The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell
Page 22
Next day, 25 April, Henry wrote to Richard Pate, his ambassador with Charles, advising him of the recent discussions with Chapuys, and justifying his uncompromising stance. In one part of the letter – on the subject of Mary’s legitimacy and her place in the succession – Henry’s choice of words suggests that he was anticipating a happy event that had yet to be publicly and formally announced:
The emperor’s second overture and request was that, forasmuch as there is great likelihood and appearance that God will send unto us heirs male to succeed us … we would vouchsafe … to legitimise our daughter Mary in such degree, as in default of issue by our most dear and most entirely beloved wife the queen, she [Mary] might not be reputed unable to some place in our succession.22
How could Henry be so confident of male heirs if he was apparently resigned to a ‘default of issue’ from his present queen? Henry was getting ahead of himself, his heart now fixed on his new dearly beloved. Pate may have heard unofficially about Jane, so he was unlikely to be misled by this ‘most dear and beloved wife the queen’, as if Henry was still attached to Anne. This is the language of diplomacy. Henry was being indiscreet, but he was not speaking from the heart. Nor was this the right time to officially announce to his ambassadors abroad that he was about to put Anne, the barren wife, away for another woman. Yet it is scarcely credible that Charles or Chapuys would have put the matter as tactlessly as Henry implied – We know God will give you male heirs, but in case you have no children by Anne, will you admit Mary to the succession! It must be one of the strangest letters Henry ever wrote, but we will have to leave Pate to puzzle it out for himself, because events at home were moving ahead swiftly.
A new queen would require new succession laws, so writs were issued on 27 April for a new parliament to assemble with all haste; the previous parliament had been dissolved on 14 April. Chapuys was also full of news. Nicholas Carew, one of Jane’s most lively supporters, had been invested with the Order of the Garter much to the frustration of Anne’s brother, who had coveted it for himself. Carew was daily conspiring against Anne, and increasingly confident that she would soon be ‘dismissed’. This word ‘dismissed’ – not ‘destroyed’ – is worth noting well. There is a world of difference between Anne being dismissed and Anne being destroyed. Henry was ‘tired of her’, Chapuys continued; he cannot ‘bear her any longer’. Henry and Cromwell must have reckoned with the likelihood that Cranmer would be reluctant to consent to Anne’s ‘dismissal’, so Bishop Stokesley of London had been sounded out on whether Henry could ‘abandon’ her. Stokesley was cagey; he would not give an opinion unless asked to do so by Henry, and even then he would try and ‘ascertain what the king’s intentions were’ before committing himself. The word ‘abandon’ is as significant as the ‘dismissed’. All the talk is of Anne being divorced, as Catherine was, but nothing more. Not yet.23
Cromwell, meanwhile, had spent four days in conference with Richard Sampson, dean of the Chapel Royal. This news comes from another letter of Chapuys dated 29 April. So he meant either 25–28, or 26–29 inclusive. No reason was given for this conference, but it should be easy enough to deduce it. Sampson took no part in Anne’s subsequent trial for adultery. Nor does his name appear on the oyer and terminer, or on her indictment, or on any other document related to her trial. Sampson was, however, an expert in canon law, who had been a key member of Henry’s team during his first divorce. So Cromwell and Sampson must have been the men assigned by the king to work on the legal and constitutional aspects of the second divorce. Cromwell, therefore, was not busily framing criminal charges against Anne during the last days of April. He would not need the company of a canon lawyer for that.24
Preparations for Anne’s ‘dismissal’ were proceeding apace. Chapuys, beavering away eagerly as ever for news, heard ‘from certain authentic quarters’ that there were ‘many witnesses ready to testify and to prove that more than nine years ago a marriage had been contracted and consummated’ between Anne and Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland. Percy, it will be remembered, was the man Anne might have married had Henry not set his eyes on her; and only the combined pressure of Percy’s father, who threatened to disown his son, and of Cardinal Wolsey, ordered by Henry to separate the couple, compelled the young earl to forsake her (see here).25
It is fascinating to hear that ‘many witnesses’ could prove that a marriage had been consummated. Be that as it may, attention now needs to focus on this pre-contract between Anne and Percy, and it is virtually certain that some sort of bond had existed between them. If there was never even a likelihood of a marriage, why would Henry have ordered his then chief minister Wolsey to intervene and bring their relationship to an end? Why would Percy be threatened with disinheritance if the young couple were just friends? Unfortunately it is not possible to say whether it was a formal, legally binding contract because the relevant papers have been lost; but if evidence had now come to light for a consummation as well as a marriage agreement, whether formal or informal, then Henry could have his marriage to Anne declared null and void in law, leaving him free to marry Jane. So Henry’s case was cast-iron; or rather, it could be made cast-iron without difficulty. Anne had little support in the government or in the country, and unlike Catherine she had no foreign potentate like Charles V to defend her cause. With witnesses willing to testify, with parliament about to be recalled to confirm the new marriage, with the oyer and terminer ready if needed, with no diplomatic complications whatsoever, no obstacle stood in the way to frustrate Henry. No one would bother to ask awkward questions, like why the Boleyn marriage was allowed to take place at all if Anne was pre-contracted to Percy. Within a few weeks everything would be settled and Anne ‘dismissed’. It did not matter one whit to Henry that all of Europe would see that the whole thing was a convenient fix. Henry cared nothing for Europe’s opinions.
Most writers on Henry and Anne have simply assumed that in order to be rid of Anne and marry Jane, Henry had no alternative but to commit or countenance an act of judicial murder. This is the utterly wrong-headed assumption that spawns the many fanciful conspiracy theories surrounding Anne Boleyn, and the vilest of crimes and motives are liberally imputed to Henry, Cromwell or some other councillor. Henry is a monster, Cromwell a bloody butcher, Cranmer a craven toady, and so on. The evidence that had now apparently come to light, for a pre-contract and a consummation, ensured that Henry did not need to destroy Anne before he could wed Jane. He had already nullified his first marriage through parliament and the courts. He could, therefore, follow his own precedent and do the same with Anne if a sufficiently plausible constitutional rationale could be found; hence the secondment of Richard Sampson, already a specialist in royal divorces, to help Cromwell prepare the case. Everything points conclusively to the fact that Henry and Cromwell were determined to resolve the affair in a sort of constitutional manner. There was no crude conspiracy being hatched.
Then, though admittedly this is conjectural, just as Catherine of Aragon had been downgraded from queen to princess dowager, Henry could have done something similar with Anne. She had been made marchioness of Pembrokeshire before her coronation in 1532, and she could have been allowed to keep that title as a consolation prize on the condition that she lived quietly and obediently for the rest of her days. Any resistance would be made treasonable under the new legislation soon to be enacted in parliament, and be dealt with ruthlessly.
In fact, it is not clear what Henry intended to do with Anne at this stage apart from dismiss her, though later reports of uncertain reliability indicate that the plan was to send her off to a nunnery. It had no doubt occurred to him that she might prove troublesome, and that the option lay open to him to compel her submission to the new settlement on pain of the axe. That eventuality, however, was some weeks off. For now, according to ambassadors’ reports – and Chapuys was intimately informed by his well-placed sources – there were no rumours of criminal charges or treason trials flying around the court. Right up to the last days of April,
all the well-versed diplomatic and court gossip focussed on the king’s divorce and Anne’s ‘dismissal’, but nothing more. No arrests had been made, and no one was committed to the Tower for interrogation.
Neither is it clear whether Henry had given Cromwell and Sampson a deadline. The king had not yet cancelled a pre-arranged royal tour to the south coast. Cromwell and Anne were originally part of the entourage, and although Cromwell may have changed his plans, Henry was still intending to go. As late as Saturday 29 April an instruction was sent from London to Lord Lisle in Calais to ship the double cannon over to Dover so that Henry could see it when he arrived there. Not until Sunday was the royal schedule altered. Henry was due to set off for Rochester the following Tuesday, but the trip was abruptly called off. Then the news filtered through that the entire Dover tour was cancelled.26
The classic account of what happened to throw Henry’s court into turmoil on the eve of the month of May is that given by a French diplomat, Lancelot de Carles, now on an embassy to England as secretary to the bishop of Tarbes. It is a narrative of the life and death of Anne Boleyn, dated 2 June 1536. The following discussion concentrates on the section dealing with her arrest, but first a word is necessary about de Carles’s bona fides. His work is not a vulgar anti-Boleyn diatribe of the kind that later appeared, for in parts it speaks quite well of Anne. It is an independent account, because a French diplomat would not compose an obituary of Anne on the say so of the English government; and he would certainly not circulate false propaganda to oblige Cromwell, the chief advocate of the pro-Imperial policy. De Carles wrote poetically and gives some facts that are not found elsewhere, but much of what he says is verifiable from other sources, so there is no reason to imagine that this is a romance or a fantasy. Unlike Alexander Alesius and the Spanish Chronicle, de Carles contains no obvious howlers. His account, therefore, is a reliable one. One final point: de Carles does not mention Cromwell’s name.27
One day, says de Carles, a certain lord of the Privy Council had words with his sister for being over affectionate in her ways. She admitted it; but she also said that her behaviour was nothing compared with Anne’s, and that if they questioned Mark Smeaton, the young court musician, they would find out a few interesting things. She claimed Anne had a string of lovers, including her own brother. This lord, realizing what a scoop this was certain to be, immediately sought out two fellow councillors. All three then went to tell Henry. The king ordered an immediate investigation, during which Smeaton confessed that he had slept with Anne three times. He also named her other lovers – Henry Norris, Francis Weston and William Brereton as well as her brother George. Henry was quickly convinced of Anne’s unfaithfulness, and after a day spent watching the jousting on 1 May, he personally accosted Norris. Within twenty-four hours all suspects, including Anne, were in the Tower.
Chapuys was amazed when he first heard the news on 2 May. Despite all his contacts at court, and despite all his watchfulness, he had no inkling of these dramatic developments. Anne had kept her love nest well hidden. Chapuys had been wondering if somehow the preparations for her divorce and ‘dismissal’ could be speeded up, but now he hurried off a despatch to Charles telling him that ‘things have come to a head much sooner and more satisfactorily than one could have thought’.28
Apart from the games on 1 May, de Carles is not quite as precise with his dates as modern scholars aim to be. However, though he does not say so specifically, it reads as though these three lords went to see Henry on 28 or 29 April. Fortunately we should be able to confirm these crucial dates quite accurately, because it is known that the chief witness, Smeaton, was committed to the Tower on 1 May. Working backwards, therefore, we need allow a maximum of forty-eight hours, and more likely twelve or twenty-four, between Henry hearing of Anne’s infidelities and Smeaton’s committal. It is impossible to account for a delay longer than this. So the delegation must have gone to the king on 28 or more likely 29 April. This conclusion is consistent with de Carles, and it would also fit in with the sudden cancellation of the Dover visit on the 29 or 30 April.29
The identity of the informers is not known, and a great deal of speculation has led to nothing conclusive. Perhaps because he was here on diplomatic service, de Carles preferred to withhold names. It is virtually certain, however, that Cromwell was not one of them – he was otherwise engaged with Richard Sampson preparing legal and constitutional documents. It was probably late on 29 April that Cromwell received an urgent message from Henry ordering him to break off this work and examine Smeaton.30
Now it is taken for granted by most writers that Smeaton was tortured, threatened with torture, or roughed up somehow. In fact, the only evidence for this is the Spanish Chronicle, the book which has Cromwell investigating Catherine Howard and other enjoyable but farcically wide-of-the-mark yarns as we saw in Chapter 8. In his balanced and sensible narrative, de Carles is quite specific – Smeaton confessed without torture. George Constantine, writing sometime later, endorsed this. Though Constantine had heard a story that Smeaton had been ‘grievously racked’, he added that ‘I could never know this of a truth’. This qualifier, though left out of some accounts of Anne Boleyn, is important because he was a servant of Henry Norris, one of Anne’s alleged lovers, and he wrote to Norris after his condemnation, handing the letter to ‘Mr Lieutenant’ of the Tower. So if any racking had been going on, Constantine could have found out – but he did not. This is not surprising. A man who had been ‘grievously racked’ on or about 1 May would be expected to show signs of wounds at his trial and execution barely two weeks later, but none of the surviving accounts, either by Chapuys or anyone else, even hints at it. Besides, racking Smeaton on his own makes no sense at all in the context, because if his confession had been successfully procured through torture, then the obvious thing to do would be to rack the rest of them and get them to confess as well. Then the case for the prosecution would be nicely wrapped up.31
Despite the confident assumptions of many modern writers, therefore, no reliable evidence exists for torture. On the contrary, reports soon circulating around London claimed that Smeaton confessed embarrassingly freely because he was jealous of the queen’s other lovers. Though the accuracy of this story cannot be proven, it does contain an uncomfortable ring of truth. The last time Smeaton saw Anne he was standing disconsolate by a window, and she reminded him teasingly that he was not a noble man, and she could not speak to him as if he were. ‘No, no, Madam’, sighed the youth. ‘A look sufficed me, and thus fare you well’. Within hours of this little exchange Smeaton was under arrest, and once in the hands of an interrogator as skilled as Cromwell, no racks or knotted ropes would have been needed to get this jealous young lover to open his heart and blurt out a few secrets.32
According to the above account of events, while the government was preparing the mind-numbing constitutional legalities for a divorce and re-marriage, the royal sex scandal suddenly exploded like an unforeseen firecracker. Such a view will never satisfy addicts of conspiracy theories, but it is worth noting that scandals in high places during our own times (there is no need to mention names) often come to light purely by chance. After the news breaks the vultures circle overhead, and political opponents rush to seize whatever spoils they can; but the discovery of the story itself is often more accidental than designed. Scandals are frequently exposed when the press stumble on something, like the lord whose sister was a flirt, or when someone close to the central character spills the beans, like Smeaton. There is no reason why the Anne Boleyn affair should be any different.
Some may feel that this is all a bit too accidental. They could be right. The Seymour faction was certainly trying to speed up Anne’s dismissal, and it may seem suspicious that those unnamed lords went to Henry just when Cranmer was away at Knole and Cromwell locked in discussions with Sampson over the divorce matters. A delegation bent on mischief could hardly have picked a more opportune moment to fill Henry’s suspicious mind with stories about Anne. This, however, is strayin
g into the realms of conspiracy theories once again without any convincing reason. The identity of the informers remains unknown, and there is no evidence that they had any ulterior motive. Besides, there is a hugely compelling argument against any kind of conspiracy, namely this: there was absolutely no need for one. The constitutional apparatus to remove Anne and crown Jane was fast being assembled, and was almost finished.
Meanwhile, Anne and her co-accused were confined in the Tower. William Kingston, Constable of the Tower, sent reports to Cromwell of statements and confessions that Anne made there. The following is a sample of the evidence that arrived on Cromwell’s desk and are Kingston’s own words:
I hear say, said she, that I should be accused with three men; and I can say no more but nay, without I should open my body. And therewith she opened her gown.
Anne also admitted her last exchange with Smeaton (‘Madam, a look sufficed’ – see above). Another one with Norris went as follows: after a tiff between them she turned to Norris and said, ‘You look for dead men’s shoes … if ought came to the king but good, you would look to have me’.
She once told Francis Weston that he did not love her kinswoman, Mrs. Skelton, or his wife. Weston replied that he loved another better than both. ‘Who?’ asked Anne. ‘It is yourself’, he answered. In one of his last messages before he died, Weston asked forgiveness from his father, his mother and his wife – but especially his wife.33