The Last White Rose Read Free Page B

divorce her, Queen Katherine declared that it was God’s judgement because her first marriage had been ‘made in blood, meaning that of the Earl of Warwick’. During the reign of Henry VIII many people thought that the curse must be responsible for the eerie proneness of Tudor males to die in childhood.
    Henry VII’s own health was collapsing. He may already have contracted tuberculosis. (In 1508 he was rumoured to be in the last stages of consumption.) Whatever the reason, he had become an old man by his forties. There is no written evidence of his decline, but a portrait painted in 1505 by the Baltic artist Michael Sittow (now in the National Portrait Gallery, London) tells us a lot. This was commissioned by Emperor Maximilian’s agent, for his master to send to his widowed daughter Margaret, whom he wanted the king to marry. It is hard to believe that the bleary-eyed, thin-lipped, exhausted old face leering out of the portrait is the same person as the young gallant sketched twenty years earlier. Torrigiano’s portrait bust of about the same date shows a very different face, but it was designed to flatter. Some artists paint what they see, however, which is what Sittow seems to have done – perhaps he was given the commissionbecause of the realism of his work. Other portraits by him are thoroughly convincing, such as that of the youthful Katherine of Aragon.
    Although the calamities he experienced did not unbalance Henry’s statecraft, they did little for his mental equilibrium. It is scarcely surprising that he grew ever more suspicious of the nobility, and continued to live in dread of the White Rose. There were strong hints that his mind was unbalanced in the way he dealt with the Earl of Suffolk.
    ‘England has never been so tranquil and obedient as it is at present,’ reported the Spanish ambassador in January 1500. ‘There were pretenders to the English crown, but now Perkin and the Duke of Clarence’s son are executed, not a drop of doubtful Royal blood can remain, the sole Royal blood being the true blood of the King.’ 3 He believed there was no one left who could challenge Henry VII, and perhaps the king himself thought so, if only for a short time.
    Yet Henry’s astrologer had been justified in warning him that there were two parties in his kingdom, one of which questioned his right to the throne. The ballad ‘The White Rose’, dating from about 1500 – probably to be sung as a three-part ‘carol’ – shows that nostalgia for the House of York was still flourishing at this date. There were Englishmen who continued to regard the Tudor as a usurper, and were outraged at the Earl of Warwick’s murder. He and Perkin might be dead, but the White Rose still bloomed, its new embodiment being Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk. Many must have recalled that less than twenty years earlier, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln – later killed at Stoke – had been named heir to the throne by Richard III. After the death of Warbeck and Warwick, Lincoln’s younger brother, Suffolk, was the obvious Yorkist claimant as Richard’s senior nephew.
    Born about 1473, Edmund had showed no sign of disaffection, playing his role on ceremonial occasions and admired for his prowess at jousting – the great spectator sport of theage. A herald’s account gives us a clourful glimpse of him at the tournament held at Westminster in 1494 to celebrate Prince Henry’s investiture as Duke of York. He led the competitors as they rode out of Westminster Hall, his red silken banner bearing his motto, ‘For to accumplisshe’, while the crest on his tilting helm was a golden lion. During the tournament, he broke his sword on Sir Edward a Borough ‘furiously and notably’, and performed no less effectively in breaking his lance when charging his opponent. After supper, the five-year-old Princess Margaret, King Henry’s eldest daughter, awarded the prize to ‘the right noble lord, the Earl of Suffolk’, a ring of gold with