Tudor Women Queens & Commoners

by Alison Plowden

  Girls continued to learn the traditional arts of baking and brewing, spinning and weaving, butter- and cheese-making and the concoction of herbal remedies from their mothers, just as they had always done, but the acquisition of more formal skills could present a problem. There's evidence that girls as well as boys attended the scattered chantry and parish schools offering elementary education to the local children, and some grammar schools, too, seem to have admitted girls, at any rate to part of their course, but there were as yet no schools for girls in any recognizable sense. In the early years of the century, of course, parents could still send their daughters to a nunnery to learn French, some Latin, needlework, music and Church history. Considerably later on, the Protestant refugees coming in from France and the Low Countries began to set up academies for young ladies, offering a syllabus of French, sometimes Italian, music, dancing, deportment and needlework. Such establishments, though, were only for the few, and in general an ambitious girl would have to rely on her own resources to get an education, learning from one or other of her parents, from an elder brother, the local parish priest or curate, or from a sympathetic and literate neighbour. Quite a number of wives persuaded their husbands to teach them to read. Higher up the social scale there was the family chaplain, or a young noblewoman might share the services of her brother's tutor.

  Another method of obtaining extra advantages for daughters which continued to be popular among upper- and middle-class parents was the practice of 'placing out' - that is of sending a girl away to be brought up and educated in a household better circumstanced than one's own. This habit applied to boys as well as girls - boys apprenticed to a craft lived with their masters' families - and had its origins in the feudal custom of sending a boy to serve as a page in his lord's household as the first step in his progress towards knighthood. But 'placing out' for a girl, even if she paid for her keep by performing some domestic duties or by acting as a 'waiting gentlewoman' to her hostess, meant the chance of acquiring accomplishments and social graces not obtainable at home, and consequently the chance of making a better marriage.

  Foreigners regarded this system (which was, of course, the forerunner of the boarding-school system) as yet another instance of English cold-heartedness and general 'want of affection' towards their children. 'If the English sent their children away from home to learn virtue and good manners and took them back again when their apprenticeship was over, they might be excused,' wrote the author of the Italian Relation severely; 'but they never return, for the girls are settled by their patrons, and the boys make the best marriages they can.'

  The girls themselves seldom complained, especially if they were fortunate enough to be placed in a large, wealthy household. Most of the great families kept up almost regal state, and there would be plenty of social life under their roofs. Supervision, too, was liable to be less strict and opportunities of making friends with other young people of both sexes considerably greater. In fact, for an intelligent girl, eager to improve herself and ready to seize her chances, the possibilities were almost limitless - the career of young Mistress Anne Boleyn being perhaps a classic example of this.

  It was naturally the height of every family's ambition to get a pretty and promising daughter accepted as one of the Queen's maids of honour, but unless a girl's rank automatically entitled her to a place in the royal entourage, competition was fierce, and much string-pulling on behalf of hopeful candidates was usually necessary. Sir Thomas Boleyn, however, encountered no difficulty when the time came to introduce his younger daughter into Queen Catherine's household.

  A combination of shrewd business acumen and a series of advantageous marriages had, in three generations, transformed the Boleyn family from obscure tenant farmers into well-heeled gentry very much on the up and up. Thomas, a younger son, had come to Court at the turn of the century to make a career in the royal service and had established himself as a useful underling, capable and conscientious, a man who could be trusted to carry out instructions. He was, nevertheless, an ambitious man and, like his father and grandfather before him, had married well - to Elizabeth Howard, a daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, who 'brought him every year a child'. Three of these children survived, George, Mary and Anne, born in 1507.

  Thomas Boleyn was a careful father who took a serious interest in his daughters' education, but he had no desire to see them become classical scholars. Nor would he have been impressed by the high-minded theories of Luis Vives, who advocated a Spartan upbringing and almost nun-like seclusion for the well-born maiden. Sir Thomas wanted Mary and Anne to learn to move easily and gracefully in the highest circles and to acquire all the social graces, to speak fluent French, to dance and sing and play at least one instrument, to ride and be able to take part in the field sports which were such an all-absorbing passion with the upper classes, and to become familiar with the elaborate code of courtesy which governed every aspect of life at the top. They must learn how to conduct themselves in the presence of royalty, how to cope with the vast quantities of rich food and drink served at royal banquets, how to avoid the obvious pitfalls lying in wait for a young woman exposed to the temptations of high society while, at the same time, attracting the attention of the right sort of man. Mary and Anne were, in short, to be groomed to make the kind of marriage which would add to the family's aristocratic connections and take the Boleyns another step up the social and financial ladder.

  The best place to learn about Court life was, of course, at Court, but before launching his daughters on the London scene, Thomas Boleyn was able to make use of his official contacts to get them the special advantage of a Continental 'finish'. In 1512 he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Brussels and took the opportunity to secure a place for Mary, then probably about twelve years did, in the household of Margaret, Archduchess of Austria and Regent of the Netherlands. Two years later an even better opening appeared. The King's younger sister, the beautiful Mary Tudor, was to be married to the King of France and would be accompanied on her wedding journey by a numerous retinue of English ladies in waiting. What better experience could there be for a young girl, and the indefatigable Sir Thomas retrieved his elder daughter from Brussels and got her accepted into the service of the new Queen. Anne still had to be provided for, but Anne was still a child, living most probably at Hever Castle, the family's Kentish property, and receiving her elementary education from Simonette, her French maid or governess.

  As it turned out, Mary Tudor's marriage lasted barely three months. The excitement and physical strain of the wedding and its attendant festivities proved altogether too much for the frail, elderly Louis XII, and he died before the end of the year. By the spring of 1515 Mary Tudor was back in England, but Mary Boleyn stayed in France, transferring her allegiance to Queen Claude, the good dull wife of Louis's heir, the anything but good François I. The French Court was widely regarded as being the centre of European culture and civilization, but it was perhaps hardly the most suitable environment for a nubile teenager, since François was well known for his inability to keep his hands off any woman. 'Rarely did any maid or wife leave that court chaste,' remarked the Sieur de Brantome, and if there is any truth in the gossip, Mary Boleyn certainly did not. She seems, in fact, to have acquired quite a reputation for being generally available and when she returned to England, the finished product of her courtly training, she became Henry VIII's mistress.

  Meanwhile it was time to send Anne across the Channel, and this probably took place in 1519, when Sir Thomas Boleyn was appointed ambassador to France. Arrangements were made for twelve-year-old Anne to join the school for young ladies personally supervised by Queen Claude, in which that much-tried lady did her utmost to maintain a high moral tone and where, it was to be hoped, moral danger would be avoided. Writing to his younger daughter to inform her of her good fortune, Sir Thomas solemnly enjoined her to be of virtuous repute when she came to Court, to work hard at her French and spelling and generally to make the most of her opportunities on pain of losing
his affection of goodwill to advance her interests. Anne's reply, written, she assured him, entirely without help from Simonette, promises her best endeavours and expresses a very proper gratitude and readiness to be ordered by her father in all things. Gratitude and obedience were attributes highly prized by parents, and Thomas Boleyn kept the letter carefully among his papers.

  While in France 'Monsieur Boullan's' daughter was noted for her skill in music and dancing and 'all games fashionable at Courts', as well as for her excellent taste in dress - at least so it was remembered afterwards. Whether or not she contrived to keep her virginity, we do not know, but Anne was always far more intelligent and considerably stronger-minded than her sister. Her stay with Queen Claude was curtailed by the breaking off of Anglo-French relations in the autumn of 1521. All English nationals were recalled, and by Christmas she was back at home again. Although she was still only fourteen, her father made no attempt to place her at another European Court, chiefly, it may be assumed, because he already had a husband in mind for her.

  Thomas Boleyn's father had married into the noble Anglo-Irish family of Butler, and his mother, Margaret had been the daughter and, with her sister, co-heir of the last earl of Ormonde. A second cousin, Piers Butler, was now laying claim to the vacant earldom, and a promising feud over the rents and revenues of the Ormonde estates had begun to burgeon between the Butlers and the Boleyns. Quarrels of this kind were by no means uncommon among landed families, but this particular quarrel also had political implications, since the goodwill of the Butler clan was of considerable importance to the English government in maintaining the always precarious stability of tribal Ireland. So when someone suggested that the matter might be amicably resolved by a marriage between Thomas Boleyn's daughter and Piers Butler's son, James, the King and Cardinal Wolsey took up the idea with enthusiasm. In the circumstances it is not surprising that Thomas Boleyn had no difficulty in getting his daughter admitted to Queen Catherine's household on her return from France, and Anne made her debut at the New Year revels, dressed in yellow satin and wearing a head-dress of Venice gold.

  It is not likely that she had been consulted about the plans being made for her future - neither Thomas Boleyn, with financial and social advantage at stake, nor King and Cardinal, fearing possible trouble in Ireland, would consider the feelings of a fourteen-year-old girl as relevant to the situation - but it's difficult to believe that Anne, that accomplished and sophisticated young lady with a developing taste for the elegancies of life, contemplated the prospect of banishment to an Irish wilderness with any degree of pleasure. Negotiations with the Butlers, though, made slow progress, and in the meantime Anne proceeded to look around on her own account.

  As one of the Queen's maids of honour she was, of course, in the best possible position for doing so. The chief function of the maids of honour was to look decorative, to provide a handsome setting for the Queen on all public occasions and generally to ornament the Court. The girls were supposed to occupy their off-duty hours with sewing and serious reading, but inevitably a large proportion of the day was spent in gossiping, playing cards and flirting with the numerous similarly under-employed young gentlemen who were seldom at a loss for an excuse to linger in the Queen's apartments. Among these was Henry Percy, son and heir of the Earl of Northumberland, currently completing his education and seeing something of the great world in the household of Cardinal Wolsey. In the words of George Cavendish, the Cardinal's gentleman usher,

  when it chanced the Lord Cardinal at any time to repair to the Court, the Lord Percy would then resort for his pastime unto the Queen's chamber, and there would fall in dalliance among the Queen's maidens, being at the last more conversant with Mistress Anne Boleyn than with any other; so that there grew such a secret love between them that at length they were insured together, intending to marry.

  There seems little reason to doubt that young Percy had fallen heavily for the elegant, vivacious brunette with her glamorous aura of foreign travel, but whether Anne was really in love or whether she just found Henry Percy infinitely preferable to James Butler and hoped that her father would regard him as a suitable alternative, we don't know. In either case, her hopes were soon to be blighted, for as soon as word of this promising romance reached the ears of Cardinal Wolsey, he squashed it ruthlessly, scolding the unhappy Percy in front of the servants for his 'peevish folly' in so far forgetting his position and his duty as to become entangled with some foolish little girl at the Court, and forbidding him to see her again on pain of the King's severe displeasure.

  George Cavendish, recording the incident in his Life of his master, believed that the King had already begun 'to kindle the brand of amours' for the young lady in question and had ordered Wolsey to intervene. In view of later events, this must have seemed a perfectly reasonable assumption but, in fact, there is no evidence that Henry had any amorous intent towards Anne in 1522, a time when he was probably still enjoying the hospitality of her elder sister's bed. A less romantic but more plausible explanation is that the Cardinal had simply acted to prevent two thoughtless young people from upsetting the plans of their elders and betters. Wolsey and the Earl of Northumberland between them had no difficulty in reducing Lord Percy to an apologetic pulp, but young Anne showed her furious disappointment so plainly that she was sent home in disgrace.

  In the autumn of 1522 Thomas Boleyn had little reason to be pleased with either of his daughters. Mary had spoiled her chances by promiscuity, for although there was little real social stigma attached to having been the King's mistress, it undoubtedly affected a girl's matrimonial prospects, and she and her family had a right to expect royal compensation for possible loss of reputation. It's true that Sir Thomas's own career was coming along quite nicely - he'd recently risen to become Treasurer of the Household and was soon to be made a Knight of the Garter - but Henry was notoriously stingy towards his mistresses. Even Elizabeth Blount, who'd presented him with a bastard son, only achieved a respectable marriage, and Mary Boleyn had to be content with William Carey, one of the King's boon companions but otherwise of no particular account. Mary's father may well have reflected gloomily on how much better these things were managed in France, where the maîtresse en titre was a public figure wielding influence and patronage who could normally expect to retire on a more than comfortable fortune. As for Anne, it looked as if the child had ruined herself at the outset by her headstrong behaviour and inability to control her temper.

  But Anne was to have a second chance. Her rustication seems to have lasted for about three years, and when she returned to Court, at either the end of 1525 or the beginning of 1526, she was still unbetrothed - the Butler marriage had finally fallen through, and there were, it seems, no other suitors under consideration. She was now in her nineteenth year and, to the outward eye, quite unconcerned about the unsettled state of her future. All the same, she must have been well aware that time was passing and very conscious of the fact that she couldn't afford to make any more mistakes. While she waited for something to turn up, Anne had begun to amuse herself by a flirtation with Thomas Wyatt, the witty and talented courtier, poet and diplomat who was a neighbour of the Boleyns down in Kent. She and her brother George and Thomas Wyatt formed a close little clique, gay, brilliant and irreverent, and although we know precious little about the actual inception of the King's grand passion for Mistress Anne, it is at least probable that it was the obvious interest of Thomas Wyatt, himself a married man, which first stirred Henry to take notice of the lady.

  The game of courtly love, derived from the mediaeval French romances which were such popular reading, was a recognized pastime in high society. It involved much sighing and languishing and mournful serenading on the part of the young men -much coyness and 'cruelty' on the part of the ladies, whose 'lovers' became their true knights and servants to command. None of this, of course, had anything to do with real life, and as soon as any real feelings were stirred, the conventions of the game rapidly disappeared. Anne seems to have succe
eded in keeping the pretence of her 'court' going for several months, but a man like Henry Tudor would not brook competition for long. There was some by-play over a trinket belonging to Anne and flourished by Wyatt during a game of bowls with the King. Henry, in turn, produced a ring which, he declared, she had given to him, and the episode ended with his majesty stumping away in a huff, muttering that he had been deceived. Since all the Boleyns depended heavily on royal goodwill, Anne had hastily to smooth things over, and Thomas Wyatt melted sadly but wisely into the background.

  By the late summer of 1526 the whole Court knew that Anne Boleyn was the King's latest inamorata, but no one, at this stage, 'esteemed it other than an ordinary course of dalliance'. There is, in fact, no reason to suppose that, at this stage, the King had anything other than an ordinary course of dalliance in mind, but Anne soon made him understand that she had no intention of becoming his mistress. With the example of her elder sister before her, she knew it would lead to nothing more than a second-rate and perhaps unhappy marriage, and she meant to do better than that. Just when she began to realize that she might, if she played her cards carefully, win herself the greatest matrimonial prize of all, we unfortunately have no means of knowing. Probably it dawned on her gradually during that autumn and winter as the King, unaccustomed to being refused, started to pursue her with ever-increasing fervour, while she withdrew nervously, protesting her virtue and retreating to Hever when the pressure grew too great, but never - as a modest young lady thus honoured by her sovereign could scarcely do - never repulsing him entirely.

  Whether this very* feminine display was all part of a deliberate cold-blooded plan or whether it proceeded from genuine embarrassment and perplexity in the face of an admittedly awkward dilemma, Anne could not have adopted better tactics, for Henry, in spite of his highly-coloured reputation, was no casual lecher. In a series of letters, undated but almost certainly written during the spring of 1527, he begs repeatedly - almost abjectly - for an unequivocal declaration of her love, offering in return to make her his 'sole mistress' and to reject all others 'out of mind and affection'. Although the sixteenth-century sense of the word 'mistress' did not necessarily imply its modern physical connotation, Anne was taking no chances. She knew her own strength by this time - the King had given himself away too completely - and she would respond to only one kind of suggestion. Just when Henry came to accept this, to decide that here was a woman worthy to be his wife and actually to make that momentous proposal, is something else we don't know. All we do know for certain is that by May 1527 he had taken the first, tentative steps towards obtaining his freedom, without, incidentally, having the courtesy to inform the lady who had been his faithful and devoted consort for very nearly eighteen years, and thus set in motion a train of events which was radically to alter the course of English history.