“Mistress Basset? Wasn’t she one of Queen Jane’s ladies-in-waiting?”
“Yes, milady, but from what I hear, the spark that’d been lit once doesn’t seem to be burning so brightly now as it was then.”
“Ach so, so he is still interested in marrying again?” I asked.
“Yes, milady. It would indeed appear so.”
And so, despite His Majesty’s past marital failures, Lady Browne’s words gave me some hope about being recalled to London especially as one of my main reasons for wanting to return to Cleves, to be with my dear mother, was now no longer relevant. I heard that she had died and in addition, my brother had been forced to surrender much of his ducal territory to the Holy Roman Emperor, King Charles the Fifth.
It seems that my brother, William, had made a politically good but loveless marriage to Jeanne d’ Albret, the daughter of the king and queen of Navarre and the Emperor’s niece. Then, when the relations between France and the Emperor broke down, my brother decided to support the French. As a result, the Emperor declared war on Cleves and the Low Countries. Despite their early successes on the battlefield, the combined Clevian and French forces lost the war and had to sue for peace. This meant that my brother had to cede much of his land and wealth, a situation which caused my mother to die of grief at the end of August 1542. It was after hearing these reports that I decided that, whether I married the king again or not, I would end my days here in England either as the queen or the ‘King’s Sister.’ There was nothing left in Cleves to call me back to the land where I had been brought up.
This last point was also brought home to me one day when I was at the palace where I’d had an interesting conversation with Archbishop Cranmer. I had asked him, as one who was in almost daily contact with the king if there was any chance that His Majesty would take me again to be his sixth wife. Although we were speaking very quietly, he looked around cautiously and then said quite definitely that His Majesty would never marry me again.
“How do you know? Did you ask him?”
“Yes, milady, but not in so many words,” he replied. “It was like this. Your brother, Duke William, wrote to the king soon after Queen Catherine was executed and through his ambassadors asked whether he’d consider taking you back to be his wife. Naturally, as His Majesty’s most trusted advisers, the ambassadors came to speak to me as well.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said, milady, that I would petition the king about this matter.”
“And did you?”
“I most certainly did, and…”
“And what did the king say?”
“He told me quite forcibly that I was to inform your brother that he would never marry you again and that that was the end of the matter.”
So now I knew I would continue not as the queen but as the ‘King’s Sister’ and that I would remain in England. It was now up to me to make the most of my life in this country. I was thirty-two years old and had no serious problems with my health. I could now speak English quite well and had good relations with many people at court. Now I knew that there was no point in hoping for any major change in my life. I should just be happy with my lot and enjoy what the Good Lord had granted me. I mean, how many other people receive four thousand pounds every year from their king? Who else had as much property and gowns and jewels as I had? Very few. So I thought, I should look forward to the future and be happy with what I’d been granted.
It was also during this period when I was enjoying one of my visits to the court that I heard some surprising news. I was sitting in a small chamber overlooking the river when there was an urgent knock on the door. I put my embroidery aside, opened the door and ushered in my chamberlain, the Earl of Rutland and his wife. It was clear that they had hurried over to tell me something and a few minutes passed before they could regain their breath and calm down. Over a goblet of hippocras and some sugared fruits they told me that the king was planning to marry again.
“Marry? Again?”
“Yes, milady,” the earl replied. “To Lady Latimer.”
“Lady Latimer?” I repeated. “Who is she? I’ve never heard of her.”
“You probably know her as Lady Catherine Parr. She’s the daughter of Sir Thomas Parr and Maud Green and has spent much of her life in the north of England,” Lady Rutland explained. “And if she marries His Majesty, he will be her third husband.”
“So she must be quite old,” I remarked.
“Oh no, milady - she’s about your age. You see, her first husband, Sir Edward Borough, died over ten years ago after only one year of marriage. He was quite old at the time and then she married John Neville, Lord Latimer, soon after.”
“And did he die soon after as well?”
“No, milady,” the earl smiled. “But he nearly did.”
“What do you mean? In a battle or something like that?”
“No, no, milady. His Lordship became involved in the Pilgrimage of Grace, the northern rebellion against the king that broke out before you came to England. It looked as though the king was going to execute him for this but his wife, Lady Latimer, interceded and managed to save his life. But then he died a few years later.”
“Yes,” added Lady Rutland. “And he left her as a rich widow with lands and plate and everything.”
I was curious to know all I could about this mysterious woman, this woman who may have prevented me from marrying the king again.
“So how did His Majesty become friendly with her if she spent most of her time in the north?”
“That’s easy to explain, milady,” my chamberlain said. “It seems that Catherine Parr’s mother had been friendly with Catherine of Aragon, the king’s first wife. Then as a result Catherine Parr became friendly with her daughter, Princess Mary. So she used to come to court quite often and that is when His Majesty first noticed her.”
“Ah, but there was a problem,” Lady Rutland added, winking at her husband. “For in the meanwhile, she’d fallen in love with Thomas Seymour.”
“Queen Jane’s brother?”
“Yes, and they wanted to get married.”
“But?”
“But the king heard about this and he - like King David in the Bible when he lusted after Batsheba - sent Thomas Seymour away to be an ambassador in Brussels so as to get him out of the way.”
“Oh, I’m sure Catherine Parr was pleased about that,” I said sarcastically, “Having her lover sent away and then being asked to marry the king.”
“You’re right, milady,” Lady Rutland said. “I heard that when His Majesty proposed to her, she replied, ‘I, your wife?’ in quite a shocked tone.”
“And there was another problem as well,” the earl added. “A scandal in the Parr family. It was when…”
“Let me tell her, Edward,” interrupted Lady Rutland. “I tell these stories much better than you do. You always leave out the best parts.”
My chamberlain stepped aside and let his wife take over.
“So my milady,” Lady Rutland began, smiling sweetly at her husband, “it was like this. It seems that Lady Latimer’s brother, William Parr, wanted to divorce his wife, Anne Bourchier, because she’d been unfaithful to him. She’d taken a lover and had run away with him. So William applied to parliament for a divorce and he was so angry with her that he asked parliament to have his wife executed as a punishment.”
“Executed?” I asked. “Is that allowed?”
“Yes, milady,” the earl answered. “It’s a somewhat rare and extreme punishment but it is allowed.”
“And so,” Lady Rutland continued, “when Lady Latimer heard about this, she went straight to His Majesty and from what I heard, she threw herself down at his feet and said that she would not rise until he promised to spare her sister-in-law’s life. At first His Majesty refused by saying that no-one was above the law, but then Lady Latimer said that as he was the King of England, he was above the law and had the authority to spare her life.”
“And did the king acc
ept this? Did he agree?”
Lady Rutland, like all good storytellers waited for a few tension-filled seconds before answering. “Yes, milady,” she smiled. “The king said that if Lord Parr agreed, then he, the king would agree to spare her life. But,” and here Lady Rutland paused again, “William’s divorced wife, Anne Bourchier, had to pay a price for her infidelity. Parliament ruled that the children she’d had through her lover would be bastards and, as such, they wouldn’t be allowed to inherit the family wealth when the time came. In addition her own lands and titles were to be transferred to her husband and later he was created the Earl of Essex.”
“Ah, Chancellor Cromwell’s old title,” I said.
“That’s right, milady,” the earl nodded. “But between you and me, I’m not sure it’s such a blessèd title, but as they say, time will tell.”
“So the real heroine of this story is Lady Latimer,” I said. “The lady His Majesty wants to marry now.”
“Yes, milady,” Lady Rutland said, “and she…”
“And what is she like, this Lady Latimer, this Catherine Parr?” I asked, still unable to shake off the feeling that because of her, I would not be queen again. “Is she anything like Catherine Howard?”
“Oh, no, milady,” said Lady Rutland and her husband together. “She’s nothing like that.”
“Why, is she fat and ugly?”
“No, milady,” answered Lady Rutland, understanding the unsaid thought behind my question. “She’s quite a comely young lady. She is a two or three years older than you I believe but, unlike you, she hates sewing and embroidery and all manner of things like that. In fact, one of the ladies at court said that Lady Latimer told her that when she was a young girl she said her hands were for holding crowns and sceptres and not spindles and needles.”
“So what does she like doing?”
“She loves reading and learning languages and talking about ideas. She can speak French, Latin and Italian and I heard that she wants to start learning Spanish as well.”
“Hmm,” was my comment. “She doesn’t sound as though she’s going to be a very gay or exciting wife for His Majesty.”
“I’m not sure that he’s still looking for excitement milady, you know, another Catherine Howard,” the earl said in reply. “I think that his ‘rose without a thorn’ pricked him too much. Now I think he’s looking for a daisy or a violet - a quieter life and wife.”
“Like with his third wife, Jane Seymour?”
“Yes, milady.”
I pondered for a moment. A quieter life - that is exactly what I would have given him, but he had turned me down. I had realised, some time ago, that I was nothing like Catherine Howard but there was nothing that I could do about it now.
Once he had chosen her, the king wasted little time in marrying his new bride. Two days after Archbishop Cranmer had issued a special marriage licence, His Majesty married Catherine Parr on 12 July 1543. The wedding, a quiet event, took place in the queen’s chambers at Hampton Court. Twenty people including myself were present as well as several members of Catherine’s and the king’s families and also a few members of the court. The Bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner, conducted the service and I noticed that the king was in high spirits as he made his marriage vows. I also noticed that when his new wife made her vows, she sounded much less joyful than her new husband. I could only assume that she was thinking that she’d have preferred to have married her real love, Thomas Seymour, instead.
Afterwards we were invited to a modest wedding feast and then I returned to Richmond. I was asked to stay for a while but despite the fact I needed to reconcile myself to the fact that His Majesty had married Catherine Parr instead of me, I still found this a little difficult. So I excused myself and took my leave.
It did not take long for the new queen to make her influence felt at court. Gone were the days of the masques, balls and banquets that had taken place during my short reign or that of Catherine Howard. Instead, the king invited writers and other scholarly men to court, men such as the well-known teacher and academic, Dr. John Cheke from Cambridge, as well as Roger Ascham and the Bishop of Ely, Richard Cox. These men would sit with His Majesty and talk at length about religion and philosophy and I also heard that, occasionally, Her Majesty would join in these discussions with great enjoyment.
One of the results of this was that the court which had been a centre for dances and entertainments of all kinds now became a verbal battlefield where all sorts of religious views were advanced. Some were for the old-style Roman Catholic faith, others were based on the new reform ideas. At the same time, other people were putting forward ideas that were even more extreme and radical than we had heard about before. Of course each idea had its own defenders. Archbishop Cranmer and several academics were for the reformist school sometimes referred to as Protestant, while the Earl of Southampton and Bishop Gardiner were very strongly opposed to them in their fervent defence of the True Faith, the name they gave to the Roman Catholic religion.
Of course, the court not only provided a battleground for religious ideas, there were also battles for the king’s ear and influence. But this was not all that the learned men were fighting about. The king had asked Dr. Cheke and Dr. Cox to provide instruction for the young Prince Edward, now a bonny but somewhat serious seven year-old boy. His studies were to include languages, philosophy and liberal sciences. However, the fact that the prince’s new teachers tended towards the reformist school was too much for Bishop Gardiner and his supporters.
And in the middle of all of this stood the king’s new wife. She was known to favour the more reformist views and was also engaged in writing a book to be called Prayers or Meditations. At first I found this very difficult to believe - a woman, and a Queen of England, to boot - writing a serious book about religious philosophy. This really seemed too much but it was not for me to say anything. I just sat on the sidelines as it were and watched as the various members of the court and the chief clerics fought to gain the king’s ear.
But soon after the battle of ideas started, another battle broke out, and this was a real one, with men, armies and weapons. In July 1544 His Majesty set out for France at the head of his army to fight in what would be his last military campaign. Before leaving, he appointed the queen to stand in for him as his regent and she was to be advised by Archbishop Cranmer, Chancellor Wriothesley, Lord Hertford and several others. By appointing his wife as regent was one way of showing how much His Majesty relied on her common sense and judgement.
Towards the end of September I asked my chamberlain how the campaign was progressing. His reply was to grimace.
“The reports that I’ve read, milady, say that His Majesty conquered the town of Boulogne after a siege but, on the same day, he learned that his ally, the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles the Fifth, had sued for a separate peace with the French.”
“So what did the king do next? Continue fighting or come home?”
“He didn’t come home, milady. He decided to march on to Montreuil, a small town several miles south of Boulogne and together with the Duke of Norfolk’s men, take this town as well.”
“Did he succeed?”
“No, not really, milady. The reports said that the weather was not in his favour. It was very wet and rainy and it was extremely difficult for His Majesty’s army to move his heavy siege engines and his wagons full of equipment. Then he ran out of food so he had to burn all his engines and lift the siege. I hear he’ll be returning to London in a week or two, but that of course depends on the weather and the state of the Channel, if it’s stormy or not.”
Of course, as soon as he’d said those words I couldn’t help but think of the storms that had delayed my own journey over to England some five years ago. That had been a journey full of expectation and speculation about what it would be like for me, a lady from a small Rhineland duchy to become the Queen of England.
As my chamberlain predicted, the king did return two weeks later, but instead of everyone at court
being pleased to see him safely home again, they walked around and conducted their business in a very subdued manner. During his absence he had become more irritable and short-tempered than he’d ever been before. Perhaps this was due to his legs which were causing him great pain. In addition, he was becoming fatter, almost visibly, by the day. He was eating and drinking enormous quantities and his complexion which had never looked good - at least since I had known him - now looked even worse. It was redder and marked with more coloured blotches and his skin seemed to hang about his jowls even more heavily than before. He could hardly walk, even with the aid of his thick silver-knobbed stick and so he had to be carried around the court, either in a chair like a litter or moved about on a special wheeled chair. The fact that he was now dependent on his servants of course did nothing to help his temper. This meant that everyone was very wary of how they approached His Majesty about anything. However, none of this prepared me or anyone else for the next shock.
One day in the late autumn of 1545 after the queen had published her book, Lady Browne and Lady Edgecombe came to visit me at Richmond. When I asked them which wine they would like they told me that the news they had to tell me was far too important to worry about than deciding which wine to drink.
“First of all, milady, you mustn’t come to court for the time being. It has become a very dangerous place. It has happened again,” Lady Browne began.
“What has happened? Tell me. Does His Majesty wish to rid himself of this wife as well?” I asked, half in jest.
“Yes,” Lady Edgecombe said, and I could see tears in her eyes.
The only thing I could do was to put my hands to my mouth. Again? I thought. How many wives will this man kill or have put away?
“Tell me what you know,” I said at length, fearing the worst.
“Well, milady,” Lady Browne continued. “You know that the queen enjoys talking about religious and philosophical matters and that she’s in favour of the reformist ways?”
I nodded. Yes, I knew this.
Anne of Cleves- Unbeloved Page 25