The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Countdown

by Ridgway, Claire

  The first point "was the most difficult of all", according to Cromwell, but he did say that "he thought the King, his master, would readily accede to what might be agreed upon between the deputies of both parties" and reminded Chapuys of the "wonderful things he had achieved ever since he had had the administration of the King's affairs". Cromwell was stalling, which was all he could do, but he appeared to be giving Chapuys hope of an agreement. What Chapuys didn't know was that Cromwell was also corresponding with Martin Luther7 and Justus Jonas8 in Germany, and negotiating a potential treaty between England and the Schmalkaldic League. Talk about keeping your options open!

  March 1536 – Act for the Suppression of Lesser Monasteries

  Brief Background

  In 1534, Henry VIII broke with Rome and became the supreme head of the church in England via the Act of Supremacy. In the same year, the collection and payments of annates ('first fruits', or the first year's profits of a benefice) to Rome was abolished by the Act in Absolute Restraint of Annates (25 Hen. VIII c. 20). This was followed, in January 1535, by the appointing of a commission to conduct a survey of the income of ecclesiastical property in England and Wales. The commission was known as the Valor Ecclesiasticus and those under its employ were to:

  "examyn, serche, and enquyre, by all the wayes and meanes that they can by their dyscrecions, of and for the true and just, hole and entyere yerely values of all the manors, londes, tenements, hereditaments, rents, tythes, offerings, emoluments, and all other profittes as well spirituall as temporall apperteyninge or belonginge to any Archebushopricke, &c. within the lymyttes of their Commyssion."1

  The commissioners collected this information and produced a financial statement for every religious community, which was given to the King's Exchequer.

  Following on from the Valor, which was a financial audit of the religious institutions for tax purposes, a further series of visitations of the monasteries started in the summer of 1535 and was not completed until early 1536. The commissioners of this visitation were given a set of questions to ask each monk. The questions covered everything from their qualifications and information on daily life, to whether they were staying true to their vows and vocation.2

  The Act for the Suppression of Lesser Monasteries

  The results of the visitations and the reports of the commissioners were made into a report, the Compendium Compertorum (Comperta), and shared with Parliament when it convened on 4th February 1536. The abuses and corruption which had allegedly been uncovered in the smaller monasteries led to the passing of the Act for the Suppression (or Dissolution) of the Lesser Monasteries in March 1536. The preamble of the Act stated:

  "For as much as manifest sin, vicious, carnal and abominable living is daily used and committed among the little and small abbeys, priories, and other religious houses of monks, canons, and nuns, where the congregation of such religious persons is under the number of twelve persons, whereby the governors of such religious houses, and their convent, spoil, destroy, consume, and utterly waste, as well their churches, monasteries, priories, principal houses, farms, granges, lands, tenements, and hereditaments, as the ornaments of their churches, and their goods and chattels, to the high displeasure of Almighty God, slander of good religion, and to the great infamy of the king's highness and the realm, if redress should not be had thereof. And albeit that many continual visitations hath been heretofore had, by the space of two hundred years and more, for an honest and charitable reformation of such unthrifty, carnal, and abominable living, yet nevertheless little or none amendment is hitherto had, but their vicious living shamelessly increases and augments, and by a cursed custom so rooted and infected, that a great multitude of the religious persons in such small houses do rather choose to rove abroad in apostasy, than to conform themselves to the observation of good religion; so that without such small houses be utterly suppressed, and the religious persons therein committed to great and honourable monasteries of religion in this realm, where they may be compelled to live religiously, for reformation of their lives, there can else be no redress nor reformation in that behalf."3

  This Act affected the "lesser monasteries"; those with fewer than twelve members and those worth less than £200 per year. They were to be dissolved, their heads pensioned off and their members to become secularized or moved to larger monasteries "where they may be compelled to live religiously for reformation of their lives". The monasteries' possessions were to be given to the King and his heirs "to do and use therewith his and their own wills, to the pleasure of Almighty God, and to the honour and profit of this realm."

  Historians are divided over the motives of Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII in devising this statute. Some see its purpose as reform and a straightforward solution to the "incurable depravity"4 in the smaller monasteries. Others see it as an excuse for the Crown to benefit from their wealth and lands5 under the guise of reform. With hindsight, knowing about the later widespread dissolution of the monasteries, we can view this Act as nothing more than a first step in a money-making exercise. It could also be seen as a way of ridding the realm of the abuses and superstition that reformers associated with Rome.

  6th March 1536

  In a letter to the Empress, written on 6th March 1536, Dr Pedro Ortiz reported:

  "Anne Bolans is now in fear of the King deserting her one of these days, in order to marry another lady."1

  The sentence comes after his report of Catherine of Aragon's burial and he does not elaborate in any way, apart from saying at the end of the letter that "At any rate, it must be owned that though the King himself was not converted like St. Paul after his fall, at least his adulterous wife has miscarried of a son."

  It is safe to assume that Ortiz believed that Anne's miscarriage made Anne vulnerable, but any information he may have had regarding Anne's state of mind would be second-hand because Ortiz was in Rome at the time! It really cannot be used as evidence of a breakdown in Anne and Henry's relationship.

  18th March 1536 – Jane in Favour

  On the 18th March 1536, Chapuys reported:

  "The new amours of this King with the young lady of whom I have before written still go on, to the intense rage of the concubine; and the King 15 days ago put into his chamber the young lady's brother."

  Jane Seymour, and her brother Edward Seymour, who had been appointed to the privy chamber, were obviously rising in favour, and Anne Boleyn didn't like it one bit. Henry would have expected Anne to ignore his flirtation, as Catherine had done before her, but it would have been natural for Anne to have been jealous and to feel vulnerable. After all, her marriage depended on her keeping the King's love. Anne had set a dangerous precedent in rising from lady-in-waiting to Queen.

  1st April 1536 - Chapuys, Cromwell, Jane Seymour and the Conservatives

  On the 1st April 1536, Chapuys reported a meeting between himself, "the young marquis[Exeter], the widowed countess of Kildare, lord Montagu, and other gentlemen" where he was informed that Anne Boleyn and Cromwell were "on bad terms" and that there was talk of the King marrying another, "the daughter of France".1 In the same report, Chapuys wrote of his concern for Cromwell regarding what Cromwell had told him of Anne's threat, namely "that she (Anne Boleyn) would like to see his head off his shoulders." Chapuys noted that his advice to Cromwell was that "He ought to take care not to offend or over-irritate her, or else he must renounce all hope of that perfect reconciliation we both were trying to bring about. I therefore begged and entreated him, in such an event, to guard against her attacks more effectually than the cardinal (Wolsey) had done, which I hoped his dexterity and prudence would be able to accomplish". Chapuys added that he hoped that Cromwell would soon have another royal mistress.

  Later in the letter to Charles V, Chapuys described how he heard that the King had sent Jane Seymour a letter and "a purse full of sovereigns". According to Chapuys, Jane kissed the letter and begged the messenger to tell the King "that she was a gentlewoman of good and honorable parents, without reproach, and th
at she had no greater riches in the world than her honor, which she would not injure for a thousand deaths, and that if he wished to make her some present in money she begged it might be when God enabled her to make some honorable match." She had been coached well and there were definite echoes of Anne Boleyn in her reaction to the King. Of course, it could be that she was sincere in her words, wanting to protect her virtue, her reputation and honour.

  Chapuys went on to write more of Jane Seymour and the King:

  "The said Marchioness has sent to me to say that by this the King's love and desire towards the said lady was wonderfully increased, and that he had said she had behaved most virtuously, and to show her that he only loved her honorably, he did not intend henceforth to speak with her except in presence of some of her kin; for which reason the King has caused Cromwell to remove from a chamber to which the King can go by certain galleries without being perceived, and has lodged there the eldest brother of the said lady with his wife, in order to bring thither the same young lady, who has been well taught for the most part by those intimate with the King, who hate the concubine, that she must by no means comply with the King's wishes except by way of marriage; in which she is quite firm. She is also advised to tell the King boldly how his marriage is detested by the people, and none consider it lawful; and on the occasion when she shall bring forward the subject, there ought to be present none but titled persons, who will say the same if the King put them upon their oath of fealty."

  Chapuys was of the opinion that Jane was being coached to appeal to the King and to make him think that his people hated Anne and did not accept his marriage to her. This party of plotters – the Seymours and conservatives like the Exeters – then approached Chapuys for his assistance and that of the Emperor, explaining that their plan would help the Princess Mary, stop heresy in England and save the King from his "abominable and incestuous marriage". Chapuys passed all this information on to the Emperor, saying that he would "consult" with the plotters. Chapuys seemed convinced that Anne was out and Jane was in.

  Jane and Anne

  Thomas Fuller, the 17th century historian, gave an account of an altercation between Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour when Jane first arrived at court:

  "It is currently traditioned, that at her first coming to court, queen Anne Boleyn, espying a jewel pendant about her neck, snatched thereat (desirous to see, the other unwilling to show it,) and casually hurt her hand with her own violence; but it grieved her heart more, when she perceived it the king's picture by himself bestowed upon her, who from this day forward dated her own declining, and the other's ascending, in her husband's affection."2

  Fuller does not give a source for this story so it is impossible to know whether it really did happen; even he refers to it as a 'tradition'. Another legend, possibly based on the same source, is a story told in a book about Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria and lady-in-waiting to Mary I. Henry Clifford, who transcribed an ancient manuscript on the life of Jane Dormer, reported "scratching and bye blows between the queen and her maid"3 when Sir Francis Bryan took Jane to court and placed her with Anne Boleyn. However, Jane Dormer was not born until two years after Anne Boleyn's death, so could hardly have witnessed the event. Even if it was a family story passed down from Jane's grandmother, Jane Newdigate, it has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Chapuys never heard this story; he would have definitely reported it to the Emperor if he had.

  2nd April 1536 – A Controversial Passion Sunday Sermon

  On the 2nd April 1536, Anne Boleyn's almoner, John Skip, preached an incredibly controversial sermon on the Old Testament story of Queen Esther. This sermon did not help her already troubled relationship with Cromwell.

  As well as serving as a clarification of Anne Boleyn's reformist religious stance, the sermon acted as "Anne's call to courtiers and counsellors alike to change the advice they were giving the king and to reject the lure of personal gain."1 In this sermon, as Eric Ives2 points out, Henry VIII was characterized as King Ahasuerus. The latter was deceived by his adviser, Haman (Cromwell) into ordering the killing of the Jews (the English clergy in this case). The Jews were saved when the King's mind was changed by his wife, the good Queen Esther (Anne Boleyn).

  As Anne's almoner, John Skip must have had Anne's permission and blessing to preach this sermon, and it is likely that it was actually her idea. Anne had just quarrelled with Thomas Cromwell over the dissolution of the monasteries. It was not that she disagreed with this reform; she simply felt that the proceeds should be used on education and on charitable causes3 rather than to make the King richer. There was no mistaking that this was a public attack on Thomas Cromwell, the King's main adviser.

  John Skip did get into trouble for his words. Letters and Papers has records of his sermon and the following record:

  "A paper of singular moderation and ability, entitled "Interrogatories and articles to be administered to the preacher who preached the sermon in the Court on Passion Sunday," on these words: Quis ex vobis arguet me de peccato? [which of you will convince me of sin?] for preaching seditious doctrines on these words, and slandering "the King's highness, his counsellors, his lords and nobles, and his whole Parliament."

  Inc.: "First, whether this was his theme, Quis ex vobis arguet me de peccato?

  Ends: "Item, finally, be it required of the preacher to bring forth and show his sermon in writing; and if he refuse so to do, or say he hath it not in writing, then be it inquired whether he did never write it, or never showed it to any man in writing before or since it was preached."4

  Primary Source Reports on Skip's Sermon

  "A sermon preached by Mr. Skyppe, in the King's chapel, upon Passion Sunday, in the year of Our Lord 1536, on the text Quis ex vobis arguet me de peccato? defending the clergy from their defamers and from the immoderate zeal of men in holding up to public reprobation the faults of any single clergyman as if it were the fault of all. He insisted upon the example of Ahasuerus, who was moved by a wicked minister to destroy the Jews. He urged that a King's councillor ought to take good heed what advice he gave in altering ancient things, and that no people wished to take away the ceremonies of the Church, such as holy water, holy bread, &c. That alterations ought not to be made except in cases of necessity. That in the present Parliament there were men of the greatest learning and ability, and perfect freedom and moderation in discussion. He described the character of the debates in Parliament, lamented the decay of the universities, and insisted on the necessity of learning."5

  "The preacher insisted on the strict following of God's Word:—that Christ chose ignorant followers, to teach men that nobility standeth not in worth but grace; and he cited the example of Solomon to show that he lost his true nobility towards the end of his life, by taking new wives and concubines. He insisted on the need of a King being wise in himself, and resisting evil counsellors who tempted him to ignoble actions, by the history of Rehoboam; observing that if a stranger visited this realm, and saw those who were called noble, he would conceive that all true nobility was banished from England. He warned them against rebuking the clergy, even if they were sinful, as rebukers were often rebuked, like Nebuchadnezzar, who was God's instrument to punish the Jews, "and yet was damned for his labour." Against evil councillors, who suggested alteration in established customs, he instanced the history of Haman and Ahasuerus. He then explained and defended the ancient ceremonies of the Church (as above). He concluded with a complaint on the moderation of the High Court of Parliament."6

  The full text of John Skip's sermon can be read in The National Archives, reference SP6/1 "Folio 8 Sermon preached by John Skip in the King's Chapel on Passion Sunday 1536", although the handwriting is rather challenging!

  Hugh Latimer's Sermon

  John Skip was not the only chaplain Anne called on to preach about her views on the dissolution of the monasteries. She also asked Hugh Latimer to preach in front of the King. Latimer preached on Luke 20 verses 9-16, the parable of the vineyard. Here is a modern text of that parable
from the New International Bible:

  "A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.

  Then the owner of the vineyard said, 'What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.' But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. 'This is the heir,' they said. 'Let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

  What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others." When the people heard this, they said, "God forbid!""

  As you can see, it is a fitting text when you consider the first fruits and taxes that the monasteries had to pay. William Latymer wrote of this sermon in his "Cronickille of Anne Bulleyne". He explained that Hugh Latimer emphasised that the owner of the vineyard did not destroy the vineyard when the tenants could not pay him in fruit. Instead, he commanded it " to be fearmed and letton to others, whoo shoulde by their industroye and housebandrye amende the negligence of the other fearmers". In other words, the owner let it be used by others who would do the right thing. Latimer, and Anne through him, were saying that instead of dissolving the monasteries, the King could "converte the abbeys and prioryes to places of studye and goode letres and to the contynuall releve of the poore."7 It was obviously something that Anne felt strongly about.

  William Latymer also recorded that Latimer's sermon gave "the governors of the other religious houses" hope that the Queen may be able to help them if they petitioned her. They therefore sent a "brotherhood" to call on the Queen, who lectured them on their "detestable sleightes and frivelous ceremonyes" and made it plain that in her opinion the dissolution was "a deservid plague from almightie God", punishing them for their "lewdenes".8 They had judged her incorrectly, she wasn't against the dissolution, she was against the Crown's plans for the monasteries' assets. That was Anne's stance: dissolution was necessary for reform but the money should go to education and to relief for the poor.