Thomas Howard (1473 – ) is one of the most prominent English noblemen of our age. A close companion to the king, his nephew via Howard’s first marriage. Thomas Howard is also the uncle of Anne Boleyn.
“You are almost sixty when this story begins, with the vigour of a man half your age; you run on rage. Your grandfather was on the wrong side the Battle of Bosworth, and your family lost the dukedom. Your father regained the favour of Henry VII, annihilated the Scots at the Battle of Flodden, and got the title back. And you expect a battle every day, and are always armed for one, visibly or not.”
Hilary Mantel, notes on characters
The story so far…
Week 1: Across the Narrow Sea / Paternity
The Duke of Norfolk is Thomas Wolsey’s greatest enemy at court. Wolsey, the lowly son of a butcher, has displaced Howard as the king’s most important advisor. Here we learn that Howard suspects the cardinal of sorcery.
Week 2: At Austin Friars / Visitation
Norfolk has a silent part in this week’s events, accompanying that other “vengeful grandee”, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. They are taking great pleasure in turfing out their enemy Cardinal Wolsey.
Week 3: An Occult History of Britain (Part 1)
Back at the beginning of the decade, Wolsey suspects Norfolk’s hand in Boleyn’s attempts to put his daughters close to the throne. Thomas Boleyn is married to a Howard. “I should be sorry to hear the Duke of Norfolk was apprised of this: oh, very sorry indeed,” says Wolsey to Thomas Boleyn.
Week 4: An Occult History of Britain (Part 2)
In Autumn 1528, Uncle Norfolk is scheming with the Boleyns to bring down the cardinal. When Lady Carey suggests marrying Cromwell, Rafe imagines what Norfolk would do: “He would come around and set fire to our house.” In 1529, charges have been made against Wolsey and Norfolk comes knocking at Wolsey’s house. Before leaving, he tells Cromwell to “come and see me”.
Week 5: Make or Mar / Three-Card Trick
Thomas Howard can’t abide lawyers, or anyone who spends their time reading and writing. He expects Cromwell to follow his instructions in Parliament and warns him the king will want to talk to him about his past behaviour, speaking out against the war. “Damn it all, Cromwell, why are you such a … person? It isn’t as if you could afford to be.”
Norfolk and Suffolk pick the bones of the Wolsey household, taking the best men under their roofs. “Nothing is more malcontent than a masterless man”, says Norfolk. And he covets Wolsey brilliant lawyer in black.
The king finds himself poorly served by an “ignorant” Norfolk and Brandon with his “annoying laugh”. Fearing Henry will recall Wolsey, Norfolk tells Cromwell that the cardinal must go north. “Or – and tell him this – I will come where he is, and I will tear him with my teeth.”
‘My lord.’ He bows. ‘May I substitute the word “bite”?
Norfolk approaches him. He stands far too close. His eyes are bloodshot. Every sinew is jumping. He says, ‘Substitute nothing, you misbegotten –’ The duke stabs a forefinger into his shoulder. ‘You … person,’ he says; and again, ‘you nobody from Hell, you whore-spawn, you cluster of evil, you lawyer.’
Week 6: Entirely Beloved Cromwell (Part 1)
Norfolk: The cardinal has “eaten the dinner that would have fed all England. He’s filched the tablecloth, by God, and drunk the cellar dry.”
Cromwell asks Norfolk to take him to the king. And when they are in his royal presence, Howard is dismissed. That must have hurt.
There is a suspicion that Norfolk’s grandfather had a part to play in the deaths of the Princes in the Tower, back in the evil days of Richard III. Howard’s friend Thomas More is busy writing a book about those black days, saying the Howards had nothing to do with it.
Week 7: Entirely Beloved Cromwell (Part 2)
‘The people?’ Norfolk says. ‘They’d cheer a Barbary ape. Who cares what they cheer? Hang ‘em all.’
‘But then who will you tax?’ he says, and Norfolk looks at him fearfully, unsure if he’s made a joke.
Hang the people, but save Wolsey for my dinner: “I will chew him up, bones, flesh and gristle.” Norfolk looks like he’s getting ready for battle. But he doesn’t want to fight Cromwell, who he wishes worked for him. Come to my house and talk to my lady wife, he says. Explain to her why I must keep my mistress under the same roof.
In August, Norfolk and Gardiner can be seen with their heads together. It can mean nothing good.
In November, Norfolk is unhappy because his niece is still not queen, and the cardinal is still at large. The king has no heirs, he contends. Ruling out Richmond, Henry’s illegitimate son. And Mary, “that little shrimp”. Norfolk says time is running out, and “this has gone beyond paper”. He sounds like he preparing for war.
Week 10: 'Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?' (Part 1)
“Oh, by the thrice-beshitten shroud of Lazarus!”
I think we will leave it at that.
Week 11: 'Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?' (Part 2) / Early Mass
Norfolk is punching nuns and dancing with nieces this week. Well almost. At Canterbury, he raises his fist against Elizabeth Barton, ordering that they “drag her back to her whorehouse, before she feels this.” On the journey over the Narrow Sea, Cromwell entertains Henry by suggesting Norfolk needs some lessons in courtly behaviour. And, did you know he curls his hair and plucks his eyebrows?
In Calais, he intervenes to get King Francis’s paws of Lady Anne, taking her away for a dance. “Dance they do, though it bears no relation to any dance seen in any hall before this. On the duke’s part, a thundering with demon hooves; on her part, a blanches caper, one arm held like a broken wing.”
Week 13: Anna Regina (Part 2)
Norfolk is in France on the king’s business, so she misses his niece’s coronation. But he is being called back and replaced with Stephen Gardiner.
Week 14: Devil’s Spit / A Painter’s Eye
Norfolk has his own view of the queen’s friends. He rattles a little while he expresses it, his relics clinking, his grey disordered eyebrows working over wide-open eyes. These men, he says, these men who hang around with women! Norris, I thought better of him! And Henry Wyatt’s son! Writing verse. Singing. Talk-talk-talking. ‘What’s the use of talking to women?’ he asks earnestly. ‘Cromwell, you don’t talk to women, do you? I mean, what would be the topic? what would you find to say?’
Week 15: Supremacy
Norfolk at Westminster, drunk and in a temper. He suggests begging the king to take Thomas More’s name out of the attainder. He calls Henry weak for caring what More thinks of him.
When they get down on their knees before the king, he needs Cromwell and Audley to lift him back up. The lawyers discuss More’s fate and those of his children: “Oh, you lawyers! On the day I go down, who will look after me?”
Henry VIII: “My lord Norfolk says you enjoy being low-born. He says you have devised it so, to torment him.”
Week 16: The Map of Christendom (Part 1)
The Duke of Norfolk still has serfs on his land, and even if the law courts move to free them the duke expects a fee from it. The king proposes to send Norfolk to Ireland, but he says he’s spent enough futile months over there and the only way he’ll go back is if they build a bridge so he can get home at the end of the week without getting his feet wet.
With Jane Seymour, Cromwell admits to calling Howard, Uncle Norfolk.
“I shall think of that when I am in the country and have nothing to amuse me. And then does he say, dear nephew Cromwell?”
Week 17: The Map of Christendom (Part 2) / To Wolf Hall
The Duke of Norfolk visits a sick Cromwell to moan about his own ailments, give the heretic a medal and march off, muttering: “I thought he was nearly dead!”
Norfolk is hauled up from the country to see the Charterhouse monks disembowelled by the law. “One of the monks spoke when his heart was out,” says Norfolk. Cromwell lets Norfolk believe he has experience of pulling hearts out of dying men.
Norfolk mismanaged the trial of Lord Dacre, so he doesn’t want to mess up More. Still, he almost forgets to let the prisoner speak at the end.