Henry VIII (37 page)

The celebrations continued for several days. As her parents watched from their thrones under the canopy of estate, the Princess Mary, dressed as a Roman goddess in “cloth of gold, with so many precious stones that the splendour and radiance dazzled the sight,”
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took part in a pageant. Wolsey staged a play celebrating the alliance, which was performed by the Chapel Royal,
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and gave a feast for the envoys at Hampton Court; one of the many fantastic subtleties served was fashioned like a chess set, and the Cardinal magnanimously presented it to a Frenchman who had admired it.

The festivities were brought to an abrupt halt by the dreadful news of the sacking of Rome by uncontrolled mercenary troops in the pay of the Emperor. The Pope had fled and was now a prisoner. Accounts of the atrocities were horrifying.

Everyone was in shock. The French envoys quietly returned home. By the King's order, the banqueting house and theatre were briefly opened to the public, who came in great numbers, then stripped of their decorations, which were carefully stored away.
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From time to time over the years, Henry would use them again, furnished appropriately for each festive occasion.

34

“
Noli Me Tangere,
for Caesar's I Am”

For five years, the King's ever-tender conscience had been troubling him over the validity of his marriage. He believed that he, good son of the Church that he was, had sinned by taking in wedlock his brother's wife, and that their lack of a male heir was proof of God's displeasure. According to Henry, the leader of the French embassy, Gabriel de Grammont, Bishop of Tarbes, had voiced doubts about Mary's legitimacy, and although the King had been able to reassure him that Pope Julius had issued a dispensation for his marriage to Katherine, he was not sure that it was valid in canon law.

Henry unburdened himself to Wolsey. The Cardinal, foreseeing a solution to the succession dilemma in a French marriage for his master, convened with Archbishop Warham an ecclesiastical court to examine the King's doubts; it met in secret at Westminster on 17 May. Meanwhile, Mary was sent with her household to Hunsdon, and Henry toyed with the idea of making his son Richmond King of Ireland, so as to make him a more desirable match for Maria of Portugal, Charles V's niece. Suspecting that this might also be a preliminary to him naming the boy his heir, the Queen made very plain her disapproval.
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But this was nothing compared with what was to come. On 22 June, the King came to Katherine's chamber and told her bluntly that they must separate, and why, and that he had sent to Rome to ask the Pope for an annulment. This news plunged her into great grief, and drove her to seek the advice of Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, and the aid of her nephew, Charles V.

Thus began the cause célèbre that became known as “the King's Great Matter,” the erroneously titled “Divorce” that was to be one of the most infamous nullity suits in history and the catalyst for revolutionary changes both at court and in the kingdom at large. For the next decade, the Great Matter would dominate England's domestic and foreign policy and overshadow the life of the court.

There was no open rift between the King and Queen. While awaiting the Pope's decision, they appeared together in public, continued to dine and spend time together in private, and showed each other every courtesy. But Katherine knew herself to be watched; several of her women were Wolsey's spies, bribed by gifts, financial inducements, and even sex,
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and every letter she sent or received was scrutinised before it reached its destination. Each attempt she made to see Mendoza in private was blocked. It was not surprising, therefore, that she incorrectly blamed Wolsey for what was happening—her view was to be shared by many other people, notably Charles V. It was inconceivable to her that Henry himself could have instigated these proceedings.

Henry and Wolsey soon realised that the Pope, who was the Emperor's prisoner, would be unlikely to offend Charles by annulling the marriage of his aunt. In July 1527, therefore, Wolsey went to France to seek Francis I's support for the restoration of Pope Clement and the annulment and discuss the possibility of a French marriage for the King. As yet, the Cardinal had no idea that Anne Boleyn was anything more to Henry than his previous mistresses had been. He did fear that his enemies would be undermining his influence during his absence. In a letter to Sir William Fitzwilliam he inquired what the King was doing and who was with him. Fitzwilliam replied that the King was on progress. “He daily passeth the time in hunting. He suppeth in his privy chamber [and] there suppeth with him the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Marquess of Exeter and the Lord of Rochford.”
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Wolsey cannot have been reassured.

Katherine accompanied Henry on his progress, but he did not visit her in the evenings. They put on a united front when they visited Mary at Hunsdon, and when it was time to move on to Beaulieu, although Henry was “ready to depart by a good space, he tarried for the Queen, and so they rode forth together.”
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At Beaulieu, however, Henry was reunited with Anne Boleyn, who stayed a month, hunting with him and taking supper in his privy chamber.

Anne was still playing hard to get. When the King became too passionate, she would tactically withdraw home to Hever—presumably Katherine, who now knew what was going on, was only too happy to let her—and then Henry would have to beg her to come back. It is likely that Anne had realised that, if she played her cards right, she could win not just her King but also the consort's crown. Although monarchs did not normally marry commoners, there was a precedent: in 1464, Edward IV had married Elizabeth Wydeville, a knight's widow, for love.

Others were wise to the game Anne was playing. In August 1527, Mendoza reported: “The King is so swayed by his passions. It is generally believed that, if he can obtain a divorce, he will end by marrying a daughter of Master Boleyn.”
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Seventeen of Henry's letters to Anne, dating from 1527–1529, survive in the Vatican archives; her replies are unfortunately lost. The King's letters betray his deep passion and longing to possess his elusive lady, and convey a barely restrained eroticism: “Henceforth my heart shall be dedicate to you alone, greatly desirous that so my body could be as well,” one read, and it ended, “Written by the hand of the servant who in heart, body and will is, Your loyal and most ensured servant, H. autre ♥ ne cherche R.” “Give yourself up, body and soul, to me,” he pleaded, adding that he wished himself “at this time private with you.” “I wish you in my arms,” he declared in another letter, and then, very daring, told her he was sending her “some flesh, representing my name, which is hart's flesh for Henry, prognosticating that hereafter you must enjoy some of mine, which I would were now. . . . I would we were together an evening.” One letter was written with “the hand of him that longeth to be yours,” while another ended with him “wishing myself, specially an evening, in my sweetheart's arms, whose pretty dukkys [breasts] I trust shortly to kiss.” Growing ever more ardent, he avowed in a later letter: “I trust within a while after to enjoy that which I have so longed for, to both our comforts. . . . I would you were in my arms, or I in yours, for I think it long since I kissed you.” In one letter he refers to his having had rooms prepared for Anne at court, “which I trust ere long to cause you occupy; and then I trust to occupy yours.” It must have required all Anne's strength and presence of mind to resist such passionate addresses.

Yet resist them she did. That the affair was not consummated is attested to by the fact that in 1530, the Spanish ambassador reported that there was “no positive proof of adultery; . . . on the contrary, several letters proving the opposite.”
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In 1531, Henry himself swore to Katherine that he had not committed adultery with Anne.
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A rumour reached Rome in 1531 that Anne had miscarried of a child, but there is no other evidence for this.
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Late in 1526, Henry had realised that he was not Anne's only suitor. The poet Thomas Wyatt was enamoured of her and one day stole her locket. Despite her protests, he would not return it, but wore it as a trophy. A day or so later, the King took one of her rings as a keepsake. Soon afterwards, Henry was playing bowls with Suffolk, Bryan, and Wyatt when a dispute arose between Henry and Wyyatt as to who had won. Pointing with the hand on which Anne's ring was prominently displayed, Henry cried, “I tell thee, it is mine.” Craftily, Wyatt asked permission to measure the distance and, taking off Anne's locket, used the chain to do so, saying, “I hope it will be mine.” The King was furious, and stalked off, muttering, “It may be so, but then I am deceived.” When he questioned Anne on the subject, she denied that Wyatt meant anything to her.
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Anne Boleyn's relationship with Thomas Wyatt has long been the subject of controversy. George Wyatt claimed that the poet had expressed his feelings for Anne “somewhere in his verses,” and historians have searched ever since for that allusion, drawing all kinds of conclusions. But in fact only four poems could be said to be evidence for the affair, if affair it was, since all the interest seems to have been on Wyatt's side; Anne appears to have spurned his advances. The first is a riddle entitled

“Of His Love, Called Anna”:

What word is it that changeth not,
Tho' it be turned and made in twain?
It is mine Anna, God it wot,
And eke the causer of my pain,
Who love rewarded with disdain.

 

The second poem is the famous
“Noli me tangere”
(Do not touch me), which is based on a work by Petrarch:

Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt;
As well as I may spend his time in vain!
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written her fair neck round about,
“
Noli me tangere,
for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.”

 

The third poem was written after Wyatt had found a new mistress, who may have Elizabeth Darrell, with whom he was involved as late as 1537:

Then do I love again;
If thou ask whom, sure since I did refrain
Her, that did set our country in a roar.

 

After Anne Boleyn's execution, when it was dangerous to refer to any previous entanglement with her, Wyatt amended this last line to “Brunette, that set my wealth in such a roar.” The fourth poem was written when Wyatt accompanied Henry and Anne on a state visit to Calais in 1532:

Sometime I fled the fire that me brent [burned]
By sea, by land, by water and by wind,
And now I follow the coals that be quenched
From Dover to Calais, against my mind.
Lo, how desire is both sprung and spent!

 

The tale of Henry's altercation with Wyatt comes from the poet's grandson, George Wyatt, and was probably handed down in the family; there is no reason to disbelieve its substance, although the details may have been embroidered. This and the above poems are sufficient testimony to Wyatt's pursuit of Anne.

Some have claimed that other evidence for it lies in the so-called Devonshire Manuscript, a book of nearly two hundred poems composed by, and circulated within, the Boleyn circle at court.
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In one margin are written the words, “I am yours, An.” The handwriting is not, however, that of Anne herself, and the manuscript must date from the 1530s since the original owner, whose initials are on the binding, was probably Norfolk's daughter, Lady Mary Howard, who was only seven in 1526. Other contributors appear to have been Anne's cousin Madge Shelton and the Lady Margaret Douglas, both of whom came to court in the 1530s, but not Anne herself. One hundred twenty-five of the poems have been attributed, some erroneously, to Wyatt, who was writing throughout that decade.

In May 1530, the imperial ambassador, Eustache Chapuys, informed the Emperor that the Duke of Suffolk had been banished from court for warning an unreceptive King that Anne was unfit to be queen because she had had “criminal” relations with an unnamed courtier, “whom she loves very much and whom the King had formerly chased from court for jealousy.” When Anne heard what Suffolk had said, she was fearful of the scandal being revived, and begged the King to send the unnamed gentleman away from court once more. Henry complied, but immediately regretted this decision and persuaded Anne to agree to the man's return.
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At that time, Suffolk, who was falling out of favour, had good reasons of his own for discrediting Anne, and Chapuys himself was not above reporting mere rumours as fact, so perhaps this tale should not be taken too seriously. Furthermore, the reports may not even refer to Wyatt, although other writers believed they did.

Three later Catholic sources—the Spanish Chronicle (written before 1552),
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Nicholas Harpsfield (c. 1557), and Nicholas Sander (1585)—all eager to defame Anne Boleyn's memory, would repeat the tale that Anne and Wyatt had been lovers. The author of the Spanish Chronicle gives lurid details of the affair, which is said to have begun one night at Hever. According to this source, when later Wyatt confessed all to the King, Henry refused to believe him. Harpsfield also says it was Wyatt who warned Henry that Anne was “not meet to be coupled with Your Grace,” admitting that he knew this “as one that have had my carnal pleasure.” According to this account, Henry praised him for his honesty and told him not to repeat what he had said. Harpsfield claimed he had got his facts from a merchant, Antonio Bonvisi, who had been close to Wolsey, More, and Thomas Cromwell, and had been acquainted with Wyatt. Sander states that Wyatt told the Council about his affair with Anne before he went to the King, and claims that Henry accused the poet of calumny. When Wyatt sent Suffolk to the King with a message to say he could prove what he said, Henry declined to probe further, saying that Wyatt was a bold villain who could not be trusted. It is of course possible that Anne had had an affair with Wyatt before she became involved with the King, and that in 1526 he had tried to revive it despite her indifference and her desire to dissociate herself from a questionable past.

It would appear that Wyatt's position at court became untenable as the King's passion for Anne intensified. In January 1527, learning that Sir John Russell was about to depart on an embassy to Rome, Wyatt sought him out. “If you please, I will ask leave, get money and go with you,” he said. Russell agreed.
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After their return in May 1527, Wyatt maintained a low profile and stayed away from Anne.

During Wolsey's absence in France, Anne Boleyn's influence was steadily increasing. The Cardinal did not know it yet, but his monopoly on power was gradually being weakened. Once Anne's affair with the King became public knowledge, courtiers came to view her as an important alternative source of patronage,
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and she began immediately to use her new power to advance her family and friends. As her confidence increased, she grew “very haughty and stout [proud], having all manner of jewels or rich apparel that might be gotten with money.”
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With the Queen, however, her behaviour was circumspect, and her mistress treated her with distant courtesy. Yet Katherine was not able to resist the occasional jibe. Once, when the King was playing cards with them both, and Anne turned up several kings in a row, Katherine turned to her and said, “My lady Anne, you have good hap to stop at a king, but you are not like others, you will have all or none!”
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