The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (18 page)
Read The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn Online
Authors: Eric Ives
And the king makes clear, for the first time, the basis of this new relationship between them. He wants Anne no longer as a mistress, but as a wife:
Praying you also that if ever before I have in any way done you offence, that you will give me the same absolution that you ask [ no doubt for appearing cold], ensuring you that henceforth my heart shall be dedicate to you alone, greatly desirous that so my body could be as well, as God can bring to pass if it pleaseth Him, whom I entreat once each day for the accomplishment thereof, trusting that at length my prayer will be heard, wishing the time brief, and thinking it but long until we shall see each other again.
Written with the hand of that secretary who in heart, body and will is
Your loyal and most ensured servant H. aultrene cherse R.
22
His next letter starts, ‘My Mistress and Friend’, and laments the prospect of more and more time spent apart (as propriety now dictated); it included a trinket for Anne to remind her of him, ‘my picture set in a bracelet, with the whole device which you already know’ - unfortunately a secret not revealed to us.
23
Then we find Henry telling Anne to urge her father to bring her back to court earlier than planned, and the inscription is again ‘H.
aultre ne cherse
R.’, with a heart surrounding the initials ‘A.B.’
24
Henry was engaged!
23
Then we find Henry telling Anne to urge her father to bring her back to court earlier than planned, and the inscription is again ‘H.
aultre ne cherse
R.’, with a heart surrounding the initials ‘A.B.’
24
Henry was engaged!
Thus far the sequence of Anne’s emotional journey with Henry. The chronology is more problematic. How soon before the application to Rome in August 1527 did Anne agree to marry? The likely answer is ‘not long’. Henry’s subsequent letters to Anne are concentrated in the ten months between December 1527 and October 1528, and it is hard to believe that the earlier ones form a detached series from months before.
25
Psychology too points in the same direction. It would be quite out of character for Henry not to act immediately Anne had yielded. It would be equally aberrant if Anne, who had resisted Henry for months, committed herself in advance of the king telling Katherine in June that he was seeking a decree of nullity. Circumstantial evidence also points in that direction. When Wolsey left for France on 22 July he knew of the plan to reject Katherine but nothing of any serious liaison with Anne, despite his own careful monitoring of the court and the vigilance of his agents in the privy chamber.
26
Nor were others more prescient. No hint of Anne’s involvement with the king has been found in any records earlier than the summer of 1527 — an unlikely thing if the betrothal was already a fait accompli; the imperial ambassador only identified Anne in August.
27
Earlier that year her public position was what it had always been, that of a court lady with valuable links with France. When, in May, the French envoys who had successfully negotiated a marriage between Henry VIII’s daughter Mary and Francis I himself, or his second son the duc d’Orléans, were guests of honour at a splendid evening at Greenwich, they merely reported: ‘we were in the queen’s apartments where there was dancing and M. de Turaine, on the king’s command, danced with Madame the Princess, and the king with Mistress Boulan who was brought up in France with the late queen.’
28
The normally hawk-eyed Venetians did not become aware of Anne until February 1528.
29
25
Psychology too points in the same direction. It would be quite out of character for Henry not to act immediately Anne had yielded. It would be equally aberrant if Anne, who had resisted Henry for months, committed herself in advance of the king telling Katherine in June that he was seeking a decree of nullity. Circumstantial evidence also points in that direction. When Wolsey left for France on 22 July he knew of the plan to reject Katherine but nothing of any serious liaison with Anne, despite his own careful monitoring of the court and the vigilance of his agents in the privy chamber.
26
Nor were others more prescient. No hint of Anne’s involvement with the king has been found in any records earlier than the summer of 1527 — an unlikely thing if the betrothal was already a fait accompli; the imperial ambassador only identified Anne in August.
27
Earlier that year her public position was what it had always been, that of a court lady with valuable links with France. When, in May, the French envoys who had successfully negotiated a marriage between Henry VIII’s daughter Mary and Francis I himself, or his second son the duc d’Orléans, were guests of honour at a splendid evening at Greenwich, they merely reported: ‘we were in the queen’s apartments where there was dancing and M. de Turaine, on the king’s command, danced with Madame the Princess, and the king with Mistress Boulan who was brought up in France with the late queen.’
28
The normally hawk-eyed Venetians did not become aware of Anne until February 1528.
29
Not all scholars would agree with this reconstruction. Influenced by the Cavendish story, J. J. Scarisbrick decided that Henry’s interest in Anne became serious in 1525 — 6, David Starkey likewise suggesting the later part of 1525, but with a measure of infatuation detectable by the start of that year.
30
He dates Anne’s surrender to January because one meaning of the word
étrenne
is a new year’s gift, and to 1527 because the equivalent in the preceding year does not fit with the king’s claim to have been in love for more than a twelve -month.
31
Such early dating carries serious implications for both Anne’s importance and her character. They make her the catalyst for the rejection of Katherine. Passion triggered Henry’s wish-fulfilment. What had begun as a courtly flirtation so subverted the king that he seized on the monstrous notion that his devoted wife of sixteen years was nothing but an accomplice in fornication. By the same token, Anne’s resistance to Henry becomes cold opportunism, ‘the other woman’ seeing the chance to prise husband and wife apart. That was Reginald Pole’s contention at the time. He told Henry in 1536: ‘At your age in life and with all your experience of the world, you were enslaved by your passion for a girl. But she would not give you your will unless you rejected your wife, whose place she longed to take.’
32
30
He dates Anne’s surrender to January because one meaning of the word
étrenne
is a new year’s gift, and to 1527 because the equivalent in the preceding year does not fit with the king’s claim to have been in love for more than a twelve -month.
31
Such early dating carries serious implications for both Anne’s importance and her character. They make her the catalyst for the rejection of Katherine. Passion triggered Henry’s wish-fulfilment. What had begun as a courtly flirtation so subverted the king that he seized on the monstrous notion that his devoted wife of sixteen years was nothing but an accomplice in fornication. By the same token, Anne’s resistance to Henry becomes cold opportunism, ‘the other woman’ seeing the chance to prise husband and wife apart. That was Reginald Pole’s contention at the time. He told Henry in 1536: ‘At your age in life and with all your experience of the world, you were enslaved by your passion for a girl. But she would not give you your will unless you rejected your wife, whose place she longed to take.’
32
We cannot, of course, know whether Anne did suspect that the Aragon marriage was vulnerable. Had Henry shared with her his concern about a son to succeed him? We cannot say either that had the divorce not materialized, Anne might not, in the end, have become the king’s mistress, perhaps in desperation — suitors for her hand disappear after James Butler, almost certainly warned off by royal interest. Thus the sympathetic can see Anne’s resistance as standing out for costly principle, the cynical gloss it as a calculated gamble, while the realistic can point to the discouraging prospects of a dumped royal mistress.
We have, however, seen that the circumstantial evidence is all against Anne’s abandoning her resistance before marriage became a possibility in June 1527, and here the word
étrenne
deserves closer inspection. If Henry did not mean ‘new year’s gift’ did he use the word only in its basic sense of ‘gift’? Perhaps. Given that the word was acquiring an implication of ‘novelty’ or ‘special occasion’, it was quite
un mot juste
for Anne’s message of surrender. Yet
étrenne
was also developing a second meaning — ‘virginity’. In other words, by describing the gift as
une étrenne
Henry could be picking up on Anne’s assertion that her maidenhead was reserved for her future husband. The jewel said that she had yielded totally and completely; Anne and her virginity now belonged to Henry.
33
The king’s parenthesis shows that he understood her perfectly — ‘For so beautiful a gift and so exceeding (taking it in all)’ - and he responded in kind: ‘my heart shall be dedicate to you alone, greatly desirous that so my body could be as well, as God can bring to pass.’
étrenne
deserves closer inspection. If Henry did not mean ‘new year’s gift’ did he use the word only in its basic sense of ‘gift’? Perhaps. Given that the word was acquiring an implication of ‘novelty’ or ‘special occasion’, it was quite
un mot juste
for Anne’s message of surrender. Yet
étrenne
was also developing a second meaning — ‘virginity’. In other words, by describing the gift as
une étrenne
Henry could be picking up on Anne’s assertion that her maidenhead was reserved for her future husband. The jewel said that she had yielded totally and completely; Anne and her virginity now belonged to Henry.
33
The king’s parenthesis shows that he understood her perfectly — ‘For so beautiful a gift and so exceeding (taking it in all)’ - and he responded in kind: ‘my heart shall be dedicate to you alone, greatly desirous that so my body could be as well, as God can bring to pass.’
If, prior to Anne’s promise, Henry had been ‘above one whole year struck with the dart of love’, and that promise was given shortly before the August appeal to Rome, it follows that the king began to be attracted to Anne in the first part of 1526. That being the case, since it is clear that Henry’s emotion grew out of a courtly-love pose, we may tentatively identify his first sign of interest in Anne with the Shrovetide joust in February when he appeared displaying the device of ‘a man’s heart in a press, with flames about it’, and the motto ‘Declare I dare not.’
34
His first letter accompanying the gift of the buck he had killed would then belong to the autumn of 1526.
35
Another significant conclusion would also follow. ‘Above one whole year’ from February 1526 would date Henry’s offer to Anne of the position of
maîtresse en titre
to about Easter 1527, an offer made despite the fact that he was then beginning moves to divorce Katherine and marry again. Only in high summer did the king realize that Anne could solve both his sexual and his matrimonial frustrations, and hence the sudden moves in August to appeal to the pope behind Wolsey’s back. As for the business with Wyatt, this could possibly have occurred before the court went on progress in July 1526 or more likely after it returned to Greenwich in October, and certainly before Wyatt’s sudden decision to make himself scarce by accompanying Russell to Italy.
36
34
His first letter accompanying the gift of the buck he had killed would then belong to the autumn of 1526.
35
Another significant conclusion would also follow. ‘Above one whole year’ from February 1526 would date Henry’s offer to Anne of the position of
maîtresse en titre
to about Easter 1527, an offer made despite the fact that he was then beginning moves to divorce Katherine and marry again. Only in high summer did the king realize that Anne could solve both his sexual and his matrimonial frustrations, and hence the sudden moves in August to appeal to the pope behind Wolsey’s back. As for the business with Wyatt, this could possibly have occurred before the court went on progress in July 1526 or more likely after it returned to Greenwich in October, and certainly before Wyatt’s sudden decision to make himself scarce by accompanying Russell to Italy.
36
If we put all these indications together with the dates of Henry’s disintegrating marriage with Katherine, the following chronology emerges:
The difficulty in charting any emotional history, and the inadequacies of the sources, make this timetable necessarily speculative. Nevertheless it does fit the context as we understand it, and it is psychologically credible. There is also independent corroboration. Among the papers in the Public Record Office is a statement of jewels and other costly items delivered to the king in a period described as ‘since 1 August in the year aforesaid’ until the following May.
37
Obviously part of a larger list, it includes items for the king himself, such as three walking staves equipped with one- or two-foot measures, compasses and dividers, but many of the pieces are ‘for Mistress Anne’. What was ‘the year aforesaid’? The latest possible period must be August 1531 to May 1532, for by May 1533 Mistress Anne was queen. The list, however, includes the gift to Anne of an emerald ring at Beaulieu on 3 August and the only year between 1525 and 1531 when Henry was at Beaulieu in early August was 1527.
38
What we have here, therefore, is a record of the torrent of gifts which the king had begun to shower on Anne by the summer of that year: rings, bracelets, brooches, diamonds for a head-dress, diamonds set in true-lover’s-knots, diamonds and rubies set in roses and hearts, gilt and silver bindings for books, velvet bindings, repairs to a book ‘garnished in France’ — the list goes on for page after page. Such a torrent can mean only one thing: Henry and Anne had an understanding - they were betrothed.
37
Obviously part of a larger list, it includes items for the king himself, such as three walking staves equipped with one- or two-foot measures, compasses and dividers, but many of the pieces are ‘for Mistress Anne’. What was ‘the year aforesaid’? The latest possible period must be August 1531 to May 1532, for by May 1533 Mistress Anne was queen. The list, however, includes the gift to Anne of an emerald ring at Beaulieu on 3 August and the only year between 1525 and 1531 when Henry was at Beaulieu in early August was 1527.
38
What we have here, therefore, is a record of the torrent of gifts which the king had begun to shower on Anne by the summer of that year: rings, bracelets, brooches, diamonds for a head-dress, diamonds set in true-lover’s-knots, diamonds and rubies set in roses and hearts, gilt and silver bindings for books, velvet bindings, repairs to a book ‘garnished in France’ — the list goes on for page after page. Such a torrent can mean only one thing: Henry and Anne had an understanding - they were betrothed.
The timetable suggested brings to the fore an obvious, frequently overlooked but critical reality in the relationship of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII: they were expecting to marry within months.
39
The delay in cohabiting would certainly be longer than the king had hoped when he had sought her for his mistress — the requirement for papal dispensation saw to that. Yet the couple were certainly thinking in terms of the existing norm where, after the possible marriage settlement had been hammered out, a quick decision was taken one way or the other, and any wedding followed promptly. English society was not equipped to handle a long engagement between betrothed adults. In canon law, if not in Church discipline, only sexual intercourse was lacking to make that relationship a lawful marriage — provided there was no impediment. Indeed, if (as Henry asserted) his union with Katherine was invalid, he was perfectly entitled to marry immediately and get the legal obsequies of the link with Katherine sorted out subsequently. He was, after all, still a bachelor. Suffolk, his brother-in-law, had solved his matrimonial problems by doing exactly that.
40
What blocked this option was not only that Henry would have to have the courage of his convictions, but that Katherine’s imperial nephew was in a position to prevent the pope disposing of her marriage retrospectively, and that would have imperilled the legitimacy of any child the king might have by Anne. He had to wait on Rome, and this imposed a highly unnatural situation for a betrothed couple, a situation exacerbated by sexual passion and by Henry and Anne frequently living cheek by jowl. The strain is evident in the king’s letters.
41
With hindsight, we know that legal technicalities in Rome and manoeuvres in England were initial moves in what would be a long-drawn-out and ultimately abortive attempt to secure an annulment. To Henry and Anne they were frustrating delays to a wedding which was imminent.
42
39
The delay in cohabiting would certainly be longer than the king had hoped when he had sought her for his mistress — the requirement for papal dispensation saw to that. Yet the couple were certainly thinking in terms of the existing norm where, after the possible marriage settlement had been hammered out, a quick decision was taken one way or the other, and any wedding followed promptly. English society was not equipped to handle a long engagement between betrothed adults. In canon law, if not in Church discipline, only sexual intercourse was lacking to make that relationship a lawful marriage — provided there was no impediment. Indeed, if (as Henry asserted) his union with Katherine was invalid, he was perfectly entitled to marry immediately and get the legal obsequies of the link with Katherine sorted out subsequently. He was, after all, still a bachelor. Suffolk, his brother-in-law, had solved his matrimonial problems by doing exactly that.
40
What blocked this option was not only that Henry would have to have the courage of his convictions, but that Katherine’s imperial nephew was in a position to prevent the pope disposing of her marriage retrospectively, and that would have imperilled the legitimacy of any child the king might have by Anne. He had to wait on Rome, and this imposed a highly unnatural situation for a betrothed couple, a situation exacerbated by sexual passion and by Henry and Anne frequently living cheek by jowl. The strain is evident in the king’s letters.
41
With hindsight, we know that legal technicalities in Rome and manoeuvres in England were initial moves in what would be a long-drawn-out and ultimately abortive attempt to secure an annulment. To Henry and Anne they were frustrating delays to a wedding which was imminent.
42
PART II
A DIFFICULT ENGAGEMENT
7
A MARRIAGE ARRANGED
T
HE story of the struggle over Henry VIII’s divorce has been told many times and in great detail, and here is not the place to rehearse it at length.
1
The king’s conviction that his marriage with Katherine had brought down the wrath of God was one thing, but satisfying the proper Church authorities was another, and that, despite six years of continuous effort, a massive expenditure of funds and mobilizing all the resources of the English hierarchy plus the brains of a good part of Europe too, the king was never able to do - with momentous consequences for England, and for Anne Boleyn.
HE story of the struggle over Henry VIII’s divorce has been told many times and in great detail, and here is not the place to rehearse it at length.
1
The king’s conviction that his marriage with Katherine had brought down the wrath of God was one thing, but satisfying the proper Church authorities was another, and that, despite six years of continuous effort, a massive expenditure of funds and mobilizing all the resources of the English hierarchy plus the brains of a good part of Europe too, the king was never able to do - with momentous consequences for England, and for Anne Boleyn.
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