Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [61]
“Yet is the mercy of Christ able,” Henry asked, “to pardon me all my sins, though they were greater than they be?” He ordered that Archbishop Cranmer be sent for to hear his confession, first declaring that he would “sleep a little.” He woke an hour later, “feeling feebleness to increase upon him.” By the time the archbishop arrived, Henry was unable to speak. So when Cranmer asked him his faith and assured him of salvation, he urged him to “give some token with his eyes or with his hand, that he trusted in the Lord.” Henry squeezed his hand and wrung it “as hard as he could.”13
By two in the morning of January 28, 1547, Henry was dead. He was fifty-six. Apothecaries, surgeons, and wax chandlers were immediately summoned to “do their duties in spurging, cleansing, bowelling, searing, embalming, furnishing and dressing with spices the said corpse.” The body was wrapped in fine linen and velvet and tied with silk cords before the plumber and carpenter cased the corpse in lead. The coffin was then laid out in the middle of the Privy Chamber at Whitehall, watched over by Henry’s chaplains and gentlemen.14
For three days the king’s death was not made public and was kept secret from all except Henry’s councillors. Life at court continued without interruption. Henry’s meals were brought into the great hall as usual to the sound of trumpets; Parliament remained in session, and those who requested audiences with the king were told that he was indisposed. As van der Delft wrote to the emperor, “I learn from a very confidential source that the King, whom may God receive His Grace, had departed this life, although not the slightest signs of such a thing were to be seen at court.”15 The imperial ambassador subsequently wrote that Mary had been very displeased with Edward Seymour because “he did not visit her or send to her for several days after her father’s death.”16 Only when Edward’s succession was secure would Mary be told of Henry’s passing.
Finally, on the morning of January 31, the tearful Lord Chancellor Wriothesley announced Henry’s death to the dumbstruck Parliament, and a section of his will, dealing with the succession of the crown, was read out.17 Meanwhile, on the twenty-eighth, the day of the king’s death, Edward Seymour, the new king’s uncle, and Sir Anthony Browne, master of the king’s horse, had ridden with a force of 300 mounted troops from London to Hertford Castle to inform Edward of his father’s death and pay homage to him as the new king.18
PART TWO
A King’s Sister
CHAPTER 26
THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING
Edward VI, by the grace of God King of England, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith and of the Church of England and also of Ireland in earth the supreme head, to all our most loving, faithful, and obedient subjects, and to every of them, greeting.
Where it hath pleased Almighty God, on Friday last past in the morning to call unto his infinite mercy the most excellent high and mighty prince, King Henry VIII of most noble and famous memory, our most dear and entirely beloved father, whose soul God pardon; forasmuch as we, being his only son and undoubted heir, be now invested and established in the crown imperial of this realm.1
—PROCLAMATION OF KING EDWARD VI, WESTMINSTER, JANUARY 31, 1547
AT THREE IN THE AFTERNOON OF MONDAY, JANUARY 31, 1547, nine-year-old King Edward VI entered the City of London to take possession of his kingdom. Guns fired from ships on the Thames as the nobility of the realm accompanied the boy king to his lodgings.2
The following day the Privy Council gathered in the Presence Chamber, where Edward sat in a chair of estate, and Henry’s will was read out. The executors announced that it had been “agreed with one assent and consent” that Edward Seymour, the king