henry’s long-vanished novelty house. The King and his family were depicted in similar classically inspired surroundings by Hans Holbein in his lost Whitehall mural.

The floors in Henry’s palaces were either of oak, which might be plastered or painted to look like marble, or tiled. Those on the ground floor were often paved with brick or flagstones.

Many rooms were still strewn with “grise” (rushes scented with sweet-smelling herbs such as saffron), in the mediaeval manner. These collected dirt and dust and sweetened the air, but after a while they stank of the “leakages of men, cats and dogs.”¹⁸ The King ordered the rushes to be renewed “every eight to ten days,” ¹⁹ and daily in the presence and privy chambers, but this did not always eliminate the smell, so the house had to be vacated for cleaning. During Henry’s reign, it became customary for rush matting to be used instead of loose rushes;²⁰ the matting was sewn together in four-inch strips and fitted to cover the whole floor. In 1539, Master John Craddock was granted a monopoly for life to provide rush matting for all the royal houses near London.²¹ A fragment of such matting was found recently under the floorboards of a former courtier lodging at Hampton Court.²²

Carpets, usually made of wool or velvet (although the word was also used to describe any strong, durable furnishing fabric), were to be seen on the floors of the royal apartments only; they were also used to cover tables, windows, cupboards, and walls. Henry VIII owned more than eight hundred carpets, most of them from Turkey.²³ The King also had a large number of oriental rugs, or “foot cloths,” which were often placed in front of chairs of estate.²⁴ Carpets, like tapestries, were very costly, and were therefore potent status symbols.

The royal apartments were heated by “fire pans,” movable charcoal braziers on wheels, or by hearth fires, fuelled by faggots or large logs called talshides, which were issued to all those entitled to bouche of court. At Whitehall and at Greenwich there were ceramic wood-burning stoves, which had been used in Europe since the thirteenth century; green glazed earthenware tiles unearthed during excavations at Whitehall in 1939 came from one such stove; they bear the monogram HR, which suggests that the stoves were built for the King’s use, as does the fact that the expensive sea coal which was burned in them was reserved exclusively for the royal family. The household department responsible for the purchase and supply of coal and charcoal was the Coal House.

Most rooms in the palaces had fireplaces. These were normally flush with the wall and featured a four-centred Perpendicular arch, often decorated, but those in the royal apartments could be grandiosly elaborate. Henry is known to have had Renaissance-style chimneypieces at Whitehall, Greenwich, and Hampton Court.

A pair of cast iron and polished steel gridirons, or firedogs, bearing the badges and initials of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn was once at Hever Castle, and can now be seen in the great hall at Knole in Kent. Made by Henry Romains, the King’s locksmith, they would have been placed on the hearth to support burning logs. In the summer, screens were set in front of fireplaces; Henry VIII had a screen carved with his arms, with feet fashioned as lions, dragons, and greyhounds.²⁵

The palace courtyards and stairways were lit by lanterns; torches or links were set in iron wall-brackets or on iron cressets on poles ²⁶ in the state apartments;²⁷ while candles illuminated smaller rooms. Candles were of beeswax, and expensive: those in the royal apartments alone cost £400 a year;²⁸ they were usually fixed on pricket-type or socketed candlesticks or candelabra, the latter being cross-beamed or wheel-shaped. Some candelabra were suspended from the ceiling; others were free-standing. Candlesticks were made of silver-gilt, iron, brass, or latten, and those used by the King might be fashioned in the antique style.

Henry VIII’s rooms were lit by quarriers, square blocks of fine beeswax with a wick,²⁹ while “salad” oil was used to fuel small oil lamps for the King.³⁰ Cheaper candles, called white lights, or rush lights were used in the palace’s lesser rooms and the service quarters. Each morning, before nine, the servants would collect all lanterns, unfinished candle-stubs, and torches in the interests of preventing waste. Candles, wax, and tallow were made and stored in the Chandlery, under the supervision of the Serjeant of the Chandlery, assisted by three Yeomen and a page. Because of the high cost of heating and lighting, the court went to bed earlier in the winter than in the summer.

There was relatively little furniture in Henry VIII’s palaces. Space had to be made for the hordes of people who came to court; therefore most furniture was strictly utilitarian. It was generally solid, but roughly fashioned, usually by the Office of Works, and the chief material was oak. Items designated for the royal apartments might be decorated with panels carved with crude mediaeval designs; only after about 1540 did Renaissance-style carvings begin to replace them. The Royal Wardrobe was the department responsible for providing furniture for the King’s houses.

The finest furniture was naturally to be found in the royal chambers. The most important pieces were the furniture of estate used by the King—his chairs of estate, his beds, and his buffets. His furniture was sacrosanct: no one else was allowed to sit on the throne, “nor to lean upon the King’s bed, nor to approach the cupboard where the King’s cushion is laid, nor to stand upon his carpet.”³¹

Hardly any of Henry VIII’s furniture survives, but contemporary sources give some idea of what it was like. His many chairs of estate, made in the typical X-frame design of the period,³² were upholstered in velvet or cloth of gold with gilt nails³³ and were provided with a braided and tasselled cushion, and perhaps a footstool. The chair of estate was set on a dais beneath a sparver, or canopy of estate, made of cloth of gold, damask, or velvet, with a ceiler and tester perhaps trimmed and tasselled with Venice gold;³⁴ its dorsal, the section hanging down the wall, might be embroidered with the royal arms or cipher and Tudor roses. The King’s cushion was carried before him in processions, and any seat it was placed on became a chair of estate—the seat of royal authority. ³⁵ Henry VIII’s first Great Seal shows him on a mediaeval throne, but by 1542, when his third Great Seal was made, it was common for his chairs of estate to be embellished with intricate antique carvings in the Renaissance style.³⁶

The Queen would sit on a smaller chair, equally lavishly appointed, with a lower canopy.³⁷ Chairs of any other sort were scarce, and along with a few settles were reserved for those of higher rank. Everyone else sat on stools, in the inward chambers, or benches, in the outward chambers. No one apart from the Queen sat in the presence of the King, except by invitation.

A person’s wealth was often measured by the number of beds he owned: because of their carved decoration and rich sets of hangings, beds were usually the most valuable pieces of furniture anyone could own, and were frequently bequeathed in wills. Henry VIII possessed many rich beds. One at Windsor was eleven feet square and had a gold and silver canopy with silken hangings; ³⁸ a similar bed had belonged to Henry VII. Another was a “great rich bedstead” inherited from Wolsey; it had gilt posts, four boules bearing cardinals’ hats, a ceiler of red satin embroidered with roses, garters, and portcullises, and a valance of white and green. Henry’s bed at Hampton Court was eight feet long, and had a ceiler and tester of cloth of gold and silver edged with silk fringes and purple velvet ribbon, as well as purple and white taffeta curtains bordered with gold ribbon.³⁹

The King’s wives also slept in lavish splendour. Anne Boleyn had a “great bed” decorated with fringes of Venice gold and tassels of Florence gold,⁴⁰ while Jane Seymour occupied “a great rich bed” with hangings she embroidered herself.⁴¹

Early in the reign, most of the King’s beds were tester beds, with a heavy wooden frame and wooden boards or, after about 1525, rope mesh, to support the mattress or feather bed. The canopy, or tester, would have been suspended from the ceiling by cords. In the day, the hangings, which were suspended from rails attached to the wall, would be drawn back and knotted. Sometimes, heavy hangings were used in winter, and lighter ones in summer. Later in Henry’s reign, the first four-poster beds appeared, and headboards grew taller and more intricately carved and painted; designs included heraldic emblems, ciphers, foliage, figures, and medallions. An oak headboard with the painted initials of Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves and grotesque carvings, dated 1539, is in the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, while a carved headboard at Hever Castle bears the royal arms of England and is said to have belonged to Anne Boleyn; these are the only two pieces of furniture surviving from Henry VIII’s collection.

Henry’s bedcoverings were made of the finest materials: his counter-points, or coverlets, were of silk, velvet, or even fur. His sheets were of best lawn, and he had woollen fustians, or blankets, and feather bolsters and pillows. He slept on no fewer than eight mattresses, each stuffed with thirteen pounds of carded wool. A wheeled trestle (or truckle) bed was kept under the royal bed. Each evening, it was pulled out for the Gentleman of the Privy Chamber whose turn it was to attend the King during the night.

The King did not sleep in his beds of estate, but used them for the daily ceremonies of rising and retiring. His nights were spent in smaller, less elaborate beds in his privy bedchambers.

Important visitors to court were assigned chambers containing splendid beds; Henry ordered ten such “rich beds” for Whitehall in 1532. ⁴² Household officers and servants slept in simple beds or on pallets on the floor.

Buffets (for displaying plate), cupboards, and sideboard tables were everywhere to be seen in the royal apartments. They were frequently covered with carpets or sumptuous cloths of velvet or tissue.⁴³ In accordance with Burgundian practice, buffets were usually built in tiers or steps: the taller the display of plate, the grander the owner. Henry VIII had buffets of up to twelve tiers for use on state occasions; these were guarded by his buffetiers (perhaps the origin of the word “Beefeaters”). Buffets were used also as sideboards for serving food and drink.

Gold and silver plate—cups, dishes, goblets, chargers, ewers, and salts—was among the most important status symbols of the age. A man’s rank and affluence were gauged by his being able to host a dinner without using any of the plate on display. Henry owned 2,028 items of plate. ⁴⁴ Most of it was later melted down, and only three items from his collection survive: the silver-gilt Royal Clock Salt, an exquisite example of Gothic-Renaissance craftsmanship, which was a gift from Francis I around 1535,⁴⁵ the Royal Gold Cup,⁴⁶ once owned by the dukes of Burgundy; and a gold and enamel crystal bowl.⁴⁷ Some of the King’s plate was stored in his privy chamber in “great trussing coffers” covered in leather and lined with “Bristol red” cloth.⁴⁸

Katherine of Aragon is said to have been bequeathed the Howard Grace Cup, a jewelled ivory and silver-gilt basin; in 1520, she and the King owned gilt goblets with their names engraved around the borders, a gold salt cellar engraved with H and K and enamelled with red roses, and a gold basin enamelled with red and white roses, which had been “given to the King by the Queen.”⁴⁹ Anne Boleyn’s falcon perches atop the antique-style Boleyn Cup, which bears the London hallmark of 1535–1536.⁵⁰

Of all his plate, Henry particularly prized his clocks, which were luxury items available only to the very affluent. His inventory lists seventeen standing clocks with chimes and “alarums,” which “strike the quarter and half of an hour”; two were “fashioned like books” (Katherine of Aragon also owned a clock set in a gold enamelled book), while another was set in crystal and adorned with rubies and diamonds.⁵¹ He also had “a hanging clock closed in glass with plummets [weights] of lead and metal,” clocks that charted “how the sea doth ebb and flow” or showed “all the days of the year with the planets, with three moving dials,” clocks of antique work or adorned with roses or pomegranates, and a striking clock “like a heart.” One clock stood on a carved pillar in the privy chamber at Hampton Court,⁵² others on cupboards, buffets, or wall-mounted brackets. The King paid a specialist clock technician 40s a year to maintain all these clocks. Only one survives, a Renaissance-style, gilt-metal bracket clock in the Royal Library at Windsor, which has weights engraved with the initials and mottoes of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn— “Dieu et mon droit” and “The most happy”—surrounded by lovers’ knots. This clock may have been a wedding gift from Henry to Anne. A facsimile is at Hever Castle.

Other items in the royal chambers were not nearly as valuable or as interesting. Early Tudor tables were often basic in design. Sometimes the table on the hall dais was handsomely carved and a permanent fixture, as at the More;⁵³ such a table might be more than twenty feet long. Most tables, however, were simply boards set on trestles; they could be taken down after a meal. Heavy fringed tablecloths covered tables in both the royal apartments and the household offices.⁵⁴

Henry VIII’s beautifully fashioned portable writing desk survives. ⁵⁵ It is of stained walnut and gilded leather painted with the arms of the King and Katherine of Aragon supported by putti with trumpets, figures of Venus and Mars, Renaissance medallions, and antique motifs. Lined with velvet, it has a pull-down flap at the front, which is released when the lid is lifted, revealing three drawers; handles are at the sides.

Many items, notably clothes and linen, were stored in oak chests, which were sometimes carved with linenfold panels, foliage, or figures. Painted and gilded chests were imported by the wealthy from Flanders or Italy. Master Green, the King’s “coffer-maker,” regularly supplied him with chests with drawers, covered with fabric or leather and provided with leather travelling cases.⁵⁶

Henry VIII, a vain man, was well-provided with “glasses to look in.” These were of polished steel; glass mirrors were unknown. One had “purple velvet and a passement of Venice gold set square about the same.”⁵⁷ Another, ordered in 1530, was full length. ⁵⁸The King’s mirrors were hung on the walls alongside his paintings and maps. Four were displayed in the long gallery at Hampton Court, and fourteen at Whitehall.⁵⁹

Also on display were three rare “pots of earth, painted, called porcelain,”⁶⁰ which must have come from Venice, where porcelain had been manufactured since about 1470. Thirty-eight items of glass were on show in the King’s lower study at Greenwich alone.⁶¹

Henry’s was an itinerant court, as royal courts had been throughout the Middle Ages. The King removed on average around thirty times annually, less in his later years. In the winter he stayed nearer London; at other times he might go further afield or on progress. His moves from house to house, and the length of his stay at each one—which could be measured in days or weeks—depended on several factors: first and foremost were political considerations, followed closely by the King’s desire to hunt in his various chases. A house would need cleaning and sweetening after being occupied for a time, or water supplies or locally available provisions might prove insufficient for a longer stay. On many occasions, the King moved house to escape the plague. Often he followed a planned itinerary known as a giest, but this could be disrupted.

The sheer amount of work involved in moving the court from place to place was staggering. Not only did hundreds of courtiers and servants have to relocate, but most furniture was taken, too; this was arranged by the Royal Wardrobe. Beds had to be dismantled, tapestries taken down, clothing and linen packed, valuables safely stored away or transported. The new house was made ready by the Grooms of the Chamber and Privy Chamber, who had to have everything in place by the time of the King’s arrival.⁶² The house just vacated was left an empty shell, with a skeleton staff under the supervision of the Keeper, usually a favoured courtier who was allowed to reside in the house, or was provided with accommodation nearby.⁶³ The official responsible for the smooth completion of each move was the Knight Harbinger; he had the final say as to where everyone was to be accommodated. His success depended on his acquiring a wide knowledge of the layout and previous arrangements at each house.

Most household items were transported on carts, wagons, mules, or sumpter horses, or by boat.⁶⁴ Everything was packed in chests or wrapped in canvas, and watched over while in transit by specialised sumptermen; boar hides were sometimes spread over the baggage to keep it dry. Other things were left in storage until they were needed: every house had its removing wardrobe, and the greater houses had Wardrobes of the Beds, Wardrobes of the Robes, and Jewel Houses.⁶⁵

The King, like most people, travelled on horseback. Sixteenth-century roads were generally poor; it was left to local landowners to keep them in repair, and many defaulted. Some roads were mere dirt tracks with pot-holes; they could be treacherous or impassable in bad weather. There were so few signposts that in remote areas (notably the far north) travellers had to employ local guides; even Henry VII had once got lost between Bristol and Bath. The chief roads were those built by the Romans, but even these were poorly maintained. An added hazard was the threat posed to travellers by beggars and robbers. Early in his reign, Henry VIII ordered the building of several new roads and the repair of important older roads, which led to an increase in the use of wheeled vehicles. The best roads were those reserved especially for the sovereign’s use, such as the King’s Road, which now runs through Chelsea in London and was once part of a private road linking Whitehall and Hampton Court. There were half a dozen of these roads, which provided connections between most of the greater houses.

The Queen and the ladies of the court would either ride on palfreys or travel in a chair (or chariot) or litter. Chairs were unsprung carriages like gaily painted covered wagons, with the coach suspended on leather straps. Such carriages were probably first used in England in the fourteenth century, and an illustration of an early example may be seen in the Luttrell Psalter. ⁶⁶ Katherine of Aragon’s ladies rode in one at her coronation.

A litter was a long, boxlike structure fixed above two poles; it could be carried by men or horses. An aristocratic mode of transport since the twelfth century, particularly for ladies, it was convenient for use on roads that could not take wheeled vehicles. Litters normally had hooped roofs, or bails, with horizontal pommels, or rods; they were hung with rich curtains or blinds. Litters were frequently used in ceremonial processions. In 1514, Henry’s sister Mary owned “a beautiful litter covered with cloth of gold embroidered with fleurs de lys, and carried by two large horses equipped with both saddles and harness, all covered with similar cloth. Inside the litter there [were] four large cushions covered with cloth of gold, and on the outside this litter [was] covered with scarlet English cloth.” ⁶⁷

Because of the problems encountered in travelling by road—especially through London, where the streets were narrow and congested—the King preferred to travel by barge along the Thames, the capital’s principal highway, beside which many of his palaces were located. Henry owned several state barges, which were looked after by the Master of the King’s Barge, the King’s Barge being a department staffed by a team of Royal Watermen. Henry’s barges were magnificent, lavishly embellished vessels: in 1530, the court painter Vincenzo Volpe was paid £15 (£4,500 now) for decorating the King’s new barge. Royal barges were large: Katherine of Aragon’s had twenty-four oars. Henry’s chief barge was called The Lyon. Docks and boathouses were reserved for the King’s use at most riverside palaces; one was built at Whitehall in 1540.⁶⁸

Henry enjoyed pleasure rides along the river, which was then the habitat of thousands of swans; one such trip took place in 1539, when he took his barge to Whitehall and Lambeth, with his drums and fifes playing, and sailed up and down the Thames for an hour after Evensong.

Members of the nobility with town houses would also maintain barges and watermen; others had to hire barges or pay the London boatmen to row them across or along the busy river.⁶⁹ Fares started at 1d (£1.25 now), but it cost 12d (£15.20) to get from Greenwich to the City. ⁷⁰

Because he hated unnecessary disruption, Henry VIII would often secretly remove to another house for a short time, taking only a few friends and servants. This small retinue was known as his “riding household,” as opposed to his “abiding household.”⁷¹ One such visit took place in 1518, when he arranged to meet Cardinal Wolsey privately at Greenwich. Richard Pace, the King’s Secretary, informed Wolsey that the King “desireth Your grace to command provision to be made there for his supper and yours, for he will depart hence secretly with a small number of his Chamber, without any such persons as should make provision for him.” ⁷²

Henry VIII was a fastidious man, and obsessed with cleanliness. He waged a constant battle against the dirt, dust, and smells that were unavoidable when so many people lived in one establishment. Erasmus was shocked by the filthy conditions in English houses, and there is evidence that many of those who came to court had disgusting habits. Men commonly relieved themselves against walls and in fireplaces; there were frequent official strictures about dirty dishes, tankards, and leftover food lying around the palaces and courtyards; and visitors to the royal apartments had to be constantly reminded not to “wipe or rub their hands upon none arras of the King’s whereby they might be hurted” or place dirty dishes “upon the King’s bed, for fear of hurting the King’s rich counterpoints.”⁷³

Henry and his contemporaries knew of and feared the connection between dirt and disease, although no one was aware of the existence of germs. Infection was thought to be transmitted through bad air or foul smells. Cleanliness was seen as a virtue, but it was very difficult to achieve or impose. Henry VIII issued numerous ordinances enforcing the observance of strict hygiene in the royal residences, but they were not always obeyed, probably because his courtiers and servants did not share his sensibilities.

The Grooms of the Chamber were commanded to keep the royal apartments free “of all manner of filthiness” and were not allowed to delegate their duties to “mean persons,”⁷⁴ they had to rise at six in order to clean and tidy the King’s rooms before he got up at eight. The pages who slept in the guard chamber were expected to rise at seven to help with the finishing touches.⁷⁵

Houses were cleaned properly only when empty; once the court had left, the remaining servants, under the supervision of the Keeper and the Office of Works, would sweep out the rooms, carry away the dirty rushes, and “dust out all the lodgings within the manor.”⁷⁶ They also dusted and washed the panelling and even the ceilings.⁷⁷ In the 1540s, Henry employed three permanent staff to keep the vast palace of Whitehall clean during his absence.⁷⁸

It is clear that some courtiers had little respect for the King’s houses and property, since the Office of Works was constantly repairing or renewing windows, hearths, roofs, floorings, paintwork, and locks.

Hygiene in the royal kitchens was the subject of many regulations. After Cardinal Wolsey discovered that scullions were going about their duties “naked, or in garments of such vileness as they now do,” the Clerk of the Kitchen was provided with money to buy “honest and whole garments” for his staff “for the better avoiding of corruption and all uncleanness out of the King’s house, which doth engender danger of infection and is very noisome and displeasant.”⁷⁹ Pissing in the cooking hearths was expressly forbidden at the same time.⁸⁰

Each morning and afternoon, the scullions had to “sweep and make clean the courts, outward galleries and other places of the court, so there remain no filth or uncleanness in the same,” and the Serjeant of the Hall would check that this was done properly.⁸¹Used washing-up water was to be poured down the drains that led directly into the sewers. Dumping rubbish in the moat was prohibited, as was the feeding of waste food to dogs, for fear of encouraging them; such leftovers were to be set aside for beggars.⁸²The kitchens and dining areas were continually infested with dogs, cats, and rats, which resisted all attempts to scare them away with whips and bells.

If the rules were not obeyed, the transgressor would receive an oral warning; upon a second offence, his perquisites would be withdrawn, and on a third he would lose for good his lodgings, entitlement to bouche of court, and even his job.⁸³

Conditions in the kitchens were not conducive to hygiene. The overpowering heat from the great ovens and fires and the press of people resulted in sweaty scullions turning the spits, “interlarding their own grease to help the drippings.”⁸⁴

Cleanliness was dependent on an efficient water supply, and that was not always available in Tudor palaces. In the Middle Ages, monastic builders had pioneered the supply of running water to buildings. Water had first been piped into a royal palace in 1234, when conduits were built at Westminster. In the late fourteenth century, Richard II had had running water in his bathroom at Sheen Palace, Richmond, but this was rare, and even in Henry VIII’s reign, some royal houses, including Ashridge and Rochester,⁸⁵were served only by wells.

In the greater houses, changes had to be made to accommodate a larger court and meet the King’s desire for longer sojourns. Cardinal Wolsey, and later Henry VIII, built such an efficient system of pipes and drains at Hampton Court that it remained in use until 1871.⁸⁶ By means of a stunning feat of engineering, the water was piped from natural springs three miles away at Coombe Hill; the pipes were embedded in the riverbed under the Thames. The three Tudor conduit houses at Coombe Hill may still be seen. The supply served the whole palace, and many household offices and even courtier lodgings were supplied with a tap, while the King and Queen had water piped into their bathrooms. The overflow from the cisterns was used to supply fountains, moats, and fishponds. Efficient conduit systems were also installed or in place at Eltham, Woodstock, Beaulieu, Greenwich, Whitehall, St. James’s Palace, Nonsuch Palace, Hatfield Palace, Enfield Palace, and Otford Palace.⁸⁷ Some of these systems were not very efficient, and were constantly being serviced or upgraded.

In 1533, the King took on a man whose job it was to clean out all the sinks and drains in the royal palaces. Other men were employed to regularly cleanse the moats, which were usually supplied with fresh water and might contain fish for household consumption.⁸⁸

Given the frequent purchases of scents and herbs to sweeten the air that appear in the royal accounts,⁸⁹ personal hygiene seems to have been found generally wanting. There were no deodorants, and only the rich could afford perfumes, which came mainly from Italy and consisted chiefly of little balls of ambergris, musk, and civet. These were known as pomanders, the name also given to the gold-filigreed balls in which they were carried; these hung from a lady’s girdle and could be held to the nose to ward off bad smells.

Soap was expensive, even though it was manufactured in London and Bristol; it was made from wood-ash, tallow, or olive oil. Many large households made their own. The best, and dearest, soaps were imported from Venice and Spain. The wealthy classes also used aromatic oils and scented salts in their baths. But most fine garments were made from unwashable fabrics, and must have smelt very stale after several wearings, particularly if the weather was hot. Body linen, however, was regularly laundered, along with chapel and table linen and towels. This was done by the Laundry, a department of the Wardrobe, which was staffed by the Yeoman Launderer and his team of five men.⁹⁰ All whites were boiled, then hung by braziers to dry. The laundry at Eltham with its enormous fireplaces survives.

The provision of a water supply proves that people did wash, but how often and how extensively is not known. Thorough washing was recommended by many authorities, but taking a bath could be a complicated business, since wooden bathtubs had to be filled with water, lined with sheets, and emptied afterwards.

Fleas, bedbugs, and head lice were certainly a problem. To ward off fleas, people put bunches of mulberry twigs beneath their beds at night. Henry VIII always wore a small piece of fur next to his skin to attract all the parasites that pestered him.⁹¹

Toothpicks were used for cleaning teeth, which were then polished with a linen cloth. A person suffering from bad breath was advised to sleep with his mouth open and wear a nightcap with a hole in it, “through which the vapour will go out.”⁹²

Sanitary facilities at Henry VIII’s court of necessity had to be efficient, given the large numbers of people present. Garderobes were provided next to all the major rooms and in larger courtier lodgings; they were always well ventilated, and some could be flushed with water from a cistern, ⁹³ but they invariably began to stink after regular use, and it was at this stage that a house was usually vacated, so that they could be scoured. Garderobes, which had wooden seats, usually emptied into stone cess-pits, which had to be feyed, or cleaned out, every so often; the poor unfortunate who had to do this was called a gong fermour, “gong” meaning latrine.⁹⁴

In the 1530s, in the wing to the right of the gatehouse at Hampton Court, Henry VIII built his Great House of Easement, a two-storey communal public lavatory with fourteen seats. The waste emptied into the palace’s main drain, bypassing the moat over which the building projected, and was flushed away by tidal water from the river.⁹⁵ Similar facilities were provided at all the greater houses and some lesser houses.

The physician Andrew Boorde urged that “piss pots” be avoided because they were malodorous,⁹⁶ but stone or lead urinals were installed around the palace courtyards for the convenience of those who might otherwise have used the walls.⁹⁷ The painting of red crosses on those same walls was also meant to act as a deterrent, in the hopes that no man would desecrate such a holy symbol.⁹⁸

The fact that eight months after Henry’s death it was felt necessary to issue a proclamation forbidding any person to “make water or cast any nuisance within the precinct of the court”⁹⁹ suggests that standards had rapidly slipped, and that the old King had succeeded only to a degree in enforcing certain standards of hygiene.