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I think that the executions of Sir Nicholas Carew, & of Sir Edward Neville, Henry's "lookalike" cousin, bothers me more about Henry's state of mind than even that of the queens. I mean, even today we have what they like to call "crimes of passion", where a volatile marriage or relationship ends tragically, but Carew was raised with Henry since they were practically kindergartners, & Neville was a blood relative to whom the king was close for many years. We're talking close to 4 decades of friendship & male bonding here. Wenches come & go, but your best buds are your best buds, forever. What kind of place was Henry's head in by 1538-9 for him to be able to do this to these gentlemen, numbered among his "closest friends"?  For those of you who may not be familiar with these executions, Neville was charged with high treason for "promoting the interests of Cardinal Reginald Pole", while Carew went down for supposed involvement in the "Exeter Conspiracy", in which Henry Courtnenay, Marquess of Exeter, allegedly masterminded a plot (uncovered by Cromwell) to hurl Henry off the throne. (Sidebar to this is that the Edward Courtenay who was "the last Yorkist" & touted as a possible husband for both Mary & Elizabeth before also losing his head was Exeter's son, arrested at the age of 11 along with his father, & grew up in the Tower; again, doesn't say much for Henry's mental state to do this to a young child, either.) |
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After I got through shaking my fist at The Tudors , I decided I was going to try my hand at some Tudor fiction that was actually historically accurate  (take THAT, Showtime & Philippa Gregory!) Nicholas Carew inadvertantly became a major character in it (some of them just seem to have a life of their own & want to run away with the story  ) & so I did some industrious research on him. I was absolutely appalled to find out what his fate was at Henry's hands (having grown to enjoy his fictional incarnation greatly). Carew's manor at Beddington Park, Suffolk, was not far from Exeter's estate at West Horsely. If memory serves me, I think the "evidence" was something along the lines of Carew having "frequently" exchanged visits with Exeter, conversing about "changing the world", & that the pair were "known" to have also exchanged letters but none could be found. Pretty slim shite there for an arrest! Carew was indicted on Valentine's Day (aw, Henry, have a  ) 1539 & separated from his head within three weeks. There's differing historical opinion on why Henry decided to growl OFF WITH HIS HEAD at pretty much his oldest friend. Carew was a hellraiser in his youth at Court; the Original Tudor Bad Boy, if you will (before Henry himself & later Jonathan Rhys-Myers took prizes in it). Wolsey supposedly despised him for being "a bad influence" on the young king (this despite Nick there being five years Henry's junior). Carew was sent down from Court on numerous occasions; once the Privy Council voted to get him out of England entirely & banished him to Calais to serve with his father, Sir Richard Carew, who was a vice-lieutenant there. Wolsey finally got him out of the privy chamber in the Eltham Ordinances purge, but Carew squeaked back in again posthaste. There was much criticism of Carew as being "overly familiar" with the king & he was known to run off at the mouth when wiser men would have bit their tongues bloody. Chapuys seemed to think Carew was done away with to deprive Mary of one of her principal supporters. Though Carew had carried the baptismal font at Edward's christening barely a year earlier, he'd apparently brought up in Privy Council the notion of declaring Mary to be heir presumptive in the event of Edward's demise. Carew was also known to be "conservative" in religious matters, & perhaps Cromwell, who was of a more radical bent, wanted this pesky flea out of range of Henry's ear. It's suggested it could even have been simple greed, as after Carew's execution Henry took the Beddington Park property for his own privy use (this is where he & JS made cozy while AB was being tried & killed off) instead of parceling it out to some sycophantic courtier (for example, Carew got a nice chunk of Buckingham's estates after that beheading). I'm not sure which of these hypotheses I buy, it just seems to me that Henry was almost eager to believe the worst of people, even if they were loved ones, & quick to think there was all sorts of treason going on behind his back even when there wasn't. If Henry was sick of not having the royal arse licked by Carew with any real credulity, there was 36 years to get rid of him in a lot less permanent fashion. If Carew supported Mary, so what? By this point in time she'd already made her submission to Henry, & while she was removed from the succession by the Act of 1534, Henry reinstated her anyway in the Act of 1543. If Carew was a closet Catholic, plenty of nobles were, & Henry changed virtually nothing in terms of worship, so that was pretty parallel to the king's own views. Edward was not known to be in severe ill-health until his own reign, so why worry about religious reform under the father when it could (& was) done under the son? Greed is just stupid, as all Henry had to do was say GIMMEE & people said OK (such as Wolsey did with York Place). Neville & Exeter, being Plantagenets, I can see Henry's concern for Edward's accession being a smooth one; he'd been in worsening health since he got rid of AB ( maybe she WAS a witch ROFL) & while he may have hoped to live to see his son grow to manhood, maybe he knew in his heart it wasn't likely to happen. But Carew I can't get my head around, as he was not of the blood royal & his proposal of Mary was ONLY in the event Edward predeceased Henry. All I know is, were I Nick Carew on that cold, loveless Valentine's Day, I'd be mighty pissed at 36 years of faithful friendship counting for naught. Can you imagine him sitting there in his Tower room thinking: Ha, ha, Hal! Good joke! Scared the shite outta me! Message received: engage brain before addressing king. Got it! Can I go home now, Hal? Hey....Hal....wait just a deuced minute here! We're pals! We go way back! We drank, we diced, we wenched, we partied until we puked! You cannot be bloody serious....can you? I'm not feeling the love, Hal! C'mon! Lemmee outta here! It just seems like Henry perpetrated the ultimate betrayal of friendship on Carew. Well, anyway, now I've got close to 200,000 words that were going along swimmingly historically accurate until Nicholas Carew demanded to be a major player in my Tudor tale I shall have to do a disclaimer now ROFL as I took a leaf from Kira's book in the other thread & I let him have a do-over on his life & let him escape the axe |
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