Tudor Queens of England (24 page)

– it is what the Marquis of Exeter told Chapuys. Exeter was a warm supporter of Mary, and no friend to A

nne.28 I
t is also unlikely that he would have been close enough to the King to have heard this outburst for himself, so that he was relying on hearsay. Altogether the story is unreliable, and the idea that the King determined at that point to get rid of Anne is not consistent with other evidence. What probably did happen is that there was a quarrel between the King and Queen and that is supported by a story that, many years later, George Wyatt heard from one of Anne’s ladies: ‘Being thus a woman full of sorrows, it was reported that the King came to her, and bewailing and complaining unto her the loss of his boy, some words were heard to break out of the inward feeling of her heart’s dolours, lay
ing the fault upon unkindness …’29 This is equally unc
orroborated, but much more plausible. Two thoroughly miserable people having a go at each other because they did not know what else to do.

Whether there was any link between these events at the end of January and Anne’s sudden fall at the end of April is problematic. Many years later Nicholas Saunders repeated a story to the effect that the foetus that Anne miscarried had been deformed in some way and that the King had leapt to the conclusion that he could not have begotten it. As it was commonly believed at the time that a deformed birth was the result of the sexual misconduct of one or both parties such a story is plausible. On the other hand, there is not a scrap of contemporary evidence that there was anything wrong with the foetus, which died only because it was premature. It was apparently inspected and declared to be male, but nothing else was said at the time. Nevertheless it is reasonable to suppose that such a miscarriage, followed by misery, quarrels and recriminations, would have destabilized a relationship that had had its rocky moments before. What seems to have happened is that these events impinged upon two longer term situations to create a crisis of confi dence upon the King’s part. In the fi rst place, Anne 126

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seems to have been quite unable to control her fl irtatious instincts or her sharp tongue and, in the second place, Thomas Cromwell decided that she was a serious obstacle in the way of his chosen foreign policy. It was the latter development that was the more important, because complex negotiations were in train at the time to persuade Charles to endorse Henry’s repudiation of the papacy in return for a recognition of Mary’s legitimacy using the argument of

bona fi de parentum
– in other words that Mary was legitimate because at the time of her birth both her parents believed that they were legitimately married. To this Anne was vehemently opposed and, although Chapuys was prepared to change his tactics far enough to be polite to her, he did not succeed in moving her position. In taking this line she was not defending herself, but her daughter Elizabeth, who would automatically lose her right to the succession if Mary should be so recognized. The story is far more complex than this simple outline would suggest but as April advanced Cromwell became increasingly convinced that Anne was standing in his way. Negotiations with the Emperor would be so much easier if this woman, who had been the cause of the Anglo-Imperial breakdown in the fi rst place, could be removed and replaced with a new wife – perhaps Jane Seymour. About 20 April Cromwell changed sides and began to seek for ways to destroy Anne’s relationship with the King – and this would not mean divorce, but death.

Within a few days he was consulting with his erstwhile enemies, Mary’s supporters, and putting together a sort of dossier consisting of unsubstantiated gossip about Anne’s behaviour, and midwives’ evidence about the aborted foetus. All this was intended to arouse the King’s suspicions, not to be the kind of evidence that could be produced in court. The device seems to have worked. Henry must already have been in a volatile state of mind, but it must also be remembered that he trusted Cromwell to a degree that he would not have trusted anyone else, with the exception of Archbishop Cranmer – who was not a party to any of these intrigues. By the end of April Henry was half convinced that his wife was a scheming whore and then she presented him with what appeared to be tangible evidence. On 30 April she had a furious quarrel with Sir Henry Norris of the Privy Chamber, during which she accused him of seeking her hand in marriage ‘if aught came to the King but good’. Norris was horrifi ed, as well he might be, by such an irresponsible charge, which he was quite unable to refute except b

y denial.30 The Secr
etary’s intelligence was good, because the same day his agents picked up one Mark Smeaton, a Privy Chamber musician who seems to have been mooning after the Queen for some time. With the aid of a little privately administered torture, Smeaton was persuaded to admit to an adulterous affair with Anne, which almost certainly existed only in his own imagination. Emboldened by this success, on 2 May, Cromwell ordered the arrest

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of Norris, and for good measure, Anne’s brother George. George had naturally been on intimate terms with his sister, and there were many occasions that could be misrepresented by a suffi ciently perverted mind. Incest, moreover, was particularly calculated to horrify a king whose sexual morality was nothing if not conventional. On the same day Anne was also arrested and taken to the Tower. So far, so good but, as one of Cromwell’s agents put it ‘no man will confess anything against her, but all-only Mark of any actual thing’.

31
This, he judged

‘should much touch the king’s honour if it should no further appear’. In other words, it would do Henry’s reputation no good at all to charge his wife upon such fl imsy grounds.

32
Ironically, it was Anne herself who partly solved this dilemma. The shock of imprisonment seems to have unhinged her, and she began to chatter. She did not confess to any actual misdeeds because there were (almost certainly) none to confess, but she did recount a whole string of indiscreet conversations, going back some time, and admitted that she had mocked Henry’s occasional fi ts of impotence. All this was promptly relayed to Cromwell, with the result that Sir Francis Weston, Sir Thomas Wyatt and William Brereton, a Groom of the Privy Chamber, were also arrested. With the aid of some forensic imagination and a few perjured witnesses, a detailed and circumstantial list of the Queen’s alleged adulteries was built up over the next few days, and on 10 May Weston, Norris, Brereton and Smeaton were all tried at Westminster and convicted by a handpicked jury of Boleyn enemies. The Queen and her brother were tried by their peers two days later but the conviction of their ‘accomplices’ made the verdict a foregone conclusion. Anne was charged not merely with adultery and incest but with poisoning Catherine, attempting to poison Mary and conspiring to bring about the death of the King. Completely amazed by this catalogue of iniquities, she could only respond, ‘If any man accuse me, I can but say “nay” and they can bring no witnesses’, which was true but quite unavailing
.33
With the King’s eye upon them, the peers knew their duty and found both the defendants guilty. Six days later, on 18 May, they both went to the block on Tower Hill. The exact chronology and circumstances of Anne’s fall have been much debated. Was she secretly opposing Cromwell’s plan for the dissolution of the monasteries? That might have given him an additional reason for wanting to get rid of her. When did he turn against her? His own claim that he only abandoned the Queen when he saw that the King had decided against her was disingenuous. He was moving against her at least by 24 April.
34
The King’s critical role is even more mysterious. He was apparently fully supportive as late as Easter, which was on 16 April, yet by 2 May he had completely changed his mind. The conclusion that he was ‘bounced’ into a fundamentally irrational decision seems unavoidable. The agent must have been Cromwell, who seems to have seized 128

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upon the opportunity created by Henry’s genuine perplexity. Anne was awkward, independent and sometimes abrasive; he admired her, loved her and sometimes feared her. Yet she had now miscarried twice and he still had no legitimate son. Was there something sinister in the fascination that had held him in thrall for nearly ten years? Then the magic word, ‘witchcraft’, was mentioned. Henry had a strong superstitious streak in his make up, mixed up with his rather eclectic intellectualism and erratic emotions. If Anne was a witch, suddenly everything fell into place; her obvious sexuality, her power over him, her failure to bear a son. It was all part of a diabolical conspiracy! Cromwell had no desire to see witchcraft feature among the legal charges. It was too subjective and emotive, and besides it was not within the jurisdiction of the Lord Steward. Fortunately for him, he did not need it. Once the King’s mind was made up, there was no shortage of more orthodox charges, no matter how implausible. Both the London commission and the Lord Steward’s Court could be persuaded to do the King’s bidding –

provided it was clearly known. For whatever reason – and there must remain some doubt about that – in the space of about a week between 24 April and 1

May 1536, Henry became convinced that his bedfellow was a whore and a witch. Of course that meant that she had never been properly his wife. Attainder had already stripped her of her title of Pembroke and on 17 May Cranmer was forced to preside over a special session of his consistory which dissolved her marriage on the grounds of consanguinity – an impediment that had been perfectly well known three years earlier when he had pronounced the marriage valid. Only the King’s manic insistence can account for such an unworthy

volte face
on the part of a man otherwise known for his integrity.

So Anne went to her execution, abandoned and despised, for no good reason other than that the King would have it so. Her family-based political faction was destroyed overnight and her young daughter left in a limbo of bastardy. As a result of his own quixotic actions, Henry now had three illegitimate children but no heir, either male or female. However, on 19 May, the day after Anne suffered, he was betrothed to Jane Seymour. There was at the time, and has been since, a school of thought that attributes Henry’s vindictive determination to erase Anne to an intense infatuation with this new love. However, that would seem to be an exaggeration. Anne had to die because she was too dangerous to leave alive and that was Cromwell’s judgement rather than Henry’s. The secretary seized the opportunity created by the King’s suggestibility to pile Pelion on Ossa, because he feared her revenge if she were left alive. In a way her death was a tribute to her power. By the beginning of May, Jane was clearly at the top of Henry’s agenda, but how long she had been there is another matter. She had been a member of the Queen’s privy chamber for some time, and Henry must have known her well

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by sight. However in September 1535, when the royal couple visited Wulf Hall, the Seymour residence in Wiltshire, during their summer progress, Jane was probably not even there. The reason for a visit to Sir John Seymour had more to do with the rising career of his elder son, Sir Edward, than with any charms of Jane. Moreover only hindsight links her with Anne’s tantrums in January 1536. It may be that the King was becoming seriously interested by then but it cannot be proved. In fact the chronology of their relationship is hazy. At some point, probably in March or early April, the King seems to have propositioned her, to be told fi rmly that ‘she had no greater treasure in all the world than her honour, which she would rather die a thousand times than tarnish’. He is also alleged to have sent her a letter and a generous present, both of which were returned with dutiful humility. All this sounds a bit like hindsight and a family plot intended to unseat Queen Anne, but the source of most of it is Chapuys, who was a keen meteorologist when it came to storm signals. It is quite probable that Henry’s decision to marry her was as sudden as his decision to abandon Anne, and was conditioned more by her immediate availability and by her father’s proven breeding record than by any deeper or longer term considerations. In moving as he did on 19 May, Henry outpaced all the observers. As soon as Anne’s fall was known, Pope Paul III, convinced that she had been the sole cause of the King’s straying, began to anticipate negotiations to end the schism. The Emperor was similarly speculating about the possibility of a Habsburg marriage to bring Henry back into the mainstream of European diplomacy. Both knew about Jane, but both chose to regard her as a casual ‘amour’ rather than an intended bride. They were wrong because Henry’s needs, both sexual and dynastic, were now urgent and he had no intention of plodding through the endless rounds of negotiation necessary to secure a European bride. Nor had he any intention of re-negotiating his ecclesiastical policy. In that respect the Seymours were neutral, perhaps more conservative than otherwise. Cromwell seems to have favoured Jane as a means of healing the deep divisions in the court that had characterised the Boleyn ascendancy – but he had no hand in prompting his master’s decision, and seems to have adopted this attitude only after the

fait accompli
. Henry and Jane were married with what can only be described as indecent haste at Whitehall on 30 May. Jane was 27: a somewhat plain and dumpy virgin if her portraits are anything to go by, although her unmarried status probably had more to do with her hard-up father’s inability to provide a suitable dowry than with any lack of attractiveness. Of course, with this dramatic turn in her fortunes no dowry was required.

She was not at all the kind of girl who would have appealed to the young Henry, but he was now 44 and his priorities had changed. What he needed now, 130