The Rule of the Tudors 1485 - 1603

Next to Whitehall on the river, but a world apart, lay Westminster. Westminster was the old palace of
the medieval kings, built beside the Benedictine Abbey. Here were the law courts of the King's Bench,
Chancery and Common Pleas; here was the Exchequer. The Lords of Parliament met at Westminster
in the White Chamber. This was an official world of laws, precedents, parchment rolls and tallies,
ordered by men robed in black. It was not Westminster which Henry VIII inhabited, but the world
of the royal court, which had its being wherever the king was. The court was the royal household
where the king's servants served him; the scene of public ceremonial and of private life. It was also
the centre of policy and of politics. All power rested in the rested in the will and person of the king
and was quintessentially personal. Access was all. Courtiers, circling and crowding, constantly in
competition, sought always to penetrate the private world of power, to gain access to the king and
influence over him. The most private affairs of a king were also inescapably matters of state.
Letters tell of 'privy' communications in the inner spaces and private recesses of the court, of whispering at windows. Leaning against a window, his hand over his mouth, Thomas Cromwell explained, disingenuously, to Eustace Chapuys, the ambassador for the Holy Roman Emperor in
April 1536 that it was only recently that he had learnt the frailty of human affairs, especially those of
the court, 'of which he had before his eyes several examples that might be called domestic'.
The king never had privacy; he was never alone; he did not sleep alone, nor wake alone, nor dress,
eat, bathe, or attend the garderobe alone. Courtiers were always, endlessly, in attendance. When Sir Francis Bryan addressed Sir Thomas Heneage as 'bedfellow', he meant it literally for, as Gentlemen
of the Privy Chamber, they slept together at the foot of the royal bed.
The succession of each new monarch brought a new world, for the character of a king determined
not only policy but also the style of government, the nature of his court and of those he had about him.
A king so secret and distant as Henry VII had sought secrecy and distance at his court also.
He devised ways to live and rule apart. Traditionally, the later medieval royal household had been
divided into the service side of hall and kitchens, served by ranks of yeomen of the larder and buttery,
pastry chefs and scullery boys, presided over by the Lord Steward; and the king's private apartment
or chamber, under the Lord Chamberlain. But even the division of the chamber into the Great or
Guard Chamber, Presence Chamber and Privy Chamber was not separation enough for Henry VII.
In about 1495 he made an institutional change at his court, an innovation little remarked at the time,
but of great political consequence: he set the Secret or Privy Chamber apart from the others, establishing a frontier for access, and gave it its own tiny staff of grooms and pages. Only they could
enter. From this Secret Chamber Henry VII excluded all those whom he did not regard as essential
for his service; he especially excluded those who regarded themselves as essential: his nobles.
Fearing, and with reason, conspiracy within as well as conspiracy without; wishing to devote himself
uninterruptedly to dispatches, accounts and high policy, and to be free of the insidious counsels and
tiresome ceremonial which attended his greater subjects, he chose, unusually, to have menial servants instead of lordly pages to perform menial service. So he guarded himself and his secrets. Henry VIII
believed that he could keep his own secrets - 'If I thought my cap knew my counsel, I would cast it
into the fire and burn it', he said. But he was often deceived and he deceived himself. Kings were
prisoners of the courts they made, and Henry VIII created a court in his own image, quite different
from his father's. The accession of a new prince is often welcomed with jubilant expectation - especially when the passing of the old prince is a relief - but the joy which greeted the second Henry Tudor in April 1509 was unusual. 'Heaven and earth rejoice . . . Our King is not after gold or gems . . .
but virtue, glory, immortality': such was the promise. Thomas More celebrated the new King's
accession as the ending of a tyranny. When he wrote that his new prince had 'a character which deserves to rule' it was true, or partly true. Henry had a powerful, if unoriginal mind; he was educated
and cultivated; he had courage, charm, even humour. He was well versed in theology and pious.
Qualities of mind and character, his splendid physical presence, and his chivalry seemed to make
him the ideal Christian knight, and would have impressed, and maybe captivated, even if he had not
been king. But he was king, of commanding will. Thomas More warned, even as the reign began,
that unlimited power tended to weaken good minds.
Henry VIII's reign began, as it would end, with a comprehensive deception practised for high political
purposes, as a courtier with a 'smiling countenance' concealed the news of the old King's death.
This courtier was a Groom of the Privy Chamber, and courtiers colluded with some of the Henry VII's
councillors to secure the succession and organize a coup. Two days after his fatherd died the new King
was being served as though he were still Prince of Wales and Henry VII still alive. On the first day
of the new reign, Henry VII's hated councillors Edmund Dudley and Sir Richard Empson were sent
to the Tower, to the delight of the people, who saw them as agents of Henry VII's oppression rather
than as victims of his son's. (They died traitors' deaths at Tower Hill in August 1510). Already the
ruthlessness of the young King seemed apparent, but it was, and always would be, uncertain how far
Henry directed what was done in his name. At one moment he claimed that his dying father had urged
him to marry Catherine of Aragon, and so he must obey; at another, he expressed doubts about the
propriety of marrying his brother Arthur's widow. He did marry her in June 1509, and they were jointly crowned on Midsummer Day.
The young and chivalrous King - whose accession day was, fittingly, the eve of St George, England's
martial patron - sought to be king in the image of the great kings of the English past and to rival foreign princes of far greater kingdoms. At home, he aspired to lead a noble order of chivalry; abroad,
to pursue honour. Reading chivalric romance, especially Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, Henry saw his court as a chivalric fellowship united in a quest for honour and loyal service to their prince.
The mottoes of courtiers vaunted their loyalty: 'Loyaulte me oblige', promised Charles Brandon.
Henry VII, too, had seen the political necessity of magnificence; had followed Edward IV in emulating the chivalric courtly culture of the dukes of Burgundy; had encouraged his courtiers to
joust; had judged their tournaments. But he had been spectator, not participant. Henry VIII was the
glittering champion of the tournament. He ran in the tilt-yard, despite all the dangers, and the courtiers with whom he jousted became his closest companions, recipients of his confidence and favour.
Valour in the tilt-yard became a way to high military position, to wealth and ennoblement, as Charles
Brandon, created Duke of Suffolk, found. Here chivalry and politics met. But chivalric values did
not easily accord with the competitiveness of life at this court.
Chivalry was the training for war. Henry's guiding ambition, as his reign began and still as it ended,
was to assert the ancient claim to dominion of France, to regain a lost kingdom and a lost throne.
War against France was half a chivalric crusade.