Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England by Thomas Penn Page A
Authors: Thomas Penn
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early sixteenth centuries were a volatile time of change and possibility and, as with periods of flux, its energy and vitality are seductive. The medieval worlds of chivalry and intense piety mingle with new political ideas, spread by the printing press and enforced by gunpowder. Dynasties and states struggle to be born in a war-torn Christendom that is still – in theory – unified by an unswerving obedience to the pope. Fleets of merchant ships, their trade routes to the East blocked by the Ottoman Empire encroaching on Europe’s south-eastern frontier, sail west across the Atlantic and discover a new continent.
It is a story which stretches from the remote regions of England to the courts and chancelleries of Venice and Rome. It is traced through merchant banks and accountants’ ledgers, courts of law, the pageantry and brutality of court and tiltyard, diplomats’ dispatches and the reports of spies and informers. It concerns high ideals and family loyalties; honour, realpolitik and grubby self-interest; deep-rooted traditions and beliefs; and new ways of understanding the roles of princes and governments. All these elements come together and are transformed in the febrile world of Henry VII’s household and court.
The last, claustrophobic decade of Henry VII’s reign, with an ageing, paranoid king and his dynamic young son at its heart, forms the focus of this book. It is one of the strangest episodes in English history. An atmosphere of fear and suspicion radiated from the royal court into the streets and townhouses of London and throughout England’s far-flung estates and provinces. Established forms of rule and government were bent out of shape, distorted in ways that people found both disorientating and terrifying.
But these are also the dawning years of a dynasty. They see the coming of age of Catherine of Aragon, the young Spanish princess who would become Henry VIII’s first wife, and of Henry VIII himself – or rather, Prince Henry, as he is here. To explore these precarious years, and to gain a sense of how and why Henry VII behaved and ruled in the way he did, is to reveal much about the house of Tudor, the family that would, over the course of the sixteenth century, dominate and transform England.
PART ONE
Blood and Roses
‘Blessed be god, the king the queen and all our sweet children be in good health.’
Lady Margaret Beaufort, April 1497
‘If the King should propose to change any old established rule, it would seem to every Englishman as if his life were taken away from him – but I think that the present King Henry will do away with a great many, should he live ten years longer.’
Venetian ambassador, c. 1500
PART TWO
Change of Worlds
‘I saw a knife hid in his one sleeve,
Whereon was written this word: Mischief.’
John Skelton
, The Bowge of Court
‘There be many lords that cannot play the lord
But I that am none can play it royally.’
A Fifteenth Century School Book
10
PART THREE
A State of Avarice
‘For bleeding inwards and shut vapours strangle soonest and oppress most.’
Francis Bacon,
Henry VII
‘Right mighty prince & redoubted sovereign
From whom descendeth by the rightful line
Noble prince Henry to succeed the crown
That in his youth doth so clearly shine
In every virtue casting the vice adown
He shall of fame attain the high renown.’
Stephen Hawes
, Pastime of Pleasure
11
12
13
14
15
1. A miniature astrological world map, with the signs of the Zodiac and personifications of the four winds. This is the frontispiece of the ‘Liber de optimo fato’, or ‘Book of Excellent Fortunes’, by William Parron, the Italian astrologer who prophesied the deaths of Warbeck and Warwick. Given as a New Year’s gift in January 1503, the book predicts that Queen Elizabeth would live to the age of eighty.
2. Terracotta portrait bust of Henry VII by Pietro Torrigiano.
3. Portrait of
It is a story which stretches from the remote regions of England to the courts and chancelleries of Venice and Rome. It is traced through merchant banks and accountants’ ledgers, courts of law, the pageantry and brutality of court and tiltyard, diplomats’ dispatches and the reports of spies and informers. It concerns high ideals and family loyalties; honour, realpolitik and grubby self-interest; deep-rooted traditions and beliefs; and new ways of understanding the roles of princes and governments. All these elements come together and are transformed in the febrile world of Henry VII’s household and court.
The last, claustrophobic decade of Henry VII’s reign, with an ageing, paranoid king and his dynamic young son at its heart, forms the focus of this book. It is one of the strangest episodes in English history. An atmosphere of fear and suspicion radiated from the royal court into the streets and townhouses of London and throughout England’s far-flung estates and provinces. Established forms of rule and government were bent out of shape, distorted in ways that people found both disorientating and terrifying.
But these are also the dawning years of a dynasty. They see the coming of age of Catherine of Aragon, the young Spanish princess who would become Henry VIII’s first wife, and of Henry VIII himself – or rather, Prince Henry, as he is here. To explore these precarious years, and to gain a sense of how and why Henry VII behaved and ruled in the way he did, is to reveal much about the house of Tudor, the family that would, over the course of the sixteenth century, dominate and transform England.
PART ONE
Blood and Roses
‘Blessed be god, the king the queen and all our sweet children be in good health.’
Lady Margaret Beaufort, April 1497
‘If the King should propose to change any old established rule, it would seem to every Englishman as if his life were taken away from him – but I think that the present King Henry will do away with a great many, should he live ten years longer.’
Venetian ambassador, c. 1500
PART TWO
Change of Worlds
‘I saw a knife hid in his one sleeve,
Whereon was written this word: Mischief.’
John Skelton
, The Bowge of Court
‘There be many lords that cannot play the lord
But I that am none can play it royally.’
A Fifteenth Century School Book
10
PART THREE
A State of Avarice
‘For bleeding inwards and shut vapours strangle soonest and oppress most.’
Francis Bacon,
Henry VII
‘Right mighty prince & redoubted sovereign
From whom descendeth by the rightful line
Noble prince Henry to succeed the crown
That in his youth doth so clearly shine
In every virtue casting the vice adown
He shall of fame attain the high renown.’
Stephen Hawes
, Pastime of Pleasure
11
12
13
14
15
1. A miniature astrological world map, with the signs of the Zodiac and personifications of the four winds. This is the frontispiece of the ‘Liber de optimo fato’, or ‘Book of Excellent Fortunes’, by William Parron, the Italian astrologer who prophesied the deaths of Warbeck and Warwick. Given as a New Year’s gift in January 1503, the book predicts that Queen Elizabeth would live to the age of eighty.
2. Terracotta portrait bust of Henry VII by Pietro Torrigiano.
3. Portrait of
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