Six Wives (96 page)
Authors: David Starkey
* * *
Anne herself probably understood little of the political storm which raged round her and of which she was the all-too-passive cause. She was shrewd enough, however, to notice the King's attentions to Catherine Howard, and, on 20 June, she complained vigorously about them to the Cleves agent in London, Karl Harst. Two days later, she was in better spirits, because Henry had spoken to her kindly.
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It was the last time she saw him as her husband.
* * *
On 24 June, like Catherine of Aragon before her, Anne was ordered to leave the Court. In her case, the move was to Richmond Palace, because, it was claimed, it enjoyed a better climate. Anne was not deceived. She knew about the precedent of Henry's first Queen and feared she would share the same fate. Harst did his best to comfort her, but without much conviction.
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On 6 July, the anticipated blow fell, as, in two separate meetings, Harst and Anne were informed of the King's intention to have the Cleves marriage reconsidered. In his meeting with the Council and his own subsequent investigations, Harst discovered the range of conservative Councillors arrayed against his mistress. Tunstall took the lead in explaining Henry's case; Gardiner had found a German in Henry's employ to translate, from German into Latin, the key document concerning the marriage contract between Anne and the son of the Duke of Lorraine, and Norfolk was also seeking information about the tense of a crucial word in the document.
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At the same time as Harst was seeing the Council in London, a powerful delegation of Councillors, which included Suffolk and Gardiner together with two interpreters, waited on Anne at Richmond. They handed her a paper, which gave notice that Henry intended to submit their marriage to the judgement of Convocation. Did she agree? According to the Councillors' report to the King, Anne, 'without alteration of countenance' gave her immediate oral consent, saying 'that she is content always with your Majesty's [desires]'. According to Harst, however, Anne, far from giving her informed agreement, paid no attention to the paper.
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Was it a genuine misunderstanding? Or was the delegation simply reporting what Henry wanted to hear?
Whatever the genuineness of Anne's consent, however, it was enough for Convocation to proceed. This it did at speed. It met early on Wednesday the 7th. The morning session considered the case against the marriage. This was presented 'in a lucid speech' by Gardiner, who had returned post-haste from Richmond the previous night. Cranmer then adjourned the full session till the following day. Meanwhile, in the afternoon, from 1 to 6 p.m., depositions were taken from a wide range of witnesses. It is these which, together with Cromwell's two written confessions, provide the intimate details about the failure of the marriage. On the Thursday the depositions were tabled and agreed to present a
prima facie
case against the marriage. Finally, on Friday the 9th, the judgement was drawn up in proper form and assented to by all present.
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prima facie
case against the marriage. Finally, on Friday the 9th, the judgement was drawn up in proper form and assented to by all present.
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From first to last the proceedings had taken three days.
* * *
Harst was taken by surprise at the speed of events and on the 9th he went to Court to complain about the lack of consultation. He was told that, because the matter concerned the validity of the King's marriage, it was up to the bishops and clergy to decide it. He was also informed that another delegation of Councillors had already left to inform Anne of the decision of Convocation. Harst followed this delegation at speed; indeed, he seems to have overtaken it.
He arrived at Richmond at 4 o'clock on the Saturday morning and found Anne in a pitiable state. She had just received another message from Henry by Richard Beard. Beard had been Holbein's escort to Cleves when he painted her portrait. Now he bore Henry's demand that she should give her consent to the divorce proceedings, not orally as before, but formally in writing.
This seems to have been the moment that the reality of her situation dawned. Henry really intended divorce. And she, like two of his previous wives, would be discarded.
Anne was heartbroken. She was also in a quandary about how to reply.
She discussed the situation first with Harst. Then she summoned Rutland, who, since he claimed to understand neither the Queen nor the ambassador, turned up with an interpreter.
Seeing her distress, the Earl tried to comfort her. Henry was a good and gracious King, he said. He would proceed by law and conscience, and Anne had nothing to fear. This seems to have calmed her. At any rate, Anne heard his explanation in silence 'and said nothing to it'.
Harst paints a more dramatic and probably more accurate picture. When her consent to the divorce proceedings was required, he wrote, she broke down. 'She knew nothing other', she protested, 'than that she had been granted [by God] the King as her husband, and thus she took him to be her true lord and husband.' Then the tears flowed. 'Good Lord,' Harst reported, 'she made such tears and bitter cries, it would break a heart of stone.'
She also had the courage to refuse Henry's demand for her written consent and instead sent Beard with a message only by word of mouth, as before.
* * *
Harst left her in this state of mingled distress and obstinacy and returned to London to send off his despatch to her brother, the Duke. But he promised to return later that day.
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Over the next twenty-four hours, however, Anne's initial hysteria subsided. So did her resistance. Instead, she heard out the formal report from the delegation of Councillors, and considered carefully their advice. Henry, it seems, was offering a deal. She would cease to be his wife, of course. But he was willing to honour her as his 'sister'. He would also, it was hinted, pay her as such.
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It did not take her long to weigh the alternatives. She would accept the offer.
On the Sunday, Anne wrote to Henry on the lines suggested. She began by repeating in unambiguous terms her previous oral agreement that the marriage should be tried by Convocation. Next she accepted their judgement that it was invalid. Finally, she submitted herself, 'for her [future] state and condition', wholly to the King 'goodness and pleasure', begging only that she might 'sometimes have the fruition of your most noble presence'.
The letter was signed 'Your Majesty's most humble sister and servant, Anne, Dochtter the Cleyffys'.
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Henry seems to have been rather surprised by Anne's sudden 'conformity'. He had not expected it. And Anne, as we have seen, had given him some grounds for his fears by her initial resistance.
But, with her submission, the King set himself to be both generous and agreeable. He replied to Anne's letter on the 12th, addressing her as 'sister' and outlining the terms of the financial settlement he proposed. She would have an income of £4,000 a year. She would be given Richmond and Bletchingley as her residences. And these, the King explained, were both near the Court, which she would be welcome to visit, 'as we shall repair unto you'.
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Never, after Anne's initial tantrum, had a divorce been more amicable.
* * *
The usual body of Councillors turned up with Henry's letter on the 14th. Anne asked Secretary Wriothesley to read it. But, since he knew the contents of the letter to be 'sweet and pleasant', he felt it better to leave Anne to digest it at leisure with her own interpreter. After a while, she summoned the Councillors back and questioned them closely.
Where was Bletchingley? What men servants would she have? And what women?
They did their best to satisfy her and exhorted her to continue her 'conformity'. She promised she would. She also let slip what may have been the over-riding motive in her behaviour. If she returned to Germany, she seems to have said, she feared that someone, presumably her brother, 'would slay me'.
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Did she think that her humiliation had injured her family's honour so much that she would be safe only in England?
It now remained only to tie up a few loose ends. On the 17th she undertook to 'receive no letters nor messages from her brother, her mother, nor none of her kin or friends, but she would send them to [Henry]'. On the 21st, she wrote to her brother the Duke, to inform him of her satisfaction at her treatment and to insist that, 'God willing, I purpose to lead my life in this realm'. Finally, on the same day, after having made a good dinner, she sent Henry 'the ring delivered unto her at their pretenced marriage, desiring that it might be broken in pieces as a thing which she knew of no force nor value'.
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And that, it seemed, was that.
Catherine Howard
73. 'Virtuous and good
behaviour'?
C
atherine Howard was the opposite in every way from Anne of Cleves. She was English, and she was petite, plump, pretty and accomplished in the Courtly graces. She had an easy charm and an abundant store of good nature. And she knew how to attract men with a skill beyond her teenage years – perhaps indeed beyond her supposedly virginal state when she met Henry.
atherine Howard was the opposite in every way from Anne of Cleves. She was English, and she was petite, plump, pretty and accomplished in the Courtly graces. She had an easy charm and an abundant store of good nature. And she knew how to attract men with a skill beyond her teenage years – perhaps indeed beyond her supposedly virginal state when she met Henry.
* * *
Catherine belonged to the mighty Howard clan. Her father, Lord Edmund, was the third son of the second Duke of Norfolk. The third Duke of Norfolk was her uncle and Anne Boleyn was her cousin. But, in Catherine's case, mighty connexions did not lead to an easy upbringing.
Her father Edmund, like most Howards, enjoyed fighting. But, unlike his own father and his elder brother Thomas, he was a brawler rather than a general. He spent his youth hanging about the Court with no very obvious employment and it was not until 1531 that his niece, Anne Boleyn, helped find him a position as Controller of Calais. Even so, the salary was barely enough for a man of his status to live on, much less to pay off his debts.
Catherine's mother, Jocasta Culpepper, was Edmund's first wife. She was co-heiress of the Culpeppers of Aylesford, Kent, and widow of Ralph Legh, by whom she already had several children. She had about ten more by Edmund in some fifteen years of marriage. She was dead by the late 1520s and Edmund went on to marry two other wives, both widows, by whom he was childless. He was dismissed from his post in Calais in 1539 and died shortly afterwards.
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Lord Edmund Howard, in short, was a man of no importance – save for the fact that he had a daughter who happened to become Queen of England.
* * *
Catherine was one of the younger members of his brood, which suggests that she was born in about 1520. But it is impossible to be sure. Her place of birth is also unknown, as are the places where she spent her childhood. It seems certain, however, that her mother, who brought considerable assets to the marriage, managed to keep some sort of establishment together – though Catherine's father must often have been away. In 1527, for example, Edmund complained to Wolsey that his debts were such that he dared not 'go abroad, nor come at my own house, and am fain to absent me from my wife and poor children'.
The suggestion, then, is of a scrabbled childhood, with a dominant, providing mother and a weak, debt-ridden and (to judge by the evidence of one of his later marriages) hen-pecked father. But, whatever its nature, Catherine's childhood was a short one, even by Tudor standards. Its end was marked by her mother's death, and her father's remarriage and appointment to Calais, which followed each other in quick succession. Catherine, at the age of ten or twelve, was now considered a young woman and was sent off to finish her upbringing in the Household of her step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk.
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* * *
Agnes Howard
née
Tilney was the second wife and widow of the second Duke of Norfolk. As a Dowager Duchess, she was one of the highest ranking women in England outside the royal family. She was also, thanks to her dower-rights and her tight-fistedness, one of the richest. As was customary, she kept a great Household, which was lodged, depending on her movements, in either of her main residences: at Horsham in Sussex, or at Lambeth on the south bank of the Thames opposite the King's new palace of Whitehall.
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When Catherine joined her step-grandmother's Household, she was placed in the Maidens' Chamber. This was a large dormitory, in which the inmates generally slept two to a bed. There, Catherine found herself among other young unmarried women of gentle or noble birth. They were connected by blood or marriage to the Howards or came from lesser families which had hitched their stars to the ducal clan. They acted as the Duchess's waiting women; they were also there, like Catherine herself, to complete their education. A music master was employed and the Duchess had clerks and secretaries who could teach them reading and writing. Also in the Household were many young gentlemen who were eager to teach the maidens other things as well.
* * *
The Duchess's Household, in short, had something of the atmosphere of a slackly run mixed boarding school. The Duchess was an imperious but ineffectual headmistress; the boys spent their time trying to get into the girls' dormitory; and there was excessive fraternisation between pupils and staff.
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Here, at last, Catherine found herself in her element. She was a quick developer, both physically and mentally. She also showed all the drive her father lacked. The result was that she became the leader in every escapade and act of domestic rebellion. And, because she was related to the Duchess, she got away with almost all of it.
* * *
She began, as is often the way with such girls, by attracting the attentions of one of her masters. Henry Manox had been employed by the Duchess in about 1536 'to teach . . . Mrs Catherine Howard to play on the virginals'. According to Manox's admission, he 'fell in love with her' and she with him. But Catherine kept the relationship within bounds. This was not out of virtue, but rather a fierce sense of Howard pride. 'I will never be nought with you', she told him, 'and able to marry me ye be not.' But she permitted him consolatory favours which were, on more than one occasion, interrupted by the Duchess. Once, 'it chanced . . . the Duchess . . . to find them alone talking in a Chamber'. As usual, the old lady struck first and remonstrated afterwards. 'She gave . . . Mrs Catherine two or three blows and gave straight charge both to her and to . . . Manox that they should never be alone together.'
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