Henry VIII: The King and His Court

by Alison Weir

  Anne’s family certainly benefited from her elevation. Her father was now one of the most important men in the kingdom, while, in 1533, her brother Rochford was made a baron in his own right, Master of the Buckhounds, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and Master of the Bethlehem (Bedlam) Hospital for the insane. During the next three years he would be entrusted with several important diplomatic embassies to France.

  In 1533, “the King kept St George’s Day at Greenwich, with great solemnity, and the court was greatly replenished with lords, knights, ladies and gentlewomen, to a great number, with all enjoyment and pleasure.” 38 Most were doubtless agog to see their new Queen. In May, the King attended the wedding of his niece, Lady Frances Brandon, to young Henry Grey, third Marquess of Dorset. It was a spectacular event, held at Suffolk Place, and cost the bride’s father £1,666 (£499,800). As the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk were hosting the event, the Queen, mindful of the Duchess’s hostility, did not attend. This was Mary Tudor’s last public appearance. She was ailing, and would soon return to Westhorpe for good.

  That month, Archbishop Cranmer convened an ecclesiastical court at Dunstable Priory, where, on 23 May, he pronounced the King’s union with Katherine null and void; five days later he declared that Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn was valid and lawful. “The King, in his blindness, fears no one but God,” Chapuys observed.39

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  “Here Anna Comes, Bright Image of Chastity”

  The King was determined that Anne’s coronation should outrival any of those of her predecessors in splendour. On the day after Cranmer pronounced judgement, she donned cloth of gold and proceeded in the former Queen’s barge from Greenwich to the Tower of London, attended by Wiltshire, Suffolk, and a host of nobles and bishops, and escorted by the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, and Aldermen with music, fireworks, pageantry, and a “marvellous” salute of cannonfire. At the Tower, Henry greeted her most affectionately, openly cupping her pregnant belly with his hands. The next day he dubbed eighteen Knights of the Bath, among them the Earls of Dorset and Derby, and Francis Weston; most had Boleyn connections.1

  Two days later, on Saturday 31 May, Anne, wearing white cloth of gold and ermine with her hair loose beneath a coif with a jewelled circlet, made a ceremonial entry into London, travelling in procession from Cheapside to Temple Bar in a litter draped with white cloth of gold, drawn by two palfreys caparisoned in the same. Above the litter was a canopy borne by four knights. The half-mile-long procession was led by the French ambassador and his suite; they were followed by ladies, gentlemen, knights, judges, bishops, crimson-clad nobles, squires, heralds, ambassadors, and the Queen’s servants dressed in scarlet. Then, wearing bejewelled robes of crimson velvet,2 came Suffolk, who had been appointed High Constable of England just for this occasion and had left his desperately sick wife to attend, and Lord William Howard, acting as Earl Marshal in place of his half-brother Norfolk, who was in France with Rochford on official business. Thanks to his niece’s influence, Norfolk had recently been able to wrest the office of Earl Marshal from Suffolk, who had held it since the death of the second Duke of Norfolk in 1524; Cromwell had mollified Suffolk by telling him that the King thought his enforced surrender of the office imputed “much honour” in him and was grateful to him for nourishing “kindness and love between my Lord of Norfolk and you.”3 Norfolk was represented at the coronation by his son Surrey, who had returned briefly from Paris for the occasion.

  The streets of London were freshly gravelled and gaily decorated with tapestries and rich hangings, and Anne’s falcon badge was everywhere to be seen. In Gracechurch Street, the German merchants of the Steelyard had erected a triumphal arch designed by Holbein, upon which was a tableau of Apollo on Mount Parnassus, surrounded by the four Muses, all “playing on several sweet instruments.”4 Beneath was a white marble “fountain of Helicon,” from which flowed Rhenish wine for all comers.5 At various places en route, the Queen paused to listen to Latin orations and angelic-sounding choirs, or to watch pageants mounted in her honour. The pageants had been commissioned and paid for by the City companies and devised by Nicholas Udall, an erudite but vicious paedophile who became Provost of Eton in 1534; he was assisted by John Leland, the King’s librarian, and Richard Cox, a Cambridge humanist. These pageants lauded the new Queen’s chastity and expressed the hope that she would bear sons to continue the Tudor dynasty.

  Late in the afternoon, Anne arrived at Westminster Hall. There, standing beneath a cloth of estate, she took spices and hippocras before changing out of her robes and leaving secretly by barge for York Place, where the King awaited her. Tradition decreed that he play no part in her triumph—it was to be hers alone. Yet Anne was dissatisfied with her reception, which, according to Chapuys, had been more appropriate to “a funeral rather than a pageant.”6 Few citizens in the huge crowds had doffed their caps or cried “God save the Queen!” and Anne’s fool had yelled at them, “I think you all have scurvy heads, and dare not uncover!” At the sight of the royal couple’s entwined initials, several wags had dared to laugh, “HA! HA!” Some even said that the crown did not become Anne.7 Nevertheless, the King commissioned his printer, Wynkyn de Worde, to publish a pamphlet commemorating Anne’s triumph.

  On Sunday 1 June 1533, Anne was attired for her coronation in a kirtle of crimson velvet, over which was a traditional sideless surcoat of purple velvet furred with ermine; on her head she wore a caul of pearls beneath a rich coronet. Walking beneath a cloth of gold canopy, with the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk carrying her train, she went in procession from Westminster Hall to the nearby Abbey, attended by thirteen mitred abbots, the monks of Westminster, the entire Chapel Royal, the bishops and clergy, and the lords in their robes of estate. Sir Thomas More, the Duchess of Norfolk, and the Exeters were conspicuous by their absence, much to the King’s chagrin.

  Seated in St. Edward’s Chair, which was draped in cloth of gold, Anne was crowned by Archbishop Cranmer with the same formalities as if she had been a queen regnant. St. Edward’s Crown was placed on her head—it was later replaced by a smaller crown specially made for her8—and she was invested with the sovereign’s two sceptres. The choir then sang Te Deum in celebration.

  Afterwards, eight hundred people sat down to a sumptuous banquet in Westminster Hall; up to thirty dishes were served at each course, to the sound of trumpets,9 as well as marvellous “subtleties and ships made of wax, gorgeous to behold.”10 The Duke of Suffolk, as Steward, rode up and down between the tables on his courser, overseeing everything, while Sir Nicholas Carew acted as the Queen’s Champion. Anne sat on the King’s throne at the high marble table on the dais, twelve steps up, served by eight nobles and attended by the Countesses of Oxford and Worcester, who from time to time held a rich cloth in front of her face “when she list to spit or do otherwise at her pleasure.”11 The King, attended by several ambassadors, watched the proceedings from a latticed closet in the cloisters of St. Stephen’s Chapel. At the end of the afternoon, the Queen was served spices presented by her Sewer and hippocras from a gold cup offered by the Lord Mayor, before departing at 6 P.M. to spend the night at York Place.

  “The English sought unceasingly to honour their new Princess, not because they wanted to, but in order to comply with the wishes of their King.”12 On 2 June, jousts were held in honour of the coronation in the new tiltyard at York Place. Henry did not take part. Carew led the answerers, but few spears were broken.13 There followed “a goodly banquet in the Queen’s chamber.”14 The next few days were given over to hunting, dancing, and feasting; then the King and Queen moved to Greenwich, where the festivities continued on a smaller scale. Sir Edward Baynton, Anne’s Vice Chamberlain, informed Lord Rochford that, “as for pastime in the Queen’s chamber, [there] was never more.” If any man had gone away leaving at court a lady who might “mourn at parting,” he added, “I can no whit perceive the same by their dancing and pastime they do use here.”15 For all her efforts to occupy the moral high ground, Anne was to preside over a court ben
t on pleasure: a year or so later Margaret Roper was to tell her father, Sir Thomas More, that there was “nothing else in the court but sporting and dancing.” 16 Anne often entertained the King at feasts and “fine mummeries,” 17 and was even known to dance with her ladies and favoured gentlemen in her bedchamber.18

  Most of these gentlemen were members of the King’s Privy Chamber. Anne enjoyed their witty and stimulating company, chose them as hunting companions and gambling partners, flirted openly with them, and exchanged gifts of money and trinkets, all in accordance with the accepted conventions of courtly love. 19 Most people, including the King, were happy for her to do so, but Chapuys and others looked askance at such familiarity.

  One of the gentlemen most favoured by Henry and Anne was Sir Henry Norris, upon whom had been showered numerous offices— among other things he was Black Rod in the Parliament House, Chamberlain of North Wales, and High Steward of Oxford University—and generous grants of land. As Groom of the Stool, Norris was the King’s most intimate associate, and much trusted by him; it was to Norris, rather than Cromwell, that petitioners took their requests. Another member of the charmed circle was Francis Weston, now a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, a renowned lutenist, and a frequent partner of the King at tennis, and of the King and Queen at cards.20 When Weston had married Anne Pickering in 1532, the King had given him ten marks and wished him better fortune in marriage than he himself had had. An up-and-coming favourite was William Brereton, for whom Anne had recently secured a post as Page of the Chamber. Henry liked him, and was to promote him to Gentleman of the Chamber and grant him lands and offices in Wales worth £1,200 (£360,000) a year.21 Brereton, who often accompanied Henry and Anne to the hunt, was a noted seducer of women22 and a client of both Richmond and Norfolk.

  The death of Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk, at Westhorpe on 25 June, caused hardly a ripple in the merrymaking. Suffolk had hastened to her bedside after the coronation, bearing a conciliatory message from the King, which healed the rift between brother and sister. Mary was buried in the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk, with all the honours due to a queen, and her daughter Frances, Marchioness of Dorset, as chief mourner.

  On 28 June, there arrived at Greenwich a sumptuous litter and three mules, a wedding gift from Francis I to the new Queen, who was so delighted with it that she insisted on being taken for a three-mile ride there and then. 23

  As Queen, Anne was enjoying a sumptuous lifestyle. In every royal house, Katherine of Aragon’s devices were being replaced, at enormous cost, by her successor’s arms, initials, and falcon badges.24 At Hampton Court, work was progressing rapidly on new, luxurious first-floor lodgings for Anne and the King, which ran at right angles to each other above Cloister Green Court and were connected by private galleries.25 A staircase led to a new privy garden, and there was a balcony from which the Queen and her ladies could watch the hunting in the park. Anne’s rooms were decorated in the antique style by a German craftsman26 and had mirrors set into the ceilings. Grotesque work adorned the outer walls of her bedchamber.

  Anne’s furnishings were the best that the age could provide. Her elaborately carved tester, bearing the royal arms of England, is now at Hever Castle; she owned another of gilded walnut. One of her beds was hung with red sarcanet with a matching canopy stiffened with blue buckram; another, smaller bed of green satin had crimson and orange curtains. She owned six chairs of estate, variously upholstered in cloth of gold, green silk, or crimson and purple velvet, with silk and gold fringing and gilded and enamelled pommels.27

  At Hampton Court, Antonio Toto was commissioned to paint religious pictures, decorative panels, and shields to adorn the new royal apartments; Robert Shynk made the moulds for the antique work, and Henry Blankston of Cologne carried out much of the decorative painting and gilding: “all the walls of the palace shine with gold and silver.”28 Galyon Hone spent ten years working on the heraldic glass at Hampton Court, where many of the windows were glazed with crystal. The King’s presence chamber was known as the Paradise Chamber, and was one of the wonders of the palace for many years. Here, “everything glitters so with silver, gold and jewels as to dazzle one’s eyes.”29 Persian tapestries hung on the walls, and there was a beautiful painted ceiling and a cloth of gold canopy of estate above the throne on the dais.30 Henry’s privy chamber had an alabaster fountain set into the wall, as at Greenwich, a black leather desk, and a clock stand. Many rooms were “adorned with tapestries of gold, silver and velvet.”31

  The elaborate gardens that Henry VIII created at Hampton Court in the 1530s have long vanished, although their layout can still be seen. The walled privy garden had square railed beds laid to lawn or sanded, with flowers round the edges, and green-and-white-striped posts bearing painted statues of the King’s Beasts. Painted and gilded rails also surrounded the ornamental fishponds in the Pond Gardens, which were laid out in 1536, 32 near the site of the present Banqueting House, which was built in 1700 on the site of one of Henry’s banqueting houses, of which there were several in the grounds. One, built on a circular plan with a dome, stood high up on an artificial mound in what was known as the Mount Garden, and afforded excellent views of the gardens, park, and river. Elsewhere in the gardens there were crenellated box hedges, fantastic topiary in the shapes of men and centaurs, arbours, fountains, and sundials. There was a herb garden, and there were two orchards, one providing fruit exclusively for the King, the other adorned with five hundred red rose bushes.

  The Queen’s gabled first-floor apartments at Greenwich were also being renovated at this time: the ceiling of her presence chamber was decorated with gilded bosses on a lattice of white battens; expensive Seville tiles were laid in the chimney grates, and cheaper green and yellow Flanders tiles in every alcove.33 Five new doors were hung in her great bedchamber, new rush matting was laid in the passage to her robing room, and new transoms were installed in the great bay window between her bedchamber and her presence chamber. Two folding tables in antique style were made for her, with inlaid tiles: one was a “breakfast table,” the other was a gaming table “for Her Grace to play on.” 34

  The King’s other major building project at this time was at Windsor, where he built a wooden platform that later became known as the North Terrace along the clifftop beneath the royal apartments in the Upper and Middle Wards. It gave him access from his lodgings to the Little Park, via an outside stair: “every afternoon” that summer, “when the weather is anything fair, His Grace doth ride forth on hawking, or walketh, and cometh not in again till it be late in the evening.”35 He was in a buoyant mood, for he was confident that he would soon, at long last, be the father of a prince.

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  “The High and Mighty Princess of England”

  In 1533, Hans Holbein painted a splendid double portrait of the French ambassadors Jean de Dinteville—who begged to be recalled after only one stormy audience with Henry VIII, in June 1533, from which de Dinteville emerged visibly shaking1—and Georges de Selves. It was a picture that was laden with symbolism, dark hints of mortality, and religious discord.2 It was probably this masterpiece, which was almost certainly painted at Bridewell Palace, that led to Holbein’s being taken up by Cromwell, who appreciated his genius and meant to exploit it in the service of the King. After Cromwell had sat for him,3 Holbein soon found himself in demand as a fashionable portrait painter, working on commissions from important people at court.

  Many of his portraits survive, some as drawings,4 others as finished works; some, of husbands and wives, were in pairs. Several are known to be lost. These portraits constitute the most important and extensive visual record of any sixteenth-century court and are important source material for costume and jewellery. Holbein must have set up a large studio with several students assisting him and reproducing his works in order to keep up with the demand for them.

  Holbein also produced exquisite miniatures, having learned the art of limning from “the famous Master Lucas,” who was almost certainly Lucas Horenbout
, whom Holbein “as far excelled in drawing, arrangement, understanding and execution as the sun surpasses the moon in brightness.” 5 Fifteen of his miniatures survive, five in the Royal Collection.

  It has been suggested, on good evidence, that Holbein worked as a spy for Cromwell.6 It was easy for him, as a fashionable artist, to obtain an entrée to the houses of those whose loyalty to the new régime was suspect: it is surely no coincidence that several of the portraits he painted at this time were of persons about whom Cromwell wanted information, such as George Neville, Lord Abergavenny; Sir Nicholas Carew; and Sir John Russell, none of whom had much liking for Anne Boleyn.

  Holbein appears to have found a royal patron in Anne Boleyn, whose religious views he shared. He designed for her an antique-style standing cup and cover decorated with an imperial crown and her falcon badge supported by satyrs,7 as well as the metalwork on the binding of her illuminated manuscript “The Ecclesiaste.” He also designed monogram jewellery for Anne and Henry and executed a set of portrait drawings of the young women of the Queen’s circle, all similar in composition. However, no certain portrait of Anne by him survives, and it may be that any that did exist were destroyed after her death.

  On 3 July 1533, Katherine of Aragon’s erstwhile Chamberlain, Lord Mountjoy, was sent to Ampthill to inform his former mistress of the King’s marriage to Anne Boleyn and order her to relinquish the title of Queen. Staunch in her conviction that she was the King’s true wife, Katherine refused, despite being threatened by the privy councillors present with an indictment for treason. Knowing of Anne Boleyn’s spite towards her, she believed that Henry was being influenced against his true nature to set her aside. Henry had his revenge later that month, when he moved Katherine to a less comfortable residence, Buckden Towers in Huntingdonshire, with a household that had again been reduced in size; of her thirty maids of honour, only ten remained.