The House of Tudor

by Alison Plowden

  If Henry really told his chaplain that he had a license from the Pope, it was a flat lie, but the reason for it soon became apparent. Towards the end of February 1533 Eustace Chapuys heard how Anne Boleyn had emerged from her private apartments into the gallery, where a crowd of people was milling about. Seeing a particular friend among the company - it may very likely have been Sir Thomas Wyatt - she cried out to him that for the past three days she had had an ‘incredible fierce desire to eat apples’. The King had told her it was a sign she was with child but she said no, no, it couldn’t be. And then, with one of her sudden, disconcerting shrieks of laughter, she turned and disappeared back into her rooms, leaving the onlookers staring at one another ‘abashed and uneasy’.

  In fact, Anne must have been nearly three months pregnant by this time and Henry would have to move fast if her child was to be born in wedlock. In March, Thomas Cranmer was consecrated Archbishop. In April, the last shreds of reticence about the exact nature of Anne’s position were cast aside. On Easter Saturday she went to Mass in royal state for the first time, ‘loaded with diamonds and other precious stones and dressed in a gorgeous suit of gold tissue’. She was now being officially prayed for as Queen - this caused more than one congregation to walk out in protest - and the nobility, with the King’s watchful eye fixed on them, were required to pay their respects to her. Chapuys reported that the whole thing seemed like a dream and even her own supporters did not know whether to laugh or cry.

  On 10 May Thomas Cranmer set up his court at Dunstable to enquire into the King’s ‘great cause of matrimony’ and by 28 May had pronounced Henry’s first marriage null and void and his second good and lawful. Three days later, Anne, now visibly pregnant, rode in triumph through the City to her coronation, wearing a necklace of pearls as big as chick peas, her splendid mane of black hair hanging loose about her shoulders.

  On I June, Queen Anne went in procession from Westminster Hall ‘with all the monks of Westminster going in copes of gold, with thirteen abbots mitred and after them all the King’s Chapel with four bishops and two archbishops, and all the lords in their Parliament robes’. The crown was carried before her by Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk and her two sceptres by two earls. She herself walked under a canopy of cloth of gold, wearing a kirtle of crimson velvet under a robe of purple velvet furred with ermine, a rich coronet with a caul of pearls on her head. ‘And so was she brought to the Abbey of St. Peter’s at Westminster’, wrote a contemporary chronicler, ‘and there was she anointed and crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York.’

  This was Anne’s moment of glory - not since the days of Elizabeth of York had so much honour been paid to a Queen consort. She is said to have complained that she saw too many caps on heads and heard too few ‘God save you’s as she passed through the streets, but that scarcely mattered. She was safely married and safely crowned. If her child was a boy and healthy, nothing would matter.

  Preparations were now under way for the all-important confinement. Henry, reported Eustace Chapuys, apparently believing implicitly in the bulletins being fed to him by the court physicians and astrologers, was confident that his Lady would give him a male heir and had made up his mind to celebrate the event with a pageant and tournament.

  Towards the end of August the Court moved from Windsor to Greenwich, where Henry himself had been born, and there at about three o’clock in the afternoon of Sunday 7 September Anne gave birth to ‘a fair daughter’. It was a bitter and grievous disappointment. Henry had turned the world upside down, made powerful enemies abroad and alienated some powerful people at home all for another useless girl. Not only had he failed to secure the succession (in fact, he had made matters rather worse by introducing a new element of doubt and confusion), but he had once more demonstrated to a sniggering Europe his unfortunate inability to get sons - especially embarrassing this for such a flamboyantly masculine figure as the King of England.

  There was nothing to be done except put the best possible face on it. A Te Deum for Anne’s safe delivery was sung in St. Paul’s Cathedral and on lo September the newest member of the Tudor family, named after her Plantagenet grandmother, was christened with all due ceremony in the Friars’ Church at Greenwich. Archbishop Cranmer stood godfather and when the baby had been brought to the font and baptized by the Bishop of London, Garter King of Arms prayed sonorously that God of his infinite goodness would send prosperous life and long to the high and mighty Princess of England, Elizabeth.

  7: ENGLAND’S TREASURE

  God save King Henry with all his power,

  And Prince Edward, that goodly flower,

  With all his lords of great honour –

  Sing on, troll away, sing, troll on away,

  Heave and how, rumbelow, troll on away.

  For Anne Boleyn the birth of Elizabeth brought the beginning of fear. In January of 1534 there was a rumour that she was pregnant again but either she miscarried at a very early stage or, more likely, the rumour was a false one. In March the Pope at long last pronounced judgement on the King’s first marriage – judgement in Catherine’s favour. Almost simultaneously Parliament at Westminster passed the Act of Succession recognizing the legality of Henry’s second marriage and entailing the crown on Anne’s children. It now became high treason to question the validity of the divorce by deed or writing and, to drive the point home, every member of Parliament, ‘all the curates and priests in London and throughout England’ and ‘every man in the shires and towns where they dwelled’ were required to swear a solemn oath ‘to be true to Queen Anne and to believe and take her for lawful wife of the King and rightful Queen of England’. In one sense, of course, this set the final seal on Anne’s victory, but it also underlined her obligation to fulfil her side of the bargain and provide the country with a Prince of Wales.

  In April the King and Queen were at Eltham with their baby daughter, ‘as goodly a child as hath been seen’ gushed somebody, and my Lady Princess was noticed to be much in her father’s favour, ‘as goodly child should be, God save her’. Henry never could resist babies, but while he fondled and played with the six-month-old Elizabeth there were ominous signs that her mother no longer occupied a similarly favoured position. By mid-summer rumours that the Queen was pregnant were going round again, but again nothing came of it. By September Chapuys was writing that ‘since the King began to entertain doubts as to his concubine’s reported pregnancy, he has renewed and increased his love to another very handsome young lady of this court’. The young lady’s name is not mentioned, but it is possible that Henry was already becoming attracted by pale, prim Jane Seymour.

  Anne tried to get rid of the girl, and Chapuys heard that Henry had told his concubine to be satisfied with what he had done for her; that ‘were he to begin again, he would certainly not do as much; that she ought to consider where she came from, and many other things of the same kind’. But although the Emperor’s ambassador lovingly collected scraps of gossip like this, he still believed that no great importance should be attached to them, ‘considering the King’s fickleness and the astuteness of the Lady, who knows perfectly well how to deal with him’. Everyone was so conditioned by this time to the idea of Anne’s power over the King, that at first it was difficult to grasp that her magic had begun to desert her. All the same, by the end of the year, it was clear to any discerning observer that Henry’s grand passion had burnt itself out, leaving only cold, sour ashes behind. Anne’s growing sense of insecurity drove her on into making scenes which bored and irritated him, and the elegant, lively dark-eyed girl was becoming a shrill, haggard virago, who could not always control her hysterical outbursts and made no attempt at all to control her bitter tongue.

  But although his domestic problems were potentially worrying, the King had other things on his mind during the winter of 1534. In November the Act which declared the King officially and unconditionally Supreme Head of the Church in England came before Parliament, and as from the followi
ng February it would be high treason ‘maliciously’ to deny this startling addition to the royal style. Sir Thomas More, who had a gift for putting things in a nutshell, described the Act of Supremacy as ‘a sword with two edges, for if a man answer one way it will destroy the soul, and if he answer another it will destroy the body’. Neither More nor John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, shared the King’s confidence in his special relationship with God; neither were prepared to recognize Henry Tudor as their supreme earthly authority on spiritual matters, and in the summer of 1535 both paid the penalty. As he stood on the scaffold, Thomas More once again summed up the situation in a single telling phrase. ‘I die the King’s good servant’, he said, ‘but God’s first.’

  Thomas More, a scholar renowned throughout the civilized world, and John Fisher, a prince of the Church, were by no means the only men in England who considered their souls more important than their bodies but they were by far the best known and the news of their deaths sent a shockwave of revulsion and dismay round Europe. But Henry had learnt his own strength now. Ironically enough, it was Thomas More who, not long before, had warned Thomas Cromwell ‘if a lion knew his own strength, hard were it for any man to rule him’. In future no man, and no woman either, could rule Henry Tudor. The gay, easy-going, malleable young King had gone forever.

  Towards the end of the summer Henry went off on a progress through the southwestern counties, leaving Anne behind at Greenwich. Her unpopularity was becoming an embarrassment and, probably more to the point, the King intended to visit Jane Seymour’s family home at Wulfhall in Wiltshire. Just what his plans were (if indeed he had any at this stage) we do not know, but he was still sleeping with Anne for in November she was definitely pregnant again. Then, in the first week of January 1536, Catherine of Aragon died at Kimbolton Castle, the gloomy, semi-fortified manor house in the Midlands, where she had been living for the past two years in increasingly miserable seclusion. Henry made no pretence of mourning. ‘Thank God we are now free from any suspicion of war’, he exclaimed to the Emperor’s ambassador and a shocked Chapuys reported that on the day after the news reached the Court, Henry appeared dressed in yellow from head to foot, carrying his bastard daughter (Elizabeth was nearly two-and-a-half now) about in his arms, making a great fuss of her and showing her off to all and sundry.

  Anne, also wearing yellow, rejoiced with Henry - at least in public. But she was far too intelligent not to have reflected on the possible consequences of Catherine’s death. The King was unlikely to complicate an already complicated situation any further by embarking on a third marriage while his first wife - still regarded, of course, by all orthodox Catholics as his only legal wife - remained alive. He had not dared to kill Catherine as he had killed More and Fisher, and as Chapuys had feared he might, but now that she had at last had the tact to die of natural causes he would find it a great deal easier to make a fresh start.

  Catherine was buried at Peterborough on 29 January and on that very day ‘Queen Anne was brought abed and delivered of a man child before her time, for she said that she had reckoned herself but fifteen weeks gone with child.’ Henry had just had a bad fall in the tilt yard which, it was said, caused the Queen to take a fright and fall into travail. But according to gossip, it was not so much concern for her husband’s welfare as jealous rage over his continuing attentions to Jane Seymour which had caused that fatal miscarriage - either that or her own ‘defective constitution’. Whatever the reason, it spelt disaster for Anne who, by a certain rough justice, was now experiencing something of what her predecessor had suffered. Henry showed her no sympathy. He scarcely bothered to speak to her and when the pre-Lent festivities began, went off to ‘disport himself in London without her - a contrast to the days when he could not bear to have her out of his sight for more than half-an-hour at a time. By Easter it was obvious that the end would not be long in coming. Anne had failed and, like Thomas Wolsey, she must pay the price of failure.

  Secretary of State Thomas Cromwell knew what was expected of him. A discreet whisper in a receptive royal ear that treason was brewing and it might be as well to set some enquiries on foot, and the thing was as good as done. The arrests began on I May. Mark Smeaton the lute-player, Henry Norris, Francis Weston and William Brereton of the Privy Chamber, and Anne’s brother George were taken to the Tower. On the following day the Queen herself was brought up-river from Greenwich to share the imprisonment of the five men accused of having been her lovers.

  Apart from adultery with ‘divers of the King’s familiar servants’ and incest, inciting her own natural brother to violate her by ‘alluring him with her tongue in his mouth and his tongue in hers’, Anne was charged with despising her marriage and entertaining malice against the King. She and her lovers were said to have conspired the King’s death and Anne was also accused of promising to marry one of them after the King was dead and of affirming ‘that she would never love the King in her heart’.

  No shred of evidence was ever produced to substantiate any of these charges -unless a ‘confession’ extorted from the poor terrified musician Mark Smeaton counted as evidence. Anne had undoubtedly been indiscreet, perhaps recklessly so. When Henry began to seek his pleasures elsewhere, relegating her to the role of brood mare, she seems to have turned more and more to the company of the young professional gallants who thronged the Court, allowing, even encouraging them to flirt with her. She may have known she was playing with fire and have enjoyed doing it, but it is hard to believe that she would have deliberately burnt her fingers.

  The government was making the most of the horrid scandal of the Queen’s adultery and the stories of her ‘abominable and detestable crimes’ and her ‘incontinent living’ soon became so exaggerated that the more level-headed started to discount them. Henry, of course, believed them all - or said he did. He told the Bishop of Carlisle excitedly that he believed Anne had had to do with more than a hundred men. He had long been expecting something of this sort to happen and had written a tragedy on the subject which he carried about with him in his bosom! ‘You never saw prince or man who made greater show of his horns or bore them more pleasantly’, commented Eustace Chapuys. Certainly for a man who believed he had been cuckolded on such a grand scale Henry appeared to be in excellent spirits and the Court had seldom been gayer. Jane Seymour was now installed in a house on the river and being visited regularly by the King who would return to Greenwich late at night, his barge filled with minstrels and musicians playing and singing lustily. ‘This state of affairs’, wrote Chapuys, ‘has been compared by many to the joy and pleasure a man feels in getting rid of a thin, old, vicious hack in the hope of having soon a fine horse to ride.’ Although no one felt much sympathy for Anne personally (only gentle Archbishop Cranmer showed any real compassion), some people were not happy about the way the proceedings against her were being conducted. Many people felt that Henry’s blatant courtship of another woman while his wife lay in prison awaiting trial for her life was not the sort of behaviour generally expected of a monarch and a gentleman.

  Anne’s trial took place on 15 May. It was, of course, a mere formality but the Queen faced her judges with courage and dignity and heard the sentence, pronounced by her uncle Norfolk, of burning or beheading at the King’s pleasure without flinching. She was ready for death, she said, and only regretted that so many innocent men were to die for her sake. The other prisoners died two days later and Anne’s execution was fixed for the eighteenth. But there was a last minute delay, caused by the King’s determination to have his second marriage annulled. Thomas Cromwell had tried to prove a pre-contract between Anne and Henry Percy, but the now Earl of Northumberland denied this so furiously and so categorically that Cromwell had been obliged to fall back on Henry’s own misconduct with Anne’s elder sister. This was embarrassing because, since canon law made no distinction between a licit and an illicit relationship, the King’s intercourse with Mary Boleyn made Anne as much his sister-in-law as ever Catherine of Aragon had been - an inco
nvenient fact which Henry had always been careful to ignore. However, this was no time to be fussy about details and on 18 May Thomas Cranmer obediently provided a decree of nullity. The fact that Anne was to die for adultery having never been a wife was brushed aside as another unimportant detail.

  During the time since her arrest Anne’s moods had fluctuated wildly between resignation, hope and hysteria. ‘One hour she is determined to die and the next hour much contrary to that’, reported William Kingston, Constable of the Tower. But now she was anxious to make an end. The stories of her impatience and her unseasonable high spirits are well known and William Kingston was greatly disconcerted by his prisoner’s shrieks of merriment and the rather tasteless jokes she would keep making about the smallness of her neck. It was not at all what Kingston was used to. ‘I have seen many men and also women executed’, he wrote, ‘and all they have been in great sorrow. But to my knowledge this lady had much joy and pleasure in death.’

  Death came at eight o’clock on the morning of 19 May when Anne was brought out on to the Little square of greensward where the carpenters had been hammering and shouting all the previous night as they put up the scaffold. The Queen had dressed carefully for her last public appearance, wearing a long robe of grey damask over a crimson underskirt, and looked, according to one eyewitness, ‘as gay as if she was not going to die’. The executioner, specially imported from Calais at a cost of £23 6s 8d, drew his sword from its hiding place in a pile of straw and it was all over. Head and trunk were bundled into a makeshift coffin and buried that same afternoon in the chapel of St. Peter-ad-Vincula hard by the execution ground. There were no mourners and it was left to Eustace Chapuys, Anne’s bitterest enemy, to pay her a final tribute. ‘No one ever showed more courage or greater readiness to meet death than she did’, he commented in a despatch to the emperor dated 19 May, and went on to tell his master that he had been told by a reliable source that both before and after receiving the sacrament Anne had sworn, on the peril of her soul’s damnation, that she had never been unfaithful to the King.