The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [169]
The monasteries. There were more than eight hundred of them scattered over the realm, and Cromwell’s report, Valor Ecclesiasticus, divided them into “lesser” houses and “greater.” Some three hundred of them were “lesser” and had an income below an arbitrarily selected point. These houses had only a few members and were likely to be lax and poorly run. Certainly it was inefficient of the orders to have a great number of tiny monasteries in operation. Cromwell had recommended dissolving these establishments, letting the truly committed monks transfer to other, more disciplined houses of their orders, and releasing the rest from their vows. The property, of course, would revert to the Crown, as it was treason to send it to Rome. He reckoned that millions of pounds would accrue to me. I left the word “monasteries” un-inked. More to discuss with Cromwell.
Now for a personal inventory. I wrote “poison.” I feared that Anne’s poison was slow-acting and irreversible. For my leg had not healed, as I had assumed it would do upon her demise. And Fitzroy—his cough had not lessened, and his colour paled day by day. I prayed that I could outlast the life of the poison, and ultimately defeat it, like a city under siege. Sooner or later its power must wane and abate. But it looked to be a long bodily siege. I was determined to withstand it. Would Mary? All the more reason for us to make peace. I was convinced that isolation increased the power of the poison. Under “poison” I included my impotence, which obviously had been due entirely to Anne’s malevolence, for it had disappeared with her.
General health. Since my fall in the lists, and the permanent state of ulceration on my thigh, I had had to curtail my athletic activities. The lack of exercise had caused me to gain weight for the first time in my life. My very flesh seemed to expand and change from tautness to looseness. I tried every means of moderate exercise to reverse the process and bring it under control: walks with Jane, long, slow cantering rides, archery, bowling. But the tide of creeping slackness and fat was relentless. It seemed I needed the violent excesses of long hunts with hounds and horses, wherein the horses would tire before ever I did; the sweating tennis matches wherein I would bet upon myself; the foot combat at the barriers in tournaments when I must leap and swing swords while encased in one hundred pounds of tortoiselike armour; even the rigorous dances in court celebrations. Deprived of these tests, my flesh sighed, expanded, and began to sag.
I left “general health” with no black line across it.
Cromwell had shown mounds, the actual day-to-day work was done by kennel-masters and dog-breeders, a staff of ten.
This fine day in late July the dogs were being exercised in the open fields not far from Blackheath. Like men, they grew restless and despondent if they were kept indoors and inactive too long; they were meant to run, especially the greyhounds and Scottish deerhounds.
The latter were an interesting breed. I had only lately been successful in obtaining puppies of this noted dog of the open northern country, which hunted by sight and not by smell. Of course, a man had to have a fleet horse and be an expert rider to keep up; in our southern areas, “chases” had been cut through forested areas in order to hunt in this manner.
“They say these dogs have been in Scotland since ancient days,” I explained to Cromwell. “But clansmen also claim that they were bred originally from Irish ‘swifthounds’—when Ireland and Scotland were exchanging families and settlers back and forth. ’Tis all the same, the wild North. Savages.” I admired a pack of deerhounds bounding off