Henry VIII (52 page)

Anne Boleyn met her death with such dignity and courage that even Cromwell was impressed:
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she was executed with a sword on Tower Green at 9 A.M. on Friday, 19 May, and was buried in the afternoon in the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula within the Tower. Richmond and his friend Surrey were among the crowd that witnessed the execution. The King's household expenses for that day were lower than for any other day that year, which suggests that he spent it in seclusion. On the following Sunday, which was Ascension Day, he made the gesture of wearing white mourning.
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There had been no precedent for the trial and execution of an English queen, and Anne Boleyn's fall with its attendant purge of the Privy Chamber had been nothing less than sensational. At a stroke, Cromwell had eliminated a whole faction. Many were touched by the tragedy. Anne's daughter Elizabeth, not yet three, was at Hunsdon when her mother perished, and remained there in the care of Lady Bryan, but that redoubtable lady was soon having to beg Cromwell to replace the clothes her charge had outgrown. The child herself, sharp for her age, was soon openly wondering why people had ceased to address her as “My Lady Princess” and were now calling her “My Lady Elizabeth.” No one knows when and how she discovered what had happened to her mother.

Anne's father, the Earl of Wiltshire, was immediately deprived of his lucrative office of Lord Privy Seal and all his lands in Ireland,
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but he retained his place at court, and when his wife died in April 1538 there was talk that he might marry Lady Margaret Douglas. When he passed away in March 1539, the King ordered masses to be said for his soul.
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He was buried in Hever Church, where a fine brass marks his resting place.

Lady Rochford retired from court after her husband's fall; her husband's possessions had been confiscated by the Crown, and she was reduced to begging Cromwell for financial help, signing herself “a power[ful] desolate widow.” Her jointure was not restored to her until after Wiltshire's death.
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Shortly after Anne's execution, Cromwell secured the release of Wyatt and Page. The King would have received Page back into favour, but Page had decided it was safer to stay away from court.
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Wyatt, also bitterly disillusioned with a courtier's existence, returned to his father's castle at Allington, Kent, for a time.

Despite his affinity with the Boleyns, Archbishop Cranmer survived the purge and continued to promote the cause of reform. Norfolk, who had presided at Anne's trial and passed sentence, retained his post of Lord Treasurer, but deemed it politic to retire to Kenninghall for the present. His absence from court enabled the Seymours to establish political ascendancy there, and so initiated the bitter rivalry between them and the Howards that was to endure for the rest of the reign.

Cromwell was careful to ensure that Norris's office of Groom of the Stool was filled by his own man, Thomas Heneage, while Bryan became chief Gentleman of the Privy Chamber.

Anne Boleyn had been one of the most powerful women ever to wear the consort's crown, yet her rapid and cataclysmic fall illustrates just how fragile was the balance of power at the English court.

48

“Bound to Obey and Serve”

On 20 May, the day after Anne Boleyn's execution, Jane Seymour was brought by barge to Hampton Court, where she and the King were formally betrothed. Soon afterwards, Henry took her to York Place, which in 1536 was officially renamed the King's Palace of Westminster and designated by statute as the principal residence of the sovereign and the seat of government, in place of the former Westminster Palace;
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from the late 1530s it was popularly and commonly known, however, as Whitehall Palace, a name that may have derived from the pale ashlar stone used to build Wolsey's great hall. The remaining buildings of the mediaeval palace were incorporated into the complex, and sometimes used on state occasions. Henry VIII had spent more than £8,000 (£240,000) on Whitehall, and it was now the largest palace in Europe, and a fitting setting for the New Monarchy.

Henry and Jane were quietly married by Bishop Gardiner in the Queen's closet at Whitehall on 30 May 1536. Later that day, Jane was “set in the Queen's seat under the canopy of estate royal.”
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At forty-five, the average age of male life expectancy in Tudor times, the King still boasted an impressive physique: in 1536, his armourers found his waist to measure thirty-seven inches and his chest forty-five inches. He remained active, continuing to enjoy hunting, riding, and dancing. But foreign observers no longer praised his good looks. He was growing bald on top, and his face had aged into the familiar mould depicted in his later portraits, with narrow eyes, heavy jowls, and a small, tightly pursed mouth. The frustrations and stresses of the last decade had left their mark, not only upon his appearance but also upon his character. Where he had once been openhanded, liberal, and idealistic, he was now contrary, secretive, dogmatic, and unpredictably changeable. “Such are the King's fickleness and natural inclination to new or strange things that I could not find words to describe it,” declared Chapuys. “His natural inclination is to oppose all things debatable, taking great pride in persuading himself that he makes the world believe one thing instead of another.”
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His egotism was supreme: “He never forgets his own greatness, and is silent as to that of others,” observed a French envoy.
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His temper was feared by all.

It has been suggested that this was all a front put on by an ageing man to mask his disappointment and shame at not having an heir, and perhaps also his increasing impotence. But the evidence for this is slender. In the August following his marriage to Jane Seymour, the King, perhaps disappointed that his bride was not yet pregnant, confided to Chapuys that he felt himself growing old, and doubted whether he would have any children by the Queen.
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This cannot be taken as conclusive proof of sexual difficulties, since Henry had said as much when addressing Parliament in 1532,
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and Anne Boleyn conceived four times during their subsequent marriage. Four months after Henry's conversation with Chapuys, Jane herself conceived. Apart from the suspect evidence produced at Rochford's trial, that Anne Boleyn had told him Henry was unable to copulate with her and had neither skill nor staying power in bed,
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there is nothing else to suggest that the King was actually impotent. Indeed, Cromwell may well have manufactured this evidence in order to portray Anne as a wife who had no respect for her husband and sovereign, and who pretended that he was impotent in order to gratify her own lusts.

In fact, there is evidence that in his later years Henry was still indulging his sexual impulses. Many of his contemporaries referred to his predilection for female company—Norfolk, who knew Henry well, asserted that he was “continually inclined to amours”
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—and in Europe his reputation as a libertine was notorious: Charles V told Chapuys that it was well known that Henry was “of amorous complexion.”
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In 1533, one observer had predicted that the Princess Elizabeth would be a weakly child because of her father's “complexion and habits of life”:
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it was widely accepted that a man's promiscuity affected his offspring.

In 1535, John Hale, Vicar of Isleworth, confided to a priest, Robert Feron, that the King indulged in “foul pleasures” and was mired in vice: “If thou wilt look deeply upon his life, thou shalt find it more foul and more stinking than a sow, wallowing and defiling herself in any filthy place. For how great soever he is, he is fully given to his foul pleasure of the flesh and other voluptuousness.” Hale claimed that Henry had violated most of the women of his court, and married Anne Boleyn out of sheer “fornication, to the highest shame and undoing of himself and all this realm.” He had also learned that “our sovereign lord” kept his own brothel, which Hale described as “a short of maidens over one of his chambers at Farnham.”
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There is plenty of evidence, as we have seen, that the King had a wandering eye. Soon after his marriage to Jane Seymour, he noticed two beautiful young women at court, and “said and showed himself sorry that he had not seen them before he was married.”
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Other evidence, despite being fragmentary, bears out Hale's assertions. In the late 1530s, a man called William Webbe complained that, while he was riding in broad daylight with his mistress near Eltham Palace, they encountered the King, who took an immediate fancy to the “pretty wench,” pulled her up on his horse, and rode off to the palace, where he ravished her and kept her for some time. Webbe was furious, and swore he would have his revenge, but could do little but recount his grievance to all and sundry.
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There is a curious story, which must date from after 1536, that while Holbein was painting a portrait of an unidentified lady that had been privately commissioned by the King, a “nobleman”—perhaps a rival for her favours—burst into the room. Mindful of the discretion required of him, Holbein, without any compunction, pushed him out and threw him down the stairs. He then locked up his house, hastened to the King, fell on his knees, and begged to be pardoned for committing an assault within the verge of the court. Hot on the artist's heels came the nobleman to give his version of events. But Henry's jealousy got the better of him and he lost his temper, telling the man, “You have not to do with Holbein, but with me. I tell you, of seven peasants I can make as many lords, but not one Holbein.”
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Such was Henry's reputation for lechery that in 1537 it was being said that all it took to please him was “an apple and a fair wench to dally withal.”
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The King's discretion, along with a natural reluctance on the part of observers to commit what they knew to paper, may account for the paucity of evidence, but enough survives to suggest a healthy sexual appetite rather than impotence.

On 2 June 1536, Jane Seymour dined in public with the King for the first time, and her servants all took their oath of allegiance. Later that day, the court moved to Greenwich, where, two days later, at Whitsuntide, Jane was proclaimed Queen “and went in procession, after the King, with a great train of ladies following her, and also offered at mass as Queen, dining in her chamber of presence under the cloth of estate.”
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Jane's elevation brought her brother Edward to prominence at court. On the day she was proclaimed Queen, he was created Viscount Beauchamp of Hache, Somerset, and appointed Governor of Jersey and Chancellor of North Wales. Now the most important Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, he enjoyed great influence with his brother-in-law the King and was therefore able to ensure that his allies and clients were appointed to key posts in the royal household.

Seymour was a haughty, reserved man, somewhat under the thumb of his volatile second wife, Anne Stanhope, whom he had married in about 1534/5; his sister Jane had been godmother at the baptism of their eldest son in February 1536. Although cultivated and astute, Seymour was too much of an idealist to make a great politician, but his ambition and status overrode such a minor consideration, and his loyalty to the Crown was never in doubt. A humanist, he was sympathetic to the cause of reform, but “so moderate that all thought him their own.”
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His greatest talent was as a military commander: even Norfolk was impressed with him, and his recommendation later led to Seymour's successful command of the royal forces in the north of England.

On 7 June, the King and Queen came by barge from Greenwich to Whitehall, attended by great pageantry. As they passed the Tower, where Anne Boleyn had lain in her grave for less than three weeks, four hundred guns sounded a salute; “all the Tower walls towards the water-side were set with streamers and banners.”
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At Radcliffe Wharf the royal barge halted so that Chapuys could pay his respects; surrounded by his velvet-clad gentlemen, and wearing purple satin, he stood bowing under a tent embroidered with the imperial arms, then gave the signal for three small boats laden with musicians playing trumpets, shawms, and sackbuts to escort the King and Queen to Westminster. After they had disembarked, Henry and Jane walked in procession to Westminster Abbey and attended high mass.
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The next morning, Jane stood in the gallery above the “Holbein” gatehouse at Whitehall, and waved Henry farewell as he rode off in procession to open Parliament.

As Queen, Jane proved herself to be entirely subservient to the King's will; Chapuys discovered that she was not to be drawn into discussions about religion or politics.
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She was compassionate and pious, but made a point of distancing herself from her inferiors, and thus appeared “proud and haughty.”
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Because she was only a knight's daughter, and lacked Anne Boleyn's confidence, she seems to have felt it necessary to emphasise her new status, and was consequently strict with regard to protocol and etiquette.
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Chapuys had cause to revise his earlier opinion of her, and reported that she bore her royal honours with dignity.
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Meanwhile, an army of masons, carpenters, painters, glaziers, and embroiderers had been hastily replacing Anne Boleyn's initials, mottoes and badges with Jane's throughout the royal palaces;
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at Hampton Court, the entwined initials
H
and
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may still be seen in the Great Watching Chamber. Jane's badge was her family emblem of a phoenix rising from a flaming castle, and her herldic beast was the panther. The motto she had dutifully chosen was “Bound to obey and serve.”

Henry ordered a stained-glass window depicting St. Anne, his former wife's patron saint, to be removed from the chapel at Hampton Court.
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Miles Coverdale, who had been about to dedicate the latest edition of his translation of the Bible to Anne, hastily inserted Queen Jane's name before it went to the printer.
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Jane was given Baynard's Castle and Havering-atte-Bower as part of her jointure. The Queen's lodgings at Hampton Court, begun for Anne Boleyn, were completed for Jane. Her bed boasted a wooden roundel painted with her arms.
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The King was planning a splendid coronation for Jane, which was to take place in October. A great barge, built along the lines of the famous Bucentaur of the Doges of Venice, was to be constructed; it would bring the Queen from Greenwich to London, where she would be received with magnificent pageantry and music, and thus proceed to Westminster.

Many of Anne Boleyn's officers and servants transferred to Jane Seymour's household of two hundred persons. Some were replaced by clients of the Seymours. Before 1536 was out, Lady Rochford had returned to court as one of the new Queen's ladies-in-waiting. Mary Zouche, who had also served Anne Boleyn, was a maid of honour, and is perhaps to be identified with the “Mrs. Zouche” who was presented with jewel-encrusted borders by Queen Jane and who later attended the Queen's funeral; in 1542, the King awarded her a pension of £10 (£3,000) in consideration of her good service to Jane and himself. A Holbein sketch of a lady identified as “M. Souch” survives: it may be of Mary Zouche, or of Anne Boleyn's former maid of honour, Anne Gainsford, who became Mistress Zouche upon her marriage to George Zouche of Codnor.
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Other ladies who served Jane Seymour included Anne Parr, the wife of William Herbert, later Earl of Pembroke; her sister Katherine would become Henry VIII's sixth wife. Elizabeth Darrell, Wyatt's mistress, who had served with Jane in the household of Katherine of Aragon, and who had attended that lady to the end, was saved from destitution by her new appointment. Sketches by Holbein survive of two more of the Queen's ladies: Suffolk's daughter (by Anne Brown), Mary Brandon, Lady Monteagle, to whom Jane gave gifts of jewellery; and Grace, Lady Parker, Lady Rochford's sister-in-law.
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Jane was determined to enforce high moral standards in her household. She laid down strict rules governing not only the behaviour but also the dress of her attendants: her ladies were to be sumptuously but modestly attired and had to wear trains three yards long and girdles set with a regulation number of pearls. One girl was told that a girdle embroidered with 120 pearls was not sufficiently grand to wear before the Queen.
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Although Jane herself dressed magnificently, she left little mark upon fashion except to popularise nightgowns and caps edged with gold and silver embroidery. The King showered her with jewels—including a large
IHS
pendant studded with black diamonds, which she wears in Holbein's portrait—and there is evidence that some of them were designed for her by Holbein, among them the emerald and ruby pendant surrounded by gold acanthus leaves that appears in the portrait, for which a similar design by him survives.