Free Henry VIII by Alison Weir Page A

his plans were never carried out. The Savoy Chapel, like Westminster Abbey a royal peculiar, was completed in 1517 (it has since been rebuilt).
    Henry VIII was “a perfect builder of pleasant palaces,” 16 “the only phoenix of his time for fine and curious masonry.” 17 Such palaces “as he erected (for he was nothing inferior in this trade to Hadrian the Emperor and Justinian the Lawgiver), wrote sixteenth-century topographer William Harrison, “excel all the rest that he found standing in this realm; they are a perpetual precedent unto those that come after. Certes, masonry did never better flourish in England than in his time.” 18
    Henry was very interested in architecture and open to new ideas. There were no architects as such in those days, and most property owners designed their own houses with help from surveyors, master masons, and “masters of the works.” 19 Henry appointed an Italian, John of Padua, to be deviser of his buildings at a wage of 2s a day, but it is clear that John was just one of many experts who had a hand in designing the palaces. Several other master craftsmen were employed by the King; they were provided with drawing offices at all the main royal building sites, notably Greenwich, Whitehall, and Hampton Court. 20 Henry could draw up his own very competent building plans. He kept such plans and drawing instruments—scissors, compasses, drawing irons, and a steel pen—in his closet at Greenwich, 21 and he would often ask for plans or reports while a house was being built. 22 Sometimes Henry would visit a site to inspect work in progress, and he was active in managing the workforce. Any workman, be he carpenter, mason, plumber, or labourer, could be impressed to work for the King at any time, even if he was engaged upon another project.
    The King was a demanding employer. He was impatient to see his houses finished, and he often insisted that the men worked through the night by candlelight in order to keep to the punishing schedule he set. He had canvas tents erected over the scaffolding so that work could continue during bad weather. 23 Once, at midnight, he provided beer, bread, and cheese to labourers standing deep in mud, digging foundations in wet weather. 24
    During the second half of his reign Henry was to embark on an extravagant programme of building and acquiring property: some of his houses came via Acts of Attainder (which confiscated a traitor’s property), exchange, or the Dissolution of the Monasteries, while most he purchased. When he died he owned more than seventy residences, on which he had spent over £170,000 (£51 million). 25 A huge share of this money had paid for repairs and maintenance. 26
    Henry’s houses were built essentially in the English late Perpendicular style with Burgundian-influenced embellishments, such as the use of brick or terracotta. Before long, the impact of the Italian Renaissance would manifest itself in “antique” ornamental motifs. The chief distinguishing features of the Tudor palace were the multi-storeyed gatehouse with crenellated turrets, bay windows with stone mullions, and tall chimney pots. Most were constructed on a courtyard, or multi-court, plan, like the Burgundian palaces. Glass was still mainly to be seen in well-to-do homes and churches: the proliferation of windows with decorated and stained glass in the King’s houses proclaimed his wealth and exalted status.
    Every palace was lavishly adorned with the royal arms, heraldic badges, initials, mottos, and other emblems in stone, terracotta, glass, and paint, in the manner of the period: on the exterior, these were to be seen above doorways, on walls and weather-vanes, and in windows. This was the great age of decorated glass; hardly any survives from Henry’s palaces, but the evidence suggests that figural glass was restricted to the chapels and heraldic glass was used for the other rooms.
    These motifs recurred in