The Boleyns (11 page)

Just when the King decided to install his own man at Canterbury, and proceed in defiance of the Pope, we do not know, but it must have been almost immediately after Warham’s death on 22 August. On 1 September he created Anne Marquis of Pembroke, and this was the signal for a change of gear in their relationship. Overtly it was aimed at his meeting with Francis I, which had been the subject of diplomatic exchanges throughout the summer and was now fixed for October. He was determined that Anne would accompany him, and since she could not yet do so as queen, he settled on a senior peerage to give her the requisite dignity. The event took place at Windsor, and the King was accompanied by the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Earl of Wiltshire and the French Ambassador. Anne was conducted by the Countesses of Rutland and Sussex, and Stephen Gardiner, since 1531 Bishop of Winchester, read the patent of creation. Her train was borne by her cousin Mary, the Duchess of Richmond, and she was given precedence over all other peers, the three dukes alone excepted.
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She thus became superior in rank to her own father, who was one of the signatories to the arrangement. By a separate patent she was also granted lands worth £1,000 a year, giving her for the first time a substantial degree of financial independence. Since she had been mainly dependent upon her father for her maintenance hitherto, we can assume that this grant was as much a favour to him as to her. When Henry set off with due panoply on 10 October, the Marquis was in his company, and in her retinue went her sister Mary and her sister-in-law Jane Rochford. The Earl of Wiltshire accompanied the King. When Henry first went to meet Francis at Boulogne, he tactfully left Anne behind, having been warned that Eleanor, Francis’s second queen, would refuse to receive her, but when Francis came to Calais, he suffered from no such inhibition, and greeted the Marquis of Pembroke as befitted her rank.
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In a sense this meeting was staged with one eye on the Pope and the Emperor, to demonstrate the ‘perfect amity’ which existed between England and France, and to enlist the aid of the two newly appointed French cardinals in promoting Henry’s cause at Rome. But in another sense it marked a parting of the ways, because with the firm support of Francis, he was now in a position to defy them both – or at least he thought that he was. In fact for all his professions of friendship and support, the King of France was not at all anxious to fall foul of the pontiff, and shortly after arranged a marriage between his second son, Henry, and the Pope’s niece, Catherine de Medici.
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Henry, however, now felt secure enough in the friendship of France to believe that he could ride out any storm which his proposed course of action would inevitably arouse. For his part Francis, although he may have had his suspicions, did not know what his ‘good brother’ would do next.

What he did in fact was to sleep with Anne, while the couple were storm bound in Calais after the meetings. At Christmas 1532, she kept state virtually as queen, and in contrast with the previous year, which had been ‘most miserable’, this time an air of jollity seems to have prevailed. During December the King presented her with a vast quantity of gilt and silver gilt plate; a customary gift, but in unusual quantities and at an unusual time. Even more exceptionally, he appears to have shown her the royal treasure chamber, normally a closely guarded secret.
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Early in January, Henry sent a special messenger to bring Thomas Cranmer home from his mission in Germany, because he was to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury – a decision which must have been made several weeks earlier and which had become general knowledge by the end of January. Thomas Audley, another Boleyn supporter, was given the Great Seal on the 26th of the month, and a few days later the council was in close session over what appears to have been a draft version of the Act in Restraint of Appeals. At about the same time, Anne was discovered to be pregnant, and all the signs pointed to an early royal wedding, with all the consequences which that implied. On 7 February her father told the Earl of Rutland that the King was determined to marry her forthwith, and sounded him out about the bill of Appeals. When Rutland responded that parliament had no such power, the Earl of Wiltshire became very angry and told him to think again, bearing in mind the consequences of incurring the King’s displeasure.
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Rutland yielded to this logic, and voted for the bill when the time came. We do not know for certain when Henry and Anne were married, but the evidence points to some date between 15 and 23 February. On the latter date Chapuys, who may have been assuming a knowledge which he did not in fact possess, reported that the King had married his ‘lady’ in the presence of her father, mother, brother, and some other unnamed individuals.
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The natural person to have conducted this ceremony would have been the Archbishop elect, but he did not find out about it for another fortnight, so we do not know who officiated. By early March the King was sufficiently confident to put up preachers in the court to sing Anne’s praises, and to proclaim the immorality of his union with Catherine, which is a reasonably sure sign of what had happened. On 14 March Cromwell introduced the bill of Appeals into the Commons, and on the 26th Convocation was invited to pronounce on the validity of the King’s two marriages.
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Meanwhile Pope Clement had, rather surprisingly in view of his knowledge of Cranmer’s track record, issued the pallium, the symbol of official approval of his appointment, and the Archbishop was duly consecrated on 30 March.

Paradoxically, there are some signs that the Earl of Wiltshire was not happy with the situation which had now been reached, and that although he supported the Act of Appeals, saw that more as a means to coerce the Pope than as a solution in itself. The evidence comes from the Duke of Norfolk, who was definitely unhappy with Henry’s declaration of independence, and who claimed that Wiltshire had supported him in blocking a marriage as far back as May 1532.
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In June the Duke had quarrelled with the French ambassador, endangering the October meeting, but he did not claim that Wiltshire had supported him on that occasion. It seems likely that the Earl would have preferred to wait for a papal decision before embarking upon a controversial matrimony, but that he was swept along by the tide of events. As late as the end of May 1533 Chapuys was reporting tensions between Anne on the one hand, and her father and uncle on the other, but since the ambassador had a constructive eye for these quarrels, it would not do to take his stories too seriously.
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The whole narrative of events in the first three months of 1533 is bedevilled by hindsight and later recusant propaganda. Rowland Lee, later the Bishop of Lichfield, was alleged to have been the celebrant at the secret wedding, but according to another version it was George Brown, the Prior of the Austin Friars. Some had the ceremony taking place before dawn, and others alleged that the King lied to the celebrant about having obtained papal permission.
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It was an event of such significance that these legends are inevitable, as were the scabrous stories impugning Anne’s virginity, although George Cavendish, who had known her and had little reason to love her, later testified that it was so. What we can be sure about is that these events were highly controversial, and that many courtiers and councillors were opposed to the way in which Thomas Cromwell was steering events. The Duke of Suffolk was more overtly unhappy than his colleague of Norfolk, and his duchess, exercising her privilege as the King’s sister, the most outspoken of them all. As these events passed into the public domain, the country became deeply divided, and the Boleyn party at court found itself riding a tiger, its only prospect of security lying in the constancy of purpose of the King. The Earl of Wiltshire could not afford to allow any doubts which he may have had about his daughter’s position to be audible outside the council chamber. Meanwhile, the King’s confidence was continued, and on 30 April he was commissioned along with Edward Fox, to conclude a stricter league of amity with France, Francis’s support being more necessary than ever in the exposed position which Henry’s actions had now created for him.
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On Saturday, 31 May Anne processed through the streets of London, and on 1 June was crowned as queen in Westminster Abbey. The Duke of Suffolk was constrained to appear as High Constable for the day, but the Duke of Norfolk was represented as Earl Marshall by his brother Lord William Howard, and there is curiously no mention in the published account of the Earl of Wiltshire. The Lord Privy Seal was definitely present but was given no special role. Neither was Thomas Cromwell, who more than anyone else had brought this event about, so it was presumably by the King’s deliberate decision that those closest to his wife did not feature. The point of
The Noble
,
Triumphant Coronation
was to emphasise the attendance of those whose support could not be taken for granted, and that hardly applied to the Queen’s father.
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The Duke of Norfolk was absent on a diplomatic mission, but his Duchess positively refused to appear, although she was Anne’s aunt. The ladies may have been allowed an indulgence which was not extended to their menfolk. The Queen was certainly ‘well accompanied’, but the ladies are not named, perhaps to disguise the absentees. However, they almost certainly included Anne’s sister and sister-in-law, who were in no position to resist pressure to participate, even if they had been inclined to do so. In spite of the eulogies, it was a thoroughly controversial event and Chapuys (who did not attend) wrote a mocking report of it afterwards for the Emperor’s benefit, declaring that the people stood silent and that half the nobility absented themselves.
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It was only a week since the Archbishop’s court at Dunstable had finally pronounced Henry’s first marriage null and void. The Pope’s reaction to these events was understandable outrage, because he had been defied on every count. On 8 August he issued a Bull calling upon Henry to restore Catherine and repudiate Anne under threat of excommunication, summoning all Christian princes to depose the schismatic if he did not yield. On the 13th, Henry responded by appealing to a general council, citing the law of God and the Pope’s unreasonableness.
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That still mattered, because in addition to the political risks involved, and in spite of the Act in Restraint of Appeals, Clement was still in some minimal sense the head of the English Church, and Henry was still seeking to have his actions confirmed in Rome. Meanwhile, one of the effects of his actions was made clear by a proclamation issued on 5 July declaring that he had ‘taken to his wife after the laws of the church, the right high and excellent Princess Lady Anne, now Queen of England’, and that consequently the Lady Catherine ‘should not from henceforth have or use the name, style or dignity of Queen of this realm’, but was to be known simply as the Princess Dowager of Wales.
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Catherine, needless to say, repudiated the decision, and was surreptitiously supported by her household. Henry made a generous provision for her as the Dowager Princess, and was circumspect about enforcing the penalties decreed for non-observance of his proclamation. In his treatment of Catherine, he was treading on very thin ice.

Thomas was now in a sense triumphant. His extended family had played a leading role in the coronation celebrations, and in the days of festivities which had followed. His son George was absent with the Duke of Norfolk in France, but the rest had played their allotted parts well. Even the death of the King’s sister Mary, the Duchess of Suffolk, on 24 June did not dampen down the hilarity. Indeed Henry, who had been seriously embarrassed by her refusal to recognise Anne, may have been secretly quite pleased. The mourning was brief, even perfunctory. More important was the delivery on the 28th of Francis I’s wedding gift – a splendid litter with three mules – which had been transmitted by George Boleyn. This was taken as proof that the King of France was on Henry’s side, although in fact Francis was playing a double game.
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He was willing to intervene to get the sentence of excommunication postponed, and to continue diplomatic relations with England when it came into effect, but he was not willing to quarrel with the Pope in the process. This gesture of recognition for Henry’s second marriage was as far as he was prepared to go, and Clement recognised that, so that relations between Rome and Paris continued to be amicable, to Henry’s great chagrin. On Tuesday, 26 August, Anne ‘took to her chamber’ at Greenwich to await the birth of her hoped-for son. In view of his experiences with Catherine, the King was understandably anxious, but this time he need not have worried. After an easy labour, she was delivered of a perfect and healthy child; the only snag was that it was girl. Her parents concealed their disappointment, and named her Elizabeth after her paternal grandmother.
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Plans for a joust were abandoned, but a magnificent christening was conducted on Wednesday, 10 September, at which all sorts of political messages were conveyed. First and foremost it was a Boleyn/Howard triumph, and of the twenty-one participants listed by Edward Hall, ten were members of one family or the other, including both the Earl of Wiltshire and his son. Thomas Cranmer was the godfather. At the same time, as many of Catherine and Mary’s friends as could be persuaded or coerced also took part. Gertrude, Marchioness of Exeter was one of the godmothers, in spite of her obvious reluctance, while her husband, the Marquis, bore the taper of ‘virgin wax’. The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, who was the other godmother, carried the child, her train borne by the Earl of Wiltshire and the Earl of Derby. Lord Hussey, the Lady Mary’s Chamberlain, was constrained to help bear the canopy, while the Duke of Suffolk escorted the child.
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They must have felt that they were assisting at a Roman triumph. Nevertheless Elizabeth’s sex was a set back for the whole clan, and Anne, who had manoeuvred herself into what had seemed in June to be an impregnable position, was now again acutely vulnerable. Chapuys’s despatches continue to breathe venom against ‘the concubine’, and now against the ‘little bastard’ also, while emphasising the love which ‘all the people’ have for the Queen and Princess (Catherine and Mary). He overstated his case, but the support was there, and Henry knew it.
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While the courts of Europe amused themselves with thoughts of his discomfort, the King still knew that he had an uphill battle to win hearts and minds to a cause to which he was totally committed.