In his last years his suspiciousness intensified, to the extent that at the time of his death he was considered by many to be the tyrant of England. He had withdrawn further into the private world of majesty. Disturbed by the knowledge that senior members of his household had colluded with Perkin Warbeck, in an attempt to restore the Yorkist dynasty, the king decided to set himself apart from those who had customarily surrounded him. He created a Privy Chamber to which only his intimates had access. He lived and worked in a private set of chambers, secluded from the more open reception rooms of the Great Chamber and the Presence Chamber; now he could truly maintain his distance and, of course, keep his secrets. The royal household of the medieval period, established largely upon the retinue of men-at-arms surrounding the king and sharing his activities, was finally supplanted by the idea of a private court administered by servants and royal officials. In the last thirteen years of his reign he summoned only one parliament, in 1504.
Yet he maintained the magnificence of his court; as befitted a great king, jousts and processions and tournaments were organized on a grand scale. Tumblers and dancers were brought before him; he purchased or was given animals for the royal menagerie, and he liked to parade ‘freaks’ for the benefit of the courtiers. The king enjoyed gambling, too, and played card games such as Torment, Condemnation and Who Wins Loses. He liked to hawk and to hunt every day, and five falconers were enrolled in his entourage. He seems particularly to have enjoyed the company of ‘fools’ or jesters; at least five of them could be found in court at any one time, including Scot and Dick ‘the master fools’ and Ringeley ‘the abbot of misrule’.
Medieval humour is now perhaps an arcane subject. One phrase became a catchword in the fourteenth century. ‘As Hendyng says’ or ‘quoth Hendyng’ was a way of encapsulating a piece of wit or wisdom. ‘Friendless are the dead, quoth Hendyng’ or ‘never tell your foe that your foot aches, quod Hendyng’ or ‘Hendyng says, better to give an apple than to eat an apple’ were repeated in street and field.
Many jokes or puzzles were posed, and a game of question-and-answer was called ‘Puzzled Balthasar’. What is the broadest water and the least danger to walk over? The dew. What is the cleanest leaf among all other leaves? The holly leaf, for nobody will wipe his arse with it. How many calves’ tails can reach from the earth to the sky? No more than one, if it is long enough. What is the best thing and the worst thing among men? Word is both best and worst. What thing is it that some love and some hate? It is judgment.
A thousand proverbs and sayings rose into the air:
Who can give more heat to the fire, or joy to heaven, or pain to hell?
A ring upon a nun is like a ring in a sow’s nose.
Your best friend is still alive. Who is that? You.
The sun is none the worse for shining on a dunghill.
He must needs swim that is borne up to the chin.
An hour’s cold will suck out seven years of heat.
The last sentence is redolent of the entire medieval period.
In the quieter times the king worked with his advisers undisturbed. Two of the most prominent of them, Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, were set to harry and to prosecute the great ones of the realm. They dominated a small committee, called the Council Learned in the Law, specifically established to enforce the king’s rights and to collect the king’s debts. But they also had more informal ways of proceeding. If the eminent families spent little, and made no outward show, then they could spare a present of money to the king; if they spent lavishly, and lived in style, then they could afford to share their magnificence with the king. This was the ‘fork’ upon which the king impaled his victims.
Empson and Dudley also imposed fines or bonds upon the members of the nobility who had in any way breached the law. The earl of Northumberland was fined £5,000 for unlawful retaining. Lord Abergavenny was fined £70,000 for the same offence; Henry collected only £5,000 of that enormous sum, with the threat of seizing the rest if the lord did not behave satisfactorily. Anyone could be accused before a judge and, if he did not answer the summons, his goods could be confiscated and the presumed guilty party imprisoned at the king’s pleasure. Thus did the king buy the obedience of those mightier subjects whom he did not trust. But he could not purchase their loyalty. He was feared by all, but he was not loved or admired by many. ‘All things’, wrote Thomas More of the king’s reign, ‘were so covertly demeaned, one thing pretended and another meant.’
