Six Wives (67 page)
Authors: David Starkey
This had immediately been realised by Catherine, who saw events with the extra clarity of bitterness and disillusionment. 'She fancies', Chapuys reported, 'that his object in taking the Lady with him to such hunting parties is that he may accustom the lords and governors of the counties and districts he traverses on such occasions to see her with him, and that he may the better win them over to his party when Parliament meets again.'
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The targets of this charm-offensive are not far to seek. The Vyne was the seat of William, Lord Sandys, KG. He had been Lord Chamberlain of the Household since 1526 and he had recently added a noble long gallery to his house. It was decorated in the latest style with panelling carved with a rich assortment of arms and badges. The arms and badges included Henry's and Catherine's, as well as Sandys's own and those of his network of friends, colleagues and relations. There were Wolsey's cardinal's hat and his cipher, 'TW'; the peacock badge of Thomas Manners, Earl of Rutland; the shield of Cuthbert Tunstall, as Bishop of London; and the mitred coat-of-arms of William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury.
These men were a broad cross-section of the political establishment of the 1520s – an establishment which, even as Henry visited The Vyne, was being rent apart by the Great Matter. Wolsey, so far, was its greatest victim, while in contrast Rutland had got his earldom at the same time as Anne's father, and was to be a reliable supporter. On the other hand, Tunstall's present bishopric of Durham had been fleeced for the Boleyns' benefit, while Warham's cautious obstinacy was emerging as a crucial obstacle to Henry's marriage to Anne.
Which side – bearing in mind the divergence among his friends and colleagues – would Sandys join? He was a sincere conservative in religion. Yet somehow he was kept on-side through all the traumas of Anne's rise. It is safe to assume that Henry's visit to The Vyne played its part in this. It might even have been the key.
Equally important was Sir William Paulet, whose arms also appear in the panelling. He was Sandys's friend and neighbour at nearby Basing. And he was similarly conservative. Yet he too remained loyal and was even promoted when Guildford, who had finally agreed to remain in office, died the following May. Paulet now became Controller as well as retaining his existing office of Master of the Wards. Henry and Anne's visit to him at Basing on 6 August must once again have been intended to cement a relationship that otherwise threatened to become shaky.
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And evidently it worked.
It was while he and Anne were en route to The Vyne that Henry received a message from Catherine. It had always been the custom of Henry and Catherine, when they were apart, to communicate at least once every three days by means of a messenger and a 'countersign' or token. Invoking this old practice, Catherine sent to Henry 'to inquire about his health, and to signify the regret she had experienced at not having been able to see him before his departure for the country'. Even if she could not accompany him, would he not at least give her the consolation of bidding him farewell? She was brutally repulsed for her pains. 'He cared not for her adieux', Henry raged, 'he had no wish to offer her the consolation of which she spoke or any other.' She had humiliated him in front of the world. He only wanted rid of her.
Catherine replied with proper, wifely submission, though without conceding anything of her position. Henry did not deign to answer in person but sent a formal letter from the Council instead. This was the first time a letter had failed to address Catherine as Queen.
Neither Catherine nor Chapuys doubted for a moment who was responsible. 'If the Lady's authority and the good reasons [this was meant ironically, of course] . . . alleged [in the letter] be taken into consideration, [it] must have been decreed by her.'
Catherine was plunged into real despair. Chapuys tried to rouse her by a wildly optimistic reading of events. But her only effective consolation was the company of her daughter Mary. Banished by their husband and father, the two decided to make the best of things by having a holiday. 'They will pass their time', Chapuys reported, 'in sport and visiting the royal seats round Windsor.'
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But their pleasure was cut brutally short.
By the first week in August, after consolidating their hold on the conservative courtiers and gentry of north Hampshire, Henry and Anne were ready to return to Windsor. And the last person they wished to find there was Catherine, with Mary clinging to her like Niobe 'all tears'. For weeks Anne, like the goddess of the chase, had pursued her rival. She bullied Henry; she wheedled; she threatened; and, most devastatingly, she cried. Her arrows pierced his heart and hardened his judgement. It was how she had destroyed Wolsey. Now she would remove Catherine.
At last Henry had screwed himself up to deliver the final blow. 'The King', Chapuys reported, 'on the plea of wishing to hunt in the environs of Windsor, sent orders for his Queen to remove to The More, a manor close to the Abbey of St Albans, and for the Princess Mary to go to Richmond.' It was the final cruelty. Not only had Henry separated himself from Catherine, he was also separating Catherine from Mary. Mother and daughter never saw each other again.
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How to interpret this brutality? The Court saw it as a portent. 'No doubt is entertained here', Chapuys reported, 'that the King is now resolutely intent upon obtaining his Divorce.' The ambassador, however, persisted in his own opinion that Henry's actions were a 'mere artifice' to bully Catherine into agreeing to a repatriation of the trial of the Great Matter once more to England. But to that, he predicted, she would never consent, however extreme the pressure that might be applied.
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Here at least he proved an accurate prophet.
* * *
By a curious coincidence, just as these fissures were taking place in the royal family, a Venetian tourist decided to pay a flying visit to England from Flanders. He was Mario Savorgano, the son of Girolamo, a Venetian commander and wealthy aristocrat. His itinerary is strikingly modern, with day-visits to Whitehall, Hampton Court and Windsor. But, unlike most modern tourists, he was well enough connected to have the entrée at Court. He caught up with Henry on 4 August, while the King was hunting in Odiham Park, mid-way between Farnham and The Vyne. 'I went to a park', he reported, 'some thirty miles from London where the King was, taking his pleasure in a small hunting lodge, built solely for the chase, in the midst of the forest . . . He embraced me joyously, and then went out to hunt with from 40 to 50 horsemen.'
Savorgano then expatiated on Henry's physical and mental qualities. He would be perfect indeed, he concluded, were he not wishing to divorce his wife. But this 'detracts greatly from his merits, as there is now living with him a young woman of noble birth, though many say of bad character, whose will is law to him, and he is expected to marry her'.
The day after this encounter with Henry and perhaps with Anne, Savorgano returned to Windsor and continued to The More, 'where the Queen resides'.
In the morning [he reported] we saw her Majesty dine; she had some 30 maids of honour standing round the table, and about 50 persons who performed its service. Her Court consists of about 200 persons, but she is not so much visited as heretofore, on account of the King. Her Majesty is not of tall stature, rather small. If not handsome, she is not ugly; she is somewhat stout, and has always a smile on her face.
Still, in other words, Catherine enjoyed the dignity and state of Queen and still, as her constant smile shows, she was able to act the part, whatever she was feeling or whatever Henry or Anne could do.
Determined to complete the tally, late that same afternoon Savorgano presented himself at Richmond and 'asked the
maggiordomo
[probably the Gentleman Usher] for permission to see [Mary]'. 'He', Savorgano continued, 'spoke to the Chamberlain, and then to the Governess [Lady Salisbury] and they made us wait.' He filled in the interval by inspecting the palace. Then he was ushered into the Presence Chamber to await Mary's entrance. 'The Princess came forth, accom
panied by a noble lady, advanced in years, who is her Governess, and by six maids of honour.' 'We kissed her hand', he reported excitedly, 'and she asked us how long we had been in England, and if we had seen their Majesties, her father and mother, and what we thought of the country.' Then she turned to her attendants and withdrew into her Chamber.
maggiordomo
[probably the Gentleman Usher] for permission to see [Mary]'. 'He', Savorgano continued, 'spoke to the Chamberlain, and then to the Governess [Lady Salisbury] and they made us wait.' He filled in the interval by inspecting the palace. Then he was ushered into the Presence Chamber to await Mary's entrance. 'The Princess came forth, accom
panied by a noble lady, advanced in years, who is her Governess, and by six maids of honour.' 'We kissed her hand', he reported excitedly, 'and she asked us how long we had been in England, and if we had seen their Majesties, her father and mother, and what we thought of the country.' Then she turned to her attendants and withdrew into her Chamber.
The audience was over and Savorgano was left only with the impression the Princess had made. It was very favourable. She was short but pretty and well proportioned 'with a very beautiful complexion'. She spoke several languages fluently and was very musical. In short, he concluded, 'she combines every accomplishment'.
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This is Mary just before the strains of her parents' divorce had damaged her character and spoiled her looks.
* * *
For Anne would give neither Mary nor her mother a moment of peace. It was not sheer vindictiveness, though there was an element of that. Instead Anne had convinced herself that Catherine's place was rightly hers. As for Mary, she was a bastard. And in any case, Mary would soon be brushed aside by the fine son who would crown Anne's own union with Henry.
That was a goal worth fighting for. Anne was good at fighting. And she had only just begun with Catherine and Mary.
58. Preliminaries to marriage
I
n the summer of 1531, the vicar of Kirk Holland, in Derbyshire, told his parishioners some extraordinary news: the King was about to marry another wife. And 'one Mr Cromwell penned certain matters in the Parliament House, which no man gainsaid'. One of his hearers, the vicar said, 'knew the gentlewoman, and that her father's name was Sir Thomas Boleyn'.
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n the summer of 1531, the vicar of Kirk Holland, in Derbyshire, told his parishioners some extraordinary news: the King was about to marry another wife. And 'one Mr Cromwell penned certain matters in the Parliament House, which no man gainsaid'. One of his hearers, the vicar said, 'knew the gentlewoman, and that her father's name was Sir Thomas Boleyn'.
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This seems to be the first time that Thomas Cromwell and Anne Boleyn were linked in the public consciousness. Quite why Cromwell's activities in the brief and unremarkable parliamentary session of 1531 should attract such attention is unclear. Most likely, in fact, the vicar was confusing events in Parliament with those in Convocation. The confusion was easily made, since the place of meeting of Convocation had been shifted from the customary St Paul's to the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey. The Commons met in the nearby Refectory of the Abbey and the Lords in the Painted Chamber in the adjacent palace. It was only a few steps from the one assembly to the other, and the journey was frequently made as the intense negotiations over the Submission of the Clergy took place.
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In these negotiations, Cromwell, MP for Taunton and newly appointed King's Councillor, played a leading part. He came into the Chapter House on the morning of Friday, 10 February 1531, and had a secret conference with Archbishop Warham. The next day, Convocation acquiesced in silence to the King's new title of 'Supreme Head of the Church, in so far as the Law of Christ allows'.
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Anne, as we have seen, greeted the news with as much joy 'as if she had actually gained Paradise'. And was Cromwell the man whom she credited with unlocking the heavenly gates? And could he pull off the trick once more – this time to make her Henry's wife and Queen at last? It seemed as though he could.
* * *
But in spite of Cromwell's already acquired reputation as a Parliamentary Pickford, who carried everything, the next session, which opened on 15 January 1532, got off to a surprisingly shaky start. Almost a month was spent in acrimonious and inconclusive discussion about the King's feudal rights. Then, in the second week of February, Norfolk convened an informal meeting of the leading members of both Houses to consider an important new proposal. 'Many learned doctors', he reported, 'had concluded that all matrimonial causes belonged to the temporal, not to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction.' Were the parliamentary opinion-formers prepared to support the King's prerogative in this matter?
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* * *
The issue of the Church's jurisdiction in matrimony had already been aired in public by the distinguished lawyer Christopher St German. In a series of books, the first of which was published in 1528, he argued for limiting canon law narrowly to matters of Faith and leaving questions of property (like wills and marriages) to the common law.
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Magpie-like as ever, Henry's councillors were seeing if Parliament would be prepared to accept St German's arguments – which would, in turn, open the way to a direct, parliamentary solution of the Great Matter.
In fact, though much has been made of St German by some modern historians, his ideas fell at the first fence. 'The first to answer [Norfolk]', Chapuys reported, 'was Lord Darcy, who said that his property and his person were entirely at the King's disposal, but that from what he had read and heard he believed that all matrimonial matters were spiritual and fell under ecclesiastical jurisdiction.' The majority of the meeting followed Darcy's lead, 'to the Duke's great disappointment and annoyance'.
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Another scheme, Chapuys heard, was floated by Anne's father, Thomas Boleyn, now the Earl of Wiltshire. Since Archbishop Warham was immovable on the subject of the Divorce, Wiltshire proposed the abolition of archiepiscopal authority over the Church and its transfer instead to the King. Anne, with her Lutheran sympathies, was supposed to have been enthusiastic about the idea. But it too disappeared without trace into that box marked 'too radical by half '.
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For Parliament, it became clear, was no more enamoured of Henry's new claims over the Church than any other reasonably representative group of his subjects. This proved true even in the contentious area of clerical taxation.
Annates or First Fruits was the fee, amounting to one year's income, which a new bishop was required to pay to Rome for the Bulls ratifying his appointment. The burden was considerable and appointees had to mortgage themselves to the hilt to pay it – with disastrous consequences to their families and friends if they died before they had been in post long enough to liquidate the debt. In view of this, it might be thought that the higher clergy would have rushed to welcome a government-sponsored Bill to abolish Annates. But the opposite was the case. The Council's motive, to put financial pressure on the Pope to agree to the Divorce, was too transparent, and the measure was fought bitterly at every stage. Indeed, the Act of Annates passed into law only through the King's heavyhanded personal intervention in both Houses. The government also made an important concession. The Act as passed was conditional, and it would only be put into practice, the Duke of Norfolk assured the English ambassadors in Rome, if the Pope continued to refuse Henry his Divorce.
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