by Byrne, Conor
The queen’s tragic miscarriage of a male foetus that month was directly ascribed to her, for sixteenth-century observers believed that women were to blame for failures within fertility and pregnancy. Women’s bodies were blamed for causing notorious vices, with women interpreted as ‘at the mercy of their wombs which could wander dangerously through the body causing hysteria and other maladies’.64 The Spanish ambassador, writing less than two weeks after the queen’s miscarriage on 29 January, recorded that: ‘on the day of the internment [Katherine’s funeral], the Concubine [Anne] had an abortion which seemed to be a male child which she had not borne 3½ months, at which the King has shown great distress. The said concubine wished to lay the blame on the duke of Norfolk, whom she hates, saying he frightened her by bringing the news of the fall the King had six days before.’65 According to Chapuys, Anne’s personal relationship with her uncle the duke had deteriorated so rapidly that she personally held him to account for her miscarriage, indicating that relations between the two had been hostile for some time, probably since at least the preceding year. The chronicler Edward Hall also noted the miscarriage, commenting that ‘and in February folowyng was quene Anne brought a bedde of a childe before her tyme, whiche was born dead’.66 Wriothesley agreed, noting that ‘Queene Anne was brought a bedd and delivered of a man chield, as it was said, afore her tyme, for she said that she had reckoned herself at that tyme but fiftene weekes gonne with chield.’67 Lancelot de Carles, who was controversially to set out the queen’s downfall in his verse, agreed with Chapuys in opining that the king’s jousting accident caused his wife to miscarry ‘un beau filz’.68
As with Queen Katherine some years earlier, Anne was directly blamed for failing to bear a son. Rumours circulated at court that she was physically unable to bear sons, while claiming that both Elizabeth and her miscarried son were ‘suppositious’.69 Significantly, similar allegations of barrenness were to arise during Katherine Howard’s downfall just five years later in 1541. Anne’s position as queen and her closeness to the Howard family were brought into doubt through her second miscarriage, particularly with the king’s developing affection for Jane Seymour, a lady-in-waiting to the queen who was aged around seven years younger than her royal mistress. Yet, somewhat unusually, despite her estrangement from the king and her mounting difficulties with her Howard relatives, the queen’s situation was not as bleak as it might have initially appeared, for Emperor Charles had promised Cromwell, who supported the queen, that while: ‘The Princess Mary might be declared legitimate [...] He promised to use his good offices with the Pope, that, at the impending council, his good brother’s present marriage should be declared valid, and the succession arranged as he desired.’70 Paradoxically, despite her second miscarriage, Anne’s position as queen during the early spring of 1536 was not eroded substantially through the increasing influence of the Seymours through the king’s flirtation with Jane, for Katherine’s death and the changed international situation had offered the chance of a reconciliation between England and the Holy Roman Empire through an acceptance of the Boleyn marriage.
Although the king had not yet decided to end his marriage to Anne during the spring of 1536, it has been surmised that the Duke of Norfolk’s hostility towards the queen led him to participate eagerly in the events leading to her downfall, largely because Anne had failed to bring sufficient rewards and prestige to the Howards and, more importantly, to Norfolk himself.71 It is difficult to place the Duke of Norfolk acting with Jane Seymour, her family and so-called imperialists in a ‘faction’ that aimed at the downfall of Queen Anne and her Boleyn relatives, for the evidence pointing to such acts is scarce. It is unlikely that, following his niece’s miscarriage, Norfolk conspired with the Seymours to effect Anne’s disgrace, confident that the king would accept their evidence and rid himself of his second wife, for the king, contrary to popular opinion, continued to support his consort, entreating the Spanish ambassador to publicly honour her on 18 April and writing abroad of ‘the likelihood and appearance that God will send us heirs male by our most dear and most entirely beloved wife, the queen’.72 However, although Norfolk probably continued to outwardly support his niece by virtue of their kinship ties, his probable belief that she had indeed committed adultery and, perhaps, treasonous acts evidences how powerful women were believed capable of the most evil of crimes.
Although both Anne’s personal relationship with the king and her friendship with Lord Secretary Cromwell had fallen into considerable difficulties by virtue of her inability to bear a son and her conflicting policies, respectively, Henry VIII’s affection for Jane did not personally threaten Anne to a significant extent during the early months of 1536 as many scholars believe that it did. As has already been noted, the international situation was actually more favourable to the queen than it had ever been hitherto. Although her estrangement from Norfolk and the growing fear among the Howards that the success they had gained through Anne’s spectacular rise might be merely momentary, Anne’s favour with her husband surely prevented Norfolk from colluding a great deal with the Seymours and other enemies of his niece as early as spring 1536 to achieve her disgrace, for the subsequent rise of the Seymours and their associates could not bode well for his family’s fortunes. However, in late April, a series of events worked together in effecting the downfall of Queen Anne. Cromwell reported in mid-May ‘that the ladies of the queen’s Privy Chamber had informed certain councillors of certain matters and there had followed interrogations of some of the Privy Chamber and a number of the queen’s staff’ pertaining to allegations of Anne’s adultery committed with five members at court, one her younger brother George.73 The queen’s own indiscreet conversations with Henry Norris, a favoured courtier, her brother George, and the lowly musician Mark Smeaton meant that, as Starkey wryly notes, ‘she [Anne] delivered herself’.74
There is a notorious lack of consensus amongst modern historians about the nature of Queen Anne’s rapid downfall in the early summer of 1536, with the majority of historians divided between theories of a factional conspiracy masterminded by Thomas Cromwell, who resented the queen’s influence; the birth of a defective foetus that January which convinced the king that his wife was a sorceress who had bewitched him into marrying her; the queen being guilty of the charges brought against her; or the simple fact that her own indiscreet conversations with male courtiers planted suspicion in the mind of the king when rumours circulated of the queen’s closeness with these individuals.75 The frustrating nature of the surviving evidence and the prejudiced, even misguided, reports of ambassadors resident at court compound these problems, but the fact remains that Anne had been in a relatively strong position as late as April 1536, calling into doubt the first three theories, none of which are satisfactory in demonstrating why the queen was charged, imprisoned, condemned and executed within a space of three weeks. The likelihood is that the queen, unsettled by her second miscarriage that winter and fearful of the rising influence of Jane Seymour, failed to maintain a respectable distance from courtiers, participating in tantalising conversations that could be sinisterly misinterpreted as evidence of treason and plotting the king’s death. Most infamously, she berated Norris on 29 April, informing him that ‘you look for dead man’s shoes, for if aught came to the King but good you would look to have me’, bringing his shocked reply that ‘he would his head were off rather than think such thoughts’.76
Two days later, May Day, the king abruptly departed from the jousts, leaving the queen in some discomfort and bewilderment: ‘on May day were a Solempne Justes kept at Grenewyche, and sodainly from the Justes the kyng departed hauying not above vi persons with him, and came in the evening from Grenewyche in his place at Westminster. Of this sodain departyng many men mused, but most chiefely the quene, who the next day was apprehended and brought from Grenewyche to the Tower of London.’77 The following day, she was arrested on charges of adultery with three men (unnamed, with others to follow), incest, and plotting her husband’s death: ‘[..
.] about five of the clocke at night, the Queene Anne Bolleine was brought to the Towre of London by my Lord Chancellor, the duke of Norfolke, Mr. Secretarie, and Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower [...]’78
The lack of documented evidence relating to the Duke of Norfolk during the initial proceedings against the queen calls into question the suggestion that, in order to save both himself and his family, the duke allied himself with the Seymours and their friends in conspiring the downfall of Anne Boleyn. The first tangible mention of the duke in relation to the queen’s downfall was his role in her arrest, for on the morning of 2 May, the duke, alongside Sir William Fitzwilliam, treasurer of the Household, Sir William Paulet comptroller of the Household, and other members of the privy council, had accused the queen of adultery and incest before escorting her to the Tower that afternoon. Norfolk’s fear for the future of his family was evident in the reports of the disapproval he showed his niece, saying ‘tut, tut, tut [...] in answer to her defence’ during her journey to the Tower.79 The duke’s concern for the Howards, through their association with a queen now accused of heinous crimes, is understandable, particularly when another relative of that family, George Lord Rochford, was imprisoned in the Tower on a charge of incest committed with the queen. Yet any concern for the future of the Howard family encouraged the duke, as one of the foremost peers in the realm, to serve as a member of the Oyer and Terminer Commission for Middlesex on 24 April, which sat at Westminster. This commission also included another Howard relative, the Earl of Wiltshire, father to the queen. The duke later sat on the Oyer and Terminer Commission for Kent on 11 May at Deptford.80
As will be considered in relation to the downfall of Katherine Howard five years later, prevailing contemporary mores about the sinfulness of women were demonstrably brought to the fore in the downfall of Queen Anne, who was denigrated in the indictments for her ‘frail and carnal lust’ entertained with male courtiers due to the ‘malice’ she held against the king.81 Significantly, it was reported that ‘the king [...] took such inward displeasure and heaviness, especially from his said queen’s malice and adultery, that certain harms and perils have befallen his royal body’.82 The implication, clearly, was that Anne had bewitched the king into marrying her and had rendered him impotent, to the danger of his realm. The likelihood was that the king genuinely believed that his queen had employed sorcery to enact evil upon his body, for contemporaries believed that women were able to manipulate men’s sexual organs and rob them of their manhood through sorcery and witchcraft. Henry VIII’s insecurity about his manhood and his ability to father a male heir reflected the concerns of many men living in the Tudor age, for manhood was commonly perceived to be a fragile achievement always open to threat from the malice of women.83
Meanwhile, the queen’s Howard relatives readily participated in the proceedings against the queen, in order to safeguard their lineage from disgrace through association and preserve their honour. Jane, Lady Rochford, sister-in-law to Queen Anne and the niece of the Duke of Norfolk through her marriage to George Boleyn, participated in the allegations made against the queen by her ladies-in-waiting. Although the only extant reference to Jane during the downfall of the queen does not support the popular notion that she was the prime mover against the queen, she was to testify that her husband had discussed the king’s impotence with Queen Anne.84 Despite the actual minimal evidence she supplied in the proceedings, Lady Rochford has still been perceived as a: ‘wretched woman [who] was actuated wholly by hatred of her own husband and the Queen, and it was upon her unsupported statements that the charges of incest were brought [...] She was largely instrumental in bringing Ann [sic] Boleyn to her death.’85 Bishop Burnet agreed, believing that Lady Rochford ‘provided the damaging evidence that there was a familiarity between the queen and her brother beyond what so near a relationship could justify’.86 Significantly, however, hostile observers such as Chapuys and the chronicler of The Chronicle of Henry VIII did not mention the role of Lady Rochford in her husband’s downfall. It is more than likely that her uncle, the duke, encouraged her to act helpfully during the interrogations in order to preserve the safety of the Howards, which was placed in considerable danger during April and May 1536. On 12 May, letters were directed to the Duke of Norfolk that appointed him High Steward of England for the trial of his niece and nephew, the queen and her brother, ‘to give judgment according to the laws and customs of England and direct execution’.87 That same day, four men accused of adultery with the queen, Henry Norris, Francis Weston, William Brereton and Mark Smeaton, were found guilty and sentenced to a traitor’s death.
The minimal role of the Duke of Norfolk during the downfall of his niece, apart from in his role as High Steward of England during her actual trial, is confirmed by a letter written by William Paulet, Comptroller of the Royal Household, to Cromwell on 11 May: ‘my lord of Norfolk showed me that he had no knowledge that the indictment was found and asked me whether the parties should proceed to their trial or not [...] he said he knew not how many were required nor whether they ought to be barons or not. Therefore he could not tell whom to name, and if he knew yet he would name none till he learned the king’s pleasure so he willed me to advertise you.’88 Although ambassadors at court during Anne’s reign, and modern historians since then, generally subscribed to the view that the duke became increasingly disaffected with his niece through her outspokenness and conflicting religious views, the evidence supporting this argument is astonishingly slim. Rather than eagerly participating in the queen’s downfall as a way of enacting a revenge upon a niece he had come to loathe, the evidence indicates that Norfolk supported his monarch because of his firm belief in duty to the king, and the belief that the future of the Howard dynasty was a more pressing concern than the survival of his niece as queen. He could surely not have happily anticipated the rise of Jane Seymour to the queenship, for her family was hostile to his, meaning that his focus must have shifted from his niece the queen to his daughter Mary who, by virtue of her marriage to Henry Fitzroy, represented the opportunity for the influence of the Howards amongst the Tudor dynasty to increase further.
On 15 May, the queen and her brother were tried at the Great Hall within the Tower of London for adultery, incest and plotting the death of the king. Wriothesley reports that ‘there were made benches and seates for the lordes, my Lord of Northfolke sittinge under the clothe of estate, representinge there the Kinges person as Highe Steward of Englande and uncle to the Queene, he holding a longe white staffe in his hande, and the Earle of Surrey, his sonne and heire, sittinge at his feete before him holdinge the golden staffe for the Earle Marshall of Englande [...]’89 The queen maintained her composure when the charges were read out, ‘whereunto she made so wise and discreet aunsweres to all thinges layd against her, excusinge herselfe with her wordes so clearlie, as thoughe she had never bene faultie to the same.’90 Despite her firm answers and courageous demeanour, the twenty-six peers present unanimously found the queen guilty, leaving her uncle the duke to pass the sentence of death. Following her trial, her brother George was also found guilty on all accounts and was sentenced to a traitor’s death, although the king later permitted the more gracious method of decapitation, a privilege also granted to the other four men under sentence of death.
The Howard family, by virtue of their prestigious standing within the kingdom as a noble family, had been required to participate in the proceedings against Queen Anne and the five men accused of adultery and treason with her, although the duke grievously regretted the loss in his status as relative to the king and the dishonour enacted to the Howard name. Following the execution of the queen’s supposed lovers on 17 May, on 19 May Anne herself was beheaded within the walls of the tower. Edward Hall, who served as chronicler at Henry VIII’s court, reported her execution speech:
Good Christen people, I am come hether to dye, for according to the lawe, and by the lawe I am judged to dye, and therefore I wyll speake nothynge agaynst it. I am come hether to accu
se no man, nor to speae any thyng of that, whereof I am accused and condemnped to dye, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reygne over you, for a gentler nor a more mercifull prince was there never: and to me he was ever a good, a gentle and soveraygne lorde. And if anye persone wyll medle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leve of the worlde and of you all, and I hertely desyre you all to praye for me. O Lorde have mercy on me, to God I commende my soule.91
The rapid downfall of Anne Boleyn within a space of three weeks, bringing down five almost certainly guiltless men with her, demonstrates visibly the dangerous nature of fertility politics within Henry VIII’s court and the opportunities it presented for the disgrace and death of a queen consort. As with Katherine of Aragon during the 1520s, Anne’s failure to bear a male heir, after suffering two miscarriages, signified to her husband Henry VIII that he had made a grave error in marrying a woman who was unable to rectify the disturbing nature of the Tudor succession. It is erroneous to interpret his relationship with Jane Seymour as one based on lust and desire, for by all accounts she lacked the charisma, beauty and wit of Anne Boleyn that had made that gentlewoman so irresistible to her monarch.92 Instead, issues of honour and masculinity were at stake, for the king speedily married Jane following his wife’s execution, not because he was captivated by Jane and wildly impatient to marry her, but because Anne Boleyn’s failure had intensified the problems of the English succession, while placing his manhood and his fertility in considerable doubt. Jane’s maidenly and virtuous demeanour probably convinced the king that the solution to these pressing issues lay with her. Some writers have even speculated that she reminded him of his gentle mother, Elizabeth of York, a queen whose fate Jane would tragically share. Historians, misunderstanding the nature of sixteenth-century manhood and beliefs about reproduction and fatherhood, have usually interpreted Henry VIII’s marriage to Jane Seymour merely eleven days after Anne’s death as callous, proving that he had been so moved by hatred for his second wife that he could not wait to get rid of her.93 The reality was that his honour and his manhood required that he speedily take another wife in order to sire a son, both for his own personal security and that of the kingdom. The indictments produced at the queen’s trial evidences the king’s belief that his wife had bewitched him into marrying her and had rendered him impotent. She would not be the last of his queens to be accused of inflicting impotence on her husband the king.