The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [264]
But all is well in the kingdom now. I have kept my naughty factions balanced and soothed, and they have caused no further problems.
Only the voices in my head, the annoying visions, have proved a problem. Occasionally I have done things I could not remember, but always I have rectified them as soon as possible, and no harm has been done.
Oh, yes—there was that fool who just recently (yesterday, or was it longer ago?) asked me what my earliest memory was. I was cross with him. I must send for him and make it up. Those sorts of things, those tidying-up things, occupy me much of late. Yet majesty must always be gracious.
It is time-consuming, making up for the voices in the head. But they are growing less, and then I will have more time to attend to the things dear to my heart. I have waited all my life to do so. At last it is almost at hand. O, to be just a man!
CXXXI
WILL:
And there it ends, just as the King himself did, some few days later. King Henry VIII died when he was fifty-six years old, in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, expecting to live and reign much longer.
He was never the same after Brandon’s death. Despite the brave words in his journal, he was melancholy and ill—either in body or in spirit—ibr most of the time remaining to him.
The things to of succession, yet remained illegitimate—a neat bit of legal juggling by their father to increase their rights and desirability as wives without compromising his belief that he had never been legally wed to their mothers. He loved those daughters, and wanted them to have as full and happy lives as possible. (A love sparsely returned on their parts. If the unnatural act reputed to Queen Mary is true, then indeed King Lear was well served by Goneril and Regan in comparison. To curse and desecrate her father’s skeleton ... !)
As to the French, the Scots, the Emperor, the Pope—well, as you know, Francis died directly after Henry, although he rallied long enough to send a teasing, insulting note to his fond old rival before both expired. The Emperor resigned his crowns, the Netherlands one in 1555, the Spanish one in 1556, and retired to a Spanish monastery. The Pope finally led his General Council at Trent, which hardened, rather than softened, the position of the Catholic Church against the Reformers. A battle line was drawn, and the Church seemed ready to fight rather than compromise. Why, it was almost as if she had principles!
The Scots actually show signs of succumbing to the Reformed faith, which would change the entire character of their realm, in relation to both England and the Continent (requiring them to find some Scriptural excuse for their money-grubbing). It is true that Mary Queen of Scots adheres to the Old Faith; but increasingly she is at odds with her Council and countrymen and isolated in this matter of religion, so that she has to import foreigners, Italians and French and such, to buoy her up in her faith. A surprising turn of events, would you not agree—although you hold that the Lord directs the Protestant victory?
As for the King’s will: what a troublesome document that turned out to be! He used it to control his councillors, waving it over their heads like a schoolmaster with a whip. Do this, and (perhaps) I shall instate you: do not, and you shall (probably) be omitted from my will. He kept it in a secret place, amending it constantly (oh! he was old: only old men act so!), tut-tutting over it. The price he paid for this old man‘s—and tyrant’s—luxury was that upon his death it was unsigned, almost undiscovered, and questionably legal.
Those constant games that he played with his courtiers led them to play games with him. Hide the document—hide the news. Dangle me—and I dangle you. Divide and rule—unite and outsmart. The last few months were so Byzantine I felt that Suleiman would have been perfectly at home amongst us. Intrigues, flatterers, panderers, betrayers all stalked the corridors and Long Gallery at Whitehall, where the King lay fighting the Angel of Death. Factions in the Privy Council waited to seize power,