Anne Boleyn: Henry VIII's Obsession (5 page)
The Field of the Cloth of Gold was intended to be a period of great festivities and a number of banquets were also held to demonstrate the friendship between the two countries and their kings. On 11 June it was arranged that Francis would dine at Guisnes with Catherine, and Henry would dine with Claude at Ardres. Shots were fired at exactly the same time from Guisnes and Ardres to indicate that the two kings had set out and the queens and their ladies must have waited with anticipation for the arrival of their guests. Anne would have remained with Claude to await the arrival of the English king.
Both banquets were a success and Henry dined with Claude before dancing with her ladies. The French queen and her ladies also displayed the wealth of France with Claude dressed in cloth of gold embroidered with jewels and with a large diamond on her breast. At the English camp Francis, true to his reputation, also set out to charm the English ladies and ‘went from one ende of the Chamber to thither on both sides and with his capp in his hand and kissed that ladies and gentilweomen one after another saving iii or five that were ould and not faire standing together’. Both banquets were a great success and Henry once again dined with Claude and Francis with Catherine on 17 June. Henry dined privately with Claude before secretly dressing for a masque with a number of the men who accompanied him. Some of the lords wore old fashioned gowns of blue satin:
‘Then was there another compaignie of X lords in whiche maskery the king was himself, apparelled all in long garments of estate all pale riche clothe of golde, all these had riche gounes which were lined with grene taffeta, and knit with pointes of Venice silver wherewith the riche clothe together was fastened on their faces cisers, and all the berdes were fine wyre of Duchet gold’.
Henry had also brought a troupe of minstrels with him to play as he and his company passed through the streets of Ardres. They came into the presence of Claude and danced with the French ladies. When Claude gave the signal, the masquers removed their masks to show their faces to the ladies with whom they had been dancing. Anne Boleyn would certainly have been one of the ladies present and she would have danced with the Englishmen. She must have been thrilled by the whole performance and it would have been an evening she remembered all her life. It is impossible to say who Anne danced with but it is not impossible that she may have danced with Henry as an Englishwoman present at the French court. She would have been called on to interpret during the evening and this would have given her a prominence. Even if Henry did not notice Anne, she would certainly have noticed him and been impressed by him.
Anne was probably also in attendance at mass on 23 June when a temporary chapel had been set up overnight on the site of the tournament. This was the first time that she saw Henry VIII’s chief minister, Cardinal Wolsey, and he would have been an impressive figure as he said mass to the congregation. Anne, like everyone else assembled, must have been looking forward to the banquet that was to be held that evening. Henry once again dined with Claude, arriving dressed in costume for a masque on the life of Hercules. The two kings met on their way home from the feasts and embraced each other, signifying the end of the celebration.
The two weeks of the Field of the Cloth of Gold must have been amongst the most memorable of Anne’s life and the splendour of the festival certainly remained in the minds of all those who witnessed them. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, mused on the meeting following the English party’s return to England and provided a useful summary of just what it meant to those who witnessed the spectacle. Bishop Fisher commented that three queens had been present (Catherine of Aragon, Claude and Mary Tudor) and that:
‘Euery of them accompanied with so many of other fayre ladyes in sumptuous and gorgeous apparell, suche daunsynges, suche armonyes, suche dalyaunce, and so many pleasaunt pastimes, so curious howses and buyldynges, so preciously apparayled, suche costely welfare of dyners, soppers, and bankettys, so delycate wynes, soo precyouse meatys, suche and soo many noble men of armes, soo ryche and goodly tentys, suche justynges, suche tourneys, and suche feates of warre. These assuredly were wonderfull syghtes as for this worlde’.
The Field of the Cloth of Gold caught the imaginations of everyone who was present and Anne would have been no exception. She may have watched the queens and felt envious of their positions. It was the greatest event in which she took part during her time in France. By the time of the Field of the Cloth of Gold Anne had lived in France for six years and she must have felt wholly French. The meeting with the English ladies emphasised just how different she was with her French upbringing. Anne would probably have been content to remain in France for the rest of her life. However, by late 1521 she would have known that this was not an option and her father was actively pushing for her return to England. Anne delayed her return for as long as possible but by the time she sailed for England in early 1522 she knew that her future lay in England, not in France.
A SECRET LOVE
Anne Boleyn returned to England in early 1522 after nearly nine years away. She would have had little time to reacquaint herself with her family and the familiar places of her childhood because, by February or March at latest, Anne had joined the household of Catherine of Aragon at Greenwich. Anne would have found the English court very different to the court of France and she may well have been disappointed with what she found there. It was a very different world that Anne entered in early 1522 and she, being French in all but birth, was also a very different person to the young girl who had left for the continent nearly a decade before.
Anne immediately caused a stir at court, in spite of her lack of conventional beauty. According to her biographer, George Wyatt:
‘There was at this present, presented to the eye of the court the rare and admirable beauty of the fresh and young Lady Anne Bolengne, to be attending upon the queen. In this noble imp, the graces of nature graced by gracious education, seemed even at the first to have promised bliss unto her aftertimes. She was taken at that time to have a beauty not so whitely as clear and fresh above all we may esteem, which appeared much more excellent by her favour passing sweet and cheerful, and these, both also increased by her noble presence of shape and fashion, representing both mildness and majesty more than can be expressed’.
At a time when the ideal of beauty was blond hair and a pink complexion, Anne’s dark hair and skin did not make her a beauty. However, there was something more to Anne Boleyn and even sources hostile to her suggest that she had something else which marked her out at court as one of the stars. The hostile Sander, for example, writing in the reign of Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth, claimed that Anne:
‘Was rather tall of stature, with black hair, and an oval face of a sallow complexion, as if troubled with jaundice. She had a projecting tooth under the upper lip, and on her right hand six fingers. There was a large wen under her chin, and therefore to hide its ugliness she wore a high dress covering her throat. In this she was followed by the ladies of the court, who also wore high dresses having before been in the habit of leaving their necks and the upper portion of their persons uncovered. She was handsome to look at, with a pretty mouth, amusing in her ways, playing well on the lute, and was a good dancer. She was the model and mirror of those who were at court. For she was always well dressed, and every day made some change in the fashion of her garments’.
Even Sander, who clearly despised Anne and could not resist providing an almost comical picture of her extreme ugliness, admitted that there was something unusual about her. While it is not impossible that Anne may have had the beginnings of a rudimentary sixth finger on her right hand, it seems very unlikely that she would have attracted as much favourable attention as she did if she had possessed the other defects claimed by Sander. Sander himself also, perhaps unwittingly, demonstrates something of the nature of Anne Boleyn. Although no beauty by contemporary standards, she possessed a grace and self-possession admired by both men and women alike. Men were fascinated by Anne for her grace and poise and women sought to emulate her in her clothing and manner. Anne Boleyn was a leader of fashion and quickly became a star at the court of Henry VIII.
In March 1522, probably only weeks after her arrival at Greenwich, Anne was chosen to take part in the masque which followed a great banquet at court. This was a singular honour and shows how quickly Anne was able to captivate much of the court. For the masque, a castle had been built in one of the rooms of Greenwich palace. At the top of this castle stood eight ladies wearing gowns of white satin and caps of gold and jewels. The eight ladies represented Beauty, Honour, Perseverance, Kindness, Constance, Bounty, Mercy and Pity. Henry’s sister, Mary, the French Queen, played the part of Beauty. Anne’s sister, Mary, took the role of Kindness and even George Boleyn’s fiancée, Jane Parker took part as one of the virtues. Anne Boleyn herself, appropriately enough as it would be shown, played the role of Perseverance.
Anne must have been thrilled at the prominence that she was given in the masque. The castle was defended by another eight ladies playing vices. They were dressed like women of the Indies and, whilst they defended the castle, eight lords entered dressed in cloth of gold and blue satin. They stormed the castle, which the ladies defended with rose water and comfits until the eight bad ladies were driven away. The eight virtues then came down from the tower and danced with the lords. Anne’s partner is nowhere recorded but it must have been one of Henry’s favourites. Henry himself is most likely to have danced with his sister, Mary or, perhaps, Mary Boleyn.
Mary Boleyn had been back at the English court for several years before Anne’s arrival and Anne is likely to have heard something of Mary’s reputation whilst she remained in France. By the time of Anne’s return to England, Mary Boleyn was well established as Henry VIII’s mistress. This was a very different relationship to the casual affair Mary had had with Francis I in France and the affair between Mary and Henry lasted for several years. It is possible that Mary’s marriage in early 1521 to William Carey, a gentleman in Henry’s privy chamber, was intended to protect her honour should she fall pregnant by the king. It is almost certain that she was already Henry’s mistress by this time.
Mary Boleyn well-deserved the epitaph of ‘Kindness’ which was given to her in the court masque and she was eager to please and generous. Thomas Boleyn’s rise to greater prominence during the early 1520s is probably linked to the position that his eldest daughter held with Henry and it is probable that Mary was encouraged to begin, and to continue, her affair with the king. Even if Thomas Boleyn was unhappy with his daughter taking the role of royal mistress, he must have been pleased with the tangible benefits he received from the relationship. In 1520 he was appointed Controller of the Household and in April 1522 he was promoted to Treasurer of the Household, both coveted positions. The king’s affair with Mary Boleyn, which was almost at an end by 1525, was also behind Thomas Boleyn’s elevation to the peerage on 16 June 1525 when he was created Viscount Rochford. Mary herself received few benefits from the relationship and, when it came to an end in the mid 1520s, she was simply discarded by the king. Anne would have taken note of her sister’s treatment and it was something that she remembered in her own relationship with Henry. Anne Boleyn was a very different woman to her sister and would never be content with sacrificing her honour and her prospects of a good marriage for a few years of prominence at court, a few presents, a few honours for her father and a ship named after her in the royal fleet.
Unlike her sister, Anne was determined to look for an advantageous marriage when she returned to the English court. It is probable that she would have been happy to remain in France and that she would, eventually, have arranged a French marriage for herself. In 1522 both Anne’s father and Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII’s chief minister, had other ideas. Anne, however reluctantly, had been summoned home from France for a marriage.
In 1515 Anne’s great-grandfather, the Earl of Ormond, had died. Ormond left only two daughters, the elder, Anne, who married into the St Leger family and the younger, Margaret, who was the mother of Thomas Boleyn. The Ormond title and lands were not entailed on the male line and the Earl’s English possessions quickly passed to his St Leger and Boleyn heirs. In Ireland, the Earl’s title and estates were claimed by his cousin, Sir Piers Butler, who declared himself Earl of Ormond soon after the old earl died. Thomas Boleyn immediately claimed the earldom from the king, pointing out that Butler had no legal right to it. However, the king, anxious not to offend a powerful Irish family, asked Wolsey to find a solution to the problem which did not involve stripping Butler of his claimed earldom and the Irish Ormond lands. It was Anne’s uncle, the Earl of Surrey, who suggested a solution to Wolsey and it was quickly agreed by the king and the cardinal that Thomas Boleyn’s only unmarried daughter, Anne, would marry Butler’s eldest son, James. This match was formally proposed by the Irish Council to Henry in September 1520 and Thomas Boleyn was instructed to send for his daughter.
Anne had no say in the marriage negotiations conducted on her behalf and this cannot have been easy for her. It is possible that Anne employed some delaying tactics whilst the marriage negotiations were conducted and, certainly, the gap of over a year between the marriage being mooted and Anne’s return to England suggests that neither she, nor her father, were entirely happy with the solution offered to the Ormond problem. Eventually, Anne was forced to bow to pressure and while she threw herself into court life in early 1522 the spectre of the Butler marriage would have been constantly hanging over her.