Six Wives (72 page)

    Bonner's evidence thus stands the argument on its head. Two independent witnesses (Cranmer and Chapuys) state that the marriage took place on the 25th. Harpsfield says that Henry was married at York Place. And indeed it now turns out that Henry was at York Place on the morning of the 25th – and, moreover, that this was (so far as we know) his
only
visit to York Place between Christmas 1532 and the opening of the new session of Parliament on 4 February 1533. The congruence of these facts is, surely, too much for mere coincidence. Harpsfield must be right about the place of Henry's marriage and he is likely to be correct about the other details also.

    The marriage, Harpsfield says, took place 'very early before day'. The only witnesses were Henry Norris and Thomas Heneage, the two principal Gentlemen of Henry's Privy Chamber, and Anne Savage, later Lady Berkeley, who attended on Anne. And the celebrant, Harpsfield says, was Rowland Lee.

    According to Harpsfield, Lee had been previously briefed by the King, who informed him that he had 'gotten of the Pope a licence to marry another wife'. But 'to avoid business and tumult' the King felt that the ceremony must be performed 'very secretly'. The two agreed the time and place.

    But when the party assembled, Lee was 'in a great dump and staggering'. For Henry had not produced the necessary documentation from the Pope. Lee pressed him once more: 'Sir, I trust you have the Pope's licence?' 'What else?' Henry replied lightly. Still Lee was not satisfied and, fully vested for mass, demanded that the licence be read. Henry was ready for this as well. The licence, he said, was 'in another, surer place whereunto no man resorteth but myself '. But if he were seen to go to get it so early in the morning, it would give the game away. 'Go forth in God's name, and do that which appertaineth to you!' the King ordered at last, 'and I will take upon me all other danger'.
²¹

    What (assuming that the words
were
said) was going on? Was Henry, as one historian has speculated, revealing even at this stage 'a psychological dependence on the papacy'? And how does the dithering, anxious Lee of Harpsfield's account square with the man we know elsewhere? For Lee's own correspondence presents a very different picture. He was the intimate friend of Cromwell, a shrewd and efficient administrator and, when necessary, as accomplished a bully as the great minister himself: later in 1533 he forced the Northern Convocation to accept the Divorce and, still more remarkably, he compelled the Welsh Marchers to submit to law and order when he was president of the Council of Wales.

    So was he overcome by the moment on the 25th? Or was he acting? And how sincere, come to that, was Henry?
²²

    The answer, surely, is that the whole ceremony was a carefully contrived performance. The first marriage in November had been designed to reassure Anne. This second, with its half-invocation of Papal authority, was intended to reassure Henry's subjects. When news of it leaked, which it quickly did, it would suggest that Henry had received the nod from Rome.

    The marriage thus forms part of the great game of 1533 in which Henry decided to get his Divorce by deceiving everybody: Rome, his English subjects and even his French allies. The game was for the highest stakes and he played it well. So well indeed that, at moments, Anne seems to have wondered whether he might be deceiving her as well.

But she had ways of dealing with that.

O
n 15 February 1533 or thereabouts, Anne informed the Duke of Norfolk, in front of many witnesses, that 'immediately after Easter, she was resolved to go on a pilgrimage to Our Lady [of Walsingham]in the event that she were not pregnant'. Chapuys reported the remark in shocked tones. But he also understood its significance: 'it seems that she wishes the world to understand that she is pregnant or that she is so indeed'.
¹

    Amid the masculine games of diplomatic bluff and counter-bluff, Anne was playing a woman's card. And it was, she knew, the ace of trumps. She was also announcing a timetable, set by her own, insistent biology. By Easter, Catherine would be divorced. She, Anne, would be Henry's acknowledged wife and Queen. And she would be known to be pregnant with the heir-to-be.

    The long game, which had begun on New Year's Day 1527 with Henry's pledge that he would marry her, would be over. And she would have won.

* * *

    The countdown began on 4 February. This was the date which Henry, in consultation with Audley, had fixed for the opening of the new session of Parliament. Little was done that day, other than to order the Commons to elect a new speaker to replace Audley who, as More's successor as Lord Chancellor, was now the presiding officer in the Lords. Four days later the new speaker was presented to the King in a ceremony which was grander than the opening itself: both the French ambassador and the Papal Nuncio were present and the Lords wore their crimson and miniver-trimmed Parliament robes. Henry had taken the Nuncio 'in his own barge and close to his person' from Greenwich to Westminster for the presentation; and, the ceremony over, De Burgo was shown round the buildings of the Palace of Westminster and entertained to dinner by the two Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk.
²

    Chapuys concluded correctly that this extraordinary show of favour to the Papal representative in England was part of Henry's attempt to convince the world that he had done a deal with the Nuncio's master in Rome. And the Imperial ambassador railed at the folly which might lead Pope Clement to contemplate such a step. For the Divorce, Chapuys insisted to Charles V, was
already
decided on. Anne and her father were in charge. And, thanks to their patronage, Lutherans and heretics were on the threshold of power. Indeed, Cranmer himself had the reputation of 'belonging heart and soul' to the sect. Could not Clement be made to realise this? Could not Charles, who was staying with Clement in Bologna, get him to act before it was too late? And, above all, could not Rome be persuaded to block or at least postpone Cranmer's appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury? The Bulls, Chapuys suggested, could easily be delayed or a special clause could be inserted in the archbishop's oath 'forbidding himself to mix himself up with the Divorce case.'
³

    Chapuys's prophecies of doom proved all too accurate. But, Cassandra-like, he was ignored. Pope Clement, with his usual policy of giving with one hand what he took with another, felt that it was Henry's turn to enjoy a favour. The French were also applying heavy pressure on Henry's behalf: there was, they insinuated to the Pope, nothing that the English King wanted more than an amicable settlement with Rome. And Charles, despite his ambassador's urgent warnings, did nothing either.

    Instead, and conforming to the Reformers' worst stereotype, the Papal Curia only haggled about money: it was not a question of
whether
Cranmer should get his Bulls, but only of how much he (or rather Henry VIII on his behalf) would have to pay. On 22 February, archdeacon Hawkins, Henry's agent in Rome, sent an interim report on the bargaining. Hitherto, he informed Henry, nothing had happened because 'they could not agree on the price'. But the previous day Campeggio (who, despite the debacle of the Blackfriars Trial, was still the CardinalProtector of England) had formally reported the vacancy at Canterbury in the Consistory and moved the grant of Bulls for Cranmer. Behind the scenes discussion of cost continued, however. If the Annate, the principal Papal tax, were levied in full ('after the rigour') it would come to 10,000 ducats (that is, at the exchange rate of 4s and 6d to the ducat, £2,333). Campeggio himself was due a 'propina' (a
pourboire
or tip) of 1,500 ducats (£350) 'only for proponing the vacation in Consistory'. And the Pope's officials would expect 3,000 or 4,000 ducats (£700 or £933) 'for sundries' (
pro minutis servitiis
).

    But when all these palms were appropriately greased, the way would be open for the next Consistory, due in nine days or so, to complete the formalities of Cranmer's appointment by approving the grant of the archbishop's pall or
pallium
. 'The Pall', Hawkins explained to Henry, 'is a piece of white cloth made of the wool of certain lambs, which the Pope halloweth [blesses], and consecrate by the Pope, and laid on St Peter's sepulchre.' It was thus the most sacred archiepiscopal vestment and symbolised the Primate's position as the Pope's direct representative. It was also expensive, and would cost yet another 1,000 ducats (£233).
⁴

    Happily, as Henry had already made clear, money was no object. Instead, the only hitch in the process came when Bonner arrived at the Papal Court hotfoot from England on 27 February, with Henry's new instructions to demand, once more, the delegation of the trial of the Great Matter to England. The English ambassadors had an audience with Clement on 2 March, and the Pope, for once, lost his temper. To press him further in the matter, the French Cardinal de Tournon warned his English colleagues, would 'so irritate and exasperate' him that it would 'destroy' the English and French positions in Rome and throw Clement unreservedly into the arms of the Emperor. There was also, Bonner reported to Henry, 'an evident peril and fear' that 'if we should have further pressed him, he would have denied my Lord Elect's Bulls'.
⁵

    Wisely, they laid off and the moment of danger passed. For, on 3 March, the day after the English ambassadors' stormy meeting with the Pope, the last two of the eleven Bulls conferring Canterbury on Cranmer were sealed: the one sending him the pall and the other ordering the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London to invest him with it.
⁶

    These Bulls were the most traditional of overtures to the coming storm in the English Church. They also meant that the reality of revolution was covered (as though by Cranmer's pall) with the fig-leaf of tradition – to the fury of Henry's and Anne's conservative opponents and to the confusion of the people. For if Cranmer were so recently appointed by the Pope, how could the Pope disapprove of what Cranmer was doing?

* * *

While all this was going on in Rome, the Parliament in Westminster was left twiddling its thumbs and – as if to prove its harmlessness – on about 12 February, De Burgo was taken to observe the Commons in session. He found them debating an insignificant bill against thieves. He did not stay long but went on to a sumptuous banquet at the lodgings of Treasurer Fitzwilliam.
⁷

    De Burgo should, of course, have eaten his supper with a long spoon. But he was by no means the only person, nor the most important, to be taken in by Henry's performance in the great game. The result was that by mid-February Henry and Anne were confident of success; they even felt free to indulge in a little careless talk. Twice Henry boasted to the inner circle of his Court that 'he would, immediately on the expedition of the Bulls, let people know what he was about, and what he himself intended doing'. And soon a more explicit version of his words became the common rumour. 'Well nigh everybody', the Venetian ambassador reported on 23 February, 'is of the opinion that immediately on the arrival of the Bulls . . . the Divorce case will be terminated, whether the Pope assents or not.'
⁸

    But, as usual, it was Anne who went the furthest. On 7 February, while dining in her own apartments, she said, in a vivid if ominous phrase, that she was 'as sure as her own death that she should be very soon married to the King'. A fortnight later, on the 22nd, she made her boast about her pregnancy public. Speaking, almost certainly, to her former flame, Thomas Wyatt, she said that she had 'a fearsome and unquenchable longing to eat apples', which she had never experienced before. The King, she added, had told her 'that it was a sign that she must be pregnant'. But, she said, she had replied that 'she was sure she was not'. Then she burst out laughing and withdrew into her apartments.
⁹

    No one who heard her was in any doubt what she meant.

    The upshot was that the King felt able to jump the gun. Cranmer's Bulls did not arrive in London till about 26 March. But already on 9 March there had been an officially sponsored sermon at Court, delivered in the presence of Henry and Anne themselves, which denounced the King's existing marriage as sinful and called on him to enter into a new and better union. No wonder, the preacher had continued, if Henry in such circumstances should take a wife who was of 'low rank' but eminent in 'virtues and secret merits . . . as happened in the cases of Kings Saul and David'.

    When she heard about the sermon Catherine decided that it was 'a sign of her case being irretrievably lost'.
¹⁰

* * *

    But, as Henry and Anne had known all along, Cranmer intended to be a modest sort of Pontiff who would defer in almost all things to his royal master and mistress-to-be. And he made this clear from the moment of his consecration, which took place on Passion Sunday, 30 March, only four days after the arrival of his Bulls.
¹²

    First Cranmer went to the Chapter House of St Stephen's College in the Palace of Westminster. There, in the presence of a select group of witnesses – the King's prothonotary, the clerk of the Council and a handful of canon lawyers – Cranmer swore the required oaths to the Pope and then, as agreed, immediately undercut them by his Protestation. Nothing in the oaths, he affirmed, should oblige him to act 'against the Law of God, or against our illustrious King of England, his Commonwealth, Laws or Prerogative'. Nor should his oaths leave him 'any the less free to speak or less able to advise and assent to anything which might further the Reformation of the Christian religion, the government of the English Church, or the Prerogative of the Crown or the well-being of the Commonwealth'. Rather indeed, he promised to take the initiative in driving change: 'to reform wherever and whatever in the English Church that shall seem to me to require reformation'.
¹³