A Brief History of the Tudor Age Read online

  Livestock being driven to market in Eastcheap. An engraving from A Caveat to the City of London, by Hugh Alley, 1598.

  The built-up area extended furthest to the west. The road through Ludgate went down Ludgate Hill, past the Fleet prison, across Fleet Bridge and up the hill between Fleet Market and the Temple, which had ceased to be a monastery nearly 200 years before and had become the site of two of the Inns of Court where the common lawyers lived and worked. On passing Temple Bar and leaving the limits of the City of London, the traveller immediately entered the City of Westminster, which by the beginning of the Tudor Age was rivalling London in importance. On its northern limits, in Drury Lane, which nearly touched Holborn, there were houses of important courtiers; by the middle of the sixteenth century these included Cecil House, the town house of William Cecil, Lord Burghley. There were also houses of important people all along the Strand on the north bank of the Thames as far as Charing Cross; these included Somerset Place, the house of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and Durham Place, the Bishop of Durham’s town residence.

  The traveller who turned left at Charing Cross, following the bend in the river, soon came to the large mansion on the waterfront which Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of York, had finished building by 1525. This splendid residence of the Cardinal of York was known as York Place. After Wolsey’s fall from power in 1529, he was persuaded to give it to the King in a futile attempt to regain the royal favour. It then became known as Whitehall, and was the chief residence in Westminster of Henry VIII and his three children, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth I. Like all the large houses on the river in London and Westminster, it had its private stairs leading down to the water, and a landing place where the residents in the palace could leave and arrive by barge.

  About half a mile south of Whitehall was Westminster Hall and Westminster Abbey. Westminster Hall was the chief public building in the realm, where all the most important official meetings were held. It was here that the King addressed Parliament, and that the House of Lords sat, though the House of Commons met in the adjacent building, St Stephen’s Chapel. The King’s common law court, the Court of King’s Bench, sat in Westminster Hall; the great state trials of traitors were held here; and it was used for the coronation banquet after the new King had been crowned in the Abbey.

  At the beginning of the Tudor Age, Westminster Abbey was one of the most important of the 513 monasteries in England. With its twenty-five monks it was only the seventeenth in size, but it was the richest of all; its annual income was £2,409, whereas the priory of Christchurch in Canterbury, which was the largest monastery in the country with seventy monks, had an annual income of £2,374. Westminster Abbey was on the very edge of the built-up area of Westminster and London. The open country began with Tothill Fields, at the Abbey gates, where Tothill Street and St James’s Underground Station stand today. The fields and woodlands continued to the north of Tothill Fields, surrounding the new royal palace of St James’s which Henry VIII built at the end of his reign, and linking up with Hyde Park. To the south and west of Tothill Fields, the open country continued up river to the village of Chelsea, two miles away.

  By the beginning of the sixteenth century there was a substantial built-up area on the south bank of the river across London Bridge in the borough of Southwark. By 1600 there were continuous buildings and little alleyways on both sides of the main street, Long Southwark, which ran south from London Bridge for a mile to the New Town (or Newington), where the open country began. There were continuous buildings for a mile along the south bank to the west of London Bridge, which reached nearly to the village of Lambeth, where the Archbishop of Canterbury’s palace was situated; while the buildings extended the other way along the south bank to the east of London Bridge, along St Olaf’s Street, for half a mile to the village of Rotherhithe.

  The river was the boundary between the counties of Middlesex and Surrey and the dioceses of London and Winchester; but the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor and corporation of London had been extended to apply to Southwark. There were important houses and buildings in Southwark. The Bishop of Winchester had his town residence there, on the fringe of his diocese. In the reign of Henry VIII, the King’s great favourite and brother-in-law, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, built a mansion in Southwark. The Marshalsea prison was on the east side of Long Southwark, about half a mile from London Bridge. It afterwards became famous, in the nineteenth century, as a debtors’ prison; but in Tudor times Ludgate was the debtors’ prison, and the Marshalsea, along with the Counter, the King’s Bench prison and the Clink in Southwark, the Fleet prison and Newgate across the river, and the Gatehouse in Westminster, was used as a prison for various kinds of offenders, including political suspects charged with sedition, whose offences were thought not to be sufficiently serious to merit imprisonment in the Tower and a charge of high treason. Many prominent politicians and propagandists, after experiencing the shock of being arrested for sedition, were relieved to find that they were being sent to the Fleet or the Marshalsea and not to the Tower.

  The city was dominated by the great Tower of London, at the south-east edge of the city on the north bank of the Thames. Nearly everybody in England, including Shakespeare, believed that the building of the Tower had been started by Julius Caesar; but a few historians and antiquaries knew that this was untrue, and that it had first been built by William the Conqueror in 1078. It covered an area of 400 yards square, and had eighteen towers and other buildings. By 1597 the tower on the riverside was being called ‘the Bloody Tower’ because of the mysterious suicide or murder there of the Earl of Northumberland in 1585, but in the Tudor Age it was usually called ‘the tower by the watergate’. People who left or arrived at the Tower by barge embarked and landed at the watergate. Important prisoners who were arrested on a charge of high treason were often brought to the Tower by barge, including Henry VIII’s second Queen, Anne Boleyn, and her daughter, the future Elizabeth I, when she was the Lady Elizabeth in the reign of her sister Queen Mary. It was more difficult for the prisoners to escape from the barge than if they were taken by land through the streets of London, and it avoided the risk of demonstrations of sympathy for the prisoners from the Londoners. So the watergate afterwards became known as ‘Traitors’ Gate’; but the name was not used during the sixteenth century.

  The Tower was a royal residence and an arsenal as well as a prison. The King’s apartments were in the White Tower. Most of his cannon, and a large quantity of other weapons, such as pikes and armour, were ordinarily stored in the Tower. In times of rebellion hundreds of prisoners were sometimes herded into the Tower; but usually only the most serious offenders were imprisoned there. Some of the prisoners were kept in strict confinement in their prison cells, in complete isolation from the other prisoners; but the social conventions of the age made it impossible to deprive a nobleman or a gentleman, however heinous a traitor or heretic he night be, from being attended by his personal servant; nor could a noble lady or a gentlewoman be prevented from being attended by her lady’s maid. These servants were sometimes able to smuggle messages in and out of the Tower; but the authorities were of course aware of this danger, and the servants were very carefully watched. They hardly ever succeeded in arranging for their imprisoned master or mistress to escape, and only the Jesuit, Father Gerard, and his friend John Arden in 1597 succeeded in escaping from the Tower during the Tudor Age.

  If a prisoner’s offence was not considered to be outstandingly serious, he was allowed ‘the liberty of the Tower’, which meant that he could walk freely in the garden and anywhere he wished within the walls of the Tower. Prisoners in strict confinement, and their families and friends, petitioned the King and the Council to be allowed the liberty of the Tower; and if the favour was granted to a prisoner after he had been confined in his cell for some weeks or months, it was usually a sign that the authorities were going to take a lenient view of his offence, and perhaps that his release might be imminent.
r />   The King had other royal palaces in London besides the Tower, for he sometimes stayed at Baynards Castle and Bridewell; and by the sixteenth century it had become the custom that the King resided in the Tower for the first few weeks after he came to the throne, until his coronation, and never stayed there again, unless he was threatened with great danger. Henry VII sent his wife and children to stay in the Tower when the Cornish rebels marched on London and reached Blackheath in 1497; but none of the succeeding Tudor sovereigns ever lived there after their coronation, no doubt because they believed that if it were known that they had taken up their residence there, this would start a rumour that they were threatened by a dangerous revolt.

  The coronation of the new King, with the religious ceremony and its link with the ancient biblical concept of anointment, had made such an impression on the people that in earlier times the idea had spread unofficially that a King did not obtain his authority to reign, and his right to demand allegiance from his subjects, until after he had been crowned. For this reason, the coronation was always held almost immediately after the new sovereign’s accession. This idea had been firmly dispelled by the beginning of the Tudor Age, but it was still thought desirable for him to be crowned as soon as possible.

  In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it became the practice to postpone the coronation for more than a year after the accession; but every Tudor sovereign was crowned within three months of coming to the throne. Henry VII, after defeating Richard III at Bosworth on 22 August 1485 and being proclaimed King on the battlefield, had wished to be crowned at Westminster as soon as he reached London; but the outbreak of the terrible sweating sickness forced him to postpone the coronation until 30 October 1485. When Henry died at Richmond on 21 April 1509, the new King, Henry VIII, who had been at his father’s bedside at Richmond, moved within a few days to the Tower of London, and fixed the date of his coronation on 24 June, Midsummer Day and the Feast of St John the Baptist.

  On the day before the coronation, Henry VIII went on the traditional procession through the streets of London on his way from the Tower to Westminster. He always loved ceremony and show, and his coronation procession was more splendid than any of his predecessors’. The streets were decorated with cloth-of-gold; the Lord Mayor and aldermen, and the masters of the livery companies, were in the streets to salute the King as he passed; so were virgins dressed in white, and priests who censed him and his Queen as they passed. Henry, who was dressed in crimson velvet lined with ermine and a coat with gold, diamonds, rubies and emeralds, rode on a splendidly accoutred horse, surrounded by his bodyguard, along Bread Street, Gracechurch Street, Cheapside and Cornhill; and his Queen, Catherine of Aragon, whom he had married twelve days before, followed a little way behind him in a litter escorted by her ladies and attendants. On leaving London and entering Westminster at Temple Bar, the King and the procession went along the Strand to Charing Cross and then continued to Westminster Abbey, where Henry and Catherine slept that night as guests of the monks, while the great crowds who had lined the streets went home filled with admiration for their handsome young King.

  Next day the coronation took place in the great church of the Abbey. After the coronation, the King and Queen and the notables went across the road for the traditional coronation banquet in Westminster Hall. During the meal, the King’s Champion rode into the hall on horseback and offered to fight any traitor who denied the King’s right to the throne. The office of King’s Champion, which was hereditary, was held by Sir Robert Dimock. He had performed this duty as King’s Champion at the coronation of Richard III in 1483. Just over two years after he had challenged any traitor who denied that Richard was the lawful King, Dimock performed the ceremony again at the coronation of Henry VII, who had proclaimed Richard a usurper and killed him. Twenty-four years later, Dimock performed the ceremony for the third time at the coronation of Henry VIII.

  Edward VI, who was nine when he became King at Henry VIII’s death on 28 January 1547, was crowned within a month, on 20 February. Again there was a procession from the Tower to Westminster on the eve of the coronation, with the city dignitaries, the cheering crowds, pageants and acrobats. The national pride had been aroused by the capture of Boulogne and the burning of Edinburgh in the last years of Henry VIII’s reign, and the people looked forward to the day when their new boy King would grow up and emulate and extend his father’s victories, and rule over England, Ireland, Scotland and France. As he passed through the streets of London in the coronation procession, the people sang a new song that someone had composed for the occasion:

  He hath gotten already Boulogne, that godly town,

  And biddeth sing speedily up, up, and not down.

  When he waxeth might and to manhood doth spring

  He shall be straight then of four realms the King.

  Sing up, heart, sing up, heart, and sing no more down,

  But joy in King Edward that weareth the crown.

  After Edward died on 6 July 1553, Mary defeated Jane Grey’s supporters and was proclaimed Queen in London on 19 July. She arrived there after her march from Norfolk on 3 August, and was crowned on 1 October. Her coronation procession through London was a little more subdued than those of Henry VIII and Edward VI, perhaps because she was too preoccupied with the religious changes which she was contemplating to encourage a great popular demonstration in her own honour. Although she was an accomplished horsewoman, and had ridden into London through Aldgate on horseback two months before, she rode in a coach in the coronation procession. Next, in a coach immediately behind the Queen, came those two well-known Protestant ladies, the Lady Elizabeth and her stepmother the Lady Anne of Cleves, who were both about to become Catholics, under duress.

  Elizabeth I became Queen on Mary’s death on 17 November 1558, and was crowned on 15 January 1559. Her coronation procession through London on the previous day was not merely, as always, a festive occasion, but was also a great Protestant demonstration by her supporters. She had already made it clear that she intended to restore the Protestant religion in England; she had stopped the burning of heretics, and had walked out of her chapel royal when the priest elevated the Host during Mass. The savage persecution of Protestants in Mary’s reign had increased their support in London; it was probably the only part of the country, except for Kent, where they were already a majority of the population.

  The five pageants along the route of the coronation procession, in Gracechurch Street, Cornhill, at the Great Conduit in Cheapside, in Paul’s Churchyard, and at the conduit in Fleet Street, were all Protestant propaganda. There were pictures, and actors representing, not only the Queen’s father Henry VIII, who had overthrown the power of the Pope, but also her Protestant mother, Anne Boleyn, who had never been officially rehabilitated after her execution for adultery and high treason, but was still regarded as an innocent victim by the Protestant extremists. There were pictures of ‘Deborah the judge and restorer of the house of Israel’, and several slogans comparing Elizabeth with this Old Testament heroine who, though a woman, had been chosen by God to save His people. At the conduit in Cheap, the Queen was handed a Protestant English Bible; she held it to her breast, and promised that she would always read it and adhere to its teaching.

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  THE KING’S HIGHWAY

  THE COUNTRYSIDE in the sixteenth century had a different appearance from the countryside today, though the removal of so many hedgerows in the last forty years has made the England of 1988 look a little more like Tudor England than did the England of 1950. The low-lying and fertile parts of the country consisted of large fields unbroken by hedges, and only occasionally by stone boundary-walls. Only Devonshire and parts of Kent were divided into small fields by hedges, and probably looked very like the counties that we know.

  The countryside was interspersed by roads, the King’s highway, which was sometimes straight and sometimes winding, and linked the market towns. No roads bypassed the towns, for their chief use was to enable the people to get to ma
rket; where there were no towns, there were no highways, only rough tracks leading to the farms and villages.

  Most of the people travelling along the roads were going to, or returning from, market. Most walked on foot, though some of them rode on horseback. Many were driving herds of animals along the roads. There were carts carrying various commodities, including some kinds of food, such as fruit and vegetables; but as there was no way of preserving the food for very long, it was seldom taken further than the nearest town. It was very unusual for meat to be carried along the roads in carts; the butchers in the towns normally arranged for cows, sheep and pigs to be driven to the town from some farm in the country on their four feet and then kept alive, wandering in their gardens or in the streets outside their shops, until they were ready for slaughter.

  At the beginning of the Tudor Age, the animals were usually slaughtered by the butcher on his premises in the town; but many of his neighbours found this objectionable. In London, the people who lived in the parishes of St Faith’s and St Gregory’s near St Paul’s Cathedral objected to the slaughtering of animals and the scalding of swine that was carried on at the butchery of St Nicholas Fleshamless. After the canons of St Paul’s had been complaining about the butchery for sixteen years, they and the parishioners presented a petition to Henry VII. They told him that the air in the district was polluted by ‘blood and other fouler things unto your most noble Grace not to be named’, which flowed through the streets from the slaughterhouse. The stench pervaded to that part of the palace adjoining St Paul’s where the King waited before entering the cathedral when he came there on state occasions; and this may have helped to persuade Parliament to pass an Act in 1489 which prohibited the slaughter of animals, not only within the city of London, but also within the confines of any walled town in England, except Berwick and Carlisle. The ban remained in force for forty-three years; but it was repealed in 1533 after the butchers at the slaughterhouse of St Nicholas had built underground sewers to take the blood and filth, so that the butchery was no longer a nuisance to the local inhabitants.