A Tudor Christmas
As Christmas draws closer, historian and author of The First Horseman, Derek Wilson, reflects on a Tudor Christmas.
22 December 1536. London is en fête. Henry VIII will spend Christmas at Greenwich Palace. The Thames is frozen, so the royal cavalcade rides in sumptuous array through the capital. Such a sight has not been seen in years. ‘The streets hanged about with arras and cloth of gold, priests in their copes with their crosses and censers on one side, the citizens on the other. It rejoiced every man wondrously,’ so one eye witness described the event.
The city needed a boost. This had been one hell of a year. Many had mourned the passing of good Queen Catherine back in January but had been shocked four months later when Anne Boleyn, the ‘French whore’, had been beheaded just along the road, in the Tower of London. Those deaths had opened a Pandora’s box of woes. Agents of the king’s minister, Thomas Cromwell, had been loosed on the country pulling down monasteries and rooting up long-held beliefs and customs. Rival preachers had thundered from their pulpits – some supporting the government; others railing against ‘ungodly newfangledness’. By the autumn the people of the North had had enough. They rose in rebellion. London had been put on alert as reports arrived that a growing army of scythe-wielding peasants was marching southwards and growing ever larger. The threat was lifted when generals despatched by King Henry from the safety of his fortress at Windsor persuaded the malcontents to disperse. Scarcely had the fear of attack evaporated when a new kind of anxiety took its place. One November morning the citizenry awoke to the news that one of their leading merchants, Robert Packington, had been shot by an anonymous assassin in the middle of Cheapside. How could anyone be safe when murderous fanatics lurked within their midst? London needed the assurance of a royal ‘show’ that Christmastide.
Any who were alive to the powerful undercurrent still swirling beneath the seasonal bonhomie knew that the crisis was far from over. One such was Thomas Treviot, the young goldsmith who stood outside his Cheapside premises with his cheering, excited household. In his purse was a curt message from Thomas Cromwell demanding his attendance at Greenwich Palace on the 26th December. In his heart was a burning passion to revenge the cold-blooded murder of his friend, Robert Packington.
To find out more about D.K. Wilson’s series character, Thomas Treviot, who stars in the The First Horseman please click here.
