The Tombs of Henry VIII's Queens: Part One

by Linda Fetterly Root

Katharine[i] of Aragon (1485-1536):

On the morning of her death, Henry VIII’s discarded wife dictated two letters, one to her kinsman The Holy Roman Emperor, and the other, to the husband who had put her aside. It is not the scornful lament to which she was entitled and which the king deserved. In it, she wishes him well and requests Henry to extend benevolence toward their daughter and generosity to her servants. But it ends as the last letter written by a lover: 'Lastly, I make this vow. That mine eyes desire you above all things.’

When the king heard of her death, he donned clothes of celebratory yellow and frolicked the night away. He was not dancing with his wife, Queen Anne, for whom he had all but moved mountains to marry. He had already tired of her.

And thus, the daughter of the legendary lovers Ferdinand and Isabella was taken to the nearby Abbey of Peterborough and interred in the choir aisle to the north of the altar, with no more pomp than due a Dowager Princess of Wales, the title to which she had been demoted. She was put to rest as Arthur’s wife, not Henry’s. Katharine died on January 2, 1536, and was buried 22 days later. A mere three months after that, on May 2, Queen Anne Boleyn was arrested, and 17 days later, she was dead. Four months and a week after Katharine's death, Lady Jane Seymour was Queen of England.[ii]

In his excellent biography Catherine of Aragon, written in 1941, Garrett Mattingly remarked that few of the hopes the Queen still held when she died had been realized.[iii] However, her burial site at Peterborough may well have been an incidental beneficiary of her death. During the Dissolution of the Monasteries, achieved by a legislative scheme orchestrated by Henry VIII between 1536 and 1541, Peterborough Abbey Church was confiscated but spared. By royal edict, Henry granted Letters Patent to Peterborough making it a Cathedral and named the former abbot as its bishop.[iv] Thus, Peterborough was appropriately Anglicanized. Some historians think it was spared because it housed the remains of a royal who had once been considered Queen of England. It is just as likely that Henry saw it as a potential source of revenue for the Crown.

The site of Katherine’s burial did not fare well. It was desecrated in 1586 and the culprits caught. During the Civil War, Oliver Cromwell’s troops ravaged both the Cathedral and the town. Their onslaught is described in the Royalist newsbook Mercurius Aulicus as worse than what would have been expected of either the Goths or the Turks.[v]

In 1895, the dignity of Queen Katharine’s burial site was restored, when the wife of one of Peterborough’s canons, Catharine Clayton, solicited funds from women named Catherine, no matter where they lived or how they spelled the name. Then, Mary Teck, King George V’s consort, grandmother of Her Royal Highness Elizabeth II, joined in the cause, and Katharine's place of interment became clearly marked as the tomb of a Queen of England. Her successor did not fare as well.

Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons.

Anne Boleyn (c. 1501- May 19, 1536):

Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of Chris Nyborg

Many historians attribute Catherine of Aragon as having captured the hearts and minds of the English people. Albeit unjustly, not even her successor’s apologists extend the honor to her predecessor. There are as many accounts of Anne’s demise as there are screenwriters and historical novelists, and many versions propounded by historians are scarcely more than musings. One thing is certain: the queen was executed for treason within the grounds of the Tower of London on May 19, 1536. Her remains were disposed of according to the custom of the time. As an aristocrat, she was buried beneath the floor within the confines of the Royal Chapel of Saint Peter ad Vincula. Much haste accompanied her beheading, and no one had thought to order a coffin. Apparently, her remains were carried from the place of her beheading to her place of burial by her ladies and placed into a wooden box.

At the time, notes may have been made as to where the bodies of Royals executed during that bloodiest of weeks were buried, but none survive, and the accuracy of notations used to identify bones found under the floor during a renovation in the late 19th century are unauthenticated.

St. Peter ad Vincula, Wikimedia, Courtesy of Creative Commons
www.graveyards, Matt Hucke,

There are indeed bones of women scattered in at least two locations, but sources differ as to which if either set were Queen Anne's. A commission formed when the floor was torn up during Victoria’s reign, and a surgeon declared a set of female bones to be of the proper age and configuration. 21st-century historian Alison Weir disagrees and believes bones identified as Anne’s sister-in-law Lady Rochford were the Queen's.

While Dr. Weir does not have sufficient facts to declare the issue resolved, she certainly has enough to raise substantial doubt. It will be ironic if further studies show that Weir is correct since Lady Rochford and Anne Boleyn were reputed rivals for Anne’s brother George’s affections. And to add to the controversy, recent research implies that even that assertion may not be true. Jane Boleyn may not be Anne's jealous sister-in-law after all. She may just have been a scapegoat.

The fact that Anne’s burial site has not been resolved is further evidence of how little dignity her remains were afforded at the time of her death. As it stands, all that commemorates her final resting place is a plaque in the floor placed at the behest of Queen Victoria, marking the spot where a wooden box with copper screws in embedded in the concrete, and which may or may not contain the bones of Anne Boleyn. Alison Weir suspects they belong to Kathryn Howard, wife #5.

Jane Seymour (1509-October 24, 1537):

Perhaps it is time to look at Queen Jane Seymour in a different light than the one in which she has been cast. At least insofar as Henry VIII was concerned, of his six wives, Jane was special. His affections for her are usually explained by her ability to present him with a male heir, an achievement not to be downplayed. However, some recent research suggests there was more to Queen Jane Seymour than her label as ‘a little mouse' implies. At the very least she lasted a year without offending Henry as long as she kept her opinions to herself, a lesson learned when she approached him about pardoning the peasants who had taken part in the Pilgrimage of Grace.

The reign of Henry Tudor’s third wife was painfully brief. She triumphed over both of her predecessors by giving Henry the son he craved, but the birth cost Jane her life. Twelve days later, she was dead, either of a partially unexpelled placenta or puerperal fever. Henry's plans for her elaborate coronation became arrangements for a royal funeral. She was the only one of Henry’s wives to receive one. The funeral procession began at Hampton Court where she had died and thereafter, laid in state, and ended at Windsor Castle, where Henry planned to be interred. Because of the elaborate nature of his tomb, which remained very much a work-in-progress, she was placed in what was planned as a temporary crypt in the Quire of Saint George’s Chapel at Windsor Palace, while Henry sorted the details of the elegant tomb he had been planning for decades. He had hired a series of celebrated Italian sculptors to render elaborate designs, none of which pleased their patron.

Later representation of Henry VIII's family as
he defined it. (Wikimedia Commons, (PD)

Henry had begun planning his tomb during the happy early days of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Years later, after five more marriages, he chose to share it with Queen Jane. All he had to do was live long enough to see it finished. He died in 1547, leaving a partially completed set of ornaments for an unfinished tomb.

Sharing a crypt with the mighty Henry VIII should have assured Queen Jane's remains a resting place superior to all others, but such was not the case. Finances and what moderns call regime change intervened. In Henry's will and again, on his deathbed in 1547, he reaffirmed his desire to be buried at Windsor, with Jane alongside him. He anticipated his son and heir, Edward, Prince of Wales, and Edward's powerful Seymour uncles would see to the tomb’s completion, including life-size effigies of Henry and Jane, and a marble statue of himself upon a warhorse. He had not considered continental politics, religious strife in England, or the threat of Calvinism and the Scottish Reformation. Henry's death left Edward Seymour, then Earl of Hereford, and Protector of the Realm, with more pressing problems than a dead king's tomb. As he approached majority, studious and devoutly Protestant Edward VI had no time for such frivolities. During the Catholic restoration that occurred in Mary I’s reign, in spite of her deep affection for Queen Jane, she had no desire to deify the father who had rejected her. When Protestant, parsimonious Elizabeth Tudor succeeded her half-sister, she found other uses for her money. When Elizabeth I died in 1603, and the Tudor Dynasty made way for the House of Stuart, King James VI of Scotland and I of England, was preoccupied with rehabilitating the image of his mother, Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots, who had been beheaded in 1587 on a warrant signed by Elizabeth Tudor, and buried at Peterborough on the opposite side of the altar from Katharine of Aragon. It was she, who never set foot in England other than as a fugitive, and later, as a prisoner, who was reinterred in a glorious tomb in the Lady Chapel at Westminster. 

To finance the Civil War, Cromwell's Commonwealth parliament sold the effigy of Henry VIII and other substantially completed components of Henry VIII’s planned memorial. The author of the commentary at the Saint George’s Chapel page cited below remarks that ‘a less ambitious scheme achievable during his lifetime would have been a wiser choice’.

CONCLUSION OF PART I ~ Tombs of Henry VIII’s Queens

St.George's Chapel,Wikimedia, courtesy of Alan Thoma

The only marking above the royal vault at Windsor Castle where Henry VIII and his third wife, Queen Jane are buried dates to the 19th century and is as follows:[vi]

IN A VAULT BENEATH THIS MARBLE SLAB ARE DEPOSITED THE REMAINS OF

JANE SEYMOUR QUEEN OF KING HENRY VIII 1537

KING HENRY VIII 1547

KING CHARLES I 1648

AND AN INFANT CHILD OF QUEEN ANNE.

THIS MEMORIAL WAS PLACED HERE BY COMMAND OF KING WILLIAM IV. 1837

Join me in September for a look at the burial sites of Henry VIII's last three consorts, Anne of Cleves, Kathryn Howard, and Katharine Parr.

Notes:
[i] The author uses the spelling that appears at the site where the Queen is buried. Mattingly uses the popular spelling of the name. The queen herself signed as Katalina.

[ii] Garrett Mattingly, infra, states the King secretly married Jane Seymour the day after Anne’s execution, i.e., on May 20, 1936, not May 29.

[iii] Mattingly, Garrett, Catherine of Aragon, 1941, Book of the Month Club Edition, 1990, pages 429-430.

[iv] See the official Peterborough Cathedral website for an excellent recap of Katherine’s life, the present festival held in her honor, and a short biography. http://www.peterborough-cathedral.org.uk/newsarticle.aspx/41/katharine-festival-2016.

[v] The entire quote is found infra.

[vi] http://www.stgeorges-windsor.org/assets/files/LearningResources/BackgroundNotesHenryVIII.pdf

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Historical novelist Linda Root left a career as a major crimes prosecutor anticipating a retirement spent writing Historical Crime Fiction. She began compiling a Murder Book, aimed at convicting Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots of conspiracy in her husband Lord Darnley’s murder. Instead of the book she planned, her research inspired her to write a novel, The First Marie and the Queen of Scots, first published in 2011. It was followed in 2013 by The Last Knight and the Queen of Scots and four stand-alone books in the The Legacy of the Queen of Scots series, with a fifth in progress: They are: 1) Unknown Princess (formerly The Midwife's Secret; 2) The Last Knight’s Daughter, (formerly The Other Daughter); 3) 1603: The Queen’s Revenge;  and 4) In the Shadow of the Gallows. The Deliverance of the Lamb will be published this winter..She has also published an adult fantasy, The Green Woman, as J. D. Root.Visit her Amazon Author Page for a complete list:
http://www.amazon.com/Linda-Root/e/B0053DIGM8/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1461277095&sr=1-2-ent

Hey Henry! That’s no way to say ‘goodbye.’

by Judith Arnopp

Henry VIII

Although Henry VIII is famous for abandoning, beheading, divorcing his wives it seems he didn’t enjoy ‘goodbyes.’ Each one of his relationships ended suddenly, without discussion.  In most instances he simply crept out of the palace, mounted his horse and rode away. End of relationship. End of marriage.

His battle for a divorce from Katherine of Aragon, his wife of almost twenty years, was a long protracted affair, ending with Henry breaking his ties with the Pope and the excommunication of England from the Roman Church. By the time he finally lost patience and removed himself from the marriage, he was already committed to Anne Boleyn.

For months the king and his two ‘wives’ had lived in a sort of Ménage à trois with Katherine trailing in the wake of Henry and Anne. But in June 1531 Henry and Anne rode away from Hampton court, leaving the queen behind.

For a few weeks it seems the couple visited several hunting lodges with Anne playing the part of consort. It had long been Catherine’s habit to write to Henry every few days when they were apart, enquiring after his health but this time her letter also expressed her regret that he had not bid her farewell when he departed.

Catherine of Aragon

Henry’s response was pitiless, informing her he ‘cared not for her adieux.’ Catherine’s reply illustrates admirable restraint but Henry did not bother to answer; instead she received a letter from the Council which, for the first time failed to address her as ‘Queen.

A further order demanded that she remove herself to The More in Hertfordshire, and ordered the Princess Mary to go to Richmond. Henry was not only abandoning Catherine but also their daughter, who was never allowed to see her mother again.

Henry’s marriage to Anne was very different to his first. Whereas Catherine had the royal training to ignore her husband’s romantic indiscretions, Anne had no such qualms. This made marriage to Anne a roller coaster ride of arguments, fights and reconciliations. There are plenty of marriages like this, it is no indication that they were no longer in love.

Anne Boleyn

Since their life together was peppered with disputes, when Anne fell out of favour in May 1536 she had no reason to suspect that it was any more than another tiff. But, after signing the order for her arrest, Henry refused to see or communicate with Anne again.

It is tempting to wonder if things had been otherwise she might have managed to talk her way out of it, as Henry’s sixth wife, Katherine Parr, did in the final years of his reign.

Jane Seymour has always been described as the ‘one he loved best’ yet when she died after giving him a son, the only indication of his grief is that he did not remarry straight away. While Jane was on her deathbed he had the goodness to delay his planned departure to Esher by several days. Cromwell was told that, ‘If she amend (recover), he will go, and if she amend not, he told me this day, he could not find it in his heart to tarry.” (Starkey. P. 608)

Jane Seymour

In other words, his wife’s death did not interfere with the king’s itinerary. Jane died at 8pm on the same day this message was written. We do not know if Henry was with her.

I have always questioned Henry’s love for Jane. We tend to think that because he was still in love with her (or at least had not yet found a replacement) he must have felt more for her than the others. But, suppose she had survived, who is to say he would not have tired of her too and found an excuse to creep from her bed into the arms of another?

I think we are safe to assume Henry had no love for his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. From the moment he saw her, before the marriage had even taken place, Henry wanted an end to it. He raged to his councillors that she did not please him but, unable to free himself from the political ties of the union, he was trapped, like a caged lion. The wedding went ahead and the honeymoon night was a disaster.

All over London jousts and celebrations were under way but the king was far from happy. He had set his heart on another and was already sneaking out after dark to visit Catherine Howard at the home of Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester in Southwark.

Anne of Cleves

David Starkey in Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII says, ‘Anne herself probably understood little of the political storm which raged round her and of which she was the all-too passive cause. She was shrewd enough, however, to notice the King’s attentions to Catherine Howard, and, on 20th June, complained vigorously about them to the Cleves agent in London, Karl Harst. Two days later, she was in better spirits, because Henry had spoken to her kindly. It was the last time she saw him as her husband.”

Ordered to leave the court and take up residence at Richmond Palace, Anne did not learn of her fate until July when she was informed of the king’s decision to reconsider the marriage. Although she was often at court after the annulment, Anne never saw Henry again until the separation was legally finalised.

Catherine Howard, as we all know, was accused of adultery and treason. As sad as it is, the charges were probably just. The legend of the little queen running screaming for Henry along the corridors of Hampton court sound as if they are straight from the pages of fiction, and they probably are. But the image is a powerful one, indicative of her terror, her knowledge of what is about to come to pass. For Catherine, coming at the end of a long line of dispatched spouses, can have held little doubt as to her fate. But, if the story is true, it was a futile attempt to reason with the king for, before she was even aware that anything was wrong, Henry had already fled.

Katherine Howard

Hurt and humiliated, the king lost no time in making himself scarce. On the 5^th of November, on the pretext of hunting, he ‘dined in a little pleasure-house in one of the parks around Hampton Court. Then, under the cover of night, he left secretly for London.’ (Starkey, p. 671)

Catherine never saw him again.

Afterwards the Spanish ambassador described Henry as suffering ‘greater sorrow and regret at her loss than at the faults, loss of divorce of his preceding wives.’ (Starkey. P. 685) The picture of an aging broken king mourning the loss of his faithless child bride is touching but, it has to be said, his sorrow was more likely to have been of the self-pitying kind than remorse for Catherine.

Katherine Parr

Katherine Parr, Henry’s last queen, was a scholar and a reformer, publishing books and entering the male world of theological debate, just as Anne Boleyn had before her. This won the queen enemies, the conservative faction resenting her influence over the aging and increasingly disabled king.

Just as with several of her predecessors, moves were made to bring her down and the task promised not to be difficult. It is possible that Katherine was just too clever for the king’s liking, perhaps she bested him with her arguments, perhaps she reminded him just a little too much of Anne Boleyn. Whatever the reason, after several years of marriage, Henry came to resent her unfeminine attitude, providing her enemies with the opportunity they needed.

When Henry complained, in Gardiner’s presence, of the nature of the queen’s conversation Gardiner lost no time in convincing the king to agree to a coup against her. Her women and her books were to be seized and the queen arrested and sent to the Tower.

Luckily for Katherine, one of Henry’s physicians got wind of the plan and tipped her off. Katherine went straight to the king but had the sense not to remonstrate with him outright. Instead, when the subject turned to religion, she pretended ignorance, preferring to ‘defer my judgement in this, and all other cases, to our Majesty’s wisdom, as my only anchor Supreme Head and Governor her in earth, next under God.’ (Starkey. P.763)

When he looked doubtful as to her honesty, she went on to claim that she had only ever disputed with Henry to take his mind from his pain, and to try to learn from his own great wisdom. His ego salved and his faith in women restored, Henry and Katherine kissed and made up.

It must have been a triumphant moment for Katherine when Wriothesley arrived the next day to arrest her.  The king and queen were walking in the garden and when Wriothesley arrived with the guard, Henry furiously berated him, calling him a knave and a beast. Wriothesley fled the royal presence.

On this occasion Henry’s wife managed to escape the ultimate penalty for displeasing the king but, as Henry’s health began to deteriorate further, the couple spent more and more time apart.

Henry spent his last Christmas in London, while Katherine was at Greenwich. He died in January 1547, probably without saying ‘Goodbye.’

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Judith Arnopp is the author of historical fiction. Her books include:

   The Kiss of the Concubine

TheWinchester Goose: at the court of Henry VIII

The Song of Heledd

The Forest Dwellers

Peaceweaver

For more information about Judith’s books please visit her webpage.

 All available on kindle or in paperback

Further reading.

David Starkey, Six Wives: the queens of Henry VIII

Alison Weir, Henry VIII King and Court

Joanna Denny, Katherine Howard,

Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn

David Loades, Henry VIII and his Queens

The Fool and his King

by Judith Arnopp

Q: When is a fool, not a fool?

A: When he is a fool.

It doesn’t matter how far back you research into history, if there is a monarch, then his fool will not be far away.  In one form or another, be it tumbler, juggler, trickster, jester or clown, every recorded culture had them, but, thanks to Shakespeare and other writers of the period, it is the motley fool of the English medieval kings that remain uppermost in our minds. But these fools were not simply to amuse the monarch, they had other, more subtle duties and their importance shouldn’t be underestimated. As the 16th century author Erasmus pointed out:

'We have all seen how an appropriate and well-timed joke can sometimes influence even grim tyrants. . . . The most violent tyrants put up with their clowns and fools, though these often made them the butt of open insults.’ (Desiderius Erasmus, In Praise of Folly)

Throughout history there are fools. Dwarves, of course, and warrior fools, Norman buffoons, minstrel fools and innocents but it is the Tudor fool, Will Somer, whose influence and companionship to Henry VIII is so well documented, upon whom I wish to concentrate on today.

Somer was not the only fool at court but he seems to have been the favourite. His predecessor, Sexton (also known as Patch) was famous for his nonsensical wit, but the thing that set Somer apart from the others, was the love of the king. He had the ability to turn Henry’s mind, when it needed turning the most. 

The most famous quip afforded to Somer is by Thomas Wilson who quotes him in his ‘Art of Rhetoric’ as follows.

‘William Somer, seeing much ado for account-making, and that the King’s Majesty of most worthy memory, Henry the eighth, wanted money such as was due unto him: As please your grace (quoth he) you have so many fraud-iters, so many conveyers, and so many deceivers to get up your money, that they get all to themselves…’

The pun on ‘auditors, surveyors and receivers’ is both a joke and a truth, and there are other similar witticism recorded to Somer in other works of the period.  For example: Armin’s ‘Foole upon Foole’ (1600), Samuel Rowley’s ‘When You See Me, You Know Me’ (1605), or the anonymous, ‘A Pleasant History of the Life and Death of Will Summers’ (1676). 

John Southworth, author of ‘Fools and Jesters at the English Court’ says that these documents do not offer much in the way of history but they all highlight Somer’s use of his ‘merry prate’ and spontaneous rhymes to improve his master’s state of mind.

Other reports suggest he was less a wit than a ‘natural fool’ (today we would refer to this as having

learning difficulties) and I could go into a lengthy discussion about this, but I want to concentrate on Will’s relationship with Henry VIII.

William Somer first emerges in 1535 when an order appears for new clothes for ‘William Somer, oure foole.’  Henry’s ‘olde foole’ Patch/Sexton had grown too old and it was Will who was chosen to take his place.

His initial requirements included a fool’s livery; ‘a dubblette of wursteed, lined with canvas and coton …a coote and a cappe of grene clothe, fringed with red crule, and lined with fryse …a dublette of fustian, lyned with cotton and canvas …a coote of grene clothe, with a hood of the same, fringed with white crule lyned with fryse and bokerham.’

It seems that throughout his service Somer was maintained by the Privy purse for although there is a surviving record from Cromwell in January 1538 of a ‘velvet purse for W. Somer’, there is no mention of anything to fill it, his expenses being met by the court. 

In this fine new apparel Will Somer’s duty was to entertain and distract the king from his worldly care, and he seems to have done so admirably. His favour with Henry raised him so high that he appears in several portraits, commissioned by the king himself. The most famous being the family portrait by an unknown artist which is now housed in the Royal Collection. (See top of page)

It depicts Henry, at his most virile and vigorous best, and Queen Jane (who had already been dead for over a decade). On the king’s right is their son Edward (whose birth caused his mother’s death in 1537). Completing the Tudor idyll are the princesses, Mary and Elizabeth, both girls bastardised and legitimised so many times, they can have had no real idea as to their royal standing .  

The entire royal family are assembled in a fantasy gathering, a made up truth to please the king, and what makes this especially poignant is that, a little behind the royal sitters, the painting also shows Will Somer, dressed in his ‘clothe coote,’ and his velvet purse is hanging from his belt. His pet monkey obligingly picks lice from the fool’s hair.

Framed in the opposite archway is a likeness of a girl, believed to be of Jane, the innocent fool of Princess Mary, whom it is believed she took into her household after the death of Anne Boleyn. The presence of the royal fools in this very personal portrayal of Henry’s family can only point to their importance.

Another glimpse we have of Will Somer is in a psalter commissioned by Henry (circa 1540.) This time the king is drawn as an old man, in the character of King David, playing a Welsh harp, and Will is pictured with his back to the king. Again, he is dressed in the 'grene cloth cote' recognisable from the descriptions in the privy purse accounts.

Since most of Henry’s old friends had, by this point, been executed, exiled or (more rarely) died of natural causes, there must have been few left that he could safely trust or confide in. This makes the image of the lonely old king and his trusty fool a hauntingly unhappy one. I can almost be moved to pity him.

Records suggest that, as the reign progressed, only Will was able to take Henry’s mind from the incessant pain of his ulcerated leg, the cares of state and his growing ill-health and depression. Right until the end of the king’s life, wherever Henry went, Will went too; from palace to palace, his every need was catered and provided for.  At Christmas 1545, just a year before the King’s death, when a batch of sixteen horses were ferried across the Thames on a trip to Hampton Court, there were three mounts to carry the massively obese king,  and one for his fool, ‘Wyllyam Somer.’

After Henry’s death in 1547, Somer went on to serve at the court of Edward VI and Mary I, but he died early in the reign of Elizabeth. He is buried at St Leonard’s in Shoreditch, his name marked on a stone to commemorate players and musicians of the period who are buried in the church.

Further reading: John Southworth: Fools and Jesters at the English Court, ISBN: 0-7509-3477-8

Photographs from Wikimedia commons.

  

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Judith Arnopp writes historical fiction. She is currently working on a novel about Anne Boleyn.

More information is on her webpage: www.juditharnopp.com

The Winchester Goose

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The Forest Dwellers

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The Song of Heledd

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Peaceweaver

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The Death of Henry VIII: Demolishing the Myths

By Nancy Bilyeau

No one would have called Sir Anthony Denny a brave man, but on the evening of January 27, 1547, the Gentleman of the Privy Chamber performed a duty the most resolute would recoil from: He informed Henry VIII that “in man’s judgment you are not like to live.”

            The 55-year-old king, lying in his vast bed in Westminster Palace, replied he believed “the mercy of Christ is able to pardon me all my sins, yes, though they were greater than they be.” When asked if he wanted to speak to any “learned man,” King Henry asked for Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer “but I will first take a little sleep. And then, as I feel myself, I will advise on the matter.”

            Cranmer was sent for but it took hours for the archbishop to make his way on frozen roads. Shortly after midnight, Henry VIII was barely conscious, unable to speak. The faithful Cranmer always insisted that when he asked for a sign that his monarch trusted in the mercy of Christ, Henry Tudor squeezed his hand.

            At about 2 a.m. on January 28th Henry VIII died, “probably from renal and liver failure, coupled with the effects of his obesity,” says Robert Hutchinson in his 2005 book The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracies, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant.

            It was a subdued end to a riotous life. The sources for what happened that night are respected, though they are secondary, coming long after the event: Gilbert Burnet’s History of the Reformation of the Church of England (1679) and John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1874).

            Yet there are other stories told of the death and funeral of Henry VIII. He was perhaps the most famous king in English history, and so it is no surprise that in books and on the Internet, some strange or maudlin words and ghoulish acts have attached themselves to his demise.

            It is time to address them, one by one.

            Myth 1: “Monks, monks, monks”

            Henry VIII broke from Rome and made himself the head of the Church of England, dissolving the monasteries. The monks and friars and nuns faithful to the Pope lost their homes and were turned out on the road. Those who defied the king and denied the royal supremacy, such as the Carthusian martyrs, were tortured and killed.  

            Did the king regret it at the end? “He expired soon after allegedly uttering his last words: ‘Monks! Monks! Monks!’" says the Wikipedia entry for Henry VIII. It’s a story that has popped up in books too. The major source for it seems to be Agnes Strickland, a 19^th century poet turned historian who penned the eight-volume Lives of the Queens of England from the Norman Conquest, and Lives of the Queens of Scotland, and English Princesses. Strickland writes: The king “was afflicted with visionary horrors at the hour of his departure; for that he glanced with rolling eyes and looks of wild import towards the darker recesses of his chamber, muttering, ‘Monks—monks!’ ”

            More on Strickland later. But when it comes to visions of cowled avengers glowering in the corner, it seems certain that this is an embellishment, an attempt at poetic justice. But not something that happened. Most likely at the final hour Henry regretted nothing.

Myth 2: “Cried out for Jane Seymour”

            Another story is that while dying Henry VIII cried out for his third wife, the long dead Jane Seymour. It supports the idea that Jane, the pale lady-in-waiting who rapidly replaced Anne Boleyn, was the love of Henry’s life. He did, after all, request to be buried next to her. And whenever a family portrait was commissioned after 1537, Jane was shown sitting beside him, rather than one of the wives he was actually married to. But Henry VIII does not quite deserve his reputation for being impossible to please when it comes to women. He actually had a low bar for marital success: birth of a baby boy. Jane produced the son who became Edward VI—doing so killed her—and thus moved to the top of the pecking order. 

Whether he actually loved Jane more than the five other spouses (not to mention those alluring mistresses) is best left to screenwriters. But one thing seems certain: Henry VIII did not cry for his third wife while expiring. There is no historical source for it.

           

Myth 3: “And the dogs will lick his blood”

            The most macabre story of all supposedly happened weeks after the king died but before he was lowered into the crypt next to Jane Seymour in St. George’s Chapel.  On February 14th, the king’s corpse was transported in a lead coffin from Westminster to Windsor; the procession of thousands lasted two days. There was a large funeral effigy on top of the coffin, complete with crown at one end and crimson velvet shoes at the other, that, one chronicler said fearfully, was so realistic “he seemed just as if he were alive.”

            At the halfway mark, the coffin was housed in Syon Abbey, once one of England’s most prestigious religious houses. That is fact. But the rest is suspect. Because of an accident or just the undoubted heaviness of the monarch’s coffin—Henry VIII weighed well over 300 pounds at his death—there was supposedly a leak in the night, and either blood or “putrid matter” leaked onto the floor. When men arrived in the morning, a stray dog was seen licking under the coffin, goes the tale.

            This hearkened to an unforgettable Easter Sunday sermon in 1532 before the king and his soon-to-be-second-wife, Anne Boleyn. Friar William Peto, provincial of the Observant Franciscans and a fiery supporter of first wife Katherine of Aragon, compared Henry VIII to King Ahab, husband of Jezebel. According to Scripture, after Ahab died, wild dogs licked his blood. Peto thundered that the same thing would happen to the English king.

            Gilbert Burnet is the main source for the coffin-leaking story. A Scottish theologian and bishop of Salisbury, he is today considered reliable—except when he’s not. One historian, while praising Burnet’s book as an “epoch in our historical literature,” fretted that “a great deal of fault has been found—and, no doubt, justly—with the inaccuracy and general imperfection of the transcripts on which his work was largely founded and which gave rise to endless blunders.” One of Burnet’s most well known contributions to Tudor lore was that a disappointed Henry VIII described fourth wife Anne of Cleves as a “Flanders mare.” Author Antonia Fraser, in particular, writes sternly that Burnet had “no contemporary reference to back it up” in her book The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

             What seems undeniable is that the foundation Burnet created, Agnes Strickland built on. Indeed, she raised a whole Gothic mansion in her own description of that night in Syon: “The King, being carried to Windsor to be buried, stood all night among the broken walls of Syon, and there the leaden coffin being cleft by the shaking of the carriage, the pavement of the church was wetted with Henry’s blood. In the morning came plumbers to solder the coffin, under whose feet—‘I tremble while I write it,’ says the author—‘was suddenly seen a dog creeping, and licking up the king’s blood. If you ask me how I know this, I answer, William Greville, who could scarcely drive away the dog, told me and so did the plumber also.’

             “It appears certain that the sleepy mourners and choristers had retired to rest, after the midnight dirges were sung, leaving the dead king to defend himself, as best as he might, from the assaults of his ghostly enemies, and some people might think they made their approaches in a currish form. It is scarcely, however, to be wondered that a circumstance so frightful should have excited feelings of superstitious horror, especially at such a time and place; for this desecrated convent had been the prison of his unhappy queen, Katherine Howard, whose tragic fate was fresh in the minds of men; and by a singular coincidence it happened that Henry’s corpse rested there the very day after the fifth anniversary of her execution.”

              Putting aside Strickland’s Bram Stoker-esque prose, there’s the question of whether such a ghastly thing could even occur. Sixteen-century embalmment did not call for completely draining a corpse of blood, it is true. And medical experts say it is possible that fluids circulate 17 days after death.

              But Strickland’s fervent connections to not only Friar Peto’s sermon but also Syon’s monastery past—echoing the “Monks, monks, monks” poetic justice—and the (near) anniversary of Katherine Howard’s death make it seem likely that this was a case of too good a story to resist.

               No one disturbed the coffin of the indomitable King Henry VIII—not even ghosts in “currish form.”

Nancy Bilyeau is the author of a trilogy of Tudor-era historical thriller.  THE CROWN, published in nine countries, was shortlisted for the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award. The protagonist is a Dominican novice taking on the most important men of the era.  THE CHALICE was published in 2013 and won the RT award for Best Historical Mystery. The third and final book in the series, THE TAPESTRY, was a finalist for the Daphne du Maurier award for Best Historical Suspense. For more information, go to www.nancybilyeau.com