Behind the Palace Doors Read online

  ALSO BY MICHAEL FARQUHAR

  A Treasury of Royal Scandals: The Shocking True Stories

  of History’s Wickedest, Weirdest, Most Wanton Kings,

  Queens, Tsars, Popes, and Emperors

  A Treasury of Great American Scandals: Tantalizing

  True Tales of Historic Misbehavior by the Founding Fathers

  and Others Who Let Freedom Swing

  A Treasury of Deception: Liars, Misleaders, Hoodwinkers,

  and the Extraordinary True Stories of History’s

  Greatest Hoaxes, Fakes, and Frauds

  A Treasury of Foolishly Forgotten Americans: Pirates,

  Skinflints, Patriots, and Other Colorful Characters

  Stuck in the Footnotes of History

  A Random House Trade Paperback Original

  Copyright © 2011 by Michael Farquhar

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Farquhar, Michael.

  Behind the palace doors: five centuries of sex, adventure, vice, treachery, and folly from royal Britain / Michael Farquhar.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-679-60453-2

  1. Great Britain—Kings and rulers—Biography—Miscellanea.

  2. Queens—Great Britain—Biography—Miscellanea. 3. Royal houses—Great Britain—History—Miscellanea. 4. Great Britain—History—

  Miscellanea. I. Title.

  DA28.1.F37 2011

  941.009′9—dc22 2010021116

  www.atrandom.com

  Cover design: Victoria Allen

  Cover illustrations: John Holder

  v3.1

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  PART I

  House of Tudor

  Introductory Chapter: A Blending of Roses and the Beginning of the Tudor Dynasty

  1. Henry VIII (1509–1547): Up the Stairs, Pulled by an Engine

  2. Edward VI (1547–1553): The Boy King

  3. Lady Jane Grey (1553): The Nine Days Queen

  4. Mary I (1553–1558): Bloody Mary’s Burning Desire

  5. Elizabeth I (1558–1603): Perils of a Princess

  6. Elizabeth I (1558–1603): A Clash of Queens

  PART II

  House of Stuart

  7. James I (VI of Scotland) 1603–1625: Kissing Cousins

  8. James I (VI of Scotland) 1603–1625: Bewitched

  9. James I (VI of Scotland) 1603–1625: Arbella Stuart: Too Close for Comfort

  10. Charles I (1625–1649): With His Head Held High

  11. Charles I (1625–1649): A Grisly Afterlife

  12. Charles II (1660–1685): The Great Escape

  13. Charles II (1660–1685): Old Rowley

  14. James II (1685–1688): A Fool and His Crown

  15. William III (1689–1702) and Mary II (1689–1694): Joint Sovereigns

  16. Anne (1702–1714): A Feud Too Many

  PART III

  House of Hanover

  17. George I (1714–1727): His Heart Was in Hanover

  18. George II (1727–1760): A Boorish, Oversexed Bully

  19. George II (1727–1760): Bonnie Prince Charlie

  20. George III (1760–1820): Caroline Matilda: Something Rotten in the State of Denmark

  21. George III (1760–1820): The Reign Insane

  22. George III (1760–1820): A Royal Murder Mystery

  23. George IV (1820–1830): A Wife on the Side

  24. George IV (1820–1830): Hello, I Loathe You

  25. William IV (1830–1837): A Misbegotten Brood

  26. Victoria (1837–1901): A Trip Down the Aisle

  27. Victoria (1837–1901): The Queen’s Prince Charming

  28. Victoria (1837–1901): Paradise Lost

  PART IV

  House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor

  29. Edward VII (1901–1910): Sex Ed

  30. George V (1910–1936): Georgie and Nicky: A Fatal Friendship

  31. Edward VIII (1936): An Abdication of Duty

  32. George VI (1936–1952): The Courage of a King

  33. Elizabeth II (1952–present): Good Queen Bess

  Select Bibliography

  About the Author

  House of Tudor

  HENRY VII

  (reigned 1485–1509)

  HENRY VIII

  (r. 1509–1547)

  EDWARD VI

  (r. 1547–1553)

  MARY I

  (r. 1553–1558)

  ELIZABETH I

  (r. 1558–1603)

  Introductory Chapter:

  A Blending of Roses and the Beginning of the Tudor Dynasty

  The body count among England’s elite was staggering: Three kings, a Prince of Wales, and numerous royal dukes were either murdered or executed, or died in battle during the epic struggle at the end of the fifteenth century that became known as the Wars of the Roses. It was essentially a vicious family feud between two branches of the Plantagenet royal dynasty—York (represented by the white rose) and Lancaster (represented in red)—over who would rule the island kingdom.

  Emerging from this murderous clash was a relatively obscure member of the House of Lancaster, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who, in 1485, defeated the Yorkist King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, seized the crown, and established the House of Tudor as Henry VII.

  Although the new king would be always be paranoid about potential rivals—and with good reason, as several imposters popped up during his reign and gained support as supposed members of the defeated House of York—the Wars of the Roses were effectively over. The restoration of peace and stability was symbolized by the marriage of Henry VII to Elizabeth of York, heiress of the rival royal house, and the birth of two sons secured the new dynasty. Only one, though, Prince Henry, was left to carry on the Tudor line after the sudden death of fifteen-year-old Arthur, Prince of Wales, in 1502.

  Henry succeeded his father in 1509, two months before he turned eighteen. The late king had left a secure realm and a full treasury for his son, but the remote and suspicious monarch was never popular with his people, mostly because of his punishing tax policies. The accession of Henry VIII was therefore greeted with wild acclaim. “This day is the end of our slavery, the fount of our liberty,” rhapsodized Thomas More; “the end of sadness, the beginning of joy.”

  Although More would one day join the scores of Henry’s beheaded associates, his enthusiasm for the new reign was well founded. The new monarch embodied youthful vigor and hope for the future. A true Renaissance prince, he was athletic and strong, superbly educated, an able musician, and a gifted composer. Furthermore, Henry VIII looked like a model king.

  “His Majesty is the handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on,” reported the Venetian ambassador in 1515; “above the usual height, with an extremely fine calf to his leg, his complexion very fair and bright, with auburn hair combed straight and short, in the French fashion, his throat being rather long and thick.… He speaks French, English, and Latin, and a little Italian, plays well on the lute and harpsichord, sings from book at sight, draws the bow with greater strength than any man in England, and jousts marvelously. Believe me, he is in every respect a most accomplished Prince.”

  Almost as soon as he became king, Henry married his late brother’s widow, Katherine of Aragon, who had been kept isolated and in near poverty by Henry VII after Arthur’s death. It was as much an a
ct of chivalry as it was of statecraft for the young monarch to rescue the sad princess and make her his queen. He was, he declared, “Sir Loyal Heart,” and so he would be—until Katherine failed to give him a son, and he fell in love with a black-eyed temptress by the name of Anne Boleyn.

  It was then that the dark and dangerous side of the king began to emerge. Queen Katherine was cruelly cast aside after two decades of marriage, while their daughter Mary—once Henry’s “chieftest pearl”—was decreed to be a bastard. In order to marry Anne, King Henry defied the pope and declared himself Supreme Head of the Church in England, after which a savage bloodletting began for those who dared protest the new order. Monks were hanged still in their religious robes, while the head of Thomas More was impaled on a spike atop London Bridge.

  Unfortunately for Anne Boleyn, the woman who inspired this religious revolution, the king quickly grew tired of her. She failed to give him the boy he wanted (only a daughter, Elizabeth), and, after she was falsely charged with adultery, her head was sliced off with a sword. Ten days later, Henry married wife number three, Jane Seymour, who earned the mercurial king’s eternal devotion by bearing him the son he believed to be vital for the realm’s future stability. With this prince, Henry was convinced the chaos of the Wars of the Roses would never be repeated.

  But there was still plenty of blood to be spilled.

  1

  Henry VIII (1509–1547): Up the Stairs, Pulled by an Engine

  The King was now overgrown with corpulency and fatness.

  —EDWARD HALL

  By 1540, Henry VIII had discarded his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, and beheaded his second, Anne Boleyn, on a false charge of adultery. He also married his third wife, Jane Seymour, who died right after giving Henry the son he had desired all along. Now—as the king grew monstrously obese—three more wives were in for the royal treatment.

  Henry VIII was huge; a colossus who dominated not only his era but, as he grew heavier, his horse as well. The poor beast was on the losing end of the chunky king’s decision to don his plus-sized armor, saddle up, and lead his English forces into battle against France in 1544. “It was no longer a glorious young prince who was to lead his Englishmen toward Boulogne,” wrote Antonia Fraser, “but an unwieldy invalid who had to be winched aboard his horse with his armour cut away from his swollen leg.”

  Miserable as it must have been for the horse to have the obese monarch bouncing on top of it, so much worse it was for Henry’s teenaged queen, Catherine Howard, when she found herself in the same position. Henry was pushing fifty when he married for the fifth time, a bloated tyrant with badly ulcerated legs that left the once vigorously athletic monarch largely immobile and subject to savage bouts of temper.

  “The King was now overgrown with corpulency and fatness,” reported the contemporary chronicler Edward Hall, “so that he became more and more unwieldy. He could not go up or down stairs unless he was raised up or let down by an engine.” (The Duke of Norfolk also noted that Henry “was let up and down by a device,” but there is no record of how the “engine” or “device” actually worked.)

  Only his diminutive young queen seemed to make Henry happy. He called her his “blushing rose without a thorn” and couldn’t keep his fat paws off her. “The King’s affection was so marvelously set upon that gentlewoman,” wrote Thomas Cranmer’s secretary, Ralph Morice, “as it was never known that he had the like to any woman.”

  Young Catherine had vowed at her wedding to be “bonair [yielding] and buxom in bed,” but that was no doubt difficult. King Henry was by this time so enormous that the Spanish chronicler reported “three of the biggest men that could be found could get inside his doublet.” Little wonder, then, that Catherine risked everything and took on a lover of more pleasing dimensions; a man who could make her happy. Unfortunately, it cost the young queen her head.

  Henry’s fourth wife, Catherine’s predecessor Anne of Cleves, had been spared the fifth queen’s ordeals in bed because the king never deigned to sleep with her. “I like her not,” Henry sniffed after meeting the German bride selected for him by his minister, Thomas Cromwell. It was the only politically arranged union of the king’s long marital career, and after seeing Anne, he entered into this “unendurable bargain” with extreme reluctance. “My Lord,” the king said to Cromwell on the morning of his wedding, “if it were not to satisfy the world, and my Realm, I would not do that I must this day for none earthly thing.”

  The king, who would be lusting after Catherine Howard later the same year, could not bear to consummate his marriage to Anne of Cleves. “I liked her before not well,” he said the morning after his wedding, “but now I like her much worse.” What had spared Anne the agony of Henry’s sexual advances? He claimed her breasts sagged.

  Instead of having the grunting monster flopping on top of her, as Catherine Howard would later, Anne had a much easier time of it. “When he comes to bed,” she told her ladies, “he kisses me and taketh me by the hand, and biddeth me ‘good night sweetheart’ and in the morning, kisses me, and biddeth me ‘Farewell, darling.’ ”

  Anne of Cleves had been so exceedingly sheltered growing up that she actually believed this was what married couples did in bed. Had she known better, she might have been more grateful to Catherine Howard—her former lady-in-waiting—for taking her hefty husband off her hands. Henry quickly divorced her. Fortunately for Anne, it was an amicable split and she lived comfortably for the rest of her life as the king’s “good sister.”

  Three years after marrying Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard (both in 1540), Henry wed his sixth and final wife, Katherine Parr, whose job it was to nurse and comfort the ailing king. She just barely managed to survive him. Katherine dared dispute with the king on religious matters—never a good idea—but wisely humbled herself before the headsman did.

  Henry VIII died on January 28, 1547. He was fifty-five, with a waist that measured about the same. It would take sixteen exceptionally strong yeomen of the guard to lower his enormous coffin into the tomb beneath St. George’s Chapel at Windsor.

  2

  Edward VI (1547–1553): The Boy King

  This whole realm’s most precious jewel.

  —KING HENRY VIII

  Henry VIII was succeeded by his nine-year-old son, Edward, the child upon whom the late king had placed all his hope for the future of the Tudor dynasty. Though the reign of Edward VI was brief—just six years—it was packed with intrigue.

  The little boy of nine sat without squirming throughout the seemingly endless coronation ceremony. Though tender of age, he was proclaimed not only England’s sovereign but a divinely ordained savior, “a second Josiah”* who would see “idolatry destroyed, the tyranny of the bishops of Rome banished from [his] subjects, and images removed.” Heightening the display of power and majesty, the boy king—propped up on pillows—shimmered in full royal regalia. Upon his head was a gold crown, made especially for his small size, adorned with rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and pearls. Before him bowed all the great nobles of the land, there to pay homage to the son Henry VIII had longed for, and who now claimed his inheritance as Edward VI.

  The ancient coronation ritual was believed to imbue the monarch with near mystical properties, but King Edward—God’s chosen—was still a child and incapable of ruling on his own. His brief, six-year reign would be marked by intrigue and treachery as those closest to the boy tried to gain control over him and rule England in his name. Two of the king’s uncles would lose their heads in various power struggles before Edward began to assert his own will, and, in the end, betray his own sisters.

  Henry VIII was overjoyed when his third wife, Jane Seymour, delivered a baby boy on October 12, 1537. Two thousand rounds of ammunition were fired from the Tower of London in celebration, while church bells continuously pealed all across the city. For her tremendous reproductive success, Queen Jane became Henry’s “entirely beloved,” foremost among all his wives for giving him what he wanted most: a male heir to
carry on the Tudor dynasty. The king had waited twenty-seven years for this momentous occasion, discarding two wives in the process and dissolving all ties to Rome. Given that, the death of Jane Seymour just two weeks after giving birth, while sad, was really of no consequence. It was the son who mattered, the child Henry declared to be “this whole realm’s most precious jewel.”

  “There is no less rejoicing in these parts from the birth of our Prince, whom we hungered for for so long, than there was, I trow, at the birth of St. John the Baptist,” Bishop Hugh Latimer wrote from Worcester. “God give us grace to be thankful.”

  The king became obsessed with Edward’s health and safety and issued an exacting set of instructions for the care of his miraculous offspring. The prince was to be watched constantly, his food and clothing thoroughly tested. Doctors swarmed around the child, monitoring every nuance of his health, while access was strictly limited for fear of infection. Loitering anywhere near the palace was prohibited. “If any beggar shall presume to draw near the gates,” Henry warned, “then they be appointed to be grievously punished to the example of others.”

  Despite the fastidious environment in which he was raised, Edward seems to have had a happy and robust early childhood. “My Lord Prince’s grace is in good health and merry,” reported Lady Byron, the head of Edward’s household. “His grace danced and played so wantonly that he could not stand still, and was as full of pretty toys as ever I saw in my life.”

  Edward had a carefully selected group of playmates that included his close friend and confidant Barnaby Fitzpatrick and a girl named Jane Dormer, with whom the prince seemed quite taken. “My Jane,” he called her. “His inclination and natural disposition was of great towardness to all virtuous parts and princely qualities,” Jane later wrote, “a marvelous sweet child, of very mild and generous condition.”