Inside the Tudor Court by Lauren Mackay

Author:Lauren Mackay [Mackay, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781445637242
Google: lwmoAwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
Published: 2014-04-29T16:00:00+00:00

Around the Throne the Thunder Rolls

Venere idus, sed nondum prœterire, the days have commenced, but have not yet ended.

Chapuys, 1536

1536 presented several unforeseen crises. The court had engaged in the usual Christmas festivities, but there was an air of uncertainty to proceedings. Charles’s victory in Tunis was compounded with the French embassy’s quarrel with Henry and Cromwell.

For Katherine, however, the days were drawing to a close. She had again fallen ill in December, and her steward and physician both wrote to Chapuys asking that he visit, as she was getting worse by the hour. The ambassador asked Cromwell for permission to visit her, but he was delayed a day as Henry wanted to see him before his departure. The informal audience only irritated him further. Chapuys was greeted with a bear hug from the delighted king, who had heard Katherine was on her deathbed and could hardly contain his excitement.1 With Katherine out of the way, Henry was confident that Anglo–Imperial relations would improve. Chapuys didn’t necessarily agree.

Finally allowed to see Katherine, Chapuys braved the bitter English weather at the beginning of January to visit her at Kimbolton, accompanied by Stephen Vaughan, a friend and confidant of Cromwell’s and a talented diplomat. Chapuys was shocked by the change in Katherine. He saw a woman who had given up the fight, who had finally lost faith in all those around her, even her nephew and the Pope, to whom she had clung. Their first meeting was conducted in Spanish, and Katherine thanked him for his years of loyal service, while he tried to rally her spirits.2

Over the next three days, Chapuys continued trying to rekindle the fire within her, but in the end he could only sit with her in the afternoons, his hope rising as she regained some of her strength. It is a touching scene between old friends, rather than that of a monarch and her ambassador. The pair had some of the most frank conversations of their entire relationship. It was to Chapuys alone that Katherine confided her fears: was she to blame for the deaths of More and Fisher because they had followed her? Was she also to blame for the religious turmoil that engulfed her people? Chapuys could only assure her of her innocence, but her doubts were valid.

The English Reformation was as much on Katherine’s shoulders as Henry’s. Her devotion to Henry, and determination not to step aside quietly because Henry was infatuated with someone else, may appear to many as misguided, but to Katherine it was quite simple. From childhood her destiny had been to be Queen of England; no infatuation could take that away from her.3

After three days Chapuys felt he could leave her, believing her to be on the mend. He bid farewell to Katherine on the morning of the 5th. Two days later, while he was en route to London, Katherine at last gave up, dying far away from her daughter, her husband and the people whom she had considered it her duty to serve.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.