The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn (24 page)

Lancelot de Carles asserts that Sir Anthony Browne—acting perhaps on information gleaned from his sister, Lady Worcester—also cited Norris, and laid evidence that Norris had promised to marry Anne after the King’s death. It may therefore have been Browne who overheard the
conversation between Anne and Norris. But Browne was the half brother of Sir William FitzWilliam, who was to play an important role in Anne Boleyn’s downfall, and to whom Sir Edward Baynton had confided his suspicions about Norris, so it is also possible that Carles confused Browne with FitzWilliam.

FitzWilliam was a loyal and dependable King’s man. He had grown up with Henry from the age of ten and was consequently one of those closest to him; he also had a long and distinguished record of service in warfare, diplomacy, and the royal household. He was a solid individual who trimmed his sails to the prevailing wind and for the most part kept aloof from the factional politics that divided the court. As will be seen, he was plainly willing to do his very best to secure the conviction of the Queen and her alleged lovers, and would become so deeply involved in building a case against them that he would later confess to having neglected all his correspondence “since these matters begun.”
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Smeaton had not only confirmed the allegations of Lady Worcester, Lady Rochford, and others, but told “much more,” as Lady Worcester had said he would. Cromwell now had the information he needed to proceed against the Queen, and he hastened to lay it before the King.

At the May Day tournament at Greenwich, Anne was disconcerted when Henry got up and left without a word to her, yet she can have had no idea that she would never see him again.

Lancelot de Carles says that during the jousts, Henry loaned Norris his own horse, knowing “that he could not keep it long,” and that he showed kindness to Norris, Weston, and Brereton, “concealing their forthcoming ruin,” but it is unlikely that the King had been made aware before the tournament of the results of Smeaton’s interrogation. His abrupt departure was prompted by a message he was given, which was almost certainly to inform him that Smeaton had confessed to adultery with the Queen and incriminated Rochford, Norris, and Brereton, and perhaps Weston also, confirming what the King and his ministers already suspected about Rochford and Norris. The “Spanish Chronicle” asserts that Cromwell sent his nephew Richard Williams (who adopted the surname Cromwell) to the King with Smeaton’s actual confession, as well as the forged confessions of Anne and Rochford—which is patently untrue; and that when Henry had read them all, “his meat did not at all agree with
him.” When learning that Smeaton had confessed to having violated Anne, he cried, enraged, “Hang him up, then! Hang him up!” The tale is probably apocryphal.

Lancelot de Carles, who may have been repeating the official line that was fed in secret to the French ambassador, claims the councillors told Henry that “when you retire at night, she has her darlings already lined up. Her brother is by no means last in the queue. Norris and Mark would not deny that they have spent many nights with her without having to persuade her, for she herself urged them on, and invited them with presents and caresses.” It sounds suspiciously like the wording of the indictments that would soon be drawn up against the Queen.

The historian S. T. Bindoff, writing about Anne Boleyn’s fall, asserted, “Where a Borgia would have used poison, a Tudor used the law.” It is worth noting that it was only after being informed of Smeaton’s confession that Henry resolved upon proceeding against Anne and her alleged lovers. He had no choice, for he could not afford to ignore such evidence. He had known for a week that there was cause for suspicion, yet did not act precipitately; instead, he waited to see if there was any further evidence to support his councillors’ allegations. He was to show a similar restraint five years later when similar unsubstantiated claims were made against his fifth wife, Katherine Howard. His immediate response would be to reject them out of hand as being malicious accusations—which suggests he was by then well aware of how Anne Boleyn had been brought to grief
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—and order an investigation, and it was only when incontrovertible evidence was laid before him that he ordered any arrests. On that latter occasion, he wept in council, his grief warring with a surge of anger so bitter that it had him crying out for a sword with which to slay Katherine.

Since being informed of his councillors’ suspicions concerning Anne Boleyn’s conduct, his mood—on the available evidence—was angry rather than grieved, but his relations with Anne had been deteriorating for some time, whereas when Katherine Howard’s misconduct was disclosed to him, he had just publicly given thanks for the happy life he was leading with her, his “rose without a thorn.” Yet there can be little doubt that some vestiges of his grand passion for Anne remained—witness his keeping her company on St. Matthias’s Day, his insistence that Chapuys pay court to her, and his remarks about her bearing him a prince in the near future—and when he was confronted with what looked like convincing evidence of
her treachery, he must have been plunged into a turmoil of emotions. It does seem that he was greatly shaken and shocked by the reports brought to him, and his sudden departure from the jousts must be viewed in this context. He may well have felt that he could not bear to set eyes on Anne again, or he might not have trusted himself to refrain from violence.

Had Henry VIII been instrumental in bringing about Anne’s ruin, he would surely not have been so obviously angry. Yet it is hard to explain why he accepted at face value evidence that many people, including even Chapuys, Anne’s enemy, were to regard as flimsy. Maybe it was all too easy to believe such things of a wife of whom he had tired, the marrying of whom, he now apparently believed, had incurred God’s displeasure. Possibly the very fact that his councillors had dared to lay such damning evidence against her was enough to convince him that it was all true, and, having been publicly humiliated by these sordid revelations, he was too angered and hurt by her betrayal of him, both as a man and as the King, to give her, or the men accused with her, the benefit of any doubt. Cromwell was no fool—what he had laid before his master would have to be pretty watertight, or the consequences for Master Secretary could have been horrific. It should also be remembered that Chapuys’s view of the evidence, although clearly shared by other observers, was not that professed by the majority of his contemporaries, who—until Anne’s daughter ascended the throne—behaved as if they accepted the Queen’s guilt without question.

“Immediately after the tourney,” when “the jousts were over and they were disarming,” “archers were ordered to arrest Norris, and were much astonished and grieved, considering his virtue and intimacy with the King, that he should have committed disloyalty.”
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“The Captain of the Guard came and called Master Norris and Master Brereton, and said to them, ‘Sirs, the King calls you.’”
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It would appear that Norris was arrested on the King’s orders, while Brereton was detained for questioning; he would not be arrested for another three days. “Before [Norris] went to prison, the King desired to speak to him.”
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Constantine says that Henry “rode suddenly to Westminster, and all the way, as I heard say, had Norris in examination,” accusing him of committing adultery with Anne as far back as 1533. It was almost unheard of for the King himself to question a suspected traitor; as an
anointed sovereign, he would always distance himself from those accused of treason, and indeed would never have anything to do with anyone tainted even by the suspicion of it, so it is probably correct to say that Henry’s interrogation of Norris was “the action of a man taken by surprise.”
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He had been very close to Norris, and was evidently outraged at what he believed was the betrayal of a friend whom he had thought utterly loyal. It is hard to believe that Henry would have been a party to sacrificing the faithful Norris, knowing him to be innocent, merely as a means of ridding himself of Anne.

Norris was aghast to hear that he was accused of criminal intercourse with the Queen. But Henry “promised him his pardon [if] he would utter the truth.”
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Cavendish, who believed Norris guilty, imagined him looking back with bitter regret on this interview:

Carles also states that the King offered “to spare [Norris’s] life and goods, although he was guilty, if he would tell him the truth.” Maybe this offer was meant genuinely and Henry was indeed prepared to be lenient with Norris, although that is by no means certain. But Constantine says, “Mr. Norris would confess nothing to the King.” “Being told the accusation, [he] offered to maintain the contrary with his body in any place”
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—that is, submit to trial by combat. Far from being reassured by this, Henry appeared determined to believe the worst, and he “authorized and commissioned” Cromwell “to prosecute and bring to an end the Concubine’s trial,” as Master Secretary was to inform Chapuys.
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Norris’s determination to maintain his innocence in the face of the King’s offer of pardon suggests either that he believed that to be an empty promise, or that he was innocent.

On arriving at York Place, Norris was placed in the custody of Sir William FitzWilliam,
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who was among the councillors who examined
him at York Place later on May 1, at a special meeting of the Privy Council summoned by the King “to treat of matters relating to the surety of his person, his honor, and the tranquillity of the realm.”
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Norris’s chaplain told George Constantine that, during this interrogation, Norris did confess to something, although he did not say what, and Norris would later declare that he had been deceived into making his confession by FitzWilliam’s trickery. This is the second independent account of FitzWilliam coercing the Queen’s alleged lovers into making confessions. Chapuys later informed Dr. Ortiz, the Imperial ambassador in Rome, that “two of the five [who would be arrested] confessed their guilt.”
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Contrary to what is often stated, it may not have been the case that Smeaton alone confessed.

Cromwell was to write to Stephen Gardiner, the King’s envoy in Rome, that the Queen’s lovers—note the plural, suggesting again that Norris also confessed—disclosed under interrogation things “so abominable that a great part of them were never given in evidence, but clearly kept secret.”
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He could have been implying that they had indulged in forbidden sexual practices with Anne. In an age in which even marital intercourse was not supposed to take place on holy days or during pregnancy or menstruation, and oral sex and masturbation were seen as utterly sinful, to hint at such things was effectively to accuse Anne and her lovers of unbridled depravity. Yet the question remains, why were these things not made public, thus bolstering the Crown’s case? Was it to protect the King’s honor from further scandal? Or was it that these men had confessed to homosexual activity, which was punishable by death? If so, that could hardly have been alleged against them, given that they were supposed to have repeatedly committed adultery with the Queen; it would have substantially undermined the whole case. The other, more likely, possibility, of course, is that they had confessed to nothing of the kind, and Cromwell was merely bolstering his case with fabrications.

At dawn the next morning, Norris was taken under guard to the Tower.
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On entering his prison, he was permitted to see his chaplain, and told him he had never betrayed the King, reiterating, “I would rather die a thousand deaths than be guilty of such a falsehood.”
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Around the same time, Mark Smeaton was also committed to the Tower.
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George Constantine, Anthony Anthony, and the “Spanish Chronicle” all give the date of his arrest as May 1, Constantine saying that Mark
was brought to the Tower in the morning, and Anthony claiming he was taken there at six
P.M
. Anthony was Surveyor of the Ordnance at the Tower, and should have been in a position to know when Smeaton arrived, but it seems he was mistaken, because Chapuys, writing on May 2, states that Smeaton had been taken to the Tower early that morning, and that Lord Rochford followed after dinner (which was served at court between ten
A.M
. and one
P.M.
, depending on one’s rank and where one ate), “more than six hours after the others.” This was to be corroborated by Anne herself, referring to the fact that accommodation was not found for Smeaton in the Tower until ten o’clock on the evening of May 2.
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Rochford, who had followed the King back to York Place,
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had been arrested and conveyed downriver to the Tower,
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apparently without having been subject to any interrogation.
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According to Lancelot de Carles, he was heard to remark that “he had well-merited his fate,” but that information sounds suspiciously as if it was “leaked” to the French embassy by official sources. Rochford’s arrest was so discreetly accomplished that few, least of all the Queen, knew he had gone. Even Chapuys had no inkling of what was to happen next.