Six Wives (60 page)

    Immediately, a battle of the pulpits broke out, with sermons and counter-sermons. News reached the Court, where Cambridge men including Foxe and Gardiner had the King's ear. On 24 January, Foxe wrote to the vice-chancellor, Dr William Buckmaster of Peterhouse, warning him of Henry's impending intervention in the 'shameful contentions' and urging him to put the university's own house in order by enjoining silence on both parties. But Foxe's letter also reveals a new dimension to the affair: the petty squabbles of Cambridge had been caught up in the larger divisions over the Great Matter.

    'It is reported to the King', Foxe wrote, 'that this malice is expressed because Latimer favours his cause.' The suspicion was borne out, Foxe continued, because Latimer's opponents had such strong connexions with Bishop Fisher of Rochester, Catherine's great champion and the chancellor of the university. They were members of St John's, the Cambridge college which Fisher had encouraged Henry's grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, to found. And they were egged on, it was reported, by Fisher's many friends in the university, including the master of St John's.
¹⁸

    Five days later, on the 29th, Buckmaster acted on Foxe's advice and, in a speech to the senate, ordered both parties to keep silence about matters of current controversy. It is unknown how effective this order was. But, in any case, feelings were still running high when, in early February, Foxe and Gardiner arrived at Cambridge as royal envoys to the university.
¹⁹

    Cambridge had been chosen for the honour of delivering the first verdict on Henry's marriage. And it was Foxe and Gardiner's task to make sure that the verdict was the right one.

    Bearing in mind his multiplicity of connexions with the university, Henry was probably expecting a walkover. In the event, he met stiff opposition, as Gardiner and Foxe informed him in their initial report. They arrived in Cambridge on Saturday at noon and that night and the following Sunday morning they spent consulting and lobbying. But the other side were equally active: 'as we assembled, they assembled; as we made friends, they made friends'.

    The result was that, when the university senate assembled on Sunday afternoon, Henry's opponents at first carried the day. The scene will be painfully familiar to anyone who has sat through such events. Vice-chancellor Buckmaster began, as was customary, by consulting the doctors of theology. There was no clear pattern to their replies
et res erat
in multa confusione
('and things were in great confusion').
Tandem
('at length'), as Gardiner feelingly puts it, it was agreed that the decision should be referred to a committee, known then as now as 'delegates'. There followed a concerted attempt by Henry's opponents to exclude from this committee anyone who was known to have 'allowed [accepted] Dr Cranmer's book' on the Divorce, which had already been circulated. This was fought off. But when the vice-chancellor's proposed terms of reference for the delegates were put to the vote, 'they would in no wise agree'. As it was already night, Buckmaster adjourned the meeting till the following afternoon.

    Even then it was a cliff-hanger. The first ballot resulted in another negative. Then there was a tie. Finally, at the third attempt, 'by labour of friends to cause some to depart the house which were against it, it was obtained'. Gardiner and Foxe sent Henry a copy of this vote or 'grace' (as again it is still called), together with an annotated list of the delegates. 'All marked with "A" ', they told Henry in their covering letter, 'be already of your Grace's opinion.' Six of the doctors were thus marked and seven of the masters, while three more names bore the note:
de isto bene speratur
('of this one there is good hope'). It was, as Henry's agents concluded, just enough:

    Cranmer, it may be remembered, had thought that the canvass of academic opinion could be done 'with little industry and charge'. He had fallen at the first fence, even in his own university.
²⁰

    Nevertheless, Cambridge finally delivered the desired verdict on 9 March. Immediately, a delegation headed by the vice-chancellor went to Court to inform the King in person. They arrived at Windsor on 13 March in the afternoon. It was the second Sunday in Lent, and the preacher appointed for this prestigious occasion was none other than Latimer. It was his first sermon at Court and he proved as much a sensation there as at Cambridge. Henry gave him an extra reward of £5 (the annual stipend for many clergy) from his Privy Purse, on top of the customary 20 shillings.
²¹

    There is no similarly direct evidence for Anne's reaction. But it is safe to assume that it was profound. She came to accept Latimer's distinction, which was then novel and controversial, between the two sorts of 'works'. 'Voluntary' works of traditional piety, he had proclaimed in his Cambridge sermons and probably repeated at Court, were useless; instead true works were the 'necessary' works of charity and mercy which flowed from Saving Grace and Love. Soon Anne's rapidly growing means would enable her to put her preferences into action. Foxe, the martyrologist, asserts that her charitable alms 'in three quarters of a year . . . is summed to the number of fourteen or fifteen thousand pounds'. This is an impossibly vast amount, and it has been guessed that Foxe, who rarely makes such a straightforward mistake of fact, may have added a zero to his source. But everybody agreed that her benefactions were unusually generous. And she was to invoke them in her hour of need.
²²

    A reluctant witness of Latimer's triumph was Vice-chancellor Buckmaster. Buckmaster had used the weight of his office to support the King's cause at Cambridge. But, like university authorities throughout the ages, he had little time for troublemakers – such as Latimer.

    Buckmaster had arrived at Windsor in time to hear 'part of Mr Latimer's sermon', which was followed by evensong at about 5 o'clock. That done, Buckmaster presented the university's 'determination' to the King, 'in the Chamber of Presence, all the Court beholding'. Henry was delighted. It was the first 'determination' of a university and it was, he had been assured by Foxe and Gardiner, favourable. He glanced at the covering letter but did not bother to read the 'determination' itself. Instead he turned his charm on Buckmaster. 'His Highness', Buckmaster reported in a letter to his close friend Dr John Edmunds, master of Peterhouse and his successor as vice-chancellor, 'gave me great thanks . . . [and] much lauded our wisdoms'. He then made clear that his thanks would be followed by a more substantial token of favour for Cambridge. 'He showed me also', Buckmaster continued, 'what he had in his hands for our University.'

    Nevertheless, the King could not pass up the chance of having a dig at Buckmaster for his hostility to the new favourite royal preacher, Latimer. 'By and by [Henry] greatly praised Mr Latimer's sermon; and, in so praising, said in this wise: "This displeaseth greatly Mr Vicechancellor yonder!" '

    'And here is the first act,' Buckmaster interpolated, as the smooth high-table raconteur he was.

* * *

The second act took place next day. There were two scenes. In the first, the Cambridge delegation was presented with Henry's personal rewards: twenty nobles (£6 13s 4d) for Buckmaster and half as much (£3 6s 8d) for the junior proctor who accompanied him. The rewards were brought by Dr Butts, the favourite royal physician and master of St Mary's Hostel, Cambridge, who had clearly been carrying out some discreet lobbying for his university. Butts further informed Buckmaster that he should take the reward 'for a resolute answer, and that I might depart from the Court when I would'. Was Anne, to whom Butts was very close, intervening to get the delegation out of the way before Henry's mood changed?

    If so, she was too late and Butts's orders were countermanded by Foxe. There then took place the second, and much less agreeable, scene of the act. It was set in a 'privy place' where Foxe brought Buckmaster to await the King's arrival. He entered at 1 o'clock. 'It was in a gallery', Buckmaster informed Edmunds, and 'there were only Mr Secretary [Gardiner], Mr Provost [Foxe], Mr Latimer and Mr Proctor and I and no more.' Henry kept them in intense debate for five hours. The reason was that he had discovered a crucial omission in what they had brought. 'He was scarce contented', Buckmaster reported, that the 'determination' contained no answer to the question:
An papa possit dispensare cum jure
divino?
(Could the Pope dispense with divine law?). Without an answer to this, the Cambridge declaration, won with such effort, was almost useless for Henry's purposes.

    Foxe and Gardiner had already explained the reason: if the clause had been included 'it would never have been so obtained'. Buckmaster added his own excuses: 'I made the best, and confirmed the same that they had showed his Grace before'. Henry grudgingly accepted the explanation but demanded that the additional clause be adopted after Easter.

    At 6 o'clock Henry departed, 'casting a little Holy Water of the Court' (that is, fair words without meaning). And Foxe and Gardiner did not even ask Buckmaster to stay for a drink.

    Buckmaster left the next day, 'thinking more than I said and being glad that I was out of the Court, where, as I both heard and perceived, many men did wonder on me'. 'And here shall be an end for this time of this fable,' he concluded with relief.
²³

    Not for the last time, an academic had found himself out of his depth in the world of power politics.

    There is no evidence that the additional clause, on the Papal dispensing power, was ever agreed. Nevertheless, despite Cambridge's failure fully to satisfy Henry, the university's 'determination' was a watershed. It was the moment when a generation chose. And at Cambridge, though not at Oxford, it had decided that it was on the side of Henry, of Reform – and of Anne. We do not know what the 'A' annotation stands for in Foxe's and Gardiner's list. Perhaps it was 'A' for
Amicus
or 'Friend'. It can hardly have been 'A' for 'Anne'. Yet it might just as well have been. For, of the seven Masters marked with an 'A', no less than four, Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Shaxton, John Skip and Thomas Goodrich, came to enjoy her enthusiastic patronage: Latimer became her chaplain, while Skip succeeded Shaxton as her Almoner.
²⁴

    And just how vigorous and calculating Anne's patronage was emerges from the case of one of the doctors marked with an 'A', Edward Crome, DD. Crome also was to benefit from Anne's interest in his career. Indeed, she pushed him too far for his own liking. In 1534 she obtained for him the parsonage of the important City church of St Mary's, Aldermanbury. But Crome long hesitated about accepting the position. Finally, on 20 May 1534, Anne lost patience. 'By which refusal', she informed him bluntly, 'we think that you right little regard or esteem your weal or advancement.' He was also disregarding the larger questions that were so important to her. She had determined on his appointment, she informed him, as tending powerfully to 'the furtherance of virtue, truth and godly doctrine'. Therefore, she commanded, let him 'use no farther delays in this matter but take on you the cure and charge . . . as you tender our pleasure in any behalf '.
²⁵

Faced with this imperious command, Crome accepted.

* * *

One name, of course, is missing from the goings-on at Cambridge: Thomas Cranmer, the man who had started it all. This is because it had been decided that Cranmer would be better employed abroad.

    In late January 1530, all the talk was of the despatch of an Embassy from Henry to the Emperor Charles V, who was about to meet Pope Clement VII at Bologna for his Imperial coronation. The Embassy was headed by Anne's father, Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire, in his triple capacity as the King's first minister, future father-in-law and leading magnate (even Henry, according to Chapuys, insisted on referring to him as '
monseigneur
'). And it was an appropriately magnificent affair. On 20 January 1530, to confirm his status, Wiltshire was formally appointed Lord Privy Seal and given a valuable wardship. The same day, the eagleeyed Chapuys noted that the advance luggage train of the Embassy, consisting of servants with eight mules, had left London. But this was only the beginning. 'It is thought', Chapuys reported, 'that the whole troop will consist of 60 or 80 horses, exclusive of the mules.' 'Early' the next day, Wiltshire himself set off. He was accompanied by two theologians, a canon lawyer, a herald and a clerk of the signet to act as secretary to the Embassy and to draw up documentation in the proper form. The initial costs, for wages and living expenses alone, amounted to the enormous sum of £1,743. This left such a large hole in the Chamber, the treasury which normally paid ambassadorial expenses, that Henry made good the amount out of his Privy Purse.

    Apart from Wiltshire, Chapuys picked out only three members of the Embassy by name. One of the three, whom he identified as a royal chaplain and theologian, was Cranmer ('Croma').
²⁶

    This, clearly, was no ordinary Embassy. Instead, it was an attempt at a comprehensive relaunch of the Great Matter. Cranmer's insights would be applied to diplomacy, in the form of a last-ditch attempt to win over Charles V, the key obstacle to the solution of the Divorce at Rome. His ideas would also be given practical effect, by a comprehensive canvass of academic opinion in France and Italy. In comparison with these ambitious goals, anything going on in England was small beer. Which is why Gardiner and Foxe were left to deal with Oxford and Cambridge, while Cranmer was sent off with Wiltshire. It is also why Wiltshire himself as chief minister was put in personal charge of the mission.