Henry VIII: The King and His Court

by Alison Weir

  “Master Smeaton, why are you so sad?” she asked.

  “It is no matter,” he replied dejectedly.

  Anne answered haughtily, “You may not look to have me speak to you as I would to a nobleman, because you be an inferior person.”

  “No, no, a look sufficeth me,” Smeaton assured her, “and thus fare you well.”22 He was to have bitter cause to regret his words.

  The King had been planning for some time to revisit Calais, and intended to depart with the Queen on 2 May, after the May Day jousts. Before crossing the Channel, they would stop in Dover to inspect the fortifications. 23

  But the visit would never take place. It is clear that Anne’s fall from favour was sudden. On 30 April, as the Queen watched a dogfight in Greenwich Park, Cromwell laid before the King shocking and seemingly incontrovertible evidence that she had seduced Smeaton and other members of the Privy Chamber, including her own brother, and that, furthermore, she had plotted regicide, 24 with the intention of marrying one of her lovers and ruling as regent for the child she was carrying. The evidence was sufficiently strong and convincing to cast serious doubt on the paternity of the baby, and to utterly alienate the King from her. With devastating clarity, he saw now that all along he had nourished a viper in his bosom: not only had she deceived and humiliated him, both as a husband and as her sovereign, but—more seriously—she had put the succession in jeopardy and committed the worst kind of treason by plotting the King’s death.

  Most modern historians are of the opinion that Anne was not guilty of any of the twenty-two charges of adultery laid against her; eleven of them can be proved false. It is unlikely that she would have schemed to kill the King, who was her chief defender and protector. The circumstances of her fall suggest strongly that she was framed; even Chapuys thought so, 25 and on the eve of her death, Anne herself would swear on the blessed sacrament that she was innocent. However, her reputation, her flirtatious nature, her enjoyment of male company, and her indulgence in the amorous banter and interplay of courtly love all made the charges against her believable. Not only the King but many other people thought her guilty.

  Anne was doomed. In the normal course of justice, her pregnancy would have saved her from a death sentence, or at least postponed it, but this child could never be allowed to live, because the King would not dare risk a disputed succession. Nor, however, could he be seen as a monarch who put an innocent baby to death, which is perhaps the reason why some of the documents relating to Anne’s trial were destroyed. No further mention is made of her pregnancy, and it is perhaps significant that she was not made to undergo an examination by a panel of matrons before her execution, as Lady Jane Grey did in 1553. Anne herself never mentioned her condition while in the Tower, but neither did she make any reference to her daughter Elizabeth. In both cases, she must have realised that to do so would be futile, for Henry had hardened his heart against her.

  Cromwell had obtained most of his evidence by questioning the members of Anne’s household, particularly the ladies of her Privy Chamber, who, he claimed, were so shocked by her crimes that they could not conceal them. 26 What he uncovered was described at her trial as “bawdy and lechery.”27 Only fragments of it survive, but they suffice to suggest that the whole fabric of the case against Anne was constructed on the basis of innuendo and inference. It was enough, however, to convince an overly suspicious man like the King.

  On 30 April, the King and Queen were observed at a window overlooking the courtyard at Greenwich. Anne was holding Elizabeth in her arms, and seemed to be pleading with Henry, who appeared to be angry. The Council sat until dark in “protracted conference,” and a crowd gathered at the palace, realising that “some deep and difficult question was being discussed.” 28

  During that day, Anne tackled Sir Henry Norris about his failure to marry Madge Shelton; he said he wished to “tarry awhile,” but she interpreted his evasive reply as implying that it was because of her.

  “You look for dead men’s shoes!” she told him. “For if aught came to the King but good, you would look to have me.”

  Norris was appalled at her indiscretion and infringement of the rules of courtly love, which required the man to set the pace, and stoutly declared that, if he ever thought such a thing, “he would his head were off.” Anne was amused, and said she could undo him if she wished to, but then realised that others were listening to their conversation, and made Norris go to her Almoner John Skip to swear on his oath that she “was a good woman.”29 Within three days the gossipmongers had spread her words round the court.

  That evening, while dancing, Anne learned that the musician Mark Smeaton had been arrested.30 She was also informed, at 11 P.M., that the planned visit to Calais had been postponed for a week.31

  Smeaton was taken to the Tower on the morning of 1 May.32 There, probably under torture,33 he confessed to committing adultery with the Queen on three occasions in the spring of 153534—the only one of the men accused with her to admit his guilt. His inclusion among her alleged lovers was doubtless intended to show how low she had stooped to gratify her lust, and so further inflame public opinion against her. Anne herself later insisted that Smeaton had only been in her apartments twice— on 29 April, and at Winchester in 1535, when he played the virginals for her.35

  The May Day jousts went ahead as planned. Sir Henry Norris led the defenders while Rochford was the leading challenger. When Norris’s steed became uncontrollable, the King lent him one of his own horses.36 But before the tournament ended, to everyone’s astonishment, especially the Queen’s,37 Henry left abruptly with less than six attendants, 38 probably because Cromwell had sent word that he had Smeaton’s confession in hand and that Norris also was under suspicion.39 If he was indeed manufacturing evidence, Cromwell was taking a risk here, because Norris was one of the King’s closest friends and intimate associates, and enjoyed far greater influence with Henry than Cromwell did. But the King chose to believe his Secretary, which suggests that the evidence against Norris was seriously compelling. Norris was summoned to accompany his master to York Place, and during the journey Henry personally accused him of adultery with the Queen as far back as October 1533,40 which Norris vehemently denied. All the same, he was taken under guard to the Tower at dawn the next day.41

  Anne was not to be kept in suspense for long. After watching a game of tennis on the morning of 2 May,42 she was arrested and conveyed by barge to the Tower, where she was comfortably lodged in the rooms she had occupied before her coronation, in the custody of the Constable of the Tower, the kindly Sir William Kingston. Her brother Rochford was also committed to the Tower that day. The accusation of incest was the vilest of the charges against Anne, calculated to arouse the deepest public revulsion, especially in view of the fact that in late 1535, when her affair with her brother was alleged to have taken place, she was pregnant. The implication, of course, was that the child was not the King’s.43 It was on the evidence of Lady Rochford alone that the charge of “undue familiarity” between her husband and his sister was made,44 although Rochford received a message through Carew and Bryan that his wife planned to intercede with the King on his behalf. There is no record of her doing so. It was believed at the time that Lady Rochford was motivated by “envy and jealousy” of the close relationship between Rochford and Anne. 45

  On the evening following Anne’s arrest, the King broke down. Once again, his hopes of an heir had been cruelly frustrated, and he was by now ready to believe anything of her. When his son Richmond came to bid him goodnight and ask his blessing, he clasped him to his breast and began weeping, declaring “that he and his sister [Mary] were greatly bound to God for having escaped the hands of that accursed whore, who had determined to poison them.” 46 Henry’s state of mind at this time has been largely ignored by many writers, who forget that his only son was obviously dying, a fact that was no doubt responsible in part for the King’s uncertain temper, emotional reactions, and phases of almost desperate gaiety. Jane Seymour, calm and sym
pathetic, must have offered a welcome refuge from the horrors that had invaded Henry’s existence.

  The atmosphere at court was tense as people wondered who would be arrested next. Anne’s Receiver General, George Taylor, and her Sewer, Harry Webb, went in fear of their lives.47 Even Francis Bryan was questioned by Cromwell,48 but this may have been a charade to lend credibility to the other arrests, since Bryan was unquestionably Anne’s enemy and in fact profited from the fall of her co-accused. In a letter to Gardiner informing him of Bryan’s cold-blooded abandonment of his cousin, Cromwell refers to him as “the Vicar of Hell,” a name that stuck.49

  Sir Francis Weston was the next to be arrested, and around 4 or 5 May, William Brereton was also committed to the Tower. The charges against him were not made public, but probably included adultery with the Queen. There is good evidence that Cromwell resented his territorial influence in North Wales and Cheshire, where he served as Richmond’s deputy, and wanted him out of the way.50 Cavendish says he was executed “shamefully, only of old rancour.”51 Brereton’s distraught wife and family pleaded his innocence, but to no avail.

  By 8 May, another Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, Sir Richard Page, was in the Tower,52 along with Sir Thomas Wyatt. Wyatt believed that Suffolk had been the cause of his arrest; it is unlikely that his friend Cromwell would have ordered it. Given Henry’s earlier suspicions of Wyatt, and Suffolk’s accusations, Wyatt may well have been correct in his assumption. He was deeply affected, not only by his own plight, but also by that of Anne and the men accused with her, and during his imprisonment he wrote poignant verses expressing his misery. Entitled “Circa Regna tomat” (Thunder rolls around the Throne), they began,

  These bloody days have broken my heart,

  My lust, my youth did then depart,

  And blind desire of estate.

  Who hastes to climb seeks to revert.

  Of truth, circa regna tomat.

  It is not known when Henry decided to marry Jane Seymour, but few doubted that she would soon be Queen. Sir Nicholas Carew had offered her a temporary refuge at his house at Beddington,53 but she did not remain there long since it was inaccessible by river and the King naturally did not wish to be seen riding abroad in public at this time. Carew therefore found her lodgings near Hampton Court, where Henry could visit her by barge.

  During the Queen’s sojourn in the Tower, the King continued to keep a low profile. He did not venture beyond the gardens of York Place, save for short jaunts along the Thames in the evening, banqueting with the ladies in his barge and returning after midnight. “Most of the time he was accompanied by various musical instruments and by the singers of his chamber.” He was behaving, according to Chapuys, “like a man who had rid himself of a thin, old and vicious hack in the hope of getting again a fine horse to ride.”54

  One evening, Henry had supper at the house of John Kite, Bishop of Carlisle, “and showed an extravagant joy” as he dined in the company of many ladies. The Bishop afterwards told Chapuys that the King told him he believed more than a hundred men “had had to do” with the Queen, and said “he had long expected the issues of these affairs, and that thereupon he had before composed a tragedy, which he carried with him. And so saying the King drew from his bosom a little book written in his own hand, but the Bishop could not read the contents. It may have been certain ballads that the King had composed, at which the whore and her brother laughed as foolish things.”55

  On 12 May, Norris, Weston, Brereton, and Smeaton were arraigned at Westminster Hall; all were condemned to death. The trial of the Queen and Rochford, who by virtue of their rank had the privilege of being tried by their peers, was held three days later in the great hall within the Tower. They too were sentenced to die, despite their protestations of innocence. Rochford caused a sensation at his trial when, passed a paper by Cromwell and told to respond without revealing what was written there, he read out what his wife had alleged, that the Queen had revealed to him that the King was impotent: given that Anne had conceived four times in three years, this was unlikely. When asked if he had expressed doubts that Elizabeth was Henry’s child, Rochford refused to answer and incriminate himself.56

  That evening, Sir Francis Bryan brought news of Anne’s condemnation to Jane Seymour at Hampton, and soon afterwards the King himself arrived for dinner, having been conveyed along the Thames with an almost festive air of pageantry.

  After her trial, Anne was moved to two panelled rooms on the first floor of the newly constructed Lieutenant’s Lodging opposite Tower Green, which is now known as the Queen’s House.57 She would remain there until her execution, and from her windows would have been able to see the scaffold being built.

  On 17 May, the Queen’s alleged lovers were beheaded on Tower Hill. All except Smeaton stressed their innocence, and Rochford warned the onlookers to beware of “the flatteries of the court.”58 That same day, Archbishop Cranmer pronounced Anne’s marriage to the King null and void and her daughter Elizabeth a bastard. The next day, he issued a dispensation for the King to remarry within the third degree of affinity. No such relationship existed between Henry and Jane Seymour, who were far more distant cousins, and it may be that the King had been involved in a unrecorded sexual relationship with somebody closely related to Jane, 59 or that Jane herself had once been the mistress of one of Henry’s cousins.

  Anne Boleyn met her death with such dignity and courage that even Cromwell was impressed:60 she was executed with a sword on Tower Green at 9 A.M. on Friday, 19 May, and was buried in the afternoon in the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula within the Tower. Richmond and his friend Surrey were among the crowd that witnessed the execution. The King’s household expenses for that day were lower than for any other day that year, which suggests that he spent it in seclusion. On the following Sunday, which was Ascension Day, he made the gesture of wearing white mourning.61

  There had been no precedent for the trial and execution of an English queen, and Anne Boleyn’s fall with its attendant purge of the Privy Chamber had been nothing less than sensational. At a stroke, Cromwell had eliminated a whole faction. Many were touched by the tragedy. Anne’s daughter Elizabeth, not yet three, was at Hunsdon when her mother perished, and remained there in the care of Lady Bryan, but that redoubtable lady was soon having to beg Cromwell to replace the clothes her charge had outgrown. The child herself, sharp for her age, was soon openly wondering why people had ceased to address her as “My Lady Princess” and were now calling her “My Lady Elizabeth.” No one knows when and how she discovered what had happened to her mother.

  Anne’s father, the Earl of Wiltshire, was immediately deprived of his lucrative office of Lord Privy Seal and all his lands in Ireland, 62 but he retained his place at court, and when his wife died in April 1538 there was talk that he might marry Lady Margaret Douglas. When he passed away in March 1539, the King ordered masses to be said for his soul.63 He was buried in Hever Church, where a fine brass marks his resting place.

  Lady Rochford retired from court after her husband’s fall; her husband’s possessions had been confiscated by the Crown, and she was reduced to begging Cromwell for financial help, signing herself “a power[ful] desolate widow.” Her jointure was not restored to her until after Wiltshire’s death.64

  Shortly after Anne’s execution, Cromwell secured the release of Wyatt and Page. The King would have received Page back into favour, but Page had decided it was safer to stay away from court.65 Wyatt, also bitterly disillusioned with a courtier’s existence, returned to his father’s castle at Allington, Kent, for a time.

  Despite his affinity with the Boleyns, Archbishop Cranmer survived the purge and continued to promote the cause of reform. Norfolk, who had presided at Anne’s trial and passed sentence, retained his post of Lord Treasurer, but deemed it politic to retire to Kenninghall for the present. His absence from court enabled the Seymours to establish political ascendancy there, and so initiated the bitter rivalry between them and the Howards that was to endure for the rest of
the reign.

  Cromwell was careful to ensure that Norris’s office of Groom of the Stool was filled by his own man, Thomas Heneage, while Bryan became chief Gentleman of the Privy Chamber.

  Anne Boleyn had been one of the most powerful women ever to wear the consort’s crown, yet her rapid and cataclysmic fall illustrates just how fragile was the balance of power at the English court.

  48

  “Bound to Obey and Serve”

  On 20 May, the day after Anne Boleyn’s execution, Jane Seymour was brought by barge to Hampton Court, where she and the King were formally betrothed. Soon afterwards, Henry took her to York Place, which in 1536 was officially renamed the King’s Palace of Westminster and designated by statute as the principal residence of the sovereign and the seat of government, in place of the former Westminster Palace;1 from the late 1530s it was popularly and commonly known, however, as Whitehall Palace, a name that may have derived from the pale ashlar stone used to build Wolsey’s great hall. The remaining buildings of the mediaeval palace were incorporated into the complex, and sometimes used on state occasions. Henry VIII had spent more than £8,000 (£240,000) on Whitehall, and it was now the largest palace in Europe, and a fitting setting for the New Monarchy.

  Henry and Jane were quietly married by Bishop Gardiner in the Queen’s closet at Whitehall on 30 May 1536. Later that day, Jane was “set in the Queen’s seat under the canopy of estate royal.”2

  At forty-five, the average age of male life expectancy in Tudor times, the King still boasted an impressive physique: in 1536, his armourers found his waist to measure thirty-seven inches and his chest forty-five inches. He remained active, continuing to enjoy hunting, riding, and dancing. But foreign observers no longer praised his good looks. He was growing bald on top, and his face had aged into the familiar mould depicted in his later portraits, with narrow eyes, heavy jowls, and a small, tightly pursed mouth. The frustrations and stresses of the last decade had left their mark, not only upon his appearance but also upon his character. Where he had once been openhanded, liberal, and idealistic, he was now contrary, secretive, dogmatic, and unpredictably changeable. “Such are the King’s fickleness and natural inclination to new or strange things that I could not find words to describe it,” declared Chapuys. “His natural inclination is to oppose all things debatable, taking great pride in persuading himself that he makes the world believe one thing instead of another.” 3 His egotism was supreme: “He never forgets his own greatness, and is silent as to that of others,” observed a French envoy.4 His temper was feared by all.