Much as we loathe his sensuality and his cruelty, his personal extravagance that emptied the overflowing treasury left by his father and led him to debase the coin of the realm in order to replenish it, much as we may deplore his iconoclasm that destroyed a thousand abbeys, priories, and noble churches and dispersed the art treasures of ages, as Englishmen we still entertain a surreptitious liking for Bluff King Hal. His magnificent appearance and the Oriental side of his nature, his six wives, his fantastic and gorgeous pageants, his outbursts of bad language, his masterfulness, his love of art and music, all appeal to the imagination and help us to convert a monarch, a very weak and poor specimen of humanity, who really had much of the vile criminal about him, into a hero of romance, and cast over his strange career something of the legendary glamour that so fascinates all students of the reign of the illustrious daughter who inherited so many of his good and evil qualities and carried on much of his chosen policy. To King Henry we owe the formation of our Army and the creation of our Navy. He abused his Parliament, but he was its first and greatest organiser. He shaped it to his own will; and it eventually shaped itself to the will of the nation.
Earlier in the evening of that momentous 27th of January Hertford and Paget had spent slow hours pacing up and down the long corridor outside the King’s chamber, and consulting as to what it would be best to do as soon as the monarch was dead. Parliament, then in session, had been busy with the alleged treasonable transactions of the Duke of Norfolk, now lying in the Tower under sentence of death. His Grace, therefore, was one of the only three members of the Privy Council absent from the death-chamber: the other two were Dr. Thirlby, Bishop of Westminster, then resident Ambassador at the Court of Charles V; and Dr. Nicholas Wotton, Dean of Canterbury, recently dispatched on a diplomatic mission to France. Gardiner, whose name had been erased from the Council list, had lately returned from Brussels, and must have been communicated with at once, for to him were eventually entrusted all the arrangements for the late King’s obsequies. An improvised Council was held immediately after Henry’s death, and decided that the event should be kept a profound secret until the Prince of Wales was brought to London. This was cleverly managed by putting all the immediate attendants in the King’s private apartments under oath; and the multitudinous household in the outer rooms performed its usual vocations as though Henry, who had long been absent from his general courtiers’ sight, were still alive. The sentinels were changed, and everything at Whitehall went on with clockwork regularity, as if nothing unusual had happened. At about four o’clock in the morning of 28th January Hertford and his brother, Thomas Seymour, stole out of the palace, took horse, and galloped towards Hertford, where the young heir was then residing. By an oversight—or was it done purposely?—Hertford put in his pocket the key of the coffer in which the King’s will was kept, and Paget had to ride out into the dark after him to obtain possession of it. At about dawn the Seymours were joined by Sir Anthony Browne, an accession which greatly elated them, for he was one of the most important leaders of the Catholic party. They reached Hertford[100] a little after daybreak, and the boy Edward was instantly roused from his slumbers. They did not at once inform him of his father’s decease, but rode with him to Enfield Chase, where his sister, the Princess Elizabeth, was residing with her governess, Mrs. Ashley. Here they broke the news to both of the dead King’s children, who burst into tears, the Princess Elizabeth holding her young brother’s hand the while. The company stayed all Sunday at Enfield, their suite being in the meantime reinforced by a numerous bodyguard, attended by which they started on the following morning for London, the boy-King riding on a milk-white palfrey between Lord Hertford and Sir Anthony Browne. As the procession passed through the villages on its way to London, the inhabitants were informed of King Henry’s death. We have proof, however, that it was not known in the metropolis on the Sunday. On that day the Grey Friar’s Church, which had been closed for some years and converted into a wine-vault, was restored to public worship by order of the late King, and his “munificence and generosity” were fulsomely eulogised by the preacher, who, however, never alluded to the sovereign’s demise. Towards evening, the fact that the King was dead began to circulate among the upper classes, and next morning it was pretty generally known all over London.
At three o’clock on the Monday afternoon King Edward VI entered the capital through Aldgate, where he was met by the Lord Mayor and a great assembly of the nobility and gentry. Cranmer greeted him at the Bridge and read him an address, after which he was conducted in state to the Tower, being only fairly well received by the populace. Meanwhile, his father’s body, still at Whitehall, after being “spunged,” cleaned, disembowelled, and embalmed with spices, was exhibited, covered with a silken garment, to the great nobility. This done, it was sealed up in a leaden coffin and brought down into the Privy Chamber, where it lay, “with all manner of lights thereto requisite, having divine service about him with Masses, obsequies, and prayers,” until 3rd February, when it was conveyed into the Chapel Royal, where Mass was said between nine and ten in the morning.
The Chapelle Ardente was hung with black cloth and with banners of St. George and England. Eighty huge silver candlesticks with tall wax tapers in them were ranged on either side of the catafalque. On the Tuesday, and for five following mornings, Norreys stationed himself at the entrance to the chancel and cried out at intervals to the congregation, “Of your charity pray for the soul of the most high and mighty Prince Henry VIII, our late Sovereign Lord and King.” Watch was kept day and night by the chaplains and gentlemen of the Privy Chamber. Then began the saying of Masses for the benefit of the King’s soul, and these were “as numerous as they were on the occasion of the funeral of his father, Henry VII.” They were continued until the 13th February. Tens of thousands of Masses were said throughout the country, both in the capital and the provinces, in the cathedrals as well as in the parish churches.[101] The ritual was everywhere absolutely Latin. In London Gardiner was the celebrant at High Mass each day, assisted by the Bishops of Durham, London, Ely, St. David’s, Gloucester, Bangor, and Bath. Archbishop Cranmer was present but did not officiate. Low Masses were said in the chapel at Whitehall, at an altar erected at the foot of the catafalque, from four o’clock in the morning until ten, when High Mass was chanted, the Marquis of Dorset acting as chief mourner. In the evening there were Vespers for the Dead and Dirge and “a great attendance of noblemen and gentlemen mourners.” The Queen and the King’s nieces, the Marchioness of Dorset and her daughters, the Ladies Jane and Katherine Grey, the Lady Eleanor Brandon, Countess of Cumberland, the Lady Margaret Lennox, the Duchess of Richmond, the Duchess of Suffolk, and all the great ladies[102] of the Court, were present, not only at High Mass, but at countless other Masses in the Chapel Royal. They were, however, not in the body of the Chapel, but in an upper gallery overlooking it—mourning cloaks being provided for them out of the Wardrobe.
Queen Katherine may have left the palace somewhat hurriedly,[103] for in the inventory taken immediately after the King’s death there is an account of the seals being on one chamber described as full of female attire of the most sumptuous description, presumably belonging to the Queen, who certainly left behind her the jewels given her by the King to wear at the reception of M. d’Annebault, the French Envoy—an oversight that gave rise to terrible subsequent dissensions between Sir Thomas Seymour and his eldest brother.
Lord Chancellor Wriothesley dissolved Parliament early on Monday, 1st February, in a neatly turned speech declaring that “their most puissant master was dead.” The eventful news was received with every demonstration of sorrow, some members even bursting into tears, or pretending to do so. Then followed the reading of that portion of the King’s will which concerned the Royal Succession.
By this famous testament[104] Henry provided that in case Edward died childless, and Henry himself had no other children by his “beloved wife Katherine or any other wives[105] he might have hereafter,” King Edward was to be succeeded by his eldest sister Mary; and if she in her turn proved without offspring, she was to be succeeded by her sister Elizabeth. Failing heirs to that princess, the crown was to pass on the same conditions to the Lady Jane Grey and her sisters Katherine and Mary Grey, daughters of the King’s eldest niece, the Lady Frances Brandon, Marchioness of Dorset. In the eventuality of the three sisters Grey dying without issue, the throne was to be occupied successively by the children of the Lady Frances’ younger sister, the Lady Eleanor, Countess of Cumberland. The Scotch succession was set aside, from no personal ill-will, however, to Henry’s eldest sister, the Dowager Queen of Scotland, Margaret Tudor, for he left her daughter a handsome legacy. Henry most probably omitted the name of the young Queen of Scots as heiress to the throne, and gave his preference to the daughters of his two nieces, because, although at war with the Regent of Scotland, he still hoped that the betrothal of his grand-niece, Mary Stuart, then only six years of age, to his son Edward might be arranged, and thus eventually bring about the desired union of the two crowns in a natural manner. Moreover, there was the religious question to be considered. The Regent, Mary of Guise, was an ardent Papist, using all her influence, both in England and in Scotland, to thwart the English King’s anti-papal policy.
Henry VIII mentioned Queen Katherine in the following eulogistic manner: “And for the great love, obedience, chastity of life, and wisdom being in our forenamed wife and Queen, we bequeath unto her for her proper life, and as it shall please her to order it, three thousand pounds in plate, jewels, and stuff of household goods, and such apparel as it shall please her to take of such as we have already. And further, we give unto her one thousand pounds in money, and the amount of her dower and jointure according to our grant in Parliament.” Henry appointed the Earl of Hertford Protector of the Realm during the minority of his son, and mentioned as his colleagues all those persons who were interested in keeping him in power in order to share it with him. Gardiner’s name was omitted, as already stated. The provisions of the will opposed a serious obstacle to the Earl of Hertford’s ambition, for they made him fifth in order of precedence, thus placing him on a footing of equality with other executors; recognising no claim arising out of his kinship to the young Prince. Sir Thomas Clere declared that the original will was stamped, a fact which inclined so careful a writer as Mr. Pollard to conclude that the idea that a stamped will was illegal must have flashed across somebody’s mind, and suggested the hasty drawing up of another, for the King to sign in autograph. The form now in the Record Office is doubtless this second one. It displays no trace of a stamp, and the two signatures at the beginning and end are not sufficiently uniform to have been impressed mechanically. In the last the up-strokes are very unsteady, and on comparing them with other signatures of Henry VIII one is justified in thinking that both were forged. It must not be forgotten, however, that the King was very ill, and failing; his hand may well have trembled.[106]
In those days the funeral of a sovereign and the coronation of his successor took place almost simultaneously, occasionally with strange results, considerable confusion arising as to the arrangements for the two ceremonies: the sombre preparations for the obsequies of King Henry, for instance, clashed weirdly with the festivities organised for the accession of his son. Matters became so confused at last that Bishop Gardiner found himself obliged to appeal to “My Lord of Oxford’s Players,” who were already at Southwark preparing to act a pageant and a comedy. It would be more decent, His Lordship pointed out, to sing a solemn Dirge for their master than to perform a merry play, and he besought them to desist until after the King’s funeral.
In the end the Bishop had his way, and the grandeur of Henry’s obsequies suffered nothing from the counter-attractions of the “green men,” “morris dancers,” and “mountain for the gods,” which were among the items promised by the players, who produced their performance in the hall of the ex-monastery of Blackfriars immediately after Edward’s coronation—doubtless to their own satisfaction and that of the public, albeit they seem to have had hard work to get the necessary cash for their “properties” out of Sir William Carwarden or Carden, the official in charge of such matters, to whom they had to frequently apply for payment.[107]