Six Wives of Henry VIII

by Alison Weir

  Tell the Queen I do not want any of her goodbyes, and have no wish to afford her consolation! I do not care whether she asks after my health or not. Let her stop it and mind her own business. I want no more of her messages!

  Nor did his spite end there. He wrote to Katherine warning her it would be better for her if she spent her time in seeking witnesses to prove her 'pretended virginity' at the time of their marriage than in talking about her cause to whoever would listen to her; she must cease complaining to the world about her imagined wrongs. To be fair to Henry, it is likely that, had she agreed to the annulment of their marriage, he would have treated Katherine generously and remained on good terms with her - his later treatment of Anne of Cleves argues this. Yet time and again she had opposed him, seemingly blind to the very real dilemma he was in with regard to the succession, and when thwarted Henry could, and frequently did, become cruel.

  Katherine remained at Windsor until early August 1531, when she received a message from the King commanding her to leave court. Having seen Mary off to Richmond, she moved with her household to Easthampstead, where, on 13 October, she was visited by another deputation of the Council, come to explain to her what the determinations of the universities meant and to inform her that Julius II's dispensation was 'clearly void and of none effect'. Katherine remained unmoved, declaring on her knees that she was the King's true wife; he had succumbed, she said, to There passion'. And when the lords warned her of what the King might do to her if she persisted in her defiance, she answered, 'I will go even to the fire if the King commands me'. A few days later, Henry sent her to The More in Hertfordshire, a manor house formerly owned by Wolsey, very well appointed and set in excellent parklands. Here, for a time, Katherine kept great state, being attended by 250 maids of honour. At the end of October, thirty Venetians were her guests and were impressed by her vast household and the splendour of their surroundings. On that day, they noticed, thirty maids of honour stood round the Queen while she dined, and a further fifty waited at table. As for Katherine herself, they found her of short stature, 'inclined to corpulence, of modest countenance; a handsome woman of good repute. She is neither disheartened nor depressed,' but 'virtuous, just, replete with goodness and religion, constant, resolute, prudent, good, and always smiling.' But while foreigners were happy to visit The More, Henry's courtiers stayed away.

  When winter came, Katherine's mask slipped, and in November, she told the Emperor that what I suffer is enough to kill ten men, much more a shattered woman who has done no harm. I am the King's lawful wife, and while I live I will say no other. At The More, separated from my husband without having offended him in any way, Katherine the unhappy Queen.

  In another letter written that month, she begged Charles, 'for the love of God, procure a final sentence from His Holiness as soon as possible. May God forgive him for the many delays!' The Emperor, touched to the heart by her pleas, summoned the papal nuncio and told him he thought it 'a very strange and abominable thing, that the lust of a foolish man and a foolish woman should hold up a law suit and inflict an outrageous burden upon such a good and blameless Queen'. Then he ordered the nuncio to press for Henry VIII's excommunication, in the hope that that would bring the King to his senses. The Pope, as usual, refused to do anything that might provoke Henry to further excesses against the Church: 'His conduct cuts me to the soul,' wrote Katherine of Clement.

  On 10 November 1531, Henry and Katherine hosted two separate banquets for dignitaries of the City of London at Ely Place in Holborn, Henry in one hall and Katherine in another. They did not meet, and this was to be the last state occasion that Katherine would attend. On her way home to The More afterwards, crowds gathered to see her and to shout words of encouragement, which greatly displeased the King. He did not invite the Queen to court that Christmas, and the absence of mirth from the festivities at Greenwich was put down to her absence. Mary, too, was absent, being at Beaulieu in Essex. Nevertheless, Katherine sent Henry a gift of a gold cup, with a humble message, for they had always exchanged presents at Yuletide. Henry sent it back with a curt message commanding her not to send him such gifts in future, for he was not her husband, as she should know. 'He has not been so discourteous to the Lady,' observed Chapuys; Anne had given him 'darts of Biscayan fashion, richly ornamented', and in return he had given her a room hung with cloth of gold and silver and crimson satin heavily embroidered. And he even remembered Mary Boleyn, who received a shirt with a collar of black-work lace.

  Anne was still as unpopular as ever. Her reputation throughout most of Christendom was dire, and she was openly called a whore, an adulteress, and sometimes even a heretic in the courts of Europe. At home public feeling made itself felt in an incident that occurred on 24 November 1531. On that day, Anne went with only a few attendants to dine with one of her friends at a house by the Thames. Word spread quickly through the City of London that she was there, and before very long a mob of seven or eight thousand women, or men dressed as women, were marching upon the house with intent to seize her, even lynch her. Fortunately for Anne, she received warning of their coming, and escaped by barge along the river. She was, however, badly shaken by this evidence of just how unpopular she was with her future subjects. Since Henry could not arrest every woman in London, he was powerless to do anything about it; all he could do was hush up the affair, so that word of it should not incite further incidents, though the Venetian ambassador learned what had happened, and recorded it for posterity.

  News that Anne Boleyn had usurped the Queen's place at court during the Christmas season provoked an outcry in London, and in March 1532, the Abbot of Whitby made history by being the first man brought to justice for calling her a 'common stewed whore'. The Nun of Kent had continued to prophesy against the King, accusing him of wishing to remarry for his 'voluptuous and carnal appetite', and by the winter of 1531, the government had begun to view her as a threat to national security since she was inciting disaffection among the King's subjects, and was secretly believed by Cromwell to be in league with the Bishop of Rochester. From this time on, she would be watched by Cromwell's agents.

  On Easter Sunday 1532, Friar William Peto preached before Henry and Anne at Greenwich, and warned the King that if he made 'an unlawful marriage' with the woman sitting next to him, he would be punished as God had punished Ahab, and the dogs would lick his blood. Henry, hearing this, went purple with rage and walked out, with Anne hard on his heels. A month later, one of his own priests, Dr Richard Curwen, delivered a sermon denouncing Peto as a 'dog, slanderer, base and beggarly rebel and [a] traitor. No subject should speak so audaciously to his prince!' Peto was then banished; he went to Antwerp, and later to Rome, where he was eventually made a Cardinal, dying in 1578.

  Anne had not only made enemies of the people and Katherine's supporters, but she had also alienated some of her own supporters by her behaviour. By the summer of 1531, she was on increasingly bad terms with Norfolk, although he would for some time to come continue to promote her cause, seeing in her advancement future benefits for himself. Yet he could not approve of the way she treated the King. It was to Norfolk that Henry came running, often in tears, when Anne had been unkind to him, and the Duke's estranged wife told Chapuys that her husband had confided in her that Anne would be 'the ruin of all her family'. Anne had also managed to offend the Duke of Suffolk in the spring of 1530, and he had gone straight to Henry with lurid tales of her supposed affair with the poet Wyatt. Henry refused to listen, lost his temper, and temporarily banished Suffolk from court, but the rift upset him. Suffolk was a close friend and a staunch supporter, even in the face of opposition from his wife, Mary Tudor. Lastly, there was Sir Henry Guildford, the comptroller of the King's household, who in 1531 said complimentary things about Queen Katherine in Anne's hearing. Furious, she threatened him with the loss of his highly remunerative and prestigious office. 'You need not wait so long!' he retorted in anger, and immediately offered the King his resignation. Henry tried to talk him out of it, saying h
e should take no notice of women's talk, but Sir Henry was adamant: he would go.

  On New Year's Day 1532, Anne returned to court after visiting her family at Hever, and was lodged by the King in the Queen's old apartments with almost as many female attendants as Katherine had had. Two weeks later, the King reconvened Parliament 'principally for the divorce [sic]'. In May, as a penalty for their past loyalty to the-

  Pope, he exacted a heavy fine from Convocation. This open defiance of the Holy See was not without repercussions, for the next day Sir Thomas More resigned from his office of Lord Chancellor and surrendered the Great Seal of England to the King. He could no longer reconcile his conscience to Henry's reforms, and he wanted nothing to do with the King's plans to marry Anne Boleyn. The King was upset, disappointed, and rather angry, but he let More go, and Sir Thomas was grateful to retire to his house at Chelsea, his family, and his books. Sir Thomas Audley, a staunch King's man, was shortly afterwards appointed Lord Chancellor in his place.

  In May 1532, Henry was busy spending a small fortune on providing Anne Boleyn with a wardrobe fit for a queen. One gown was made entirely of gold-embroidered velvet, and cost over 74. Then there was the glamorous nightgown, supplied in June, made of black satin lined with black velvet, which was not to be worn in bed, but to keep warm and to receive guests out of it. That same month, Henry granted Anne the manor of Hanworth, which boasted a fine house in which she frequently stayed.

  Meanwhile, in Rome, the King's case still dragged on. A hearing had been set for November 1531, but then it was adjourned again until January 1532, when 'that devil of a Pope' (as the French ambassador described him to Chapuys) once more postponed it. It would not take place until after Christmas, even though Francis I had told Clement, at Henry's behest, that if he agreed to an annulment then Henry might forget all about his new-found supremacy and once more become a dutiful son of the Church. Clement was waiting for Henry to appear in Rome and answer for himself, which Henry dismissed as a foolish 'fantasy'. He would never go, he said. Then the Pope sent a solemn injunction to the King, ordering him to restore Queen Katherine to her rightful place at court and remove 'that diabolic woman' from his bed forthwith; whereupon Henry, who had waited so long and with such impatience to manoeuvre Anne into that bed, reacted with hot fury. 'It is my affair!' he cried. How dared the Pope interfere! But interfere Clement did, threatening excommunication, a threat that Henry ignored. And in May, he issued a brief ordering Henry to treat Katherine with more kindness. In July, in secret consistory, he decreed that if the King did not appear in Rome by 1 November, he would be declared contumacious, and the hearing would go ahead without him.

  The Queen also received support from other quarters. In January, Reginald Pole, then studying in Paris, spoke out against the King, after having once used his influence to cause a division of opinion in Henry's favour in the Faculty of Theology at the Sorbonne over the question of the validity of the royal marriage. Henry ordered Pole to explain himself, which he wisely refused to do; later the King tried to gain Pole's support for his reforms, but again, Pole proved uncooperative. In June 1532, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, preached a sermon in favour of the rights of the Queen, thereby incurring the King's grave displeasure. And in February that year, Archbishop Warham, fearing an earthly king less than a celestial one, formally protested in Parliament against all legislation passed since November 1529 that was derogatory to the Pope's authority, thereby effectively denying the royal supremacy. This was a setback for the King, but he let it pass, for Warham could not live much longer. But he could not silence his own sister, the Duchess of Suffolk, who, in April 1532, used what Chapuys called 'opprobrious language' about Anne Boleyn, and who still stayed away from court on her account. Nevertheless, finally, Mary Tudor would be reconciled to the King before her tragic early death in June 1533, and would tell him in her last letter that 'the sight of your Grace is the greatest comfort to me that may be possible.' Lastly there was Chapuys, who was still as zealous as ever in the Queen's cause. He had even obtained an assurance from the Earl of Shrewsbury, Keeper of the Queen's Crown, that he would not allow it to be placed on any other head than Katherine's.

  There were signs in 1532 that the government meant to deal harshly with those who persisted in supporting the Queen. In August, Maria de Salinas, Lady Willoughby, Katherine's closest friend, was ordered to leave her household and not communicate with her royal mistress. And in that same month, Thomas Abell was sent to the Tower of London for publicly upholding Katherine's cause. However, he was released at Christmas, with a stern warning not to meddle in the King's matrimonial affairs. Most ominous of all was Katherine's separation from her daughter. In January, Mary had made a much publicised visit to her mother at Enfield, Henry being anxious to placate his subjects. When the visit ended neither mother nor daughter realised that they would never be allowed to meet again. It suited the King to keep them apart; now that Mary was growing older, he feared they might well intrigue with the Emperor against him. Besides, keeping Katherine from seeing Mary was a good way of punishing her for her obstinacy.

  And there were other ways, too. In May 1532, the King ordered Katherine to leave The More and move to the palace at Bishop's Hatfield in Hertfordshire, a red-brick edifice built in the late- medieval style by Henry VII's chief minister, Cardinal Morton, in 1497. Built around a courtyard - all that remains nowadays is one wing containing the great hall - it was a royal enough residence that would later be used as a nursery palace for the King's children. Katherine was installed there by the end of June, but she did not stay long, for on 13 September, Henry sent her to Enfield, where she would be less comfortably housed. She went meekly enough, still holding firmly to her conviction that she was right.

  In June 1532, England and France signed a mutual treaty of alliance. Henry now expected to be able to count on Francis I's support when it came to dissolving his marriage and marrying Anne Boleyn, and the two Kings agreed to meet at Calais in the autumn to discuss those matters and to formulate their policy towards the Emperor. In the summer, Henry told Chapuys that he meant to marry Anne as soon as possible, and would celebrate their nuptials in 'the most solemn manner'. Yet for a while it seemed there might be an impediment to their union. The Countess of Northumberland was petitioning Parliament for a divorce from her husband, Anne's former suitor Henry Percy, on the grounds that there had been a precontract between him and Anne Boleyn. Henry had Percy closely questioned by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, who made him swear solemnly on the Blessed Sacrament that there had never been such a precontract. Parliament, accordingly, threw out his wife's petition, and the unhappy marriage of the Percys had perforce to continue.

  In August, Henry took Anne on a progress with him through the southern counties, but was forced to cut it short as a result of the hostility shown by the crowds who lined the roadsides and hurled abuse at her. Some cried out that he should take back the Queen, others that Anne was a whore and a heretic. 'The Lady is hated by all the world,' observed Chapuys with satisfaction. It was around this time that Anne found a book of prophecies in her apartments at Whitehall, obviously left by one of her enemies for her to find for one crude picture showed her with her head cut off. Anne was unperturbed, and told her maid of honour, Anne Saville, that she thought it 'a bauble', adding that she was resolved to marry the King 'that my issue may be royal, whatever will become of me'.

  On 22 August 1532, Archbishop Warham died, and the King wasted no time in appointing Thomas Cranmer to the vacant See of Canterbury. Chapuys wondered if the Pope knew of the reputation Cranmer has here of being devoted heart and soul to the Lutheran sect', a reputation that was not undeserved, although the new Archbishop had to keep his heretical views a strict secret from Henry. 'He is a servant of the Lady's,' the ambassador informed his master, 'and should be required to take a special oath not to meddle with the divorce[sic].It is suspected that the new Archbishop may authorise the marriage in this Parliament.'

  Of course, Cran
mer had every intention of meddling with the annulment, not only because he believed in it, but because his appointment was enthusiastically supported by the Boleyns, whose chaplain he had been; the new primate had a sincere affection for Anne Boleyn, and saw her as a means whereby he might push through the ecclesiastical reforms that were so dear to him. The Queen, like Chapuys, regarded his promotion as ominous, and was also concerned about her daughter, having heard that Anne Boleyn's enmity towards the Princess was as great as it was towards herself. It was said that the King dared not praise Mary in Anne's presence for fear of provoking her vicious temper, and that she had made spiteful remarks about the girl. By September 1532, Henry was having to keep his visits to Mary as brief as possible because Anne was so jealous, and not long afterwards she was boasting that she would have Mary in her own train and might one day 'give her too much dinner, or marry her to some varlet'. Chapuys, hearing her, was concerned, remembering the attempt on Bishop Fisher's life; he had no doubt that Anne was perfectly capable of putting her threats into effect.