Six Wives (50 page)

    After describing their (rather too easy) success with the dispensation, Foxe moved to the more delicate matter of their failure to secure the decretal commission. But he put this in a good light too. The general commission, which they had got, contained, he claimed, all but two of the essential points of the decretal commission. The omissions – the Pope's definition of the law on the case and his promise not to revoke the commission – were, Foxe conceded, important. But Clement, he assured Henry, had faithfully promised to make them good by his subsequent letters.

    Henry was persuaded. He 'made marvellous demonstrations of joy and gladness' and summoned Anne to join in.

    After he had been joined by Anne, the King peppered Foxe with questions about the Pope's attitude to his case. In his answers Foxe, as he reported to Gardiner, 'took occasion' to puff Wolsey's role. 'Without [Wolsey's] letters', he told Henry and Anne, 'we should have obtained nothing there'. It was also thanks to Wolsey that Clement had changed his opinion of Anne. The Pope had previously been informed that, in his love for Anne, Henry was driven by
privatum aliquem effectum
('a certain private lust'); that Anne herself 'was with child, and of no such qualities as should be worthy that majesty'. But, Foxe asserted, thanks – and thanks only – to Wolsey's testimony to the contrary, Clement had been persuaded of the truth.

    At this point, Foxe must have turned to Anne, who had of course been present throughout this extraordinary recital. Was she properly grateful to Wolsey? Or outraged at the impertinence of his agent, Foxe?

    Finally, Henry asked Foxe about the issue of 'recusation and appellation' – that is, refusal of jurisdiction by one of the parties and appeal. This matter loomed large because it was already clear that Catherine intended to resort to these devices to abort any trial in England – as indeed she was to do. Once again Foxe had his answer ready. These cases were covered by the new commission, he claimed, 'so far as the law would suffer and might be expressed by words'. He then quoted the relevant clause of the commission. But, faced by this technicality, Henry remitted the matter to Wolsey. 'He said he would by my lord Grace's judgement' and ordered Foxe to go immediately to Wolsey that night.

* * *

For the moment, Wolsey's own town-palace of York Place was uninhabitable, since he was rebuilding the Hall and other chambers 'most sumptuously and gorgeously'. Instead, he was staying at Durham House on the Strand. By the time Foxe arrived there it was past 10 o'clock at night and Wolsey had gone to bed. Foxe was admitted nonetheless and explained what had happened. Wolsey's first reaction was unfavourable. He was 'marvellously perplexed, thinking this Commission to be of no better value than that was sent by Gambara' and obtained by the despised Knight. But he decided to sleep on the matter.

    By the following afternoon, he had changed his mind. He summoned a high-powered delegation, consisting of Foxe, Dr Bell (Henry's first and most trusted adviser on the Divorce), and Anne's father, Lord Rochford, and told them that he was fully satisfied with the commission. Other experts concurred and sang Gardiner's praises:
O! non aestimandum
thesaurum, Margaritumque regni nostri
('O inestimable treasure and pearl of our realm'). Which was, Foxe reported to the subject of these extravagances, 'to the great comfort and rejoice of us your poor friends here'.

    But, despite these outpourings, Wolsey wavered again. Finally, he decided he must have a decretal commission. It would settle his conscience and defend him against his detractors. It would deal with the possibility that Clement might die before a verdict was reached – or that he might change his mind. Above all, it would protect Wolsey's own political position.

    Here Wolsey got carried away. He spoke with extraordinary bluntness and gave Foxe a complete rhetorical question-and-answer script for Gardiner to use with Clement. What, Gardiner was to ask, would most conduce to the recovery of Papal authority? Surely, he was to answer his own question, it would be to render Wolsey impregnably secure in Henry's favour? So 'that what his Grace [Wolsey] should advise . . . his Highness [Henry] should . . . facilely condescend . . . unto'. 'And by what means', Gardiner was to continue, 'may that be so perfectly attained?' By Clement's granting a decretal commission, he was to reply, '
only at the
contemplation (petition) of my lord's Grace
'.
¹

* * *

It was A. F. Pollard who, almost a hundred years ago, observed that for Wolsey 'the Divorce was . . . a means not an end'. The point has been played down by Wolsey's apologists. But it seems to me to be no more than the truth. For from the moment he found out about Knight's secret mission, Wolsey had a single aim. It was not to get the Divorce for Henry. Instead, it was to recover control of the Great Matter for himself. He pursued this objective with single-mindedness and – it would seem from his words to Foxe – self-awareness also.
²

    But were Wolsey's objectives in the Great Matter compatible with Henry's and Anne's? In other words, were Wolsey's policies as effective in procuring the Divorce as they were, for the time being, in bolstering Wolsey's own position? Only time, once again, would tell.

* * *

Barlow rode off, yet again, to Orvieto with Foxe's letter and Wolsey's instructions. And Gardiner, once more, had to lay siege to Pope Clement. At first he failed and his golden reputation risked crumbling to dust. The only thing that would recover it, Foxe reported to his friend, would be for him to secure Legate Campeggio's despatch with the decretal commission. 'And in case he never come, ye never to return.' It was the fate of exile, which Wolsey had visited on the wretched Knight.
³

    Gardiner fought tooth and nail to avoid it. Finally, he was successful. On 11 June he wrote to Henry in triumph: Campeggio was en route for England with the decretal commission. On 28 June, Wolsey received the news. Gardiner's triumph was his triumph. He had got what Henry wanted; now, surely, he was impregnable.
⁴

    Less than a week before, Anne had been at death's door.

T
he sweating sickness, or the sweat for short, seems to have been a kind of acute influenza, perhaps combined with pneumonia. The principal symptom was profuse sweating (hence the name). The disease moved with extraordinary speed: within twenty-four hours the patient was generally past the worst – or dead. The epidemic made its first recorded appearance in England at the end of the fifteenth century. Thereafter, it struck again, invariably in the summer and with undiminished ferocity, every few years. The outbreak of 1528 was one of the worst.

Certainly, it had the most momentous consequences.

* * *

On Tuesday, 16 June, one of Anne's ladies-in-waiting fell sick of the disease.

    It was in any case a day of upheaval at Court as it was the beginning of the Progress. The whole Courtly apparatus of 'portable magnificence' – the tapestries and cushions, jewels and plate, household utensils and the King's own clothes, bedding, travelling library, medicine chest and personal petty-cash – had been packed into their special bags, boxes and chests and loaded on to carts. The carts had been covered with bearhides to protect them against the elements and the great caravanserai of the Court stood ready to depart from Greenwich to the first port of call of the Progress: Waltham Abbey in Essex.

    But, with the news of the disease, these orderly arrangements were abandoned. Henry immediately rode off to Waltham while Anne was sent to stay with her father at Hever.
¹

    Such a flight to safety was Henry's invariable reaction to plague and other epidemic diseases. No one would have expected him to behave differently – with the exception, it appears, of Anne herself. She seems to have protested at the abrupt separation from her royal admirer. At any rate, Henry was soon writing to her, to comfort her and remove her 'unreasonable thoughts'. He trusted that the disease had spared her as it seemed to have done him. He heard that she had had, as yet, no symptoms. And, in any case, he asserted, 'few if any women' had been affected.

    But the real purpose of the letter was to assure Anne that, despite his flight and their separation, his love for her remained the same. 'Wherever I may be I am yours,' he protested, reverting both to the Courtly French and the extravagant phraseology of his earliest letters to her. And, once more, there was a fanciful signature: his royal cipher between the syllables of the French word
immuable
– the whole meaning 'King Henry the Constant' or 'King Henry the Immovable.' The fact that the 'Constant' and 'Immovable' Henry was actually in a state of perpetual motion, fleeing from house to house to escape the sweat, may have escaped Henry. But Anne is unlikely to have missed the irony.
²

* * *

A day or so later Henry's hardy optimism was dashed: Anne had fallen ill, along with her father. The news was brought to Henry at night. Immediately, he wrote to her again. It was the worst possible thing that could have happened. He loved her more than the whole world. He desired her health as much as his own. He would gladly suffer half her illness to have her cured.

    With the letter Henry sent Anne a physician. His favourite doctor (probably Dr Chamber) was unfortunately absent, just at the moment when he was most needed. But, in his place, Henry was despatching his second medical adviser. He prayed to God that this physician would be able to make her well. Anne, for her part, 'was to be governed by his advice regarding your sickness'. That way, Henry wrote, 'I hope soon to see you again, which will be a better restorative to me than all the precious stones of the world' – and here the King, who was himself a keen amateur of medicine, referred to the supposed curative properties of certain jewels.
³

    The physician's name was Dr William Butts. He had gone up to Cambridge about ten years before Foxe and Gardiner. But, since he was a slower developer than that brilliant pair of friends, he was an elder contemporary of theirs. He commenced his MD in 1518 and in 1524 he became the Principal of St Mary's Hostel, which lay a few yards from both Gardiner's Trinity Hall and Foxe's King's College. His practice began in the mid-1520s and he quickly made his name with his treatment, first of the always sickly Princess Mary and then, as recently as May 1528, of the usually robust Duke of Norfolk. Norfolk sang his praises, as one 'without whose aid he thinks he should not have recovered'. But Anne was his test-case.
⁴

    At first, it was touch and go. 'By returning in of the sweat before the time', Anne was in grave 'jeopardy'. Though no one knew it at the time, the whole future of England, England's Church and England's State, hung in the balance. But 'the endeavour of Mr Butts' (or, more likely, the vigorous Boleyn constitution) carried her through. She survived.
⁵

    Butts's career was now made. 'If he can put you in health again,' Henry had vowed in his letter to Anne, 'I shall love him better than ever.' He kept his promise. By Christmas, Butts had been appointed Royal Physician with the then enormous salary of £100 a year. With Anne herself, Butts's relationship became, if anything, even more intimate. For he helped take charge not only of Anne's physical health but of her spiritual welfare and religious patronage as well.
⁶

* * *

Anne recovered rapidly. However, Henry's invariable practice was to impose a lengthy period of quarantine on members of his entourage who had been sick or otherwise exposed to infection. He made no exception – not even for Anne – and she remained in Kent for several weeks. But they communicated frequently by letter. And her absence not only made Henry grow fonder (as the French ambassador noted with apparent surprise) but also more generous to her 'suits' or petitions on behalf of her relatives and clients.

    The ability to get jobs and procure favours was, then as now, a mark of political power. As soon as Henry's passion for Anne was clear, Cavendish notes, 'it was . . . judged . . . throughout all the Court of every man that she being in such favour with the King might work mysteries with the King and obtain any suit of him for her friend'. Anne, for her part, grasped the opportunity eagerly. Unlike Catherine, a foreigner and with no ties binding her to Court parties or factions, Anne had wheeling-anddealing in her blood. She was the daughter of a man whose ambition was to serve the King 'in the Court all the days of my life'; her uncle was the politically supple Duke of Norfolk; her brother-in-law, William Carey, was a gentleman of the Privy Chamber; and her cousin, Sir Francis Bryan, known as 'the Vicar of Hell', was one of the most colourful characters of the Court. For Anne to press suits on the King, and turn her power over his heart into power over his patronage, was as natural as breathing.
⁷

    Anne showed a particular interest in the appointment of the next Abbess of Wilton in Wiltshire. The house was a rich one and many of the nuns were the unmarriageable daughters of important families. They had little by way of religious vocation and lived the life of ladies of leisure – gadding about the countryside, feuding with each other and occasionally conducting not very well concealed love affairs with local clergy. The last Abbess had died in April and two candidates quickly emerged to replace her: Dame Isobel Jordan and Dame Eleanor Carey. Eleanor was sister of William Carey, who pressed hard for her appointment. But William Carey was one of the first victims of the sweating sickness. Anne then took over the suit, as a kindness to her sister Mary's stricken family, and got Henry to promise faithfully that Eleanor should have the post.

    But here other forces came into play. Dame Isobel had powerful backers, too, including, it soon became clear, Wolsey himself. Both sides in the struggle played dirty and the easy-going life of the Abbey provided plenty of scandalous material. Dame Eleanor admitted that she had 'had two children by two sundry priests and further since hath been kept by a servant of the Lord Broke that was, and not long ago'. There were nasty rumours, too, about Dame Isobel – though, it was conceded, she 'is so old that of many years she could not be as she was named'.