Tudor Queens of England

by David Loades

  1 He was also a diplomat and a courtier of infl uence who, in 1513, managed to secure for his younger daughter a coveted position at the Court of Margaret of Austria, the Regent of the Low Countries. That he chose to give Anne such a training rather than her older sibling Mary is signifi cant. The following year Mary was to accompany the Princess her namesake when the latter was offered to Louis XII on the altar of matrimony, but Anne was clearly the brighter, and considered to be the more teachable. Margaret was choosy about who she would accept and her willingness to receive Anne is similarly a great complement to the child. The language of the court at Mechelen was French, and Margaret was meticulous, both in chaperoning her young charges and in providing them 114

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  with a sophisticated education. Anne remained in that stimulating environment for over a year, before joining her sister in Paris by 5 November 1514, the date on which Mary was crowned Queen of France. When Louis died, the older Boleyn girl returned, as we have seen, to England, but Anne remained in France, transferring her service to the new queen, Claude, who was a girl not much older than herself. While Mary Boleyn was catching the King’s eye and sharing his bed, her younger sister remained in France, acting, it would appear, as an interpreter for the numerous English missions that visited the French Court at this time, including one led by her own father. Queen Claude was of a retiring nature and was almost constantly pregnant, so not very much is known of Anne’s exposure to the King’s household, which travelled around with him, but she is thought to have met and been infl uenced by the King’s sister, Margaret of Angouleme. She attended Queen Claude to the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520 – which was something of a Boleyn family reunion – and became an accomplished dancer and musician. When eventually in November 1521 Anglo-French relations had deteriorated to such an extent that war was in prospect, Sir Thomas brought his younger daughter home. By then she was 20 and, as one contemporary put it,

  ‘more French than English’. She was also a poised and self-assured courtier – and an accomplished fl irt in the best Gallic tradition.

  As might be expected, her marriage had been under discussion in England without reference to her own wishes. Both Wolsey and the Earl of Surrey were keen to marry her to James Butler, who was about three years her junior, as a means of resolving an ongoing dispute between the Butlers and the Boleyns over the Earldom of Ormond. James was living in Wolsey’s household at the time, as something between a guest and a hostage, and as late as October 1521 the Cardinal, then in Calais, wrote to the King: ‘I shall, at my return to your presence, devise with your Grace how the marriage betwixt him and Sir Thomas Boleyn’s daughter may be brought to pass … for the perfecting of which marriage I shall endeavour myself at my return, with all effect.’

  2 The marriage never took place, probably for reasons which had more to do with Irish politics than with anything that happened in England, but it is also possible that someone asked Anne, who proved less than enthusiastic. It seems that for some time after her return to England she was thought of as being betrothed in some sense to James Butler, but no formal engagement was ever made. She was, of course, much sought after but, rather surprisingly, there seem to have been no real negotiations. The story of her entanglement with Lord Henry Percy, the son of the Earl of Northumberland, is both late and problematic. It is told by George Cavendish, who dates it to a time after the King had become seriously interested, which would be some time in 1527. However, the fi fth Earl,

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  who features prominently in the story, died in May of that year; so it is possible that the events narrated occurred in 1526, or that Cavendish’s elderly memory was at fault in some other way. The fact is that for all her obvious allure, she was still available at the age of 25 or 26, when her game of courtly love with Henry started to become real. It looks as though Sir Thomas, already the father of one royal mistress, was well aware of the King’s increasingly vulnerable state of mind over his marriage, and was plotting the eventual outcome. However, there is not a shred of evidence that anything so purposeful was going on. When Anne returned to England, it was to a position in the Privy Chamber of the Queen. By the beginning of 1522, Catherine’s days of power were long since passed, but for an appointment of this kind her decision would still have been required, so it is reasonable to suppose that she had no idea that she was setting up a rival for herself. However, the appointment did mean that Anne was in regular attendance at the Court, and available to take part in its festivities. The fi rst recorded occasion upon which she did that was when she appeared in the character of Perseverance in the defence of the Chateau Verte on 1 March. This involved elaborate dressing up, and a mimic battle in the best Burgundian tradition. Henry led the assault on the chateau, which symbolized female coyness or reluctance, and (of course) won a great victory, which was symbolized by an elaborate dance.

  3 Anne’s appearance at this stage of her career was described or recollected later by many writers, who differ according to whether they regarded her with favour or not, but in certain respects they are in agreement. She was no dazzling beauty but had an electrifying sexuality: ‘Very eloquent and gracious, and reasonably good looking’ one contemporary who knew her well wrote, although he was a priest who would hardly have commented upon her allure. Probably the fairest description comes from a Venetian diplomat who was at the English court at the time: ‘Not one of the handsomest women in the world, she is of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, a bosom not much raised, and eyes which are black and beautiful …’4 It was not, however, her appearance that attracted men; in the words of Eric Ives, ‘she radiated sex’5, and Henry was not the only male to be captivated. Apart from young Henry Percy, who bitterly rued his father’s hostile intervention, Sir Thomas Wyatt equally found her almost irresistible, and had to be warned off by an infatuated monarch.6 Part of Anne’s fascination was her accomplishments. She danced excellently in several different modes, played a number of musical instruments and was an accomplished and witty conversationalist, both in English and French. She was also both feisty and independent – and while both these characteristics attracted the King they may have put off other suitors. If she had been seriously intending to marry during the early 1520s then she had not done very well. Men were 116

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  fascinated but wary because they did not necessarily want a woman with her own agenda – at least not as a wife. The King’s attentions, therefore, although they may have been unexpected and even unwelcome at fi rst, nevertheless soon created a dazzling possibility that no girl in Anne’s position could have resisted. As we have seen, the chronology of this relationship is not straightforward. That Henry bombarded her with passionate love letters and wanted to make her his mistress, and also that she refused, is well attested and can probably be dated to late in 1526. By April 1527 Henry had decided that he wanted to rid himself of Catherine because that is when the fi rst secret meetings to effect that were held, and by August he had decided that he wanted Anne as her replacement. In that month he applied to Rome for a dispensation to marry a woman although she was related to him in the ‘fi rst degree of affi nity … from … forbidden wedlock’.

  7 Anne was not named, but the consanguinity alluded to was clearly that created by his liaison with her sister. When Wolsey went off to France on 22 June, he knew all about the King’s intentions with regards to Catherine but did not know about Anne. So the chances are that Henry applied for his dispensation almost immediately after she had signalled her willingness to be a party to his plan – that is at sometime during July 1527. At that stage neither of them was thinking long term; they expected to be married within a matter of months. What then transpired had nothing to do with Anne. It was the result of Catherine’s recalcitrance and of the political support that she enjoyed, both within England and in Rome. At fi rst Henry expected that his good
standing with the Pope would guarantee success in what was, after all, not an unprecedented

  quest.8 Only gradually did it become clear, both to the King and to Wolsey, that they were beating their heads against a brick wall. Meanwhile, Anne’s infl uence grew. She lived most of the year at court, had frequent access to Henry and excited in him a fury of frustration. There was more to Anne, however, than sexual torment; she quickly revealed herself to be a politician of skill and resource. Thomas Wolsey was the fi rst to perceive this. His own favour had been uncertain since he had taken the blame for the failure of the Amicable Grant in 1525 and it is signifi cant that Henry never discussed Anne’s position with his chancellor until it was public knowledge. During 1528 she was becoming an alternative source of encouragement and advice. Wolsey was far too canny to resent this openly, and he played to his strength. Because of his unique position as a minister of the Crown and a prince of the Church, the King was bound to rely on him to untangle the Gordian knots in the Curia. Anne knew this perfectly well, and as delays and diffi culties built up, increasingly looked to him for a solution. She may not have trusted him, or even liked him, but for the time being there seemed to be no realistic alternative. 9

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  This phase of the royal quest came to a dramatic end in the summer of 1529. The Legatine Court, which Clement had ostensibly conceded, was nothing more than a sham because Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, the Protector of England, who was the specifi c papal representative, was under secret orders to deliver no verdict. Neither Wolsey (the other Legate) nor the King was aware of this deception, and Henry certainly expected the court to declare in his favour. It duly convened at Blackfriars on 18 June, and on 21 June both Henry and Catherine appeared. The Queen then withdrew on the ground that her case should only be heard in Rome and was declared contumacious. So far so good for the King but that was the limit of his success. Over the next month the Court became bogged down in technicalities, perhaps intentionally, and Wolsey wrote to Clement, urging him to order expedition. Nothing could have been further from Clement’s intention. On 13 July he revoked the case to the Rota, and on 27 July (in ignorance of that decision) Campeggio adjourned the court for the vacation.

  10 Henry exploded with rage and Wolsey stood directly in the path of his wrath. What was the use of a Cardinal Legate who could not even deliver a routine annulment? On 18 October he was relieved of the Great Seal and rusticated to his diocese. There is no reason to suppose that Anne was in any way responsible for this outcome, despite later stories to the contrary; nevertheless the cardinal’s fall left her in a position of unchallenged infl uence. On 8 December her father was created Earl of Wiltshire and Ormond and her brother, now Viscount Rochford and a member of the Privy Chamber, was sent on a mission to Franc

  e.11 It is hard to say whether there had been any such thing as a ‘Boleyn party’ at court before October 1529 but afterwards there certainly was and it was in the ascendant. Politically, therefore, Wolsey’s fall was a major breakthrough for Anne, but in terms of her confl ict with Catherine it led her nowhere. Henry’s affection seemed genuine enough and was ardently expressed but the previous year, when Anne had been forced to withdraw to Hever by an outbreak of the sweating sickness in her household, he had for a while appeared regularly with his wife. Despite the

  ménage a trois that the King had established by the autumn of 1529, the Queen showed no sign of either budging or being budged. From time to time Anne became frustrated and we are told that on one occasion, probably in November of that year, she had lashed out at her royal lover: Did I not tell you that when you disputed with the Queen, she was sure to have the upper hand? I see that some fi ne morning you will succumb to her reasoning, and that you will cast me off. I have been waiting long and might in the meantime have contracted some advantageous marriage … But alas! Farewell to my time and youth spent to no purpose at all.

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  Rather surprisingly, Henry seems to have found such outbursts stimulating and they certainly did no harm to their relationship but, on the other hand, they solved nothing either. By the beginning of 1530 a new post-Wolsey regime was in place, with Sir Thomas More as Chancellor and the Duke of Norfolk who was Anne’s uncle, as President of the Council. When her father had been raised to the peerage his allies, George Hastings and Robert Ratcliffe, had also been created respectively Earls of Huntingdon and Sussex. Between them they dominated the council and, as the French ambassador Jean du Bellay wrote, ‘… above everyone, Mademoiselle Anne’.

  13 Politically, Catherine was now heavily outgunned but unless the Boleyn armament could be brought to bear on its target it would make little difference. So preoccupied had Wolsey and the King been in August 1529 that England was almost left out of the Peace of Cambrai altogether. Some rapid last-minute footwork avoided that, but her interests received no consideration. For the time being, Europe was at peace, which meant that Henry had even less leverage in Rome than before and the King could not afford to indulge in such absent-mindedness in the future. Now that there was no Wolsey to take the blame, or credit, he had to concentrate harder, which was not easy when his matrimonial affairs were in such a terminal mess.

  As we have seen, in the summer of 1531 he made a decision of sorts. He broke up the

  ménage a trois and dismissed Catherine from the court. This left Anne in sole possession – but possession of what? Her ascendancy depended entirely upon her sexuality and upon Henry’s willingness to be impressed by it. She had no kind of legal security at all and the next year must have been a radical test of nerve. In that situation the ultimate victory may not have been won by Anne at all but rather by Thomas Cromwell, who had succeeded in transferring himself from Wolsey’s service to the King’s and, having quickly assessed the politics of the court, made haste to align himself with the Boleyn party. It was almost certainly Cromwell rather than Anne who fi nally persuaded Henry that he could use the ancient and honourable device of statute law to sever the bond that tied him to his wife. The Act for the conditional restraint of Annates in 1532 was probably a fi nal attempt at blackmail and, when that did not work, the King decided to pursue his unilateral course anyway, relying on statute to tidy up as he went. On 22 August William Warham died, and on 1 September Anne was created Marquis of Pembroke. In one sense this creation was merely a temporary expedient, designed to give her some offi cial status ahead of Henry’s planned meeting with Francis of France in the autumn, but in another sense it was a recognition of her real status. Anne did not sit at the Council Board but she was far more really a councillor than many who did. She was knowledgeable, opinionated, and a leader of men – not just in the obvious way of a woman, but in a real political

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  sense. She did not eventually meet Francis, who had only one use for women and that did not involve councilling. Moreover he was pressed by his own women to avoid encountering such an exotic creature. She did, however, sleep with the King for the fi rst time, and that was – and was probably intended to be – a way of forcing the issue.

  It was the discovery of her pregnancy in January 1533 that necessitated rapid action. The amenable Archdeacon of Taunton, Thomas Cranmer, had already been summoned back from a diplomatic mission in Germany to the see of Canterbury. Cranmer was not the most obvious man for such a promotion but he had already declared himself to be the King’s man over his annulment issue with a respectable show of theological conviction, and that was what mattered. He had also spent some time in the Earl of Wiltshire’s household and was well known to Anne, although not her servant. The fact that he had secretly married in Germany was at this time known to no one but himself and his wife’s family. Although he knew something of Cranmer’s antecedents, Clement VII made no diffi culty about confi rming his appointment – perhaps he was anxious to oblige the English king over some matter that was with
in his power. Cranmer received his temporalities on 19 April and was duly enthroned. By that time Henry and Anne were already married in a private ceremony, probably about 25 January, although we do not know where, by whom the ceremony was conducted, or who the witnesses were.

  14 Henry may have been confi dent, both in his new Archbishop and also in the understanding that he had reached with Francis at Calais but he was not prepared to come into the open. Even the sharp-nosed ambassadors in London did not fi nd out what had happened until 12 April. As we have seen, convocation dutifully declared the King’s fi rst marriage null and void, and Cranmer, acting in defi ance of the papal ban on any further action in the matter, used his consistory court to pronounce a formal verdict. All this Catherine, Chapuys, and many Englishmen of all degrees rejected with varying degrees of contempt. 15 However, the King’s conscience was now satisfi ed, and on Thursday, 29 May a visibly pregnant Anne was paraded from Greenwich to London by barge in preparation for her coronation. Everything possible was done to make the occasion seem joyful and spontaneous. She was escorted along the river by ‘all the worshipful Crafts and Occupations in their best array, goodly beseen’. The King received her at the Tower, and graciously thanked the citizens for their welcome. Over the next couple of days he made 65 new knights, and on the Saturday she processed through London from the Tower to Westminster, escorted by bishops, noblemen and ‘ladies of honour’. The following day, Whitsunday, 1 June, she was solemnly crowned, and at the banquet that followed, her ‘service’ was led by Henry Bourgchier, Earl of Essex, 120

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