Anne Boleyn: Henry VIII's Obsession (26 page)
Anne saw the proffered Imperial alliance as a means of re-establishing her position at court in April 1536 and she was happy to attempt some reconciliation with the emperor. Henry was also determined that Charles should recognise his marriage and on Easter Sunday he instructed Cromwell to ask Chapuys to visit Anne and kiss her. This would have shown the world that the emperor recognised Anne as queen but Chapuys, who had always refused to meet personally with Anne, could not bring himself to agree to this, refusing to greet the woman who would always be to him, the Concubine. Both Anne and Henry expected this refusal and while in happier times Anne would have railed against it, she and Henry conceived a scheme to force Chapuys to finally recognise her. In spite of his refusal to meet Anne, Chapuys still found himself in high favour on Easter day and:
‘Was conducted to mass by Lord Rochford, the Concubine’s brother, and when the king came to the offering there was a great concourse of people partly to see how the Concubine and I behaved to each other. She was courteous enough, for when I was behind the door by which she entered, she returned, merely to do me reverence as I did her. After mass the king went to dine at the Concubine’s lodging’.
Anne deliberately waited until her brother had manoeuvred Chapuys behind a door so that he had no chance to escape without finally acknowledging her as queen. This was a great victory for Anne and, at long last, she had achieved the recognition of Catherine’s family of her rights as queen. It was to be the last victory of both Anne’s reign and of her life and for all the hope it gave her, she was still filled with foreboding.
Anne had followed Henry in publicly rejoicing at the death of Catherine of Aragon in January and, to a certain extent, she must have been glad to finally be rid of her rival as queen. However, Anne was also no fool and she was well aware of just how exposed Catherine’s death in reality left her. There must have been many times when Anne wished that Catherine and her daughter would simply disappear but she also recognised that Catherine’s continued existence had forced the king to remain committed to his second marriage. If Henry were to put Anne away during Catherine’s lifetime, pressure for him to take his first wife back would have been almost overwhelming. Most of Europe and many people in England did not recognise Henry’s second marriage as valid and, with the death of Catherine, he was widely held to be free to marry again, regardless of Anne’s position. While Anne put on a defiant face in public, she was no fool and she would have heard the rumours flying around court and trembled.
Following Anne’s miscarriage, the English court was certainly full of rumours. These tended to centre on Anne’s fertility and in February it was reported that Anne was unable to conceive a child and that Elizabeth was a changeling and the miscarried son a supposition. Anne probably attempted to laugh off rumours such as this, but they were widespread and they must have been both frustrating and deeply worrying to her. There were even claims that she had not been pregnant at all and had merely claimed that she had miscarried a son so that the king would think she was at least capable of conceiving a male heir. The much later report of Nicholas Sander also stated that Anne gave birth to a shapeless mass of flesh rather than a stillborn son in January. While there is no evidence to suggest this was the case, it does demonstrate just how embellished the rumours became as they piled down upon the beleaguered Anne.
By late April 1536 Anne was fully aware of just how low she stood in Henry’s favour. Henry was, by then, intending to marry Jane Seymour as soon as he could be rid of Anne and, on 29 April he showed this clearly by appointing Sir Nicholas Carey, a supporter of Jane, as a Knight of the Garter in preference to George Boleyn. As Chapuys gleefully reported, ‘the Concubine has not had sufficient influence to get it for her brother’. This was a major blow to Anne and the entire Boleyn faction and Anne decided to take decisive action to disprove the rumours and offer Henry the only proof of her fertility she had. At some point near the end of April, Anne took Elizabeth in her arms and held her out to Henry as he looked down from an open window at Greenwich Palace. This was Anne’s last attempt to reawaken Henry’s love for her and it failed utterly. While, for Anne, Elizabeth was the proof that she could bear a healthy child, for Henry she was only proof of his wife’s betrayal in her failure to provide him with the son she had promised him. Angry words were spoken between the couple and Anne then moved away defeated. It was probably the last time she saw her daughter.
While at the end of April 1536 Anne was aware that she had lost the king’s love, she cannot have foreseen the rapidity of her fall, for all the whispers that surrounded her. Anne had always been a politician as well as a queen, forming factions and policies as actively as Henry’s ministers. By late April 1536 Henry had decided to bring her political influence to an end and had accepted that Anne was as much of a problem to him as Catherine of Aragon had once been. On 24 April 1536, a commission was set up to investigate certain treasons and, with official approval for an investigation into Anne’s conduct, it was only a matter of time before she fell from power. As Chapuys sent to tell Mary on 29 April, she should be of good cheer, ‘for the king was already as sick and tired of the Concubine as could be’. On 1 May 1536, Henry and the rest of Anne’s enemies were ready to strike her down.
TURNED TRUST TO TREASON
Anne suspected that she had lost Henry’s love and was being conspired against in April 1536 but she can never have imagined the speed with which she would fall. She probably hoped that, if only she could reawaken Henry’s obsession with her, she would be safe and might finally bear him a son. Anne can never have imagined just how dangerous her situation was in April 1536 but, on 30 April, Cromwell was ready to strike.
On 30 April 1536 Mark Smeaton, a young musician in Anne’s household, was invited to dine with Cromwell at his house at Stepney. This was a flattering invitation for Smeaton, who was not gently born and he went gladly, probably hoping for some preferment from the king’s chief minister. He was completely unsuspecting when he arrived at Stepney and, rather than being offered a meal, found himself arrested by Cromwell’s men and taken to the Tower for interrogation. Smeaton must have been terrified and there were rumours that he was racked or subjected to some other torture. By the following morning, he had confessed to committing adultery with Anne and provided both Cromwell and the king with the means to take the final action against the queen.
Smeaton was a member of Anne’s household but he was so lowly that she is unlikely to have noted his disappearance. Even if she did, she would not have thought anything of it and may simply have been annoyed that he was neglecting his duties towards her. She did not imagine just how dangerous his disappearance was to her and it was an entirely unsuspecting Anne who attended the May Day jousts at Greenwich the following day. The jousts were a great affair, attended by the entire court with Henry sitting close to Anne. Anne may have hoped to be able to speak to her husband at the jousts and her mood was lighter than it had been for several weeks as she watched her brother and other gentlemen, including Henry Norris, a favourite of the king, and Thomas Wyatt, in the jousts. Anne noticed nothing amiss as she sat in the gallery and, as she watched, she dropped her handkerchief to one of the jousters to allow him to wipe his face. Anne had always been flirtatious with men and sought the admiration of the gentlemen of court. She would have seen nothing unusual in her action and she, along with the rest of the court, was perturbed when Henry suddenly got to his feet and left the jousts without saying a word.
Henry took only six attendants with him when he left Greenwich, including Henry Norris, and he rode swiftly towards the palace of Westminster. According to the account of George Constantine, Norris’s servant, Henry insisted on riding at the head of the group beside Norris and ‘all the waye as I heard saye, had Mr Noryce in examinacyon and promised hym his pardon in case he wolde utter the trewth. But what so ever could be sayed or done, Mr Norice wold confess no thinge to the Kynge, where vpon he was committed to the towre in the mornynge’. Although no details of Henry’s questions survive, they can only have been about Norris’s relationship with Anne. With Smeaton and Norris in custody, it was decided that the next suspect to be apprehended would be Anne Boleyn herself.
Little evidence concerning the charges against Anne and the men with whom she was accused survives and it is therefore impossible to fully judge the basis for the charges and the evidence. It appears from the surviving evidence that the source of the accusations come from evidence given by four women; Lady Wingfield, Lady Worcester, Lady Rochford and Anne Boleyn herself. The judge, Sir John Spelman, who sat on the bench during Anne’s trial, noted that Anne had originally been accused by Lady Wingfield. Lady Wingfield had died in either 1533 or 1534 but she left a deathbed statement which apparently accused Anne of being morally lax. Although this statement does not survive, it seems likely that it related to some premarital affair on Anne’s part. As already noted, the usually proud Anne wrote to Lady Wingfield in very subservient tones whilst she was still Lady Marquis of Pembroke and it is almost certain that Lady Wingfield knew a secret about the queen that Anne was desperate should never be revealed. Given the attention paid to Henry Percy at the time of Anne’s fall and, also, the fact that Anne may have considered herself contracted to him, it is reasonable to speculate that Lady Wingfield’s confession stated that Anne and Percy had consummated their relationship, something that Anne would have been very loath to have revealed to the king. When Lady Wingfield’s statement was finally brought to Cromwell and the king in early 1536, it was enough to cast doubt on Anne’s morality and for further investigations to be carried out. While a lack of premarital chastity was a ground for divorce, it was certainly not treason and Anne was also the subject of a far more damning allegation by the Countess of Worcester.
According to a letter written by John Husee to Lady Lisle a few days after Anne’s death ‘the first accusers, the Lady Worcester, and Nan Cobham, with one maid more. But Lady Worcester was the first ground’. Lady Worcester was a member of Anne’s household and she was noted for her loose morals. According to a letter written by Lady Worcester to Cromwell in March 1537, Anne had lent her £100, a vast sum, for some purpose which she did not specify but which Lady Worcester was ‘very loath it should come to my lord my husband’s knowledge, which is and hath been utterly ignorant both of the borrowing and using of the said hundred pounds. And if he should now have knowledge thereof, I am in doubt how he will take it’. It appears that Lady Worcester had a lover and in early 1536, her brother, Sir Anthony Browne, berated her for her immoral conduct. In her anger, Lady Worcester blurted out that she was not the worst and that her brother should look to the conduct of the queen herself. This was enough for Henry, seeking a way to be rid of Anne, to permit Cromwell to carry out an investigation into her conduct.
By early 1536, Cromwell and Anne were at odds, and the minister used any means at his disposal to produce evidence against her. According to Alexander Ales, who was at court during the last weeks of Anne’s life, Cromwell’s agents ‘tempt her porter and serving men with bribes, there is nothing which they do not promise the ladies of her bedchamber. They affirm that the King hated the Queen, because she hath not presented him with an heir to the realm, nor was there any prospect of her doing so’. These spies apparently searched out people willing to inform against the queen and one of those who testified was Anne’s sister-in-law, Lady Rochford, who was apparently angry with her husband and ‘seeking of his blood’. She claimed that Anne and George laughed at the king’s clothes and discussed his impotence. She also told Cromwell that George had questioned the paternity of Elizabeth. It is unclear whether Lady Rochford acted under duress or not, but her words were damning and, with the help of the three ladies, Henry and Cromwell were ready to arrest Anne herself on 2 May. Anne’s own role in the accusations occurred soon afterwards.
Anne spent an anxious night at Greenwich following Henry’s abrupt departure from the jousts and she may have suspected that he had spent the night with Jane Seymour or one of the other ladies of the court. A veil of silence had been placed around her and she would not have known of either Smeaton’s arrest nor Norris’s interrogation until her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, with several other members of the king’s council came to arrest her on the morning of 2 May. When Anne was told of the charges, she immediately exclaimed that she was wronged and begged to see the king, but she was not permitted to do so. Anne spent much of that day being interrogated before being taken to the Tower of London at 5pm that evening. No details of Anne’s interrogation survive, but she was certainly terrified. Anne had known that she was rapidly losing Henry’s love, but she can never have imagined herself as a prisoner in the Tower. As she arrived at the Tower, her self-composure gave way and ‘she fell downe on her knees before the said lords, beseeching God to help her as she was not giltie of her accusement, and also desired the saide lords to bessech the kinge’s grace to be good unto her, and so they left her prisoner’. By the time that she had arrived at the Tower, Anne knew that she was accused of adultery and she had heard that her brother had also been taken to the Tower that same day. Anne would never again leave the Tower and all her composure had gone. As she entered the Tower she asked the lieutenant of the Tower, William Kingston, ‘shall I go in to a dungyn?’ Kingston assured her that she would be lodged in the royal apartments where she had slept before her coronation, and she was led away, attended by only four ladies selected for her by either the king or by Cromwell.