In Bed with the Tudors: The Sex Lives of a Dynasty from Elizabeth of York to Elizabeth I (26 page)

The first stage of the journey was between the Cleves base of Dusselfdorf and Antwerp; on arrival there, Anne was met by English merchants four miles out of the city, dressed in velvet coats and gold chains, waiting to conduct her to English lodgings in the town. From Antwerp, merchants accompanied her towards Gravelines, where she was received by the town captain amid a volley of gunshot and, by 11 December, she arrived at Calais. This was where the waiting began. Unsurprisingly for the time of year, the weather was terrible. Grounded for fifteen days, Anne was entertained by Governor Lord Lisle and his dignitaries in their all finery: cloth-of-gold and purple velvet, gold chains, satin damask and yeomen in the king’s colours of blue and red. At the town’s Lantern Gate she viewed the waiting English fleet of fifty ships, including Henry’s famous flagships the ‘Lion’ and the ‘Sweepstake’, decked with 100 banners of silk and gold. Trumpets sounded and a ‘double drum’ never seen before in England was beaten, followed by so much more gunshot that her train could not see each other for smoke. The mayor gave her a gift of 100 gold sovereigns and escorted her to the feasts and jousts that helped filled the days. Watching the turbulent seas each day, Anne must have mused about her future husband and the possibility that she might soon become a mother. After all, that was what queens did, even if she wasn’t quite sure how. Her mother had neglected that part of her education, too.

Finally the tide turned. Early in the morning on 27 December, the fleet set sail from Calais and soon had the coast of Kent within sight. As they approached, Anne may have caught a first glimpse of the rolling chalk-white cliffs of her new home or the impressive grey stone castles that stood out proudly and defensively along the shore. They landed that evening between six and seven and were conducted to Deal Castle for a banquet and change of clothes, then on to Dover Castle with the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk, Henry’s former brother-in-law Charles Brandon and his fourth wife Catherine Willoughby – Henry’s sister Mary Rose, Brandon’s third wife, had died in 1535. Predominantly Plantagenet, Dover castle had Norman, Saxon and even Roman elements, staring out formidably into the channel. After Deal’s compact, squat six bastions, it must have been an impressive and well-provisioned stronghold; Henry had been here two years previously and added the bulwarks of the moat. Anne would spend a couple of days here to recover from her journey and ready herself for the first meeting with her husband. It was to come sooner than she anticipated.

Anne’s route then took her through Canterbury and Sittingbourne, ending at Rochester on New Year’s Eve amid stormy weather. Although Rochester Castle still dominates the town, chroniclers have variously stated that she stayed at the Palace or Priory. This might have been Bromley Palace, residence of the Bishops of Rochester containing a holy well in its grounds or Rochester Palace in the present nearby village of Halling; most likely though, was the fifteenth-century palace within the cathedral precincts, home to Bishop Fisher. Anne still had a fair way to travel before the planned reception at Greenwich but Henry had other ideas. Unable to contain his excitement, he imagined a meeting along the lines of courtly love and the conventions of court entertainment, whereby his bride could not fail to recognise him in spite of his unscheduled, masked appearance. It was his test of true love; the vital test that Anne must pass. Always a romantic, in spite of his experiences, Henry set off to ride to Rochester, intent on playing out a role in a chivalric tale that had already proscribed Anne’s response. In common with the heroines of troubadour legend, she would instantly recognise her betrothed and the spark of love would ignite. After all, his majesty and prowess could leave no one in doubt as to his identity. Decades of masked balls, including the Château Vert, had been played along these lines, with canny Tudor courtiers colluding in the king’s deception and feigning surprise when his disguise was revealed. The unsuspecting Anne, unfamiliar with such games, was resting from her journey. So far as she knew, the king she had never seen was days away. It was a scheme that was doomed to fail. Henry himself had created an unrealistic scenario which would determine the course of his most unsatisfactory marriage.

As Henry and his courtiers sneaked into the castle, Anne was watching a bullfight. Assailed by unknown masked men, she wisely and virtuously repelled one who tried to kiss her, cursing in German, the only language she knew. Factors influencing sexual attraction can be random and unpredictable; circumstances and accidents can cause initial interest to flourish or be stunted due to conditions beyond the control of those involved. Anne’s failings as a wife have traditionally been held to lie in her appearance and manners, yet something almost inexplicably subtle had prejudiced her chances right from the start. She had lost a game she was unaware she was playing. For Henry’s exacting requirements, ever difficult to satisfy as he aged, her non-conformity was fatal. He could not see her in any other role than that he had pre-cast for her. Optimistic chroniclers such as Holinshed, who reported how lovingly they addressed each other, were not present to witness this in person. With his personal rules of attraction so dependent upon a code of conduct that excluded his future wife even before their meeting, Henry’s disappointment, whilst a blow to his ego, was of his own making. Yet Henry was by no means the first ruler to pre-empt an official meeting with his future spouse: Henry VII had insisted that he and Arthur met Catherine of Aragon
en route
to London, even when they had been refused entry and she had tried to escape by retiring to bed; likewise James IV of Scotland had hurried to meet Margaret Tudor unexpectedly before their wedding. There were precedents for Henry’s actions yet none of these had involved the bridegroom arriving in disguise.

The surprise had failed. Henry unmasked and Anne was made aware of her mistake, yet the damage was already done. After dining together, he departed to brood on her supposed unresponsiveness while she travelled on, unaware, through Dartford and Blackheath, arriving at Shooter’s Hill on 3 January. Here, the couple met a second time, more formally, with Anne dressed in impressive cloth of tissue of gold and a German headdress set full of Orient pearls, a coronet of black velvet and a necklace of sparkling stones. Perfumed fires were lit and all the trees and bushes were cut down; city dignitaries in furs and chains of gold lined her route towards the tents where she and Henry would dine. According to Hall’s chronicle, repeated by Holinshed, she had a most ‘amiable aspect and womanly behaviour’ whilst Henry embraced her ‘with most lovely countenance and princely behaviour’. This was intended to have been their first encounter. Dressed up to look her best, with the correct formalities and procedures in place, willing and responsive, Anne may have made a more favourable impression had Henry stuck to the original plan. Yet Henry’s mind was already made up: the more he saw her, the less he liked her. Using her appearance, manners and foreign costume as his first excuse, he started looking for ways out of the marriage even before it had been conducted. In this, he was different from many of his predecessors and European contemporaries. Traditionally, kings and queens had put aside personal feelings in order to honour matches that were diplomatic and usually international. The match of Henry’s parents had been conducted primarily for political advantage, as had that of his elder brother Arthur and sister Margaret: Henry himself had arranged his younger sister’s marriage to the ageing Louis XII of France. Such was the lot of royalty. With luck, the couple may be able to co-operate, with mutual respect and friendship developing; if love were to blossom, it was an unexpected but welcome bonus. Most foreign princes could not hope to escape this ritual, either to strengthen their own claim or reinforce important foreign ties. Francis I had married the daughter of his predecessor and cousin, Louis XII, on his accession while in 1533, Catherine de Medici had married Henri, Francis’ second son, in a notoriously loveless union. In rejecting Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII could cause an international scandal and alienate the powerful German states; in allowing his initial personal dislike to overcome all other concerns, he was adhering to romantic aspirations that were at odds with the nature of the match.

Taken by surprise, Cromwell could not find his master a way out. The pre-contract between Anne and Anthony, Duke of Lorraine, was raised, although it had been arranged when she was below the age of consent and dissolved in 1535; the surprised Cleves ambassadors could not produce paperwork to prove this, although promised to deliver it imminently and Anne herself swore that the betrothal was now invalid. The net was closing in. Despite expressing his distaste, Henry was forced to go through with the ceremony on 6 January 1540. Thomas Cranmer officiated at the service in the queen’s closet at Placentia Palace, in what was to be Henry’s most public marriage. They exchanged vows and Henry placed on Anne’s finger a wedding ring engraved with the legend: ‘God send me well to keep’. The couple then processed into Greenwich Park where the dignitaries of the city were gathered to receive them. Seeing her for the first time, French ambassador Marillac described her as ‘tall, thin and of medium beauty and of very assured and resolute countenance’. Overestimating her age at around thirty, when she was in fact twenty-four, he wrote, ‘according to some who saw her close, is not so young as was expected nor so beautiful as everyone affirmed’ and that ‘the turn and vivacity of wit supplies the place of beauty.’
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Following the ceremonies, the couple spent their wedding night at Greenwich. In the 1530s, Henry had made considerable improvements to the old medieval palace, building tilt-yard towers and stables for jousting as well as a great wardrobe to contain the king’s ‘standing beddys’, with long presses for Arras, carpets, cushions and hangings: one such press measured 55 feet and seven ladders were required to manage the hanging of the huge tapestries.
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Greenwich also boasted a specially upholstered close stool for the king’s use and magnificently curtained beds, in one of which Henry would have visited Anne that night. The encounter itself cannot have been anything less than a disaster: Henry’s dislike was concealed from the court but made plain to his close servants. Famously stating that he liked her even less after their attempted union, he questioned her virginity because of the ‘flabby belly and breasts’ he took as signs of sexual experience. There can be no question though, of the sheltered princess’s innocence, even ignorance. Strictly supervised at the Cleves court, she later proved herself unaware of the processes of reproduction. Three of her ladies – Rutland, Rochford, and Edgecombe – deposed that upon questioning the queen, they had uncovered her naivety in believing that mere kisses were sufficient, whilst Lady Browne judged Anne to have ‘such fashion and manner of bringing up so gross that in her judgment the king should never heartily love her’.
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In some cases where marriages had not been consummated, a bedroom trial might be instigated. This went back at least as far as the twelfth century, when Thomas of Chobham advised a physical examination of a man’s genitals by a panel of matrons who would then observe the couple in bed over a number of nights to see if the ‘member is always found useless and as if dead’. This could hardly constitute encouragement to perform! In Canterbury in 1292, twelve matrons found the member of Walter de Fonte to be ‘useless’ and berated him for not being ‘better able to serve and please’ his wife. In fifteenth-century York, a husband was submitted to such an ordeal before witnesses: his wife ‘exposed her naked breasts and with her hands warmed at the fire, she held and rubbed the penis and testicles of the said John … and stirred him up … to show his virility and potency (yet) the whole time aforesaid, the said penis was scarcely three inches long … without any increase or decrease’.
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There was little danger of Henry being forced to submit to such a trial.

Henry’s repudiation of the unfortunate Anne was finalised that summer. The queen appears to have received little advice from those close to her as to how to try and please her husband or what to expect from him. Whilst she gradually learned the English language and ways and set aside her foreign clothes, she did not become any more attractive to Henry who could not overlook his initial dislike of her body or what he described as its strange odours. Women at the time, wishing to remain sweet-smelling in their heavy clothes, may have carried scented herbs and spices in bundles or pomanders about their person; nutmeg, lavender and mint were common. Trotula of Salerno recommended women to rub their breasts, nipples and genitals with a mixture of dried roses, cloves, nutmeg, laurel and galingale before sex. All forms of mint were strewn among clothing and bed sheets, for its scent as well as the ability to repel fleas, with pennyroyal a particular favourite. Crushed camomile was also used to scent laundry and flowers such as lavender and rose, and formed perfumes and waters to freshen the body. Sage, balm, liquorice and angelica were chewed to freshen the breath and whiten teeth. The mouth could also be cleaned with salt, rosemary or powdered cuttlefish administered on sticks or linen cloths, although the arrival and popularity of sugar did little to improve dental hygiene. A late fourteenth-century lyric predates Shakespeare in comparing a mistress’s charms to herbs and flowers:

Your breath is sweeter than balm, sugar or licquorice
And yourself as sweet as is the gillyflower
Or any lavender seeds strewn in a coffer to smell.
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Many contemporary receipt books included recipes for personal hygiene and appearance alongside those for illnesses and dishes for the table:

To make a Sweete Smellinge Breath:
Lett a man use to drinke verven (vervain) tempered with wine, itt drives away the Stinke of the Mouth and maketh thee a Sweete breathe.

For the Same:
Take Garden mynte, seeth them in Vineger, wash thy mouth therewith, then rubb thy gummes with powder of Minte.