The Six Wives & Many Mistresses of Henry VIII

by Amy Licence

  Witnessing this atmosphere of courtly dancing, masques and flirtation, the young men of Wolsey’s court were conscious of their own marital futures. Cavendish had been married around the time he entered service in 1522, which meant that he was often separated from his wife. Jane Parker, daughter of Lord Morley, who became the wife of George Boleyn in 1525, suffered less from this as she was in the service of the queen. Thomas Cromwell had been wed for around ten years by the mid-1520s, producing three legitimate children and at least one other by his mistress. A suitable wife had been found for Henry Percy when he was fourteen, but his marriage to Mary Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, had still not taken place by the time he entered Wolsey’s household at around the age of twenty. Through 1522, as he attended Henry’s court and helped entertain the king at Wolsey’s many properties, he fell in love with the beautiful newcomer who had made her debut at the Chateau Vert.

  Cavendish describes Anne as a maid in Catherine’s household, where with ‘her excellent behaviour and gesture [she] did excell all other in so much’. While Wolsey attended to court business, Percy ‘would then resort for his pastime unto the queen’s chamber’ and ‘fall in dalliance’ with her maidens. Quickly he developed a favourite, ‘being at the last more conversant with … Anne Boleyn than with any other’. This preference escalated into more than friendship and ‘there grewe such a secret love between them that at lengthe they were ensured together intending to marry’.3 During the autumn of 1522 or early in 1523, Anne apparently made a promise to Percy to become his wife. Whether this was part of the play of courtly love, or the more formal kind of verbal agreement that was considered legally binding, it made the negotiations for the Butler match more complicated. With Wolsey responsible for the morality of the young men in his house, he could not tolerate the threat of a love match to any established dynastic negotiation for the hands of his charges. The cardinal intervened, calling Percy before him, and berating him in front of the servants of his chamber.

  Cavendish takes up the story again:

  I marvel not a little of thy peevish folly that thou wouldst tangle and ensure thye self with a foolish girl yonder in the court. I mean Anne Boleyn. Dost thou not consider the estate that God hathe called thee unto in this world for after the death thy noble father thou art most like to inherit and possess one of the most worthiest Earldoms of this realm and therefore it had been most meet and convenient for thee to have sued for the consent of thy father in that behalf.

  Percy had been already matched ‘according to your estate and honour, whereby you might have grown so by your wisdom and honourable behaviour in to the king’s high estimation that it should have been much to your increase of honour. But now behold what you have done through your wilfulness, you have not only offended your natural father but also your most gracious sovereign.’ George Wyatt also confirmed this report during the reign of Elizabeth, but what is interesting about Cavendish’s version, is that as early as 1523, he explains that Henry was ‘offended’ by the engagement ‘wherefore he could hide no longer his secret affection but revealed his secret intention unto my Lord Cardinal in that behalf’.4

  This is often dismissed as incorrect, as Anne Boleyn’s relationship with Henry did not begin for at least a couple more years, around 1525 or 1526, but this does not preclude the king’s pre-existing admiration. It is quite possible that Henry had noticed Anne already and had hoped to add her to his list of conquests and, without initial success, consoled himself with her sister and perhaps other lovers. This might have been as informal as Anne simply not returning his interest, or using her dark, attractive eyes to show her affections were bestowed elsewhere. After all, Cavendish was present in Wolsey’s household at the time, an eyewitness to the development of the king’s affairs. He records Anne’s history with hindsight, but the notion that Henry had already been drawn to the woman with whom he would soon fall passionately in love is not impossible. If he did intervene in the Percy–Boleyn betrothal, it was probably to restore the Butler match for its political usefulness. In the meantime, though, he was more intent on the pursuit of a more willing lover.

  Percy seems to have genuinely desired Anne for his wife, according to Cavendish, as he was prepared to stand up to the cardinal and argue in her favour, even though he was ‘weeping’, according to the account. Considering himself of good years, Percy ‘thought [him]self sufficient to provide me of a convenient wife where as my fancy served me best but that my lord my father would have been right well persuaded and though she be a simple maid and having but a knight to her father, yet she is descended of right noble parentage as by her mother she is nigh of the Norfolk blood and of her father’s side lineally descended of the Earl of Ormond’.5 As Percy explained, the understanding had become common knowledge among the couple’s acquaintance, having ‘gone so far before so many witnesses that I know not how to avoid myself not to discharge my conscience’.6 Such a process of formal betrothal was sometimes finalised by the consummation of the match and Percy specifically refers to it, in Cavendish’s words, as a ‘precontract’. It has been suggested by some writers that Anne and Percy might have slept together, as their vows would have entitled them, but it is unlikely that the king would have continued to pursue Anne for seven chaste years in the knowledge that she had slept with another man.

  Wolsey sent for Percy’s father, the fifth earl, in order to consult him about ways to avoid ‘this … hasty folly’. He ‘made quick speed to court’ on hearing of the matter and went at once to the cardinal, meeting him ‘in secret communication’ in his gallery. The harsh character assassination ascribed to him by Cavendish gives a very one-sided impression of the young man to whom Anne had contracted herself; he ‘hast always been a proud, presumptuous, disdainful and a very unthrifty waster … ’ who had now ‘misused’ himself, with ‘no manner of regard to’ his father or king by ‘ensuring’ himself to Anne. Warning his son to ‘use thyself more witter hereafter’, he assured him that if he did not ‘amend his prodigality’ he would be the last earl of their house, due to his natural inclination to be a wasteful prodigal. Thankfully, the father had ‘more choice of boys’ to choose from, whom he trusted to ‘prove themselves much better and use them[selves] more like unto nobility’. And with this he obtained Percy’s promise that he would be married to the daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury.7 Cavendish related that the ‘former contract was clearly undone, wherewith Anne Boleyn was greatly offended saying that if it ever lay in her power, she would work the cardinal as much displeasure’. Percy was ‘commanded to avoid her company’ and Anne was ‘commanded to avoid the court and … sent home again to her father for a season whereat she smoked for all this while she knewe nothing of the king’s intended purpose’.

  Cavendish’s account clearly puts words into the mouths of the key players. It is unlikely, even if he had witnessed these events in person, that he would be able to recall their speech with any degree of precision but, considering his position in Wolsey’s household and his later place as one of the few who remained with the cardinal after his disgrace, his version of events contains some approximate truths. The question of hindsight also makes it a difficult source to disentangle, but the basic facts are sound regarding the betrothal. Percy and Anne clearly fell in love at court, as he sought her out in the queen’s apartments, perhaps dancing together, playing cards, reading or taking part in court entertainments. Catherine’s court in the 1520s has been presented by some historians as being dour and solemn, with women sitting in silence and reading, devoid of lovers, dance and song. This is almost certainly misleading, given the references in Hall’s Chronicle to Catherine’s role in the court entertainments and masques, but while the queen may have withdrawn more from public life, she had not taken up the life of a vowess. Catherine was becoming increasingly religious, and her court may not have been as colourful as it once was, but this image of an overly austere queen belongs more to the coming years; the poetry of Thomas Wyatt attests to the tone of her cour
t at this time, and if her ladies were sewing to excess then they would have been assisting the royal wardrobe by working on the costumes and elaborate disguises that Henry still loved. However, from July 1524, Catherine may have been in mourning following the death of her French counterpart, Claude, at the age of twenty-four and, after 1525, she was feeling the loss of her daughter Mary, who was away at Ludlow. Catherine might set the tone of her household, but Henry set the tone of the court.

  There was also a frequent overlap between the households of the king and Wolsey, providing plenty of opportunity for romance, following the lead established by Henry himself. Percy may well have witnessed Anne’s performance in the Chateau Vert. In fact, it seems very likely that he did, along with a number of other young men, given that it took place at the cardinal’s residence of York Place, where his protégées were lodged. The fledgling betrothal was dismissed and Percy’s engagement to Mary Talbot was resurrected, with the marriage taking place in 1525 or 1526. Anne disappeared from the records again until 1525, so there seems little reason to doubt Cavendish’s explanation that she had been forcibly rusticated to Hever.

  If we accept that a betrothal was made and broken, and there seems no reason not to, then the implications for Anne were considerable. In terms of the Boleyn sisters’ reputations, it was Anne rather than Mary who returned home disgraced after engaging in illicit emotions. With the Butler and Talbot matches still a possibility, the young couple took quite a daring step in ‘ensuring’ themselves to each other, to borrow Cavendish’s word. Given the way it happened, evolving out his attentions to her at court, and purely of their own choosing, it would seem this is the first occasion when we can genuinely be confident that Anne was in love. Although her feelings on the matter were not recorded, the wrath they incurred and her apparent removal from court might suggest the ‘great offense’ which Cavendish describes her as having taken. It had been a brutal lesson for her about the boundaries of love at Henry’s court and the dangers of letting emotion take precedence over dynastic might.

  The question of the pre-contract would raise its head once more. By 1532, when Anne was poised on the verge of becoming queen and Percy’s marriage had broken down, his disgruntled wife sought a divorce, citing the previous arrangement with Anne. However, when the allegation was investigated, Percy was questioned about his love affair and the nature of the understanding between them. Under oath, with the potential to derail the king’s imminent marriage, he wisely denied that there had been an engagement ten years earlier. Or rather he neatly circumvented it, to the peril of his mortal soul, writing on 28 May that it ‘may be to my damnation, if ever there were any contracte or promise of marriage between her and me’.8

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  Brunet, 1523–25

  What word is that, that changeth not,

  Though it be turn’d and made in twain?

  It is mine Anna, God it wot,

  The only causer of my pain.

  Yet is it loved, what will you more?

  It is my salve, and eke my sore.1

  Anne was sent away from court, probably to languish in the Kent countryside, while Henry continued to pursue her sister. Yet Henry Percy was not the only man she had attracted during her brief debut. The reputation of Thomas Wyatt preceded him, both as a poet and as a man. His father, Henry Wyatt, had been a key figure in the life of the king in his youth, becoming a Privy Councillor and Knight of the Garter, and a neighbour of the Boleyns, living at Allingham Castle near Maidstone, about twenty-five miles to the east of Hever. The connection went further, too, as Sir Henry and Sir Thomas had been appointed joint guardians of Norwich Castle in 1511, so it is likely that their children met at some point during the following decade. His eldest son, Thomas, had been born at Allingham in around 1503 and, at the age of eighteen, had married Elizabeth Brooke, a Boleyn cousin, although this match quickly turned sour. By the time Anne arrived at court in 1522, the tall, handsome poet had already been in the king’s service for several years. According to the account written by his grandson, George, he was quickly captivated by the new arrival, his old acquaintance, and ‘ever more taken with her witty and graceful speech’.2

  Wyatt’s poetry gives an insight into the nature of Henry’s court in the early to mid-1520s, shedding light on the nature of courtly love and the flirtations that were conducted in and around the queen’s apartments, which were hardly the dour, joyless places they later became. Written to entertain an elite circle, the poems were riddles and games, literary exercises designed to tease and titillate, amuse and suggest, for performance in the chamber, tucked into his lover’s pocket or read at a pageant, rather than for publication.3 He was one of an inner coterie who ‘spend their time in vainful vanity, making ballades of fervent amitie’.4 As such, his poems reflect the intimate courtly culture, the in-jokes of the time and the references to love affairs and affections that would have immediately been understood by those witnessing them unfold.

  With some poems referring to one ‘Brunet’ that ‘did set our country in a roar’, ‘falcon’, Anne’s badge, and ‘Anna’, Wyatt paints a world where the need for secrecy in love is essential, particularly when the participants were married, like Henry or Wyatt, or engaged elsewhere, like Anne and Percy.

  Take heed betime lest ye be spied

  Your loving eyes you cannot hide

  At last the truth will sure be tried

  Therefore take heed!

  For some there be of crafty kind,

  Though you show no part of your mind,

  Surely their eyes ye cannot blind.

  Therefore take heed.

  Percy’s courtship of Anne would have been apparent to those observant members of the queen’s household as they danced or sang together, or engaged in conversation and whispered secrets. Himself rejected by Anne, Wyatt may have observed her, sitting demurely and sewing, pretending not to notice her lover, or even awaiting his arrival:

  She sat and sewed that hath done me the wrong

  Whereof I [com]plain and have done many a day,

  And while she heard my plaint in piteous song

  Wished my heart the sampler as it lay.

  The blind master whom I have served so long

  Grudging to hear that he did hear her say.

  Made her own weapon do her finger bleed

  To feel if pricking were so good indeed.

  The evidence of his poems suggests that the married Wyatt’s attentions did not find favour with Anne during 1522–23, probably due to her affection for Henry Percy. As a young woman, already in her early twenties, Anne had probably been intent on finding a suitable husband rather than a married lover when Wyatt made his first advances. By the time she returned to court a few years later, however, the situation was different. Percy was either a married man or about to become one, and Wyatt’s marital unhappiness was widely known, as he repudiated his wife as an adulteress. It is unclear exactly when Anne did arrive back at Henry’s court, but if it had been during the 1524/25 Christmas season then she would have witnessed Wyatt’s participation in the pageant of the Chasteau Blanche, perhaps even dancing with him or the king on this occasion rife with symbolism.

  To honour the ambassadors who had arrived from Scotland, a challenge was delivered to the king in Catherine’s great chamber at Greenwich, shortly before Christmas 1524. The participants included William Carey, Thomas Wyatt and his brother-in-law George Cobham, along with other young men of the court who are better known today because of their famous offspring and relations – Leonard and John Grey, Sir John Dudley, Francis Sidney, Edward Seymour and others. A herald delivered their trial on a coat of arms, bearing the device of a castle with four silver turrets, in each of which was a beautiful lady; the captains agreed to ‘raise the castle on a mount’, in heraldic detail, to form the centrepiece of feats of strength, and it would be known as the Chasteau Blanche. It was to have one white shield, and whoever touched it should run six courses at the tilt; the red shield signified involvement in the to
urney. Those who touched the yellow shield must answer twelve strokes at the barriers and the blue one represented the assault upon the castle, with a range of weapons. The building work began in the tilt yard.

  This pageant was to run for weeks, keeping the court busy, with carpenters sawing, knights rehearsing and ladies sewing; like previous entertainments, it provided a convenient cover for courtship and intrigues to develop under the courtly masque. The castle was an immense twenty feet wide and fifty feet tall, built from timber and fastened with iron. To the north and south were two steep ditches, fifteen foot deep, set with drawbridges and, just like the coded messages about Mary at the Chateau Vert, it was said to ‘not be wonne by sport, but by ernest’,5 which may have been aimed at a specific lady. This time, though, the metaphor of conquest and surrender, of persistence in the face of great difficulty, was more suited to perseverance than kindness. Henry was ‘minded to have it assaulted’ and, after St John the Evangelist’s Day, 27 December, six men-at-arms and two ladies on palfreys presented Catherine with a note or bill, saying ‘that although youth had left them, and age was come, and let them to do feats of arms: yet courage, desire and good will abode with them and bade them to take upon them to break spears, which they would gladly do if it pleased her to give them licence’.6 Catherine read the letter and consented. Such notes, verses and poems played a prominent role in courtly entertainment, both on a grand scale like this and in the more intimate arenas of courtship.

  With the queen’s consent, the revellers revealed themselves as Henry and Brandon, followed by Nicholas Carew, Henry Norris, Francis Bryan and others, all dressed in gorgeous costumes. They ran courses and broke spears, before repairing to Catherine’s chamber to dine and, after the lords and ‘diverse ladies’ had danced, the masquers arrived. All sixteen of them were dressed in cloth of gold from head to toe, from their shoes to their caps. Led again by Henry and Brandon, they danced ‘a great season’ before wine and spices were brought to signal the end of the evening.