The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [177]
But no one came. There was no puff of smoke, no sulphurous fumes. That angered me, too.
So you are as unreliable as the other one, I sneered to myself. The least you could do is have a reception for me. I gave grand ones whenever I signed a treaty with a foreign power. You are cheap as well as evil.
I would serve no master, then, but myself. I would hit out and destroy; I would indulge every whim and appetite that raised itself. I wanted to destroy, to pull down all the ugly rottenness around me. If there was no good left in the world, there was a surfeit of bad, and I would spend myself on it. Not in the name of God—that betrayer, that assassin—but in my own name: King Henry VIII.
LXXXI
I ordered an end to the mourning which I had imposed on the court even through Christmas. (Would that grieve God? Good!)
I began to confer with Cromwell again. Many things were afoot: the bishops had completed their “interpretation” of the Ten Articles of Faith to Establish Christian Quietness, all set forth in a volume called The Bishops’ Book, designed to answer laymen’s questions; it awaited my endorsement. A number of greater monasteries had offered their surrenders: Whalley, Jervaulx, Kirkstead, and Lewes. Rich prizes. I should love to see them demolished. I wanted to hear the groan of the stones being pulled out of their sockets, and the crash of stained-glass windows hitting the ground to explode in multicoloured shards. I wanted to see the “miracle” statues, with their hidden wires and water-filled reservoirs, pitched onto a roaring fire made from monastic choir-stalls and embroidered vestments.
In addition, I was being courted by the Continental powers. It seemed I was an eligible bachelor again, and a rich one at that. Cromwell begged me to “consider the matter and frame it to your most noble heart.”
I would never marry again. But for amusement I would look at the portraits. It was sport to order others to perform. “I cannot marry without knowing their appearance. The matter touches me too near my person,” I explained.
I dispatched Hans Holbein, More’s former painter who had done a passable job on Jane’s portrait, to the Continent to take portraits of Christina of Denmark and Anne of Lorraine. That should take months.
I began to order banquets and celebrations. My appetite had returned, and fearsomely. Before, I had cared about my appearance. When I was young, it was important to me that the English King be more awesome than the French monarch. Then, I cared that Katherine, Anne, and Jane should find me desirable, handsome. Now there was no reason not to eat, to steep myself in pleasures of the palate. What else was left to me?
When the fish course came round, I no longer abstained from eels (a notably fatty fish). When the meat. Whand lamb. I drank flagons of wine at every meal, so that they passed in a haze of pleasure. I ate all desserts and even called for sweetmeats in my chamber in mid-afternoon. I had no other pleasure but eating. Riding and hunting were taken away from me; there were no women and all the things that go with them: dancing, fetes, musical evenings. But there was food—marvellous, unbridled food.
WILL:
Now I understand. This was Henry’s “Nero” period, when he behaved cruelly and erratically, and from which (unfortunately) much of his reputation is derived. (How unfair, that eighteen months should eclipse almost forty years!) He grew fat. As one eyewitness described him: “The King has grown so marvellously excessive in eating and drinking that three of the largest men in the Kingdom could fit inside his doublet.”
His beautiful features expanded and swelled, until his eyes were like little raisins set in a red mass of dough, and his strong neck became enruffed in a series of fat-rings.
He