The House of Tudor (25 page)

Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire and of Ormonde, father of Mary and Anne Boleyn; a sketch by Holbein.

Mary Boleyn who became Henry’s mistress in about 1520.

30 Anne Boleyn; a drawing by Holbein.

31 Cardinal Thomas Wolsey by Jacques le Boucq.

32 A letter from Henry to Anne Boleyn, September 1528, telling her of the imminent arrival of Cardinal Campeggio. Henry writes: ‘I would you were in mine arms, or I in yours, for I think it long since I kissed you.’

33 A design for a triumphal arch for Anne Boleyn’s coronation procession in May 1533.

34 Jane Seymour, a portrait by Holbein.

35 Edward, Prince of Wales, by Holbein.

36 Mistress Jak, Prince Edward’s nurse, drawn by Holbein.

37 Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s chief minister throughout the 1530s and the architect of his marriage to Anne of Cleves.

38 ‘Henry VIII and his Family’: Princess Mary, Prince Edward, Jane Seymour and Princess Elizabeth. In fact Jane Seymour died soon after Edward’s birth; this painting was probably executed in 1545.

39 Anne of Cleves by Holbein

40 Catherine Howard, an unauthenticated portrait by an unknown artist.

41 Henry in the last years of his life.

For Mary at least this altered everything. She waited a week and then wrote to Thomas Cromwell asking him to open the way for a reconciliation with her father - to obtain for her ‘his Grace’s blessing and favour’. She would have written sooner, she told Cromwell, only she knew that no one would dare to speak for her as long as ‘that woman’ lived.