Thomas Penn - Winter King - Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England

Wilshere’s role as intelligencer merged seamlessly with the world of high finance. He was to be kept fully briefed on the vast bribes that Henry was paying to Maximilian, transferred to the emperor through the London branches of international merchant banks, in order that he could co-ordinate activities on the ground. As soon as Wilshere heard the relevant instalments had been processed, he was to ensure that Maximilian – who had, finally, added his signature to the new extradition treaty – stuck to his side of the bargain. Wilshere’s men were to monitor the proclamation banishing Suffolk and his men from imperial territories, checking that it was correctly announced and published in all towns and cities ‘where the king’s said rebels might be’, in exactly the wording specified ‘in French and Latin by the king’s council’, together with a comprehensive list of the ‘names and surnames of the king’s rebels that they may be banished’. For good measure, Wilshere was to send a German translation of the proclamation to the emperor. 39Henry was determined to get full value for his £10,000. All this activity, however, only served to confirm what Henry and Maximilian both knew: that with Arthur’s death, Suffolk’s value – and the emperor’s bargaining power – had increased exponentially.

Suffolk knew it too. In a separate note to Killingworth, he instructed the steward to impress upon the emperor the enormity of the new situation. The only figure that now remained between Suffolk and his claim was King Henry’s second son – and if he should ‘happen to die’, there would be ‘no doubt’ whatsoever of Suffolk’s title.

Nor could there be any doubting the significance of Suffolk’s words – or what he meant when he talked of his ‘title’. In the event of Prince Henry’s death, Suffolk, as a Plantagenet, was well placed to inherit the English throne. Even alive, the eleven-year-old prince barely seemed an obstacle. Prince Henry, he sneered, ‘will pose no kind of a threat’. 40

Back in Ludlow, Catherine had not accompanied the funeral cortège to Worcester. Grieving, she was herself dangerously ill. She was carried slowly back to London, still weak, in a litter of black velvet sent by a solicitous Queen Elizabeth. By early May, she was convalescing at Lady Margaret Beaufort’s Thamesside palace of Croydon, west of Richmond, where she received a stream of messengers from Henry and Elizabeth, and wrote to her parents, reassuring them that she was herself well out of danger, and removed from the ‘unhealthy situation’ at Ludlow.

Apart from a natural concern for the young widow, there was another reason for the solicitous attention shown her: the possibility that she might be carrying her dead husband’s child. If she were, and if she had a boy, that child would be heir to the English throne; Catherine, as his mother, would continue to occupy the honoured place within the new dynasty that her wedding reception had signified. Catherine, however, was not pregnant – and therefore, she was no longer part of her dead husband’s family. Prince Henry was heir to the throne. 41

Ferdinand and Isabella, meanwhile, sent a stream of urgent dispatches to Rodrigo de Puebla, varying wildly in tone from the assertive to the querulous. They ‘confidently’ expected that Henry would ‘fulfil his obligations’ to their daughter, which included giving Catherine her dower lands – the estates due to her as a widow – so that she could pay her household expenses. They were sure that the king of England would not break his word ‘at any time, and much less at present whilst the Princess is overwhelmed with grief’. This rather overemphatic confidence in Henry’s probity betrayed that they fully expected him not to keep his promise.

In fact, they had been alarmed to hear that people in England were already advising Catherine to borrow money against the gold, jewels and silver that she had brought with her as part of her marriage portion, because Henry was hardly going to provide for her. De Puebla was to instruct Juan de Cuero, Catherine’s wardrober, to keep the treasure secure, in case she started selling or pawning it. And Catherine herself, Ferdinand and Isabella commanded, should be sent straight home to Spain on the next available ship: ‘We cannot endure that a daughter whom we love should be so far from us when she is in affliction.’ 42

But as Ferdinand and Isabella wept crocodile tears, they were also playing a game of double bluff. Catherine remained a highly valuable commodity in the world of international politics, and now she was evidently not pregnant, she was free to marry again. Far from wanting their daughter shipped back, her parents were very keen indeed that she should wed the ‘Prince of Wales that now is’ – ‘without delay’. 43

The Spanish monarchs, in fact, were more desperate than ever to have England onside. Back in 1499 the new French king, Louis XII, had picked up where his predecessor had left off. Re-invading and re-occupying swathes of northern Italy, his armies were once again on the warpath against Spanish-ruled Naples. Fearing complete French domination of the peninsula, Ferdinand and Isabella were now trying to hustle Henry into a new marriage alliance that would, again, force him to commit to war against France – or, at the very least, put quantities of his fabled wealth towards it. If, as they wrote to de Puebla that August, the new betrothal and its accompanying treaty could be arranged, ‘all our anxiety would cease, and we shall be able to seek the aid of England against France’. 44

Eager to show they had a card to play, Ferdinand and Isabella offered to exert pressure on Maximilian to give up the earl of Suffolk. The Spanish monarchs had a strong presence at the court of the emperor’s son, Archduke Philip of Burgundy, who had married their daughter, Catherine’s sister Juana of Castile. The coterie of Castilian diplomats at the Burgundian court, they reasoned, might be able to pull some strings. It was a lame offer, and Henry knew it. 45

Henry temporized. Here, at least, he was in a strong position to negotiate – and he was unwilling to rush into anything. By the autumn, the tone of Ferdinand and Isabella’s letters were subdued, far from the bullishness of earlier in the year. They told their ambassadors not to mention anything to Henry about France, in case it put him off the idea of a betrothal, adding plaintively that, were the betrothal to take place it ‘might chance’ that Henry’s friendship ‘might prove an advantage to us’. Once the paperwork was in place, they reasoned, they could continue lobbying Henry about military intervention. 46

As 1502 wore on, changes were afoot at Eltham, as Prince Henry’s little household began to transform itself into an establishment fit for an heir. And Queen Elizabeth’s consoling words to Henry had been proved right. She was pregnant again.

Now Must You Supply the Mother’s Part Also

On Christmas Day 1502, Henry made his customary procession, crowned and in a gown of purple velvet lined with sable, through Richmond’s public chambers and galleries to the Chapel Royal, surrounded by a thicket of lords temporal and spiritual dressed in their robes of estate, his way lined with halberd-bearing guards pushing back anybody ‘so hardy’ as to approach. There, before the high altar, as the choir’s voices soared upwards to the blue, star-flecked ceiling, Henry knelt and made his offering of a ‘noble in gold’, 6s 8d. After him, his eleven-year-old son stepped forward to make his offering of five shillings, not as the duke of York, but, for the first time, as ‘my lord prince’. At the centre of things, too, was the reassuring sight of Elizabeth. Cheeks flushed, heavily pregnant, she heard the children of the Chapel Royal sing William Cornish’s new setting of a carol, and on Boxing Day, she settled down to endless games of cards, gambling away a hundred shillings. 1