by Alison Weir
The King did not help matters by installing Anne Boleyn in the palatial surroundings of Durham House on the Strand soon after the legate’s arrival. But Anne was not satisfied with her new abode, and demanded something even grander. Henry arranged for her to lodge temporarily at Suffolk House in Southwark, the London home of the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk, and himself paid for the refurbishment of the rooms she would occupy, which were furnished with great splendour. Here, Anne kept great state, attended by ladies-in-waiting, trainbearers, and chaplains. Courtiers hastened in droves to pay their respects to her, while Katherine’s chamber, once the hub of courtly entertainments and gatherings, was deserted.
Despite this semblance of popularity, Anne and her family were never well liked at court, where they were secretly considered proud and grasping, and they were hated by the people, many of whom supported their beloved Queen. When Anne went hunting with the King, villagers would hoot and hiss at her, 7 and on one occasion when Henry was riding alone near Woodstock, one of his subjects yelled, “Back to your wife!”8
Anne cannot have been happy with the fact that Henry was still dining regularly with Katherine, and also, according to Jean du Bellay, sharing her bed.9 On the King’s own admission, he was not having sex with her, so he was probably keeping up appearances in order to impress the legate. The strain of the nullity suit had taken its toll on Katherine—Campeggio thought she was nearly fifty, when in fact she was just forty-three, whereas Henry, at thirty-seven, was still in his prime.
In November 1528, the royal couple were together at Bridewell Palace; as they walked along the river gallery, they could hear a large crowd outside cheering the Queen.10 Fearing that his popularity was at risk, the King summoned the leading citizens of London to the palace and assured them that he had instigated nullity proceedings only to set his mind at rest, and that, were he to choose again, he would take Katherine for his wife above all others.11
In early December, however, Henry took advantage of Katherine’s temporary absence at Richmond and installed Anne at Greenwich “in a very fine lodging which he has furnished very near his own. Greater court is paid to her every day than has been for a long time paid to the Queen.” 12 Some were scandalised by this turn of events—the Venetian ambassador spoke in such an insultingly “lewd fashion” of the King’s morals that he had to be recalled13—but Anne did not care. She was determined to eclipse not just Katherine but Wolsey, too. It was to Anne, rather than the Cardinal, that courtiers and supplicants now came seeking patronage.
There was a tense atmosphere at court during the Christmas celebrations. Anne kept open house in her own apartments, avoiding the official revels in the chamber “because she does not like to meet the Queen.” 14 It was Katherine who presided over the main festivities, but she found it hard to look cheerful “and made no joy of nothing, her mind was so troubled.”15 The King ignored her misery; he entertained the two legates with jousts, banquets, masques, and disguisings, knighted Campeggio’s son, and on the Feast of St. Thomas of Canterbury on 29 December appeared looking very majestic in cloth of gold lined with beautiful lynx skins. “All comers of any honest behaviour” were allowed to enter the great hall and partake of the “great plenty of viands” laid out there.16
The Boleyns had recently taken up Holbein, who around 1528 painted portraits of several members of their faction, among them Rochford’s sister Anne and her husband Sir John Shelton, and Sir John Godsalve and his son, another John, who were members of Rochford’s circle in Norfolk.17
Holbein had also painted the illuminated capitals for a short treatise by Nicolaus Kratzer, entitled “Canones Horoptri,” which was bound in green velvet and presented to Henry at New Year 1529. The treatise described the uses of an instrument called a horoptrum which had been invented by Kratzer to predict such things as the exact times of sunrise and sunset and the passage of the Sun through the Zodiac. 18 We know that Holbein had returned to Basel by August 1528, when his two-year leave of absence from the city expired, but it is possible that he came back briefly to England for the presentation of the treatise. This cannot be proved, as his movements for the next three years are unrecorded. 19
During the early months of 1529, the legates prepared for the hearing of the King’s nullity suit. Henry proposed Warham as counsel for the Queen, but Katherine had little faith in the Archbishop’s ability or inclination to uphold her cause. Besides, he was Henry’s subject, and therefore not impartial. She had more confidence in her other counsel, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, a man of greater principle.
There was a minor scandal at Easter when Anne took it upon herself to bless cramp rings, a ritual that could be performed only by an anointed king or queen. The fuss soon died down, and the court moved to Richmond to celebrate St. George’s Day with the usual Garter feast.
Wolsey, who had left no stone unturned to make the King’s case watertight, was confident of a happy outcome when, on 31 May, the legatine court opened in the great hall of the priory of the Blackfriars in London. There was enormous public interest in the proceedings, not only because opinions ran high, but also because a king and queen had never before been summoned before a court in England. For a brief space it seemed as if the hearing might not take place after all, for when the Queen was summoned into the court, she did not go to the chair of estate appointed for her, but, ignoring the legates, made her way to the King’s throne and there, falling to her knees, made a dramatic plea to him to spare her the extremity of the court. She declared that she had been a true wife to him, and that when he married her she had been a virgin, “without touch of man. And whether it be true or no, I put it to your conscience.” If, however, he persisted in his suit, then she would commit her cause to God.20
As the King stared straight ahead, Katherine rose, curtseyed, and, leaning on the arm of her Receiver General, Griffin Richards, who had served her since her marriage to Prince Arthur, she left the court, ignoring urgent calls for her return. Outside, the people cheered and clapped her. The legates, however, declared her contumacious and proceeded without her.
There followed days and days of interminable depositions and heated discussions. Much of the evidence focused on whether Prince Arthur had consummated his marriage, and several noblemen came forward to boast that they had been capable of the sex act at his age. Much of the evidence was heavily weighted in Henry’s favour, but Bishop Fisher, a lone voice, spoke up for Katherine, telling the court, “This marriage of the King and Queen can be dissolved by no power, human or divine.”21 Henry dismissed this as the view of “but one man.”
Campeggio listened to it all, but gave nothing away. Finally, on 23 July, he unexpectedly adjourned the case to Rome, in compliance with the Pope’s secret instructions. There was a shocked silence; then, as the King walked out, his face like thunder, the Duke of Suffolk crashed his fist onto a table and shouted, “By the mass, it was never merry in England while we had cardinals among us!” Wolsey, who was no less appalled than anyone else and doubtless believed that he now faced ruin, replied bitterly, “Of all men in this realm, ye have least cause to be offended with cardinals. For if I, a simple cardinal, had not been, ye should have at this present no head upon your shoulders.”22
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“Above Everyone, Mademoiselle Anne”
At the end of July 1 529, Henry went with Anne Boleyn to Greenwich, then took her on progress, visiting Waltham Abbey, Barnet, Tittenhanger, Windsor, Reading, Woodstock, Langley, Buckingham, and Grafton, where Anne “kept state more like a queen than a simple maid.”1 Here, in September, the two legates came, so that Campeggio could take his official leave of the King before returning to Rome.
There is no doubt that Wolsey was in disgrace, and that Anne, Norfolk, and the rest of their faction were resolved to be rid of him for good. There are conflicting accounts of what happened at Grafton. Cavendish, writing many years later, claims that when the cardinals arrived, Campeggio was led away to a comfortable lodging, but that no provision had been made
for Wolsey, and he was forced to sit on his mule in the courtyard until Henry Norris came and offered the use of his own room, so that the Cardinal could change out of his riding clothes before seeing the King. Another of Wolsey’s servants, Thomas Alward, whose account was written five days after the event, does not mention this but states that, because Grafton was a very small house, both cardinals were lodged at nearby Easton Neston.2 Both are agreed that when Wolsey, full of trepidation, came into the crowded presence chamber and knelt before his master, Henry’s old affection for him surfaced and, smiling, he raised him and led him to a window embrasure, where they talked for some time, much to the amazement of the onlookers.
Anne was furious. After Wolsey had gone off to eat, having arranged to meet with the King the following morning, she sat at dinner with Henry and upbraided him for entertaining a man who had done him and his realm so much ill. Alward claims that Henry and Wolsey did sit in Council the following morning, and that the King went hunting after dinner, but Cavendish says Anne insisted that Henry leave early with her to see a new hunting park nearby, and that Wolsey and Campeggio arrived just as the King was ready to leave, when he told them he had no time to talk and bade them farewell. Anne, who had ordered a picnic, saw to it that he was away all day. When he returned, Wolsey had gone, bound for the More.3
Whatever happened, Henry never saw Wolsey again. Influenced by the Boleyn faction, who were even accusing their enemy of witchcraft, he agreed that the Cardinal be indicted under the Statute of Praemunire, which prohibited papal interference in English affairs without royal consent, for receiving bulls from Rome, which Wolsey could not deny. On 17 October, he was stripped of his post as Lord Chancellor, and the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk triumphantly went to collect the Great Seal from him at Esher. Yet the King was merciful: when, in November, Parliament arraigned Wolsey on forty-four charges, Henry refused to proceed against him, but allowed him to retain several of his ecclesiastical properties and retire to his diocese of York.
The effects of Wolsey’s fall were manifold. It unleashed a wave of anticlerical feeling, which was fed by Norfolk and Suffolk. It gave the King a useful scapegoat for things that had gone wrong in the past: he could say that Wolsey deceived him, and that many things had been done without his knowledge.4 The Privy Council and the nobility grew more powerful now that they had no rival.
In October, the King had returned to Greenwich, having seized four of Wolsey’s most desirable houses—York Place, the More, Tittenhanger, and Esher—along with their priceless contents, and taken full possession of Hampton Court. Building works still in progress were allowed to continue, and Wolsey’s coats of arms were torn down and replaced with the King’s.
On 2 November, Henry and Anne, accompanied by her mother, went by barge to view York Place.5 This was, strictly speaking, still the property of the archdiocese of York, but early in 1530 the King’s lawyers would manage to overcome this technicality.6 Wolsey had drawn up an inventory before leaving the house, and the King and Anne inspected the piles of gold plate that had been left on trestles in the presence chamber and the sumptuous hangings that had been laid out in the long gallery. 7 Anne particularly liked York Place because it had no apartments for the Queen, and would be a house she could share exclusively with Henry. When Anne visited, she would lodge in a chamber beneath Wolsey’s old library, and there was accommodation for her family also.8
At Hampton Court Henry was building a new private lodging for himself, the Bayne Tower, which was connected to the privy chamber by a new gallery. 9 While work was in progress, he himself lodged in Wolsey’s stacked royal apartments. The Bayne Tower, which still survives,10 is a three-storey donjon, the last of its type to be built in England. On the ground floor were the Privy Chamber office and a strong room; the first floor housed the King’s private bedchamber, bathroom (hence the name Bayne) with hot and cold taps, and study, and the top floor his library, housed in two rooms, and jewel house.11 Henry used the Bayne Tower until 1533, when he abandoned it for more modern apartments.
His next tasks were to improve the drainage system12 and add a second great kitchen with three huge open fireplaces and two stone hatches,13 as well as several subsidiary kitchens and offices. Later, he extended the cellars. The service complex would then occupy more than fifty rooms.14
Over the next year or so, the King, encouraged by Anne Boleyn, undertook other works at Hampton Court. He replaced Wolsey’s wooden bridge with a stone one, guarded by statues of the King’s Beasts, and set up the royal arms on the gatehouse and the inner gateway.15 He built a new council chamber and constructed an imposing watergate down by the river, with an adjacent covered and crenellated water gallery with oriel windows. Later, he would transform the chapel, build innovative royal apartments, and erect a vast great hall.16 Altogether, in the period 1529–1546, he spent £62,000 (£18,600,000) on converting Hampton Court into a magnificent show palace.17
Esher Palace had been built of red brick by William Wayneflete, Bishop of Winchester in the fifteenth century, and remained officially episcopal property until Henry VIII purchased it in 1537.18 Wolsey had added a fine projecting gallery similar to that at Bridewell, which Henry had ripped out and moved to York Place while Wolsey was still residing at Esher, “only to torment him.”19
The More, another fifteenth-century house, which stood to the southeast of Rickmansworth, had been so lavishly rebuilt by Wolsey that Jean du Bellay claimed it was finer than Hampton Court.20 Henry initially did little to it, and by 1531 its once beautiful gardens were “utterly destroyed”21 and the house was deteriorating. Only in 1535 did the King make improvements, partitioning the great hall with a floor and creating new chambers above and below. Later, he entertained there several times.
Henry also took over Wolsey’s unfinished tomb at Windsor, having decided that it would make an ideal sepulchre for himself. But the work proceeded in fits and starts, and the tomb, with its golden effigy on a black marble sarcophagus embellished at each corner with nine-foot-high bronze pillars adorned with angels bearing candlesticks, would still not be completed at the time of Henry’s death.
Cardinal College, however, did not survive Wolsey’s fall. Many of the lands that supported it were “begged away to hungry courtiers,” 22 and when the Master and Fellows begged the King to save the rest, he gave a vague promise to found his own “honourable college, but not of such magnificence as my Lord Cardinal intended to have.”23 It would be seventeen years before he kept his word.
For the next two years, Henry ruled England alone, determined that in future he would manage his own affairs.24 For the first time in years, he bore the sole responsibility for his kingdom, and he found it a heavy one. Initially, he told the Queen that Wolsey had left affairs in such a chaotic state that he would have to work day and night to set everything in order.25 Yet it soon became clear just how many of the burdens of state the Cardinal had shouldered, and the King soon lost patience with his councillors, shouting that Wolsey had been “a better man than any of them for managing matters” and stamping out of the council chamber in disgust at their incompetence.26
However, ruling autonomously gave Henry a new confidence and authority, and his political and personal priorities led him to forge increasingly aggressive policies. Driven by the unshakeable conviction that he was right to demand the annulment of his marriage—“not because so many say it, but because he, being learned, knoweth the matter to be right”27—he relied more and more on his own judgement and political instincts. He also paid greater attention to paperwork: Erasmus noted in 1529 that the King personally corrected and amended his letters, often drafting up to four versions before he was satisfied.28
Wolsey’s fall resulted in the promotion of several courtiers. Norfolk and Suffolk were made joint Presidents of the Council. Norfolk had envisaged that his career would flourish once the Cardinal was out of the way, but was to find himself outmanoevred by cleverer men. Moreover, his policies were invariably directed by his own insecuritie
s, for it was his constant fear that the King might restore Wolsey to his former place.
Henry appointed as his secretary a canon and civil lawyer from Cambridge, Dr. Stephen Gardiner, an able but rather arrogant and difficult man 29 of about thirty-two, who had been one of Wolsey’s secretaries. Gardiner was in many ways a conservative, but his overriding belief in absolute monarchical authority, and his hostility towards the Queen for defying it, made him an ideal royal servant. He was of swarthy complexion, and had a hooked nose, deep-set eyes, a permanent frown, huge hands, and a “vengeable wit.” 30 He was ambitious, sure of himself, irascible, astute, and worldly. Henry came to rely on him, sending him on important diplomatic missions and telling everyone that, when Gardiner was away, he felt as if he had lost his right hand; yet he was also aware that the Secretary could be two-faced. 31 Gardiner was successful in his career because he understood “his master’s nature” and knew how to manipulate him.32
The final, and most important, new appointment was that of Sir Thomas More as Lord Chancellor of England, on 26 October 1529; Sir William Fitzwilliam was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in his place. Suffolk had been the King’s first choice for the post of Lord Chancellor, but a jealous Norfolk opposed it on the grounds that Suffolk was powerful enough. But More did not want to be Chancellor: he was reluctant to become embroiled in the Great Matter because he knew that his views did not coincide with the King’s. Henry overruled his doubts, assuring him that that he need play no part in the nullity proceedings; More might “look first unto God and, after God, to him.” Eustache Chapuys, the new imperial ambassador who had come to replace Mendoza, declared, “There never was nor will be a chancellor as honest and so thoroughly accomplished as he.” 33
