Anna of Kleve, the Princess in the Portrait

by Alison Weir

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  It was something Henry VIII said—and kept on saying—that made me wonder if Anna did come to her marriage bed a virgin, and gave me the storyline that runs through this book—a storyline I suspect will provoke some controversy.

  On the morning after his wedding night, the King told Thomas Cromwell: “I liked her before not well, but now I like her much worse, for I have felt her belly and her breasts, and thereby, as I can judge, she should be no maid, which so strake me to the heart when I felt them that I had neither will nor courage to proceed any further in other matters.”

  For weeks afterward, he made similar complaints to others, saying he “plainly mistrusted her to be no maid by reason of the looseness of her belly and breasts and other tokens,” and stating, “I have left her as good a maid as I found her.”

  I puzzled for months over what Henry meant by these remarks. Discovering that your bride was no virgin did not constitute grounds for an annulment, although failing to consummate the marriage did, and blaming that on Anna spared the King any loss of face; there had been talk that he was impotent. But there was no need to blame anyone; he needed only to state that he felt there was an impediment to his marriage that prevented him from consummating it. And there were other grounds for dissolving the marriage, because the Duke of Kleve could not produce proof that Anna’s previous betrothal had been properly dissolved.

  Even so, Henry had gone ahead with the marriage, and initiated sexual activity to the extent of exploring Anna’s body, which suggests that he might originally have intended to proceed to intercourse. It may have been the evidence suggesting she was no virgin that put him off going any further.

  What if he had been telling Cromwell and others what he believed to be the truth?

  Henry had had vast experience of women. He had been married three times before he wed Anna, and his previous wives had had a total of at least eleven pregnancies between them. He must have known the difference between a female body that had borne children and one that had not. Were Anna’s loose breasts and belly and the “other tokens” Henry mentioned indicative of her having been pregnant at some stage?

  It is hard to imagine she would have had the opportunity, having been brought up strictly near her mother’s elbow, as we read. Yet her innocence could have made her vulnerable to the attentions of some amorous male, possibly one of her many cousins (who might have been regarded as safe company), who seized his opportunity and took advantage of her. She may have been a willing partner: she was, after all, the granddaughter of the libidinous and prolific Kindermacher, and there would later be talk of her being fond of wine and indulging in other excesses, and gossip about secret pregnancies. I did fear that speculating along these lines might be doing a great injustice to Anna, but as I re-researched her story further, I found evidence that could be seen as corroborative. It may be significant that, when it came to providing grounds for an annulment, Henry placed far more reliance on the precontract than he did on nonconsummation. There was talk of Anna’s body being inspected to prove her virginity, which came to nothing. Was Henry concerned that an examination would show her to be no virgin? How would he prove that someone else had deflowered her? Accusing her of fornication could have led to a diplomatic meltdown with Kleve.

  During the annulment proceedings, Henry made contradictory statements about whether Anna had been a virgin on their wedding night. In one, he stated, “I never for love to the woman consented to marry, nor yet, if she brought maidenhead with her [author’s italics], took any from her by true carnal copulation.” Yet he also affirmed that Anna had come to him a virgin. That spared her any examination, and so avoided exposing her lack—if lack there was—of a maidenhead, which in turn could have compromised the King’s case.

  Anna herself stated that she had given herself to one man, and would remain his wife until the bitter death. She agreed to the annulment, “confessing the integrity of her body, the state of [which] remaining entire for any act of carnal knowledge.” She was hardly likely to admit, especially in the circumstances, that she had not come to Henry a virgin. The Act of Parliament confirming the annulment stated: “The Lady Anna has openly confessed that she remains not carnally known of the King’s body.” Was this a qualified statement? Soon afterward, Anna told the councillors that she would “maintain the truth, both touching the integrity and cleanness [purity] of her body.” She told her brother that her body was “preserved with the integrity which I brought into this realm.” Again, in both cases, she may have been telling the strict truth.

  But, in the sarcastic opinion of the reformists, “As to the reply of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other bishops to the King’s letter directing them to judge the case, that they found Anne of Cleves was still a maid, that is a likely thing indeed!” They found it hard to believe that Henry had not deflowered her—and perhaps that she had been a maid anyway.

  Henry VIII’s seventeenth-century biographer, Lord Herbert, refers mysteriously to “secret causes” that could have been used to prove the invalidity of the marriage but were never put forward, and adds that “the King, without great necessity, would not have disclosed [them] because they touched the honor of the lady.” Could those secret causes have been connected with Henry’s oft-voiced doubts about Anna’s virginity? There can be little doubt that, if she had contested the nullity suit, he would have used them against her.

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  Within sixteen months of her divorce, Anna had gained something of a reputation. In December 1541, Chapuys reported his conversation with Sir William Paget about Anna’s behavior and the rumors swirling about her. It seems it was widely known—in London and the Low counties—that she enjoyed wine and other excesses. Maybe her newfound freedom, like the wine, had gone to her head.

  A strange episode that occurred in December 1541 is the basis for another storyline in the novel. This was when the King’s councillors informed him that they had “examined a new matter, viz., that the Lady Anne of Cleves should be delivered of a fair boy, and whose should it be but the King’s Majesty’s, and gotten [back in January] when she was at Hampton Court, which is a most abominable slander.” The baby had allegedly been born late in September. Chapuys says the rumor had been widely circulated.

  What happened is much as described in the novel. The King was most concerned to discover whether there was any basis to the report. It is hard to credit that, at the height of his infatuation with Katheryn Howard, he had slept with Anna. More likely he wanted to know if Anna had committed the kind of misconduct that could have freed him from his financial obligations to her. The great lengths to which the Privy Council went to investigate the matter show how seriously it was regarded. It was treason to slander the King, and treason to speak of his marriage to Anna as valid, which may have accounted for the councillors meeting with an apparent conspiracy of silence.

  Clearly the rumor had come from two sources, and Frances Lilgrave’s refusal to name hers argues either that she had made it up, or that she was protecting someone. Given that Jane Ratsey had also refused to divulge what she knew, it may have been the latter—or the sources they could have named would have led the investigation directly to Anna.

  Although nearly all modern historians insist that Anna had not borne a child, the possibility remains that she had, although it was surely not the King’s. Her movements after the early spring are not documented, and she seems to have spent the year living quietly in the country. With the assistance of her women, she could have concealed a pregnancy and a birth from the rest of her household.

  One could, of course, interpret these sources in different ways, and conclude that Anna was purely the victim of gossip or malice. But the rumors originated from a source close to her, which may be significant.

  Was Anna as innocent as the conversation with Lady Rutland, Lady Rochford, and Lady Edgcumbe (which is repeated
almost verbatim in the novel) suggests? It was a strange conversation, especially since, the following month, Anna’s chamberlain, Lord Rutland, could not understand her because she had not yet learned sufficient English. Yet, in the reported exchange with her ladies, her English is lucid and flawless. Possibly she had managed to make herself understood through an interpreter—or the ladies put words into her mouth. Obviously they were aware that her marriage had not been consummated; and they had probably been given official instructions to get Anna to admit it, to provide grounds for an annulment, for this conversation appears in a deposition in support of the dissolution of the marriage.

  But was Anna as innocent as she made out? Her actual words, if she said them at all, may have been ironic. It seems inconceivable that she had reached the age of twenty-four without finding out about sex. She had grown up in a court populated by her grandfather’s bastards. Even if she had never speculated about that, or asked awkward questions, and her mother had so far forgotten her duty to inform her daughter what happened in the marriage bed, the carvings Anna must have seen on the nuptial headboard were pretty explicit. Henry’s pawing of her body on her wedding night, his attempts to consummate their marriage, and the crucial, oft-voiced expectation that she would bear him children cannot but have alerted her to the fact that there was more to bed sport than kissing.

  I found Otho von Wylich in the splendid genealogy that appears on the website http://vanosnabrugge.org. It shows Anna’s family connections and those who accompanied her to England. I discovered it when I was looking for a cousin of similar age to Anna, to portray as her seducer. The story of their love affair is fiction, of course, as are the narratives of her pregnancies and her son, Johann—stories that developed organically as my imagination took wings. But Otho von Wylich did come to England in Anna’s train, and did serve for seventeen years in her household. His dismissal was as described in the novel.

  “John of Jülich” is also listed (in Anna’s will) as being in her household toward the end of her life. It’s uncertain who he was, and unlikely that he was Anna’s bastard Uncle Johann, because the latter was known as the Bastard of Jülich. Although the Bastard had been a member of the escort that brought her to England, he is not listed as being in her household in July 1540, while the John of Jülich to whom she left a small bequest in 1557 seems to have been of lower rank.

  Apart from the storylines above, the novel is based very closely on the historical record, although I have modernized the language in the sources in places. In the passages covering the negotiations and preparations for Anna’s marriage, I have telescoped events slightly, to avoid repetition. Events that took place over a month or so are portrayed, roughly timeously, in fewer scenes.

  Those negotiations for Anna’s marriage, her journey to England, her months as queen, her houses and household, and the later tensions in the latter are much as described, as is the career of Sir Thomas Cawarden, who probably was involved in every conspiracy against Mary I. Anna did come under suspicion during Wyatt’s rebellion (although there is no record of her being questioned, as shown here), and Queen Mary never showed warm friendship until Anna was dying.

  I composed Henry VIII’s first letter to Anna, basing it on his love letters to Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour.

  We don’t know for certain if Florence of Diaceto was intriguing with the French. The impounding of his papers suggests that he was thought to have been acting on Anna’s behalf, and that she was involved in the political maneuverings of her brother and Henri II of France against England. In 1555, Dr. Wotton, now ambassador to France, wrote to Queen Mary’s Secretary of State that Florence, having been in trouble, had left England, and had been seen in Paris. Wotton had him watched, and was informed that he had met many times with the Constable of France and the whole Council, which led Wotton to believe that he was “here for no good intent.” But we hear no more of the matter.

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  One of the carved wooden panels Anna ordered is now at Hever Castle. The fireplace (now at Reigate Priory) was once at Bletchingley, and may actually have been made for Henry VIII’s Nonsuch Palace. Given that we know Anna installed carved wood panels in a later house of hers, it could have been she who commissioned the chimney breast. Anna’s glimpse of Cawarden as she leaves Nonsuch was inspired by stories that ghostly sounds of a banquet have been heard there, and people have reported seeing a tall man with a thin face standing by the eastern gate, watching the park or the palace; he wears a dark cloak and hat and has a forlorn or fixed expression.

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  The nature of Anna’s final illness is unknown. By the spring of 1557, when her health began seriously to decline, she had probably been ailing for some time. Some have speculated that she was suffering from cancer, which is possible. It is clear from her will that her physician, Mother Lowe (who had perhaps become a mother figure to her), her ladies, kitchen staff, household officers, and servants had all looked after her in her final illness, “taking great pains” to tempt her with food and see to her comfort, which suggests she was bedridden and needed careful nursing. She was also attended by her surgeon, Alard Blundey. Barber-surgeons like Blundey, who was rewarded in Anna’s will, performed not only operations, but also dentistry and blood-letting, believed to balance the body’s “humors” for the maintenance of good health. Blundey may have operated on Anna, although I have not shown that in the novel—the final passages are harrowing enough. Surgery without anesthesia was sheer agony, but a modern examination of the surgeon’s chest found aboard the Mary Rose showed that Tudor practitioners were far more skilled and advanced in their craft than was hitherto suspected. If Anna did undergo an operation, it was to no avail.

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  I owe a debt of gratitude to the historian Elizabeth Norton, who afforded me new insights on Anna and drew my attention to the dispatches of Karl Harst, the ambassador of Kleve, which offer a somewhat different narrative of her divorce from the official English sources. Ms. Norton’s excellent biography of Anna was especially helpful.

  For the sources I consulted, the reader is referred to the extensive bibliographies in my Tudor nonfiction books, notably The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Henry VIII: King and Court. Among the many works I read while updating my research, the following were very useful: Anne of Cleves by Mary Saaler (London, 1995); In the Footsteps of the Six Wives of Henry VIII by Sarah Morris and Natalie Grueninger (Stroud, 2016), and The Marrying of Anne of Cleves by Retha Warnicke (Cambridge, 2000). The Internet Sacred Text Archive was the basis of my research into German legends. The passages relating to the treatment of cancer draw heavily on A Discourse of the Whole Art of Chyrurgerie (1612) by Peter Lowe.

  I am hugely grateful to my editors, Mari Evans at Headline in the UK and Susanna Porter at Ballantine in the USA, for commissioning this book and giving me the chance to bring Anna to life—and for their terrific support. I owe a large debt of gratitude to Flora Rees for her sympathetic, creative approach to editing, which has helped me to craft a far better book. Special thanks also to Caitlin Raynor, Jo Liddiard, Sara Adams, Frances Edwards, Jennifer Harlow, Phil Norman, and all the fabulous team at Headline in London; and to Emily Hartley, Melanie DeNardo, Kim Hovey, and the amazing team at Ballantine in New York.

  I am indebted, as ever, to my agent, Julian Alexander, who goes above and beyond to support me, and has now put up with me for over thirty years!

  Lastly, a loving thank-you to Rankin, my husband, without whom I could not function. You will never know how much I appreciate all you do for me.

  To John and Jo, with all my love.

  And to Beth, with thanks for your generous help.

  BY ALISON WEIR

  FICTION

  SIX TUDOR QUEENS

  Anna of Kleve, The Princess in the Portrait

  Jane Seymour, The Haunted Queen

  Anne B
oleyn, A King’s Obsession

  Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen

  The Marriage Game

  A Dangerous Inheritance

  Captive Queen

  The Lady Elizabeth

  Innocent Traitor

  NONFICTION

  ENGLAND’S MEDIEVAL QUEENS

  Queens of the Conquest

  The Lost Tudor Princess: The Life of Lady Margaret Douglas

  Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World

  Mary Boleyn: The Mistress of Kings

  The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn

  Mistress of the Monarchy: The Life of Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster

  Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in Medieval England

  Mary Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley

  Henry VIII: The King and His Court

  Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life

  The Life of Elizabeth I

  The Children of Henry VIII

  The Wars of the Roses

  The Princes in the Tower

  The Six Wives of Henry VIII

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALISON WEIR is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Jane Seymour, The Haunted Queen; Anne Boleyn, A King’s Obsession; Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen; The Marriage Game; A Dangerous Inheritance; Captive Queen; The Lady Elizabeth; and Innocent Traitor and numerous historical biographies, including The Lost Tudor Princess, Elizabeth of York, Mary Boleyn, The Lady in the Tower, Mistress of the Monarchy, Henry VIII, Eleanor of Aquitaine, The Life of Elizabeth I, and The Six Wives of Henry VIII. She lives in Surrey, England, with her husband.