Epilogue
Henry’s breach with Rome and his supremacy over matters religious set the bloody tone for the remainder of his almost four decades on the throne of England. Many were to die as a consequence of his dynastic ambitions in a series of executions that made the scaffolds in the cities of England a butcher’s block of stinking gore and entrails.
Among the first to die was his grandmother’s favourite, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, who had strenuously opposed the annulment of the king’s marriage and refused to swear an oath under the Act of Supremacy which gave Henry control of the church in England. After months of cruel imprisonment, the aged and infirm prelate was executed on 22 June 1535 on Tower Hill.
His journey to the scaffold, carried in a chair – he was too old and weak to walk – was hastened by the unfortunate decision by the new pope, Paul III, to make him a cardinal. Although prevarication had been honed to a fine skill, timing was not the Vatican’s forte. The king angrily declared that he would ‘send [Fisher’s] head to Rome for the cardinal’s hat’.
Then it was the turn of the king’s friend Sir Thomas More to face Henry’s rough justice. Royal promises of his immunity over the issue of the marriage proved mere hot air and his resignation as Lord Chancellor on 16 May 1532 did not save him. He had been condemned to perpetual imprisonment for cleverly avoiding taking the Oath of Succession that recognised Anne Boleyn as the king’s lawful wife and their children as the legitimate heirs to the throne. Anyone refusing to take the oath was guilty of treason and More, as a revered national figure, was just too important to escape retribution. He was beheaded with one blow of the axe on the morning of 6 July 1535 after a perjured trial.
Katherine died, lonely and neglected, at Kimbolton Castle, Huntingdonshire, probably from cancer of the heart, on 7 January 1536. She had last seen Henry and her daughter Mary late in the summer of 1531.
Anne Boleyn did not live up to her personal motto: ‘The Most Happy’. After she suffered several miscarriages, Henry became weary of a wife whom he increasingly saw as a peevish and arrogant tartar and alleged that she had tricked him into marriage ‘by means of sortileges [sorcery] and charms and that owing to that, he would hold it … nullified’.
His chief minister, Thomas Cromwell was the ideal man to free him of such a termagant wife. After he scrabbled around finding dubious evidence, she was accused of adultery with five of the king’s courtiers as well as plotting Henry’s death. One alleged accomplice was her brother George, Viscount Rochford, who was charged with committing incest with the queen. At her trial at the Tower, witnessed by 2,000 awestruck and enthralled spectators, a slip of paper was produced recording Anne’s damning description of her husband’s poor performance in bed: ‘ Que le Roy n’estait habile en cas de soi copuler avec femme, et qu’il n’avait ni vertu ni puissance ’ – ‘The king was not skilful when copulating with a woman and he had not virtue or power’. If nothing else, this was enough to condemn her.
Rochford and his fellow courtiers were executed on 17 May 1536 and two days later Anne was beheaded by a single sweep of a long two-handed sword wielded by a French executioner especially brought over from St Omer at a fee of £24.
Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, the king’s illegitimate son by Bessie Blount, married Mary Howard, daughter of the Third Duke of Norfolk. The marriage was never consummated and he died, probably from tuberculosis, on the morning of 23 July 1536 in St James’ Palace. He was just seventeen.
Henry still harboured fears about the threat of the Yorkist nobility and in November 1538 Thomas Cromwell swept up the surviving distant members of the White Rose faction – who coincidentally were also numbered amongst his countless bitter enemies.
Henry Courtenay,
Henry’s breach with Rome and his supremacy over matters religious set the bloody tone for the remainder of his almost four decades on the throne of England. Many were to die as a consequence of his dynastic ambitions in a series of executions that made the scaffolds in the cities of England a butcher’s block of stinking gore and entrails.
Among the first to die was his grandmother’s favourite, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, who had strenuously opposed the annulment of the king’s marriage and refused to swear an oath under the Act of Supremacy which gave Henry control of the church in England. After months of cruel imprisonment, the aged and infirm prelate was executed on 22 June 1535 on Tower Hill.
His journey to the scaffold, carried in a chair – he was too old and weak to walk – was hastened by the unfortunate decision by the new pope, Paul III, to make him a cardinal. Although prevarication had been honed to a fine skill, timing was not the Vatican’s forte. The king angrily declared that he would ‘send [Fisher’s] head to Rome for the cardinal’s hat’.
Then it was the turn of the king’s friend Sir Thomas More to face Henry’s rough justice. Royal promises of his immunity over the issue of the marriage proved mere hot air and his resignation as Lord Chancellor on 16 May 1532 did not save him. He had been condemned to perpetual imprisonment for cleverly avoiding taking the Oath of Succession that recognised Anne Boleyn as the king’s lawful wife and their children as the legitimate heirs to the throne. Anyone refusing to take the oath was guilty of treason and More, as a revered national figure, was just too important to escape retribution. He was beheaded with one blow of the axe on the morning of 6 July 1535 after a perjured trial.
Katherine died, lonely and neglected, at Kimbolton Castle, Huntingdonshire, probably from cancer of the heart, on 7 January 1536. She had last seen Henry and her daughter Mary late in the summer of 1531.
Anne Boleyn did not live up to her personal motto: ‘The Most Happy’. After she suffered several miscarriages, Henry became weary of a wife whom he increasingly saw as a peevish and arrogant tartar and alleged that she had tricked him into marriage ‘by means of sortileges [sorcery] and charms and that owing to that, he would hold it … nullified’.
His chief minister, Thomas Cromwell was the ideal man to free him of such a termagant wife. After he scrabbled around finding dubious evidence, she was accused of adultery with five of the king’s courtiers as well as plotting Henry’s death. One alleged accomplice was her brother George, Viscount Rochford, who was charged with committing incest with the queen. At her trial at the Tower, witnessed by 2,000 awestruck and enthralled spectators, a slip of paper was produced recording Anne’s damning description of her husband’s poor performance in bed: ‘ Que le Roy n’estait habile en cas de soi copuler avec femme, et qu’il n’avait ni vertu ni puissance ’ – ‘The king was not skilful when copulating with a woman and he had not virtue or power’. If nothing else, this was enough to condemn her.
Rochford and his fellow courtiers were executed on 17 May 1536 and two days later Anne was beheaded by a single sweep of a long two-handed sword wielded by a French executioner especially brought over from St Omer at a fee of £24.
Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, the king’s illegitimate son by Bessie Blount, married Mary Howard, daughter of the Third Duke of Norfolk. The marriage was never consummated and he died, probably from tuberculosis, on the morning of 23 July 1536 in St James’ Palace. He was just seventeen.
Henry still harboured fears about the threat of the Yorkist nobility and in November 1538 Thomas Cromwell swept up the surviving distant members of the White Rose faction – who coincidentally were also numbered amongst his countless bitter enemies.
Henry Courtenay,
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