The Rule of the Tudors 1485 - 1603

                                                                            Imperium
                                                           HENRY VIII AND THE REFORMATION
                                                                        IN ENGLAND, 1509-47

                                                                      
                                                                       COURTS AND KINGS

                                                            The bell tower showed me such a sight
                                                             That in my head sticks day and night;
                                                                There did I learn out of a grate,
                                                                 For all favour, glory or might,
                                                                   That yet circa Regna tonat
                                                                   [It thunders around thrones].
                                                                             Thomas Wyatt, c. 1536

At Christmas 1529 Henry VIII was at Greenwich, designing a royal palace to be built at Whitehall;
a palace vast in scale and novel in conception, a display of his magnificence and an emanation of his
power. That October, two days after the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, Henry had taken Anne Boleyn to
survey York Palace. The seizure of this palace of Wolsey's and the eviction of hundreds of hapless
lesser subjects from a whole Westminster suburb made way for Henry's grand design, which was
built at great cost. At its centre was the Privy Gallery, where the King would live and rule apart in
his privy lodging, his bedchamber and closets. At its west end the Gallery joined the Great Hall, the
Great Chamber, and the Presence Chamber, which was dominated by the throne and its canopy.
Here Henry's subjects were symbolically - but not actually - in the royal presence. The King himself
was guarded and watched behind a series of doors locked by master keys. No one who entered this
painted palace and passed through two great courtyards and three outer chambers on to the Privy
Gallery could doubt the power of this king. On the walls of the chambers hung splendid tapestries,
including a series acquired in 1528 of the Story of David, the godly king of Zion, with whom this
king of England so strongly identified. In the Privy Chamber, the most intimate inner sanctum of
royal rule, Hans Holbein would in 1537 paint a great mural in which Henry VIII dominated the foreground, with his father behind. This was a manifesto in art of the power of the Tudor kings.
Intended to awe, it did. Yet very few were allowed into the royal presence, the source of all 'favour,
glory or might'.