Six Wives of Henry VIII

by Alison Weir

  Back in the courtroom, Henry was declaring that Katherine had been to him 'as true, as obedient, and as conformable a wife as I could in my fantasy wish or desire'. He had been fortunate to be blessed with such a queen. 'As God is my witness, no fault in Katherine moved me!' he cried. Then, as his listeners were trying to equate what he was saying about his love for the Queen with what they knew of his passionate pursuit of Anne Boleyn, he reminded them how all his legitimate sons had 'died incontinent after they were born'. That, he believed, had been a punishment from God. His concern was chiefly for the succession; he had not brought these proceedings 'for any carnal concupiscence or mislike of the Queen's person or age, with whom I could be well content to continue during my life if our marriage might stand within God's laws'.

  The King then produced a parchment on which was set forth the case his bishops had agreed he had to answer, saying that every bishop in England had set his hand and seal to it. He was interrupted, however, by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, one of the Queen's counsellors, who denied he had ever signed or sealed such a document. 'Is this not your hand and seal?' asked the King. 'No, Sire,' answered the Bishop, in a rage. 'Well, well, it shall make no matter,' said Henry testily, 'you are but one man.' Fisher reluctantly sat down, but he had in effect scored a minor victory for the Queen, since he had exposed what was obviously a forged signature and seal and had thereby cast doubts in the mind of Campeggio at least upon the integrity of the King's advisers.

  The court sat again on many successive days. Katherine did not appear, despite several citations, and Henry was absent from most of the sessions. Both, however, were represented by their counsel, who spent much of the time arguing about whether the Queen's first marriage had been consummated. They even quarrelled among themselves - Warham and Fisher had a heated dispute over the validity of the royal marriage, and Nicholas Ridley, acting for the Queen, expressed disgust that her private life had ever come under scrutiny in open court.

  Meanwhile, Wolsey was doing his best to gain possession of Campeggio's decretal bull, but on 24 June the legate told him that the Pope had written expressly to forbid its use. Wolsey paled. 'That will be my ruin!' he lamented. The King would not be pleased when he found out.

  The hearings continued, as did the arguments. At the end of June, the legates were no nearer a conclusion than when the court first sat, notwithstanding a visitation from the King, who begged them to reach a 'final end' as he was so troubled and could not attend to 'anything which should be profitable for my realm and people'. Thereafter, the court met daily without the principal parties. The general consensus of opinion was that the King and Queen's marriage could only be lawful if Katherine had been left virgo intacta by Prince Arthur. Katherine had sworn on the Blessed Sacrament, and in open court, that she had, but the King - who was the only other person who knew the truth of the matter - alleged otherwise, and had gone to great lengths to seek out witnesses to that first wedding night. Nineteen of them gave evidence at the end of June, much of it deeply embarrassing to the Queen, and all of it inconclusive. Prince Arthur's boastful remarks on the day after his wedding were recalled, and several elderly peers were happy to attest that they had been sexually active at Arthur's age and even younger. A few of the witnesses, such as Rochford and Norfolk, belonged to the Boleyn faction.

  The King's 'inconceivable anxiety' about the case prompted him, at the beginning of July, to send Wolsey to the Queen in an attempt to persuade her to be reasonable and accept the authority of the court. But she asked the Cardinal to stop and think: 'Will any Englishman counsel or be friendly unto me against the King's pleasure? Nay, my lord. I am a poor woman, lacking in wit and understanding.'

  Henry, whose patience was almost at breaking-point, now heard that Campeggio had said he meant to prorogue the court until October, as the papal curia enjoyed a holiday during the summer months, and since the legatine court was an extension of the court of Rome, the same rules must apply to it. This meant that judgement was unlikely to be given this side of the summer recess. On 13 July, Campeggio informed the Pope that some people were expecting a sentence within ten days, but assured him: 'I will not fail in my duty. When giving sentence I will have only God before my eyes, and the Holy See.' Four days later, Clement gave way to imperial pressure and revoked the general commission granted to Campeggio and Wolsey, thus invalidating any further proceedings at the Black Friars court, which was still going ponderously about its business.

  In England, rumour had it that Campeggio would pass sentence on 23 July. On that day, the King himself attended the court, sitting with the Duke of Suffolk in a gallery above the door, facing the legates. But it was only to hear Campeggio announce that he would give no hasty judgement in the case until he had discussed the proceedings with the Pope. So saying, he adjourned the court indefinitely.

  The effect of his words was tumultuous. The King rose and walked out, his face thunderous, whereupon uproar broke out in the court. The Duke of Suffolk shouted from the gallery: 'By the mass, it was never merry in England whilst we had cardinals amongst us!' Wolsey retorted loudly that 'If I, a simple cardinal, had not been, you should have had at this present time no head upon your shoulders wherein you should have a tongue to make any such report in despite of us!' Suffolk did not answer, and stalked off in search of the King. The legates were left sitting looking at each other.

  It might well be a matter of years, and not months, now before the Pope reached a decision. Worse still, the waiting might be in vain: Wolsey knew with bitter certainty that, if the case were heard in Rome, judgement would go in the Queen's favour. If the King went to Rome, he warned the English ambassadors at the Vatican, it would be at the head of a formidable army, and not as a supplicant for justice. And the King, when letters citing him to appear before the papal curia arrived in August, was speechless with rage: 'I, the King of England, summoned before an Italian tribunal?' he cried. But that same month, Charles V and Francis I made peace, which left Henry isolated in Europe. Even now, it was being rumoured at court that the King would take matters into his own hands and force Parliament to grant him an annulment, and although this was not his immediate intention, his anger with the Holy See was mounting, and he was already casting about for another solution.

  The referral of the case to Rome had been a consolation to Queen Katherine: the Pope had listened to her, and she was still confident that her husband would eventually return to her. But the King, as if to underline his determination to have his way, left her behind when he went on progress that August, and took Anne Boleyn instead. When he returned, matters were very strained between the royal couple, and at the beginning of October a heated exchange took place, when Katherine told Henry that she knew she had right on her side, and that as she had never been a true wife to his brother, their marriage must be legal.

  Katherine now had a new champion in England. In the autumn of 1529 the new Spanish ambassador arrived. Eustache Chapuys was a cultured attorney from Savoy, a man of great ability and astuteness. Never afraid of speaking his mind, he was devoted to the service of the Emperor and those connected with him. He had been well briefed about the treatment meted out to Queen Katherine by her husband, and when he arrived in London he was already committed to her cause. Nor would it be long before, having come to know her, he conceived the deepest admiration and respect, and a very sincere affection, for the Queen.

  From the first, Chapuys carried out his duties with more zeal than any of his predecessors, even Mendoza. His initial brief was to bring about a reconciliation between the King and Queen by using 'gentleness and friendship'. But it would only be a matter of time before Chapuys had far exceeded these instructions and became a continual thorn in the side of Henry VIII. He was distrusted by the King's courtiers and advisers, and hated by the Boleyn faction, who feared his influence. The enmity was mutual. Chapuys would never refer to Anne Boleyn as anything other than 'the Concubine' or 'the Lady'. Sir William Paget, one of the King's secretaries, did not consi
der Chapuys to be a wise man, but a liar, a tale-teller and a flatterer, who had no regard for honesty or truth. Paget, it must be said, was biased, but his comments should be borne in mind, for the dispatches of Chapuys form a major proportion of the source material for this period.

  By October 1529, Chapuys had met the King, the Queen, Cardinal Wolsey, and the Privy Council, and had assessed the situation in England. 'The Lady is all powerful here, and the Queen will have no peace until her case is tried and decided at Rome,' he told Charles V. He was right. Henry could not do enough to make up for the disappointment Anne had suffered at the prorogation of the legatine court. In October 1529, the ambassador reported: 'The King's affection for La Boleyn increases daily. It is so great just now that it can hardly be greater, such is the intimacy and familiarity in which they live at present.' In October 1529, Lord Rochford boasted to the French ambassador that the peers of the realm had no influence except what it pleased his daughter to allow them.

  It now pleased her to urge them to seek revenge on the man whom she considered to be responsible for her present position, Cardinal Wolsey. After the legatine court had been formally closed on 31 July, this was brought home to Wolsey himself by a letter Anne sent him, in which she accused him of abandoning her interests in favour of those of the Queen. In future, she said, she would rely 'on nothing but the protection of Heaven and the love of my dear King, which alone will be able to set right again those plans which you have broken and spoiled'. There would be no more need for hypocrisy.

  For the moment Henry was still reluctant to proceed judicially against Wolsey. Nevertheless, it was soon obvious to the court that the Cardinal had fallen from favour. In August, Henry and Anne went on progress, visiting Waltham Abbey, Barnet, Tittenhanger, Holborn, Windsor, Reading, Woodstock, Langley, Buckingham and Grafton before returning to Greenwich in October. When they were at Grafton in the old royal hunting lodge deep in the Northamptonshire countryside, Campeggio, accompanied by Wolsey, arrived to take formal leave of the King before returning to Rome. No accommodation had been prepared for Wolsey, and he was left standing at a loss in the courtyard until Sir Henry Norris, the King's Groom of the Stole, came and offered him his own room. Norris also advised the King of his arrival, and later brought a summons from Henry, requiring the Cardinal to attend him in his presence chamber with Campeggio.

  Wolsey approached the packed room with trepidation, fearing public humiliation, and seeing Norfolk, Suffolk, Rochford and their supporters waiting like birds of prey for the kill. But when the King entered, he greeted Wolsey warmly and helped him up from his knees, gripping him on both arms. Then he led him to a window embrasure where he chatted affectionately to him until dinner was announced. Meanwhile, Norfolk and Rochford had gone straight to Anne Boleyn and warned her what was going on. Consequently, when Henry dined with her that evening, she was in a dangerous mood, showing herself- according to George Cavendish - 'much offended' with him, and reminding him that 'there is never a nobleman within this realm that if he had done but half so much as the Cardinal had done, he were well worthy to lose his head.' 'Why then, I perceive that you are not the Cardinal's friend,' said Henry, with devastating naivety. 'Forsooth, Sir,' cried Anne, 'I have no cause, nor any other that loves your Grace, if ye consider well his doings.'

  She was still sulking when, later in the evening, Henry resumed his talk with Wolsey, but the next morning, knowing that the King had planned to sit in council with the Cardinal, she seized her opportunity and persuaded Henry to go hunting with her instead. Thus, when the Cardinal appeared, he found the King, dressed for riding, already mounted in the courtyard. Henry ordered him to return south with Campeggio, and bade him a fond farewell with the whole court looking on. They would never meet again.

  Campeggio left England on 5 October. He took with him Henry's love letters to Anne Boleyn, which had been stolen from Anne's London house by one of his agents. Nor were they ever returned, for they are still in Rome today in the Vatican archives. The King's officials searched Campeggio's luggage at Dover, in the hope of securing the decretal bull. They never found it, or the letters.

  Anne and her faction did their work thoroughly. In October 1529, the King stripped Wolsey of his office of Lord Chancellor of England and demanded that he surrender the Great Seal. He also commanded his attorney general to prepare a bill of indictment against the Cardinal. In a desperate attempt to placate the King, Wolsey surrendered to him York Place and most of his other property, before retiring to his more modest house at Esher in Surrey. The King was elated at the acquisition of York Place, and in October 1529 he announced it was to be renamed Whitehall and renovated as a palace for Anne Boleyn. That same month, he took Anne and her mother to inspect it, and notwithstanding the presence of a great army of workmen, all engaged upon refurbishment, Anne moved in at once. Whitehall boasted no lodging suitable for Queen Katherine, and Anne was tired of giving precedence to her rival. Now she had her own court and was queen in all but name.

  In November, Wolsey, in an agony of anxiety over his future, sent the King a message begging for mercy, and Henry, whose anger had to a great extent been dispelled by the acquisition of his property, placed the Cardinal under his own protection, graciously permitting him to retain the archbishopric of York. And when, thanks to Anne's adherents, Parliament presented the King on 1 December with a list of forty-four articles or charges against Wolsey, Henry declined to punish him further. Anne must perforce wait.

  Henry VIII met the man who would present him with a solution to his marital problems in the autumn of 1529. When Stephen Gardiner and Edward Fox were returning from Rome in September, they lodged in a house belonging to Waltham Abbey in Essex. There they met a cleric called Thomas Cranmer, who had sought hospitality in the same house because there was plague in Cambridge, where he was resident in the university.

  Cranmer was then forty. Cambridge educated, he had gained a degree in divinity, but soon ruined his career by marrying a barmaid called Black Joan. Marriage was then an impediment to any career in the Church; however, when Joan died in childbirth, the university readmitted Cranmer, who shortly afterwards took holy orders and devoted himself to a lifetime of study. Fox and Gardiner had been fellow students of Cranmer's in their youth, so their meeting turned out to be a friendly reunion, the envoys treating Cranmer to a good dinner. Over the meal, they asked him his opinion on the King's nullity suit. He had not really studied the matter, he said, but he ventured the opinion that the King's case should be judged by doctors of divinity within the universities, and not by the papal courts. 'There is one truth in it,' said Cranmer, and the Scriptures would soon declare it if they were correctly interpreted by learned men trained for such a task; 'and that may be as well done in the universities here as at Rome. You might this way have made an end of the matter long since.' The case, so his argument ran, should be decided according to divine law, not canon law, therefore the Pope's intervention was unnecessary. If the divines in the universities gave it as their opinion that the King's marriage was invalid, then invalid it must be, and all that was required was an official pronouncement by the Archbishop of Canterbury to that effect, leaving the King free to remarry.

  This was a radical solution, but to Gardiner and Fox it made sense, and when the King returned to Greenwich in October after his progress they told him about Dr Cranmer's suggestion. 'Marry!' exclaimed Henry, 'This man hath the sow by the right ear!' Cranmer was duly sent for, and came to Greenwich, where Henry was impressed with the sober, quietly spoken, rather timid cleric. He ordered Cranmer to set all other business aside, and 'take pains to see my cause furthered according to your device'. He could begin by writing a treatise expounding his views.

  Lord Rochford, Anne's father, was asked to prepare accommodation for Dr Cranmer at his London house, so that he could write in comfort. Rochford gladly complied, and seeing the admiration Dr Cranmer conceived from the first for Anne, he made much of his guest. Not only was Cranmer learned and reassuring, but he was al
so interested in the new learning and in the arguments for Church reform that were so often aired in the Boleyn household. In no time at all Rochford made Cranmer his family chaplain, and he stayed in that capacity for some time, being allowed frequent access to the King.

  Henry VIII's acceptance of Cranmer's suggestion to sound out the universities marks the beginning of a new phase in the 'great matter'. Hitherto, the King's main concern had been to have his marriage declared invalid by the Pope, but now he began to take cognizance of the wider issues involved. He was politically isolated in Europe, and, disillusioned with the Holy See, he perceived himself also as an outcast from a corrupt Church of Rome. Even before the advent of Cranmer, Henry had contemplated severing the Church of England from that of Rome. Now, this seemed a very real possibility for the future if the King wanted his marriage dissolved, for it was almost certain that the Pope would not help him. In this way what began as a matrimonial suit became transformed, very gradually, into a political, theological and ultimately a social revolution. The period of Wolsey's tutelage was over; the lion was at last discovering the full extent of his strength and power. The King was now intent on becoming absolute ruler in his own realm, and More's prophecy, made eight years earlier, would soon be fulfilled.

  9

  It is my affair!

  In November 1529, Henry VIII was as much in love with Anne Boleyn as ever, and still showering her with gifts; although these were now more in the way of peace offerings, for the relationship between them was by then often a stormy one. Anne felt that time was passing her by. She accused the King of having kept her waiting; she might, in the meantime, have contracted some advantageous marriage, she said, and had children- a pointed barb, this. Peace was bought with a length of purple velvet for a gown, linen cloth for underclothes, a French saddle of black velvet fringed with silk and gold with a matching footstool, and a black velvet pillion saddle and harness so that Anne could ride in intimate proximity to her royal lover.