The Taming of the Queen

GREENWICH PALACE, WINTER 1546

I think of Queen Katherine, who celebrated Christmas at Greenwich over a divided court while the king was in London courting Anne Boleyn, ordered to behave as if nothing was wrong. This time it is not lovemaking that keeps the king in the city but killing. They tell me that the court at Whitehall is closed to everyone but the Privy Council, and that the king and his advisors are going over and over the evidence that has been gathered against the Howards, father and son.

They tell me that the king has become devoted to scholarship. He studies Henry Howard’s careless letters as if they were a text, annotating every guilty admission, questioning every word of innocence. The king has become thorough, pedantic. Spite gives him energy and he follows the interrogations as if he is determined that the young man, the beautiful foolish young man, shall die because of his own light words, spoken without thought.

One night in early January, Henry Howard climbs out of the window of his prison cell, trying to escape the king’s mercy. They seize him just as he is about to slide down the chute for waste water and fall into the icy river. This is typical Henry Howard: daring as a boy. The act should remind everyone that he is an impulsive young man, a bit of a fool, but a brave reckless innocent; but instead of laughing at him and releasing him, they send for irons and keep him in shackles.

Worse, far worse, is his father’s confession. In a desperate gamble to save his wrinkled old skin the old duke writes to the Privy Council that he is guilty of everything that they have put to him. He confesses to bearing arms that were his by right and have been used by the House of Howard for generations. Ludicrously, he confesses to sending secret messages to the pope. He swears that he has done everything they allege, he says anything as long as he can be spared. He pleads guilty as no-one has ever been guilty before and offers all his fortune and his lands as payment for his guilt if they will leave him with his life.

As if his son is nothing but an object for barter, he throws Henry Howard into the bargain along with honour and name and wealth. He casts off his son and heir to hell, he all but sends his own hurdle to drag the young man to the scaffold. He says on oath that his son and heir, the twenty-nine-year-old Henry, is a traitor to the king and to his name and to his house. The old duke sends his boy to death as the agreed price of his own freedom. His accusation is the death sentence for his son, and that night the king signs the warrant to send Henry Howard to trial. The king says that it is all the fault of Thomas Howard, and no-one can complain of him.

We all know what the outcome of the trial must be. His own father has confessed for him and named him as guilty; surely Henry Howard can say nothing in his own defence?

But he has much to say. He stands in the dock and defends himself. He argues all day until they call for candles in the evening, and the handsome young earl shines in their golden light before the jury of his neighbours and friends. Perhaps, even then, they might have refused to convict him, he was so persuasive and funny and insistent. But William Paget came from the court with a secret message from the king, went into the jury room as they considered their verdict, and when they came out, they said that they had all agreed without one dissenting voice. For who was going to argue? They said ‘guilty’.

In the middle of the cold bright month of January a messenger comes from the Privy Council to inform me that Henry Howard has been beheaded on Tower Hill. His father remains in prison awaiting his own sentence. We hear the news in silence. The king’s determination that there should be no more burnings of reformers does not extend mercy to other suspects. Nobody thinks that Henry Howard was more than a foolish braggart, a poet who was too prodigal with his words; but he died for that.

Princess Elizabeth comes to me and puts a cold hand in mine. ‘I hear terrible things of my Cousin Howard,’ she says, her dark eyes questioning me. ‘He was planning to overthrow you, and put another woman in your place. They tell me that he was going to put his sister on the throne.’

‘It was wrong of him to hope for that,’ I reply. ‘Your father and I were married in the sight of God. It would be wrong for anyone to drive us apart.’

She hesitates – she has heard enough about her own mother to know that Anne Boleyn did exactly this to Henry’s first queen, and her kinsmen were planning to do it again to his sixth. ‘Do you think it was right that he should die?’ she asks me.

Not even for Elizabeth, with Jane Grey standing so solemn and silent, listening behind her, am I going to risk expressing an opinion that is different from the king’s. I have kissed the rod. I have lost my voice. I am an obedient wife.

‘Whatever your father the king thinks best, is the right thing to do,’ I say.

She looks at me, this bright, thoughtful girl. ‘If you are a wife, can you not think for yourself?’

‘You can think for yourself,’ I say carefully. ‘But you need not speak. If you are wise you will agree with your husband. Your husband has power over you. You have to find ways to think your own thoughts and live your own life without always telling of it.’

‘Then I had better not marry,’ she says without a glimmer of a smile. ‘If to be a wife is to give up your own opinion, I had better never marry.’

I pat her cheek and I try to laugh at this thirteen-year-old girl forswearing matrimony. ‘Perhaps you are right in this world,’ I say. ‘But this world is changing. Perhaps by the time you are old enough to marry the world will hear a woman’s voice. Perhaps she will not have to swear to obey in her wedding vows. Perhaps one day a woman will be allowed to both love and think.’