It was not long before Henry asked Anne to be his lover, but her reply took him by surprise. “I would rather lose my life than my honesty,” she told the king. “Your wife I cannot be . . . your mistress I will not be.”
But Henry would not be deterred, courting her with poetry, love letters, and jewelry. Like an infatuated schoolboy, he designed an emblem with their initials entwined, and the motto aultre ne cherse—I seek no other. The pair of them “passed notes” during mass in the royal chapel, defacing a Book of Hours with their scribbles. Below the image of the bloodstained Man of Sorrows, Henry wrote, “If you remember my love in your prayers as strongly as I adore you, I shall hardly be forgotten.” He signed it “Henry R forever.”
And beneath a detailed miniature of the Annunciation, Anne replied with a rhyming couplet: By daily proof you shall me find
To be to you both loving and kind.
The royal affair remained a secret for several months, until the foreign ambassadors got wind of it, and soon it was the buzz throughout the court and across the kingdom. On May 15, 1527, Henry and Anne first appeared together as a couple at a reception hosted at Greenwich Palace to honor the French ambassador. Two days later, Cardinal Wolsey opened the secret trial in what came to be known as the King’s Great Matter, which Henry fully expected to result in a swift declaration of nullity of his marriage to Katherine of Aragon.
Henry required two separate decisions from Rome: permission to divorce Katherine, and permission to marry Anne—which would include an additional papal dispensation to ignore the issue of the first degree of affinity, because Henry had slept with Anne’s sister.
In the early months of 1527, even before Henry had taken any action to secure an annulment or divorce, Anne—one of a group of powerfully placed individuals who championed religious reform—found scholars and theologians to support their theories. She read Henry passages from William Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man, which argued that a king should be head of the Church in his own country. Anne’s encouragement of Henry to break with the Church of Rome eventually led to the British monarch being the Head of the Church of England.
But as time wore on, Anne grew disgusted with the sympathy Katherine was engendering, not merely from the public but from Henry himself, who was growing tired of the fight and anxious about the enemies it was making. Anne feared that he might abandon the Great Matter and return to Katherine after all. By then, she was nearly thirty years old, middle-aged in Tudor terms, and made it very clear to Henry that she might have already sacrificed the best years of her life: “I have been waiting long and might in the meanwhile have contracted some advantageous marriage out of which I might have had issue, which is the greatest consideration in the world, but alas! Farewell to my time and youth spent to no purpose at all.”
In December 1530, after Pope Clement VII demanded that Henry dismiss his mistress from court while the matter of the dispensation remained under judicial review, the king pressed Parliament even harder to pass an act that had been under discussion since November 3, 1529, which would grant him supreme leadership of the Church in England. Finally, on February 11, 1531, following a secret meeting between Thomas Cromwell and the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, Henry was acknowledged “Supreme Head of the Church, in so far as the Law of Christ allows.”
Anne was ecstatic, “as if she had actually gained Paradise,” it was reported.
“Paradise,” however, was still a long way off. In the summer of 1532 Anne’s old flame Henry Percy, now the Earl of Northumberland, angrily told Mary Talbot during one of their frequent marital squabbles that she was not his wife because he’d previously been legally contracted to Anne Boleyn. This news flash got as far as Anne herself, who immediately shared it with Henry. The king summoned Percy to London, where he was interrogated by a pair of bishops; and in the presence of Anne’s father and Henry’s two canon lawyers, the earl swore on the Blessed Sacrament that he’d had no precontract with Anne.
By now, Anne’s arrogance was testing the patience of her own flesh and blood. According to his wife, who gleefully relayed the information to Katherine of Aragon, the Duke of Norfolk had privately admitted that Anne would be the ruin of the Howards. Henry’s support began to hemorrhage, as even his closest advisers feared the potential economic and financial damage to England if Charles V closed off her routes to Spain and the Netherlands as punishment for Henry’s casting aside his aunt Katherine.
Mario Savorgnano, a Venetian who visited England soon after Henry’s separation from Katherine, observed, “There is now living with him a young woman of noble birth, though many say of bad character, whose will is law to him, and he is expected to marry her, should the divorce take place, which it is supposed will not be effected, as the peers of the realm, both spiritual and temporal, and the people are opposed to it.”
One of those people anonymously sent Anne a crude drawing of three figures intended to represent herself, Henry, and Katherine. Summoning her lady-in-waiting Anne Gainsford, she called, “Come hither, Nan, see here a book of prophecy; this he saith is the king, this the queen, and this is myself with my head off.”
Mistress Gainsford was said to have replied, “If I thought it true, though he were an emperor, I would not myself marry him with that condition.”
“Yes, Nan,” sighed Anne, “I think the book a bauble, yet for the hope I have that the realm may be happy by my issue, I am resolved to have him whatsoever might become of me.”
For some time Anne had harbored a sense of foreboding. But instead of resigning herself to it, she had all but enthusiastically embraced it. Back in 1530, when Henry had reminded her how many enemies she had made him and how much she therefore owed him for his resoluteness, Anne had retorted, “That matters not, for it is foretold in ancient prophesies that at this time a queen shall be burnt. But even if I were to suffer a thousand deaths, my love for you will not abate one jot.”
In 1532, plans were under way for a continental summit meeting between Henry and François I, but for Anne to be able to accompany Henry she would have to be a person of rank. Her appearance itself would need to be delicately negotiated, as she was not yet his wife.
So on September 1, in a pomp-filled ceremony at Windsor Castle, Henry created Anne Marquess of Pembroke, using the male form of address for the title, a common custom in Tudor times, although making a woman a peer in her own right was anything but common then. Equally unusual was the clause assigning the remainder to Anne’s offspring, whether or not they were legitimate. But even with her new title, Lady Pembroke would have to meet the king in Calais after the official diplomatic mission had been concluded. Still, Anne made the best of it, and at François’s court (where she had spent her teenage years as a lady-in-waiting to Mary Tudor and then to Mary’s successor, Queen Claude), she was treated like the prodigal daughter, fawned over and admired, with a retinue of English noblewomen at her beck and call that included her sister, Mary—and a mild-mannered blonde named Jane Seymour.
Following the festivities, while most of their attendants returned to England, Anne and Henry spent a fortnight in Calais enjoying a romantic idyll that resembled a honeymoon. Rumors circulated that the couple exchanged vows. Anne finally surrendered her body to Henry and they made love for the first time since the king’s infatuation with her had sparked nearly seven years earlier. As a point of law their intercourse validated their “marriage,” on the assumption that Henry’s union with Katherine would eventually be nullified. Regardless of whether their coupling was enjoyable, it was certainly fruitful, for by the end of the first week of December 1532, Anne was pregnant.
Like all brides, particularly those who feel as though they’ve waited a lifetime for the Big Day, Anne Boleyn wanted a big showy wedding—at Westminster Abbey. It didn’t quite happen the way she’d dreamed, but at least, after so many years of judicial wrangling, it happened. In Whitehall Palace on St. Paul’s Day, January 25, 1533, Anne and Henry were secretly wed at dawn in the upper
chamber over the Holbein Gate. The king lied outright to Dr. Rowland Lee, the cleric traditionally believed to have been their officiant, claiming that he had a document from the Pope giving him permission to marry again. But Henry refused to produce the paper, testily insisting, “If I should now that it waxeth towards day, fetch it, and be seen so early abroad, there would rise a rumor and talk thereof other than were convenient.” He commanded the celebrant to “Go forth in God’s name and do that which appertaineth to you.” Henry was not legally divorced according to the Church of Rome, but in the king’s mind he had never been legally married to Katherine, and therefore, he was a bachelor, free to wed whomsoever he chose.
Anne was now Henry’s “most dear and well-beloved wife.” But in wedding her he destroyed the delicate foreign policy he had so recently forged with François the previous autumn. Regardless of his appreciation of Anne’s numerous charms, the French king had been adamantly against Henry’s marriage to her.
By mid-February, Anne felt the urge to flaunt her delicate condition, announcing in company that she had “a fearsome and unquenchable longing to eat apples.” Henry remarked that it was a sure sign she was pregnant, to which Anne responded she “was sure [she] was not,” with a silvery peal of laughter. She exited the room without another word; eyewitnesses were shocked by her lack of discretion.
Anne appeared for the first time as Queen of England on Easter Sunday, April 12. “All the world is astonished at it, and even those who take her part do not know whether to laugh or to cry,” wrote Eustache Chapuys, the imperial ambassador.
On May 23, Archbishop Cranmer reached his decision on the Great Matter, with the assent of the learned divines of the court. Henry’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon was “null and absolutely void,” and “contrary to divine law.” Five days later, from a gallery in Lambeth Palace, the archbishop declared Henry’s marriage to Anne “good and valid.” Anne was now Henry’s legal bride and the child she carried in her womb would be legitimate.
Cranmer was about to crown the king’s pregnant new wife, but despite the fact that he and Anne were England’s keenest supporters of reform, he wasn’t altogether comfortable about it. As archbishop, he was technically the Pope’s legate and not the king’s servant. Therefore, Cranmer felt obligated to threaten Henry with excommunication if the monarch didn’t “put away” Katherine—who still considered herself Henry’s wife and queen.
So Henry shoved a history-making law through Parliament called the Act of Restraint of Appeals, which proclaimed England “an empire governed by one supreme head and king,” who answered to no one but God for his actions. It was also made an act of treason to write or speak against his marriage to Anne, and all adult males were forced to uphold it.
Anne’s household now numbered two hundred retainers and attendants, liveried in her chosen colors of purple and blue, embroidered with the motto La plus heureuse—“the most happy.”
Preparations then began in earnest for the four-day coronation celebration. Cloth of gold adorned Anne’s burgeoning figure as she sailed in state up the Thames from Greenwich on May 29, 1533, in a richly appointed barge accompanied by a flotilla of fifty other vessels sponsored by the kingdom’s various mercantile and crafts guilds. At the Tower of London, Henry greeted her with great pomp and the royal couple spent the next two nights celebrating under its battlements. The next time Anne would be conveyed to the Tower, it would be under distinctly less glamorous and celebratory circumstances.
Unfortunately, Anne’s official progress through London was somewhat marred by the banners that lined the streets, emblazoning the entwined initials of the monarch and his new queen consort. HA HA they read, and the public loved the unintentional joke on Anne.
On June 1, Whitsuntide, the six-months-pregnant Anne was crowned queen at Westminster Abbey. She wore an ermine-trimmed mantle of violet-colored velvet with a high starched ruff. The folds of her gown cleverly concealed her condition. According to tradition, the king did not attend the coronation. Greeting Anne afterward at Westminster, Henry asked her, “How liked you the City, sweetheart?”
The new queen replied, “Sir, the City itself was well enow, but I saw so many caps on heads and heard few tongues.”
Henry had pulled out all the stops to give his new wife a spectacular celebration. But very few people would have been described as enthusiastic about Anne’s coronation. According to a contemporary witness to events, “The initiatives of the gentlemen and lords were notable as the English sought, unceasingly, to honour their new princess. Not, I believe, because they wanted to, but in order to comply with the wishes of their king. The lords and ladies set to dances, sports of various kinds, hunting expeditions, and pleasures without parallel.”
As spring turned to summer, the royal couple was in high spirits as they awaited the birth of the son they had so long desired. Anne had endured a difficult pregnancy, particularly in her final months. The king was so anxious about her health that it was said he’d welcome a miscarriage if it would save Anne’s life.
Henry had confided to François I that he had to have a son “for the quiet repose and tranquility of our realm.” He’d already chosen the baby names, expressing a preference for Edward or, of course, Henry. However, at three p.m. on September 7, 1533, Anne gave birth to a flame-haired daughter, whom the monarchs named Elizabeth after both of their mothers.
Because of Anne’s rough pregnancy, Henry’s initial reaction was relief that both mother and child were healthy, followed briefly by delight that his daughter’s coloring was identical to his own. But he could not conceal his overall disappointment at the birth of a girl.
Nor, at the outset, could Anne. Her fortune had risen as far as it ever would, reaching its zenith on September 6, 1533, the day before Elizabeth’s birth. Within the space of a year, Anne had become a marquess, the king’s wife, the Queen of England, and the mother of the heir to the throne—but when that heir turned out to be a girl, her star plummeted. For all Anne’s education, culture, and wit, she was already failing in the one job requirement of a royal consort: she could not bear Henry VIII a son.
Henry cancelled the joust and the other grand celebrations that had been set to take place upon the birth of his son. He had been so sure Anne would give him a boy—she had practically guaranteed it—that the formal documents had been drawn up with the word “Prince” on them. All that was lacking was the insertion of the heir’s name and date of birth. Henry seethed as “ss” was added to every announcement.
By September 1534, Anne was several months pregnant again, her “goodly belly” a subject of discussion since April 27. As a precautionary measure to protect the well-being of both mother and child, it was common custom for a king to refrain from bedding his pregnant wife, and rarely did a sovereign remain celibate during those long months of prescribed absence from his spouse.
Although Henry had sacrificed much to wed Anne, he was no exception, and she was unable to contain her jealousy over his little infatuations and dalliances with her ladies-in-waiting. “Coldness and grumbling” characterized their arguments. Chapuys reported that the king had renewed his interest in one of Anne’s maids of honor. Naturally, Anne wanted the girl dismissed. But Henry testily informed his wife that “she had good reason to be content with what he had done for her, which he would not do again, if he were starting afresh. . . .” During one of their frequent lovers’ quarrels, when Anne complained about Henry’s infidelities using “certain words” that he disliked, according to Chapuys, he advised her to “shut her eyes and endure, just like others who were worthier than she, and that she ought to know that he could humiliate her in only a moment longer than it had taken to exalt her!”
Henry might have lashed out in anger at Anne, but at the same time he was instructing Thomas Cromwell to draft the statute that would make their children his heirs. In November 1534, Parliament passed the Act Respecting the Oath to the Succession, which required all adult males to take an oath recognizing Anne as Henry�
��s lawful wife and their children as the legitimate heirs to the throne. Anyone refusing to take the oath was guilty of treason.
Anne was in her mid-thirties during her second pregnancy in 1534, and Henry was forty-three. To their mutual consternation, she miscarried the fetus, and both of them were desperate for her to become pregnant again as soon as possible.
Yet Anne had not utterly forgotten her daughter, Elizabeth, in her rage to give birth to a son. She doted on her little girl, and breast-fed the baby herself, scandalizing the court. Anne even forced Elizabeth’s half sister to dance attendance on her as a servant, banishing Mary to a tiny, dark room and demanding that the eighteen-year-old girl’s ears be boxed by her governess “for the cursed bastard she is,” if Mary dared refer to herself as “Princess.” Henry’s elder daughter was now styled the Lady Mary, stripped of her title and birthright when Henry’s marriage to her mother was annulled.
Anne was pregnant again in October 1535, though her condition did not deter Henry from paying a visit early in the month to the Seymour family at their home of Wulfhall. There, Sir John Seymour made certain that his demure and modest daughter Jane fell under the royal gaze as much as possible. It was not long before Henry gave Jane a miniature portrait of himself, which she ostentatiously wore about her throat at court. Anne was so infuriated by Jane’s impudence that she ripped the chain from her neck.
Anne’s predicament was unusual. Most royal unions were political and dynastic alliances. Her marriage had been a love match—and yet she had no security in it. Consequently, she was prepared to protect it at all costs. More than her crown and marriage were at risk: her love for Henry and his for her—the very raison d’être for their union—were at stake, so she couldn’t afford to take the high road traveled by a traditional queen and ignore her husband’s infatuation with Jane Seymour. The ironic result of Anne’s making a big deal out of Jane was that Jane became a bigger deal than she might otherwise have been.
Notorious Royal Marriages: A Juicy Journey through Nine Centuries of Dynasty, Destiny, and Desire Page 13
