With my mother I felt safe and happy always. She was dignified and aloof, as became a queen, but always warm and loving toward me and while I was proud to have such a glittering, all-powerful father, I was more deeply contented in the love of my mother.
That Christmas I spent with them was one I remember well. There were so many presents—not only from my parents but from the ladies and gentlemen of the Court. I remember the gold cup because it came from the Cardinal, and the silver flagons I think were from Princess Katharine Plantagenet, who was quite old, being the daughter of my great-grandfather, King Edward IV. In contrast to these valuable presents was one from a poor woman of Greenwich. She had made a little rosemary bush for me all hung with gilt spangles. It gave me as much pleasure as any.
My mother made it a Christmas to delight me and sent for a company of children to act plays for me. I remember some of those plays well. They were written by a man called John Heywood who was later to make quite a success with his dramatic works.
Those early years were spent mainly in the calm serenity of Ditton, with occasional visits to my parents. These memories are of laughter, music and dancing, of cooks and scullions rushing hither and thither with great dishes of beef, mutton, capons, boars' heads and suckling pigs, and in fact any meat it was possible to think of; of eating, drinking and general merrymaking, with my father always at the center. He could sing and hold the company spellbound—perhaps as much by his royalty as his talent; but there was no doubt that in the dance he could leap higher than any; he was indefatigable. No stranger, seeing him for the first time, could have doubted that he was the King and master of us all.
I was proud to be his daughter, and if I could have had one wish it would have been that my sex might be changed, so that I could be the boy who would have delighted him as Henry Fitzroy did and so rid my mother of that look of anxiety which I saw more and more frequently in her face.
But perhaps Henry Fitzroy felt something of the same, for he could not give my father complete pleasure because he was illegitimate. So he was flawed even as I was.
Shortly after my parents returned from France, something happened which caused anxiety to my godmother, the Countess of Salisbury. At my tender age I was aware only of a ripple of disturbance, and it was not until later that I understood what it meant.
It concerned Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, whose rank brought him close to the King, and on the surface they were good friends. Just before the party went to France, Buckingham had entertained the King lavishly at Penshurst. I heard people talking about the masques and banquets which had been of such splendor as to surpass even those given by the King himself.
Buckingham was not a wise man. He could never forget his royal descent and would remind people of it in any way which offered itself. He should have remembered that, although he was so proud of it, in the mind of a Tudor it could arouse certain suspicions. A clever man would have been more subtle, but from what I heard of Buckingham he had never been that. The King might enjoy the entertainments while they lasted, but afterward might he not ask himself: Why should this man seek to outdo royalty? The answer was, because he regarded himself as equally royal… no, not equally, more so.
It was true that the Tudors' grip on the crown was not as secure as they would wish. My grandfather, Henry VII, had seized it when he defeated Richard III at Bosworth Field in 1485; and many would have said that his claim to it was not a very strong one. Buckingham was one of those. Later I was to see my father's eyes narrow as he contemplated such men. At that time he was more tolerant than he became later. Then he delighted in the approval of his subjects, but later he only wished them to accept his rule. It was up to them to like it or risk his displeasure. My father was a man who changed a great deal over the years. At this time he was only just passing out of that phase in which he appeared to be full of bonhomie and good will toward men, which made him the most popular monarch men remembered. It was the growing discord in his marriage which was changing him; he was turning from a satisfied man to a disgruntled one, and that affected his nature and consequently his attitude toward his subjects.
Buckingham had powerful connections in the present as well as the past. He was married to a daughter of the Percys, the great lords of the North. His son—his only one—had married the Countess of Salisbury's daughter, so that made a family connection between him and my godmother. Small wonder that she was worried. He had three daughters, one of whom had married into the Norfolk family, one to the Earl of Westmorland and the third to Lord Abergavenny. So it was clear that Buckingham was well connected.
Someone said of him, “My lord Buckingham is a nobleman who would be a royal ruler.”
Knowing my father, now I can guess that such a remark would set up warning signals in his mind. His father had been plagued by pretenders to the throne—Perkin Warbeck, Lambert Simnel, to name the two most important. A king who sits warily on the throne has to be careful.
Buckingham was a stupid man. It was a great mistake to antagonize Wolsey. Obsessed by his nobility, I suppose it was natural that he should resent a man of lowly birth who had climbed so high that the King relied on his judgment and had more affection for him than he had for the greatest nobleman in the land.
He should have had more sense than to pit his wits against Wolsey. Precarious as his position was with the King, he could not afford to challenge the cleverest man in the kingdom.
For some time my father must have been toying with the idea of ridding himself of the arrogant Buckingham who, in time, would doubtless be laying claim to the throne.
Matters came to a head over a simple incident, as such matters do.
It was the custom for one of the highest-ranking nobles to hold the basin while the King washed his hands. This was Buckingham's duty. Wolsey was standing beside the King, chatting amiably to him as they did together, for if my father liked someone he never hesitated to show it and would allow that person all sorts of privileges; and when the King had finished washing his hands, Wolsey attempted to use the basin too.
Buckingham was incensed that he should be holding the basin for a lowborn son of a butcher, as he called him. Wolsey's father had owned land in Ipswich and may have bred sheep and cattle; if so, he doubtless sold the carcasses. In any case the epithet “Butcher's Cur” was often bestowed on him by his many enemies and frequently used by those jealous of his power. The Duke tilted the basin and poured the water onto Wolsey's shoes.
The King was amused and nothing was made of the incident at the time, but naturally it was not brushed aside. Wolsey would not forget; Buckingham had to be taught a lesson; and as the King was already uneasy about Buckingham's pretensions to royalty, it was not difficult to bring a charge against him.
Men in high positions can be sure of one thing: they have many enemies. It was not long before a case was brought against Buckingham and he was committed to the Tower on a charge of treason.
I believe it was easy to prove a case against him. He was supposed to have listened to prophesies of the King's death and his own succession to the crown and of even expressing an intention to kill my father, but that was mainly hearsay. The King wanted to be rid of him. He would always be a menace. He must have remembered the uneasiness of his own father, and Buckingham was condemned as a traitor. He was beheaded on Tower Hill, and his body was buried in the church of Austin Friars.
I should not have known anything of this at the time, as I was only five years old, but I was aware of the effect it had on the Countess, for the Duke's son was her son-in-law and it was a family tragedy. The Countess was a clever woman. She knew that the Duke had not lost his head because of treasonable acts. He had died because of his closeness to the throne. And she herself? She was even closer. Her father had been the brother of Edward IV. My father was the grandson of that Edward through his mother, so they were closely related; but the Countess through the male line.