The Boleyn Women: The Tudor Femmes Fatales Who Changed English History (17 page)

This letter should be treated with caution but may, perhaps, be accurate, albeit with its tone altered by translation into Italian and then back into English.

It is clear that Anne fully committed herself and her future to the king from the early months of 1527. Both she and Henry hoped that they would be able to quickly marry and consummate their relationship and, on 5 May 1527, Henry gave a banquet at court in honour of the French ambassadors and publicly led Anne out as his dancing partner for the first time. Twelve days later a secret ecclesiastical court opened in London to try the validity of the king’s marriage, based on the fact that Catherine of Aragon had been the widow of Henry’s elder brother.

Anne and Henry could never have envisaged in May 1527 that it would be nearly six long years before they were able to marry. Henry always argued that his conscience was troubled by his marriage to his sister-in-law and that he believed that his lack of surviving sons was due to the fact that the Bible, in the Book of Leviticus, stated that a man who married his dead brother’s wife would be childless. While the couple had a surviving daughter, the eleven-year-old Princess Mary, in Henry’s eyes, the lack of a son was effective childlessness. The fact that, through his sexual relationship with Mary Boleyn, he had placed himself within the same degree of relatedness (the first degree of affinity) with Anne as he was with Catherine, was immaterial to Henry, although it did not escape the eyes of some of his contemporaries. To be on the safe side, Henry did, in fact, ask the pope for a dispensation to marry a woman within the first degree of affinity, while at the same time disputing the validity of the earlier dispensation obtained for his first marriage.

In spite of the absurdity of his position, Henry knew that he had a good chance of succeeding if his church council of May 1527, which was convened by Cardinal Wolsey, could give sentence quickly. Unfortunately for Henry and Anne, news of the court quickly leaked out, with Catherine and the ambassadors of her powerful nephew, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, learning of the proceedings within hours. Catherine, not surprisingly, immediately asked her nephew to alert the pope, forcing Wolsey to adjourn the court on 31 May. With the adjournment, it became clear to Anne and Henry that they would have to seek the divorce directly from the pope. Unfortunately for them, news arrived that, on 16 June 1527, the Emperor had sacked Rome and was holding the pope as a virtual prisoner. With family honour at stake, Charles, who hardly knew his aunt, had no intention of allowing her to be discarded, ensuring that, while Henry had the upper hand in England, it was Catherine who held sway in Rome. Henry did not fully appreciate this at first, apparently hoping that the Emperor’s support could be bought. In this he was to be disappointed, with Charles unequivocally informing Henry’s ambassadors that

he was sorry to understand of the intended divorce, adjuring the king (for the rest) by the Sacrament of Marriage, not to dissolve it or, if he would needs proceed therein, that the hearing and determining of the business, yet, might be referred to Rome, or a General Council, and not be decided in England. Adding further, that he would defend the Queen’s just cause.
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Charles’s own wife was the daughter of a man who had married two sisters and then their niece in turn (who were in fact Charles’s two aunts and his sister respectively) and it was certainly not in his interests to allow his aunt to be discarded as Henry wished.

Anne, who was resident at court during the summer of 1527, must have found herself in a very difficult position as news of the king’s desires began to leak out. As a member of Catherine’s household, she was constantly in her mistress’s presence, something which must have been uncomfortable for both women. According to George Wyatt, Catherine was able to find ways to subtly attack her opponent, for example often insisting that her rival join her as she played cards with the king so that Anne would be forced to display her deformed fingertip to Henry as she held her cards. During one game Catherine finally confirmed that she knew full well what Anne’s ambitions were, with Wyatt recording:

And in this entertainment of time they had a certain game that I cannot name then frequented, wherein dealing, the king and queen meeting they stopped, and the young lady’s hap was much to stop at a king; which the queen noting, said to her playfellow, My lady Anne, you have good hap to stop at a king, but you are not like the others, you will have all or none.
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By 1527, Catherine had been married to Henry for nearly twenty years, devoting her life to him. She had tended to ignore Henry’s affairs in the past, but she recognised Anne as a dangerous rival from the beginning. For her part, Anne was hostile towards Catherine and her daughter, with the records of her conduct not showing her in a very good light. According to the Imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, for example, Anne supposedly declared at Christmas 1530 to one of Catherine’s ladies that ‘she wished all the Spaniards in the world were in the sea’.
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When her companion upbraided her, Anne continued, saying that ‘she did not care anything for the queen, and would rather see her hanged than acknowledge her as her mistress’. In her defence, Anne was sorely tried by Catherine’s supporters at court, with Chapuys for one always referring to her in his despatches as ‘the Lady’ or ‘the Concubine’, even after she had become queen. Anne was also furious to find that, some years into her relationship with the king, Catherine still performed the traditional wifely duty of making his shirts.
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The three were forced to live in close proximity to each other until 11 July 1531, when Anne and Henry secretly left Windsor with a small retinue, leaving Catherine behind. In spite of the queen’s protestations, the separation proved permanent and she and Henry never met again. Anne continued in her antagonistic relationship with her predecessor, at one stage requesting that Catherine’s jewels be sent to her for her own use.
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To this, Catherine gave the cutting response that ‘it was against her conscience to give her jewels to adorn a person who is the scandal of Christendom’. On being expressly asked by the king, she was forced to relinquish them.

At the same time that he dispatched his ambassadors to the Emperor, Henry also sent agents to speak to the pope himself. While the pope met with Henry’s ambassadors, there was little he was actually prepared to do and, after the first embassy failed, Henry sent Edward Foxe and Stephen Gardiner to the pope at Orvieto to further press his claims. Anne followed Foxe and Gardiner’s progress with interest, expecting them to keep her in touch with events directly. In a letter written by Anne to Gardiner on one of his journeys to Italy in April 1529, for example, she expressed the hope that this mission would be more pleasant to her than his first which had come to nothing and which ‘for that was but a rejoicing hope, which causing the lie of it does put me to the more pain, and they that are partakers with me, as you do know, and therefore I do trust that this hard beginning shall make a better ending’.
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On their first visit to Italy, Foxe and Gardiner found the pope in a pitiful state, protesting his loyalty to Henry but begging for more time. Foxe returned to England in April 1528 and rushed straight to Greenwich, arriving on the evening of 28 April. On his arrival, Henry commanded him to go straight to Anne’s chamber where Anne, eager to hear his news, made ‘promises of large recompense’ to the diplomat.
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While they were talking, Henry entered the chamber and Anne left the room, allowing them to speak privately for a few minutes in which Foxe informed the king that the pope had privately told him that he might be prepared to confirm a sentence of divorce given in England. This was excellent news for the couple and Henry called his fiancée in to tell her himself. Overjoyed, the couple kept Foxe with them for most of the evening. Even better news followed a few weeks later when the pope, after considerable pressure from Gardiner, finally agreed to send a papal legate, Cardinal Campeggio, who was Bishop of Salisbury and known in England, to hear the case in Henry’s own kingdom.

Both Anne and her mother kept abreast of news of the divorce. Elizabeth was resident with her daughter at court in March 1528 while the king was engaged in daily hunting expeditions. On 3 March Thomas Heneage, a former servant of Wolsey’s who had recently joined the king’s household, was intercepted by Anne and her mother at dinner time.
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Anne immediately complained to Heneage that she felt that the cardinal had forgotten her since he had failed to send her a token with his most recent messenger, a man named Forest. Heneage sought to reassure her that the cardinal had had his mind on other matters and had simply forgotten, something which is unlikely to have pleased Anne. Elizabeth, who was listening to the conversation and had evidently been in a position to speak personally to Forest, then stepped in, complaining that she had asked Forest to request a ‘morsel’ of tuna from the cardinal and that she had not yet received it, therefore requesting it again through Heneage. Although couched in civil language, it is clear that both women considered themselves to have been slighted by the cardinal and it is not at all impossible that Elizabeth was also opposed to the cardinal’s dominant position in England. The pair appeared together again in the depositions of Elizabeth Barton, the nun of Kent, following her arrest. She claimed that Anne had desired that she remain at court and that Elizabeth had sent to her personally to ask her to attend Anne herself.
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Whether this means that Elizabeth actually gave credence to the nun’s claims is debatable and it appears more likely that she, like Anne and Henry, was trying to ascertain whether the nun could be persuaded to slip quietly back out of public notice. There can be no doubt that Anne and her mother were emotionally very close. We have Anne’s own testimony for her affection for her mother, with a letter from Anne to her friend, Lady Wingfield, written at some point between 1529 and 1533, stating, ‘Assuredly, next mine own mother, I know no woman alive that I love better.’
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Throughout the years of the divorce, Anne largely appears to have remained on good terms with her parents, with her father’s accounts from the last months of 1526 recording that he had paid over £3 to settle a bill she owed.
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By this time Thomas lived in some style at court, with his accounts showing a payment of £4 to the king’s goldsmith. He purchased black satin for a doublet for himself, as well as making payments to his sister, Lady Shelton, brother, William, and his wife. That the couple remained close to Elizabeth’s family is clear from the gift of a hogshead of Gascon wine to her stepmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. As the years dragged by Anne’s mood became more tense, leading to quarrels with both Henry and members of her own family. She fell out with her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, in early 1530 and also made an enemy of her aunt, Norfolk’s estranged wife, who was a staunch supporter of Catherine of Aragon, requesting that the duchess be sent home ‘because she spoke too freely, and declared herself more than they liked for the queen’.
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Anne also quarrelled with her father in the summer of 1532 when she refused to intercede for the life of a young priest who had been condemned for clipping coins.
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Anne, in typically outspoken manner, ‘told her father that he did wrong to speak for a priest as there were too many of them already’. The disagreement was not lasting, although there is evidence of some continuing bitterness in comments made by Thomas during Anne’s first pregnancy in 1533. Anne had a particularly fiery character, at one point publicly quarrelling with Henry over Cardinal Wolsey and threatening to leave him, something that caused the king to burst into tears.
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Henry did sometimes become frustrated with Anne, complaining privately to Norfolk that Anne was ‘not like the queen, who had never in her life used ill words to him’. Norfolk certainly agreed with this, having already privately commented that Anne would be the ruin of all her family. Henry was always the one to make amends, with a report reaching Rome early in 1531 that the king had desperately summoned some of Anne’s relatives to court to beg them in tears to help him make his peace with her after one quarrel. It would seem likely that these unspecified relatives included Elizabeth. Both Thomas and Elizabeth benefited from their daughter’s position: in 1529 Thomas was finally created Earl of Ormond, as well as receiving the English title of Earl of Wiltshire, which had once belonged to his great uncle. It is telling that, at the banquet to celebrate the ennoblement, Anne took the place of the queen. At the same time, Anne’s brother took the courtesy title of Viscount Rochford, while Anne began to style herself as ‘Lady Anne Rochford’.
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Anne’s brother, George, and his wife Jane Parker Boleyn benefited from her relationship with the king. As the king’s prospective brother-in-law, George naturally acquired a certain status at court. He was in receipt of royal favour, receiving an annuity in 1528, as well as being appointed as keeper of the palace of Beaulieu in Essex. Jane gave the king a New Year’s gift in 1532 when she made him the present of four caps.
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Henry reciprocated with gold plate. While lists of the king’s New Year’s gifts are fragmentary, Jane is known to have given Henry a shirt with an embroidered silver collar in 1534, suggesting that she was enough in the king’s thoughts to be regularly included in his New Year’s gift lists. Jane and George lived in some style. A short list of some of Jane’s possessions compiled in 1536 records that she possessed a rich wardrobe, including a pair of sleeves of crimson velvet decorated with goldsmith’s work and another of yellow satin.
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She owned a pair of knitted stockings of white silk, decorated with gold, kept specifically for masques. At the time of her death Jane had some fine plate, such as a pair of silver flagons and a ewer of silver parcel gilt.
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Her jewels included a black enamelled brooch with six small diamonds and a gold brooch decorated with a cameo. At some point during their marriage George and Jane also acquired a rich bed of painted wood, which was decorated with burnished gold gilt and furnished with hangings of white satin, decorated with tawny cloth of gold and George’s devices as Viscount Rochford.
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