The Moldwarp image

The Moldwarp image turns political fear into an emblem: a dark creature said to have crawled onto the throne of England. It gives a name to suspicions about Henry VIII’s rule, while linking the danger to prophecies of dynastic reversal and to the unresolved fate of Katherine of Aragon and Princess Mary Tudor. The image recurs as rumor, visionary language, and private interpretation; it signals opposition, but does not itself establish that any prophecy will come to pass.

The creature on the throne

A rumor reaches Margaret Pole’s household that her brother Edward Plantagenet has returned from the dead and is knocking at the Tower of London. In the same story, Edward identifies the Moldwarp as a wicked, dark animal occupying the English throne. The rumor casts the king’s rule as an intrusion and imagines a coalition that might dislodge it: Charles V as a dragon, Scotland as a wolf, and Princess Mary Tudor as a lion who would defeat her father and free her mother and country. These are reported claims, not events. Margaret responds by ordering the gossip removed and forbidding further talk of lions, moles, or flaming stars. That night, however, she sees a star above the princess’s room and privately reads it as a sign of hope.

Prophecy and the language of darkness

The Moldwarp also appears in the account of Elizabeth Barton’s visions. Barton says that she has already spoken to Henry VIII and warned him that leaving his wife and marrying another woman would bring his death almost immediately after the false wedding. She describes those who reject her words as remaining in darkness and moving underground like the Moldwarp. The metaphor thus does more than condemn the king: it marks a conflict over who may claim to speak with divine authority, and whether refusal to heed a warning is itself a descent into spiritual blindness. Margaret is disturbed by Barton’s claims, but observes that the king has not changed course.

Rumor, secrecy, and royal policy

The image’s political charge persists as the king’s marriage crisis advances. In spring, Margaret receives unsigned, unsealed notes from Montague, sometimes placed at her plate, pinned to her saddle, or tucked into her jewel box. They report that the new archbishop has declared Henry’s marriage to Katherine invalid, that John Fisher has been arrested after opposing the ruling, and that Anne Boleyn is now called queen while Katherine is to be known as the Dowager Princess. The notes do not invoke the Moldwarp directly, but their clandestine form belongs to the same atmosphere of danger and suppressed speech.

At Christmas in Bisham, the metaphor returns explicitly. With the Pope dead, the question of Henry’s marital status unresolved, and the priory fearful of inspection, Margaret’s household avoids staging stories about the king, the queen, or the Pope. People no longer know what is true or treasonous, and the customary disorder of the Lord of Misrule seems to have overtaken public life. Some say the king is advised by the Moldwarp in dark and forbidden deeds. Meanwhile, Katherine is far away and faces execution, while Anne’s failure to produce a son is read by those around Margaret as evidence that divine favor has deserted her. The image condenses these judgments into an accusation of concealed, corrupt counsel.

The curse and the vulnerable king

The surrounding narrative gives the metaphor further resonance through repeated failures of succession and Henry’s own language of a curse. When a newborn son dies, Margaret describes the loss as if an old curse has ended the line that killed the princes of York. Later, after Henry FitzRoy’s death, Henry asks whether a curse explains why he has lost those he loves and become miserable. These scenes do not name the Moldwarp, but they connect its imagery of a dark power on the throne with the bodily fragility on which dynastic rule depends. Against the king’s increasingly imperial claim to be addressed as Majesty, the image offers a hostile counter-portrait: not a divinely secured ruler, but a mortal sovereign whose authority is shadowed by grief, contested legitimacy, and fear of what comes next.