House Of Treason: The Rise And Fall Of A Tudor Dynasty Read Online Free PDF Page B

barque called Genett 4I with all apparel and artillery and £50 to begin his stock with.
    The other bastard I bequeath to my special trusty friend Charles Brandon [first Duke of Suffolk from 1514], praying him to be [a] good master to him. Because he has no ship, I bequeath to him one hundred marks [£66] to set him forward into the world. 42
    He left Henry’s wife, Queen Catherine of Aragon, his ‘St Thomas’s Cup’ - a superb silver-gilt and ivory ‘grace’ or loving cup - engraved with three inscriptions in Latin and English: ‘Drink thy wine with joy’; the more sententious: ‘Be sober’; and finally: ‘Fear God’. 43 The pious Catherine would have thoroughly approved of the legacy. He also instructed that his local abbey, the Trinitarian priory at Ingham, Norfolk, should ‘find a secular priest, to be called “Howard’s Priest” and a friar, likewise named’. Brandon was left ‘my rope of bowed nobles that I hang my great whistle by, containing three hundred angels’, 44 and the king, his admiral’s whistle. 45 Both were disappointed in their bequests, as these now lay in enemy hands.
    Howard’s brother Thomas was appointed Lord High Admiral in his place, providing him with his first opportunity to emerge from the shadow cast by the noisy bravura and derring-do of his younger sibling. Safe at home in Plymouth harbour and aboard Mary Rose , he sought to placate Henry’s anger at the loss of admiral and ship:
    As to the actual feats of all such noblemen and gentlemen as were pr[esent when] my brother, the admiral, was drowned (whom Jesu pardon), I assure your [highness so] far . . . as I can . . . anyway understand, they handled themselves as . . . men did to obtain their master’s pleasure.
    It was the most dangerous enterprise [I have] ever heard of and the most manly handled. 46
    He would punish two men who ‘did their part very ill the day my brother was lost . . . Cooke, the queen’s servant in a row[ing] boat, and Freeman, my brother’s servant’.
    But Thomas, Lord Howard, soon fell foul of Henry’s overarching need to make his mark on European politics through leading his army in a ‘fire and sword’ invasion of France. Although Howard needed to revictual his ships, his prime task was to engender a new spirit of élan among his dispirited, demoralised crews who were deserting their ships in shoals. He complained to Wolsey that his sailors would ‘rather end up in purgatory than return to battle’. 47
    Despite these morale problems, the new admiral was ordered to take his ships from Plymouth to Southampton to escort a force led by Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle, 48 in a feint attack on Brest. The king and his main army, meanwhile, crossed the Channel further east to attack Louis XII of France. Howard’s pleas that the wind was against him did not wash with an impatient Henry. Bishop Fox, in Southampton, told Wolsey on 19 May:
    The lord admiral . . . with their whole army and their victuallers lie so far within the haven of Plymouth that they cannot come out of it without a north-west wind and the wind has been south-west continually three days past. 49
    All too conscious that he was making a hash of his first command, Howard galloped to London to explain his problems in person to his master. But both Henry and Wolsey refused to see him. How he must have suffered and squirmed in the face of these snubs! However, he cadged and wheedled fresh supplies and paid, out of his own purse, to transport the victuals down to Southampton. Eventually, he managed to escort the diversionary force across to Brittany and hastened northwards to the main theatre of war. He was soon sent home. 50
    Henry, fearful that James IV of Scotland would invade while he and his army were campaigning in France, appointed Surrey to guard England’s northern marches. The ageing Earl of Surrey was the obvious choice for the job, given his years of experience in the region, but the old campaigner was less than happy