Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession

by Alison Weir

  The Nun herself and four of her acolytes were attainted for high treason. But the piece of legislation that meant the most to Anne was the Act that vested the succession to the crown of England in her children by Henry. Better still, this new Act required all the King’s subjects, if so commanded, to swear an oath acknowledging Queen Anne as the King’s lawful wife and the Princess Elizabeth as his legitimate heir. Those refusing to swear would be accounted guilty of abetting treason and sent to prison.

  The prospect of her enemies being forced to acknowledge her calmed Anne’s nerves. But on a sunny day in early April, Henry burst into her chamber.

  “That whoreson Pope!” he spluttered, seething with fury. He looked so puce in the face she feared he might have an apoplexy. Rising quickly from her curtsey, she made him sit in the chair she had vacated.

  “What has he done?” she asked.

  Henry looked ill. “The French ambassador has just informed me that Clement has found for Katherine. He said that our marriage always had been, and still stands, firm and lawful, and Mary is its legitimate issue.”

  Anne felt sick. This judgment might rally many waverers to Katherine and her daughter, and the Emperor might now decide that making war in his aunt’s cause was worthier than crushing the Turks. The Act of Succession had been passed not a moment too soon.

  “But he has ignored all the determinations of the universities!” she exclaimed. “Plainly the opinions of the finest minds in Europe are of no consequence to him. He is a disgrace to his office, and should be defrocked!”

  Henry nodded in vehement agreement. “He has ordered me to resume cohabitation at once with Katherine. I’m to hold and maintain her as becomes a loving husband and my kingly honor. If I refuse, I will be excommunicated. And—this is the final insult—I am to pay the costs of the case!”

  He was visibly shaken, and Anne realized that even after all he had done to break with Rome, he had been hoping, right up until the last minute, that the breach could be healed. But Clement, by this judgment, had wrecked all hope of that. If England was in schism, it was the Pope’s fault.

  “This was a political decision,” she said.

  “Aye, but that’s been Clement’s approach these seven long years. He cares not a fig for the Scriptures, or the theologians, who are far more learned in these matters than he is. But he shall rue the day he gave this judgment. The sentence of this Bishop of Rome no longer carries any weight in England. I will have sermons preached in every church in the land declaring his perfidy.”

  The order went out. On Easter Day, congregations all over England were informed of the wickedness of Pope Clement, and true subjects were commanded to pray every week for King Henry VIII as being, next unto God, the only and Supreme Head of the Church, and Anne his wife, and Elizabeth their Princess. It did not prevent public celebrations being held in some places in anticipation of Katherine’s expected return to favor.

  Henry now sent out commissioners to all parts of the realm to administer the new oath upholding the Act of Succession to all who held public office and anyone else whose loyalty was in question. Anne was tense, waiting for reports of disaffection to come pouring in, but her fears were soon allayed, because most people, even members of the religious orders, were swearing it without demur. Only a few refused. She was not surprised to hear that Bishop Fisher, whose sentence had been commuted to a fine, was among them—and Sir Thomas More. He had refused the oath twice, and no amount of pressure could persuade him to say why.

  Henry was deeply hurt. “I accounted him my friend,” he said. “This will go against me with the people because he is so universally respected. My commissioners advise that he should be left alone.”

  “You mean they would collude in his breaking the law?” Anne was amazed. “Henry, this man should be made an example of. If others see him defying you and getting away with it, they will refuse the oath too.”

  Henry had his head in his hands. “How can I proceed against More? I have loved him, Anne. And I would bring much hatred on myself by punishing him.”

  “Whatever he is, he should not be exempt from your laws. By allowing it, you undermine the oath and the Act and our marriage.”

  “Very well,” Henry capitulated. “I will have the oath put to him again.”

  —

  He sent More to the Tower for defying him a third time. Anne had not thought him capable of it, but he surprised her. She suspected he had done it as much for fear of her reaction if he had not, as out of anger and righteousness. He would not risk upsetting her while she carried his child.

  As Henry had predicted, there was much murmuring at More’s imprisonment, which would no doubt soon reverberate all over Europe. And there was a lot more murmuring when the Nun of Kent and her associates were drawn on hurdles to the gallows at Tyburn, where, before huge crowds, she was hanged until dead, then beheaded, and the men suffered the horrors of a traitor’s death: hanging, drawing, and quartering. Theirs, Anne realized, was the first blood that had been spilled on her account. Well, it would serve as an example to the people, and a warning that they must obey their King or it would go worse for them.

  —

  Cromwell, she was aware, was becoming very powerful. That April he was advanced to the office of Principal Secretary to the King. He had risen above everyone except herself, and had more credit with his master than ever the Cardinal had.

  “There is now no one who does anything except Cromwell,” George said, sitting with Anne in the window seat in her chamber. “He is become the most influential of the King’s ministers. You had best watch out, sister.”

  “Henry heeds me more than he heeds Cromwell,” she insisted, but her brother’s words had chilled her. What would happen if she bore another daughter? Would Cromwell creep closer into the King’s counsels and oust her? He could prove a formidable rival. “Cromwell is on our side,” she declared. “He is still my man, and we owe much to him for implementing the changes Henry has made and promoting the royal supremacy.”

  George frowned. “I’m just asking you to be watchful. This man thrives on power. He controls access to the King. He uses a host of paid informers and grateful clients anxious to do him service. Knowledge is power, Anne, and Cromwell has seen to it that he occupies a position of enormous influence. He could try to undermine you.”

  “Henry would not let him,” she assured him. “He doesn’t love Cromwell as he loved Wolsey. And Cromwell and I share common aims. We both support reform and the King’s supremacy.”

  “Well, just make sure that you keep him on your side,” George warned. “He’s already unhappy with what Brereton did.”

  Brereton had accused a man of killing one of his Welsh retainers, but when a court in London acquitted the fellow, Brereton had taken matters into his own hands and hanged him.

  “Master Secretary is most put out, with Brereton, and apparently with you. Father heard him say it was done out of sheer malice, and that he had liked the man and tried to save him.”

  “Brereton says he was a villain,” Anne replied. “He told me how justice had failed him, and I authorized him to have the fellow rearrested and re-tried.”

  “That explains why Cromwell mentioned your name.”

  “Well, he’ll have to get over it,” she said. “Justice has now been done.”

  Norris joined them, lute in hand.

  “I hear you are to be congratulated,” George said, clapping him on the back. “Keeper of the King’s Privy Purse and Master of the Hart, Hounds and Hawks! And Black Rod in the Parliament House.”

  “It is thanks only to the gracious favor of your Grace and the King,” Norris protested. “I fear I am not worthy of your goodness to me.”

  “Nonsense!” Anne smiled. “The King loves you as he loves no other man. And I—I have every confidence in you.”

  Norris went down on one knee, took her hand, and kissed it. “I am blessed to serve such a loving mistress,” he declared fervently.

  Anne drew her ha
nd away. She had seen George looking at them curiously.

  —

  “Mary is ill,” Henry said, arriving late for supper. “Chapuys has begged me to let her go to her mother, but I do not trust him—or them. Don’t say anything, Anne—I would never consent to it. Cromwell recommends that I send my own physician to Mary.”

  Pray God that this child is a son, Anne was beseeching inwardly, as she sat down at the table and her napkin was placed over her shoulder. Until she had borne a prince, she would feel—and, indeed, be—insecure on her throne. In her most desperate moments, in the still watches of the night, she fretted that Henry would cease to love her if she gave him another daughter. Her worst nightmare was that he would heed the Pope’s sentence and return to Katherine.

  A few days later, news came that Mary had recovered from her illness, and Anne could not stop herself from thinking it would have been better if Mary had died, and her mother, too. It would resolve everything.

  Henry was considering making a state visit to France. She would not be accompanying him, because of her condition, but that suited her perfectly.

  “If Mary is taken ill while he’s away, I’ll not be sending my own physician,” she told George when they were relaxing in her chamber that afternoon. “I’d as soon do away with her. I might starve her to death.” She was bursting with angry frustration.

  George frowned. “I wouldn’t answer for how the King might react if you did.”

  “I wouldn’t care, even if I was to be burned alive for it afterward,” she cried, feeling herself becoming hysterical.

  “Hush, sister, you must not say such things.”

  “But she is a threat to me, George, and to Elizabeth. I wish she were dead!” She was near to tears now.

  “Soon she will be silenced,” he soothed. “The King said today that the oath is to be administered to the Lady Mary and the Princess Dowager. He’s sending the Archbishop of York, who won’t stand for any nonsense. He’ll visit the Princess Dowager first.”

  “Thank God!” Anne exulted, relief flooding through her. “If they take the oath, well and good. If they refuse it, Henry must proceed against them. Whatever they do, we have them!”

  —

  Katherine had refused the oath. She had stated that, if she was not the King’s wife, as he maintained, then she was not his subject, and could not be required to take it.

  “But since she has always insisted that she is your wife, she must know that she is laying herself open to punishment,” Anne observed to Henry as they rode at the head of their cavalcade, through lanes made festive with spring blossom, on their way to visit Elizabeth at Eltham Palace.

  “They will persevere with her,” Henry promised.

  —

  The Princess’s household made obeisance in unison as the King and Queen entered the nursery and found their daughter on her lady mistress’s lap.

  Elizabeth was seven months old now and talking already.

  “Come to your father,” Henry said, scooping her out of Lady Bryan’s arms and dandling her on his knee.

  “Papa!” the infant crowed, pulling at his beard.

  “Ouch! You’ve a strong hand there, sweetheart,” Henry told her. “She is as goodly a child as I’ve ever seen, don’t you agree, Anne?” he asked.

  Anne bent down and kissed Elizabeth on her downy head. “Indeed,” she said, feeling the familiar emptiness. All would right itself, she hoped, when her son was born. Then Elizabeth would not be a living and breathing reminder of her failure to bear a prince.

  They left her with her nurses and went to inspect the nursery that was being prepared for the Prince. Well satisfied with its gilded splendor and luxurious furnishings, they proceeded to the chapel for Vespers.

  As they came out, Lady Rochford approached Anne. “Madam, I must tell you. The Lady Mary was in chapel, and curtseyed to your Grace as you left.”

  “Would that I had seen it!” Anne exclaimed, as Henry beamed. “If I had, I would have done as much to her. Where is she?” She looked eagerly around the crowded gallery, and espied Mary’s back, disappearing through the door at the far end.

  “Go after her, Jane,” she said, all her ill intentions toward Mary forgotten. “Tell her that I salute her with much affection, and crave pardon, for if I had seen her make a curtsey to me, I would have done the same to her. Tell her I desire that this may be the beginning of a friendship between us, which will be warmly embraced on my part.” Lady Rochford hastened away.

  When Henry and Anne arrived in the soaring great hall and seated themselves at the high table for supper, Anne saw her stepdaughter at one of the long tables set at right angles. Not so long ago, Mary would have occupied the place of honor by the King.

  She was aware of the girl watching her as the first course was served. And then, as the company began eating and there was a lull in conversation, she heard her address Lady Rochford in a carrying voice. “It is not possible that the Queen can have sent me such a message, Her Majesty being so far from this place. You should have said it was the Lady Anne Boleyn, for I can acknowledge no other queen but my mother. I curtseyed in chapel to the Lady Anne’s Maker and mine, so they are deceived, and deceive her, who tell her otherwise.”

  It was humiliating and it was offensive. Henry flushed angrily, but before he could speak, Anne turned to him and in tones as ringing as Mary’s declared: “I swear I’ll bring down this high spirit!”

  “I will deal with her,” he muttered. “Let be for now.”

  Before they left, he took Mary aside into a closet, and kept her there for several minutes. But when he emerged, Anne could tell, from the look on his face and the tears in his eyes, that his daughter had bested him yet again.

  —

  She had a high belly now and tired easily. In three months, God willing, she would bear a son, a living image of his father. Henry fussed over her constantly. He had Archbishop Cranmer warn preachers that they must not weary her by over-long sermons in chapel. He gave her, for her delight, a peacock, and a pelican that had come all the way from a far-off country called Newfoundland. But the best gift of all was his sanctioning the translating of the Bible into English, in response to a petition from his clergy, which had been driven by the seven reformist bishops who had been appointed, thanks to Anne’s good offices, since she had become queen. A reformist scholar, Miles Coverdale, was undertaking the translation, and his work was going to be dedicated to Henry and to her. Anne had hugged and kissed Henry when he told her.

  She was delighted to receive from Lady Lisle, wife of the Governor of Calais, a brace of dotterels for her table, a singing linnet in a cage, and an adorable little dog. Of course, Lady Lisle had daughters she no doubt hoped to place at court, and wanted to ingratiate herself, but with well-wishers thin on the ground, the gesture was heartening. The dog was the sweetest thing. It gazed up at her with soulful, inquiring eyes, and she thought of a name for it at once.

  “I shall call you Little Pourquoi, because you look as if you are always asking me why!”

  Heartening too was Henry’s decision to punish Katherine for not taking the oath by sending her under house arrest to Kimbolton Castle, which was farther from London than Buckden. Then he sent out heralds to warn all his subjects that anyone slandering his beloved Queen or his lawful heirs would be guilty of high treason, for which the penalty was death.

  —

  In the second week of July, George, now Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, was sent on an embassy to France, leaving Anne feeling depressed. She wished he did not have to go away when her child was soon to be born and she needed him most to allay her fears, or just listen to them. Mary had gone home to Hever—not that she would be much comfort anyway. Even the antics of Little Pourquoi, or the docile loyalty of the greyhound Urian, failed to cheer Anne.

  A week later, Henry broke the news that his daughter had refused the oath. When he had gone, growling about making her pay for her defiance, Anne took up her pen and wrote to Lady Shelton: “Give
her a good beating, for the cursed bastard she is.” She would see to it that Mary got her just desserts, even if Henry balked at it.

  George was soon home.

  “It’s been agreed that I won’t go to France this year,” Henry told Anne. “Katherine and Mary bear you no small grudge, and might in my absence make mischief.”

  “Thank God,” Anne said. “I feel much safer when you are with me.”

  Henry caressed her cheek. “It will not be long now, darling. The doctors say it is often easier the second time.”

  It was easier—in fact it was all over within two hours. The baby came sooner than she had expected: she had not even taken to her chamber. But her pains were for nothing.

  As the midwife wrapped the tiny babe in a cloth and covered his dead face, Anne lay racked with sobs. “Why? Why?” she kept crying out. “Other women have sons—why not me?”

  Her women tried to soothe her, but when they heard that Henry was coming, they drew back nervously, warning, “The King! The King!”

  Anne twisted in the rumpled bed. She knew she must look dreadful, her face raw from weeping, her body sweaty from her travail, as yet unwashed and still clothed in her bloody shift. She pulled the sheets and counterpane around her. Little Pourquoi leapt up and snuggled next to her, as if sensing her distress.

  Henry’s gaze was wounded and accusing. There was no doubting that this was her fault.

  “I am so sorry!” she sobbed. “He came too early.”

  “Where is he?” Henry demanded.

  “Here, your Grace.” The midwife nervously handed him the shrouded bundle. Henry pulled the covering aside. “Oh, God, my son, my little son,” he murmured brokenly, tears streaming down his face. “Take him.” He thrust the body back into the midwife’s arms, mastered himself with an effort, then bent his gaze on every soul in the room.

  “You will not speak of this to anyone,” he commanded. “If you are asked, you must say that the Queen miscarried. Do not say it was a boy. Do you all understand?” Anne knew he would not look a fool in the eyes of Christendom.