Great Harry
Page 26
But Boleyn was to rise still higher by trading on his younger daughter's charms. While she was still in France he put her at the king's disposal, and Henry's first reaction was to try to marry her to the Irish chieftain James Butler, to settle an old rivalry between the Boleyns and Butlers over the earldom of Ormond. The negotiations came to nothing, and Anne came back to England marriageable and unattached. She made herself conspicuous among Katherine's maids of honor, kept an observant eye on her sister's interesting situation as wife and royal mistress, and, for her pastime, lent her decorative looks to court pageants. With her sister, Mary Brandon, and four others Anne took part in an entertainment called "Le Chateau Vert" soon after her arrival, wearing a white satin gown and jeweled bonnet and pretending to defend the castle with missiles made of sugarplums. Among the knights who assaulted the castle was the king, but if he was attracted then by his mistress' sister he did nothing to indicate it.
Instead it was left to Wolsey to guide Anne's destiny over the next few years. The cardinal's entry into Anne's affairs was an abrupt one, and left a painful scar. Anne and young Henry Percy, heir to the earl of Northumberland and a member of Wolsey's household, fell in love. In his infatua-
tion Percy, a sensitive though somewhat violent youth, chose to forget that he was already promised to a daughter of the earl of Shrewsbury, Mary Talbot. Wolsey remembered, however, and shouted at Percy for becoming enamored of "that foolish girl yonder in the court." The young man had no choice but to give in, though his marriage to Mary Talbot proved to be miserably unhappy. At the time Anne's punishment must have seemed even more severe. She was sent away to Hever, the Boleyn country house, where for some three years at least her sophistication and allure were wasted on the rural gentry. Used to gaiety and variety, Anne had to accustom herself to a dull, uneventful existence made humiliating by the stigma of disgrace. At once heartsick, angry and resentful, she blamed all on Wolsey. 'Tf it ever lay in her power," she swore, "she would work the cardinal as much displeasure."
Finally in 1525 or 1526 Anne came back to court, now a beauty of eighteen or nineteen. Possibly at this time, if not earlier, she had another love affair—with her longtime admirer, the poet Thomas Wyatt. There is reason to think that Anne became Wyatt's mistress, and that years later the poet confessed this to the king and his privy councilors. But whatever the truth of their involvement, Anne and Wyatt could never have indulged their feelings for long—he because he was married (though separated from his wife) and she because she soon became the object of a more commanding passion.^
Sometime in 1526, it would seem, Henry was, in his phrase, "struck with the dart of love" for Anne. His comfortable liaison with Mary Boleyn had come to an end perhaps a year earlier, and for a time, no single favorite took her place. There were certainly women in his life. Looking back on this period some six years later, Norfolk told the imperial ambassador that Henry was "always inclined to amours"—a tendency the imperialists were only too eager to exploit. According to one French report, Charles V was attempting to influence English foreign policy "by means of women who he thinks are favored by the king."'* But before too many months had passed he had begun to prefer one above the others, and for the second time his choice fell on a daughter of his councilor Thomas Boleyn. Characteristically, Henry signaled the course of his affections in nautical terms. Some years earlier he had christened one of his ships the Mary Boleyn: now in 1526 payment for a new ship, the Anne Boleyn, was made from the royal militate accounts.^
There were other signs that the king was in love. He ordered his goldsmiths to make him four gold brooches, one of Venus and cupids, one of a lady holding a heart in her hand, a third of a gentleman lying in a lady's lap, and a fourth of a lady holding a crown. It is tempting to think they may have been made for Anne.® In addition to his ever resplendent dress—a visitor to court in October of 1527 saw him in an elegant suit of black velvet lined with sables, his studs and buttons made of diamonds and pearls—Henry now doused himself often with a perfume of his own invention, a pungent concoction of musk, ambergris, sugar and rose-water.
That the restless, vital king should have been attracted to a fascinating, dark-eyed girl sixteen years his junior poses no mystery. The course
their long, eventful passion took is somewhat harder to account for. Perhaps because she resisted repeating her sister's thankless fate, perhaps because from the start Henry hoped to provide her with a higher destiny, Anne at first became the king's love without becoming his mistress. For years unfulfilled longing bound Henry to Anne with a force more potent than the most powerful aphrodisiac; in his chivalrous imagination she remained the unattainable maiden, the worthy locus of all hope and worship.
Most important, Henry's love for Anne became linked in a unique way to his need for a son. Unlike her predecessors Bessie Blount and Mary Boleyn, Anne came to embody, not merely a distraction from the besetting dilemma of the succession, but an answer to it. She would become not his mistress but his wife. The new marriage would have none of the frustrations or tragedies of the old. No whispered rumors of a curse would overshadow it; there would be no deadbom children, only strong, vigorous sons to carry on the Tudor line.
Once he began to see his way past the snares of his fruitless marriage, the other vexing preoccupations that had so perplexed the king in recent months began to seem less daunting. His passion for Anne renewed and emboldened him to take up the struggle against the forces thwarting him at home and abroad—against the emperor, whose lukewarm allegiance had darkened Henry's vision of conquest in France, against his critical subjects and his intriguing courtiers, against that inner sense of defeat that dispirited him and drained him of energy.
To Londoners it seemed as if the early months of 1527 were devoted to nothing but days of jousting and pageantry and nights of banquets and disguisings. The revelry was misleading; behind the scenes envoys from the French court were meeting in long bargaining sessions with English diplomats, working out the terms of three treaties that would bind the two realms into an alliance sealed with the betrothal of the Princess Mary to the second son of the French king. Though busied with the negotiations Henry found time to give special attention to the celebrations that accompanied them, setting nineteen tailors and five fabric cutters to work fashioning jousting costumes of purple Florentine velvet trimmed in gold fringe and gold lace. He ordered the Flemish and German workmen of his armory to make a suit of armor for the French comte de Turenne, copying as exactly as they could armor made for Henry himself shortly before, said to be the safest design ever invented.^
To judge from the scale of the rejoicings, the newfound amity with the French surpassed all previous diplomatic accords in importance. At Hampton Court the envoys feasted in luxurious abundance, marveling at the edible sculptures served between courses. Culinary artists had been brought in to prepare these masterpieces, in the lifelike forms of beasts, birds and inhabited castles. Jousting courtiers in full armor, soldiers battling with guns and crossbows, leaping knights dancing with ladies—all were brought to life in gilded confections rising above the heavily laden dining tables. At one point a chessboard, complete with chessmen, was set before the guests, made entirely of sweetmeats. In acknowledgment of his skill as a chess player Wolsey gave it to one of the Frenchmen, ordering a
special case built to carry it to France. Every effort was made to overwhelm the visiting diplomats, in order "to make them such triumphant cheer as they may not only wonder at it here, but also make a glorious report in their county to the king's honor and of this realm."®
Crowning the festivities was a great celebration in a new hall and theater built on the tiltyard at Greenwich. Here in a magnificent setting made splendid by the work of dozens of foreign artisans the king entertained the French envoys. The children of his chapel sang for them, and two companies of maskers, among them Henry and nine-year-old Princess Mary, danced an intricate measure. The little princess, her slight form weighed down by her heavy gown and abundant je
wels, was shown off afterward to the representatives of her future husband. As they looked on Henry unbound her fair hair, letting it fall becomingly around her shoulders while he stood back in pride at their approval of his daughter.
As usual, efforts were made to share the spectacle with the people of London. The hall and disguising house were left standing for three or four days after their usefulness ended, their gorgeous contents intact; "all honest persons" were welcomed in to gape at the cupboards of gold and silver plate, the silken carpets and fantastic carvings that decorated the walls. But while a great number of people came, many grumbled at what they saw. The alliance with France greatly disturbed Londoners, who were always predisposed to favor the emperor. Merchants whose businesses depended on uninterrupted trade with Flanders—certain to be ruptured once England and France became allied against the imperialists—joined with the German merchant community in the capital in condemning the negotiations, while the poorer citizens swore "they would have no Frenchman to be king of England."
In the streets and taverns of the city the story of an unwitting clash between the French envoys and two unfortunate apprentices aroused more interest than the gilded banqueting hall and all its furnishings.
One evening several members of the French delegation were going from Blackfriars to the Tailors' Hall. Their way led them past a house where two apprentices were cleaning a gutter and throwing the accumulated sludge into the street; unintentionally the boys hit a French lackey with a clod of filth. The man was unhurt, but the Frenchmen took the incident badly and complained to Wolsey. The cardinal's formidable anger flared and, "too hasty of credence," he sent for the lord mayor and ordered him to imprison everyone in the house from the master down to the meanest servant. The apprentices were locked away in the Tower to await their punishment. It was a full six weeks before the unfortunate householder and his family and servants were allowed to return home. One of the apprentices was in time released from the Tower, lamed by the fetters which had bound his legs and ankles; the other died before he could be freed. "Of the cruelty of the cardinal, and of the pride of the Frenchmen," the chronicler Hall wrote, "much people spake, and would have been revenged on the Frenchmen, if wise men in the city had not appeased it with fair words."^
With the approach of May Day, traditionally the occasion for assaults on foreigners, Wolsey put the city on guard. Nightly watches were set at
some half-dozen points throughout the capital, manned by householders and their servants; at Westminster soldiers stood ready to break up any commotion that might arise, backed up by heavy guns charged to fire. May Day came and went, but still the unrest in the city grew. Handbills critical of the king's Council and especially of Wolsey circulated nightly, warning against the French marriage and threatening the cardinal with punishment as "an enemy to the king and the realm." The authors of these attacks were impossible to apprehend because they were impossible to find; their campaign of slander escalated until by mid-May it was rumored the king meant to relieve Wolsey of his share in the government—a rumor made plausible by the cardinal's withdrawal from court. ^^
In truth Wolsey was ill, and had been for weeks. The stress of the negotiation, the fear that his French allies might betray him at the last moment (or so the imperial ambassador believed), the strain of his frequent "high words" with Norfolk and Tunstall, his chief opponents in the Council, all had taken their toll. When not laid low by indigestion or fever he stormed through his working days, lashing out at those around him and leaving them bewildered by his inconsistent orders. One day his talk would be of nothing but war; he would command all ships taking on goods for Flanders and Spain to be seized and detained in port. The next day, fearful of a popular rising, he would take back these orders in even stronger terms.^^ Hearing that he had been ridiculed in a disguising staged by the law students of Gray's Inn he threatened the actors "in a great fury," and had the author of the work imprisoned in the Fleet. He insisted it was the king who was "sorely displeased," but there could be no doubt whose displeasure had in fact been aroused.^^
As rapprochement with the French proceeded the few remaining ties between England and the empire grew frayed. Communications between the two courts broke down, and after the imperial ambassador de Praet left England in the spring of 1525 the emperor waited more than a year and a half before sending another. By the time Mendoza arrived in December of 1526 events had moved too far to permit the breach to be healed. The king met the ambassador with an annoyed recital of his nephew's grievous shortcomings as an ally: he had accepted English money and used it against English interests, he had negotiated a separate peace with the pope and the French, neglecting his uncle and ally, he had not kept faith. Charles had nothing but words for him, Henry said heatedly; deeds he kept for others.^^
Clearly Henry had passed the point where he would listen to reason. When told that he had not always kept his own obligations he replied "rather in a passion" that the accusation was totally false; he would answer for his honorable conduct "against whomever contradicted him." Each meeting with Mendoza grew more heated, with the king abandoning words for gestures, gesticulating in frustration and "showing his anger even more in manner than in words."^'^ By mid-March the interviews had reached a quarrelsome stalemate, and the ill feeling was not directed to the ambassador alone.
Queen Katherine's awkward and anxious situation in the spring of
1527, Mendoza afterward observed, was entirely the result of her close identification with the interests of her nephew Charles V. She had been out of touch with him for years, yet she continued to look upon herself as his agent at the English court. Her letters to him were full of reproaches for his neglect, but she never failed to assure the emperor of her "readiness for his service"; if he would only send his orders, she wrote, she would do her best to carry them out.^^
By now Katherine had lived nearly two thirds of her life in England, yet according to one English witness she still spoke her adopted language haltingly. Her spelling revealed her heavily accented pronunciation; like the Spanish envoys who came and went from the imperial court she spelled Greenwich "Granuche" and Hampton Court "Antoncurt." Surrounded by her Spanish women and household servants, she preserved a cultural distance between herself and the English, whose peculiarities she noted with the detachment of an outsider. "A small advantage renders them overbearing, and a little adversity makes them despondent," she once remarked of her husband's diplomatic advisers, and it was just this sort of shrewd objectivity, combined with her clearheaded loyalty to her Hapsburg relatives, that made Katherine seem dangerous to Wolsey.
What Wolsey did not see was that in recent years Katherine had paid dearly for her isolation. Hers was a narrow world, enlivened too infrequently by messages or gifts from the outside. One winter a letter came from the faraway lands in America, from Hispaniola, describing curiosities to be sent to her: a ceremonial native gown and a chair or saddle of the kind the island women rode in. He decided against sending parrots, Katherine's correspondent in the New World said, as he feared they would not survive the long sea journey. ^^ Surprises such as this were rare, and did little to alter the austere regimen of Katherine's day, a regimen built around unfailing observance of religious services and meditations. On many days she fasted and, having become a professed sister of the Third Order of Saint Francis, wore a Franciscan habit under her court robes. The queen's devotions made her a "mirror of goodness," yet they brought more resignation into her life than joy. As she advanced more deeply into middle age her troubled marriage weighed her down and occasionally made her morbid. Writing to Wolsey about the proposed marriage of one of her waiting maids, Katherine said that she was concerned to provide for her attendants while she still could, "before God called her to account."^^
Katherine's one unalloyed source of pleasure was her daughter. Everything about the little princess—her demure good manners, her quick mind and well-behaved diligence in learning, her graceful dancing and agile musicianship—gave the qu
een reason to hope that Mary would some day sit on her father's throne. More and more, though, the king appeared to favor his bastard Henry Fitzroy as his heir. Currently there was talk of adding to Fitzroy's titles unprecedented authority as king of Ireland, with vast estates to support his rule in that untamed region. Henry was hoping to make an important marriage for his son as well, and even as he railed in anger at Mendoza he proposed a match for Fitzroy with the emperor's niece Maria.*^
What talk she heard of Fitzroy's advancement distressed Katherine, not only for her daughter's sake but, increasingly, for her own. She was becoming exceedingly uneasy about her position. Wolsey was tightening the ring of suspicion he had thrown around her some years earlier. In addition to maintaining informants among her servants and reading every letter that came and went from her desk he now refused to let her see the imperial ambassador in private, insisting that he be present at their meetings and even then interrupting their conversation on the pretext of an urgent communication from the king. Henry too seemed altered. Once he had listened to his wife's advice; now he turned from it. His passion for Thomas Boleyn's dark-haired daughter was taking an unexpected course, one which threatened much greater harm than a conventional court dalliance.
Sometime in March of 1527 Katherine formed a darker conviction. In one of his brief visits with the queen Mendoza brought her a welcome letter from her nephew, and she sent an immediate reply. To avoid Wolsey's spies her message had to be a verbal one, carried by her physician Ferdinand de Victoria. Through her envoy she told the emperor that her husband was secretly attempting to divorce her.