Thomas Howard
Duke of Norfolk
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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.
Week 22: The Black Book (Part 1)
When Henry falls from his horse, Norfolk delivers the news to Anne.
Uncle Norfolk, lurched down by the corpse for a quick prayer, has stumbled up again. 'No, no, no,' he is saying. 'No woman with a big belly. Such cannot rule. Anne cannot rule. Me, me, me.'
Norfolk comes at him like ‘a maddened wasp’ and Cromwell bats him away. Later, he and Fitzwilliam will recall that moment, Howard shouting, ‘Me, me, me!’
Week 23: The Black Book (Part 2)
Cromwell and Cranmer invite Norfolk to supper at Lambeth Palace. He brings his ‘peculiar son’ Surrey, who he chastises throughout proceedings. ‘He fears no one alive except Henry Tudor… but he fears the dead.’ In Cromwell’s imagination, he invites Norfolk to a dinner for the butchery of the Boleyns.
Week 24: The Black Book (Part 3)
Norfolk sits at the head of the table, hungry. He complains when Chapuys comes in, ‘now must we speak French?’
Week 26: Master of Phantoms (Part 2/5)
The day they arrest his niece, Norfolk is triumphant, flourishing the warrant. He tells Anne that Cromwell made her, ‘And be sure he repents him of it.’
In the barge to the Tower, he tells Anne that ‘A bishop would spit on you,’ and he suggests drowning her in the Thames. He insists on the cannon being fired to announce her arrest to London.
Afterwards, he tells Cromwell he must see the king. Cromwell refuses, and an angry Howard responds: ‘If I say I need to see the Tudor, no blacksmith’s boy will say me nay.’ In a giddy mood, the councillors joke that this blacksmith’s boy will weld Uncle Norfolk out of shape.
He thinks, you must laugh, Thomas Howard, you must laugh or burst into flames: which will it be? if you combust we can at least throw water on you. With a spasm, a shudder, the duke turns his back on them to master himself: 'Tell Henry,' he says. 'Tell him I renounce the wench. Tell him I no longer call her niece.'
Week 28: Master of Phantoms (Part 4/5)
Norfolk presides over the trial of Brereton, Weston, Smeaton and Norris.
Week 29: The Book of Phantoms (Part 5/5) / Spoils
Uncle Norfolk oversees his niece’s trial. He is the only one who can look at her: ‘as if her head were not Medusa’s head.’ He reads out the sentence and causes a commotion. First, because he is her own uncle. Second, because the lawyers believe he has done it wrong. But Cromwell defends Norfolk’s wording, which is the king’s pleasure: ‘Thou shalt be burned here, within the Tower, or else to have thy head smitten off.’
Week 30: Wreckage (I)
Thomas Howard is too friendly with Cromwell at the beheading brunch. Gregory is too forward with his questions, asking whether Norfolk is too cold and why he thinks Katherine was an obedient wife to Henry Tudor. He listens to Gregory’s story making fun of Charles Brandon with some relish and declares his loyalty to the Tudor with conspicuous vigour. Later, Call-Me tells Cromwell that Norfolk is pressing for Richmond to be Henry’s heir.
Week 32: Salvage (Part 2/3)
Norfolk goes to see Mary and complains to Cromwell ‘of a fool’s errand.’ Tom Truth, his half-brother, is with him: ‘What brings you out, boy, crawling from under some trull’s skirt?’
'An idly generation.' Norfolk sucks his lip. 'Naught but riddles and games.' 'What would your lordship like instead?' the young man says. 'A war?'
Week 33: Salvage (Part 3/3)
Norfolk rides up to Hunsdon with Cromwell and Suffolk. Lady Shelton reminds him and everyone of his rage when he was last there and the damage he did to the furnishings. On the way back, he rides ahead with his people. Brandon and Cromwell ride behind, and the Howards are ‘twitching… They want to know what we are talking about.’
Week 36: Augmentation
Norfolk takes Gregory hunting during the summer. In autumn, he learns that the imperial ambassador has resumed his pension. He recognises that Cromwell has done him a service.
Week 37: The Five Wounds
Chapuys on Norfolk: ‘He is chafing to be at the rebels. Any glory going, he wants to get it. He wants to slaughter somebody, even if it’s only tanners and plumbers. He is in high spirits, I hear. He thinks this affair will bring you down.’
Cromwell goes to Lambeth to pour cold water on those spirits, telling Norfolk that he is not needed, and Suffolk will be sent into the field. He is outraged and threatens to ride to Windsor to talk to Henry himself.
Cromwell raises the issue of Norfolk’s wife, which leads to a confrontation between Norfolk and Rafe Sadler.
Week 42: The Image of the King (Part 2/2) / Broken on the Body
Norfolk writes to the king on behalf of his son, the Earl of Surrey, under punishment of amputation for drawing blood at court. Henry says ‘He thinks me your minion, my lord Privy Seal.’ Surrey had told Cromwell that his father ‘could be king of the north … But witness his loyalty.’
When Henry’s son is born, Norfolk is back at court: ‘Then the duke grins around the company with his yellow teeth: masters, you see my exile is over? The birth will reconcile all quarrels.’
He writes to Cromwell on the news of Jane’s death, praying that Cromwell come early ‘to comfort our good master.’
Week 43: Nonsuch
Norfolk puts pressure on Cromwell to convince Henry to remarry. ‘Say I offer fatherly comfort and counsel.’ Henry says, ‘Let us hope I turn out better than young Surrey.’ Norfolk keeps a short rein on his spidery son. ‘Uncle Norfolk wants a Frenchwoman,’ Cromwell tells Lady Rochford. And Norfolk insists that Henry will not marry ‘some gospeller’s daughter’ for he is an emperor and must marry according to his rank.
In Yorkshire, a woman begins a black fast to waste the king’s body and the body of the Duke of Norfolk. ‘When the duke hears this he will be spurring north to hang Brigge in person. The king has flesh enough to see out any widow, but Norfolk has not an ounce to spare.’
Richard Cromwell tells his uncle that the king is spending more time with Norfolk while he is away and that Norfolk is ‘linking arms with the Frenchman,’ the ambassador Castillon.
Week 46: Ascension Day (Part 1/2)
Norfolk goes north, ‘to stamp out sedition where the king’s writ is weakest.’ Cromwell tells him to take his time. Norfolk tells Cromwell he need not address him as ‘your grace.’ He suspects the king has had words.
But, he thinks, I won't start calling you Tom. He never sees the duke with a sword at his side, without imagining himself run through. 'Beg pardon, Lord Cromwell, was that your heart?'
Under Cromwell’s new plans, unemployed dukes and earls lose precedence. It is Howard’s job as Lord Treasurer that counts, not his ancient blood.
Week 47: Ascension Day (Part 2/2)
In the House of Lords, Norfolk ‘crusades’ for the Six Articles, ‘though he knows as much theology as a gatepost.’
At Lambeth Palace, Norfolk rants about Cardinal Wolsey. Cromwell takes offence and assults him. ‘For shame, Thomas,’ says Cranmer, ‘he’s an old man.’ He drops the duke, who swears ‘a horrible oath like a gunner.’
Week 48: Twelfth Night
After the bust-up at the banquet, Cromwell and Norfolk make peace and shake hands like Christians. ‘Though he is not sure Norfolk is even a Christian.’ When they talk of Anna’s lack of English and French, Norfolk muses that he doesn’t know what to talk to women about. He suggests sending his son Surrey to Cleves to seal the deal. He is rebuked, but meanwhile, he has his young female relatives placed close to the new queen.
Week 49: Magnificence (Part 1/2)
Norfolk escorts Anna of Cleves through Rochester as she progresses to Greenwich and Blackheath. After the calamitous meeting between Henry and Anna, Thomas Howard comes to council ‘bright-eyed, as if there were something to celebrate.’ At the wedding, he dances with his niece, Katherine. He even cracks a joke of a sort, and ‘laughs with pure delight.’