Tudor Women Queens & Commoners

by Alison Plowden

  But appearances were deceptive, and after nearly two years the ultimate prize was, in fact, as far away as ever. The King might talk of proceeding by his own authority, but this was not as simple as it sounded, and Parliament showed an obstinate reluctance to assist him. Indeed, apart from Henry, the Lady Anne and the pushful, unscrupulous clique which had attached itself to the Boleyns, nobody liked the idea of the divorce, and sympathy for the Queen was strong among all classes of Englishmen and their wives - especially their wives. The women of England could see in Catherine's present predicament an implied threat to every respectable wife and mother. After all, if the King could today cast off his virtuous and faithful consort in order to take another, younger wife, who could tell what his subjects might be able to do tomorrow? For the vast majority of women the sanctity of the marriage bond was their only security against a harsh and hostile world, and the sight of bold, black-eyed Anne Boleyn flaunting herself, bejewelled and triumphant, at the King's right hand caused much bitter and deeply-felt resentment.

  While the Pope continued to delay, apparently hoping that if he waited long enough the problem might go away of its own accord, Catherine begged and implored him to take a firm stand, to settle the case without more ado and deliver her from the pains and torments to which she was daily being exposed. Like many another deserted wife, the Queen could not bring herself to face the fact that her husband had changed, that he was deliberately rejecting her of his own free will. No, it was just that he had fallen into the clutches of a wicked woman who had bewitched him and evil counsellors who were leading him astray. These people were the real enemy, and if the Holy Father would only stop their tongues and take away their hope of making mischief by proceeding swiftly to judgement, Henry would soon become his normal sweet self again. T trust so much in the natural goodness and virtue of the King, my lord,' wrote Catherine pathetically, 'that if I could only have him with me two months as he used to be, I alone should be powerful enough to make him forget the past.'

  But by the time this letter was written, Henry had already seen, or been shown, an ingenious solution to his marital problems. Parliament might not be prepared to help him directly to get his divorce, but there would be no difficulty in persuading the Commons to attack the Church. What Henry needed was the submission of his own clergy - with that he could proceed independently of the Pope, while still preserving at least the appearances of law and orthodoxy. In order to obtain that submission, what better weapon could he use than the longstanding, smouldering anti-clericalism of the bourgeois laity? And so, indeed, it proved. By the spring of 1532 the King had assumed supreme religious power in his own realm, and the English clergy had been terrorized into surrendering all their ancient, jealously-guarded freedom from secular control.

  This revolution, for such it was, had been master-minded by Thomas Cromwell, the King's new counsellor and hatchet-man, and now only one obstacle remained. William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, was an old man, ailing and frightened, but there was a point beyond which he could not be driven. He would not disobey the Pope's ban on any hearing of the divorce case in England. Then, in August, Providence came to the King's aid, and death removed the Archbishop from his path.

  On the morning of Sunday, 1 September, an extraordinary scene was enacted in the presence chamber at Windsor Castle. Escorted by the officers of arms and flanked by two countesses, the Lady Anne Rochford, wearing a narrow-sleeved gown of crimson velvet, her hair hanging loose about her shoulders, knelt before the King, while Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, read aloud the letters patent creating her Marquess of Pembroke - an important peer in her own right. Henry then invested his sweetheart with the panoply of her new rank and presented her with another document, granting her an independent income of a thousand pounds a year. It was an unusual, even an unprecedented occasion, but the assembled audience, which included the French ambassador and the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, did not fail to notice a significant omission in the wording of the new marquess's patent of creation. The title and the income would pass to the heirs male of her body, but the standard qualifying phrase 'lawfully begotten' had not been included. By agreeing to, or, more likely, insisting on, that omission, the Lady Anne was making what amounted to a public announcement that she had at last become the King's mistress in the obvious sense of the word. She was ninety-nine per cent certain now of final victory, but just in case anything should go wrong at the last moment, she was taking steps to insure her future and that of any child she might bear.

  Anne had played an active part throughout the struggle for the divorce - cultivating anyone she thought might be helpful (especially the French, who could be relied on to put a spoke in the Spanish-Imperialist wheel whenever possible) and building a party for herself among the progressive anti-papalist element at home - but by far her most potent weapon had always been her own sexual attractions and her prudent refusal to allow Henry to proceed to the 'ultimate conjunction'. This in itself was no small achievement. To the world at large the sight of a young woman living unprotected in the King's household, his constant companion and often occupying adjoining apartments, naturally meant only one thing. But when the King on various occasions informed various sceptical audiences that the Lady Anne was living under his roof in perfect virtue, the overwhelming probability is that he was speaking the truth. Unsatisfied desire would certainly appear to offer the most likely and logical explanation for Anne's undiminished influence and Henry's anxious, almost slavish devotion.

  By surrendering to her lover before the knot was actually tied, Anne was taking a calculated risk. She had made many enemies during the past five years, and her position depended entirely on the King's continuing ardour. If his long-anticipated gratification proved an anti-climax, if she failed to hold him during the months which must still pass before a new and pliant Archbishop could be enthroned at Canterbury, then she would have played her last card. But Anne Boleyn had never lacked self-confidence, and she was gambling now on conceiving quickly, an event which would, she reckoned, put an end to delay. The gamble paid off. By the middle of January 1533 she was able to tell the King that she was pregnant, and on the twenty-fifth of the month she and Henry were married - or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they went through a form of marriage, since, in spite of everything, the King was still legally tied to his first wife. The ceremony was performed in one of the turret rooms at Whitehall 'very early in the morning before day' and so secretly that the identity of the priest and witnesses remains uncertain. Henry would probably have preferred to wait until Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop-elect of Canterbury, could give him his 'divorce' in proper form - it would have looked better that way - but Anne's pregnancy had altered everything, and no matter what corners had to be cut, her child must be born in wedlock.

  For Anne herself that scrambling, furtive marriage in the January dawn can scarcely have had any resemblance to the royal wedding, the triumph she had once envisaged. In normal circumstances a wedding was always a joyous occasion and one to be celebrated as publicly as possible by family and friends. Secret or clandestine marriages- that is, those without previous publication of the banns on three separate Sundays or holy days - were frowned on by the Church and by society in general. A secret contract or handfasting between two impetuous young people might well frustrate the carefully laid plans of their elders and could lead to bitter ill-feeling among neighbours, especially when land or property was involved. The Church also remembered that in the case of a secret marriage, perhaps irregularly conducted and without proper safeguards, it was the woman who would be most likely to suffer and possibly be led into mortal sin.

  The Tudors took the whole business of marriage - a solemn contract entered into for life and sanctified by the Church -with great seriousness. It was universally accepted that a father's first duty to his daughter was to provide her with the best and most suitable husband available, and many child betrothals or spousals were arranged as an insurance against a hazardous
future. This initial form of contract, known as de futuro, as the promises were made in the future tense, was not a binding one. It was, in fact, little more than a conditional statement of intent to arrange a marriage at some future date. If, later on, the situation had changed, some impediment had been discovered, or the young people concerned objected, then the agreement could be terminated by mutual consent - unless, of course, there had been cohabitation. If all went well, the next stage was the de praesenti betrothal with the vows exchanged in the present tense. By this time the financial arrangements would have been completed, the dowry and marriage settlements agreed on, and, if the bride was an heiress, prudent relatives would have seen to it that her property was secured to herself and her children.

  The betrothal per verba de praesenti could be celebrated at a public and formal ceremony, it could take place quietly at home, or it could simply be a man and a woman promising to marry one another in the presence of a couple of witnesses. Whatever the circumstances, it was binding and indissoluble, and any attempt to marry someone else after entering into a de praesenti contract was illegal. Even after a marriage had been completed and blessed by the Church, it could still be invalidated and the children bastardized if evidence of a previous de praesenti betrothal were to be produced; hence the insistence on due care and deliberation over the preliminaries and as much publicity as possible.

  The Church had always recognized the binding nature of private spousals, but it insisted on a religious ceremony to complete and sanctify the union and impress on everyone concerned the holiness of the estate of matrimony. In the vast majority of cases this ceremony took the form of a public church wedding, but it could also be a private family occasion or be as secret as the King's marriage to his Lady. It must, though, be performed by a priest and be witnessed by two or more other persons. The content and wording of the marriage service has changed very little over the centuries: the last opportunity to disclose any impediment or irregularity, confirmation of the de futuro promises in the T will' of bride and groom, the giving away of the bride, a repetition of the de praesenti vows, the ritual of putting the ring on the bride's finger, the joining of hands and the final, awesome pronouncement - 'those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder'. In pre-Reformation days the service was usually followed by Mass, later replaced by a wedding sermon in which the minister discoursed on the duties and responsibilities of the married state. It was the husband's part to provide for his wife and children, to guard them from danger and want, to be faithful, generous and vigilant over their welfare. The wife must first and foremost be a good home-maker, chaste, submissive and, God willing, fruitful; for no one ever forgot that marriage had been primarily ordained for the procreation of children and their bringing-up in a stable, God-fearing environment. The partnership aspect of marriage, too, was always stressed. Husband and wife must trust one another and be tolerant of each other's little failings. They would be together now till God did them part, and it was up to them to make the relationship a happy and successful one.

  After all this, everyone was ready for the festive part of the proceedings, and the rest of the day (and very often several succeeding days) was given up to merrymaking, the bridal procession making its way through the streets escorted by a cheerful band of minstrels. The traditional white wedding is, in fact, a comparatively recent innovation, dating from about the mid-eighteenth century, and a Tudor bride just wore her best dress - though she usually appeared 'in her hair', that is with her hair hanging loose over her shoulders as a symbol of virginity, and garlanded with flowers. Everyone else was in their best clothes, and the home had been swept and garnished for the occasion. There was music for dancing and food and drink in as great an abundance as possible - if money was short, friends and neighbours would rally round to supply the deficiencies - and then, as now, the young couple would be showered with gifts of plate and linen and other such useful objects to help them set up house. But there was no 'going away', no honeymoon and precious little privacy, for the culmination of the jollity of every wedding day was the public bedding of bride and groom.

  It was the bridesmaids' duty to prepare the bride for bed, to throw her stocking and distribute her garters and the knots of ribbon from her gown (if these favours had not already been snatched off her in the general horseplay), before the groom arrived, surrounded by his friends. At grand weddings there would probably be a bishop or two on hand to bless the bridal bed, but in every case everybody who could still stand up expected to come crowding into the nuptial chamber to offer good wishes, encouragement and all too explicit advice. What sort of an ordeal this must have been for a shy girl or a nervous, inexperienced young man one can only speculate, but it was the same for everybody - an inescapable initiation ceremony. (In the royal divorce case, much play had been made over the long-ago bedding of Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur, someone helpfully remembering how in the morning Arthur had called for a drink, saying he had been in Spain that night and found it thirsty work.) The newly-weds would get a few hours alone together, and then the minstrels would strike up a merry tune under their window and the family would come surging back, bearing refreshments and full of anxious enquiries as to how things had gone.

  Anne Boleyn might have missed all the merry sport, the excitement and the triumph normally enjoyed by a bride on her wedding day, but there would be other, less ephemeral triumphs to come; the child now growing in her womb would ensure that, and she was content at last to relax a little and await developments. These following with gratifying speed. In March Thomas Cranmer was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury, and within a fortnight had written to the King begging permission to investigate his 'great cause of matrimony'. No one was in doubt as to the outcome of such an investigation, but even before it could begin, Anne, 'loaded with diamonds and dressed in a gorgeous suit of gold tissue', had appeared at Easter Mass in royal state, the trumpets sounding before her and the Duke of Norfolk's daughter carrying her train.

  Meanwhile, Queen Catherine, exiled from the Court, not allowed to see or communicate with her daughter, humiliated, forsaken and, to all intents and purposes, defeated, had by no means given up the struggle. The previous autumn she had tried, yet again, to warn her nephew the Emperor of the grave dangers facing the Catholic faith if her case, which she now saw clearly was no longer hers alone, were not settled as a matter of urgency; and, she added, 'what passes here every day is so ugly and against God and touches the honour of the King my lord so nearly, that I cannot bear to write it'.

  Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador and Catherine's firm friend and champion, was of the opinion that although Henry might be by nature kind and generously inclined, his association with Anne had so perverted him that he scarcely seemed the same man, and during the momentous spring of 1533 Catherine was presented with fresh evidence of just how much her husband had changed. In April she received a deputation headed by the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, who descended on the remote Bedfordshire manor where she was now living. She was to renounce her title of Queen and would in future be regarded simply as Arthur's widow, with the rank of Princess Dowager. Unless she accepted the situation without further argument, her allowance would be reduced to less than a quarter of the sum she had been receiving. In any case, Norfolk told her, further resistance was useless. 'She need not trouble any more about the King, for he had taken another wife.'

  Catherine was unmoved, at least outwardly. As long as she lived, she answered, she would entitle herself Queen as was her right as Henry's lawful wife. As far as her housekeeping expenses were concerned, she was at her husband's mercy. She hoped he would continue to allow her enough for herself, her confessor, a physician and two maids for her chamber. If even that was too much to ask, then she would willingly go about the world begging alms for the love of God.

  With Henry's emissaries Catherine maintained her brave and dignified facade, but to Eustace Chapuys she wrote bitterly, 'there is no justice for me or my daughter'. Chapuys
entirely agreed with her and told his master he was afraid 'that the moment this accursed Anne sets her foot firmly in the stirrup, she will try to do the Queen all the harm she possibly can and the Princess Mary also, which is the thing your aunt dreads most'. Chapuys reported that anger and resentment over the Queen's ill-treatment was now so widespread that very little outside encouragement would be needed to make the English people rise up and force the King to put away his concubine; and he added bluntly that, considering the insults being offered to a lady of his House, he thought the Emperor could scarcely avoid making some warlike gesture.

  At the end of May, Thomas Cranmer obediently pronounced the King's first marriage to have been null and void from the beginning and his second good and valid. Three days later Anne was crowned with all customary pomp. The streets of London were hung with banners, in Cheapside a conduit ran with white wine and claret, and the usual pageants and tableaux had been staged along the processional route from the Tower to Westminster. The King's Lady had got her public triumph at last, but although the citizens came out to enjoy the show and the free drink, they remained obstinately unimpressed by the sight of their new Queen in her gleaming white gown and necklace of pearls 'as big as chick peas'. To them she would always be that 'goggle-eyed whore Nan Bullen', the cause of all good Queen Catherine's sufferings.