Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [62]
Having sworn oaths to the king, his councillors cried together, “God save the noble King Edward!” Edward thanked them heartily and doffed his cap.4 He would remain in the Tower for the next three weeks until after his father’s funeral had taken place and preparations had been made for his own coronation. From there he wrote letters of condolence to his stepmother Katherine Parr and this to his sister Mary, then thirty-one, who remained in the dowager queen’s household:
Natural affection, not wisdom, instigates us to lament our dearest father’s death. For affection thinks she has utterly lost one who is dead; but wisdom believes one who lives with God is in happiness everlasting. Wheretofore, God having given us such we ought not to mourn our father’s death, since it is his will, who works all things for good … so far as lies in me, I will be to you a dearest brother, and overflow with all kindness.5
On Wednesday, February 2, between eight and nine at night, Henry’s body was moved from the Privy Chamber to the Chapel Royal at Whitehall. Ten days later it was taken to Windsor in a gilded chariot pulled by seven horses, all bedecked in black velvet. The roads had been cleared and widened to allow the easier passage of the procession, which stretched over four miles. In front were 250 poor men, dressed in mourning gowns and carrying torches, followed by gentlemen bearing the king’s standards and heralds with the king’s helmet, targe (sword) shield, and coat of arms. Upon the coffin, draped in cloth of gold and blue velvet, was a life-size, lifelike effigy of King Henry, a scepter of gold in his right hand, in his left the ball of the world with a cross. On his head rested the imperial crown, and around his neck was the collar of the Garter.6 According to one observer, it “looked exactly like that of the King himself … just as if he were alive.”7 Behind the coffin rode the king’s chief mourner, the marquess of Dorset, constable of England, and the king’s guard, all in black, their halberds pointing to the ground.
The procession reached Syon, the former Bridgettine house on the banks of the Thames in Middlesex, at two in the afternoon. There, after Masses were said, the corpse remained overnight. One account describes how, at Syon, “the leaden coffin being cleft by the shaking of the carriage, the pavement of the church was wetted with his [Henry’s] blood.” When plumbers later came to solder the coffin, they saw a “dog creeping, and licking up the King’s blood.”8
At seven the following morning, the procession resumed its slow progress to Windsor. Funeral knells were rung, and townspeople lined the route through each town it passed. Finally the gilded chariot arrived at the chapel of the Order of the Garter, where the coffin was placed in a hearse thirty-five feet tall and covered with tapers and candles. The next morning, February 15, Henry’s burial took place. Stephen Gardiner preached the funeral sermon, and sixteen yeomen of the Guard lowered the coffin into the vault next to that of Jane Seymour, just as Henry’s will had instructed.9
As Edward Hall wrote in his chronicle, “The late King was buried at Windsor with much solemnity, and the officers broke their staves, hurling them into the grave. But they were restored to them again when they came to the Tower.”10 With Henry laid to rest, Edward’s reign could be formally inaugurated.
AT ONE IN THE afternoon of Saturday, February 19, Edward left the Tower, dressed in white velvet and cloth of silver embroidered with precious stones, to ride on horseback through the city to Westminster.11 Before him went an ordered procession: his