Six Wives (51 page)

    The upshot was a stalemate that was submitted to Henry himself for resolution. He reported his decision to Anne in a letter written at the beginning of July. Her sister-in-law, Eleanor Carey, was barred out of hand. 'I would not', Henry wrote to Anne, 'for all the gold in the world cloak your conscience or mine to make her ruler of a house which is of so ungodly demeanour.' That might seem to open the way to Dame Isobel. But Henry arrived at a Judgement of Solomon. 'Yet notwithstanding', he assured Anne, 'to do you pleasure, I have done that neither of them shall have it; but that some [other] good and well disposed woman shall have it.' This was an ingenious solution, calculated to save face all round.
⁸

    But Wolsey rejected it. The minister's mind at this time is unusually hard to read; probably, indeed, he was unsure of it himself as he was buffeted by contrary experiences. There were long delays in the suit for the decretal commission, on which he had hung his whole future. These filled him with fears and forebodings, which he confided to the French ambassador. And the sweat was carrying off so many in his own household that it seemed impossible that he should escape infection himself. At this moment, suddenly, the clouds parted and Gardiner's letter arrived with news that Clement had, at last, conceded the decretal commission. Swinging now wildly between depression and a sense of mission, between talk of retirement and a determination to do the right thing at all costs, Wolsey's mood became dangerously unpredictable. At the beginning of July, he even managed to pick a quarrel with the faithful Russell. This was rather like fighting with himself. Even more dangerously, however, he resolved to take on the King.
⁹

    Henry's decision in the Wilton affair had been communicated to him in a letter written by the Court cleric, Dr Bell. Wolsey decided on his response probably on 5 July. Contrary to his usual practice, he did not inform Henry immediately. Instead, he sent him a strange letter. If these were 'the last words' he wrote to him, he assured the King, 'I dare boldly say and affirm, your grace hath had of me, a most loving, true and faithful servant; and that for favour, meed, gift or promise of gift, at any time, I never did or consented to [any]thing that might, in the least point, redound unto your dishonour or disprofit.' It was a magnificent valedictory, written in fear of imminent death. Unfortunately, perhaps, Wolsey lived – and had to live with the consequences of his actions.
¹⁰

    Two days later, on the 7th, Bell was still pressing Wolsey for a reply to his letter. What had he done about Wilton? Henry, under pressure no doubt from Anne, was keen to know.
¹¹

    Wolsey delayed another few days still before writing, and his letter did not reach Bell till the 10th. Bell trembled as he reported Henry's reaction. The King was 'somewhat moved'; Bell, for his part, protested that 'I would rather than part of my small substance' that Wolsey had acted otherwise. The next day Heneage confirmed Henry's displeasure: 'he was not best content'.
¹²

    For Wolsey, it transpired, had appointed Dame Isobel Jordan Abbess of Wilton. In so doing, he had defied Henry's direct command. Still worse, perhaps, he had humiliated the King in front of Anne.

H
enry wrote his letter of reproof to Wolsey on the morning of 14 July. After he had finished it, he summoned Wolsey's two leading Court followers, Russell and Heneage, and read the letter aloud to them.
¹

    Clearly, he was proud of his efforts and of the effect he knew his rebuke would produce.

    And with reason. It was almost a year since Henry had first quarrelled with Wolsey over the management of the Divorce. Then, the King's own behaviour had been duplicitous, even furtive. His letter to Knight, his instrument in deceiving Wolsey, 'reads', a great nineteenth-century historian wrote, 'more like the composition of a schoolboy found out by the master against whom he plots, than . . . the letter of an absolute King, who might have dismissed and ruined Wolsey at a moment's notice'.
²

    This time, however, there was no diffidence in either Henry's mind or his pen. To defy, the King wrote to his minister, his direct order in the matter of Wilton was bad enough. But worse than his defiance was his attempt at deceit by claiming 'ignorance of my pleasure'. Henry refuted the claim by quoting word for word from previous letters to Wolsey. He then issued the blunt warning: 'wherefore, good my Lord, use no more that way with me for there is no man living that more hateth it'.
³

    It was Wolsey's turn to tremble like a schoolboy at this verbal lashing and to receive what comfort he could from his creatures Heneage and Russell.

* * *

Henry, the playboy king, had grown up at last. He had had to. His determination to marry Anne had forced him to stand alone; it was Henry against the world.

    But, as usual, behind a newly strong man was a stronger woman: Anne herself. Henry was not only fighting for her, to keep and to marry her;
she
was helping to direct the blows and to plan the strategy.

    And nowhere does this show more clearly than in the couple's handling of Wolsey during that long, disease-ridden summer.

* * *

'As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten', Henry had begun his letter to Wolsey – assimilating himself (not for the last time) to the Deity with this reference, from the
Book of Revelation
, to God's cruel-to-be-kind treatment of the faithful.
⁴

    And, for the moment, Henry meant it: everything which stood in the way of the full resumption of the 'loving' relationship between the King and his minister was swept aside. Abruptly, the King declared the question of Wilton closed. 'It is no great matter', Henry wrote to Wolsey a few days later, 'and though the case were much more heinous, I can be content for to remit it.' He also affected a conscious even-handedness as the tension between Russell and Cheyney over the wardship of Anne Broughton turned into open feuding. Indeed, he went one better and inclined rather against Anne's client Cheyney, whom he cast as the aggressor towards Wolsey's follower Russell. Cheyney 'was proud and full of opprobrious words', Henry said publicly. And only if he would admit his fault and be friends with Russell would he be readmitted to the Privy Chamber.
⁵

    The clue to Henry's behaviour, of course, was Gardiner's coup in securing the despatch of the Legate Campeggio with the decretal commission. This vindicated (it seemed) Wolsey's approach to the Divorce and rendered him indispensable – to Anne at least as much as Henry.

    The result was that Anne sought to turn the renewed love-in between Wolsey and Henry into a strange sort of threesome. 'I am', she wrote to Wolsey, 'most bound of all creatures, next the King's Grace, to love and serve your Grace.' She would, she swore, never 'vary from this thought as long as any breath is in my body'. And she thanked the Lord 'that them that I desired and prayed for are scaped [the sweat], and that is the King and you'.
⁶

    Anne wrote this letter while she was still convalescing from the sweat. After her return to the Court in late July she wrote another, in terms of equally extravagant affection. 'I do know', she assured Wolsey, 'the great pains and troubles, that you have taken for me both day and night, [are] never like to be recompensed on my part, but alonely in loving you next unto the King's grace above all creatures living'. But her love, of course, was cupboard-love. 'I do long', she continued, 'to hear from you news of the Legate.'

    She finished writing and turned to Henry who was by her side and wheedled him into adding a postscript. 'The writer of this letter', Henry began his note, 'would not cease till she had caused me likewise to set my hand.' 'I ensure you', he continued, 'there is neither of us but that greatly desireth to see you.' Then there followed the same sting-in-the-tail as in Anne's own letter. 'The not hearing of the Legate's arrival in France causeth us somewhat to muse', Henry ended, 'notwithstanding, we trust by your diligence and vigilancy (with the assistance of Almighty God) shortly to be eased out of that trouble'. There followed the double signature:

And still their trust in Wolsey seemed to be rewarded. After all their anxieties, Legate Campeggio arrived in France. Once more, for decency's sake, Anne was packed off to stay with her mother in the country. And there she received the news she had hoped for, in a scribbled note from Henry himself. 'The Legate which we most desired', he informed her, 'arrived at Paris on Sunday or Monday last past [13 or 14 September] . . . and then I trust within a while after to enjoy that which I have so long longed for to God's pleasure and our both comfort.'

    Henry's hopes, of course, far outpaced not only Campeggio's gouty limbs but events themselves. It took the legate till the end of September to reach Calais and another week before he finally arrived in London. Then began his interminable round of meetings: with Henry, with Wolsey, with Catherine – with everybody in short apart from Anne herself. Away from her royal admirer and the Court, and flagrantly excluded from events, Anne's patience (never her strong point) snapped. Henry administered a slap of firm comfort in a letter which has disappeared. Then he welcomed her restoration to a better frame of mind. 'What joy', he exclaimed, 'it is to me to understand of your conformableness to reason, and of the suppression of your inutile [useless] and vain thoughts and fantasies with the bridle of reason!'

    Never was she to think such black thoughts again, he wrote. The preparations for the wedding were in train: 'I have . . . dress[ed] up gear for you, which I trust ere long to see you occupy' – 'and then', he added meaningfully, 'I trust to occupy yours.' As for Campeggio, only 'the unfeigned sickness of this well willing Legate doth somewhat retard his access to your presence'. When his health recovered, Campeggio would, Henry assured Anne, despatch their business quickly. And it was a calumny that he was favourable to Charles V: 'for I know well where he hath said', Henry confided, 'that it should be well known in this matter that he is not Imperial'.

    But, as it turned out, it was Anne's 'inutile and vain thoughts and fantasies', not Henry's masculine reason, which proved correct. For in Italy events suddenly turned against Henry's French allies. In June 1528, Doria broke with the French and on 4 July his nephew withdrew his blockading fleet from the Bay of Naples. The Spanish could now revictual and reinforce the city. Still worse, on 17 August, Lautrec died
of the plague – which had already carried off two thirds of his army. The stricken French forces, depleted and effectively leaderless, first retreated and then surrendered. On 9 September, as Campeggio was approaching Paris, Charles V's commander informed him that he was once more master of the south of Italy. Other disasters for the French followed in the north, as Genoa rebelled and regained its independence. Finally, on 21 October, just as Campeggio's negotiations were fully underway in London, the last French garrison on the Ligurian coast surrendered as well.
⁸

    'If Lautrec advances', Casale had presciently written the previous December, 'the Pope will do all [Wolsey] wants.' But Lautrec was now dead and the French conquests in Italy had collapsed like a house of cards. Wolsey's hopes collapsed with them.
⁹

* * *

For the moment, however, Henry's mind was on matters nearer home. He was missing Anne horribly – so much so that current language was inadequate and he had to reach back into the already antique vocabulary of English Romance to find the word to describe his condition.

'
T
hese', Henry wrote to Anne, 'shall be to advertise you of the great
elengenesse
that I find here since your departing'.  '
Elengenesse
' means loneliness, dreariness or misery. Henry had encountered the word, almost certainly, in the continuation of the
Romaunt of the Rose
by a follower of Chaucer:

Anne, familiar probably with the poem in its original French as well as in the English translation, would have got the reference immediately. For the 'she', whose attributes include
elengenesse
, is the personification Abstinence, who cruelly parts lovers from the object of their desires – just as she and Henry were parted.

    As usual, therefore, Henry, the most literary of Kings, had chosen his words carefully:
elengenesse
is a word for lovers, to describe the pangs that only lovers – separated by distance, or necessity, or a false parade of virtue – know.
¹

    And the knowledge, it seems, had taken Henry unawares, as he was surprised by the strength of his own feelings. A day or two since Anne had gone seemed longer, he wrote, than 'a whole fortnight' while they were together. His pains were worst in the evening. He wished 'you were in my arms or I in yours'. He fantasised about embracing her. Above all, he longed to kiss her 'pretty duckies [breasts]'.

    Only two things, he told Anne, lifted his depression. One was the 'book' he was composing to argue the case for his Divorce. The 'book' was based on the materials produced by his team of theologians. As we have seen, according to Pole, this group had first been assembled by Anne herself; latterly it was almost certainly headed by the bright young theologian, Dr Edward Foxe. That day Henry had 'spent above four hours' in writing and he was delighted to find that the result 'maketh substantially for my matter'.

    His other consolation was more material: 'now that I was coming towards you', Henry wrote, 'methinketh my pains half relieved'.
²