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

by Amy Licence

  On 30 April, the strain on Henry and Anne’s marriage erupted, with Scottish visitor Alexander Alesius witnessing the couple arguing through a window, when Anne, holding Elizabeth in her arms, appeared to be entreating Henry: ‘The faces and gestures of the speakers plainly showed that the king was angry, although he could conceal his anger wonderfully well … it was most obvious to everyone that some deep and difficult question was being discussed.’ The impending visit to France was also cancelled on this day. Anne did not know it, but the first of a series of arrests had already taken place. A young and handsome musician from her household, Mark Smeaton, whose melancholy she had remarked upon just a few days before, had been removed to Cromwell’s house at Stepney and questioned. He may also have been tortured, as the Spanish Chronicle relates, as he admitted to the charge of committing adultery with the queen. This played directly into the notion of Anne as an upstart, of deviant sexuality, who sought corrupt pleasures with a man far beneath her station. The argument that Alesius witnessed can only be guessed at but the timing suggests that, in Henry’s mind, the seeds of her adultery, or the weakness of Cromwell’s scapegoat, had already been sown. After this, the end came very quickly.

  The independence and wit that had initially attracted Henry to Anne later began to irritate him. It had been charming in a mistress, but he wanted obedience and tradition in a wife. The sacrifices he had made for her weighed heavily upon him and he was aware of the extent of Anne’s lack of popularity, which continued to manifest in cases of treason and libel among the common people. Anne’s rise to fame had been unprecedented, even meteoric; she was an over-reacher in the classic sense, rising through the social ranks to an unanticipated position as queen. There is no denying Anne’s aristocratic, privileged background, but a significant distance still separated those in her social position from royalty, or aspiring to enter the royal family, as is shown by Henry’s furious response to his sister Mary’s marriage to Charles Brandon. The king had forgiven his best friend and, after all, that match was presented to him as a fait accompli, but Anne’s rise was further complicated by her gender. As Henry’s own grandfather Edward IV discovered, for a king to wed a commoner exposed a woman to all the latent misogyny of the era and would forever colour interpretations of her character. By becoming queen, Anne was breaking a complex set of social codes.

  At the time, ‘upstarts’ who achieved a similar career arc, like Wolsey and Cromwell, were treated with derision and suspicion. Like them, Anne was able to soar while she had the king’s backing; with Henry’s blessing, there was little that anyone could do to challenge her position, nor the titles, properties, wealth and influence she accrued. Just like the king’s other two chief servants, though, once Henry withdrew his support, the end was swift and dramatic. The king’s backing was their life force but it was freely given, underpinning every part of his favourites’ success. Its sudden withdrawal whipped away the scaffolding under these careers, as Henry abandoned them to the hostile forces he had previously kept at bay. Anne’s dazzling rise to the top was less forgivable than that of Wolsey and Cromwell; her power and influence were more offensive to her contemporaries, because she had transgressed the boundaries of gender roles. She was an intelligent, educated and brilliant woman whose abilities far outstripped those of many of the men at court, and her fall unleashed the misogyny of her enemies. The labels of whore, adulteress, witch and incest were weapons aimed specifically at Anne as a woman who had dared to aim for the throne.

  The following day, Henry and Anne took their places on the royal stand to watch the jousts at Greenwich. Among the participants on that hot day were Henry Norris and George Boleyn. Halfway through the tournament, a message was brought to Henry, perhaps with the news of Smeaton’s confession and the list of names of others he had incriminated. The king rose and rode away without explanation. Anne would never see him again.

  45

  A Little Neck, May 1536

  And thus farewell each one in hearty wise!

  The axe is home, your heads be in the street;

  The trickling tears doth fall so from my eyes

  I scarce may write, my paper is so wet.1

  Waiting overnight at Greenwich, Anne must have wondered what had happened and where her husband was. She was still queen and was treated as such as she dined, said her prayers and prepared for the night. In her decorated apartments, surrounded by her waiting women, did she lie awake as the hours passed, uneasy about her fate? The following day, 2 May, she was summoned to appear before the council, and was taken by barge to face Henry’s commissioners, headed by her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk.

  Norfolk informed Anne that she stood accused of adultery and incest, and that the investigation into her conduct had already begun, with the finger of suspicion pointing at Smeaton and Norris. Perhaps Anne recalled the recent conversations she had had with both men and offered her explanation or protested her innocence and loyalty, but Norfolk would not listen. The whole occasion must have had a nightmarish unreality about it; surely, Anne must have hoped, if she could speak with her husband, or explain herself, all would be resolved? The misunderstanding would be cleared up. That morning she had woken in her royal bed and been waited upon as a queen, the queen Henry had begged her to become for years. Now she was a prisoner at his command.

  A barge was waiting. Anne was conveyed down river to the Tower and, on seeing the solid walls appear, she broke down and became hysterical. By a cruel irony, which was perhaps deliberate, she was lodged in the same rooms that she had occupied for her coronation just under three years before. In 1533 she had emerged as queen, still carrying the unborn child she had predicted to be a boy, in anticipation of a glittering future. How had the wheel of fortune cast her down so low in such a short space of time? Anne is alleged to have noticed the contrast, saying that she was ‘received with greater ceremony last time [she] was there’. It was already decided that she would not be leaving alive. The swordsman from France who would take her life may have been summoned as early as a week later, given that he had to cross the Channel, making it clear that her death was a foregone conclusion.

  Over the next few days, six other arrests were made. Her co-accused were her own brother George, Henry Norris, Francis Weston, William Brereton and Richard Page, who were all members of Henry’s intimate household, along with Thomas Wyatt and Mark Smeaton. On 12 May, Norris, Weston, Brereton and Smeaton were put on trial for high treason at Westminster Hall. The jury members included Sir Thomas Boleyn, obliged to attend despite his personal involvement in the case, but the remainder were largely hostile to the defendants and the Boleyn cause, with affiliations to the Seymours, Cromwell, Princess Mary and the old faith. While the queen’s arrest may have been shocking to the court, it elicited little sympathy. Records of the trial’s proceedings have not survived but the four men had little chance to defend themselves, with the emphasis on them to prove their innocence without access to the range of evidence stacked against them. Norris, Weston and Brereton pleaded not guilty while Mark Smeaton pleaded guilty to ‘violation and carnal knowledge of the queen’, or, as Chapuys put it, that ‘he had been three times with the said putain and concubine’.2

  Mark Smeaton was an unusual choice of defendant, given that he was outside the inner circle of the Privy Chamber and of a different class to the other men. He was probably unfortunate in having a recent conversation with Anne overheard and being observed flaunting possessions that were above his station. Perhaps his good looks and musical talent, or a streak of arrogance in his character, had alienated someone. According to the Spanish Chronicle, Smeaton accepted Anne’s offers of love so readily because he was a ‘base fellow’ and ‘waited in her sweetmeat cupboard until she summoned him after dark by the coded message to bring her some marmalade’.3 Alone with him, she ‘grasped the youth’s arm, who was all trembling, and made him get into bed. He soon lost his bashfulness and remained that night and many others’, with Anne going on to shower him with expensive gifts. A
far tamer version of their relationship was reported to Cromwell, after being overheard that April in her chambers. Anne reputedly chided Smeaton with the words, ‘You may not look to have me speak to you as I should do to a nobleman, because you are an inferior person’, to which he replied miserably, ‘No, no, Madam. A look sufficeth, thus fare you well.’ At least one of the dates on which Smeaton confessed he had slept with Anne at Greenwich was impossible, as she was at Richmond; likewise, Alison Weir has conclusively proven that the majority of the dates on which all the men stood accused can be ruled out in a similar way.4 It did not make any difference. Scapegoats were needed. If Anne was to be accused of adultery, she needed to have accomplices. All four men were condemned to death.

  On 14 May, Anne’s marriage was declared null and void, meaning that technically she could not have been committing adultery. This did not prevent her trial and that of George from going ahead the following day. Her brother defied the charges and daringly read out the note he had been requested to keep secret, that Anne and Jane Parker had allegedly discussed the king’s inability in the bedroom, claiming he lacked ‘vertu’ and ‘puissance’, or ability and power. Although he did not confirm the account, it was an act of rebellion that counted against him, as did the report that he had spread rumours that Princess Elizabeth had been fathered by Henry Norris. Witness Lancelot de Carles wrote that ‘one never saw a man respond better’ and that he was eloquent and knowledgeable. Despite onlookers betting ten to one that George would be acquitted, given the lack of evidence, he was sentenced along with the rest.

  Anne’s turn followed. The trial took place in the King’s Hall at the Tower and was presided over by her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. Also on the panel of jurymen along with her father was Sir Henry Percy, the lover she had not seen for years, after their secret engagement had been ended by Wolsey. She was charged with twenty acts of adultery, three of which were also incest, with her brother George, in November and December 1535. When the inevitable guilty verdict was read out in court, Percy collapsed and had to be helped from the room. In a twist of cruel irony, Anne was condemned under the same statue of 1534 that had been created to protect her and her daughter. Tudor law had decided that she was the ‘onchaste wife, the spotted queen, causer of all [Henry’s] strife’, as she was described in a poem by George Cavendish.5

  Anne returned to the Tower to await her death. Her state of mind can scarcely be imagined, having gone from queen to traitor in two traumatic weeks, reputedly passing through different stages of shock and hysteria, alternatively laughing and weeping, and reliving past conversations in an attempt to discover where and how she had offended. A letter reputedly written by Anne, although not in her handwriting, was found among Cromwell’s effects in 1540 and seventeenth-century historian mentions a second letter, in which Anne states that she could not confess to that which she had not done. While the authenticity of these are seriously in doubt, the sentiment of the first contains some emotional truth, that Henry had ‘chosen [her] from a low estate to be your queen and companion, far beyond my desert or desire’ and if he had then found her worthy, he should not ‘let any light fancy or bad counsel or [her] enemies withdraw [his] princely favour’. The letter also refers to Henry’s affection for Jane (‘your affection already settled on that party’) and suggests that it had been a cause of grievance between them (‘your grace not being ignorant of my suspicion therein’).6 Anne was attended by women appointed to observe her behaviour and report her speech, and although her aunts Lady Shelton and Elizabeth Boleyn were present they were charged to act as her gaoler and spies. Through the first week of May, Anne offered to enter a nunnery and remained, reported her gaoler, Sir William Kingston, ‘in hope of life’. As the days passed, she realised it was a vain hope.

  On 17 May, George Boleyn, Norris, Brereton, Weston were executed. Anne was then informed that she was to die the following day, with her sentence commuted to death by the sword. After having spent the night in prayer and preparation, her end was delayed for a further twenty-four hours and further night stretched ahead of her. By the following dawn, she had celebrated Mass and dressed herself in a French gable hood and a gown of black or dark-grey damask trimmed with ermine over a red kirtle. The Constable of the Tower led her on the short walk to the scaffold on Tower Green, where she mounted the steps and looked down at the crowd. A document in the Vienna archive records that she ‘looked very frequently behind her’, perhaps in anticipation of a reprieve, and was ‘much exhausted and amazed’.7 Her final speech was traditional but dignified:

  Good Christian people, I have not come here to preach a sermon; I have come here to die. For according to the law and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak of that whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never, and to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me.

  Before an audience that included Cromwell, Brandon and Henry Fitzroy, the Queen of England removed her hood and tucked her hair under a cap. Then she knelt in the straw and the executioner removed her head with one stroke of the sword. It was an unprecedented moment in national history; never before had a queen been treated in this way.

  Present at the Tower throughout this time, Sir Thomas Wyatt and Richard Page were never called to trial and managed to escape death. It seems strangely fitting that, having written about court life in his poetry since Anne’s arrival, through to his affection for her and her developing relationship with the king, Wyatt was now present to record her final days. Perhaps his most simple and evocative response lies in the following verse:

  These bloody days have broken my heart.

  My lust, my youth did them depart,

  And blind desire of estate.

  Who hastes to climb seeks to revert.

  Of truth, circa Regna tonat (it thunders round the realm).

  Wyatt and Richard Page were released that June, after the death of Anne, but the experience broke the poet. In a few brutal and bloody weeks, the inner core of Henry’s court, with its glittering young people fond of dancing, flirting and poetry, donning masks to dance into the small hours while dressed in cloth of gold, had all been swept away. Wyatt had witnessed the bloodshed of his close friends and the woman he had loved, scarcely able to believe the charges laid against them or the manner of their deaths. Escaping to his family home at Allington, he composed a moving longer poem as he struggled to accept their fates:

  In Mourning wise since daily I increase,

  Thus should I cloak the cause of all my grief;

  So pensive mind with tongue to hold his peace’

  My reason sayeth there can be no relief:

  Wherefore give ear, I humbly you require,

  The affect to know that thus doth make me moan.

  The cause is great of all my doleful cheer

  For those that were, and now be dead and gone.

  What thought to death desert be now their call.

  As by their faults it doth appear right plain?

  Of force I must lament that such a fall should light on those so wealthily did reign,

  Though some perchance will say, of cruel heart,

  A traitor’s death why should we thus bemoan?

  But I alas, set this offence apart,

  Must needs bewail the death of some be gone.

  As for them all I do not thus lament,

  But as of right my reason doth me bind;

  But as the most doth all their deaths repent,

  Even so do I by force of mourning mind.

  Some say, ‘Rochford, haddest thou been not so proud,

  For thy great wit each man would thee bemoan,

  Since as it is so, many cry aloud

/>   It is great loss that thou art dead and gone.’

  Ah! Norris, Norris, my tears begin to run

  To think what hap did thee so lead or guide

  Whereby thou hast both thee and thine undone

  That is bewailed in court of every side;

  In place also where thou hast never been

  Both man and child doth piteously thee moan.

  They say, ‘Alas, thou art far overseen

  By thine offences to be thus deat and gone.’

  Ah! Weston, Weston, that pleasant was and young,

  In active things who might with thee compare?

  All words accept that thou diddest speak with tongue,

  So well esteemed with each where thou diddest fare.

  And we that now in court doth lead our life

  Most part in mind doth thee lament and moan;

  But that thy faults we daily hear so rife,

  All we should weep that thou are dead and gone.

  Brereton farewell, as one that least I knew.

  Great was thy love with divers as I hear,

  But common voice doth not so sore thee rue