The Six Wives & Many Mistresses of Henry VIII: The Women's Stories

by Amy Licence

  During his stay at Lille, either on this occasion or previously, the king came into contact with a Flemish maid of honour in Margaret’s household called Etiennette de la Baume. The daughter of Marc de la Baume, Comte de Montrevel and Lord of Chateauvillain, her connection with Henry rests on the survival of a single letter, written in intimate terms and referring to a promise the king had made her ‘when we parted’. The wording, content and timing of the letter suggests that she had been his mistress at some point during this visit to France. If Henry had previously contemplated, or indulged in, a relationship with Anne Hastings, with the subsequent scandal it had caused at court in 1510, he would have had fewer reservations about having a brief affair while separated from Catherine by the English Channel.

  Etiennette’s parents had been married on 10 July 1488 and, with at least one elder brother, she is likely to have been born around 1490, making her a similar age to Henry. The letter, which survives in the State papers for 17 August 1514, was written two months before Etiennette’s marriage to Ferdinand de Neufchatel, Seigneur de Marnay and Montaigu, which took place that October. It opens with the writer making Henry the gifts of a bird and some ‘roots of great value, belonging to this country’,9 which were likely to have been medicinal rather than designed for the king’s table. Then Etiennette proceeded to remind the king that he had called her his ‘page’ and ‘told me many beautiful things … when Madame went to see the Emperor, her father, and you at Lille’.10 This use of sweet talk and nicknames, possibly with role play as part of their affair, indicates an informality and flirtation at the very least, if not a full-blown sexual encounter. It gives an intimate glimpse into the nature of Henry’s lovemaking, wooing his lady with promise and fine words, with Henry perhaps disguising Etiennette as his page in order to smuggle her into his room, or continuing his love of play and dressing up in order to entice her into bed. She may well have been an attractive diversion for a few nights between the gold sheets but Henry had been mindful of her reputation and appears to have offered her a considerable reward, or perhaps compensation for the loss of her virtue.

  A year later, Etiennette wrote to Henry from what she describes as his house at Marnay. He might have installed her in a property there but Marnay is over 500 kilometres from Lille and no record remains of Henry owning a house there. Yet, this does not mean that he did not. Perhaps he contributed towards her rent or made her a gift that went unrecorded. By 1514, the situation had changed for Etiennette and, with her father now urging her to marry, she reminded Henry that ‘when we parted at Tournay you told me, when I married, to let you know and it should be worth to me 10,000 crowns or rather angels’.11 The tone of the letter and the promise of the dowry strongly suggest that Henry and Etiennette were lovers briefly during the campaign of 1513, which the lady now used to secure her financial future. She, or her father, may have intended the letter to suggest that they had a secret to tell, but any possible intention to blackmail the English king was not overt.

  That November, according to the Venetian ambassador, Henry had ‘clad himself and his court in mourning for love of a lady’, which may have been Etiennette, on the occasion of her marriage.12 It is not clear whether or not the king did send her a dowry when she married later that year. Maybe he disliked having the reminder of his infidelity, especially as the letter arrived during a time when Catherine was pregnant again. Maybe he recalled her fondly and sent her a suitable gift. His generosity may be suggested by the fact that Etiennette’s marriage did go ahead on 18 October 1514, but no other contact is recorded between them. She died around 1521.

  By 20 October, Henry was at Calais, staying at the Exchequer, awaiting a favourable tide. It came two days later. Arriving safely at Dover, he headed to Richmond for his reunion with Catherine, which was ‘so loving’ that the bystanders ‘rejoiced’ to see it. The royal couple then repaired to the queen’s property of Havering-atte-Bower in Essex, where they feasted and were entertained by pageantry and dancing. Given that the ambassadors had known of Catherine’s lost child early in October, the news would have reached Henry before his return. He had already digested and accepted it before he saw his wife again. Like his response to the death of Prince Henry in 1511, he was probably pragmatic and ‘manly’, reassuring Catherine they were still young and that she would fall pregnant again soon. She did, in fact, conceive six months later, but by then a new threat to her happiness had emerged that would drive a further wedge between her and her husband.

  17

  Jane Popincourt, 1514

  I count women lost, if we love them not well,

  For ye see God loveth them never a deal

  Mistress, ye can not speak with the God.1

  Henry’s sister Mary was getting married. The date had been fixed for May 1514 and the location was to be Calais; her bridegroom would be the young man to whom she had been betrothed since December 1507, Catherine’s nephew Prince Charles of Castile, the son of her sister Joanna. It was a match that promised to cement the alliance of England, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. Young and beautiful, described as a ‘paradise’ by the Venetian ambassador, Mary anticipated finally coming face to face with her fiancé as preparations began for their wedding.

  Within a few weeks of the date, though, Henry had completely changed his mind and the best-laid plans of a decade were rejected in favour of a hasty new match that suited the recent changes in international affairs. Furious with Ferdinand’s pursuit of his own self-interest, he instructed Wolsey to open negotiations for Mary to wed the recently widowed Louis XII instead, breaking the engagement with Charles on the pretext that the boy had failed to ratify it when reaching the age of fourteen. Instead of the teenaged bridegroom she had been expecting, Mary’s new husband was to be the fifty-two-year-old widowed king, ‘an old man … and gouty’.2 The crown of France offered Mary a degree of compensation when the proxy marriage took place at Greenwich on 13 August. The Duke de Longueville spoke the French king’s vows in his place, presenting the princess with a gold ring before the assembled crowd. Catherine was a witness, pregnant again, and dressed in ash-coloured satin, with gold chains and a cap of gold. The ambassadors from Spain and the Emperor were not invited, which might have ‘caused much comment universally’,3 but not as much as the mésalliance of the nubile young Tudor with the ageing Valois.

  In public, Mary accepted the last-minute switch of bridegroom. Obediently, she wrote to her new husband that she would ‘love him as cordially as she can’ and claimed to have heard the vows repeated on his behalf ‘with great pleasure’. A formal consummation took place, with Mary taking to her bed in a state of undress ‘in the presence of many witnesses’. The Duke de Longueville acted as proxy for Louis: dressed in a doublet and red hose, ‘but with one leg naked from the middle of the thigh downward, he went into bed and touched the Princess with his naked leg. The marriage was then declared consummated.’4 There was no escape for Mary now, but she did manage to extract a promise from her brother that if she should wed again, her second husband would be of her own choosing. Catherine and Henry accompanied the bride to Dover and waved her off across to France. On 9 October, Louis and Mary were married in person at Abbeville. Among her retinue of eighty damsels and English lords were Ambassador Thomas Boleyn’s young daughters Mary and, soon, Anne. Another lady from Catherine’s household had expected to be present also, but found herself excluded at the last minute.

  Jane Popincourt was probably French-born and her family may have originated from the area of Dancourt-Popincourt, an hour’s drive south of Lille. She might have been a descendant of the premier president of the Paris parlement, Jean de Popincourt, who died around 1403. His grandson was ambassador to England from the 1450s, so Jane may have travelled to England with him, or as a result of his influence. Before this, Jane appears to have gained experience in service at the French court, perhaps beginning her career under Charles VIII, in the household of his wife, Anne of Brittany. Charles’ death in 1498, followed by Anne’s remar
riage to his successor, Louis XII, may have been the catalyst that prompted Jane to leave France and head for England the same year. Louis’ later actions would certainly suggest he had reason to personally dislike Jane, or that something about her religious beliefs or behaviour had offended him. When Louis took the throne, Jane may have realised it was wiser to be away from court, perhaps away from France altogether. By 1498, she was teaching French to princesses Margaret and Mary at Eltham, through ‘daily conversation’, and probably acting as a companion and maid. The minimum age she might have been for this role was in her mid-teens, placing her date of birth in the late 1470s, or 1480 at the very latest, although it is more likely that such a responsibility would have been given to someone a little older.

  Jane appeared to do well at the English court. By 1502, she had become one of Mary’s maids of honour and in this capacity would have been known to both Henry, as Prince of Wales, and Catherine, who was then a widowed princess. Jane’s name appears in the records when a Robert Ragdale was paid to mend the clothes of the princesses, with 7d ‘for the mending of two gowns for Johanne Popyncourt’. Jane clearly established herself to be of good enough character to become part of the new queen’s household on Henry’s accession in 1509, when she was paid 50s for court expenses.5 With her history and fluency, it was reasonable to expect that she would be chosen to accompany Mary to France in the autumn of 1514.

  However, Jane’s reputation preceded her. After the Duke de Longueville, Louis d’Orleans, was captured at the Battle of the Spurs and sent to England, she had become his acknowledged lover. The duke was initially imprisoned in the Tower before taking a more central role at the English court and being treated as an honoured guest and something of an informal ambassador. Longueville was still a young man, in his early thirties, married with four children, the last of whom was born in the year of his capture. The extent of his involvement with Jane is uncertain, although the presence of both of them at court during 1514 and at the celebrations for the marriage of Princess Mary might suggest an opportunity. Perhaps after the pretence of consummating Mary’s marriage by proxy, Longueville shed his red hose and hopped into bed with Jane instead. After all, it was his last night at court.

  When the duke returned to France the next day Jane had anticipated following in the retinue of Mary Tudor, but she was to be disappointed. Direct intervention from Louis himself meant that she was the only woman who was personally rejected from the party. Perusing the list of his future wife’s attendants, he had struck off Jane’s name, reputedly commenting that she should be burned. Taken literally, this fate was usually reserved for heretics, and sometimes female murderers, but it may also suggest a dislike of a more personal nature. Some historians have inferred that this objection, coupled with a payment of £100 later made by Henry to Jane, suggests that they were lovers and that Louis objected to her immorality. It is quite likely that the French king disliked her on those grounds, but the identity of the lover, or lovers, to which he objected, is less certain. Louis may have been acting to protect Longueville’s wife, Joan of Hachberg, a cousin of Louis by virtue of their shared great-grandparents. Equally, he might have rejected Jane on grounds of personal dislike, a conviction about Jane’s religious views or perhaps her conduct in the household of his former wife, Anne, Queen of France.

  Another interesting detail is included in Hall’s account of Longueville’s English stay as part of his chronicle for the year 1514. He confirms that the duke was treated well in his pseudo-captivity, being ‘highly enterteyned in England of many noble men and had great cheer’. When he returned to France with Mary, though, his royal reception was decidedly frostier, as Louis ‘would scarce know them’.6 This suggests that it was disapproval of the duke’s relationship with Jane that lay at the root of the king’s animosity, although Hall was writing at some remove from the events he described.

  Frustrated in her desire, Jane remained in Queen Catherine’s household during the autumn of 1514, and it is at this point, between October and the following January, that she is reputed to have consoled the English king. She partnered Henry in a masque at Eltham Palace to mark the festivities for Twelfth Night, but at this point news had already arrived of the death of Louis and Jane would have been anticipating her return. Henry granted her permission to leave for France and awarded her the £100, which is the main evidence on which the theory of their intimacy rests. If nothing else, Henry did not think any less of Jane for having been Longueville’s mistress. By dancing with her in public, he was condoning her relationship with a married man, although it is interesting that this performance may not have taken place before the queen. Given Jane’s possible age, her history at the English court and role, a one-off payment of this kind is consistent with other rewards given to courtiers for loyal service to the Tudor family over the years.

  Although it cannot be ruled out that Jane Popincourt entered the royal bed following the departure of her French lover, no direct evidence places her there. There is no flirtatious letter surviving to indicate an intimate tone between her and the English king, as in the cases of Elizabeth Carew and Etiennette de la Baume. Perhaps it is most suggestive that Jane did not return to France immediately. Something kept her in England. Perhaps it was Henry himself, which means her affair with him might post-date Louis’ disapproval. In the end, a whole year elapsed before she left England, to be reunited with Longueville, in the spring of 1516. He died a few months later. Jane’s movements after this are not known.

  Henry’s switch in foreign policy, from Spain to France, did not just have an effect on Princess Mary. Queen Catherine suffered, too. As the visible symbol of the old alliance in English eyes, after relations between the two countries had deteriorated significantly her Spanish accent and blood provoked memories of Ferdinand’s perfidy. It was not an easy time to be a Spaniard in England. Italian visitors reported that the French and Spanish ambassadors were not on speaking terms and Ferdinand’s representatives stayed at home, feeling ‘quite dispirited’, as ‘the English abuse Spain excessively for her bad faith in making truce with France’.7 Although Catherine had tried her best to walk the delicate path between remaining loyal to both her father and her husband, she might have borne the brunt of Henry’s new hostility. Italian gossip reported rumours that Henry was intending to divorce her and Fray Diego advised her to ‘forget Spain and everything Spanish, in order to gain the love of the King of England and the English’. Later he reported that the king had ‘badly used’ Catherine.8 It seems unlikely that Henry was considering divorce, given that Catherine was again pregnant, and no other reports support this claim. If such a report ever reached the queen’s ears, it must have been an unpleasant reminder of the international breach and her own track record when it came to bearing children.

  18

  Elizabeth Carew, 1514

  Your key is meet for every lock

  Your key is common and hangeth out

  Your key is ready, we need not knock

  Not stand long resting there about

  Of your doorgate we have no doubt1

  It may have been around this time that Henry’s attention was diverted away from Catherine again. That October, materials to equip her chamber and nursery had been ordered, including a cradle lined with scarlet – which was a cloth, not just a colour – and other lengths of blue material. She was due to enter confinement in November and, as her pregnancy advanced during the autumn, she would have been aware of the arrangements that were also being made for the marriage of another young lady in her household. Elizabeth Byran was then aged around fourteen, the daughter of the queen’s vice-chamberlain, Sir Thomas Bryan of Marsworth and Cheddington, and Margaret Bourchier, a lady-in-waiting. Through her mother’s descent from Edward III, Elizabeth had royal blood and a connection with one of the most powerful men at court, Sir Thomas Howard, who was her step-grandfather. This made her a cousin of three of Henry’s future wives.

  Elizabeth’s intended husband was Nicholas Carew, one of th
e king’s closest friends. The son of the Captain of Calais, Carew was one of the young men of the Privy Chamber who became Henry’s intimate companions, sharing his love of sport and pleasure, as opposed to his core of older councillors, to whom the king delegated most of his business matters. Five years younger than the king, Carew had been raised in the royal household at Eltham from the age of six, receiving his lessons beside Henry in the schoolroom. Carew was a fearless jouster, Master of the Horse, a knight, ambassador and a reprobate,2 considered by Wolsey, along with his fast crowd, to be a bad influence on the king. In 1519, the cardinal and other senior figures at court would attempt to break the hold Carew and his circle had over Henry.

  This group of boisterous, rakish young men came to be known as the king’s minions. Among their number was Elizabeth’s brother, Sir Francis Bryan, later named by Thomas Cromwell as ‘the vicar from hell’ for his role in the downfall of his cousin Anne Boleyn. Bryan has been described by later historians as a rake and a hellraiser, the accomplice to Henry’s affairs, who reputedly once called for a ‘soft bed then a hard harlot’.3 He sported a patch after losing an eye in the jousts and was not averse to throwing stones and eggs at the local population when on embassy abroad. Bryan’s other brother-in-law, Sir Henry Guildford, became Henry’s Master of the Horse in 1515 and was also a regular participant in court revels, designing pageants, dancing and enjoying the king’s confidence and favour. In 1513 he had composed an interlude, a symbolic drama part way between the medieval morality style and the more modern form of the play, to celebrate the victory in France. In it, Guildford had played the part of the king himself. Henry’s early friendships with these young men and their sisters and wives often blurred the lines of propriety and role, in disguise and reality.