CHAPTER VII
HENRY VIII
On the night of Wednesday, 27th January 1547, Henry Tudor lay dying on that huge fourpost bedstead which Andrea Conti, an Italian traveller who visited Whitehall a few years after the King’s death, described as “looking like a High Altar,” so costly were its hangings of crimson velvet and cloth of gold, so dazzling its rich embroideries.[92] The vast apartment was hung with rare Flemish tapestry glistening with gold thread; the furniture, of carved oak and inlaid ebony, was upholstered in glorious Florentine brocade. Curtains of “red velvet on velvet” draped the numerous windows overlooking the Thames, and the Eastern carpets that covered the floor muffled the sound of footsteps cautiously moving about the mighty couch.
The once puissant and magnificent Henry VIII, King of England, France, and Ireland, and Defender of the Faith, was now a mass of deformed flesh, eaten up and disfigured by a complication of awful disorders—gout, cancer of the stomach, rheumatism, ulcers, and dropsy. So swollen were the miserable man’s hands, arms, and legs that he could only move with great pain, and then only with the aid of a mechanical contrivance. But his immense head tossed restlessly from side to side and he groaned piteously, often praying those about him to cool his parched lips with a drop of water. Though little over fifty-six years of age, the dying monarch’s hair had turned quite white, and his beard, formerly so well trimmed, had grown scant and straggling. His steel-grey eyes looked as small in proportion to the broad, bloated face as those set in the elephant’s enormous mask, but they still retained their ophidian glitter.[93]
The dying King had been unusually irritable throughout the weary day. At times indeed he was delirious, but on the whole his mind remained fairly clear. At about six o’clock in the afternoon he awakened out of a deep sleep or lethargy and asked for a cup of white wine, which was given him. Presently he wandered again,—the result, perhaps, of the draught of wine,—and shouted, “Monks, monks!” imagining, so it would seem, that he saw cowled forms hovering about his bed. Three times, too, and very distinctly, he cried out the name “Nan Boleyn.” After that he kept his eyes fixed on a certain spot near his bedside, where, it may be, his fancy showed him the menacing wraith of his murdered wife. This outburst of feverish excitement was followed by a lull, and presently the King grew calmer and fell into a profound slumber.
The principal persons about the death-bed were the Earl of Hertford and his brother, Sir Thomas Seymour; Henry’s Chief Secretary, Sir William Paget; and his Master of the Horse, Sir Anthony Browne, the only non-schismatic present. The physicians in attendance upon the King were Dr. Wendy and Dr. Owen, who had brought the Prince of Wales[94] into the world, and who subsequently assisted at the death-beds of Edward VI[95] and Mary. With them was Dr. John Gale,[96] the King’s surgeon-in-ordinary, who had waited upon Henry and his army when in France. Notwithstanding the number of priests attached to the Chapel Royal, there were no clergymen in the room. The Catholic party afterwards declared they had been purposely kept out of the way lest the King, whose hatred of the Papacy was purely political, might recant and make a death-bed submission to Rome. The elimination of the clerical element from the death-chamber is significant, and we have no certainty as to whether the King, who clung so tenaciously to the theory of the Church as to her Last Sacraments, ever personally received them.
Another very remarkable fact is that neither in the State Papers nor in any other contemporary accounts of the death of Henry VIII is there any mention of the Queen’s presence at this time. Her Majesty had certainly been her husband’s assiduous nurse until early in January, but after that we hear no more of her, and except for one or two hints to the contrary in documents connected with the household effects of the King, we might almost conjecture she had left the palace before the King passed away. The Spanish Chronicle, introduced to English readers by Martin Hume, which contains a great deal of what would now be called back-stair gossip, informs us, however, that Katherine Parr was summoned to the King’s bedside the day before he died, and that “he thanked her for her great kindness to him,” adding that he had “well provided for her.” The good Queen, falling on her knees, burst into such loud sobbing that she had to be removed and conveyed back to her apartments. From the same source we learn that Princess Mary saw her father three or four days before the end, and received his blessing. Of these statements there is no confirmation in the English State Papers; they are confirmed, however, by documents in the Simancas archives and in a pamphlet published at Valladolid some three years after Queen Mary’s death entitled La Muerte de la Serenissima Reyna Maria d’Inglaterra (Valladolid, 1562).[97]
The last we hear of Katherine Parr as Queen-Consort is in a letter addressed to her from Hertford on 10th January by her stepson, Prince Edward, in which he thanks her for a New Year’s gift.[98]
If we trust the Acts and Monuments, there is direct evidence that Henry VIII deliberately omitted Gardiner’s name from his testament. In the afternoon of the day before his death, Sir Anthony Browne asked him directly if “My Lord of Winchester was left out of His Majesty’s will by negligence or otherwise?” He was kneeling at the moment by the King’s bed and endeavouring to recall to him the Bishop’s long services. The broad face of the dying King turned towards him, and he said angrily, “Hold your peace. I remember him well enough, and of good purpose have I left him out; for surely if he were in my testament and one of you, he would cumber you all and you should never rule him, he is of so troublesome a nature.” If this be a truthful account of the scene, there can be no doubt that Henry realised the omission of Winchester’s name from the will, which would imply a truckling to the Seymour faction; for there was now no one left to oppose their influence or expose their intrigues.
Between seven and eight in the evening of 27th January, Sir Anthony Denny, who had been watching his master very closely, thought he perceived signs that the end was approaching. Stooping over him, he whispered into the dying ear a message especially dreadful to one who, like Henry, held the mere mention of death in horror, warning him that his hour was very near, and that “it was meet for him to review his past life and seek God’s mercy through Jesus Christ.” The King, although in great agony, evidently understood what Denny had said, and is reported to have answered that he would suffer no ecclesiastic near him but Cranmer, who was immediately sent for. The Archbishop was at Croydon, but, being an excellent horseman, he galloped up to London, and reached Whitehall about one o’clock in the morning of Thursday, 28th January.[99] He found the King almost speechless but in full possession of his faculties, and exhorted him, in a few words, to repent him of his sins and “to place his trust in Christ only.” Henry pressed the Churchman’s hand, and muttering the significant words, “All is lost!” immediately expired.
So passed into eternity Lady Jane Grey’s great-uncle and the most extraordinary of all our kings. Even at this date it is impossible to define his true character, for whereas, on the one hand, his cousin Pole, who knew him well, likened him unto Nero and Tiberius, that painstaking historian Froude has endeavoured to prove him a well-intentioned man, whose political and whose domestic troubles especially were not of his own making, but the result of circumstance and of Court intrigues beyond his control. Between these two appreciations the truth doubtless lies. Henry VIII was beyond question a wonderful being—in whom were reflected, nay, absorbed, all the good and evil qualities of the subjects whose very Church he contrived to dominate. With all his treachery, his lust, and his cruelty, he may well have been a necessary evil, a tool in the guiding Hand that has shaped the destinies of the British Empire. He tore down the last vestiges of the Middle Ages; and if the light so suddenly admitted was too dazzling for the eyes that first beheld it, in due time it mellowed into the slowly developed liberty and progress that have placed our country at the forefront of civilisation. Our eighth Henry was the tyrant who inadvertently forced open the gate whereby Freedom was to enter.