Six Wives (84 page)

    Chapuys made good use of the information in his next meeting with Cromwell. He had deliberately refrained from seeking him out, he informed Cromwell, so as to avoid arousing Anne's suspicions. Then he became even more confidential. He spoke 'for the love' he bore him. He wished him 'a more gracious mistress, and one more grateful for the inestimable services he had done the King'. Finally came the warning. 'He must beware of enraging her, else he must never expect perfect reconciliation.' She had destroyed Wolsey: Cromwell would have 'to see to it better than the Cardinal' if he were to survive.

    In his reply, Cromwell, who, like many vulpine politicians, had a good line in sanctimoniousness when required, took the appropriate tone of resigned other-worldliness. 'Only now', he said, 'had [he] known the frailty of human affairs, especially those of the Court . . . and [he trusted] that if fate fell upon him as upon his predecessors, he would arm himself with patience, and leave the rest to God.'
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    There would come a moment when Cromwell's resolution to 'leave [it] to God' would be put to the test. But it was not yet.

    Nevertheless, Anne struck back forcefully.

* * *

Her instrument, unsurprisingly, was one of the many clergy she patronised, John Skip, who had succeeded Shaxton as her Almoner. Skip was the preacher for the day in the Chapel Royal at Greenwich on Passion Sunday, 2 April 1536. His congregation included the King and Queen and the cream of the Court and Council. And he spared none of them.

    Henry was reminded of Solomon, who, 'in the latter end of his reign . . . became very unnoble and defamed himself sore by sensual and carnal appetite in taking of many wives and concubines'. Cromwell (for there could be no doubt that he was the target) was roundly compared to the evil councillor Haman. Members of the Council were warned against Reform for its own sake: '[they] have need to take good heed what counsel they give . . . in altering of any ancient things'. Finally the entire political establishment was the preacher's victim in his satirical picture of Parliament:

'This think I', the preacher concluded with his tongue firmly in his cheek, 'and other men ought to think the same.'
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    Just as striking was Skip's defence of the position of the clergy. His text was 'Which of you convicteth me of sin?' (
John
8.46). Nowadays, he pointed out, it was fashionable to attack the clergy, and the fault of one was treated as though it were the fault of all: 'if they [the laity] may spy a great or notable vice or fault in one priest . . . then they will infame and rebuke all the whole clergy for the same'. This was the technique of Cromwell's visitors, and it had just been used to stampede Parliament into agreeing to the Act for the Dissolution of the Smaller Monasteries. The Bill had been passed on 18 March and it was even then awaiting the Royal Assent.
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    But what, Skip wanted to know at this crucial juncture, was the motive? Was it really to reform the lives of the clergy? Or was it malice and covetousness: 'because they [the laity] would have from the clergy their possessions'?

* * *

Clearly, Skip's sermon was designed to put pure Holy Water between Cromwell and Anne on religious policy. Cromwell, he argued, was using Reform as a cloak for expropriation. Anne, on the other hand, meant it.

    Latymer's
Life
offers precise corroboration. When Anne heard that the Dissolution of the Smaller Monasteries was mooted, he writes: 'she commanded that godly preacher of England, Mr Latimer, to take some occasion in his next sermon to be made before the King to dissuade the utter subversion of the said houses and to induce the King's Grace . . . to convert them to some better use'.
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    And the 'better use' was education. Some houses could be turned into Bible-based educational foundations, like Stoke-by-Clare in Suffolk where she appointed her Chaplain, Matthew Parker, as Master with a mandate to carry out the reform. And all could be required to direct part of their wealth to fund university bursaries and scholarships to train future clergymen to be more effective preachers of the 'Word of God'. Skip touched on this theme as well when he lamented 'the great decay of the Universities in this realm and how necessary the maintenance of them is for the continuance of Christ's faith and his religion'. And Anne had already made a major contribution to their revival, when she sued to Henry to exempt the universities from the payment of First Fruits and Tenths. If the charge had been levied, as the university of Cambridge explained in its letter of thanks to the Queen, '[it] would [have] greatly diminish[ed] the number of scholars in every College'.
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    Anne's attitude naturally gave the smaller monasteries hope and, again according to Latymer, their heads petitioned Anne in a body. She sent them away with fleas in their ears, however. Their degenerate manner of living, which was so different from that of their founders, meant, she said, that the dissolution was God's judgement on them. Nevertheless, she dropped heavy hints that moves to increase their educational endowments would win her favour.
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* * *

Skip's boldest stroke, however, was his treatment of the Haman story. In the
Book of Esther
, Haman, the councillor of King Ahasuerus, persuades his master to order a pogrom of the Jews, 'because their laws are diverse from all people, neither keep they the King's laws' (
Esther
3.8). For Skip, as we have seen, Haman was Cromwell, while the persecuted Jews were the clergy and, more particularly, the about-to-be dispossessed monastic clergy, who had indeed been accused of obeying the Pope's laws and not Henry's. The parallels were clear enough. But Skip deliberately altered his text to drive the point home. In the original story, Haman offered Ahasuerus the gift of 10,000 talents of silver as an inducement to agree to the pogrom; in Skip's adaptation, Haman promised the King 10,000 talents to be taken from the Jews (just as Cromwell was proposing to fill the royal coffers from the dissolution).

    But Haman met his come-uppance at the hands of Ahasuerus's Queen Esther, who was a secret Jewess and intervened to protect her people. We have already encountered the parallel between Anne and Esther, which had been alluded to in her coronation
entrée
. But that was in respect of her displacement of Catherine, who was identified with Ahasuerus's first Queen, the proud and unyielding Vashti. Now, in Skip's sermon, Anne/Esther appeared in her more heroic role as the destroyer of the evil and overweening minister.

    It was a role, however, that dared not quite to speak its name. For not even Skip was rash enough to describe Esther as Queen or even to mention her name. Instead, overcome by an uncharacteristic fit of discretion, he referred to her as 'a good woman (which this gentle King Ahasuerus loved very well and put his trust in because he knew she was ever his friend) and she gave unto the King contrary counsel'. But, this necessary caution over, Skip returned with relish to the conclusion of his tale. Thanks to this 'good woman', he explained, the pogrom was cancelled; the Jews were saved and Haman, the evil councillor, was hanged on a gallows fifty cubits high.
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* * *

After such a performance, Skip inevitably found himself hauled before the Council on charges of slandering 'the King's Highness, his councillors, his lords and nobles, and his whole Parliament'. Interrogatories were prepared. But he survived unscathed. Anne was still able to protect her own.

    But was she able to protect herself?

    Earlier, Cromwell had told Chapuys that Anne wanted his head. Now, before the whole Court, her Almoner had threatened him with being hanged as high as Haman. It is little wonder that he decided to strike first.

    He may have made his first move too quickly, however. Over the Easter holidays, 14–17 April, Chapuys, with Cromwell's enthusiastic backing, made an overture for a settlement of the outstanding differences between Henry and Charles V and a renewal of their former friendship. He put forward four specific proposals, which Henry himself summarised as follows. First, that Charles would broker a reconciliation between him and the Pope. Second, that 'for as much as there is great likelihood and appearance that God will send unto Us heirs male to succeed Us . . . We would vouchsafe, at his contemplation, to legitimate our daughter Mary, in such degree, as in default of issue by our most dear and most entirely beloved wife the Queen, she might not be reputed unable to some place in our succession.' Third, that Henry would help the Emperor against the Turk. And fourth, that he would also help him against the anticipated French attack on Milan.
¹⁰

    Henry apparently reacted favourably and Chapuys was summoned to Court on Tuesday, 18 April. He was asked if he would go and kiss Anne's hand. As usual, he refused. He was then conducted to mass in the Chapel Royal by Rochford. The ambassador, along with the rest of the Court, was below, in the body of the Chapel, while Henry and Anne, with their immediate suites, were above in their first-floor pews or 'Holiday Closets'. But, at the moment of the offering in the mass, the demarcation was broken down as the King and Queen descended from their pews by staircases on either side of the Chapel to make their way to the altar.

    Anne and Chapuys would come face to face. This was the first personal confrontation between them since Anne had become Henry's wife and Queen. What would happen? The Court crowded round. 'There was a great concourse of people', Chapuys reported, 'to see how [Anne] and I behaved to each other.' 'She was courteous enough', he continued, 'for when I was behind the door by which she entered, she turned back, merely to do me reverence,
as I did to her
.'
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    For the first time, whether he fully realised it or not, Chapuys had acknowledged Anne as Queen. Mary was furious when she heard.

    With this gesture, one major achievement from Chapuys's visit had been notched up by Henry. But, typically, Henry saw no need to give anything in return. He had an acrimonious exchange with Cromwell and then turned to deal with Chapuys. One by one he dismissed his four proposals out of hand. He was at his most outrageous over the last. 'He was not a child', he said, 'and that they must not give him the stick, and then caress him.' Then, to drive home the point, he enacted a dumbshow, 'playing with his fingers on his knees, and doing as if he were calling a child to pacify it'.
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* * *

Many things have been read into the events of this day. It was, Cromwell later told Chapuys, the moment he decided Anne had to go. He would never again accept such a rebuff on foreign policy; it was either her or him.
¹³

    The remark comes from the horse's mouth and it is tempting to take it at face value. But the temptation should be resisted. Cromwell was an adept flatterer, and in this case he was trying to persuade Chapuys that the concerns of the Emperor and his ambassador had come first. In fact, the concerns of the King of England and his minister had come first. And, as we have seen, these concerns point to a different timetable, with wider areas of dispute and a significantly earlier breaking-point between Anne and Cromwell; if the events of 18 April mattered at all, it was as the last straw in their relationship.

    The day has also been seen as victory for Anne. She had at last got Chapuys to bow and doff his cap. And Henry had made an emphatic restatement of his commitment to the Boleyn marriage. But this last is doubtful, also. In the circular report of his exchange with Chapuys which the King sent to his main ambassadors abroad, Henry mentions 'our most dear and most entirely beloved wife the Queen' only in his summary of Chapuys's proposals. She does not figure at all in his reply to the ambassador and nowhere is she referred to by name. If this is a ringing endorsement of his marriage, it has a distinctly hollow tone.

    But most extraordinary of all is the interpretation foisted on the words 'for as much as there is great likelihood and appearance that God will send unto Us heirs male to succeed Us'. These words mean, it has recently been claimed, that Anne was pregnant again; and, furthermore, since Henry persuaded himself that the child was not his, that they offer a clue to the tragedy which was to follow.

    If this were true, it would indeed be a major insight. But it is not. For the statement 'for as much as there is great likelihood and appearance that God will send unto Us heirs male to succeed Us' is followed immediately by the proviso: 'in default of issue by our most dear and most entirely beloved wife the Queen'. The statement thus refers to Henry's potency, not to Anne's fecundity, and the qualifying proviso indeed presumes her to be barren, at least of male issue. Finally, of course, the words are not Henry's own, but the King's summary of Chapuys's proposal.
¹⁴

    The notion of Anne's pregnancy and all that has been deduced from it is therefore, alas, a case of much ado about nothing. Whatever drove Henry forward, it was not this.

* * *

The Feast of Easter was followed by the Feast of St George. And on St George's Day, 23 April, a Chapter of the Order of the Garter was held at Greenwich, with Henry himself presiding.
¹⁵

    The Garter was the oldest and most prestigious Order of Chivalry in Christendom and there was hot competition for appointment to it. This year there were two front-runner candidates, Anne's brother Rochford and her cousin, Sir Nicholas Carew, the Master of the Horse. And one of them would have to be disappointed as there was only a single vacancy. Both candidates had powerful support. There had been heavy French pressure, going back over a number of years, for Carew's election; while Anne herself was pushing equally strongly for her brother. The voting in the Chapter was inconclusive and Henry, 'having perused' the list of names, 'put it in his bosom' and, most unusually, postponed his decision to the following day.
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