The Taming of the Queen

The lenten lilies swell and then flower beside the paths, their bright trumpet blooms like a shout of joy and hope, but the king keeps to his rooms with a table crowded with draughts and tinctures and herbs and jars of leeches, the shutters tightly closed against the dangerous fresh air. Doctor Wendy composes one physic after another, trying to keep the fever down, trying to cleanse out the suppurating wound on Henry’s leg, which gapes still wider, like a bloody mouth, as it eats into the flesh towards the bone. Two pages are dismissed, one for fainting at the sight of it, and one for saying in chapel that we should pray for the king as he is being eaten alive. Henry’s friends and courtiers gather around him, as if they are all under siege from disease, and each one tries to improve his position with the king in case this is not just another flaring up of fever and pain, but the beginning of a final illness.

It falls to me to dine before the court, to order the entertainments, and to make sure that the royal household runs as smoothly reporting to me as it does when it is reporting to the king. I even confer with the rivals Edward Seymour and Thomas Howard to see that there is nothing troubling, difficult or dangerous in the Privy Council reports to the king before they take them in to him. When the Spanish envoys visit with a new plan for a treaty against France so that the emperor can move against the Lutherans and Protestants in his land, they call on me in my rooms before they attend the king.

They do this in the morning, in order to avoid the embarrassment of arriving at my rooms when the preachers of reform are there. They would be horrified to bump into Anne Askew: a reformer and an intelligent woman. It is bitter for me to have to smile and greet them, knowing that they are seeking the friendship of England only to be strong enough to hunt down and murder men and women in Germany who believe as we do. But they come and speak of their plans, trusting that I will serve the interests of my country before anything, and I do my duty and greet them with politeness and assure them of our friendship.

It is well known that the afternoon is the time for our sermon and our study. The best preachers in England travel down the river to attend my rooms and speak of the Word of God and how it can be applied in daily life, and how the man-made rituals can be scoured from a clean pure church. In these long weeks of Lent we have some inspiring sermons. Anne Askew comes several times, and Hugh Latimer often. Members of the court come to listen, even one of the Howards, Tom, the old duke’s second son, makes his bow and asks if he may sit at the back and listen. I know that his lordship would be appalled to know that his son thinks as I do, but the yeast is spreading through the thick dough of court and the people will rise to holiness. I’m certainly not going to forbid a good young man to come to Jesus, even if he is a Howard.

These are the best theologians that England has, in touch with the reformers in Europe, and as I listen to them and sometimes debate with them, I am inspired to write a new book, one that I don’t mention to the king because I know that it will go too far for him. But I am more and more convinced by the rightness of the Lutheran view, and more and more opposed to the superstitious paganism of the old church, and I want to write – I have to write. When I have a thought in my head, when I breathe a prayer in the chapel, I have a great desire to see it set down on a page. I feel as if I can think only when I see the words flowing from the nib of my quill, that my thoughts only make sense when they are black ink on cream paper. I love the sensation of a thought in my head and the vision of the word on the page. I love that God gave the Word to the world, and that I can work in His chosen form.

The king started the reform but now he is old and fearful he has halted. I wish he would go further. The influence of Stephen Gardiner, even at a distance, seems to blight any new thinking. The power of Spain should not dictate the beliefs of English men and women. The king hopes to create his own religion, an idiosyncratic combination of all the views of Christendom, picking the elements that he likes, the rituals that move him, the prayers that strike him. But this cannot be the way to worship God. The king cannot cling to the empty gestures of his childhood for sentiment, he cannot retain the expensive ritual that the old church loves. He has to think, he has to reason, he has to lead the church with wisdom, not with nostalgia for the past and fear of Spain.