Betrayed, Betrothed and Bedded

by Juliet Landon

  Ginny promised. ‘And what about Master Holbein?’ she said. ‘Does he stay here with you?’ The question was intentionally ambiguous.

  Anna turned a little pink. ‘For the moment. He’s painting Princess Elizabeth’s portrait here at Richmond. After that, perhaps another one.’ She smiled impishly.

  ‘Marriage, perhaps?’

  ‘Oh, no. Master Holbein has a wife and children in Germany. But we are good friends. Henry visits me quite often nowadays, too. He finds it peaceful here.’

  They embraced again. It had all been said. Anna was an example to them all.

  Ginny, Jon, and Etta stayed at Tyburn House in Westminster for two weeks, entertaining Maeve and George and their family, giving them the good news and observing the astonishing changes in Ginny’s brother Paul. From irresponsible rogue, he was now a shrewd buyer working in the royal wardrobe department. His former delinquencies had not been repeated and no one had a harsh word to say about him, not even the merchants who had tried, and failed, to swindle him. As for his relationship with the younger ones, it only took little Etta’s yelp of joy to convince her parents that there was genuine affection on both sides. Had he not been taken up by Culpeper’s cronies, they said, he would not have been led astray so easily, but when Ginny told her sister about the possible reason for Sir Walter’s different treatment of Paul since childhood, she found herself in agreement.

  As for their father’s behaviour, Maeve’s opinion was that it accounted for much that had previously been something of an enigma. Their mother’s unswerving obedience to him, for one thing. For her, loyalty was absolute. Elion, who had listened to the sad story, agreed that Paul had always been treated rather differently. As boys together, he had seen more of it than the others.

  Jon, who had also been listening to the discussion, voiced a dramatic sigh. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t see my wife offering me any of that unswerving obedience in the near future. It’s all she can do to stitch me some new aglets on the ends of my laces. Look here,’ he said, waving one of his doublet laces at them where the spear-headed gold stopper was missing. ‘She sends me out like this.’

  ‘Disgraceful!’ agreed George. ‘But my wife is just the same.’

  Retaliating at full volume, the two sisters set about reconstructing the truth of the matter and so drowning out the first distant rumbles of thunder.

  Epilogue

  The weather finally broke at the end of October, causing floods and more hardship, washing away roads and drowning livestock. But by this time Jon, Ginny, and Etta were safely back at Lea Magna, beginning their new life together as landowners and dedicated parents. Occasional visits to their London home gave them a chance to see old friends and to catch up with the news, and to spend time with Sir George and Lady Betterton and the young ones. They went regularly to see the Lady Anna at Richmond, too, though Master Holbein died of the plague exactly three years after the end of this story. Anna remained single all her life.

  Molly predicted, correctly, that twin boys would be born on Saint Valentine’s Day to her lord and his lady. They had masses of dark hair like their father, and the christening was conducted at D’Arvall Hall by Father Spenney.

  Paul’s conversion became even more convincing when he found a well brought-up young woman to love, the daughter of a silk merchant. Sir Elion, still footloose, went abroad for a while, but always remained in touch with his family.

  Ben continued to study medicine as his uncle’s assistant while Sandrock Priory was being restored and adapted for domestic use. He then went abroad to Leyden to continue his studies and graduated with an MA in 1547, qualifying with the College of Physicians, whose offices were on Knightrider Street in London. Father Spenney died at D’Arvall Hall in 1550, being nursed to the end by the devoted Lady Agnes, though he was buried at Sandrock Priory, the home of Dr Ben Spenney.

  * * * * *

  Author Note

  England in 1540 was an unsettled time for those who lived and worked within the orbit of Henry VIII, when his marriage to Anna of Cleves, his fourth wife, was annulled after only five months. Marriage to his third wife, Jane Seymour, had ended abruptly with her death after the birth of Prince Edward and, although Henry now had a son to succeed him—and several illegitimate ones—it was essential for a king to have more than one son, for safety’s sake. Plague and other ailments carried off so many people in the days before reliable medication.

  The getting of another heir became an obsession with Henry and, for once, his choice of bride in 1539 was not conducted in the usual way, but by attraction to a portrait commissioned from that most superb of all portraitists, Hans Holbein, who saw in the lady qualities Henry could not. In the end, she had the wisdom to react exactly as Henry wanted a woman to react when she was told that her marriage was over; that is, with a meekness and complete obedience that might even have ruffled his vanity when he was told there had been no tears. Not even one. If Anna was upset, she had the sense not to make a fuss. She fared best of all six wives by being afforded high status, making herself a very popular hostess and enjoying her freedom enough to remain friends with all the royals, including Henry himself. As an author, I have the greatest fondness and respect for this woman, which is why I chose to make her one of the characters in Ginny’s story. As for Henry calling her ‘a Flemish mare’, there is no evidence for this insult, which comes from a later historian, although Henry’s juvenile behaviour at their first meeting is difficult for us to comprehend. Much nonsense has been written about Anna’s appearance, but one only has to look at the portraits of her to see that, although perceptions of beauty change over the years, she is certainly neither fat nor ugly. Nor do I believe she smelled unclean, as Henry petulantly stated. Anna soon adapted to English fashions and habits, and was much loved by everyone, living out the rest of her life in the countryside at Richmond, Hever, and Bletchingly. She died in 1557 at the age of forty-two, outliving the king by ten years.

  The terrible and catastrophic enmity between Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, is well documented and actually much worse than I have made it sound. Henry’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, was also a Howard on her mother’s side, her mother being the duke’s sister, who married Thomas Boleyn, whereas Katherine Howard was the daughter of the duke’s younger brother, but orphaned. So getting anywhere near the throne, either as a mistress or a wife, was a sure way of tipping the influence of power in that family’s direction. The Boleyn family, and therefore the Howards, took a fall when Queen Anne lost her head on trumped-up charges partly engineered by Cromwell, and the Howards were desperate to return to favour. As the possibility of Katherine Howard becoming wife number five became a reality, Cromwell had the Duke of Norfolk kept out of London, knowing that, once he returned, Cromwell’s days would be numbered. It is a sad indictment of Henry’s loyalty to his faithful servants that he should not only have allowed, but encouraged the feuds between them to colour his own judgement. But that was what he did. Cromwell, the friend for whom Jon deciphered coded letters, was brutally beheaded. Some time later, Henry bitterly regretted it, but by then it was too late. He had lost his ablest minister and gained a wife, Katherine Howard, who turned out to be as foolish as anyone could have imagined. Her affair with Culpeper, the courtier in the story, caused her death on the block, as well as his. He is portrayed here as he was, and sadly the incident of the park keeper’s wife is true, as is Henry’s ‘forgiveness’ of his favourite. Which serves to illustrate the status of women in sixteenth-century England.

  The practice adopted by the king of allowing personal friends to buy the monasteries that were closed down and destroyed between 1535 and 1540 is quite true. Some he gave away as gifts with all the land and property they owned, which was usually considerable. Sandrock Priory and St Clare’s Priory in Hampshire, however, are fictitious, although some of the more fortunate priors and abbots were given position
s as chaplains and clergy in parish churches. And although Henry VIII made himself head of the church in England, taking the place of the pope, he remained staunchly Catholic in his devotions to the end of his days. Nothing changed suddenly except the acknowledgement that the pope had no influence over the English church, but the loss of abbey treasures, like the Sandrock library, was quite unforgivable.

  The severe drought of 1540 is true also, causing crop failure, food shortages, and many deaths. It broke suddenly in October, causing floods. There was plague in London, too, so Henry took his new wife on progress to the southern counties.

  Elvetham Hall in Hampshire is now an hotel, but the original building on the same site was the residence of Sir Edward Seymour, Jane’s elder brother, whose sad story of paternal deceit is also true. Hampton Court Palace is still open to visitors and, although Whitehall Palace is much changed, its history is well documented. Richmond Palace has long gone, although its gatehouse is still intact, and there is an excellent model of it as it was in Tudor times in Richmond Museum. D’Arvall Hall, Lea Magna, and Tyburn House are all fictitious, but there were houses of wealthy people lining the Thames in both directions from Westminster Abbey, and the use of the river for travel was more common than it is today.

  Bibliography

  For information on the life and times of the Tudor Court, I have relied heavily on the following books:

  Henry VIII: King and Court Alison Weir

  The Six Wives of Henry VIII Alison Weir

  The Six Wives of Henry VIII Antonia Fraser

  The Other Tudors Philippa Jones

  Henry VIII Lacey Baldwin Smith

  Life in a Tudor Palace Christopher Gidlow

  House of Treason: The Rise and Fall of a Tudor Dynasty (for the Howard family) Robert Hutchinson

  Thomas Cromwell Robert Hutchinson

  The Tudor Age Jasper Ridley

  Henry VIII and His Court Neville Williams

  The Tudor Housewife Alison Sim

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  ISBN-13: 9781460335062

  BETRAYED, BETROTHED AND BEDDED

  Copyright © 2014 by Juliet Landon

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