The Six Wives & Many Mistresses of Henry VIII

by Amy Licence

  Henry’s third queen left Hampton Court for the chapel at Windsor on 11 November 1537. Her mortal remains lay in a casket but, according to custom, a wax effigy of a crowned Jane lay on top, resting on a golden pillow and dressed in robes of state, with embroidered stockings and gold shoes, a sceptre in the right hand and fingers adorned with rings. All along the road to Eton, Jane’s passing was marked by lighted torches carried by two hundred poor men, banners and almoners distributing alms. From there they passed over the bridge, where the mayor and brethren were waiting, and climbed the hill up to the castle, where the coffin was lifted from the hearse and taken into the chapel. Jane’s stepdaughter Mary took the role of chief mourner, with her train carried by Jane Boleyn, while twenty-nine others, representing Jane’s twenty-nine years, made up the procession in five chariots, among them Henry’s nieces Margaret Douglas and Frances Brandon, Lady Morley, Jane Ashley, Mary Norris, Anne Bassett, Mary Zouche, Elizabeth Carew and Jane’s own sister Elizabeth, now married to the son of Thomas Cromwell. Her other ladies had gone on ahead to Windsor. That night her body was watched over while her mourners stayed in the castle. The service of interment was carried out the next day, followed by the offering of the palls, when her ladies lay expensive cloths over her coffin. Most gave two or three, but Frances Brandon gave four and Princess Mary gave seven. Jane was then laid to rest and the mourners were ‘sumptuously provided for’ in the castle.22 She was the only one of Henry’s wives to be buried with the ritual of a queen.

  The cataloguing of Jane’s effects upon her death helps shed a little light on her otherwise shadowy stint at queenship. Many of the items had been given or lent to her ladies, including strings of beads, jewels, pomanders and tablets, girdles and borders enamelled with various colours, bracelets, gold buttons, chains and gold brooches which had been bestowed on her brother Thomas, the king’s apothecary Cutberd and Lady Shelton. She also had in her possession a glass with the images of Henry VII and others.23 A list of her lands and debtors showed that she owned the prestigious and ancient royal properties at King’s Langley and Berkhamsted, as well as at Whaddon (which was run by her brother Henry), Bodiam, Cookham, Bray, Hampstead, Walton, Stamford and the forests of Exmoor, Rache and Mendip, as well as Catherine’s favourite Essex home of Havering-atte-Bower and a number of properties in Kent. Jane was also receiving rent from the king’s palace at Southwark, with a ‘barysgardeyn’, perhaps a bears’ garden, one of the bear-baiting gardens located on the south bank. The value of these was estimated at £938 6s 8d.24

  Jane’s son, Edward, remained in the royal nursery at Greenwich before being set up in his own establishment in the north range at Hampton Court, at a cost of £6,500. Having lost so many children, Henry was leaving nothing to chance with this new son. Under the care of Mistress Margaret, Lady Bryan, recently in charge of his sister Elizabeth’s household, Edward’s world was run under strict guidelines to prevent infection and injury; serving boys and dogs were forbidden as the most clumsy of creatures and a daily programme of washing was followed, with walls, floors and ceilings scrubbed down. No food or dirty utensils were to be left lying around and anyone falling ill was to immediately leave the palace. Visitors needed the king’s written permission to approach the cradle and none were allowed to travel to London in summer, in case they acted as carriers of some terrible infection. The prince’s clothes were washed, brushed, tested, perfumed and dried before the fire to kill any lurking pestilences. A new kitchen and wash house were constructed especially to serve Edward’s establishment and prevent cross-contamination from the rest of the court. His cradle of estate lay in the presence chamber, where he was displayed to visitors who had been allowed access through the heavily guarded watching chamber. He actually slept in the rocking chamber, where a canopy hung over his cradle to protect him from the sun.

  Prince Edward’s arrival marks the end of a phase in Henry’s life in which his increasing need for a son underpinned many of his actions. It had seen him take drastic action to rid himself of two wives, doubt his own standing in the eyes of God and break with Rome in an unprecedented way. Yet his son’s arrival had cost him his queen. Remaining in mourning until the following February, it was the first time the king had not been in a hurry to take a wife.

  PART SEVEN

  Anne of Cleves

  48

  Vacancy in the Bed, 1537–39

  Thy niece, thy cousin, thy sister or thy daughter

  If she be fair, if handsome be her middle

  If thy better hath her love besought her

  Advance his cause and he shall help thy need1

  Henry may not have been rushing to the altar, but his minsters were keen to see him married for a fourth time. Jane was scarcely cold when Cromwell proposed a new wife for the king. On 31 October, he had written to Howard and Bishop Gardiner that Henry was ‘little disposed to marry again’, but ‘some of his council have thought it meet for us to urge him to it for the sake of his realm’. Apparently Henry had ‘framed his mind, both to be indifferent to the thing and to the election of any person from any part that with deliberation shall be thought meet’. In the light of the king’s ambivalence, Cromwell had already come up with two candidates to share the royal bed, ‘the French king’s daughter [said to be not the meetest] and Madame de Longueville, of whose qualities you are to inquire, and also on what terms the King of Scots stands with either of them’.2 Now he just had to get Henry interested.

  The first candidate Cromwell suggested was Margaret, seventh child of Francis I and Queen Claude, who was then fourteen years old to Henry’s forty-six. Raised by Marguerite of Navarre, who had been greatly admired by Anne Boleyn, Margaret’s age and French background probably counted against her in Henry’s eyes. He had dismissed a potential French bride in 1536 based on a newfound dislike of her nationality and manners. Madame de Longueville, though, was a far more likely candidate. Born Mary of Guise in 1515, she had been widowed at the age of twenty-one, with two sons, one of whom arrived after the death of his father. Her ability to bear healthy male children was an advantage to the King of England, as was her physique, as Henry stated that he was ‘a large man who had need of a large wife’. Mary, though, seemed less keen, reputedly referencing Anne Boleyn’s comment before execution by saying she may ‘be a big woman but she had a very little neck’.3 In any case, the likelihood of Mary accepting Henry was slight, as she was already committed to a match with a handsome young man half his age.

  In the autumn of 1537, negotiations were well underway for Mary to marry the recently widowed James V of Scotland, and while Henry may have wished to steal this eligible bride from under the nose of his young nephew, he was competing against an existing bond of affection between a couple in their twenties. Keen as he was for an English match, Francis I made it clear that Mary of Guise was off-limits, writing to his ambassador Castillon that December. It was ‘a great honour if the king take a wife in his realm, and there is no lady who is not at his commandment except Madame de Longueville, whose marriage with the king of Scots has been arranged.’4 A proxy marriage took place between Mary and James in June 1538, putting an end to any final hopes Henry still entertained. He would have to look elsewhere for a new wife.

  Francis then proposed two of Mary’s younger sisters, either of whom might make a suitable match for the King of England. Louise and Renee of Guise were then aged seventeen and fifteen respectively and both were considered beautiful. Renee, the youngest, was destined for the Church, but Louise was described by a visiting Scotsman as ‘the most beautiful creature that he ever saw’. Castillon crudely urged Henry to ‘take her … she is still a maid, with her you will be able to shape the passage to your measure’.5 Francis also dangled the carrot of a second marriage, between his youngest son Charles and Princess Mary, in spite of her illegitimate status. Yet neither Guise lady was considered a serious candidate by Henry, nor did he want Francis’ cousins Anne of Lorraine and Mary of Bourbon, who were also proposed. The likelihood of him ma
king a French match had seemed doomed once he crassly asked the French ambassador, Castillon, if a number of beautiful women could be assembled for his perusal at Calais, ‘especially of the houses of Lorraine or Vendome or Nevers’. Francis was outraged, saying it was not their custom to display women of such noble rank ‘as if they were hackneys for sale’ and that if Henry was interested in a particular lady he could ‘send his envoys to report on her manner and appearance in the traditional way’. The ambassador then wryly suggested that the king might like to ‘mount them one after another, and keep the one you find to be the best broken in. Is that the way the Knights of the Round Table treated women in your country in times past?’ The dig at Henry’s past chivalric ideals was well chosen. Castillon reported that the king blushed, laughed and changed the subject.

  Cromwell was already hard at work as international matchmaker. On 30 November 1537, he had written to Thomas Wyatt, mentioning another possible bride, this time drawn from the same pool as Catherine of Aragon. Clearly he considered that sufficient time had passed since Henry’s repudiation of his first wife for a mutually beneficial union with the Empire to be possible. Personal memories could be set aside for the good of diplomatic relations. Upon Jane’s death, the Imperial ambassadors ‘made an overture for the daughter of Portugal’, but it seemed they acted without consulting Charles, as Cromwell added ‘it was thankfully taken, but would have been more so had it come anew from the Emperor, but it appears they did it upon an old commission’.6 The family tree of the ruling House of Aziz under John III displays a mysterious lack of suitable Portuguese princesses at the time, with Maria, the eldest granddaughter of Catherine of Aragon’s sister Maria and her husband Manuel I, being only ten. However, Manuel’s daughter by his third wife was unmarried at the age of sixteen and proves a far more likely prospect. Born in Lisbon in 1521, Mary of Portugal was five years younger than her English namesake and potential stepdaughter, Princess Mary. Her mother, Eleanor, was the sister of Charles V, who had been suggested as a bride for Henry when they were children, back in 1498. She was also, therefore, Catherine of Aragon’s niece and, by her mother’s second marriage, stepdaughter of Francis I. The match would neatly tie together Henry’s interests in France, Spain and the Empire. No doubt this was Mary’s attraction. However, it came to nothing. Perhaps Charles was reluctant to commit another female relative to the English king, or perhaps Eleanor, who had previously avoided Anne Boleyn, rejected the idea. Mary never married and no more information appears to exist regarding a potential match between her and Henry.

  On 4 December 1537, Ambassador John Hutton was in Brussels and, although admitting his lack of experience when it came to women, summed up the available candidates on offer:

  There is in the Court, waiting upon the Queen, the daughter of the lord of Breidrood, 14 years old and of goodly stature, virtuous, sad, and womanly. Her mother, who is dead, was daughter to the cardinal of Luike’s sister; and the Cardinal would give her a good ‘dote.’ There is the widow of the late earl of Egmond, who repairs often to Court. She is over 40, but does not look it. There is the duchess of Milan who is reported a goodly personage and of excellent beauty. The duke of Cleves has a daughter, but there is no great praise either of her personage or her beauty.7

  The ‘daughter of Lord Briedrood’ Hutton refers to was the fourteen-year-old Margaretha, whose father, Lord Reinoud III van Brederode, was captain-general in the Emperor’s army, as well as his Privy Councillor and chamberlain. His daughter was an attendant of Mary, Regent of the Netherlands, and was described by Hutton as ‘of a goodly stature … virtuous, sad and … womanly’, but her beauty was only ‘competent’.8 Coupled with her age, this made her a less likely candidate for Henry’s hand. Age also ruled out Frances van Luxembourg, widow of Jan von Egmond, although she was a ‘goodly personage’9 who did not look her forty years. She had already borne a daughter and two sons but was considered too old to provide Henry with the string of heirs he desired.

  Hutton’s letter contains references to the two women on whom Henry would choose to focus in the coming months: the beautiful Duchess of Milan, whom he wanted to make his wife; and the woman he would later marry, Anne of Cleves. For the time being, though, Henry was enjoying the bachelor life, in the company of different women, while potential wives were discussed. And there were a good number of them. For the first time since 1509 he was an eligible bachelor, although his marital history and his increasing girth – from a thirty-two inch waist in his youth to the fifty-two inches of his later years – made him perhaps slightly less eligible than he had been in his youth. Refusing to take a wife without having some idea of her appearance, Henry dispatched his court painter Hans Holbein on a whirlwind tour of the courts of Europe to paint the pictures of likely beauties. Unexpectedly, one of them would capture the king’s heart.

  On 10 March, Hans Holbein and diplomat Philip Hoby arrived in Brussels. There, after much bargaining, they were allowed a three-hour sitting with the Duchess Christina. She was the daughter of the exiled Christian II of Denmark and his wife Isabella of Austria, Catherine of Aragon’s niece. Having been widowed at the age of thirteen, she was living in the household of her aunt, Mary of Hungary, dressed in deepest mourning and her rooms hung in black. Reports of Christina’s charms had already arrived in England, with the young widow described as tall, ‘gentle of countenance’ and ‘soft of speech’, with something of a lisp, although this ‘did nothing misbecome her’. Also, she had dimples that appeared when she smiled; ‘two charming pits in her cheeks and one in her chin, the which becometh her right exceedingly well’.10 Hutton reported that ‘there is none in these parts for beauty of person and birth to be compared with the duchess. She is not so pure white as the late queen … but she hath a singular good countenance.’11 Wriothesley added that she ‘was a goodly personage of stature higher than either of us and competently fair but very well favoured, a very good woman’s face, a little brown’.12 Beside this, she had a reputation for being ‘the wisest of the wise’ and spoke French, Italian and German. Henry was confident in his belief that marriage to him would be an elevation she deserved. Writing to Wyatt that January, he stated he might ‘honour [her] by marriage, her virtues, qualities and behaviour being reported to be such as it worthy to be much advanced’.13 However, the king’s reputation had preceded him and the duchess was less convinced.

  Christina was interviewed by Thomas Wriothesley, whose overenthusiastic praise of Henry’s temper – that the king was ‘the most gentle gentleman that liveth’, with such a benign and pleasant nature ‘that I think to this day no man hath heard many angry words pass his mouth’ – was received by an incredulous duchess. Anyone who had witnessed Henry’s recent rages (or his physical attacks upon Cromwell, whose ears he regularly boxed), let alone the cold treatment meted out to his first two queens and daughters, knew that this was nonsense. Wriothesley reported that Christina found it difficult to keep a straight face, as she appeared ‘like one that was tickled’.14 Holbein’s full-length portrait depicted a young, pale woman in mourning, with a gentle, intelligent and attractive face; Henry found her captivating and urged his ambassadors to bring the negotiations to a conclusion. With the backing of Mary of Hungary, Christina declined his offer. She is reputed to have said that if she had two heads, she would happily put one of them at Henry’s disposal. There was a further, convenient, impediment for the duchess. She was, as she stated, at the disposal of the Emperor. And, as Christina was the great-niece of Catherine of Aragon, Henry would require a papal dispensation to marry her, which would be difficult given that he was excommunicated in 1538.

  Smarting from Christina’s rejection, Henry consoled himself with the ladies who had belonged to Queen Jane’s court. Having been sworn in only weeks before her mistress’s death, Anne Bassett was now seventeen and references in the Lisle letters make clear that she had a family reputation for beauty. Anne had been born in 1521 in Cornwall but raised in Calais after her mother remarried to Henry’s uncle
, Arthur Plantagenet, Lord Lisle. She had been educated in the French manner, following the example of the Boleyn daughters, being placed in the household of Thybalt de Rouaud, or Riou, and his wife Jeanne, near Abbeville. There she learned French, and a wealth of letters testify to the clothes and jewels provided for Anne and her sisters in order for them to look the part. She had returned to Calais in September 1536, at the age of fifteen, with a yearly allowance of £6 13s 4d and a marriage portion of over £66.15 It is clear that her good looks had impressed the king soon after her arrival.

  On 9 October, as Jane went into labour, Peter Mewtas wrote to Lord Lisle that Henry had spoken of nothing but him and his daughters for the past two days, stating that he thought ‘mistress Anne to be the fairest’.16 It should have been the start of an illustrious career, during which she could attract a suitable husband, but the queen’s death just five weeks later meant that her household was dissolved. Anne and her newly arrived sister Catherine were forced to rely on the hospitality of other previous ladies-in-waiting to the queen. Her mother, Honor, Lady Lisle, wrote from Calais on 14 November to their cousin Mary Arundel, who had become Countess of Sussex in January that year and was expecting her first child:

  Commendations to my lord and you. I have received your letter and perceive your sorrow for the death of the Queen, yet her Grace was fortunate to live the day to bring forth such a prince. I perceive my lord and you have taken my daughter Anne until, by your good suit, she may obtain place again. If she cannot I will send for her and recompense your charges. I did not send them to put you or any of my kin to charge, but to have them with the Queen. Where you write that but for your great charge of kin and other gentlewomen you would have taken Kateryn too; it was never my mind to put you to any charge, yet if I were in England and you sent me even three or four I would accept them. I pray you prefer Anne because she was sworn to the late Queen. Where it has pleased my lord of Rutland and my lady at your suit to take Kateryn for the time, I trust they shall be no losers. ‘Very glad to hear of your great belly, beseeching God to make you a joyous mother.’17