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

by Amy Licence

  Visiting Venetian Gasparo Spinelli described the queen’s ladies, ‘whose various styles of beauty and apparel, enhanced by the brilliancy of the lights, caused me to think I was contemplating the choirs of angels’. Inside the pageant, the women were more beautiful still, ‘as to be supposed goddesses rather than human beings. They were arrayed in cloth of gold, their hair gathered into a net, with a very richly jewelled garland, surmounted by a velvet cap, the hanging sleeves of their surcoats being so long that they well nigh touched the ground, and so well and richly wrought as to be no slight ornament to their beauty.’ This might seem to echo the old legend that Anne instigated the fashion at court for long, trailing sleeves, perhaps even ‘greensleeves’, either as a French fashion or to cover the little extra nail that reputedly grew on one of her fingers.8 Anne could well have been among these women who danced around the bejewelled mountain, or perhaps was claimed by the king when he suddenly disappeared and returned in gold Venetian masks.9 Predictably, the end of the evening saw all the masks removed, but greater secrets would soon be made public.

  35

  The King’s Darling, 1527–28

  He is so blindly in love with that lady that he cannot see his way clearly.1

  Henry had seriously underestimated his wife. Catherine was popular, ‘much beloved in this kingdom’,2 with her own network of loyal servants. When it came to such a critical issue as the validity of her own marriage, she soon found out what he was planning. In fact, she had been informed by a ‘reliable authority’3 of the secret meeting at York Place barely hours after it had first met and passed that information on to Mendoza, who wrote it down in a letter to Charles. Soon, the whole of Europe was aware of the King of England’s delicate moral conscience, while Henry himself believed that his secret was only known to a select few. Yet it appears that his motives were unknown at this stage. Catherine still believed her husband’s doubts were political rather than personal, and she therefore retained hope.

  In a private letter to Charles, though, it was clear that Catherine was placing her hopes on her nephew. Ambassador Mendoza’s account of events at the English court primarily attacks Wolsey for ‘scheming to bring about the queen’s divorce’ rather than recognising Henry’s personal desire or the level to which he was driving the issue. He described to Charles how the queen was ‘so full of apprehension on this account’ after hearing ‘that the king is so bent on this divorce that he has secretly assembled certain bishops and lawyers that they may sign a declaration to the effect that his marriage with the queen is null and void on account of her having been his brother’s wife’. Mendoza was fearful that the captive Pope Clement might be influenced or tricked by ‘some false statement to side against the queen, or that the cardinal, in virtue of his legatine powers, may take some step fatal to the said marriage’.4 He was right to suspect that the Pope could do little independently of the Emperor and to fear that, as his prisoner, Clement could possibly be led to act against Henry’s wishes.

  Catherine believed ‘that the principal cause of all that she is made to suffer is that she identifies herself entirely with the Emperor’s interests’, having taken Charles’s side when Henry wished to ally with France. Her mistake suited Henry. Writing to the Emperor, Mendoza asked for the Pope to be ‘put on his guard in case any application should be made to Rome against this marriage; also that His Holiness should tie the legate’s hands, and by having the cause referred entirely to himself, should prevent him from taking part in it, or appointing judges in this kingdom’. This is exactly what Charles would do, forbidding Clement from making any ruling and attempting to delay Henry’s investigation into the marriage in any way that he could. After discussion with the queen, the ambassador believed that if Henry met with any success he would soon make the affair public, ‘but should the king see that he cannot succeed, he will not run the risk of any of the preliminary steps being known’. Until then, ‘the queen desires perfect secrecy to be kept in this matter, at least for the present’.5 It worked to Catherine’s advantage for Henry to believe her in ignorance of her plans, buying her some much-needed time. With all these secrets seething beneath the surface at court, a dramatic confrontation was brewing.

  When Catherine was officially informed of Henry’s doubts concerning their marriage, on 22 June, it came as no surprise. Through the intervening weeks, she had been planning and preparing her response and defence, hoping that the matter would be dropped, dreading the moment when her husband might broach the topic. Official records show that Henry was at Windsor on that day, so it seems likely that he broke the news to Catherine there. He knew his wife to be proud, intelligent, devout, determined and loyal; at one time, these had been traits he had admired in her, traits that became a queen well. However, it must have also made him uneasy about exactly what her response would be.

  Outlining the questions of conscience that had been troubling him, Henry informed his wife that they had been living in mortal sin since 1509 and that she must retire into a convent. Although Catherine had been aware of his ‘great matter’ for over a month, she had believed it would be put aside when Henry’s attempts to annul the marriage failed. This interview convinced her that he was serious. This question was not going away. To be confronted with Henry’s desire to part in this way, for it to have finally become an acknowledged reality, must have been devastating for Catherine. Yet she was accustomed to tragedy; for decades it had been strengthening her will.

  The Spanish Chronicle includes an account of events composed by an author who was possibly an eyewitness at court during the 1520s and 1530s, or who had access to someone who had been. Into the mouth of the ‘sainted Queen Catherine’ on 22 June it puts this reasoned speech:

  My good Henry, I well know whence all this comes, and you know that the king, Don Ferdinand, when he gave me in marriage with the Prince of Wales, was still young, and I came to this country a very young girl, and the good Prince only lived half a year after my coining. My father, the king Don Ferdinand, sent at once for me, but King Henry Vii. wrote and asked my father that I might marry you. You know how we were both agreed, and how my father sent to Rome for the dispensation, which the Pope gave, and which my father left well guarded in Spain.6

  Other sources claim that Catherine burst into tears. It must have been an emotional encounter. Henry then asked her to keep the matter a secret, little knowing that it was already the worst-kept secret in Europe.

  It must have been around this point that Catherine became aware that Henry was intending to replace her with Anne Boleyn. After eighteen years of marriage, she was adept at reading her husband’s moods and observing his affairs running their course. This was a new challenge. With the recent elevation of Henry Fitzroy she had been reminded that Henry would not tolerate her commenting upon certain aspects of his personal life, but she now knew she was fighting for her future. If Cavendish is to be believed, she had learned to keep her enemies close, almost to appreciate them, holding Anne in ‘great estimation’ and accepting ‘all things in good part and with wisdom and great patience’. She had weathered the storm thus far and would refute these allegations with obstinate certainty. As an anointed queen, stepping aside to enter a convent was insult enough; leaving the throne empty for her lady-in-waiting was unthinkable. Catherine was the daughter of two monarchs, with Plantagenet blood in her veins and connections to the great ruling houses of Europe; Anne was the descendant of a merchant. There was also the question of religion and the supremacy of the Church. Catherine represented the old faith, with its Catholic ritual and the guidance of papal authority; Anne’s background was reformist, ‘more Lutheran than Luther himself’. She leaned towards France rather than Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. Thus, she represented a threat to the entire world that had produced and nurtured Catherine, which she had proudly represented for decades. Anne must not replace Catherine. Such a move would redefine England.

  Yet that was indeed the direction in which Henry and Anne were moving, with his lette
rs becoming more passionate and committed to their future together. He impatiently anticipated the time he and Anne would be together as husband and wife, ‘the approach of the time for which I have so long waited rejoices me so much, that it seems to almost have come already’. It was also clear at this point the relationship had taken on a more physical dimension, as Henry wished Anne ‘were in mine arms, or I in yours, for I think it long since I kissed you’.7 Later, he wished himself ‘privately’ with her and that he might spend an evening ‘in my sweetheart’s arms’, whose pretty ‘dukkys’ (breasts) he longed to kiss. To facilitate this closeness, he arranged lodgings for Anne at Greenwich which were close to his own. Ironically, it was Wolsey, now appraised of the situation, who helped find a suitable place ‘which could otherwise not have been hired’. This was a role the cardinal had certainly played before, on at least one occasion, to help the king’s love life run smoothly. Yet Catherine was still in residence at Greenwich in the queen’s apartments and Anne’s presence must have created an uneasy atmosphere. As Du Bellay reported, ‘Open house is kept by both the king and queen, as it used to be in former years. Mademoiselle de Boulan is also there, having her establishment apart, as I imagine, she does not like to meet with the queen.’8

  As a lover, Henry was affectionate and full of small attentions. His letters allow us to glimpse the kind of language and flattery, the promises and presents he used in wooing a woman – we hear his technique as a lover. He sent Anne a buck which he had killed himself, hoping it would make her think of him; he longed for her rather than her brother, who was the bearer of the note, and begged her to ask her father to bring her back to court sooner than planned. Henry showered her with gifts, of material, jewels and other items that may have taken her fancy, but reassured her that she was a greater comfort to him than ‘all the precious jewels in the world’. However, as an experienced man in his thirties, Henry would have been hoping for comfort of a different sort.

  Having managed to reach an agreement with Henry about the future of their relationship, Anne was now faced with the challenge of setting boundaries regarding their physical closeness. From the letters it is clear that she had allowed him to kiss and caress her, but there must have been a point at which she refused him. The tradition of Anne holding Henry at bay and inflaming his desire is a well-established one and rings true for this phase of their connection. After all, they expected their marriage to be imminent, so they could control themselves for a few months. But the boundaries Anne imposed – assuming they came from her and not Henry – also raise the question of her motives and governing emotions.

  Did Anne resist falling in love with Henry, either for personal reasons or an awareness of the wider implications of her actions? Vives’ advice to young women was to tread cautiously, as ‘it is in your power to let love in, but once you have let it in, you no longer belong to yourself, but to it. You cannot drive it out at your pleasure, but it will be able and will take pleasure in ousting you from your own house … while this passion violently sweeps away all human hearts, it does so all the more with women’s feelings, which are more tender than men’s.’9 Vives clearly paints women as the victims in love, but this raises the questions of just who was steering Anne and Henry’s relationship and the extent to which Anne’s decisions were reactionary or whether she took the initiative. With Henry’s letters making his desires clear, was Anne intimidated by his courtship and status into complicity? Could any female subject really give Henry a decisive refusal? Did she see an opportunity and take it? Or had she, by the end of 1526, fallen in love with the king, or with the idea of becoming queen?

  A number of possible interpretations for her actions could make sense, depending upon different readings of the tone of the king’s letters. If Anne was not in love with Henry, she may have agreed to marry him as the ultimate prize in the marital stakes. This would not have been a cynical move; it would be entirely consistent with the arranged matches that families made to advance their fortunes and establish strong dynastic connections. Everyone was looking to ‘marry up’, and Anne was no exception. Perhaps she was exhilarated by the rewards Henry could offer and decided to play the game. She may also, along the way, have developed feelings for him. She may have not. This would make her an absolutely typical woman of her times and no different from Henry’s other wives. However, the romantic possibility remains that she fell in love with him; either at the start while resisting his advances out of loyalty or belief that they would not lead to marriage, or as their relationship developed. We will probably never know.

  Just how far did Henry and Anne go during their early courtship? Henry wrote of the pleasure of having her in his arms, or being in hers; he also longed to kiss her pretty breasts, although this may well refer to the portion of chest above the bodice, or even just be a fantasy he was anticipating making into fact. When Anne moved into rooms at Greenwich, in close proximity to Henry, this would have allowed them greater privacy and may well have marked a great stage of intimacy. Furthermore, Anne was not occupying them as the king’s mistress, but as his intended wife, his fiancée, even if their intention to marry was still secret. In this respect, she had the same legal status as she had after having given promises to Henry Percy, an act that was often considered binding by the Church and considered sufficient licence to allow the couple to indulge in various acts of foreplay, or ‘bundling’. It is very unlikely that Henry and Anne slept together this early, as they would have wanted to be certain of the legitimacy of any child she may conceive. Rudimentary forms of contraception did exist, and perhaps Anne may have taken the risk and yielded once, in order to make their betrothal legally binding and secure her position. However, it seems more likely that they indulged in some intimate acts that allowed Henry to glimpse their future sex life without them fully becoming lovers.

  By the summer of 1527, when Henry broke with Catherine, he had apparently not slept with her since her menopause, in 1524. Although it is difficult to ascertain exactly what happened once their bedroom door was closed, a number of historians repeat the assertion that he still ‘shared her bed’ for the sake of appearances. Does this mean that he was still having sex with his wife, or visiting her room, or literally sleeping beside her, to prevent court gossip? In 1527, Wolsey wrote to his representative in Rome, Gregorio Casale, that sexual relations were now impossible between Henry and Catherine, as ‘certain diseases in the queen defy all remedy, for which, as well as for other causes, the king will never again live with her as a wife’. Some intimate illness, Wolsey suggested, meant that Henry was ‘utterly resolved and determined never to use’ her again and that ‘danger … may ensue to the king’s person by continuing in the queen’s chamber’.10 This was quite a dramatic claim. It implied that Catherine had some infection, illness or condition that affected her sexual organs and that this might be transmitted to her husband, or that the queen was capable of doing violence to Henry. Was this really true, or were Henry and Wolsey prepared to use whatever weapon they thought might prove successful in severing the king from his wife? Considering that Wolsey also lied to the Pope that the bloodstained sheets from her 1501 wedding night had been sent to Spain and defamed Catherine as frenzied with desire for sex, his argument about her disease appears in a less credible light. There is no other surviving source for the queen’s ‘illness’.

  That autumn, Anne, who was noted for her fluency in both French language and French graces, would have been indispensable at the reception of the Lord Montmorency at Greenwich. The Grand Master of France had been at Francis’ court since 1515 so it is likely that Anne already knew him and would have been selected from among Catherine’s attendants to form part of the official welcoming party. This took place at Greenwich, being followed by jousts and a feast in another new banqueting hall of gold and satin silver, where ninety dishes were served before a pageant of a white marble fountain flanked by hawthorn and mulberry trees, set with gold gargoyles and winged serpents. If Anne’s powers of translation had se
rved their purpose, she may have been one of the eight ‘fair ladies in straunge attire’ with whom the king and his companions danced ‘very lustily’. No doubt she and Henry enjoyed watching the tragedy performed in Latin by the Children of the Chapel Royal, depicting the imprisoned Pope being rescued by a cardinal, who appealed to the king of England for assistance. The subsequent entertainment of dancing, masquing and banqueting followed predictable lines, but the surviving expense account gives a delightful insight into the world of courtly pageantry, into the wheels that turned behind the scenes, the labour required to create the illusion of magic.

  The provisions for the palace of pleasure had been made by a Richard Gibson. In the second week of November, he submitted the list of costs incurred, including the wages and payments to men ‘working day and night’, as well as such fascinating details as sixty-six pounds of old lead for leaves, pomegranates, fleurs-de-lys and 1,700 ‘little long leaves cast in lead’; four dozen measures of rushes for ‘raising of the dust’ in the banquet chamber, half a pint of aqua vitae, 14d for a piece of cord to draw the curtains and 8d for eight long canes to put out the lights. It also mattered that the event smelled nice, with 6s 8d spent on half a pound of sweet powders put among the king’s napery (table linen) and 6s 8d for perfumes put under the pageant, and forty-two gallons of sweet water were purchased at 5s per gallon to run in the ornamental conduit.11