Anne Boleyn: Henry VIII's Obsession (13 page)

The uncertainty of her position made Anne sensitive to any perceived slight and wherever she went at court there would have been whispered conversations when she entered the room and strange looks. Although Anne was often arbitrary and over-sensitive in her behaviour, for much of the time between 1530 and 1532 she was on edge, aware of the disapproval that she garnered at court, for all her attempts to ignore it. One person who earned Anne’s enmity was the controller of Henry’s household. According to the imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, who is a useful, if hardly an impartial, source:

‘The Lady, knowing that Guildford, the controller, was not very partial to her, has threatened him bravely, going so far as to say that when she is queen she will deprive him of his office. To which he replied, that when that time arrived, she should have no trouble to deprive him, for he would give up his office himself. He then went to the king to tell him the story, and give up at once the baton of his office, - which the king restored to him twice, saying he should not trouble himself with what women said. The Controller, however, has, from disgust or for some other reason, gone to his house’.

Henry may also have received the sharp end of Anne’s tongue when she heard of this exchange and she was not afraid to angrily berate the king when she did not get her own way. Anne’s independence was a large part of her attraction to the king but, as the divorce dragged on, their relationship became increasingly stormy. Anne, as her frustration mounted, often found it difficult to remain even-tempered with Henry, particularly as it was she, rather than the king, who had to bear the brunt of the whispering and rumours that surrounded their relationship. According to Chapuys, in November 1530, Anne and Henry had a public argument about Cardinal Wolsey to the interest and embarrassment of the court. According to the ambassador, Anne:

‘Does not cease to weep and regret her lost honour, threatening the king that she would leave him, in such sort that the king has had much trouble to appease her; and though the king prayed her most affectionately, even with tears in his eyes, that she would not speak of leaving him, nothing could satisfy her except the arrest of the Cardinal’.

Henry was so besotted with Anne that she had the power to bring him publicly to tears. The arguments never lasted and once they were reconciled the couple appeared even more in love to everyone at court than before. Even Henry sometimes became frustrated and complained to Norfolk that Anne was ‘not like the Queen, who had never in her life used ill words to him’. Norfolk certainly agreed and privately said that Anne would be the ruin of all her family. Henry always made amends and in early 1531 a report reached Rome that Henry had desperately summoned some of Anne’s relatives to court to beg them in tears to help him make his peace with Anne. Henry frequently made a public fool of himself in his fervour for Anne and his love for her was all that mattered. Henry’s obvious devotion and her own feelings for him must have helped ensure that the disagreements were always short-lived and Anne reserved the bulk of her anger and ill feeling for Catherine of Aragon and her daughter, Princess Mary.

Anne Boleyn’s behaviour towards Catherine and Mary shows her character in the worst possible light and there is no doubt that she was guilty of great cruelty towards the pair. It is difficult to defend her conduct but she was in a very difficult situation. Anne had been one of Catherine’s ladies, but she is unlikely to have had a personal relationship with the queen. She may have barely known Catherine and her daughter and, when the opportunity to become queen presented itself, she had no personal feelings of loyalty towards the king’s current wife. As the years dragged on and Catherine proved so intractable, Anne’s frustration with the women, as the barrier to her own happiness, would have become acute, and it is clear that she came to hate them as the two people who stood in the way of her greatest ambition. Cardinal Wolsey had been Anne’s greatest enemy, but he was soon supplanted by Catherine of Aragon in Anne’s hatred and the two women were implacably opposed.

Eustace Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador, and one of Catherine’s greatest supporters, chronicled the difficult relationship between the two women and, although his accounts are entirely partisan, always referring to Anne either as ‘the Lady’ or ‘the Concubine’, they provide a useful source for just how frustrated and angry Anne had become with her rival’s intransigence. According to Chapuys, by Christmas 1530, Anne was certain that her marriage would soon be accomplished:

‘She is braver than a lion. She said to one of the Queen’s ladies that she wished all the Spaniards in the world were in the sea; and on the other replying, that, for the honour of the Queen, she should not say so, she said that she did not care anything for the Queen, and would rather see her hanged than acknowledge her as her mistress’.

This was a truly shocking thing for any woman to say and again shows Anne’s independent spirit. Anne could not afford to have any sympathy for Catherine’s position and she was implacable in her hatred of her. Anne used many of the same tactics with Catherine that she had used so effectively on Wolsey and she pursued a policy of keeping the king away from his wife, encouraging Henry not to visit Catherine or see her when they were together at court. Anne also commented that York Place was her favourite palace and that she liked ‘better that the king should stay in the said house than elsewhere, as there is no lodging in it for the queen’. It must have been particularly galling for Anne to recognise just how formidable an enemy Catherine of Aragon was and as Anne’s own uncle, Norfolk, commented with grudging admiration, the queen’s ‘courage was supernatural’.

Throughout the years of the divorce, Catherine fought to maintain her position as queen and as Henry’s wife. For several years this policy was successful and, up until mid 1531 Henry, Anne and Catherine presented an odd group as they spent most of the time confined together within the court. Although Henry was still insisting that his marriage was invalid, he did not allow this to interrupt the routine of the court and, for the most part, Catherine was still queen in deed as well as name. Henry even went so far as to continue to request that Catherine make his shirts for him, something that infuriated Anne when she found out. Henry and Catherine also still dined together as husband and wife well into 1531 and appear to have been able to have a civilised conversation, for all the animosity that they must have felt for each other. According to Chapuys, at one such meal in May 1531:

‘The King, dining the other day with the Queen, as is usual in most festivals, began to speak of the Turk and the truce concluded with your Majesty [Charles V], praising your puissance, contrary to his wont. Afterward proceeding to speak of the Princess, he accused the Queen of cruelty, because she had not made her physician reside continually with her; and so the dinner passed amicably. Next day, when the Queen, in consequence of these gracious speeches, asked the King to allow the Princess to see them, he rebuffed her very rudely, and said she might go and see the Princess if she wished, and also stop there. The Queen graciously replied that she would not leave him for her daughter nor any one else in the world’.

Both Anne and Henry knew that Catherine would never leave the king regardless of how cruelly he behaved towards her. Anne, who often proved more decisive than Henry, could not endure this situation and she continually berated the king about his failure to take action to separate from his wife and commit fully to their own future marriage. The pressure Anne put on Henry finally bore fruit and on 11 July 1531 Anne and Henry secretly left Windsor with a small retinue of followers, leaving Catherine behind. Anne felt exhilarated as she rode away with the king, knowing that suddenly, everything had changed.

Catherine on the other hand was bewildered by Henry’s disappearance. By custom, she and Henry had been in the habit of visiting each other every three days and when Henry had not returned after six days she sent him a message asking after his health and ‘to tell him of the concern she felt in not having been able to speak with him at his departure’. Henry was furious to receive her message and recalling her messenger:

‘In great choler and anger, as it seemed, charged him to tell the Queen that he had no need to bid her adieu, nor to give her that consolation of which she spoke, nor any other, and still less that she should send to visit him, or to inquire of his estate; that she had given him occasion to speak such things, and that he was sorry and angry at her because she had wished to bring shame upon him by having him personally cited [to appear in Rome]; and still more, she had refused (like an obstinate woman as she was) the just and reasonable request made by his Council and other nobles of his realm’.

Henry was used to getting his own way and no one had ever defied him like Catherine had. Catherine, undaunted, sent another message and Henry replied banning her from sending him any messages or anything else, stating that he did not consider himself her husband. Catherine could not have known it but on the 11 July Anne had won and Henry and Catherine were never to meet or correspond directly with each other again. Most people in England assumed that Henry’s final rejection of Catherine was the work of Anne, and Chapuys commented of Henry’s last letter to Catherine that ‘it may be supposed, considering the Lady’s authority, and the good reason contained in the said letter, that she must have dictated it’. Anne was commonly held to be the driving force behind the king’s desire to be rid of Catherine and she was hated for it.

Following Henry’s abandonment of Catherine, he also commanded the queen to separate from her daughter and the two women were never to see each other again. This was also widely held to be Anne’s doing and in April 1531 a request made by Mary to join her parents was refused by the king. According to Chapuys, this was refused by the king in order to please Anne ‘who hates her as much as the queen, or more so, chiefly because she sees the king has some affection for her’. There is no doubt that Anne hated Mary and behaved cruelly to the teenaged princess, even ensuring that her spies were present when Mary and Henry met in order that the conversation would be reported back to her. Anne’s treatment of Mary is almost indefensible but, once again, she would have had no personal feelings for Mary and probably saw her only as an obstinate girl who stood in the way of her greatest desire. Once she became queen, she also knew that Mary would have to be broken to ensure that she was no threat to Anne’s own children.

1. Blickling Hall, Norfolk. A seventeenth century house now stands on the site of Anne Boleyn’s birthplace.

2. The Howard coat of arms over the gate at Framlingham Castle, Suffolk. Anne was always proud of her Howard blood and this connection raised her to the highest ranks of the nobility. 

3. Anne Boleyn. Anne did not conform to contemporary ideals of beauty but her grace and wit set her apart from the other ladies of the court.