Was Bishop Stephen Gardiner a Secret Tudor?

By Nancy Bilyeau

Finding illegitimate children in the Tudor royal family is a favorite pastime for some. Chief among the theoretical parents of these children would be Henry VIII, of course. (You'd be amazed to learn how many debates rage over whether Mary Boleyn's two Carey children were fathered by Henry VIII shortly before he fell in love with Anne Boleyn...Or maybe you wouldn't!) Elizabeth I is also accused of giving birth to secret babies, with theories targeting Thomas Seymour and Robert Dudley that would make TMZ reporters blush.  As for the Elizabeth-as-bad-girl premise of the movie Anonymous, we are not going there.

The one and only accepted illegitimate child of a royal Tudor is Henry Fitzroy, son of Henry VIII and Bessie Blount, a beautiful maid of honor to Catherine of Aragon. Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, may or may not have been considered as a possible heir to the throne by Henry VIII before the boy died in 1536.

But was there another Tudor male in the 16th century, born on the wrong side of the blanket as they used to say, who not only lived through four Tudor reigns but was a key player at court?

Stephen Gardiner

Stephen Gardiner, the bishop of Winchester, was the grandson of Jasper Tudor, Henry VIII's great-uncle, and a mistress named Mevanvy ferch Dafydd from Gwynnedd, according to a persistent theory. If the rumors are true, Gardiner's mother, Ellen, was first cousin to Henry VII. She married a cloth merchant named Gardiner and Stephen was one of their children. He attended Cambridge at a young age and studied the classics, even meeting Erasmus.

Before we go any further, it must be said that Gardiner brought out fear and dislike among many of those who knew him. Moreover, in Tudor television series, Stephen Gardiner has been portrayed with evident relish by a series of actors as a Grade A Jerk:

"The Six Wives of Henry VIII"




Wolf Hall

The Tudors

In these shows, he's the man you love to hate. When Edward Seymour punches Gardiner in the face during the last episode of The Tudors, you feel good. When the bruise-faced bishop goes running to Henry VIII to tattle and has the door closed in his face, you feel even better.

Screenwriter license aside, how did this loathsome churchman reach a position of power in the Tudor court? Was it that he was family? Not likely. Henry VIII didn't care for his extended family; he executed them steadily throughout his reign.

The reason for Gardiner's prominence in the 16th century was his brain. Even his enemies grudgingly conceded his intelligence. His nickname during his lifetime: "Wily Winchester." The lawyer, royal secretary, councilor, and bishop survived Henry VIII's reign. A religious conservative, he was thrown into the Tower of London during the reign of Protestant Edward VI and occupied a cell for years. One of Queen Mary's first acts was to spring him (along with his old friend the Duke of Norfolk). Gardiner crowned her and served as her lord chancellor. He distrusted Princess Elizabeth and pressured the Queen to imprison her half-sister after the Wyatt Rebellion. It's safe to say that if he had lived to see Elizabeth take the throne, he would have been ushered back into the Tower.

In her book Henry VIII: The King and His Court, Alison Weir describes Gardiner as "an able but rather arrogant and difficult man":

He was of swarthy complexion and had a hooked nose, deep-set eyes, a permanent frown, huge hands, and a "vengeable wit." He was ambitious, sure of himself, irascible, astute, and worldly. Henry came to rely on him, sending him on important diplomatic missions and telling everyone that, when Gardiner was away, he felt as if he had lost his right hand; yet he was also aware that the Secretary could be two-faced.

Henry VIII and Bishop Gardiner had a complex relationship. They feuded with each other (as much as one can feud with Henry VIII), and the king withheld promotions Gardiner obviously longed for. Then, suddenly, he would be back on top. When the king made him bishop of Winchester, he said, "I have often squared with you, Gardiner, but I love you never the worse." Gardiner was an enemy of Cromwell's who relished destroying him. He also despised Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, but was unable to turn the king against him. In 1540-1541 Gardiner was in Germany, representing England at a Diet convened to try a last time to heal the breach between Catholic and Protestant. (Both Calvin and Charles V also attended.) It was a delicate and important mission--which failed, through no fault of Gardiner's.

Henry VIII

But the bishop tried to have Henry's last wife, Catherine Parr, arrested for heresy, and when his plot failed, that contributed to his decline of influence. The king excluded him from his will. Henry's technique in controlling his councilors was to pit them against each other and stoke their fears. Gardiner's Protestant opponents claimed after Henry VIII's death that in excluding him from the will and list of councilors for Edward, the king explained that only he could control Stephen Gardiner.

The bishop's relationship with Henry's oldest daughter, Mary, also had its difficult moments. Early in his career, Gardiner devoted his legal brain to the king's case for annulment of the first marriage to Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. Therefore, even though he was one of Mary's adherents, she never could bring herself to trust him completely. Once she was queen, Gardiner wanted her to wed an Englishman, and opposed her marriage to Philip of Spain, repeatedly trying to talk her out of it.

Mary I

Stephen Gardiner died in 1555. One story has it that on his deathbed he said, "Like Peter, I have erred. Unlike Peter, I have not wept."

A strange thing to say. He was, it's safe to say, a strange man.

But was he related to the Tudors, whom he served and quarreled with for so many years? Returning to Jasper Tudor, the man was something of a warlord in a time when he didn't have a choice. During the Wars of the Roses, Jasper possessed two qualities in short supply: loyalty and patience. He supported his half-brother, Henry VI, without question, and did everything possible to help his nephew, the future Henry VII.

It was very important that Lancastrian nobles marry and beget heirs--the Yorkists were way ahead in that regard. Yet Jasper did not marry until after the Battle of Bosworth when he was 54 years old, and he wed the dowager duchess of Buckingham. They had no children. Since much of his earlier life was spent in battle, regrouping from battle, going into hiding, and living in exile in France or Brittany, perhaps he did not feel a wife was possible. A mistress made more sense.

In Gardiner's lifetime, no one said he was the grandson of Jasper Tudor, or at least it hasn't shown up in contemporary letters and papers. In the 18th century, this "fact" popped up in Cockayne's Peerage and a reverend's genealogical table. It gained strength over the years, though some always had their doubts.

Recent studies of Jasper Tudor do not dispute that he fathered one or two illegitimate daughters but suggest there could be some confusion over whether Ellen married the Gardiner who was the father of Stephen or another man with the same last name. It's unclear. The suggestion that he would need discreet royal blood to get into Cambridge and then rise in legal and ecclesiastical circles is not true. Gardiner's father was a prosperous cloth merchant, and the Tudor period was a time of men rising on their merits: the "new men," as they were called.

And so Stephen Gardiner may have achieved every illustrious promotion and survived every shouting match with a strong-willed king or queen not because he had Tudor blood but .... because he was Stephen Gardiner. A reality I suspect that Wily Winchester would have been prepared to accept.

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Nancy Bilyeau is the author of the Tudor trilogy The Crown, The Chalice, and The Tapestry, published in nine countries. The main character is a Dominican novice named Joanna Stafford; an antagonist running through the plot of each book is Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester.

The Crown was an Oprah selection in 2012. The Tapestry was a finalist for the Daphne du Maurier award for Best Historical Suspense this year.

Nancy is giving away seven signed hardcover copies of The Tapestry. To enter, please go HERE.

Holding Winchester Cathedral in My Hand

By Nancy Bilyeau

The story of Winchester Cathedral is hard to tell.

Too old, too enormous, too awe-inspiring—how is it possible to do it justice in a book, never mind a single blog post? And yet, I will try, because for me, the magnificence of the cathedral is never more inspiring than when I hold a dark, wooden, four-inch-long cross in my hand. This cross was part of the foundation of the building, below the ground.

Foundation Cross

Before I explain how a piece of Winchester Cathedral came into my possession, let me tell the stories of two men, separated by a millennium.

The first was Walkelin, a cousin and royal chaplain to William the Conqueror. On May 30th, 1070, Walkelin was consecrated as the first Norman bishop of Winchester. He turned his critical French eye on the cathedral.

Christianity was in its infancy in the Saxon royal family when in the 7th century Cenwalh, son of Cynegils, built the first church, small and cross-shaped, in Winchester. It became known as Old Minster, and it grew as the city grew.

According to Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester:  "To attempt to trace the story of the city as well as that of the cathedral would be to recapitulate the most important facts of the history of England during those centuries when Winchester was its capital town." The Wessex kings were buried there, as well as Emma of Normandy, the wife to two kings, who I am obsessed with after reading Patricia Bracewell's Shadow on the Crown.

But Walkelin wanted a do-over.

Statue of Walkelin

The Norman bishop became as obsessed with building his own cathedral as Prior Philip in Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth. Walkelin began in 1079 and kept pressing King William for permission to chop trees. He finally was granted as much wood for the building from the Forest of Hempage Wood as his carpenters could take in four days and nights.

"The Bishop collected an innumerable troop of carpenters and within the assigned time cut down the whole wood and carried it off to Winchester. [Soon afterwards the King], passing by Hempage, was struck with amazement and cried out, 'Am I bewitched or have I taken leave of my senses? Had I not once a most delectable wood upon this spot?' But when he understood what had happened, he was violently enraged. Then the Bishop put on a shabby vestment and made his way to the King's feet, humbling begging to resign the episcopate and merely requesting that he might retain his royal friendship and chaplaincy. The King was thus appeased, only observing, 'I was as much too liberal in my grant as you were too greedy in availing yourself of it."

The new cathedral was completed in 1093, and when Walkelin died in 1098, he was buried in the nave. The original tower collapsed in 1107. The chroniclers blamed it on the "sensual" William Rufus being buried there too. Repairs were made, and the replacement, in the Norman style, survived.

Winchester Cathedral is one of the largest in all of Europe

And now I jump forward, to the early 1900s.

Huge cracks appeared in Winchester Cathedral, and total collapse was feared. An architect wanted to build modern foundations of concrete--but how? Workmen dug, but water flooded the caverns below as fast as they dug.

An incredible solution was found: a deep sea diver. William Walker, an experienced man from Portsmouth, stepped forward. For six years, Walker worked underwater for SIX HOURS A DAY in a heavy diving suit. He labored in darkness, using his hands to clear the rotted wood. He completely excavated the trenches, filling them with bags of concrete.

William Walker

Walker''s diving suit

Walker never complained. He took off his helmet to eat lunch every day, followed by some pipe smoking. He often said the smoking  protected him from germs in the water.

When the work was finally done, Walker was the star of a special service of thanksgiving on Saint Swithun's Day in 1912. Shortly after, he was presented to King George and Queen Mary.

Tragically, William Walker died at the age of 49, during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918.

When, some seven years ago, I began researching my novel The Crown, with a main protagonist who is a Dominican novice, one of the people I turned to for religious discussion was a family friend, the Reverend William A. Collins, an Anglican priest now living in Toronto.

A few months ago, Bill gave me a present. It was a small wooden cross he'd inherited from an old friend. It seems that when a diver worked under Winchester Cathedral, he brought up a great deal of wood. Cathedral workers turned the wood into small crosses and sold them to supporters.

Inscription: "1202-1906: Winchester Cathedral Foundation Wood"

When I hold this cross in my hand, I feel the passionate striving of Walkelin and the selfless labor of William Walker.

I feel truly connected to Winchester Cathedral.



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Nancy Bilyeau is the author of a historical thriller series set in Tudor England, with a Dominican novice as the heroine. For more information, go to  www.nancybilyeau.com