Henry: Virtuous Prince. David Starkey

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ a force of professional German troops in the Netherlands, sailed with it to Ireland, crowned the impostor as Edward VI and then invaded England at the head of an army swollen with Irish soldiers.

      For the second time in two years, Henry VII had to prepare to fight for his crown in battle.

He took as his base the mighty fortress of Kenilworth in Warwickshire. Thence, in May 1486 he wrote to the earl of Ormond, the queen’s lord chamberlain, to order him to escort Elizabeth of York and Lady Margaret Beaufort, who were staying at Chertsey Abbey in Surrey, to join him.18 A month later, the king and queen separated once more. Henry VII moved east to Coventry as he prepared to close in on the rebels. But the queen, accompanied by Peter Courtenay, bishop of Winchester, hastened back to be with her son Arthur at Farnham, where she arrived on 11 June. It also looks as though a detachment of the household was sent ahead to Romsey Abbey, eight miles north of the Solent, to prepare an escape route abroad for the queen and prince if things went badly.19

      It proved an unnecessary precaution. Henry met the rebels at Stoke, near Newark in Nottinghamshire, on 16 June. The royal army was much larger and the Yorkists were crushed. Lincoln was killed in the battle, while the pretender was captured, uncrowned and, in an act of ironical mercy, sent to spend the rest of his life in the royal kitchens.

Stoke had confirmed the result of Bosworth, and Henry’s crown sat that much more firmly on his brow. To celebrate he had a new one made – a ‘rich crown of gold set with full many rich precious stones’ – which he wore for the first time on 6 January 1488, the feast of the Epiphany and the most important of the four ‘crown-wearing’ days at court.20

      This, almost certainly, was the diadem later known as the Imperial Crown. In the fullness of time, the Imperial Crown would become the supreme symbol of Henry VIII’s own monarchy and of his revolutionary claims to authority over church as well as state. For his father, on the other hand, it was much more straightforward: a second victory in battle had made his claim to the throne more solid, and he would wear a crown of unusual size, weight and richness to prove it.

      Another royal visit to Arthur’s nursery at Farnham followed in March 1489. By this time Elizabeth of York was pregnant again. Once more the birth and baptism would be made to symbolize Tudor power, this time in a setting that was even more magnificent than that chosen for Arthur: Westminster.

      Since the thirteenth century the palace of Westminster had been the principal seat of the English monarchy – being, at one and the same time, the king’s main residence and the headquarters of royal government, where parliament, the law courts and the exchequer all sat.

      The royal birth was to be only one element in an autumn of ceremony. On 14 October, parliament, which had been prorogued on 23 February, reassembled. A meeting of parliament brought together everybody who mattered in Tudor England: nobles and knights, clergy and layfolk. The opportunity was too good to miss. Not only would the lords and commons provide a ready-made audience for the birth of the second royal child, they would also, the king decided, dignify the creation of his first-born as prince of Wales.

The decision to invest the three-year-old Arthur was taken soon after the assembly of parliament; the date was set for St Andrew’s Eve (29 November), and summonses were sent out. It is clear that this date was expected to coincide quite closely with the birth of the king and queen’s second child. But was it assumed that the birth and baptism would take place before the creation? Or afterwards?21

      No one, however, would have been bold enough to predict what actually happened – unless, perhaps, one of Henry VII’s astrologers had worked his apparent magic again.

      On Halloween, 31 October, the queen commenced her confinement with the ceremony known as ‘taking to her chamber’. ‘The greater part of the nobles of the realm present at this parliament’ were in attendance. A month later, on 29 November, the rituals of Arthur’s creation began. First he was to be made a knight of the Bath. The ceremonies started ‘when it was night’ and lasted to the following morning.

      But, just as the ceremonies got under way, the queen went into labour. As the king was giving his son ‘the advertisement [or solemn admonition] of the order of knighthood’, the chapel royal were reading psalms for Elizabeth of York’s safe delivery. At a quarter past nine that night a healthy daughter was born.

      The following morning, Arthur was created prince of Wales in the parliament chamber, and immediately afterwards his sister was baptised in the adjacent church of St Margaret’s Westminster. She was named Margaret after Lady Margaret Beaufort, who stood as her godmother.

After the christening, the infant Margaret was carried back in triumph to the palace, ‘with noise of trumpets … [and] with Christ’s blessing’.22 And indeed God (or the stars) seemed to be on the side of the Tudors: the double family event was a powerful signal of their strengthening grip on the throne; it also meant that the first two pieces on the dynastic chessboard were in place.

      It remained to be seen how much room there would be for the third child, Henry, whose entry into the world – so understated in comparison with the ceremonies for Arthur and Margaret – followed eighteen months later in June 1491.

      Notes - CHAPTER 3: THE HEIR

1. Memorials, 39.

2. Loc. cit.

3. For all this, see D. Starkey, ‘King Henry and King Arthur’ in J. P. Carley and F. Riddy, eds, Arthurian Literature,16 (Cambridge, 1998), 171–96, pp. 177–8.

4. Collectanea IV, 204, 206.

5. Beaufort Hours, 279.

6. Collectanea IV, 204.

7. Ibid., 206.

8. Vergil A, 208.

9. Ibid., 207; BL Add. MS 4617, fo. 186; Staniland, ‘Royal Entry’, 307 n. 60.

10. Materials II, 349, 459; BL Add. MS 4617, fo. 202; CPR Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III (1476–85), p. 241.

11. Materials II, 298, 343, 394, 404, 437, 553, 556.

12. Materials II, 343, 349, 370, 459; BL Add. MS 4617, fo. 205.

13. OxfordDNB, ‘Alcock’.

СКАЧАТЬ