Six Wives (79 page)

* * *

A few weeks later, yet another delegation of councillors turned up at Buckden to try, once more, to get Catherine to accept these facts. There is, however, a sense of both sides going through the motions. Catherine barely bothered to listen to her husband's advisers; instead, 'in great choler and agony', she 'always interrupt[ed] our words'. For their part, the councillors were perfunctory, both in expounding their case and in writing down Catherine's answers, which 'for tediousness' they left to an oral report by their junior assistants.
²⁹

    Already, that is to say, Catherine saw herself in another, juster world. Her husband and her adoptive country, misled by Anne and Anne's faction, had ruled against her. But what matter? Christendom, the Universal Church and the Vicar of Christ had endorsed her marriage. There, and in their sight, she was still Henry's wife, and Mary was his heir. And, what mattered most of all, her soul was unspotted by any hint of compromise.

    But, unfortunately for Catherine, her body remained in England and in Henry's power.

    So, more unfortunately still, did the bodies of her leading supporters. For they were not protected by the royal status and royal blood which, for the moment at least, spared Catherine and her daughter from a worse fate. Instead, the penalties of the Act of Succession were turned ruthlessly against them. And, when the Act (thanks again to the revisions of the King's legal counsel) proved inadequate to justify the death penalty, new, severer laws were passed in the autumn session of Parliament. The Act of Supremacy 'authorised' the King to assume the Supreme Headship of the Church, with all the annexed rights, and repudiated any 'foreign laws or foreign authority' to the contrary. Another Act established a definitive oath of obedience to the King. This now involved a renunciation of the power of any 'foreign authority or potentate' – that is the Pope – as well as the endorsement of the Boleyn marriage and succession. Finally, the Act of Treasons declared that it was treason, either by overt act or maliciously by 'wish, will or desire, by words or in writing', to do any harm to Henry, Anne and their heirs, or to deprive the King of his titles (including that of Supreme Head) or to call him heretic, tyrant or usurper.
³⁰

    The argument of the Great Matter would now be settled by the axe and the knife.

* * *

And the first victims were chosen deliberately for their eminence and distinction: the monks of the Carthusian Order, Bishop Fisher of Rochester and Sir Thomas More himself. The Carthusians were the holiest monastic order in the country, Fisher the most saintly prelate and greatest theologian, while More was both Henry's intimate friend from boyhood and the Englishman with the widest European reputation. But none of this counted for anything against their support for Catherine and their disobedience to Henry.

    In May 1535, four leading Carthusians were subjected to the full horrors of execution for treason. Still in their habits, they were dragged on hurdles (in a bizarre parody of Anne's coronation procession) from the Tower, through the City, to Tyburn near the present Marble Arch. There, in turn, as the others were forced to watch, each was half hanged, cut down while still alive and conscious, and then castrated, disembowelled and finally, after his entrails had been burned before his face, quartered and beheaded.

    In June, Fisher (his sentence commuted to a mere beheading) was executed on Tower Hill and More followed at the beginning of July.
³¹

    Anne undoubtedly rejoiced. They had been her enemies, and they were gone. But she wanted other, yet more distinguished victims too. 'She is incessantly crying after the King', Chapuys reported a few weeks later, 'that he does not act with prudence in suffering the Queen and the Princess to live, who deserved death more than all those who have been executed, and that they were the cause of all.'
³²

    Would she get her way in this too?

T
he trials and executions of Fisher and More, which Henry supervised from Windsor, delayed the start of the summer Progress by a few days. The original intention had been to leave on 5 July, but it was not until the 9th that the royal party set out. Despite the blood-letting and the unseasonably wet weather, the Court was in high spirits: Henry was 'more given to matters of dancing and of ladies than ever he was'; while Anne and her henchman Cromwell, 'who are omnipotent with [the King]', were in confident political control.
¹

    It was time, this ruling clique had decided, to turn from lopping heads to winning hearts and minds, and the Progress was to be the means.

* * *

    There were, of course, far fewer Reformers than Catholics. But their numbers were increasing. Nor, in any case, were numbers everything. For the Reformers were in strategic positions. They had masterful preachers and the control of the printing-presses. They commanded, for the moment, the levers of power and patronage. And in parts of the country they had local roots. One of these areas was London, which Anne had wooed in 1533. Another was the west country, which was her destination on the Progress of 1535.
³

    Bristol, the regional capital, was second only to London as a trading city and economic centre – and, as in London, a significant number of both the merchant élite and the common citizens of Bristol were early converts to Reform. The remote valleys of the Cotswolds were also a stronghold of the pre-Reformation English heresy known as Lollardy, whose principal tenets, such as the importance of being able to read the Bible in English, merged easily with the 'New' developments in religion. Here, at West Kington, was Hugh Latimer's parish, whence he descended on nearby Bristol (so the conservative local clergy felt) like the wolf on the fold, doing 'much hurt among the people by his . . . preaching, and soweth errors'. Equally, many local gentry in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire were sympathetic to Reform and a handful went further and became committed supporters. They included Richard Tracy, M.P. of Stanway in Gloucester, whose father William had acquired notoriety by his sensationally anticlerical Will; Sir Edward Baynton of Bromham, who was Vice-chamberlain of Anne's Household and Latimer's correspondent and protector; Sir John and Lady Walsh of Little Sodbury, who had been won over by their children's live-in tutor, William Tyndale, and Lady Walsh's nephew, Nicholas Poyntz of Iron Acton.
⁴

    The Progress was designed to fertilise these west country roots of Reform with the rich humus of Court favour. The local gentry who were favourable to Reform – including Poyntz at Iron Acton, Walsh at Little Sodbury and Baynton at Bromham – were singled out for the honour of a visit from the King and Queen. For Bristol a royal
entrée
was planned which would, it was hoped, emulate the success of Anne's coronation procession in London. Local clergy, like Latimer, who had the ear of the Court, were marked out for accelerated promotion. But what really showed that the Court meant business was that Cromwell was scheduled to join the Progress and remain with it for eight weeks. During this time, the government of England was wherever he happened to be. He used the opportunity to pilot daring schemes of Reform – and to disarm opposition with the magic of the royal presence. And, throughout, his most active co-adjutor was Anne herself. She managed Henry; wrote to Cromwell on his absences from Court, and, where necessary, took the initiative on the ground.
⁵

    One of the pageants at Anne's coronation
entrée
had enjoined her to 'prosper, proceed, and reign'. She evidently took the injunction to heart, and the Progress of 1535 shows her putting it enthusiastically into practice.

* * *

As usual, the route of the Progress or 'gists' had been planned carefully in advance. From Windsor, it followed the valleys of the Thames and its tributary the Evenlode; skirted the northern edge of the Cotswolds to the Vale of Evesham; and then, turning south and still keeping to the foothills of the Cotswolds, it passed via Sudeley Castle to Tewkesbury. En route, there were the usual frequent stops – to rest, to hunt, and, it turned out, to view property.

    Ewelme in Oxfordshire, where the Court stayed for a couple of days on the 12th and the 13th, was a splendid red-brick palace built in the mid-fifteenth century by the de la Poles, dukes of Suffolk. Henry had been conceived there during an extended visit by his parents in the autumn of 1490. But the de la Poles, cursed by their Yorkist blood, dabbled repeatedly in treason. Their property and titles had been forfeit and had been re-granted by Henry to his then great favourite, Charles Brandon, who had been created Duke of Suffolk in 1513. But now Suffolk himself had fallen out of favour, thanks to his less than whole-hearted commitment to the Boleyn marriage. It was time to pay the price, and in the course of the Progress Anne and Henry inspected some of Suffolk's properties which were ear-marked for surrender to the Crown.
⁶

    They included Ewelme and Hook Norton, where they probably hunted en route from Langley Castle to Sudeley. But they were not impressed with what they saw. Suffolk, trying to save what he could from the wreck, claimed to have spent £1,000 on Ewelme and £1,500 on a hunting lodge at Hook Norton. Henry, who rather liked bargaining, was brutally incredulous. He had recently visited Ewelme, his agent was instructed to inform Suffolk on 29 July, and had 'viewed' the property. He found it 'in great decay and great sums would not repair [it]'. As for Hook Norton, 'it will require no small sums of money to repair and build it after the King's mind'. Henry also hinted that he had seen little trace of the eighty red deer which the Keeper was supposed to maintain in the park. Let Suffolk stop quibbling, the King's instructions ended. Instead, he, 'of all men', should consider the 'manifold benefits' he had received from the King. Henry had 'advanced him to his honour and estate'; he could just as easily undo him.
⁷

    Anne, no doubt, had been irritated by the lack of sport at Hook Norton as well. But the hunting-down of another of her old enemies offered some compensation.

* * *

After this diversion, the Progress got down to its intended business at Sudeley Castle. The King and Queen and their immediate servants stayed in the Castle. But many of their entourage, including Cromwell, who arrived on or about 23 July, were lodged in the nearby Winchcombe Abbey.

    Rarely has hospitality been worse returned. Winchcombe itself survived till 1539. But by 1540 the last of England's monasteries had gone, their land and buildings confiscated by the Crown, and a thousand years of religious life and ritual had come to an end. And the process which led to all this – the Dissolution of the Monasteries – began here, at Winchcombe, while Cromwell was staying under the Abbey roof in 1535. Thence, he launched it and directed it. And he did so with Anne's eager, high-profile involvement.

    Quite whether the full-scale Dissolution was envisaged from the beginning is another matter, however.

* * *

In January 1535, Cromwell had been appointed Henry's Vicegerent-inSpirituals. The office, which was a new-fangled one, made him the King's deputy as Supreme Head of the Church, with full authority to exercise the vast powers which the Supremacy conferred on the Crown. Among these was the power to 'visit' or inspect monasteries. The power, traditionally exercised by the local bishop, was an ancient one. But the purpose to which it was now put was almost wholly new.

    The articles for the visitation of 1535 were relatively innocuous. But the sting in the tail came in the form of the injunctions, or orders to reform, which were to be issued to the monks after the inspection was complete. These injunctions, drawn up in full consultation with Henry himself, required the abbot and brethren to enforce and obey the recent Oath of Obedience and the Acts 'made or to be made' for the 'extirpation . . . of the usurped and pretended jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome' – as the Pope was now insultingly styled. Such of them as were priests were also 'everyday in [their] mass [to] pray for . . . the King and his most noble and lawful wife Queen Anne'. It was a prayer which would stick in the throat of any but the most compliant.
⁸

    Then came a Reforming attack on the religious ceremonies which were the
raison d'être
of monastic life. The abbot was to explain that 'true religion' was not a matter of observing the traditional rules and customs – 'apparel, manner of going, shaven heads . . . nor in silence, fasting, uprising at night, singing and such other kinds of ceremonies'. Instead, it was 'cleanness of mind, pureness of living, Christ's faith not feigned and brotherly charity'.

    Another Reforming
bête noire
was the monasteries' central role in popular piety as places of pilgrimage to miracle-working images or relics. These images and relics offered comfort to the people, as well as providing nice little earners for the monks. But, the injunctions sternly required, all such displays were to stop. Instead, sober charity was to be substituted for the heady satisfactions of religious mysteries, and would be pilgrims were to be told 'to give that to the poor that they thought to offer to their images or relics'.