Six Wives (94 page)

    Nor was Fitzwilliam the only one to do so. Lady Lisle wrote enthusiastically to her daughter, Anne Basset, who was ear-marked for the new Queen's Chamber. And Anne Basset, in turn, echoed her praises in her reply to her mother. 'I humbly thank your Ladyship', she wrote, 'of the news you write me of her Grace, that she is so good and gentle to serve and please.' 'It shall be no little rejoicement to us, her Grace's servants here', she continued, 'and most comfort to the King's Majesty, whose Highness is not a little desirous to have her Grace here.' Anne knew this because, as instructed, she had passed Lady Lisle's comments on to Henry himself.
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    Better and better, it must have seemed to the King. Previously, he had had to rely on diplomats and agents of uncertain status. Now his own familiars and courtiers had seen Anne. And, to a man and a woman, their verdicts were favourable.

    How soon before the weather allowed him to add his own praise to theirs?

* * *

In fact, it was not until 27 December that the winds turned and Anne was able to sail. She landed at the Downs between 6 and 7 p.m. and was received by the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk.
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She was in her new kingdom at last. And she would never leave it.

* * *

The weather continued to be as bad on land as at sea. 'The day', Suffolk reported to Cromwell, 'was foul and windy, with much hail [that blew] continually in her face.' There were also long delays in getting her cloth of gold–covered chariot, in which she had travelled from Cleves, and her elaborate trousseau ashore.

    Nevertheless, to the evident surprise of her escorts, she insisted on setting out after only a day's rest, 'so . . . desirous [was she] to make haste to the King's Highness'. Her first halt was at Canterbury. There Cranmer made a speech; the Mayor and citizens received her with torches and a peal of guns, and fifty ladies in velvet bonnets turned up to see her in her chamber. 'All of which', Suffolk's report continued, 'she took very joyously . . . that she forgot all the foul weather and was very merry at supper.'

    She then continued to Sittingbourne and Rochester, where she arrived on New Year's Eve. The official programme envisaged that she would spend the New Year's holiday at Rochester and then travel via Dartford to her formal meeting with her bridegroom-to-be at Blackheath on 3 January.
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    But Henry, burning with impatience to see the woman about whom he had heard so much, decided to give her a surprise New Year's gift. *

New Year's Day was already half over and Anne of Cleves was standing in the window of her chamber at Rochester, watching a bull-fight which had been laid on for her entertainment. Then a party of six gentlemen came unannounced into the room. They were disguised in identical 'marbled' or multi-coloured cloaks and hoods. Suddenly, one of the group stepped forward and, without warning, kissed her and presented her with a 'token' or gift, which, he said, came from the King. Anne, taken by surprise, was 'abashed [and], not knowing who he was, thanked him'. The unknown gentleman continued to try to 'commune' with her – that is, to make love to her. 'But she regarded him little but always looked out of the window on the bull-baiting.'

    Unused to being treated in this fashion, the gentleman lost patience and withdrew. A few moments later, he returned without his disguise and dressed in a coat of purple velvet.

    It was the King.

    Everyone bowed and Anne, embarrassed afresh, made him a deep courtesy.
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* * *

There are two accounts of what followed, one by the chronicler and herald Charles Wriothesley, and the other by Sir Anthony Browne, Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and Carew's successor as Master of the Horse. Both were eye-witnesses, yet their accounts differ radically. According to Wriothesley, Henry raised Anne up, kissed her again, talked with her 'lovingly' and took her by the hand into another, more private chamber.

    According to Browne, on the other hand, the King spoke barely twenty words to Anne and left her as quickly as possible without giving her the precious New Year's Gift of bejewelled sables which he had brought.
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    The difference between the two accounts is, of course, the result of point of view. Wriothesley wrote as one of the audience, unable to go with Henry and Anne into the more private chamber. Browne, on the other hand, had the
entrée
, both to the King's private rooms and, it will become clear, to his most intimate thoughts.

    And Browne knew, from the King's face alone, that the meeting had been a disaster.

* * *

Two things had gone wrong. The first was Anne's reaction to Henry – or rather her lack of reaction since she had failed to recognise him. This meant in turn that she had failed her first test as Henry's loved one. For, in visiting her in disguise, Henry was re-enacting a scene from chivalric romance. In the romances, and in the Courtly entertainments based on them, ladies encountered their lovers in a variety of disguises. But, no matter how fantastic the disguise, the second-sight of passion always penetrated it and the lady recognised her lover.

    Any woman with even a little experience in the ways of the world would have known this and known what she was expected to do. But Anne, utterly unprepared by her strict and cloistered upbringing for such frivolities, did not. Instead, she behaved naturally, like a peasant, rather than artificially, like a lady.

    Who was this strange man? she seems to have wondered. Why was he kissing her and making love to her? Was it some strange custom of the country? Better to ignore him and pretend to be interested in the bullbaiting in the courtyard below.

    Put like this, Anne's behaviour can be interpreted as both sensible and decorous. From Henry's perspective, on the other hand, it was an unheard-of humiliation. Not to have recognised him – he who stood head and shoulders above his courtiers and exceeded them in all qualities, mental as well as physical . . . !

    His New Year's romance had turned into a vulgar farce, with himself as the Fool.

    It was not a part he relished.

* * *

All this was bad enough. What was worse was Henry's reaction to Anne. Everything he had been told about her led him to expect love at first sight. Instead, he was overwhelmed with disgust.

    He brooded about his feelings overnight at Rochester. Then, the following day, during the return journey by barge to Greenwich, he shared them with two of his attendants. First he called Browne to sit beside him. 'I see nothing in this woman as men report of her,' he said, speaking 'very sadly and pensively'. 'And I marvel', he continued, 'that wise men would make such report as they have done.' At this point Browne fell silent, fearful for his half-brother, Admiral Fitzwilliam, who had written so enthusiastically in Anne's praise from Calais.

    Dismissing Browne, Henry spoke next to Lord Russell, as he now was. 'How like you this woman?' he asked. 'Do you think her so fair and of such beauty as report hath been made unto me of her? I pray you tell me the truth.' Russell replied 'that he took her not for fair, but to be of a brown complexion'.

    'Alas,' sighed Henry. 'Whom should men trust?'
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* * *

The King had the answer to his question when he got back to Greenwich. For, on cue, Cromwell, the man whom he trusted most, appeared. Henry had told Cromwell about his intention to visit Anne secretly at Rochester 'to nourish love'. And Cromwell was eager to know the result. 'How ye liked the Lady Anne?' he asked the King. 'Nothing so well as she was spoken of,' answered Henry, speaking 'heavily and not pleasantly'. Then he continued: 'if [he] had known as much before as [he] then knew, she should not have come within this realm'.

    'What remedy?' he concluded. Cromwell took this as a 'lamentation'. It was not. It was a question. Cromwell had got him into this marriage. How, Henry wanted to know, would he get him out of it?

    But Cromwell, for once, was stumped. 'I know none,' he replied, adding lamely that 'he was very sorry therefore'.
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* * *

On Saturday, 3 January, Anne and Henry met for the second time in the formal public encounter at Blackheath. Both were dressed in cloth of gold and accompanied by a great procession of servants. They greeted each other and rode to Greenwich together through lines of courtiers, who were also finely turned out in velvet with gold chains.

    Henry conducted Anne to her apartments and then returned to his own. Once more he found Cromwell in his Privy Chamber. 'My Lord,' he said, 'is it not as I told you? Say what they will, she is nothing as fair as she hath been reported.' 'Howbeit,' he conceded, 'she is well and seemly.'

    Cromwell snatched at this straw. 'By my faith, Sir,' he replied, 'ye say truth.' 'I thought', he added, 'that she had a queenly manner.'
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* * *

The wedding should have taken place the following day, Sunday the 4th. Instead, it was postponed as Henry desperately sought a way out.

    First, he ordered Cromwell to summon the Council to see if it were possible, even at this late stage, to find a legal pretext to break off the marriage. Immediately, the Council fixed on the issue of the possible precontract between Anne and the Duke of Lorraine's son, which Henry had dismissed so lightly a few months previously. The Cleves ambassadors, headed by Olisleger, were summoned to clarify the matter. Naturally, in view of Henry's previous attitude, they were unprepared and had brought none of the necessary documentation. But they solemnly assured the Council that the Lorraine match had never gone beyond an engagement, which could be, and had been, properly broken off. They also offered to remain as hostages in England until the documentation to prove this was produced.

    It was a reply which would have satisfied any reasonable man. But Henry was not in a reasonable mood. 'I am not well handled,' he said to Cromwell, after the minister had returned from the Council meeting to the Privy Chamber by 'the privy way'. But equally he recognised the impasse he was in. 'If it were not', he added, '. . . for fear of making a ruffle in the world – that is, to be a mean to drive her brother into the hands of the Emperor – I would never have married her.'

    The next day, he made a final attempt to escape. Anne must make a solemn, notarised declaration before the Council 'that she was free from all contracts'. But, alas for Henry, she did so promptly.

    The trap had snapped shut. 'Is there none other remedy', Henry asked Cromwell when he brought the news of Anne's declaration, 'but that I must needs, against my will, put my neck in the yoke?'

    Without even trying to reply, Cromwell fled.
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* * *

Cornered at last, Henry now recognised that he had to go through with the ceremony, which was rearranged for 8 o'clock in the morning on Tuesday, 6 January, the day of the Epiphany. But he acquiesced with the worst possible grace. 'If it were not to satisfy the world and my realm', he told Cromwell on their way to the service, 'I would not do that I must do this day for none earthly thing.'

    But, curiously, the final delay was Anne's. Had the two-day postponement of the ceremony and the humiliation of the declaration made her have second thoughts? Or was she simply exercising a woman's prerogative to be late?

    Whatever it was, it put Henry in an even worse mood. Like Macbeth, he had decided that 'if 'twere done, . . . 'twere well it were done quickly'. 'Therewith', Cromwell afterwards remembered, 'one brought your Grace word that she was coming; and thereupon your Grace repaired into the gallery towards the Closet, and there paused for her coming, being nothing content that she so long tarried, as I judged then.'
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    But eventually she came, arrayed magnificently like a bride. She wore a gown of cloth of gold, embroidered with flowers of pearls. Her hair, 'which was fair, yellow and long', hung loose, while on her head was a coronet of gold, jewelled and fashioned with sprigs of rosemary, for remembrance. When she met Henry, whose gown of cloth of gold was also embroidered with flowers of silver, she made three low curtsies. Then they entered the Queen's Closet, where they were married by Cranmer. Henry said 'I will', and the wedding ring, engraved with the words, 'GOD SEND ME WELL TO KEEP', was set on Anne's finger.

    They were man and wife.

    They dined and supped together and spent the evening with 'Banquets, Masques and divers disports, till the time came that it pleased the King and her to take their rest'.
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* * *

But, alas, the human figures below seem to have been less active.

* * *

The morning after, Cromwell came to the Privy Chamber. He saw immediately that the King was in a bad mood. Nevertheless, he persevered and asked him 'how [he] liked the Queen'. Henry replied 'soberly'. 'Surely, as ye know,' the King said, 'I liked her before not well, but now I like her much worse. For I have felt her belly and her breasts, and thereby, as I can judge, she should be no maid.' '[The] which', he continued, 'struck me so to the heart when I felt them that I had neither will nor courage to proceed any further in other matters.'

    'I have left her', he concluded, 'as good a maid as I found her.'
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    That same morning, Henry discussed his failure to consummate the marriage with his physicians, Dr John Chamber and Dr William Butts. 'He had not that night carnally known the Queen,' he said. Chamber, who was a wise old bird, advised the King 'not to enforce himself, for eschewing such inconveniences as by debility ensuing in that case were to be feared'. Henry took the advice and the 'second night he lay not with her'. But he tried again on the third and fourth nights – always with the same lack of success.