Six Wives (2 page)

* * *

My problems started quickly, with the character of Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Catherine is one of Strickland's less satisfactory lives. This is largely a question of materials. Or rather a lack of them, since the archives of Spain, unlike those of Britain and France, remained firmly closed to her. And yet there were riches there. Gaining access to them in their dusty fastness at Simancas made the name of the Victorian historian, James Anthony Froude. But it was only with the publication of the
Calendar
of Letters, Despatches and State Papers . . . Preserved in the Archives at Simancas
and Elsewhere
that the treasures were made generally and comprehensively available. Historians promptly fell on them and all subsequent assessment of Catherine has been based on the evidence of the
Calendar
.

    But there is a
caveat
. For there is not one
Calendar
for the relevant period but two, parallel ones. For volumes I and II of the
Calendar
, published in 1862 and 1866 respectively, were followed by the
Supplement
to Volume I and Volume II
, which was published two years later in 1868. The circumstances which led to the division were described by the editor, G. A. Bergenroth. When he had first been allowed into the archives at Simancas in 1860, there had been a rule that the archivist could forbid access to materials which 'might reflect dishonour on reigning families and other great personages or . . . [otherwise] be unfit for publication'. Bergenroth had been assured that the rule would not be applied in his case. But he quickly discovered that it was. It took years of lobbying to get the rule lifted and to obtain free access to the entire collection.

    The result, however, was worth the effort. For one of the principal lines of demarcation between what Bergenroth had been shown and what he had been forbidden turned out to lie through the material relating to Catherine of Aragon. He had been allowed to see the documents which supported the almost universally accepted view of Catherine as virgin before her second marriage to Henry and as a woman of unimpeachable honesty at all times. But he had been denied anything which cast doubt on this favourable picture. However, as he discovered on his second, unrestricted search, there was plenty on the debit side of the account.

    Bergenroth reacted with typical Victorian moralism. Previously, he wrote in the Introduction to the
Supplement
, 'he had joined in the universal praise of [Catherine's] personal virtues'. But now, knowing what he did, he could only reflect, censoriously, that 'exceedingly few, if any, of the men and women who were mixed up with the public affairs of three or four hundred years ago can bear close examination without their characters being more or less lowered in our estimation'. 'Of this', he concluded, 'Queen Catherine furnishes us with new evidence.'

    All of which is, no doubt, very interesting. But, it will be objected, even setting aside his Victorian moralism, is not Bergenroth's tale itself now history? After all, both the original
Calendar
and the
Supplement
have been in print for almost a hundred and fifty years. Surely that is time enough for historians and biographers to have arrived at a balanced verdict?

    The answer, I fear, is that the issue is still very much alive. For historians, wedded to 'the universal praise of [Catherine's] personal virtues', have shown an extraordinary determination to ignore the clear evidence of the
Supplement
. It shows, for example, that Henry's claim that Catherine had had intercourse with her first husband, Prince Arthur, is supported by good contemporary testimony, including that of Catherine's own tutor and confessor, Alessandro Geraldini. This does not
prove
the fact of sexual relations, of course, especially bearing in mind Catherine's own impassioned word to the contrary. But it does suggest that the matter should be left rather more open than it normally is.

    I have also been able to add another piece to the jigsaw puzzle and one which eluded even Bergenroth. This is the letter from Catherine's father-in-law, Henry VII, to her parents, Ferdinand and Isabella, in which he described the decision to send Catherine to live with her husband Arthur at Ludlow and explained Geraldini's part in it. The letter had been abstracted from the Spanish archives and sent, it is supposed, as a gift from Queen Isabella II of Spain to her opposite number in France, where it formed part of 'the private cabinet of the Empress Eugénie at the Tuilleries'. The letter and a translation were printed in 1864 by William Drogo Montagu, the 7th Duke of Manchester, in his
Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne
.

    Montagu was well aware of the sensational nature of the letter, and speculated smoothly on the real reasons for its removal from the regular Spanish records. But, once again, despite its appearance in print, the letter slipped through the historians' net (which seems, it must be admitted, to have a very large mesh for anything injurious to Catherine's reputation). And I was only alerted to its existence as the result of a chance exchange at the Quincentennial Conference to mark the death of Prince Arthur, which was held at his burial place at Worcester in 2002. I should like to thank Frederick Hepburn, who drew my attention to the document and kindly supplied me with a copy of it.

    Like Montagu, I was aware that any new information which appeared to cast a slur on Catherine would be controversial. But the fact was brought home by the response to the public seminar which I gave at the launch of the new Centre for the Editing of Lives and Letters (CELL) at Queen Mary College, London in November 2002.

    Here I presented the other key incident from the
Supplement
, which concerns Catherine's first pregnancy. The
Calendar
itself contains only a single letter on the subject. It is from Catherine herself, is dated May 1510, and informs her father that, in the last few days, she had miscarried of a daughter. What could be more straightforward? But letters in the
Supplement
make clear that things were anything but. For the letters show beyond doubt that Catherine's miscarriage had taken place in January; that, despite the miscarriage, she had persisted in the belief that she was still pregnant; and that, fortified by this belief, she had 'taken to her chamber' (that is, undergone the formal, very public ceremony of confinement for a Queen of England) in March 1510. The result, needless to say, was a humiliating end to a 'false pregnancy', which cast doubts on Catherine's fertility and led directly to her first serious breach with her new husband.

    The facts are indisputable. But not, apparently, the words in which they should be described. For when I said that Catherine had 'lied' to her father about the date of her miscarriage, I was immediately denounced by a significant section of the audience.

    Was I being unfeeling? Unimaginative? Was I ignoring the Rights of Women (which seem, indeed, to have a flexibility denied to the mere Rights of Men)?

    The reader must judge.

    Readers must also decide whether they are persuaded by my identification of a portrait of the young Catherine, which shows her as blue-eyed and blond (or at least auburn) in contrast with the sultry, doeeyed Spanish beauty of the traditional image. The latter is clearly wrong, for there is no way that the features or coloration connect to the known portraits of her maturity. But the 'new' image is supported, as yet, only by probability.

* * *

As far as Henry's second Queen, Anne Boleyn, is concerned, there was neither the need nor the opportunity for such fundamental reconsiderations of character. This was because it has been Anne's fate to be vilified rather than idealised (and enemies, I feel, tend to be rather more honest than friends). It was also because she has been the subject of two scholarly biographers – Paul Friedmann in the nineteenth century and Eric Ives in the twentieth – who between them have settled most points of dispute.

    But the revisions here are substantial nonetheless. They relate to the chronology of the early years of Anne's affair with Henry,
c.
1525–7. This is at once the most important and the worst documented period of her adulthood and such fragments of evidence as exist must be sifted with care. It is therefore extraordinary that historians should have persistently antedated the marriage of Lord Henry Percy, Anne's erstwhile admirer, to Mary Talbot. The negotiations for the match had begun, as is well known, as long ago as 1516 and its conclusion was confidently forecast for spring 1524. On the assumption that it went ahead in 1524 as planned, historians have dismissed out of hand the story, given by George Cavendish in his
Life of Wolsey
, of Henry's ordering Wolsey to break off Percy's betrothal to Anne; there was no need for this, they argue, since, with Percy now a married man, any relationship with Anne must have long been over. But, as I show, Percy's marriage to Mary Talbot did
not
take place in 1524. Indeed it was not concluded for at least another year, till August 1525 or August 1526. This means that Cavendish's story remains plausible; indeed, bearing in mind his status as a reliable eyewitness to the events he describes, it is extraordinary that it should ever have been doubted.

    And, just as important, it also means that we should believe Cavendish when he says that the incident led to Anne's nourishing a bitter grudge against Wolsey, which shaped the whole ensuing relationship of mistress and minister.

    The other key evidence for this period is Henry's love letters to Anne. The letters are undated and often undateable. But I have been able to date letter V, in which Henry affirms his 'unchangeable intention' towards Anne (that is, his intention to marry her), to January 1527. This alters, at a stroke, the whole chronology of the Divorce: Henry first decides to marry Anne; only then does he launch the first secret trial of his marriage before a genuinely surprised Wolsey. And this in turn transforms our reading of the motivations and behaviour of the principal actors. Wolsey never really recovers his poise. Instead, as I show in my subsequent reworked narrative of the Divorce, his handling of the King's Great Matter was often inept and occasionally malign. Henry, too, emerges badly. It is now clear that he began the Divorce in thoroughly bad faith and that his supposed conscientious scruples were, as Catherine always insisted, a mere fig leaf to hide his lust for Anne.

    Only the two women cover themselves in something like glory: Catherine for her indomitable courage and resourcefulness, and Anne for her driving will and ambition. They, at least, were fairly matched.

Catherine and Anne were the two most important of Henry's wives, in terms both of the duration of their relationships with Henry and of their significance. Catherine was Henry's wife for twenty-four years; that is, for two thirds of his thirty-seven-year reign. Anne's marriage was much shorter, famously lasting only a thousand days. But her previous love affair with Henry had already endured for at least seven years, during which time she was his real Queen and Catherine only a shadow of a consort. Combining Anne's informal with her formal period of Queenship gives her a 'reign' of ten years. And it was the most momentous decade of English history since the Norman Conquest. It is also the best documented and has the Mistress-Queen at its centre. All this is why I devote the whole of Part I to Catherine of Aragon and most of Part II to Anne Boleyn.

* * *

In comparison with these two giantesses, who were worthy opponents in the struggle to remake England, Henry's other Queens are creatures of the moment, with their marriages measured in months rather than years: Jane Seymour's lasted eighteen months, Anne of Cleves's scarely six, while Catherine Howard's was lucky to survive for fifteen. Henry's last Queen, Catherine Parr, is, it is true, a more substantial figure, who was his wife for three and a half years. But even she was a cipher for at least the last ten months of her marriage.

    And the imbalance of materials is at least as marked. For Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, the sources are to be numbered in the thousands; for Catherine Parr, in the hundreds; and for the remaining three, in their dozens. To attempt roughly equal treatment of the six women, therefore, as has been the general practice, is to distort the record: the lesser are inflated and the greater diminished. Here, instead, I have let the weight of materials and importance shape the structure of the book.

* * *

* * *

Jane emerges more firmly drawn than usual. For, despite her protestations of humility, she set herself up as the equal and opposite of her rival, Anne Boleyn. Jane was white to her black, a good conservative Catholic as opposed to Anne's religious radicalism. Particularly important is Jane's role in the great northern revolt known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. She endorsed, as far as she dared, the rebels' demands for a restoration of the monasteries, and, by a cruel twist of fate, her known sympathy with the aims of the revolt played an important part in tricking its leaders into submission.

* * *

This last point is new. In contrast, my treatment of Anne of Cleves is traditional. The essential material, in the form of the depositions about the King's invincible personal dislike for Anne, has been in print since the publication in the early eighteenth century of the
Ecclesiastical
Memorials
by the great antiquary John Strype. The depositions reproduce, verbatim and often in direct speech, the words of the participants and I have refashioned them into a narrative which tells the story of Anne's wooing, marriage and divorce largely in dialogue form.

    The reader may find it difficult to believe that the result is not fiction. But it is not. Instead, it is a word-for-word transcription of documents, which, thanks to this simple device, speak directly and without mediation to us.