Young and Damned and Fair

by Gareth Russell

  Watching all this in the throng of courtiers and servants was Eustace Chapuys, whose government was initially perturbed to hear that Anne had been invited back to court. In a letter to the Emperor’s sister, Chapuys promised that if there was any sign of Anne’s rehabilitation, “I will seize every opportunity of indirectly thwarting it.”58 As he observed the royal reunion, Chapuys unknowingly concurred with the French ambassador’s assessment to his government that Anne’s appearance at Hampton Court was a public relations exercise and that rumors of her elevation, much less restoration, were baseless fantasies.59 Since he did not regard Anne as a threat to the Hapsburg agenda, Chapuys could afford to be impressed by Catherine’s handling of the situation and praised the “favour and courtesy” she showed to her predecessor.

  After supper, the King, the Queen, and the ex-queen “conversed for a while in the most gracious manner,” until the King retired for the night and left the ladies to lead the celebrations that were not due to stop for two more days. Catherine and Anne danced a duet together before the revelers were invited to join them. For the second dance, Catherine and Anne each chose a young man from the King’s privy chamber staff as a partner. The privy chamber’s gentlemen could be relied upon to know the steps and to keep up a steady flow of pleasant conversation as the musicians played into the night.

  We do not know the name of Catherine or Anne’s male partners, and presumably they would have changed with each new dance, but whoever they were they were unlikely to have recognized Anne of Cleves as the shy, angular, tongue-tied princess in hideous pearl bonnets, whose one-year anniversary would have fallen on the same night as she was dancing with her replacement. She had put on weight, which suited her, and she filled out the numerous new dresses she had bought herself in retirement.60 The woman who emerged from gilded seclusion in Düsseldorf with no language but German and a total ignorance of music, dancing, or cards was now fluent in English, sumptuously dressed, dispatching perfect gifts to her ex-husband, and pirouetting in public as if she was devoid of worries.61

  On the second day of her visit, she had dinner with the King and Queen and, according to Chapuys, “there was again conversation, amusement and mirth, and on the King retiring to his apartments, as on the previous night, the Queen and Lady Anne danced together.”62 They were interrupted when a messenger knelt before Catherine to present her with two small lapdogs and a ring, gifts from her soon-to-be slumbering husband. Apparently, Catherine was as impressed as anyone with Anne’s chutzpah and perhaps genuinely sympathetic to her situation, because she immediately passed the presents over to her.63 After dinner, Anne and her two new puppies went to her apartments to oversee the packing, which took two more hours, before her horse was brought to one of the courtyards and she rode off to her own palace, six miles away, at Richmond. Knowing that she owed her position and continued freedom to Henry, Anne had behaved impeccably, and with more land due to be signed over to her on January 17, her subservience at Hampton Court was shrewdly theatrical.64

  The visit had been a success for Queen Catherine as well. She had managed to avoid any show of tasteless triumph, and her performance had impressed lifelong courtiers. The next few months saw Catherine in a mood of increasing confidence. It may have been around this time that she decided to reprimand her stepdaughter by making good on her threat to dismiss one of her maids. During Christmas, Chapuys told Maria of Austria that “the Princess has not yet visited the new queen, though she has on this New Year’s day sent her a present, at which the King, her father, has been much pleased.”65 Henry’s relief at Mary’s gift to Catherine evidently did not last, and the fact that he sent her “two most magnificent new year’s gifts” in his name and Catherine’s perhaps suggests that he organized the presents on his disgruntled wife’s behalf.66

  On January 17, the same day as Anne of Cleves received her next batch of rent-generating lands, the poet, courtier, and diplomat Sir Thomas Wyatt was arrested and sent to the Tower on suspicion of treason. Wyatt, who was both repulsed by and addicted to life at court, had most recently served as Henry’s ambassador to the Hapsburgs—despite his way with words, it was Wyatt who had caused a scene by thoughtlessly deploying the term “ingratitude” in a conversation with the Emperor—and before that he had been a close friend of Thomas Cromwell. His house was searched, one of his servants was imprisoned, and another wave of arrests was expected, plunging courtiers into dread as they remembered a similar environment three years earlier when Sir Geoffrey Pole was taken and the White Rose horror unfolded.67 The news that the English ambassador in France, Sir John Wallop, was recalled from Paris the day after Wyatt’s arrest deepened the chill. Wallop was as prominent a conservative as Wyatt was a reformist, provoking fears of a tit-for-tat game of reprisals from the respective sides which, as usual, would probably claim as collateral damage the lives or careers of hapless courtiers who spent their days treading the path of deliberate neutrality.68

  On the surface, life continued as normal. Catherine was in good health and high spirits in the first week of February.69 There was another round of official receptions, for Sir James Campbell, a Scottish diplomat traveling to represent his king at the Hapsburg court.70 Catherine’s chancellor, Sir Thomas Denys, who also oversaw the management of the Prince of Wales’s estates, was defending himself before the Privy Council after a complaint was made against him by tenants on royal land in Dartmoor Forest.71 All three of the main men in Catherine’s life—her husband and two uncles—were preparing to leave her: the King and his councillors were going to conduct business in London for a few days, the Duke of Norfolk was heading north to inspect English fortifications on the border with Scotland, and Uncle William had been picked to replace Sir John Wallop as ambassador to France.72 The government had clearly learned their lesson from Bonner’s rudeness—William went with the reminder that he must use immaculate manners when dealing with the French royal family.73

  * * *

  I. The sitter’s broach, once cited as the Ormond falcon and thus proof that it is a portrait of a Boleyn, is in fact too tiny, even upon magnification, to show anything clearly.

  II. Henry VIII’s youngest sister, Mary (d. 1533), married King Louis XII of France and, after his death, Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. They were the maternal grandparents of Lady Jane Grey.

  Chapter 13

  * * *

  Lent

  I have read in old books that some for as just causes have by kings and queens been pardoned by the suit of good folks.

  —Mary Boleyn (d. 1543)

  On February 7, 1541, the King and some of his councillors went into London for three days on business, while the Queen stayed at Hampton Court with her household.1 When he returned from the city, the King was irritated to hear that some of the defenses built during the invasion scare of 1538–39 were already beginning to crumble. The ramparts near Dover, Portsmouth, Southampton, and various other points along the southern coastline had already partially collapsed, and some of their sister structures had been damaged by the incoming tide which, considering their location, cannot have been an unanticipated factor. Their deterioration justified Charles de Marillac’s earlier suspicion that more effort had gone into making the defenses visually impressive than into making them durable.2

  Worrying news was also coming from the north, where the Scottish Parliament was preparing to pass legislation that confirmed the kingdom’s commitment to Roman Catholicism. The year before, Henry’s representative in Edinburgh had reported conversations that seemed to indicate the King, who was Henry’s nephew, applauded some of his uncle’s ecclesiastical policies, yet James V’s government was now passing bills that stressed a traditional Catholic view of the seven sacraments, encouraged “worship to be had of the Virgin Mary,” declared “that no man argue the Pope’s authority,” protected saints’ images from Protestants who wished to destroy them, and outlined harsher punishments for heresy.3 Scotland was too close to the parts of England where conservative religious sympa
thies had birthed the Pilgrimage of Grace uprising in 1536 for this development to pass without causing worry in London. It made the Duke of Norfolk’s mission to inspect defenses on the Anglo-Scottish border doubly pressing. Persuading James V to repudiate papal authority was an ongoing and unsuccessful feature of Henry VIII’s foreign policy in the 1530s and early 1540s. The English consistently underestimated the depth of James’s devotion to his faith and dismissed his protestations of piety as proof that he must be dominated by the Scottish episcopacy, with the result that they misinterpreted his motives and leapt on any ephemeral sign that he might change his mind by rebelling against his “handlers.”4

  At Hampton Court, the courtiers still lived under a pall. Thomas Wyatt and John Wallop remained in prison, more arrests were expected, and conversation in the palace antechambers predicted Wyatt’s execution.5 An observer wrote that “although he is more regretted than any man arrested in England these three years, both by Englishmen and foreigners, no man is bold enough to say a word for him.”6 It was tacitly understood that John Wallop was in less danger—although his conservatism was well known, he seemed to have been tossed into the Tower “due to his having said something in favour of Pope Paul.”7 Courtiers interpreted Wallop’s spell in jail as an attempt to teach him a lesson, rather than a prelude to his death. Still, memories of the White Rose intrigue were fresh. Many people were nervous, and the debates over the possible outcomes did nothing to soothe frayed nerves. Wallop might, like the Countess of Salisbury, be spared the axe to spend years in prison. When summoned home from his embassy to France, Wallop had suspected it was because he was in trouble with his King. Every courtier or member of the local gentry who encountered him on his journey from Dover to London was under strict and horrible instructions to “let him pass on without suspicion” to make sure Wallop put himself into the government’s hands without a fuss.8 Desperate to prove his loyalty, the fifty-year-old Wallop tried to surrender himself to Sir Richard Long, who, remembering his orders, would not accept. Wallop broke down in tears in front of Long, terrified and confused that he might be considered a traitor.9 By imprisoning a reformist and conservative at the same time, the King was reminding all his courtiers that both sides were at his mercy.

  Henry was voicing his intention to go south to inspect the disintegrating strongholds when he began to feel unwell.10 He took to his bed with a fever, which de Marillac thought “should rather have profited than hurt him, for he is very stout.”11 Henry did not have time to sweat out the weight de Marillac thought he could stand to lose. He felt better by February 23, when the council sent a letter to the Duke of Norfolk informing him that the King had recovered after a few days of sickness.12 They were wrong. The fever was tertian, a malarial strain, that caused the King’s ulcer to close over. He was in such pain that for a few days his entourage were genuinely afraid that he was going to die. The Privy Council and Privy Chamber worked together to stifle news of their master’s infirmity. Discussions about rebuilding the southern defenses and the fortifications at Calais continued in council, as if nothing were wrong, but ambassadors and courtiers knew that something was amiss. From her windows, the Queen could see the effects of tightened security—the usual flow of petitioners and place-seekers trying to get into the palace met with questions about their intentions, and more often than not they were sent away. When the doctors finally managed to pierce the ulcer and alleviate some of his pain, Henry sank into what the French envoy called a mal d’ésprit.13 That unhappiness turned outwards and Henry began to threaten his advisers—he accused them of putting their own needs above his and undermining his policies with their flattery and greed. He missed Thomas Cromwell, charging his no doubt terrified councillors that “by false accusations, they made him put to death the most faithful servant he ever had.”14 He also raged against his subjects’ ingratitude. Having heard that “his subjects in divers places murmured at the changes which, contrary to their ancient liberties, are imposed upon them, and at their ill treatment for religious opinions,” Henry ranted that “he had an unhappy people to govern whom he would shortly make so poor that they would not have the boldness nor the power to oppose him.”15 Either because he was embarrassed at his physical condition or in too low spirits to take comfort from her company, Henry ordered that Catherine was not allowed to visit him and the Queen was left rattled by his decision.16

  The King’s temper did not improve during Shrovetide. Usually a time of celebration before the penitential season of Lent began on Ash Wednesday, it was sometimes known as “Fat Tuesday,” or by its French translation “mardi gras,” and the English celebrated it with rich foods like pancakes, which used up all the ingredients they would not be allowed during Lent. The court usually marked the holiday with feasting, cockfighting, plays, and dancing. In 1541, all those entertainments were canceled. Courtiers were encouraged to go home, petitioners were still turned away, and an isolated Catherine, for the first time, felt the chill fear of uncertainty that so many of her husband’s companions had endured for years. De Marillac wrote in a letter to his own king that Henry “spent Shrovetide without recreation, even of music, in which he used to take as much pleasure as any prince in Christendom, and stayed in Hampton Court with so little company that his Court resembled more a private family than a king’s train.”17

  In observance of Lent, fish replaced meat, eggs and cheese were removed, sexual intercourse was discouraged, and examination of one’s conscience was exhorted as the Church marked the temptations of Christ in the wilderness with a season of self-denial.18 In the magnificent Chapel Royal at Hampton Court, the riot of color was blotted out as somber veils were hung through the chancel and over the lectern, statues, and altars.

  Catherine may have used the Lenten fast as a time to examine her life. It is hard not to fall into the trap of undue speculation when writing about a historical individual. In Catherine’s case, we can only infer from what happened next, since she left no record of her feelings at this time. All that can be said with confidence is that after her only Lent as queen, her behavior altered significantly. She became more prone to insecurity but paradoxically began to behave more recklessly in the privacy of her own apartments. She veered between uncertainty, which bred unhappiness, and a dangerous overconfidence. It was possibly during her husband’s brush with death that she realized for the first time that his love for her was no more consistent than his love for his country. Her husband had threatened to impoverish and punish his own people for having “murmured” against his policies. She had stood on the sidelines during Thomas Cromwell’s destruction, an event that Henry was now blaming on everyone but himself. She knew that her uncle and Bishop Gardiner were hated by Cromwell’s supporters for ruining him, but neither of those men had been at the King’s side at Shrovetide when he lashed out that he had been tricked into destroying “the most faithful servant he ever had.” Norfolk was in the north and Gardiner on a diplomatic mission to Europe. She knew that there had been ample opportunity for Henry to save Cromwell, if he had wished to. Perhaps too the atmosphere among the agitated courtiers, even before the King took ill, had eventually affected her.

  Henry VIII’s court was a place riddled with espionage, where nothing was quite what it seemed and people listened behind the walls, peeped at keyholes, and whispered in alcoves. Its inhabitants exhibited a bizarre and unsettling mixture of bone-chilling fear alongside obsequious, and often genuine, loyalty. When John Wallop wept, it was not ostensibly because he was afraid that he was going to die, but rather that “nothing grieved him so much as that your Majesty should think him a false man.”19 Henry VIII was able to command an obedience within the walls of his palace that was total in comparison to the varying degrees of resentment that festered outside. Some writers have likened the courtiers’ loyalty to a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, and while modern labels like that are difficult to validate, they do nonetheless seek to explain why there was such sustained devotion to a man who held a sword of Damocles over the head of
everyone he had ever known, liked, promoted, or loved and who ruled by playing them off against each other.20

  The first six months of Catherine’s queenship was a reduced version of it. She was only very briefly at one of the larger palaces at the start of August, when she was first proclaimed queen. Apart from that, Catherine moved from hunting lodge to hunting lodge with a smaller court that insulated her from the political reality of her new position—that her marriage had pitched her headfirst into a fraught and internecine environment where nearly everyone had long, if silenced, memories of those who had already been destroyed by her husband. Her behavior during Anne of Cleves’s trip to Hampton Court showed how much store Catherine set by doing things properly, and that visit and her quarrels with her stepdaughter confirmed in different ways how disagreeable she found criticism. Her husband’s dark mood, which resulted in her first moment in the shadows, must have unsettled her, as did the situation described in de Marillac’s letters—eerie silence and mounting panic in an enormous palace.

  One touching anecdote about Catherine from this time unfortunately cannot be sustained. The incarcerated Countess of Salisbury had complained about the cold blowing in off the Thames, and to alleviate her pain the Queen’s tailor, John Scutt, delivered two nightgowns, one trimmed with fur and the other with satin, a woollen kirtle, a bonnet, four pairs of hose, four pairs of shoes, and a pair of slippers. This is often ascribed to Catherine’s sympathy for the elderly and bereaved Lady Salisbury.21 However, at the same time the King’s tailor was asked to make or source a similar delivery for Lord Lisle, another royally descended prisoner in the Tower, and the order for both was issued by the Privy Council in a meeting held at Hampton Court on March 1. The bill, for £11 6s 4d, was settled on April 12.22 Even in prison, Tudor concepts of social hierarchy were maintained—queens, dukes, and countesses were treated as their position demanded. They were to have everything they needed, except freedom. The Queen’s tailor was asked for the same reason the King’s was commissioned for Lord Lisle’s “necessaries”—they were making clothes for the Countess, who was King Edward IV’s niece, and Lord Lisle, who was his illegitimate son.23 Queen Catherine had nothing to do with the gift to the Tower in 1541. To have associated herself with someone like Lady Salisbury, whom the King loathed and whose son Reginald was still actively working against Henry in Europe, would have been unwise, to say the least.