CHAPTER 24
His Majesty therefore thinketh convenient before his departure beyond the seas that it be enacted by his Highness with the assent of the lords spiritual and temporal and the commons in this present Parliament … that in case it shall happen the King’s Majesty and the said excellent Prince his yet only son Prince Edward and heir apparent to decease without heir of either of their bodies lawfully begotten … then the said Imperial Crown … shall be to the Lady Marie the King’s Highness’ daughter and to the heirs of the body of the Lady Marie lawfully begotten … and for default of such issue the said Imperial Crown … shall be to the Lady Elizabeth the King’s second daughter and to the heirs of the body of the Lady Elizabeth lawfully begotten.1
IN FEBRUARY 1544, PARLIAMENT PASSED A NEW AND RADICAL ACT of Succession. The previous law, passed in 1536 following Henry’s marriage to Jane Seymour, had bastardized both Mary and Elizabeth and settled the succession on any son born of Seymour or “by any other lawful wife.”2 Yet now, as Henry visibly aged and the six-year-old Edward remained his sole heir, a real uncertainty hung over the Tudor succession. As the new act declared, “It standeth in the only pleasure and will of Almighty God whether the King’s Majesty shall have any heirs begotten and procreated between his Highness and his … most entirely beloved wife Queen Katherine” or whether “the said Prince Edward shall have issue of his body lawfully begotten.”3 Although still regarded as illegitimate, Mary, and then Elizabeth, were placed in the line of succession after Edward and his heirs.
On June 26, the royal children came together with their father at Whitehall for a lavish reception—a voyde—at which wine and sweetmeats were served. It was the first public outing of the reconciled royal family.4 The reunion was commemorated in the portrait known as The Family of Henry VIII, painted by an unknown artist. The picture is dominated by Henry, sitting on his throne between his son and heir, the six-year-old Prince Edward, and, to emphasize the line of dynastic succession, Edward’s mother, the long-since-dead Jane Seymour. On the left stands Mary, on the right Elizabeth. Both are dressed similarly, with Mary distinguishable only by being the taller sister. Despite having played a part in brokering the reconciliation between Henry and his children, Katherine Parr is omitted from the scene. This was more than just a family portrait, however; it was to commemorate the political settlement enshrined in the Act of Succession. This was the Tudor family as Henry had decreed it: the king’s heirs in degree of precedence. It would shape the English monarchy for the rest of the century.
WITH THE SUCCESSION settled, Henry looked to recapture the glories of his youth by going to war with France. The emperor and the French king had resumed hostilities, and both sovereigns once again began to compete for Henry’s favor. Chapuys reported that the French “now almost offer the English carte blanche for an alliance,” and he advised that England must, at whatever cost, be secured for the imperial interest.5 Henry would indeed make a secret treaty with the emperor, in February 1543, that provided for a joint invasion of France within two years.
But Henry first needed to secure the northern border by mounting a campaign against Scotland. At Solway Moss in November 1542, the English inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Scots. Three weeks later King James V died, leaving the kingdom to his week-old daughter, Mary. Henry then sought to subdue Scotland in advance of his invasion in France, and in July 1543 a treaty of peace and dynastic union was signed at Greenwich with Prince Edward betrothed to Mary, queen of Scots.6 But within five months, the entente had broken down as the Scots reaffirmed their alliance with the French.
Preparations were now made for war on two fronts: with Scotland and with France. While the emperor sought to make Francis relinquish his claim to Milan and support the German princes, Henry looked to force him to abandon the cause of Scottish independence. In May 1544, 14,000 troops were sent to Scotland, and a month later, an English force of some 40,000 men invaded France. On July 11, Henry, despite his greatly expanded girth and swollen, ulcerated legs, left Whitehall for France.7 In his absence, Katherine Parr was appointed regent of England, to rule the country in the name of the king as Katherine of Aragon had done some thirty years before. She managed the five-man council that Henry had appointed to assist her and oversaw the supply of men and money for the war. Writing to Henry’s council, Katherine adopted the full royal style: “Right trusty and right well-beloved cousins, we greet you well.” She signed herself “Katherine the Queen.” In letters to Henry she used the submissive tone of a royal wife “by your majesty’s humble obedient servant.”8 She was a model of wifely queenship.
As Katherine governed from Hampton Court, Mary was with her, and later Edward and Elizabeth too. Both stepdaughters witnessed a woman governing and imposing her authority on her male councillors. It would prove formative for both.
ON JULY 14, HENRY arrived in Calais, ready for the planned siege of Boulogne, which began five days later. After weeks of laying siege, the Council wrote to Katherine on August 4, informing her that “Yesterday, the battery began, and goes lustily forward, and the walls begin to tumble apace.” They anticipated that Boulogne must fall shortly.9 Six weeks later, the town surrendered and Henry entered in triumph. Yet on the same day the emperor, who sought to concentrate his efforts on Germany, had concluded a treaty with the French at Crépy and abandoned England. Henry was left to fight Francis alone. The French king now pledged “to win as much as the Englishmen had on this side of the sea,” to capture a town on England’s southeast coast that could be exchanged for Boulogne, and to send troops into Scotland for an invasion of the north.
On May 31, 1545, a French expeditionary force landed at Dumbarton in Scotland, and on July 19, a French invasion fleet of more than two hundred ships entered the Solent. Fires were lit across England, raising the alarm.10 In the skirmishes that followed, Henry’s warship the Mary Rose was sunk with the loss of 500 men. Two days later, 2,000 French troops landed at Bembridge on the Isle of Wight and burned several villages before being forced to retreat. English shipping in Portsmouth harbor was attacked and the towns of Newhaven and Seaford were sacked until the French forces were driven back across the English Channel. The following day Henry ordered processions throughout the realm and prayers to be said to intercede for victory.11
“We are in war with France and Scotland,” warned Bishop Gardiner;
we have enmity with the bishop of Rome, have no assured friendship here, and have received from the Lansgrave, chief captain of the Protestants, such displeasure that he has cause to think us angry with him. Our war is noisome to our realm and to all our merchants that traffic throughout the Narrow Seas…. We are in a world where reason and learning prevail not and covenants are little regarded.12
By September, as both sides sued for peace, negotiations were revived with the emperor. On October 23, Bishops Gardiner and Thomas Thirlby were commissioned to present a three-pronged plan: Charles V would marry Mary, Edward the emperor’s daughter, and Elizabeth his son, Philip. Charles did not respond favorably.13 It was clear that Henry was seeking better relations with the emperor merely to secure a stronger negotiating position with France, and the proposals came to nothing.
IN MAY 1546, the ailing Eustace Chapuys prepared to leave England after sixteen years as ambassador. On May 4 he went to the palace of Westminster to bid farewell to the queen and Mary. Katherine expressed her desire that the friendship between England and Spain be maintained. “She … begged me affectionately, after I presented to your majesty her humble service, to express explicitly all I had learned here of the good wishes of the King towards you.” Mary, meanwhile, thanked him for the emperor’s “good wishes towards her,” and, “in default of her power to repay your Majesty in any other way, she said she was bound to pray constantly to God for your Majesty’s health and prosperity.”
At a final audience, Chapuys and Henry spoke about future relations between England and France. Henry “observed that he would very much prefer a settled peace to a truce … but, after all, if your Majesty would aid him, in accordance with the treaty, he did not care very much either.” The king stressed “the importance of the treaty of friendship … that I would report very fully and use my best endeavours, in every way, to induce your Majesty to declare against the French.”14
Finally, on June 7, 1546, French and English commissioners signed a peace treaty in which it was agreed that Boulogne would be returned to France in eight years’ time on payment of 2 million crowns. In the hope of exploiting the new accord, the pope sent an envoy to England, Gurone Bertano, to propose terms for Henry’s reconciliation to Rome. Pope Paul had hoped that the prodigal son might now submit to papal primacy, but Bertano’s overtures were firmly rebuffed.15