Tudor_Passion. Manipulation. Murder. the Story of England's Most Notorious Royal Family

by Leanda de Lisle

Henry found it hard to accept his loss of public acclaim and he also understood its dangers. Faced with a threat, he responded as his father had always done, with massive force. A reign of terror was about to begin. In March, the Holy Maid, Elizabeth Barton, was indicted by Act of Attainder and convicted of treason without any form of judicial process.9 It was feared a jury would find her innocent of any capital crime, so she never faced one. She was executed in April, along with a number of clergy with whom she was associated. John Fisher, the most powerful defender of the Aragon marriage, was in the Tower, simply for having met Barton. Henry’s former Lord Chancellor, Thomas More, joined Fisher that month for refusing to swear an oath in support of the recent Act of Succession. This statute made Mary illegitimate in English law, but the oath’s preamble also denied papal jurisdiction, which More believed was key to Christian unity and instituted by Christ. For More this was a matter of his private religious conscience; for Henry it was necessary that everyone accept the rightness of his actions, even in their private thoughts.

  Yet there were still no signs of God’s blessing for Henry and that summer Anne miscarried her second child. The old pattern of Katherine’s pregnancies was being repeated and gossip emerged the king had an eye for other women, and even that Anne was jealous.10 But theirs had always been a volatile love affair of sunshine and storms, and the marriage was about to be given a boost from an unexpected quarter – Rome. On 25 September 1534, Pope Clement VII died and the opportunity arose for a rapprochement between Rome and the king. The newly elected Pope Paul III was anxious for a clean slate. He saw the sack of Rome as God’s punishment for the worldliness of recent popes and corruption within the church. The time for reform was long overdue and the battle to prevent the break-up of Western Christendom had begun. In May 1535 Pope Paul created a number of cardinals: men known for their sanctity, learning and integrity. Amongst them was Fisher. The Pope hoped this would both rescue Fisher from the Tower and encourage Henry on the path to reconciliation with Rome. The appointment was made, the Pope noted, not only for Fisher’s virtues, but ‘in honour of that king and his kingdom’.11 The new Cardinal Fisher was to be the English representative at a council that would launch the reform of the church.

  What Paul III had failed to appreciate was how important Henry’s supremacy over the church was to him. What may have begun as a piece of legal and constitutional chicanery, designed to get around Pope Clement’s refusal to annul his first marriage, had become, for Henry, an end entirely in itself, independent of any issues concerning the succession. It was here, Henry believed, that he would find the ‘virtue, glory and immortality’ he had always pursued. He had not yet achieved his boyhood dream of reconquering France, but in becoming Pope in England, with an empire over church and state, Henry had found his claim to greatness.

  As always, Henry VIII genuinely believed his actions to be godly. He saw his regal prototypes as the Old Testament kings, David and Solomon, and the Christìan Roman emperors, Constantine and Justinian. Henry was certain that early English kings had similarly held the title of emperor and the popes had, for centuries, usurped it. Those close to the king said he would not give up his supremacy even if St Peter were to spring to life again.12 When Henry learned of Fisher’s elevation he retorted that he would send Fisher’s head to Rome for his cardinal’s hat, and he had recently created the capital crime for which the bishop would die.

  A new Treason Act had made any denial of the royal supremacy punishable by death. The first to suffer were members of the contemplative order of the Carthusians (regarded widely as amongst the holiest men in England – Londoners often went to them for advice and counselling, even staying for days or weeks of peace and prayer). Their jury had refused to convict them until Thomas Cromwell threw any pretence of justice to the wind and threatened the jurors with terrible consequences if they did not return the verdict the king had wanted. People could hardly believe their eyes to see men once so respected being dragged through the streets on hurdles that May, to be hung, drawn and quartered in their distinctive white robes. But Henry was making the point that no one could expect mercy on this issue, and one he wished his courtiers also to witness.

  Amongst those who attended the execution was the king’s fifteen-year-old son, Henry Fitzroy. He was obliged to stand close to the scaffold and watch each monk hanged in turn for a short time, cut open while conscious and disembowelled.13 Being killed one at a time ensured the monks saw the slow and horrible deaths of the companions who preceded them to the scaffold, and suffered the additional terror of knowing they too were about to die thus. After this group were all dead, further Carthusians were executed before a restive gathering of Londoners in the middle of June. Fisher would be next.

  The colour scarlet, worn by cardinals, was supposed to represent their willingness to die for their faith. But in the 1,000-year history of the cardinalate only one member of the Sacred College has ever been called upon to do so, and that was Fisher. Margaret Beaufort’s old friend, strikingly handsome as a young man, but now well into his seventies, was emaciated and almost blind, and had to be carried on a mule to the scaffold on Tower Hill.14 He was well aware of the corruption of recent popes and had been a leading advocate of reform of the church. But he believed in the institution of the papacy, just as he believed in the institution of the English monarchy. On the scaffold Fisher prayed for his king, as well as his country, and then he died before a stunned and silent crowd.

  It is the death of Thomas More, the family man and politician, beheaded in July, that is now better remembered. But at the time it was Fisher’s death that was considered the more notable. An outraged Pope declared Fisher a greater martyr than Thomas Becket – whose tomb was one of the three top pilgrimage sites in Europe – because Fisher had died for the universal church. It followed that Henry VIII was worse than Henry II who had caused Becket to be killed. On 1 September the Pope decreed that until such time as Henry should repent, he was to be cast out of the Christian family as a heretic, schismatic and rebel.15 This made it certain that the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Katherine would never be recognised in Europe. Yet Henry’s honour, as he saw it, rested on the rightness of his second marriage. The reports of Henry’s extramarital flirtations faded as he launched on a long summer progress with Anne. It was now all the more essential for Henry that they have a son, not only for the sake of the dynasty, but so he might feel exonerated in his actions.

  Courtiers travelling with Henry and Anne from palace to palace that summer of 1535 hunted and enjoyed themselves as best they could. The king’s niece, Margaret Douglas, enjoyed the new sensation of being surrounded by admiring young men and she made several friends. A book, now known as the Devonshire Manuscript, preserves the verses they copied and wrote for each other, and which reflected the lives they were leading and their feelings about it. These compositions include those of Norfolk’s twenty-three-year-old younger brother, Lord Thomas Howard, Henry Fitzroy’s wife, the fifteen-year-old Mary Fitzroy, Duchess of Richmond, who was also a daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, and another of Anne Boleyn’s cousins, her maid of honour, Mary Shelton.16

  Like Margaret, Mary Shelton was exceptionally attractive. She had briefly even caught the attention of the king, but others had now taken up the pursuit. The Devonshire Manuscript features a poem written for her, which spells out her name in the first letters of each of the seven stanzas. The theme is that of an admirer bemoaning a mistress who does not notice his attentions, and it ends: ‘till she knows the cause of all my pain/content to serve and suffer still I must’.17 Mary Shelton and Margaret Douglas scribbled a few tart comments under it, poking fun at the poet’s insincerity. All the while Margaret was falling in love, however, with Thomas Howard.

  Anne was expected to help keep her young women’s romantic fancies under control, and reprimanded Mary Shelton when she spotted her scribbling poetry in her prayer book in the chapel. But Anne was the most successful woman in England at the game of love – it had won her a
king – and in the febrile atmosphere of the summer progress, she found she enjoyed it too much to give it up. She flirted with the twenty-five-year-old Sir Francis Weston, accusing him of preferring Mary Shelton to his wife, a comment that prompted his reply that there was one he preferred to both, and then confirming: ‘it is yourself’. It remained the king’s attention that mattered most to Anne, however, and by early November she was pregnant again. She hoped for a son, but she did not neglect her daughter in the meantime. Anne lavished Elizabeth with attention, personally selecting the silks and velvets that would clothe her. Elizabeth’s position, honour and dignity were a guarantee of Anne’s own. Equally, Anne regarded any honour given to her stepdaughter, Mary, with fear. Henry had assured her that Mary would not marry while he lived. But Anne observed how courtiers who accompanied her to see Elizabeth would often slip off to pay their respects to Mary. Few regarded it just that Mary was declared illegitimate. Under canon law, if parents had good reason to believe their marriage was valid when their children were conceived, those children remained legitimate when the marriage was annulled. Even those who were prepared to accept that Henry’s Aragon marriage was invalid regarded Mary as a true princess and the king’s rightful heir. If Henry were to die, Anne’s position, and even her life, would be in grave danger.

  Many courtiers were also concerned that Henry’s marriage to Anne would lead to war with Katherine of Aragon’s powerful nephew, Charles V. For the moment the emperor was hoping to draw Henry away from France. He had even persuaded the Pope not to publish Henry’s excommunication, so releasing his subjects from their duty of obedience. But Charles was certain Henry’s marriage would prove a passing aberration. If it proved otherwise then he might ally with his aunt, and Henry too was fearful that, though Katherine’s health was poor, she might one day, in her daughter’s interests, ‘carry on a war against him as openly and fiercely as Queen Isabella, her mother, had done in Spain’.18 It came as a huge relief, therefore, when news reached the court that Katherine had died in Huntingdonshire on 7 January 1536. ‘God be praised that we are free from all suspicions of war!’ he announced.

  Katherine had spent her last days worried that the deaths of ‘good men’ were her fault, and asking bystanders to pray for the husband she had loved and lost. There was no grief in Henry, however, for the woman with whom he had once been so happy. That Sunday Henry dressed in yellow and after dinner, carrying Elizabeth in his arms, he showed her off first to one courtier and then another, ‘like one transported with joy’.19 He felt rejuvenated, and on 24 January he continued to celebrate at the joust. He was now forty-four, however, older than Edward IV had been when he died, and like his grandfather he was growing stout. No longer as fit as he once was, his pride came before a crashing fall when he was tipped from his saddle. He was left unconscious for two hours.

  It is sometimes suggested that this caused a head injury that had a deleterious effect on the king’s character. But his executions of the Carthusian monks the previous year were amongst the most shocking of his entire reign. What the accident did do was remind Anne how precarious her situation was. It left the mood at court sombre, and Anne was without any trace of her former gaiety. The Imperial ambassador reported that it had occurred to her that one day, ‘they might deal with her as they had with the good queen [Katherine of Aragon]’. On 29 January, the day that Katherine was buried in Peterborough Abbey, Anne miscarried her third pregnancy.20 It was said that her baby had been a boy.

  Henry came to see Anne, as she lay bleeding in her bedchamber, but rather than offer sympathy he announced self-pityingly, ‘I see that God will not give me male children.’21 This was troubling for Anne. Although Henry was not pointing the finger of blame at her, it was evident he believed God had passed judgement on him again. His affair with Anne’s sister, years earlier, also meant he had good reason to wonder if his second marriage was as cursed as his first. Desperately, Anne assured him that it was only the shock of hearing of his fall at the joust that had triggered the miscarriage. By nature hot-tempered, she could not prevent herself adding, however, that his ‘loving another woman’ had also left her ‘broken-hearted’. As in the past when his wives were pregnant, Henry had been looking to other women for sex. Anne’s suggestion that his own actions had caused the miscarriage infuriated Henry, and he left her rooms with the brusque comment, ‘When you are up I will come and speak with you.’22

  The Marchioness of Exeter claimed Henry was soon complaining he had been seduced and trapped into marrying Anne.23 Within a fortnight the Imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, had also learned the name of a woman in whom the king was showing romantic interest: Anne’s maid of honour, Jane Seymour. A gentleman’s daughter, of average height and average looks, Jane Seymour was somewhat older than Margaret Douglas’s group of high-spirited, literary friends. And she was different in every respect from Anne. With her light-red hair, she was as fair as the queen was dark, and utterly lacked her mistress’ brio. Her cool, arrogant poise attracted Henry nevertheless – the old appeal of the unobtainable maiden.

  Anne assured Margaret Douglas and her other ladies that all would be well, given time. She would have another child and, with Katherine of Aragon now dead, her next baby would carry no taint of illegitimacy. Her difficulty was how could she conceive a child, for it seemed Henry’s anxiety about the validity of his second marriage had rendered him impotent.24 Opponents of the Boleyns were also moving quickly to exploit the opportunity Anne’s weakness offered them. When Jane’s brother, Edward Seymour, joined Henry’s Privy Chamber in March he found those who regretted the break with Rome most anxious to promote his sister with the king. Amongst them was Edward IV’s grandson, Exeter. The royal marquess and his allies were certain that if Anne were out of the way Henry would recognise the legitimacy of the princess Mary. They suggested to Jane that she should play on Henry’s fears that his marriage was invalid while refusing his bed. She did exactly that.

  At the end of the month Henry sent Jane a letter along with a bag of coins. Instead of opening the letter, with its possible suggestion of a liaison, Jane fell to her knees. She begged the messenger to tell Henry ‘to consider that she was a well-born damsel, the daughter of good and honourable parents, without blame or reproach of any kind; there was no treasure in this world that she valued as much as her honour and on no account would she lose it, even if she were to die a thousand deaths’.25 The Marchioness of Exeter was soon reporting that Henry’s interest in Jane had increased ‘marvellously’. They hoped to see Anne trounced at her own game, and Mary restored as Henry’s rightful heir – but they had badly misjudged the king they thought they knew so well.

  22

  THE FALL OF ANNE BOLEYN

  AS SOON AS ANNE’S AUNT, LADY BOLEYN, WAS OUT OF SIGHT, Margaret Douglas would sneak into the chamber of her friend, Mary Fitzroy.1 With the coast clear, Margaret’s lover, Lord Thomas Howard, then followed. He and Margaret met regularly to talk privately, kiss and exchange gifts. One day Margaret gave Thomas her picture, and on another, a diamond. He in turn gave her a ring blessed by Henry in the royal chapel. This, it was believed, had given it healing qualities through a special power granted to the Lord’s anointed.2 Their surreptitious meetings remained well hidden from the rest of the court, but there was a warning to secret lovers recorded on the opening page of the book of verses they shared with their friends:

  Take heed betime lest ye be spied

  Your loving eyes you cannot hide

  At last the truth will sure be tried

  Therefore take heed!3

  It may have been written about the king and his once hidden love for Anne Boleyn. But now it was for Margaret and Lord Thomas to take heed. Tensions were high at court with rumours raging over the worsening relationship between the king and queen.

  On 30 March 1536 the Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys even asked the king’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, if there was a possibility of divorce. Cromwell confided that Anne regarded him as an
enemy and so it gave him no pleasure that ‘notwithstanding that the king was still inclined to pay attention to ladies [such as Jane Seymour] he believed the marriage to Anne would continue’.4 The ambassador wondered if Cromwell’s body language – he kept his hand over his mouth – indicated he was lying. But dissolving the marriage to Anne was a more complex issue for Henry than Chapuys realised. As was later explained to the ambassador, Henry believed ‘he could not separate from the Concubine [Anne] without tacitly confirming not only the first marriage, but also, what he most fears, the authority of the Pope’.5 If Henry were to get rid of Anne some means other than simple divorce had to be found. Happily for the Boleyns it was by no means clear how this might be achieved and Henry was, by nature, dilatory.

  On 2 April Anne felt sufficiently confident in the security of her position to confront Cromwell on a major issue that divided them: what to do with the money made from the dissolution and reform of small and failing monasteries. Anne hoped to see many of the reformed monasteries become teaching establishments, a role that monasteries had always played, with all the money raised ploughed back into charitable enterprises. Cromwell, by contrast, intended to pour the monasteries’ wealth into the king’s pocket and those of men whose support the king needed. He also disliked monasteries on theological grounds, seeing them as promoters of the ‘superstitious’ veneration of saints and their relics.

  That morning Anne’s almoner, John Skip, delivered a sermon in the king’s chapel that broadcast her opposition to Cromwell’s activities. Skip complained about indiscriminate abuse being heaped on the clergy, claiming it was done out of greed for the church’s possessions; he reiterated Anne’s view that the money from the dissolved monasteries should be going on education, laying the blame for the money going elsewhere on evil counsel. Without naming names, he went on to compare Cromwell to Haman, the corrupt minister of the biblical King Ahasuerus, and Anne to that king’s wife, Queen Esther, who had saved the Jews from persecution. Finally the chaplain reminded his audience that Haman had gone to the scaffold.