Some nights he hardly sleeps at all. Some days he does not get up, but hears Mass in his bed, and his advisors and councillors meet in the chamber that adjoins his bedroom, with the door open so that he can hear them speak.

I sit beside his bed and listen as they plan the future union of England with Scotland through the marriage of Lady Margaret Douglas, the king’s niece, and Matthew Stuart, a Scottish nobleman. When the Scots reject this, I listen to the advisors plan an expedition to be led by Edward Seymour and John Dudley to lay waste the border country and teach the Scots to respect their masters. I am horrified by this plan. Having lived in the North of England for so many years I know how hard life is in those hills. The balance between harvest and hunger is so carefully weighed that an invading army will cause starvation just by marching through. This cannot be the way to bring about unity with the Scots. Are we to destroy our new kingdom before we gain it?

But, silently listening from the king’s room, I begin to see how the Privy Council works, how the country reports to the lords, who report to the council, who debate before the king. Then the king decides—quite whimsically—what shall be done and the council considers how it shall be drafted into law, put before the Parliament for their consent, and imposed on the country.

The king’s advisors, those who filter all the news that he hears and draft the laws that he demands, have enormous power in this system, which depends on the judgment of one man—and that is a man in too much pain to rise out of his bed, who is frequently dazed and stupid with drugs. It is easy for them to withhold information that he should have, or cast the law in a way that suits themselves. This should give us all concern for the well-being of the country, whose destiny sits in Henry’s sweating hands. But it also gives me confidence to be regent, as I see that with good advisors I could judge just as well as the king. Almost certainly I could judge better, for Henry will suddenly bellow from his bed, “Move on! Move on!” when something bores him, or a disagreement irritates him, and he favors one policy or another depending on who presents it.

I also learn how he plays one party against another. Stephen Gardiner is his preferred advisor, always pointing out that there should be more and more restrictions on the English Bible, that it must be strictly limited to the nobility and the learned, locked-up in their private chapels, that the poor must be prosecuted if they try to read it. He never misses an opportunity to complain that men everywhere are debating the sacred Word of God as if they could understand it, as if they are equal to educated men. But just as Stephen Gardiner thinks he has won and that the Bible will never be restored to the churches, stolen forever from the very people that need it most, the king tells Anthony Denny to send for Thomas Cranmer.