Eminent Henrician, Part II: Thomas Wriothesley, First Earl of Southampton

Meanwhile Wriothesley was always away, earning his reward the hard way by his incessant labours for the King and Cromwell. In this same autumn of 1538 he was sent as ambassador to Charles V’s sister ruling in the Netherlands to ask for the hand of the Duchess of Milan for Henry. This was Christina of Denmark, whom we see in Holbein’s famous portrait. After the death of Jane Seymour Henry was in need of a new wife, but he needed even more to head off the rapprochement between Charles V and Francis I, which might mean a coalition against England. To help to achieve these objectives was Wriothesley’s new assignment, with Vaughan for colleague. They had some difficulty in getting a sight of the Duchess; but when they did they found her “a goodly personage, of stature higher than either of us and competently fair, but very well favoured, a little brown.”¹ The ambassadors were kept kicking their heels several months, during which Wriothesley was often ill of his “old enemy,” a quartan fever. I think this means that he was a consumptive, and he was only forty-five when he died. He got through a great deal of life in his short time.