The Making of Henry VIII by Marie Louise Bruce

Author:Marie Louise Bruce [Bruce, Marie Louise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2021-05-16T04:00:00+00:00

Under Hone’s regime Henry rarely emerged from the schoolroom; his programme of study seems to have been interrupted only by sleeping, eating, religious worship and sports. There is no record of his ever having attended a council meeting, although occasionally he would act as witness to an official document. He set his signature on a charter to the earl of Ormond granting him the right to hold a weekly market and on a grant of certain revenues to the dean and canons of St Stephen’s Chapel in Westminster Palace. His name appeared frequently on commissions for the peace, as Arthur’s had from infancy, and also once on a commission of oyer and terminer at Westminster on 16 January 1503. But this was a formality only. It was not necessary for the prince of Wales in person to exercise judicial authority either at the sessions of the peace or at the court in Westminster to enquire into and punish more serious crimes.

But that did not mean that Henry VII was not preparing his son for government. The king subscribed to the sixteenth-century humanist belief that it was more important for a future ruler to learn the theory of government than to practise it; and that could be best learnt from books. So Prince Henry continued to study Latin grammar and literature, to pay lip service to the humanist ideals of peace, the importance of avoiding war, and the value of scholars.

To his knowledge of Latin, French and music, he was soon adding Italian, Spanish, medicine and theology, as well as three new subjects from the quadrivium, astronomy, geometry and arithmetic. Astronomy and mathematics were particularly fascinating subjects now that they were helping men to discover new lands across the seas — the West Indies in 1492, Newfoundland in 1497, Venezuela in 1499 — the first indications of a whole continent whose existence most of medieval Europe had not even suspected before.

As well as receiving instructions from Hone, Henry still enjoyed the company of Lord Mountjoy. This accomplished nobleman had become governor of Hammes in the pale of Calais in 1503, but he still spent much time in England, reading history with the prince and improving the boy’s Latin composition by showing him Erasmus’s letters, sent in hopeful profusion by the perpetually needy scholar to his patron. There is no doubt that Henry was given for special study Erasmus’s essay in favour of marriage, originally written for Mountjoy when that nobleman had been a student in Paris.

In view of Henry’s future six marriages this essay and the circumstances surrounding it are worth considering. Years later Erasmus himself would tell the story: after presenting the essay to Mountjoy, Erasmus had asked how he liked it. ‘I like it so much that I have made up my mind to marry,’ the young nobleman replied with enthusiasm, and when Erasmus pointed out that there was another side to the question, added with a smile, ‘I pray you, keep that to yourself. I am quite content with the first side.

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