In the convivial days between Christmas and New Year, while the court is feasting and Charles Brandon is in the fens shouting at a door, he is rereading Marsiglio of Padua. In the year 1324 Marsiglio put to us forty-two propositions. When the feast of the Epiphany is past, he ambles along to put a few of them to Henry.
Some of these propositions the king knows, some are strange to him. Some are congenial, in his present situation; some have been denounced to him as heresy. It's a morning of brilliant, bone-chilling cold, the wind off the river like a knife in the face. We are breezing in to push our luck.
Marsiglio tells us that when Christ came into this world he came not as a ruler or a judge, but as a subject: subject to the state as he found it. He did not seek to rule, nor pass on to his disciples a mission to rule. He did not give power to one of his followers more than another; if you think he did, read again those verses about Peter. Christ did not make Popes. He did not give his followers the power to make laws or levy taxes, both of which churchmen have claimed as their right.
Henry says, ‘I never remember the cardinal spoke of this.’
‘Would you, if you were a cardinal?’
Since Christ did not induce his followers into earthly power, how can it be maintained that the princes of today derive their power from the Pope? In fact, all priests are subjects, as Christ left them. It is for the prince to govern the bodies of his citizens, to say who is married and who can marry, who is a bastard and who legitimate.
Where does the prince get this power, and his power to enforce the law? He gets it through a legislative body, which acts on behalf of the citizens. It is from the will of the people, expressed in Parliament, that a king derives his kingship.
When he says this, Henry seems to be straining his ears, as if he might catch the sound of the people coming down the road to turn him out of his palace. He reassures him on the point: Marsiglio gives no legitimacy to rebels. Citizens may indeed band together to overthrow a despot, but he, Henry, is not a despot; he is a monarch who rules within the law. Henry likes the people to cheer him as he rides through London, but the wise prince is not always the most popular prince; he knows this.
He has other propositions to put to him. Christ did not bestow on his followers grants of land, or monopolies, offices, promotions. All these things are the business of the secular power. A man who has taken vows of poverty, how can he have property rights? How can monks be landlords?
The king says, ‘Cromwell, with your facility for large numbers …’ He stares into the distance. His fingers pick at the silver lacing of his cuff.
‘The legislative body,’ he says, ‘should provide for the maintenance of priests and bishops. After that, it should be able to use the church's wealth for the public good.’
‘But how to free it,’ Henry says. ‘I suppose shrines can be broken.’ Gem-studded himself, he thinks of the kind of wealth you can weigh. ‘If there were any who dared.’
It is a characteristic of Henry, to run before you to where you were not quite going. He had meant to gentle him towards an intricate legal process of dispossession, repossession: the assertion of ancient sovereign rights, the taking back of what was always yours. He will remember that it was Henry who first suggested picking up a chisel and gouging the sapphire eyes out of saints. But he is willing to follow the king's thought. ‘Christ taught us how to remember him. He left us bread and wine, body and blood. What more do we need? I cannot see where he asked for shrines to be set up, or instituted a trade in body parts, in hair and nails, or asked us to make plaster images and worship them.’
‘Would you be able to estimate,’ Henry says, ‘even … no, I suppose you wouldn't.’ He gets to his feet. ‘Well, the sun shines, so …’
Better make hay. He sweeps the day's papers together. ‘I can finish up.’ Henry goes off to get into his double-padded riding coat. He thinks, we don't want our king to be the poor man of Europe. Spain and Portugal have treasure flowing in every year from the Americas. Where is our treasure?
Look around you.
His guess is, the clergy own a third of England. One day soon, Henry will ask him how the Crown can own it instead. It's like dealing with a child; one day you bring in a box, and the child asks, what is in there? Then it goes to sleep and forgets, but next day, it asks again. It doesn't rest until the box is open and the treats given out.
Parliament is about to reconvene. He says to the king, no parliament in history has worked as hard as I mean to work this one.
Henry says, ‘Do what you have to do. I will back you.’
It's like hearing words you've waited all your life to hear. It's like hearing a perfect line of poetry, in a language you knew before you were born.
He goes home happy, but the cardinal is waiting for him in a corner. He is plump as a cushion in his scarlet robes and his face wears a martial and mutinous expression. Wolsey says, you know he will take the credit for your good ideas, and you the blame for his bad ones? When fortune turns against you, you will feel her lash: you always, he never.
He says, my dear Wolsey. (For now that cardinals are finished in this realm, he addresses him as a colleague, not a master.) My dear Wolsey, not entirely so – he didn't blame Charles Brandon for splintering a lance inside his helmet, he blamed himself for not putting his visor down.
The cardinal says, do you think this is a tilting ground? Do you think there are rules, protocols, judges to see fair play? One day, when you are still adjusting your harness, you will look up and see him thundering at you downhill.
The cardinal vanishes, with a chortle.
Even before the Commons convenes, his opponents meet to work out their tactics. Their meetings are not secret. Servants go in and out, and his method with the Pole conclaves bears repeating: there are young men in the Cromwell household not too proud to put on an apron and bring in a platter of halibut or a joint of beef. The gentlemen of England apply for places in his household now, for their sons and nephews and wards, thinking they will learn statecraft with him, how to write a secretary's hand and deal with translation from abroad, and what books one ought to read to be a courtier. He takes it seriously, the trust placed in him; he takes gently from the hands of these noisy young persons their daggers, their pens, and he talks to them, finding out behind the passion and pride of young men of fifteen or twenty what they are really worth, what they value and would value under duress. You learn nothing about men by snubbing them and crushing their pride. You must ask them what it is they can do in this world, that they alone can do.
The boys are astonished by the question, their souls pour out. Perhaps no one has talked to them before. Certainly not their fathers.
You introduce these boys, violent or unscholarly as they are, to humble occupations. They learn the psalms. They learn the use of a filleting blade and a paring knife; only then, for self-defence and in no formal lesson, they learn the estoc, the killing jerk under the ribs, the simple twist of the wrist that makes you sure. Christophe offers himself as instructor. These messieurs, he says, be sure they are dainty. They are cutting off the head of the stag or the tail of the rat, I know not what, to send home to their dear papa. Only you and me, master, and Richard Cremuel, we know how to stop some little fuckeur in his tracks, so that's the end of him, and he doesn't even squeak.
Before spring comes, some of the poor men who stand at his gate find their way inside it. The eyes and ears of the unlettered are as sharp as those of the gentry, and you need not be a scholar to have a good wit. Horseboys and kennelmen overhear the confidences of earls. A boy with kindling and bellows hears the sleepy secrets of early morning, when he goes in to light a fire.
On a day of strong sunlight, sudden and deceptive warmth, Call-Me-Risley strides into Austin Friars. He barks, ‘Give you good morning, sir,’ throws off his jacket, sits down to his desk and scrapes forward his stool. He picks up his quill and looks at the tip of it. ‘Right, what do you have for me?’