Full fifty cooks and twice as many scullions worked in the spacious kitchens, and in 1544 we hear of a French pastry-cook of good repute who rejoiced in the very pleasing and appropriate name of M. Doux. A regiment of gardeners and under-gardeners trimmed the pleasaunces and kept the King’s orchards in order.
The dresses and costumes of this army of picturesque, though often quite useless, folk, numbering some thousands or so, were sufficiently costly to account in part for the straits of the Royal Exchequer. Their wages and silks and satins cost the nation, in the last year of Henry VIII’s reign, £56,700—against £17,280 in the last year of that of his father; a prodigious increase—when we take into consideration the relative value of money—and sufficient to explain the depletion of the coin.
HENRY VIII IN 1548
FROM AN OLD ENGRAVING
Scarlet, or rather deep red, was the predominant colour of the garments of King Henry’s retainers, but dark blue and orange, with the white and light apple green of the house of Tudor, were not lacking, and added to the kaleidoscopic aspect of the courtyards and staircases, galleries and audience chamber, in the stately residences of “bluff King Hal.” One Venetian Ambassador, commenting on the order kept at the English Court, declared that “everything is regulated as by clock-work, and no one ever seems to be out of his place.” When the King condescended to walk abroad, he was attended by a host of superbly attired courtiers, by his grand equerries and chamberlains, the Grand Master of his Horse, his almoners, ushers, and physicians; his fool—Will Somers[46]; his pages, and even by a favourite musician or so. In the last years of his life, owing to his increasing infirmity, Henry was sometimes carried upon the shoulders of six sturdy noblemen, in a kind of sedia gestatoria like the Pope’s. At His Majesty’s approach every knee was bent, and many who particularly desired to conciliate his favour “grovelled” face downward as Orientals before some Eastern despot. The officials and serving-men who prepared the table for His Majesty’s meals made an obeisance each time they passed the vacant chair wherein the monarch was presently to seat himself. The Queen-Consort, and the Princesses, his daughters, knelt whenever they addressed him. In brief, King Henry, having filched from Peter some of Peter’s pontifical prerogatives, exacted the same sort of homage as that paid to the Roman Pontiff, and turned himself from mortal into a sort of demigod or idol. But foreigners and Catholics noted that though people knelt as he rode past, His Majesty bestowed no blessing upon them. This slavish etiquette continued throughout the reign of Edward VI,[47] but was modified when Mary renounced the titular position of Head of the Church. Elizabeth, however, demanded, and, what is more, received, quasi-divine honours from her subjects.
Yet another point of resemblance between the Courts of England and the Ottoman at this period: Whitehall, like the Seraglio, was gay and brilliant on the surface, but in each case there was an undercurrent of terror and suspicion. The Tudor Court swarmed with spies and informers, and often a thoughtless jest, a careless remark, spitefully retailed at headquarters, would send men or women to the Tower, or even to the stake. Folks went in fear and trembling lest what they had said overnight in their cups might be brought home to them with appalling consequences in the morning. This state of abject and habitual fear engendered habits of whispering and talking apart and an atmosphere of mystery, in spite of which the gossip and rumours of the King’s own chamber passed to the pages, grooms, and serving-men in the courtyards below, and thence to the general public, as rapidly as news flies nowadays by telephone and telegraph.
There can be no doubt that Jane Grey, the daughter of one so closely connected with the throne as was the Marchioness of Dorset, must often have mingled in the gaudy crowd that thronged her grand-uncle’s palace. Henry was as “fond of children as he was of pastry,” although, for obvious reasons, he did not display any overweening affection for his own offspring. This engaging little niece, now about six years of age, is likely to have found favour in the monarch’s sight, and Jane Grey, for all we know, may even have throned it on her dread relative’s august knee. Cranmer’s hand, too, must have rested in benediction upon her head, and she may, perchance, have won the smile of Gardiner and of Bonner. She must often have heard the sick King, who had lost his own fine voice, accompany his favourite fool, Will Somers, on the lute, in some song or hymn of his own composition. She must have been familiar with the two Seymour brothers; with the dreamy face and austere manner of the Earl of Hertford, and the bluff good-nature of Sir Thomas. She may even have been tossed in the strong arms of John Dudley, at this time Lord High-Admiral of England and Viscount de Lisle, reputed a “magnificent gentleman,” but otherwise of secondary importance. Wriothesley, Rich, and foredoomed Surrey and his father, old Norfolk, must often have watched her run along, clinging to her portly mother’s trailing brocades as she passed on her way to and from the King’s cabinet, and may even have whispered one to the other that the little damsel would surely be as good a match for young Prince Edward as the Scottish Queen’s daughter, Mary Stuart. In the apartment of her grand-aunt the Queen, where that busy little lady nestled like a sultana among her innumerable soft pillows and cushions,[48] encased in cloth of gold and silver, the child Jane must have heard much evangelical counsel from the erstwhile widow Latimer, who found some consolation in the gorgeousness of her thraldom for the loss of her handsome lover, Sir Thomas Seymour.
The Queen’s lodgings were parted from the King’s by a short corridor, and nearly all her windows overlooked the Thames. Here Katherine Parr played the housewife, and in the midst of her tapestries and brocades and her “stretches” of silver and gold cloth, made poultices for Henry’s ulcered legs, wrote her pious treaties on probity and prayers, and probably counted the hours till the Lord in His mercy should deliver her royal spouse from his sore sufferings. In these rooms, perhaps, Jane Grey sat for her miniature to Lavinia Tyrling; Bartolomeo Penni may here have limned her diminutive but very pretty features; and we fancy we can see Mr. Crane or Mr. John Heywood, His Majesty’s chief virginal players, teaching her the notes upon the King’s “favourite virginal,” the one “enlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl.” In the last months of Henry’s life, when Lady Jane is known to have been much with Katherine Parr, the little girl may have listened with delight to the wonderful warbling of the King’s Italian singers, Alberto of Venice, Marc Antonio Galiadello of Brescia, or Giorgio da Cremona, as they vainly endeavoured to soothe the sufferings of the dying monarch by their elaborate cadenze.
Queen Katherine soon made her influence felt at Court. She could not control the violent passions of her wayward lord, but she did in a measure modify them, and steered her own course amid the shoals of regal existence with consummate skill. No breath of scandal ever sullied her fair name, though Thomas Seymour, back from his convenient mission to Hungary, was appointed her Chamberlain, and must have been a good deal in her company. Even her worst enemies never ventured on that track. When at a later date they planned a blow, which they hoped would prove fatal to the Queen, they selected her religious leanings, not her love affairs, as their fell weapon. Katherine Parr, to her credit, lost no time in reconciling the King with his hitherto neglected daughters. Princess Mary was near her own age, and had been intimate with her when she was Lady Latimer. The Emperor’s Ambassadors praise “the new Queen for her kindness to the daughter of Katherine of Aragon,[49] who now takes her proper place at Court.” Elizabeth, too, was summoned from her suburban retreat, but had not been many weeks under her father’s roof ere he became so exasperated by her pert obstinacy that he summarily ordered her back to Enfield. In a few weeks, however, Katherine patched up the quarrel, and on 24th July 1544 Elizabeth wrote Her Majesty, in Italian, a most graceful letter of thanks for her good offices.[50] Edward was too delicate to be much in London, but none the less his stepmother looked after his health with so much “gentleness” that she soon won his sincere affection and lasting goodwill. He wrote her letters in Latin, French, and Italian, addressed to his charisima Mater, and full of praise for her beautiful penmanship, which, on comparison, proves greatly inferior both to his own and to that of either Elizabeth or Jane Grey. Katherine induced her stepdaughter Mary to assist in the translation of Erasmus’s Paraphrase of the Four Gospels. The Princess selected that of St. John, and when the work was finished, an amusing correspondence ensued as to the propriety of the future Queen of England placing her name, as translator, on the frontispiece. “I see not why you should reject the praise deservedly yours,” argued the Queen; and the Princess at last allowed the editor of the work, the learned Dr. Udall, to allude to the fact that “the most noble, the most virtuous and the most studious Lady Mary” had a hand in its success.[51]