The Other Tudors (37 page)

For Henry, the only bright spot in the whole marriage fiasco was that he met and fell in love with one of Anne’s ladies-in-waiting, the 19-year-old Catherine Howard, which provided another reason for ending the German marriage. Burdened with a dull, sexually unattractive wife with whom he was not sleeping, it is not surprising that his eye roved over the lovely ladies who surrounded her.

On May Day, Anne attended the official Court celebrations. She had been improving her English and people seemed to like her. It was to be her last formal appearance; from this time on, she was marginalised. On 25 June she was at Richmond, where the King’s Commissioners came to her and advised that Henry planned to divorce her on the grounds that he had been coerced into marriage by Cromwell and that the marriage had never been consummated. Henry gave his word that he had not had sex with Anne, and this was sufficient for a divorce, since one of the principle reasons for marriage was the sanctioned production of children. All Anne had to do was agree that she remained a virgin.

Where Catherine of Aragon or Anne Boleyn might have hotly denied this and fought for their position, Anne apparently took the whole thing quietly and calmly. She wrote to Henry saying that she would be bound by whatever he decided, and signed the letter, not ‘Queen’, but ‘Daughter of Cleves’. Henry’s delight at such a helpful wife manifested itself in a more than generous separation gift of estates valued at £3,000; the only condition of divorce was that Anne would have to remain in England as Henry’s subject. Anne had no objections; she seems to have liked England, liked her freedom, and made some good friends.

It is perhaps ironic that Anne understood Henry the best of any of his wives. Her letter of submission to him, written on 11 July 1540 from Richmond, struck all the right notes. She started by pointing out that the whole question had been raised by the King’s Council and the Clergy, and Henry was not to blame. She recognised her love for him (and implied his love for her), but acknowledged that there were greater forces at work: ‘… this case must needs be most hard and sorrowful unto me, for the great love which I bear to your most noble person, yet having more regard to God and his truth than to any worldly affection …’ They would be divorced because it is the right thing to do, and Anne would remain his devoted friend and sister.
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With Anne so compliant and agreeable, the alliance with Cleves could be maintained. Duke William had no cause to say that his sister had been ill treated; in fact, she had done very well. She was even given precedence over all English ladies, save the king’s wife (when he had one) and Henry’s daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. Anne was to be the king’s ‘good sister’. Thus William was able to keep England as a friend and supporter against the Emperor, and Henry was able to keep a hand in European politics.

Two years later, during the investigation into the misbehaviour of Catherine Howard, rumours began to fly that Henry VIII was considering taking back his fourth wife. Chapuys wrote to Charles V that Henry had been out hunting and might have visited Anne. Her brother, the Duke of Cleves, had sent letters to his ambassador, Dr Heinrich Olisleger, broaching the subject of Henry remarrying Anne. At such a sensitive time, on 5 December 1541, the Privy Council recorded that a lady named Frances Lilgrave had ‘slandered the lady Anne of Cleves, and therein, the King …’
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Lilgrave had been sent to the Tower along with Richard Tavernor, a Clerk of the Signet, to whom she had told her tale and who had reported it to the Council.

This refers to an incident that had taken place several months before when a baby had been born to one of Anne’s servants. Rumours were circulated that the child was Anne’s and, worse still, that the father was Henry himself. According to Chapuys, the King’s assertion that he and Anne had never had sex was false; she and the King had been having sexual relations, the result being that that summer Anne had retired to the country to give birth.
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The King certainly visited Anne and it was not impossible that he went to bed with her. Well-dressed, contented and relaxed, speaking English, no longer under pressure to impress, Anne may at last have shown Henry the slender, serene, intelligent girl in the miniature with whom he had fallen in love. This would have been disastrous. The King could not have a child by a divorced wife whom he insisted that he had never slept with, especially as he had just married Catherine Howard, who might yet become pregnant. In any event, Anne of Cleves always maintained that the child was that of her servant.

Some years later, in 1546, Stephen Vaughan, the King’s Factor in Antwerp, wrote to colleagues in the English Court that there were rumours in Holland that Henry was planning to divorce Catherine Parr and marry again: ‘a merchant … had dined with certain friends, one of whom offered to lay a wager with him that the King’s Majesty would have another wife …’. Vaughan went on that there were rumours circulating that the next queen was to be Anne of Cleves, that she and the King were lovers, and that she had already had two sons by him.
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Anne ended her days in England, rich in lands and houses, and popular with her Tudor family. She got on well with Catherine Howard, formally visiting her at Court during her brief reign, and was a favourite ‘aunt’ to the Tudor children, Edward, Mary and Elizabeth. She didn’t have such a good relationship with Catherine Parr, and tried unsuccessfully to have her annulment overturned once Henry was dead so that Anne, not Catherine Parr, would be Queen Dowager.

Anne of Cleves died on 16 July 1557, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. She had never remarried, although there wasn’t a reason why she should not. Perhaps, once having tasted freedom, she never wanted to give it up again. Perhaps the farce with Henry had put her off the very thought of marriage.

Back in 1540, living in comfort at her house at Hever, Anne of Cleves may have congratulated herself on a lucky escape, when the tragedy of her successor unfolded. However, Catherine Howard had not been the only woman who tempted Henry before and during his marriage to Anne of Cleves. There was another possible British candidate for queen – Anne Bassett, stepdaughter of Lord Lisle, and servant to Jane Seymour before her death.

Arthur Plantagenet, Lord Lisle, was a remarkable man, in that he, and his sister Elizabeth, Lady Lumley, managed to live under the Tudors at all. He was the only surviving bastard son of Edward IV by Elizabeth Lucy, a widow and daughter of Thomas Wayte, a gentleman from Hampshire. When Richard III reported that his brother’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had been illegal and their children were therefore bastards, it was a precontract with Elizabeth Lucy that he used as evidence. A precontract was almost as valid as a marriage, and the two children tended to lend support to the claim by Richard that his brother, the King, had made some kind of promise of marriage to the lady.

Perhaps Arthur Plantagenet’s survival was due, in part, to the fact that he had no son who could raise a claim to the English throne. Arthur had three daughters by his first wife and no children by his second. However, he did accumulate a large family of stepchildren from both marriages. His first wife, Elizabeth Grey, was the widow of Edmund Dudley by who she had three sons. His second wife, Honor Grenville, was the widow and second wife of Sir John Bassett and had three sons and four daughters by him; Honor also cared for four daughters of Sir John Bassett by his first wife, Elizabeth Dennys.

Lord and Lady Lisle made an interesting couple. Henry VIII said of Lisle that he had ‘the gentlest heart living’
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and he was universally loved as a kind and gentle person. Arthur’s second wife, Honor Grenville, on the other hand, was a less lovable person; she ran up huge bills with tradesmen like the king’s tailor, ‘Mr Skut’. She was domineering and ruthless, especially where her Bassett children were concerned; Honor and Lisle had no children.

The Lisles had settled in Calais in 1533 when Lord Lisle was given the post of governor, and unusually Lady Lisle took Frances Plantagenet, Lisle’s daughter, and the four Bassett girls – Philippa, Katherine, Mary and Anne – with her, rather than leaving them with noble families in England to be educated, as happened with Elizabeth and Bridget Plantagenet. Anne Bassett was about 12 years old at that time.

Once in France, Lady Lisle placed Anne and Mary Bassett with noble French families, while the three remaining daughters stayed with their parents. Anne went to the household of one of her father’s dearest friends, the soldier Thybault de Rouaud and his wife, Jeanne de Saveuzes, who lived at Pont de Remy, near Abbeville in northern France. The Rouauds were a fine old Poitou family, and Jeanne was related by blood and marriage to the finest families in Artois and Picardy. Anne Bassett’s sister Mary went to the household of Thybault de Rouaud’s sister, Anne, who had married Nicholas de Montmorency, siegneur de Bours. Mary, we learn from de Bours, was considered the beauty of the two, although Anne must have been almost as lovely. Anne de Bours wrote to Lady Lisle on 9 August 1534: ‘I find her of such an excellent disposition that I love her [Mary] as if she were my daughter, and she is beloved of all them that see her.’ De Rouaud wrote a year later, ‘My wife and I have been very sorry that Mistress Anne hath been taken with a certain sickness [possibly smallpox], but thanks be to God she is now wholly recovered from it … As for Mistress Marie, who is with my sister, she is merry, and is indeed the fairest maiden in the world to look upon.’

One of the principle purposes of placing the girls in French households was for them to learn to speak, read and write French; in a letter of March 1536, Mary records, ‘I have given the schoolmaster who taught me to read and write ten sols …’ She wrote to her sister Philippa, who was still living in the Lisle’s household in Calais, ‘I enjoy myself so much here in this country that I should be right well content if that I would often see my lady my mother, never to return to England.’
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Anne Boleyn had established the fashion for French manners, and the presence on the throne of France of the handsome Francis I maintained France as a leader in fashion. The Lisles were not going to have their beautiful daughters be disadvantaged by not following the fashion of the day.

Letters also advised of Mary’s musical talent; she was receiving instruction on the lute, virginals and spinet. She was also working at her needlework, playing cards and hunting with hawks. One can assume that Anne had similar tuition. There are also many references in letters relating to both girls, to clothing and jewels, so that they should be well dressed as the daughters of so illustrious an English noble and his lady.

In September 1536, Anne Bassett returned to Calais to be reunited with her family, and plans were afoot for her future. Mary stayed with the de Bours for the time being. Like her sisters, Anne Bassett would have a reasonable dowry (100 marks) and was of a good family, so she might expect to make an advantageous marriage. Coupled with this, she was a beautiful and talented girl whose stepfather’s contacts at Court meant that she might expect to move in more exalted circles than other girls from the same background.

The early months of the year saw the fall and execution of Anne Boleyn in May, followed rapidly by the marriage of Henry to Jane Seymour. In 1537 Lady Lisle learned that two Arundel nieces had found places at Court and she set about bribing her noble friends and relatives to find similar places for her daughters, Katherine and Anne. Initially some of these friends seemed to doubt that Anne was old enough, being only 16, and Katherine was the daughter most likely to find a place. In order to get the girls into the Court, Lady Lisle was making plans to place Katherine in the household of the Duchess of Suffolk, and Anne with the Countess of Rutland. Once at Court, if only as part of a lesser household, it would be easier for them to be considered when the next vacancy occurred in the queen’s circle of ladies. In the meanwhile, Lady Lisle sent gifts to a variety of contacts, primary amongst whom were the Dowager Countesses of Sussex (Elizabeth Stafford) and Rutland (Anne St Leger), and Lady Anne Seymour, the wife of Edward Seymour, Queen Jane’s brother. Through them, she sent presents of game birds to the Queen. A letter from Sir John Russell to Lord Lisle, dated 20 May 1537, sent from Hampton Court, explains the nature of the gift: ‘My lord, the King commanded me to write to you for some fat quails, for the Queen is very desirous to eat some but here be none to be gotten. Wherefore, my lord, I pray you in anywise that ye will send some with as much speed as may be possible; but they must be very fat.’

The quail, which were found in abundance in the area around Calais, were set before the King and Queen by the end of May, and were much remarked upon and enjoyed. Jane Seymour eventually agreed to meet the Bassett girls and take one into her household, as John Hussee wrote to lady Lisle on 17 July 1537: ‘… the Queen … chanced, eating of the quails, to comment of your ladyship and of your daughters … her Grace made grant to have one of your daughters; and the matter is thus concluded that your ladyship shall send them both over [from Calais], for her Grace will first see them and know their manners, fashions and conditions, and take which of them shall like her Grace best …’
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