Inside the Tudor Court: Henry VIII and His Six Wives Through the Writings of the Spanish Ambassador Eustace Chapuys by Mackay Lauren

Author:Mackay, Lauren [Mackay, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
Published: 2014-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

The ambassador’s response was carefully engineered, as he knew it would get back to Henry before his audience. He attempted to soothe the older man, assuring him that his words would be moderate, adding that Norfolk ‘ought also to consider that friendship between princes, unless well founded and rooted, does not generally last long’.118

When he and Henry met, the ambassador got straight to the point. Katherine’s treatment was unacceptable and Mary was being deprived of her status in a hostile household run by Anne Boleyn’s aunt, Anne Shelton.

Henry remained cordial, saying that the ambassador must know surely that Henry was legitimately married to Anne, his former marriage having been judicially declared null. Therefore Katherine could not be queen, nor could Mary be his legitimate daughter. Henry seems to have assumed this would, as the ambassador put it, ‘shut my mouth’.119

However, the ambassador replied, ‘With regard to the sentence pronounced by the archbishop of Canterbury on the divorce suit, he ought to make as little of it as of that which King Richard caused to be pronounced by the bishop of Bath against the sons of King Edward, declaring them bastards.’120

No canon law or rule or even historical analogy Chapuys threw at him would sway Henry, nor could Chapuys truly have expected it to, but he persisted, declaring his incredulity at Henry’s comments. It no doubt grated on his legal mind when Henry magnanimously offered to send the ambassador several books which would explain why Mary could not inherit.121

The ambassador wisely read the changing mood of his audience, and simply asked that Mary receive better treatment and be allowed to see her mother. He added yet another historical analogy. Taking into account the rumours swirling around Katherine’s health, he was sure that Henry would not want any harm to come to Mary; even if she were to die of natural causes, Henry would be hard-pressed to prove there had been no outside involvement.

I added that he ought to take example of Henry II of England, one of the greatest kings in this country, who had to perform a very great and grievous penance in public, besides promising to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, all owing to his want of due veneration towards St. Thomas of Canterbury [Thomas Beckett], and his having been the cause of his death.122

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