She Wolves (29 page)
Both Henry and Anne eagerly anticipated the birth of their child and Anne entered her confinement at Greenwich in early autumn. On 7 September 1533, she gave birth to a daughter, who was named Elizabeth, in honour of Henry’s mother.
33
The sex of their child must have been a huge blow to both parents and it is clear that both were confidently expecting a son. The child was perfect, however, resembling her father, and the couple appear to have tried to make the best of the situation.
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After her initial disappointment evaporated, Anne probably believed that she would quickly bear another child. She was an attentive mother to Elizabeth. The child was fostered out at Hertford when she was just three months old, but she was brought to visit court often and Anne visited her regularly.
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Anne took a great interest in her upbringing and welfare, regularly ordering clothes and presents for her daughter. She was also ambitious for Elizabeth and wished her to have the opportunity to learn Latin, a language of which Anne herself was ignorant.
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She also wished Elizabeth to be taught Hebrew, Greek, Italian, Spanish and French. Despite her fondness for Elizabeth, Anne cannot have believed that she would remain Henry’s heir for long. She became pregnant within four months of Elizabeth’s birth and must have hoped that this would produce the son Henry required.
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It would have been a blow to both her and Henry when she miscarried in July 1534. There is no evidence that she conceived again before late 1535.
Henry had been attracted by Anne’s confidence and her willingness to stand up to him and argue with him.
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Whilst these were qualities that he admired in a mistress, he expected submission from his wife. In summer 1534, Anne discovered that Henry was having an affair with one of her ladies.
39
She remonstrated with him as she had many times before during their relationship but Anne must have been horrified by Henry’s reaction this time. Henry told her bluntly that it was not her place to criticise him and that she should remember where she came from. He also told her that he would not raise her again if he had the chance to. This exchange must have shocked Anne, concerned that she was losing her hold over Henry. However they appear to have been reconciled and in December 1534 it was Henry himself who informed her gently of the death of her pet dog.
40
In the summer and autumn of 1535, Anne and Henry went on progress together. This was a success and Anne became pregnant in October 1535, soon after their return.
41
Nonetheless by late 1535 Anne must have been aware that she had lost much of her influence over Henry and that she needed a son to safeguard her position as queen.
Anne must have been jubilant and hopeful of a happy future in January 1536 when she heard of Catherine of Aragon’s death that month. The event meant that Anne was the sole Queen of England and she must have felt as though a burden had been lifted from her. She is recorded as having celebrated the death with Henry by wearing yellow.
42
She must have eagerly anticipated the birth of the child that she believed would ensure her own safety. On 24 January, however, Henry suffered a bad fall from his horse and was unconscious for several hours.
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Anne was informed of the accident and was terrified. On 29 January 1536, the day of Catherine of Aragon’s funeral, Anne miscarried a male child.
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Anne blamed her terror at Henry’s fall but the miscarriage caused a rift between Henry and Anne and at that point Henry may have begun to believe that Anne, like Catherine of Aragon before her, would not be able to bear him a living male child.
Despite her miscarriage, Anne’s position was still fairly strong in early 1536 and Henry does not seem to have been contemplating removing her. However in the spring of 1536 Anne’s fiery temper once again got the better of her and she fell out with Thomas Cromwell, the king’s first minister and her greatest supporter.
45
This quarrel ultimately proved fatal to Anne. Cromwell, probably fearing that she would attempt to bring him down, transferred his allegiance to her rival for Henry’s affections, her own lady-in-waiting, Jane Seymour. Anne probably did not realise just how dangerous her rift with Cromwell was and her fall was unexpected.
On 1 May 1536, Henry and Anne sat together to watch jousting at Greenwich.
46
Anne must have been perturbed when Henry rose suddenly during the jousting and left without saying a word. The next day Anne’s brother Viscount Rochford and a courtier, Henry Norris, both of whom had taken part in the tournament, were arrested and taken to the Tower.
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It is unclear whether Anne heard of this before her own arrest that evening. She must have been surprised and frightened by her arrest and before entering the Tower she fell to her knees and begged God to help her, saying she was guilty of no crime.
48
She was taken inside the Tower and lodged in the same apartments in which she had stayed the night before her coronation, an irony that did not fail to escape Anne. She must have been horrified when she heard that she was accused of incest with her brother and adultery with the noblemen Henry Norris, Francis Weston and William Brerton and her musician, Mark Smeaton.
49
A woman as intelligent as Anne Boleyn would never have acted in such a foolhardy way and it is clear that these charges were a pretext to allow the king to be rid of his wife. Anne was tried within the Tower on 15 May and the result was a foregone conclusion. Anne’s uncle, Norfolk, presided over a court that sentenced her to be either burnt or beheaded, according to the king’s pleasure.
Anne and her brother defended themselves eloquently at their trials but for Anne her trial may have been the moment when she realised that Henry meant to kill her. She may previously have hoped that Henry would merely divorce her, but his problems with Catherine of Aragon meant that Henry did not want another ex-wife. Anne spent her final few days preparing herself for death. On 17 May 1536, Anne’s supposed lovers were taken out to Tower Hill and executed.
50
Anne must have known of these deaths and would have then considered her death a virtual certainty. She was probably also informed that on that same afternoon, Archbishop Cranmer held a church court at Lambeth and annulled her marriage due to her precontract with Henry Percy.
51
Anne is known to have had a wry sense of humour and it may have touched her that she was being executed for adultery against a man to whom she had now officially never actually been married.
Anne Boleyn was led out onto Tower Green early the next day. As a concession to her, Henry had sent to France for a swordsman to cut off her head and it is possible that Anne herself requested this.
52
She was probably consoled somewhat by the knowledge that she was to be dispatched by an expert and that it would be quicker than death by axe. Anne was dressed entirely in black and carried a book of psalms on her way to the scaffold.
53
It was customary for a condemned person to make a final speech on the scaffold. Anne’s speech appears remarkably conciliatory towards a husband who had condemned her to death and she may have feared for Elizabeth’s safety. Her speech went as follows:
Good Christian people, I am come hether to dye, for according to the lawe and by the lawe I am iudged to dye, and therefore I wyll speake nothing against it. I am come hether to accuse no man, nor to speake any thyng of that wherof I am accused and condemned to dye, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more mercyfull prince was there neuer: and to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign lorde. And if any persone will medle of my cause, I require them to iudge the best. And thus I take my leave of the worlde and of you all, and I heartely desire you all to pray for me.
54
With these words, Anne, former Queen of England, knelt down and prayed, before being decapitated with one stroke of the sword.
The life and death of Anne Boleyn shocked Europe. She had been a controversial figure even in her own lifetime. She was an intelligent, ambitious woman and her life was one of great extremes. Anne was innocent of the charges of adultery and incest laid against her; most people in England would have seen them as a pretext to allow Henry to remarry. However as an Englishwoman Anne was as vulnerable as her predecessor, Elizabeth Woodville, had been when the protection of the king was withdrawn. Henry was free to execute her to rid himself of her, something that had not been possible in the case of his foreign-born wives. Anne Boleyn was a proud and aspiring woman and these facets of her character, so important in securing the throne for her, ultimately also led her to her death, as she quickly proved not to be the kind of wife that Henry wanted. This was not Anne’s fault and she never appears to have understood that what Henry admired in a mistress was not what he required in a wife. Although she could not have known it at the time, Anne Boleyn was the second wife of England’s most married monarch and her story was unnervingly echoed in that of her first cousin, Catherine Howard, who was destined to become Henry’s fifth queen.
Treachery & Misjudgement
Catherine Howard
Catherine Howard was the second of Henry VIII’s wives to be beheaded for adultery but unlike her cousin Anne Boleyn, Catherine was guilty. Catherine may have been as young as fifteen when she caught the eye of the king and she was completely ill-equipped to deal with the demands of queenship. At a time when queens were expected to be chaste and virginial at marriage, Catherine had already enjoyed affairs with two lovers. She then preceded to commit adultery with a third, possibly with the intention of producing a son for the ageing king. Catherine Howard loved the trappings of power that queenship brought her but she was unable to see the danger that also accompanied the position. Catherine’s sudden arrest and execution caused shock across Europe but the picture of her conduct that emerged from Henry’s investigations meant that there was little sympathy for her. There is no doubt however that Catherine Howard was completely unsuited for the position of queen. Further to this, although she was disloyal, her relatives and her husband must also bear some of the blame for her downfall, since it was they who initially placed her in such an inappropriate position.
Catherine Howard’s date of birth is not recorded but she was probably born between 1521 and 1525. Since Catherine was not listed in her step-grandfather’s will of 1524 but was in his wife’s of 1527, it is entirely possible that she was born around 1525.
1
She would therefore have been only around fifteen at the time of her marriage, an unusually early age even for the Tudor period. Catherine’s mother Joyce Culpeper was a widow when she married Lord Edmund Howard and it is likely her wealth attracted him to her. Certainly Joyce Culpeper’s stepfather and mother were suspicious of Edmund and entailed Joyce’s inheritance on her children.
2
Edmund was also to marry two more wealthy widows following Joyce’s death when Catherine was still very young.
Lord Edmund Howard was a younger son of the Duke of Norfolk and as such a member of the most prominent noble family in England. However he was ineffectual, never finding favour at court or lasting employment. The only evidence of his character also suggests that he was henpecked by his wives. In a letter to Lady Lisle, Edmund wrote:
Madame, so it is I have this night after midnight taken your medicine, for the which I heartily thank you, for it hath done me much good and hath caused the stone to break, so that now I void much gravel. But for all that, your said medicine hath done me little honesty, for it made me piss my bed this night, for the which my wife hath sore beaten me, and saying it is children’s parts to bepiss their bed.
3
Edmund Howard was constantly short of money and from August 1537 until just before his death in 1539, he was absent from England in his capacity as Mayor of Calais.
4
Catherine probably had little contact with either of her parents. At some point during her childhood she was sent to join the household of her father’s stepmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk at her home in Horsham.
It was not unusual for noble girls to be boarded out in the households of wealthy relatives and Catherine’s parents probably hoped that she would receive a good education at her grandmother’s house. Catherine would have been educated with the other noble girls in the duchess’s household and she was taught to read and write although it is unlikely that her education extended much beyond this. The duchess, however, also wanted Catherine to be musical and appointed a neighbour, Henry Manox, to teach her the virginials.
5
Socially Henry Manox was far beneath Catherine. However he and Catherine quickly began a relationship. Manox himself spoke about how ‘he fell in love with her and she with him, but the duchess found them alone together one day and gave Mrs Katharine two or three blows, and charged them never to be alone together’.
6
Catherine must have been very young when she and Manox first began their affair and it is likely that he initiated it, perhaps hoping to marry a Howard bride. Catherine was probably flattered by the attentions of an older man and may have been encouraged by the other girls in the household to reciprocate. There was little privacy in the duchess’s household and Catherine would have known about the love affairs of the other members of the household.
Manox always denied that he and Catherine consummated their relationship and Catherine’s extreme youth and inexperience probably played a part in this. They do appear to have lain naked together, however, and it was later claimed that Manox knew of secret marks on Catherine’s body.
7
Manox was dismissed when the duchess discovered him and Catherine meeting secretly in the duchess’s chapel chamber.
8
For Catherine, this probably marked the end of the affair; she may never have taken the relationship very seriously, instead seeing Manox as an amusement. Manox was not deterred, however, and followed the household when it moved to the duchess’s house at Lambeth. Catherine was probably irritated by the appearance of her former lover because by this time she had found a new lover.