The Boleyn Women: The Tudor Femmes Fatales Who Changed English History (18 page)

Although the pope bowed to Henry’s demands to some extent in the summer of 1528, he was still in the Emperor’s power and had no intention of offending Catherine of Aragon’s nephew. Unbeknown to Henry and Anne, Campeggio was under strict instructions to delay matters as much as possible and his progress towards England was painfully slow. He had still not set out by the end of June, some weeks after it was first agreed that he would be sent, when Henry and Anne suddenly found that they had greater problems to contend with. Throughout the Tudor period, there were a number of sudden outbreaks of sweating sickness, which was a highly contagious disease that struck down people suddenly, particularly attacking the young and healthy. In June 1528 there was an outbreak in London, which quickly infected much of the city. The sweating sickness was a terrifying disease, with the French ambassador commenting that ‘one has a little pain in the head and heart; suddenly a sweat begins; and a physician is useless, for whether you wrap yourself up much or little, in four hours, sometimes in two or three, you are dispatched without languishing’.
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Henry, who was always terrified of disease and conscious of his lack of a male heir, was in a state of high anxiety as the sweat began to ravage the city. Even his love for Anne was not enough for him to brave infection and practically, although hardly romantically, he sent her away when she was exposed to the disease, while he fled to safety.
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Although Henry was not prepared to risk infection for Anne, he quickly wrote to her to reassure her of his continuing love for her and his concern for her health:

The uneasiness my doubts about your health gave me, disturbed and alarmed me exceedingly, and I should not have had any quiet without hearing certain tidings. But now, since you have as yet felt nothing, I hope, and am assured that it will spare you, as I hope it is doing with us. For when we were at Walton, two ushers, two valets de chamber, and your brother, fell ill, but are now quite well; and since we have returned to our house at Hunsdon, we have been perfectly well, and have not, at present, one sick person, God be praised; and I think, if you would retire from Surrey, as we did, you would escape all danger. There is another thing that may comfort you, which is, that, in truth, in this distemper few or no women have been taken ill, and, what is more, no person of our court, and few elsewhere, have died of it.
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Anne heeded Henry’s advice and returned home to Hever. However, reports that she had escaped the fever were premature and, soon after, Henry wrote anxiously that

there came to me suddenly in the night the most grievous news that could arrive, and I must need lament it for three reasons: the first being to hear of the sickness of my mistress, whom I esteem more than all the world, and whose health I desire as my own, and would willingly bear the half of your illness to have you cured; the second, for fear of being yet again constrained by my enemy absence, who until now has given me every possible annoyance, and so far as I can judge is likely to do worse, though I pray God rid me of a rebel so importunate, the third, because the physician in who I most trust is absent at a time when he could do me most pleasure; for I hoped through him, and his methods, to obtain one of my chief joys in this world, that is to say, that my mistress should be cured.

Henry sent his second-best doctor to Hever, something which, given that he was concerned about infection himself, is testament to his deep love for Anne: he desperately wanted her to recover. Thomas Boleyn also contracted the sweating sickness that summer at Hever and it must have been a relief for his wife, who was almost certainly present, when they both recovered. The family did not escape unscathed, with Mary Boleyn’s husband, William Carey, succumbing to the sweat that summer.

The death of her young husband was a shock to Mary Boleyn and left her financially exposed. Anne promised her sister that she would do something for the family following Carey’s death, approaching the king about her ‘sister’s matter’, which the king faithfully promised in one of his letters ‘to write to my lord my mind thereon, whereby I trust that Eve shall not have power to deceive Adam; for surely, whatsoever is said, it cannot so stand with his honour but that he must needs take her, his natural daughter, now in her extreme necessity’.
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It appears from this that Anne had sought Henry’s assistance in ensuring that Thomas Boleyn would take on financial responsibility for his eldest daughter in her time of necessity.

William Carey’s sister, Eleanor, was a nun at the aristocratic convent at Wilton which, in the summer of 1528, was without an abbess due to the death of its previous head. Anne approached Henry to request that he appoint Eleanor Carey as abbess. Anne’s promotion of Eleanor placed her in direct and open conflict with Cardinal Wolsey for the first time, as he instead supported the candidacy of the prioress, Isabel Jordan. Nonplussed at the king’s support of Eleanor, Wolsey carried out an investigation into her conduct, evidently aware that there was a scandal to be found. He then reported his findings to a shocked Henry who, in spite of his six wives and break with Rome, was a deeply pious man, and who wrote immediately to Anne to inform her that he could no longer support her sister’s kinswoman:

As touching the matter of Wilton my lord Cardinal hath had the nuns before him and examined them, Master Bell being present, which hath certified me that for a truth she [Eleanor Carey] hath confessed herself (which we would have had abbess) to have had two children by two sundry priests and further since hath been kept by a servant of the Lord Brook that was. And that not long ago; wherefore I would not for all the gold in the world cloak your conscience nor mine to make her ruler of a house which is of so ungodly demeanour, nor I trust you would not that neither for brother nor sister I should so destain mine honour or conscience; and as touching the prioress or dame Eleanor’s eldest sister though there is not any evident case proved against them, and that the prioress is so old that of many years she could not be as she was named, yet notwithstanding, to do you pleasure I have done that neither of them shall have it; but that some good and well disposed woman shall have it.

Whether the revelations about Eleanor Carey were a surprise to Anne or not is unclear: Wilton had long been used by noble families as a convenient place to house daughters who, for some reason or another, had proved unmarriageable, something that meant that many of the nuns had little or no vocation for the religious life. Anne was further infuriated when Wolsey ignored the king’s commands regarding Wilton, appointing Isabel Jordan to the position in spite of Henry’s prohibition. This was a dangerous game for the cardinal to play and Henry immediately wrote to admonish him, declaring his fury at Wolsey ignoring his express commands and then trying ‘to cloak your offence made by ignorance of my pleasure’ when, as Henry pointed out, he had told the cardinal himself that ‘his pleasure is that in no wise the Prioress have it, nor yet Dame Eleanor’s eldest sister for many considerations’.
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Although matters were soon smoothed over with an apology from Wolsey, the damage had been done in spite of Henry writing to assure his minister that ‘seeing the humbleness of your submission, and though the case were much more heinous, I can be content for to remit it, being right glad, that, according to mine intent, my monitions and warning have been benignly and lovingly accepted on your behalf’.

During the early years of the divorce, Wolsey and Anne had always taken great pains to appear friendly towards each other due to the fact that both were aware of the great influence the other had over the king. A number of Anne’s letters to Wolsey survive, demonstrating that she was prepared to flatter and work with him if necessary, for example in one letter writing, ‘After my most humble recommendation, this shall be to give unto your Grace, as I am most bound, my humble thanks for the great pain and travail that your Grace doth take in studying by your wisdom and great diligence how to bring to pass honourably the greatest wealth that is possible to come to any creature living.’
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In spite of the pair’s politeness towards each other, there was significant underlying hostility. Wolsey’s servant, Cavendish, claimed that the cardinal referred to Anne as ‘the Night Crow’ and as a ‘continual serpentine enemy about the king’, complaining of her influence over Henry and her ability to limit his access to the king. For example, on one occasion Anne arranged a hunting trip and picnic for the king to ensure that he would not be available to see the cardinal on a day that he came up to court. For his part, Wolsey was also looking for ways to bring Anne down, at one stage reporting her to the king for her possession of William Tyndale’s
Obedience of a Christian Man
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which was banned in England as heretical.
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On hearing that Wolsey intended to denounce her for this, Anne rushed to the king to inform him that she had marked out points that she thought would interest him, heading off the cardinal’s complaints that the work should not have been in her possession in the first place. Due to her regular presence beside the king at court, to which Wolsey was only a visitor, it is no surprise that Anne soon gained the upper hand. It was the failure of the Blackfriars trial of his marriage that truly brought about the cardinal’s ruin.

Anne remained at Hever throughout the summer of 1528, evidently recuperating from her illness, with Henry writing unhappily that ‘as touching your abode at Hever, do therein as best shall like you, for you know best what air doth best with you; but I would it were come thereto (if it pleased God), that neither of us need care for that, for I ensure you I think it long’.
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While away from court she continued to keep abreast of news, particularly seeking details of the progress of Cardinal Campeggio’s journey towards England.

Campeggio finally arrived in London in October 1528 and immediately retired to his bed with gout. This was a major disappointment to the couple and Anne, who had been intending to remain in the background during the legate’s visit, returned to London for Christmas. This time she had her own apartments at court as she did ‘not like to meet with the queen’, an arrangement which must have been something of a relief for all three parties involved in the divorce.
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Campeggio finally rose from his sickbed in early 1529 and set about trying to fulfil his secret orders from the pope to ‘persuade the Queen to a Divorce; and dissuade the King from it, as having either way the end he proposed: yet he failed in both’.
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Campeggio then tried to persuade Catherine to become a nun, a solution that actually had a good deal of merit as it would both have allowed Henry to remarry and ensured that Catherine retired with her honour and the legitimacy of her former marriage to the king and her daughter unchallenged. However, Catherine was a pious woman and could not bring herself to feign a vocation that she did not have. She was also in love with her husband and desperately hoped that he would return to her, something which could never permit her to retire and to allow her position to be taken by Anne Boleyn. Campeggio found both husband and wife unshakeable in their respective beliefs, commenting of Henry that he was so convinced that his marriage was void that ‘if an angel was to descend from heaven he would not be able to persuade him to the contrary’.
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It quickly became apparent to Campeggio that the matter would need to be tried.

Both Catherine and Henry were busy in their preparations for the trial of their marriage. Through his examination of the original papal bull of dispensation, Wolsey thought that he had found a flaw in that the wording said that Catherine’s first marriage had been ‘perhaps’ consummated. Henry pounced on this, with his lawyers arguing that if Arthur and Catherine had indeed consummated their marriage then her second marriage to her brother-in-law could never have been valid. Catherine always claimed that she had been a virgin at the time of her marriage to Henry, but the king was able to find a number of witnesses to testify against her. George, Earl of Shrewsbury, for example, was happy to testify that he had been present when Arthur had been conducted to Catherine’s bedchamber on their wedding night and that he had always supposed that the marriage had been consummated.
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A further testimony by Sir Anthony Willoughby was more damaging, with Willoughby claiming that Arthur had spoken to him the morning after the wedding, saying, ‘Willoughby, bring me a cup of ale, for I have been this night in the midst of Spain.’ The teenager had also later boasted that ‘it is good pastime to have a wife’. Given Catherine’s deep religious faith, it seems unlikely that she was lying. Certainly, Henry had originally believed that he had found her a virgin on their wedding night. In any event, Catherine was able to surprise everyone by producing a copy of a papal brief which was held in Spain and which overcame all the difficulties that Wolsey had identified in the papal bull. While Henry made strenuous efforts to obtain the original from Spain, declaring it to be a forgery, Catherine sensibly refused to request it from her nephew. At stalemate, Anne retired from court in the early summer of 1529 with a trial of the marriage finally convening at Blackfriars in June 1529.

Both Henry and Catherine were cited to appear before Campeggio and Wolsey on the first day of the trial on 18 June 1529. To everyone’s surprise, Catherine heeded the summons and sat in her chair on the opposite side of the hall to Henry. As the court was opened, Catherine stood up and walked over to the king, kneeling at his feet. The queen was well aware that the court was not impartial and she immediately appealed to Rome for the case to be heard there, making a long and emotional speech to her husband:

I beseech you for all the love that hath been between us, and for the love of God, let me have justice and right, take of me some pity and compassion, for I am a poor woman and a stranger born out of your dominion. I have here no assured friends, and much less impartial counsel, I flee to you as to the head of justice within this realm. Alas! Sir, wherein have I offended you, or what occasion of displeasure have I deserved against your will and pleasure - now that you intend (as I perceive) to put me from you? I take God and all the world to witness that I have been to you a true, humble and obedient wife, ever comfortable to your will and pleasure, and never said or did anything to the contrary thereof, being always well pleased and contended with all things wherein you had any delight or dalliance, whether it were in little or much. I never grudged in word or countenance, or showed a visage or spark of discontent. I loved all those whom ye loved only for your sake whether I had cause or no, and whether they were my friends or my enemies. This twenty years or more I have been your true wife and by me ye have had divers children, although it hath pleased God to call them out of this world, which hath been no default of me.
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