Hi my name's Jon and welcome to another edition of History Roadshow.
The year 1536 was, without doubt,
the most pivotal year of Henry's reign, and now a new scandal was about to break.
Henry had discovered that his 21-year-old niece Lady Margaret
Douglas had been having a secret affair with Norfolk's younger brother Lord Thomas Howard.
But this was just the tip of the iceberg!
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any of our videos and with that said let's begin todays story.
This recent revelation shook the court.
Henry was seething after he found out the couple had gone
so far as to contract a marriage to each other without seeking permission.
The problem for Henry was that Margaret was close to the throne,
and Howard's presumption was given short thrift by the King, who announced it as treasonous.
Both Margaret and Thomas were sent to the tower.
The act of succession was immediately changed,
making it treason for anyone to espouse, marry or deflower any woman of the royal court.
As for the unlucky Thomas, he was attained and sentenced to death; luckily for Margaret,
she escaped this due to her claim that the couple had never made love.
Although Henry didn't carry out the execution of Thomas,
he was wild with anger and never really forgave Margaret for her actions.
By 1537 both prisoners had contracted fever.
On 29 October, the King relented somewhat
by releasing Margaret into the care of the sisters at Syon Abbey.
Thomas wasn't so lucky, and he died just two days later, still within his confines.
Margaret would eventually be allowed back to court after writing
many letters to Cromwell stating her mistakes and denouncing her once love of Thomas.
Cromwell seemed to go from strength to strength.
After his knighthood in 1536, he was also privileged to have his son
Gregory marry the Queen's sister Elizabeth Seymour.
But his climb up the ladder of power didn't stop here.
His most recent charge was that of overall control of administrative departments;
this position would allow him to make sweeping changes almost totally without question.
However, this would free the King to have more spare time and to be honest,
Cromwell had been a trusted colleague, so what possible worries would Henry have?
Henry always held the upper hand
in this relationship as he did with every other relationship in his life.
Cromwell would at times suffer under the influence of Henry to the point of physical beatings!
George Paulet, the controller of the household, once wrote.
" The king calls Cromwell twice a week, sometimes knocking him about the head and shaking him
like a dog" Yet when he leaves the great chamber, he brushes himself down, smiles and walks
away with a merry countenance, knowing it's a small price to pay for his office and position.
But the King also had others he despised, one being Gardiner.
It was a well-known fact that both Gardiner and Cromwell didn't see eye to eye,
with Gardiner strongly disapproving of Cromwell's interference with church matters.
Under the Kings guidance in 1536, the Dissolution of the Monasteries began.
Ten articles were described as a doctrine for the church of England
to find a middle road between the Catholic church and, at the time, the radical reformers.
Five hundred sixty-three
religious houses had been closed within four years, and the inmates pensioned off.
It would change the landscape of England forever.
When Queen Jane begged the King to reconsider, Henry told her to abandon
all thoughts or potentially face the same consequences as Anne Boleyn.
The vast wealth from
the abbeys was placed straight into the crown coffers, increasing the King's wealth and power.
Some monies were used to build even more grander elegant buildings.
The crown also took the priceless gems from the monasteries and churches.
One given by Louis VII of France was a ruby, initially placed in the tomb of Sir
Thomas Beckett, but now Henry had the stone set in a ring and placed on his thumb.
Henry also removed land
to further the wealth at court, which contributed massively to the overall haul of cash.
Henry, in his wisdom, gifted a third of the grants to his courtiers.
With contributions of land totalling 124 going to lords, 183
to knights and gentlemen and a further 147 to the household officers.
The rest was scattered between merchants, lawyers, doctors, and yeomen, helping them
become landed gentry and rise to a new middle-class status
with the intention to bind them to the King with their gratitude and loyalty.
By the end, there was hardly anyone
within the court of England who didn't at some point benefit from the dissolution.
Henry kept very few monastic properties for himself, except those connecting London to Dover.
In March 1540, he would take Rochester cathedral, where monarchs had used royal lodgings
since the fourteenth century.
The building was converted into a further royal residence which he visited in 1541.
On 22 July 1536, the Duke of Richmond died; he was Henry's only son, all be it an illegitimate one!
The King kept the death secret, and Henry ordered Norfolk to have the body wrapped in lead,
hidden under straw and with only two attendants be taken to Thetford priory in Norfolk for burial.
His secretive plan was to stop gossip within the court of possible succession claims.
Especially now, as Henry had pretty much confirmed that his boy
would be the next King after his daughters Mary and Elizabeth had been discarded.
Cromwell later said that the King, "for certain, had intended to make the Duke his successor."
News of Richmond's death was greeted differently within Lady Mary's household.
Chapuys reported that Mary and her entourage were over
the moon by recent events and jubilant at the news of the duke's demise.
After the funeral, Henry roared again; he was having one of those alarming changes of
heart that characterised his behaviour in his later years.
Norfolk was openly scathed when told Richmond should have been buried with honours due to him.
He was threatened with prison and execution, something Norfolk couldn't handle.
He wrote to Cromwell and angrily said, "When I deserver to be in the tower, Tottenham will
turn french." Henry soon forgot about the incident and returned to his normal-ish self!
After the dissolution, Richmond's body was reinterred at Framlingham church in Suffolk,
where he would be among many of the Howard family burials.
Richmonds wife Mary was left a virgin and suffered from a lack to obtain
any financial help, and even Norfolk gave little to no support.
Henry would now depart on progress with Jane; they stopped over at Dover castle
where stained glass windows had been installed displaying the badges of Jane.
But Chapuys noticed a change in the King.
He was depressed about his son's death,
and more importantly, the Queen had still not fallen pregnant.
That aside, the royal couple spent the rest of the summer
enjoying life, hunting or, as they said, "good sport." Henry would turn his attentions
to the coronation of Jane; he had already spent approximately 90 thousand
in today's money on furnishings and preparations at Westminster Hall for the coronation banquet.
But then things took a turn for the worse.
England was in the throes of a lethal disease. The plague had returned.
In October, lady Mary returned to court, although under duress.
The trauma of her parent's divorce, along with the forced submission, played hard on Mary's
mind to the point she was becoming ever prone to illness and other disabling irregularities.
Mary knew she would never be entirely accepted, and the chances of a significant
marriage to a prince were doubtful.
Mary faced facts that only when the King died would she, at last, be free, but until that time,
she was the unhappiest lady in all of Christendom.
Henry would often joke about his daughter and her life so far, saying
she must have had some adventure over the years with men.
On one occasion, Henry asked Sir Francis Bryan to dance with Mary and test
her sexual knowledge by using a sexual swear word to see her reaction.
Both men were astonished when Mary gave no reaction; it was undoubtedly a cynical trap
by the courtiers which proved they gave such little credence to any woman or their virtue.
Henry Howard, the boy who the King liked, but called him foolish, was bemused by the flaws
in his character.
He was arrogant and just downright overbearing to many,
but Henry enjoyed his company, at least in small doses.
Howard had an overinflated view.
Self-importance and status were high on his agenda, along, of course, with family pride.
He would commission more portraits of himself from Holbein than any other sitter.
But Howard was similar to his cousin Anne Boleyn.
He loved to travel throughout Europe to Italy and France, when the renaissance was at its peak.
But also like Anne,
he had a talent for making enemies, and his number one targets were the Seymour's.
Howard did try to come between Anne Stanhope and her husband
Edward Seymour, and you can only imagine the backlash at this event.
Resentment, not to mention the audacity to go down this
road, would eventually lead to a complete and lasting feud between both families.
Back at court, Henry was now faced with one of the most threatening moments of his life.
The most significant rebellion of his reign was underway,
as of now nothing could stop the growing force known as the Pilgrimage of Grace.
He prepared his army for battle; rebels were the target, and action needed to be swift.