Six Wives of Henry VIII

by Alison Weir

  This letter was written at Bletchingly in Surrey, one of the houses granted to Anne of Cleves after the annulment of her marriage. The others were Richmond and Hever, and she seems to have divided her time among all three. Richmond had once been the favourite home of Henry VII, and was by far the largest; after Anne's death, Elizabeth I would come to love this mellow, red-brick palace on the banks of the Thames, and would die there in 1603. Bletchingly Place was also built of red brick; it had once been in the hands of that Duke of Buckingham who had been executed by Henry VIII in 1521, after which it had come into the possession of the Crown. All that remains of it today is a Tudor gatehouse at Place Farm. Hever Castle, of course, had been the home of Anne Boleyn from childhood until her marriage to the King; it had fallen to the Crown on the death of Anne's father, the Earl of Wiltshire, without heirs, in 1539. Anne of Cleves seems to have favoured it least among her houses, probably because it held too many memories of her unfortunate predecessor. Yet she did go there from time to time; in 1547, Katherine Bassett, who had entered Anne's household after the latter's divorce, was married to Mr Henry Ashley of Hever, whom she no doubt met when accompanying her mistress on a visit to the castle.

  Anne was always welcome at court and therefore able to enjoy the best of both worlds, as an honourary member of the King's family and as a country gentlewoman. She was therefore a witness to the shifting vicissitudes of power and the changing fortunes of the monarchy that characterised the middle years of the sixteenth century. She saw Edward VI decline in health and learned of his death from consumption at the age of fifteen in July 1553. She heard, not long afterwards, how Northumberland had plotted to set the Lady Jane Grey - whom he had married to his son, Lord Guildford Dudley - upon the throne, that he might conserve power for himself and thus preserve the Protestant religion in England. And she learned, with sincere gladness, how the country had rallied to Mary Tudor's cause, and how Mary had overthrown Queen Jane and been herself proclaimed Queen of England. In October 1553, Anne was present at Mary I's coronation in Westminster Abbey, and occupied the same litter as the Lady Elizabeth in the procession to and from the Abbey.

  Some months later, Anne was writing from Hever to congratulate Mary on her marriage to the Catholic Philip of Spain, son and heir of the Emperor Charles V, and to ask 'when and where I shall wait on your Majesty and his'. She sent also a wish that they should both enjoy 'much joy and felicity, with increase of children to God's glory and the preservation of your prosperous estates'. Sadly, Mary whose first legislation in Parliament had been an Act declaring her parents' marriage lawful - was never to bear a child. What was at first thought to be a pregnancy later turned out to be a malignant growth within the womb.

  Mary had originally been responsible for Anne of Cleves's conversion to Roman Catholicism, and by the 1550s Anne had long since repudiated Protestantism. She would have heard, no doubt, of the coming of the Inquisition to England, and also of the burning of more than 300 heretics, among them Archbishop Cranmer, on the Queen's orders. It had been Mary's intention from the first to eradicate the Protestant heresy from her realm, and to return her kingdom to the fold of the Roman Church. This she had done, but at a price, and when she died she would be remembered, not as the saviour of the English Church, but as 'Bloody Mary', a monster of cruelty.

  It appears that during these years Anne of Cleves rarely went to court, preferring to lead the life of a private gentlewoman, attending to domestic affairs and managing her estates. She seems to have become quite efficient at this, and to have converted her property into a thriving asset. The rents she received from her manors now enabled her to live in comfort, and her steward, Sir Thomas Cawarden (who had formerly been Henry VIII's Master of the Revels), assisted her so ably that when she died she bequeathed to him her manor of Bletchingly as a reward. It was Cawarden who in 1556 made her a generous loan with which to buy furniture for a small house she had recently purchased at Dartford in Kent; indeed, she seems to have relied on him implicitly in financial matters.

  Anne never married again, nor did she ever leave England; her parents were dead, and her brother, a strict Protestant, did not approve of her conversion to the old faith. Thus a return to Cleves, even had she wished it, was out of the question. In fact she had grown fond of England and its people, and intended to die in her adoptive land. In her latter years, when her health began to fail, she was allowed by Queen Mary to live at Chelsea Old Manor, where Katherine Parr had once lived with Admiral Seymour, and it was here, in mid-July 1557, that she dictated her will, a document that bears witness to her kindness and compassion for others. To her brother she left a diamond ring, and to his wife a ruby ring; to her sister, the Lady Amelia, went another diamond ring, as also to the Duchess of Norfolk and the Countess of Arundcl. The Lady Elizabeth was to have Anne's second-best jewel, and there was a request for her to find employment in her household for 'one of our poor maids named Dorothy Curzon'. To Mother Lovell, 'for her care and attendance upon us in the time of our sickness', there was a bequest of 10.00, likewise to 'our poor servant, James Powell'; Elya Turpin, Anne's laundress, was to receive 4.00 'to pray for us'. Each of the executors was remembered 'for their pains': the Lord Chancellor was to have a standing cup and cover of gold or a crystal glass set with precious stones; Sir Richard Preston would get 'our best gilt bowl with a cover', and Edmund Peckham a jug of gold.

  The Queen, 'our most dearest and entirely beloved sovereign lady', was asked to be overseer of the will, 'with most humble request to see the same performed as shall to her Highness seem best for the health of our soul'. In token of 'the special trust and affection which we have in her Grace', Anne bequeathed to Mary Tudor her best jewel, begging her to see that her servants were well provided for, in consideration of their long service; many had been with her since 1540, and Anne reminded the Queen how her father King Henry had 'said then unto us that he would account our servants his own; therefore we beseech the Queen's Majesty to accept them in this time of their extreme need.'

  Anne knew she was dying when she dictated her will, and she ended it with the requests that all those benefiting from it should pray for her soul and see her body buried 'according to the Queen's will and pleasure', and that she might be given the last rites of 'Holy Church, according to the Catholic faith, wherein we end our life in this transitory world'.

  Anne of Cleves died on 16 July 1557, at Chelsea, a few weeks short of her forty-second birthday. The illness that caused her death is not named. She was buried, on 3 August, by order of the Queen, in Westminster Abbey with great ceremony. The coffin was borne from Chelsea on a hearse, and was covered with seven rich palls. Many priests and clergy walked in the procession, as well as the Bishop of London and some of the monks who had not long before been allowed to return to Westminster Abbey. With them was their Abbot, John Feckenham, with the dead woman's executors, followed by several representatives of the nobility and gentry. The late Queen's banners were carried aloft by members of her household, who also walked in the procession. At Charing Cross, the cortege was met by a hundred more of Anne's servants, all bearing torches, who joined the throng of mourners, together with her ladies, clad in black, mounted on horses, as well as twelve 'beadsmen' of Westminster and eight heralds bearing white banners of arms, who ringed the corpse.

  At the Abbey door, everyone dismounted, and the Bishop of London, with the Abbot of Westminster, received the body, swinging censers of incense over it. Then the coffin was borne into the great church, covered with a canopy of black velvet, and put in position before the altar, where it remained all night while the monks sang dirges. The next morning, a requiem mass was sung, and the Abbot preached a sermon. Bishop Bonner, wearing his mitre, said mass, then the coffin was laid in its tomb in the south transept of the Abbey. The chief officers of Anne's household then came forward and broke their staves of office, casting them after the coffin. Jane Seymour's sister Elizabeth, Marchioness of Winchester, was chief mourner, and she led the ladies in making their of
ferings afterwards. When the obsequies were concluded, her husband, John Paulet, Marquess of Winchester, entertained all the mourners to a funeral banquet at his London home. Within a month, the monks of Westminster had despoiled the hearse left over Anne's tomb, removing all the palls and banners adorning it, and Queen Mary gave orders for Anne's countryman, the stonemason Theodore Haveus, to come over from Cleves and fashion a proper monument. In 1606, a bare marble slab decorated with the earliest example of a skull and crossbones to appear in England was placed above Haveus's tomb. Today, Anne's final resting place is obscured by two monuments dating from the late seventeenth century.

  Mary I did not long survive Anne of Cleves. She died, embittered and unloved, on 17 November 1558, and was succeeded by her sister, who became Queen Elizabeth I. Mary was buried not far from Anne of Cleves, in one of the side-chapels to the great Henry VII Chapel in Westminster Abbey.

  Half a century after Anne's death, the chronicler Raphael Holinshed remembered her as 'a lady of right commendable regard, courteous, gentle, a good housekeeper, and very bountiful to her servants'. There had never been, he wrote, 'any quarrels, talebearings or mischievous intrigues in her court, and she was tenderly loved by her domestics.'

  It was an apt and well-deserved tribute.

  Bibliography

  The major sources for this book have been the monumental Calendar of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII(21 vols in 33 parts, edsj. S. Brewer, James Gairdner and R. Brodie, HMSO, 1862-1932), which is said to include at least one million separate facts about Henry;State Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII,published under the Authority of Her Majesty's Commission (11 vols, Records Commissioners, 1831-52); and, for the latter part of the reign in particular, theActs of the Privy Council of England(32 vols, ed. John Roche Dasent, HMSO, 1890-1918).

  Of the diplomatic sources, by far the most useful and informative, if necessarily biased, is theCalendar of Letters, Despatches and State Papers relating to negotiations between England and Spain, preserved in the Archives at Simancas and Elsewhere(17 vols, ed. G. A. Bergenroth, P. deGoyangos, G. Mattingley, R. Tyler etal., HMSO, 18621965). This incorporates ambassadors' dispatches and a large volume of the correspondence of Katherine of Aragon and the Spanish monarchs. Also very useful, especially for descriptions of pageantry and ceremonial, is theCalendar of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to English Affairs preserved in the Archives of Venice and in the other Libraries of Northern Italy(7 vols, eds L. Rawdon-Brown, Cavendish Bentinck et al., HMSO, 1864-1947). Other diplomatic sources for the period are theCalendar of State Papers and Manuscripts existing in the Archives and Collections of Milan: vol. i, 1385-1618(ed. A. B. Hinds, 1912); theMemoiresof Martin and Guillaumc du Bcllay, French ambassadors to the court of Henry VIII (4 vols, eds V. L. Bourrilly and F. Vindry, Paris, 1908-19);Correspondance du Cardinal Jeandu Bellay(ed. R. Scheurer, Paris, 1969);Correspondance Politique de MM. de Castillon et de Marillac, Ambassadeurs de France en Angeleterre, 1537-1542(ed. J. Kaulek, Paris, 1885);Correspondance Politique de Odet de Selve, Ambassadeur de France en Angleterre, 15461549(ed. G. Lefevre-Pontalis, Paris, 1888);Negotiations Diplomatiques entre la France et I'Autriche, 1491-1530(2 vols, ed. A. J. G. Le Glay, Paris, 1845-47);andPapiers d'Etat du Cardinal Granvelle, 1500-1565(9 vols, ed. C. Weiss, 1841-52).

  Official records for the period are contained in the Rolls of Parliament,Rotuli Parliamentorum(7 vols, ed. J. Strachey et al., Records Commissioners, 1767-1832), in which are detailed all the Acts and Statutes, as well as parliamentary proceedings;Household Ordinances: A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government of the Royal Household(Society of Antiquaries, 1790);Journals of Parliament for the Reign of Henry VIII, 150^-1536(r. 1742);Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VIIIfrom November 1529 to December 1532(ed. H. Nicolas, 1827);Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England(ed. H. Nicolas, Records Commissioners, 1834-7);The Statutes, AD 1235-1770(HMSO, 1950);Statutes of the Realm(11 vols, Records Commissioners, 1810-28);State Trials vol. 1, 11631600(ed. D. Thomas, W. Cobbett and T. B. Rowell, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972);English Historical Documents, 1485-1558(eds C. H. Williams and D. C. Douglas, 1967); and, for documentary sources for the latter period of the book, theCalendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reigns of Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth, 15471580(2 vols, ed. R. Lemon, Longman, Brown, Green, 1856) and theCalendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, Elizabeth/(ed.J. Stevenson et al., 1863-1950).

  There are also several invaluable chronicle and narrative sources dealing with the reign of Henry VIII in general. Three are contemporary, or written by contemporaries. The first is Edward Hall's Chronicle, published in two versions:The Union of the Noble and Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York(first published 1542; ed. H. Nicolas; G. Woodfall, Printer 1809) andThe Triumphant Reign of King Henry the Eighth(first published 1547; ed. C. Whibley and T. C. and E. C.Jack, 2 vols, 1904). Hall was a lawyer; his chronicles have a strong patriotic bias in favour of Henry VIII, and he tends to gloss over compromising issues. His descriptions of state occasions have not been surpassed, and his true value is as an annalist. The second contemporary source is George Cavendish'sThe Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey(first published 1557; ed. R. Sylvester, Early English Texts Society, 1959), which is particularly useful for the early career of Anne Boleyn. Cavendish was Wolsey's secretary and well placed to record contemporary events, yet his admiration for his master makes him a biased observer. The third, and most controversial, source is theCronico del Rey Enrico Otavo de Inglaterra,written before 1552 and sometimes attributed to Antonio de Guaras, who came to England in the train of Eustache Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador. It was printed asThe Chronicle of King Henry VIII(ed. M. A. S. Hume, George Bell and Sons, 1889), but is commonly referred to by historians as the 'Spanish Chronicle'. Much of the information in it is I based on hearsay and rumour, although many writers have been fooled by a seeming authenticity of detail which is not always corroborated by other sources. This source should therefore be treated with caution. There are several later narrative sources for the reign of Henry VIII; these may be divided into Protestant or Catholic sources, and most are accordingly biased. The Protestant sources are all English.

  John Foxe, in his popular History of the Acts and Monuments of the Church(better known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs) (published in 1563; ed. G. Townshend and S. R. Cattley, 8 vols, Seelcy and Burnside, 1837-41), gives interesting details about Anne Boleyn and Katherine Parr, both of whom he represented as Reformation heroines. Raphael Holinshed'sChronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland(first published 1577; ed. H. Ellis, 6 vols, G. Woodfall, Printer, 1807-8) draws mainly upon Hall's chronicle. Charles Wriothesley, Windsor Herald, wrote before 1562 hisChronicle of England in the Reigns of the Tudors from 1485 to 1559(ed. W. D. Hamilton, 2 vols, Camden Society, 2nd series, X and XX, 1875, 1877). Wriothesley was the first cousin of Thomas, Earl of Southampton and Lord Chancellor of England, and may therefore be considered a reliable primary source, especially for the 1540s, although his work was not published until 1581. The antiquarian John Stow wrote two useful books,The Annals of England(1592; ed. E. Howes, London, 163 1) and his celebratedSurvey of London(1598; ed. C. L. Kingsford, 2 vols, Oxford University Press, 1908). Another valuable later work is Lord Herbert of Cherbury'sThe Life and Reign of King Henry the Eighth(published a year after his death in 1649; ed. White Kennett, 1870), which may be considered to be the first 'modern' biography of the King. Herbert used original source material, some of which has since been lost or destroyed, and he was less subjective in his approach to his subject than earlier Protestant writers.

  The later Catholic sources for Henry VIII's reign, most of which were printed abroad, are all biased against the King. Nicholas Harpsfield'sA Treatise on the Pretended Divorce between King Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon(ed. N. Pococke, Camden Society, 2nd series, XXI, 1878) was published in 1556 when Katherine's daughter Mary I was reigning and is consequently imbued with the spirit of the Counter-Reformation. Like most l
ater Catholic sources, Harps- field's work contains much that is apocryphal. One of the most damaging works ever printed was Nicholas Sanders'De Origine ac Progressu Schismatis Anglicani(first published in 1585 in Rome; printed asThe Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism,ed. D. Lewis, 1877). Sanders was an English Jesuit, exiled to Rome in the reign of Elizabeth I. He had nothing but contempt for Henry VIII, but the chief object of his venom was Anne Boleyn, whom he portrayed as evil personified, the cause of the English Reformation, and the English Jezebel. Sanders is responsible for many apocryphal anecdotes about Anne - such as the tale that she was the result of an affair between Henry VIII and Elizabeth Howard, or the tale that she was raped at the age of seven - and his treatise was received with scornful scepticism in England, prompting a reply by George Wyatt (see below, under chapter 7). Another Catholic writer working at the end of the sixteenth century was Gregorio Leti, who wrote a life of Elizabeth I which was suppressed by the Catholic authorities in Italy, probably because it was too favourable to its subjects. Nearly all the original copies were destroyed, and the work only survives in a French translation of 1694,La Vie d'Elisabeth, Reine d'Angleterre,from which some of the original material is certainly missing. It is thought that Lcti made use of contemporary sources now lost to us, and for this reason his narrative may be of some value, although parts have been shown to be apocryphal. Girolamo Pollino, another Italian Catholic, wrote hisIstoria dell' Ecclesiastica della Rivoluzion d'lnghilterrain 1594. Although he was biased against Henry VIII, there is evidence that much of his information was drawn from reliable sources, as many of his statements are corroborated by more contemporary sources. Unfortunately, there is much that has also been shown to be fanciful. The best Catholic source is Henry Clifford'sLife of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria(published 1643; ed. E. E. Estcourt andj. Stevenson, Burns and Oates, 1887). Jane Dormer was one of Mary I's maids of honour and confidantes. When the Duke of Feria came to England in 1554 in the train of Philip of Spain, he fell in love with Jane and took her back to Spain as his wife. Many years later she dictated her memoirs to her English secretary, Henry Clifford, who published them after her death. They remain one of the better late sources, although one must allow for a certain bias and lapses in an old lady's memory.