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

by Amy Licence

  Next, Henry’s privy gentlemen were questioned. Many of their statements echoed those of the king, even repeating his exact words. Wriothesley stated that ‘eight days after the marriage, the Earl of Essex told him that “the queen was then a maid for the king’s highness”, who had no affection for her. He added that, a little before Easter, the king declared to him that the marriage had not been consummated.’ Sir Thomas Heneage said that ‘ever since the king saw the queen he had never liked her; and said as often as he went to bed to her, he mistrusted the queen’s virginity, by reason of the looseness of her breasts and other tokens; and the marriage had never been consummated’.7 Henry had made a similar confession to Sir Anthony Denny, ‘as [his] confidential servant, that he could not induce himself to have affection for her, for she was not as reported and had her breasts so slack and other parts of her body in such sort, that he suspected her virginity, and that he could never consummate the marriage … he lamented the state of princes to be far worse than that of poor men who could choose for themselves’. From his prison cell, Cromwell stated that ‘after Candlemas and before Shrovetide, [Henry] once or twice said that he had never known her carnally, although he had lain nightly or every second night by her’.8 By Easter and in Whitsun week, the king ‘lamented his fate to Cromwell, that he should never have any more children if he so continued, declaring that before God he thought she was not his lawful wife’.9

  Henry’s instant dislike of Anne was easy enough to establish, as he had hardly kept it a secret from his servants and councillors. Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, agreed that ‘he saw that the king liked not the queens person’ and Wriothesley admitted her had been ‘very sorry to perceive the king, upon sight of her, so to mislike her person’.10 Lord Russell had noticed that Henry was ‘sore troubled’ and ‘amazed and abashed’ in Rochester. He reported that the king had told him ‘I promise you I see no such thing in her as hath been showed unto me of her, and am ashamed that men hath so praised her as they have done, and I like her not’.11 Sir Anthony Browne added that Henry was ‘dismayed’, with such a ‘discontent and misliking’ of Anne that he did not stop to ‘speak with her twenty words’. He had not given Anne the furs he had brought as a gift, but sent them via Browne the following day, ‘with a cold message’.12 His wife, Lady Browne, who had since died in childbed, had commented in January that ‘she saw in the queen such fashion and manner of bringing up so gross that in her judgment the king should never heartily love her’. Henry himself added that when he saw her in Rochester ‘he liked her so ill he was sorry she had come and he considered if it were possible to break off’.13

  Cromwell was examined in his room in the Tower, fully cooperating, ‘with … heavy heart and trembling hand’,14 in the hope that it might yet save his neck. Following the impromptu meeting at Rochester, Henry had confessed he liked her ‘nothing so well as she was spoken of, and that if [he] had known so much before, she should not have comen hither’.15 He had solicited Henry’s opinion again on the day he brought Anne back to Greenwich, 3 January, but the king had replied that ‘she is nothing fair; the personage is well and seemly, but nothing else’, adding that ‘if it were not that she is come so far into England, and for fear of making a ruffle in the world and driving her brother into th’ Emperor and the French king’s hands, now being together, I would never have her; but now it is too far gone, wherefore I am sorry’.16 On the eve of the wedding, Cromwell reported, the king had described the imminent nuptials as ‘putting his head into the yoke’. Suffolk added that before the marriage, Henry ‘constantly affirmed that he would do nothing in the matter of the marriage unless the precontract between the lady Anne of Cleves and the marquis of Lorraine were first cleared’.

  Henry’s examiners had the evidence they needed. On 6 July, Henry sent a written message to Anne at Richmond, informing her of the inquiry. According to Rutland, who understood her with the help of an interpreter, she took the news ‘heavily’ and did not respond to his encouragement to ‘discharge her conscience’ and ‘rejoice and not … be sorry’.17 That afternoon, Henry sent a delegation of gentlemen to Richmond to explain the matter further and urge her to cooperate. More composed, Anne replied that she was ‘content always with your majesty’ but she was forbidden to send any messages to Henry. The case was heard at Westminster the following day. On 8 July, Anne summoned her advisor Carl Harst twice, to explain the situation further, and when he saw her the second time, late that night, she was ‘sobbing so loudly and crying so violently it almost broke his heart’.18 This belies the notion that Anne readily acquiesced to the annulment, although it may have owed more to the fear that she had jeopardised Cleves alliance than the loss of Henry himself. On 9 July, Parliament agreed that Henry and Anne had never been legally wed and that both were free to remarry.

  Anne was now in a difficult situation. In a foreign country, far from home, she was no longer Henry’s wife and queen and her status and future were uncertain. To return home as an unwanted bride only six months after the lengthy journey and elaborate ceremony of her arrival would be a terrible disgrace. She sent Harst to Henry to lodge her complaints but his lone voice could accomplish little against the king’s decision, backed by his council, and her ambassador knew it. Returning to his mistress, he advised Anne to capitulate. On 11 July, she wrote to the king, accepting the verdict regarding their ‘pretended matrimony’, stating her ‘worldly affection’ for him and signing herself his ‘sister and servant’. A relieved Henry responded with a generous settlement.

  Anne would indeed become his sister by adoption, second only in status to his children and future wife, with extensive properties, a considerable annual income of £4,000, hangings, plate, furniture, jewels, pearls and the occasional invitation to court.19 Henry wrote that ‘when Parliament ends, we shall, in passing, see and speak with you, and you shall more largely see what a friend you and your friends have of us’. In the meantime, he required her to be ‘quiet and merry’.20 Faced with this solution instead of an ignominious return to Cleves, Anne returned her wedding ring with the message that ‘it might be broken in pieces as a thing which she knew of no force or value’. She confessed to the ‘integrity of her body’ and wrote to her brother, Duke William, on 21 July, to reassure him that she had given her consent to the matter, ‘wherein I had more respect [as beseemed me] to truth than to any worldly affection that might move me to the contrary, and did the rather condescend thereunto for that my body remaineth in the integrity which I brought into this realm’. She was ‘well satisfied’ and the English–Cleves alliance would ‘not be impaired for this matter’. She declared her intention to live in England and signed herself as ‘Anna, Duchess born of Cleves, Gulik, Geldre and Berge’.21

  Writing to Francis I, Marillac reported on Anne’s popularity: ‘She is no longer to be called queen, but Lady Anne of Cleves; to the great regret of this people, who loved and esteemed her much as the sweetest, most gracious and kindest queen they ever had or would desire.’ Henry’s frequent visits across the Thames to Catherine Howard at Lambeth had also been noted: ‘It is commonly said that this king will marry a lady of great beauty, daughter of Norfolk’s deceased brother. If permitted to write what he hears, he would say this marriage has already taken place and is consummated; but as this is kept secret he dare not yet certify it as true.’22 It was not true. Not yet.

  Wages were paid to Anne’s officers at the end of July, providing an insight into her household in this period of transition. Her chamberlain was Sir William Goring, who received £26 13s 4d, the same amount as was paid to her steward Jasper Horsey. Wymond Carew was her receiver, and Chomley her cofferer at £20 a head; her clerk controller Richard Tomewe got £13 6s 8d, as did her secretary Mathew; her physician Dr Cornelis received a large £46 13s 4d, as did four of her native Flemish servants, while four more got a slightly lower salary of £33 6s 8d. Two Dutchwomen in her employ, Katherine and Gertrude, received £10 each, her cook Schoulenburg and the butler Henry were given £5 whi
le her footmen received £6 13s 4d.23 No doubt the members of her staff were relieved to find the household was not to be disbanded following the annulment, and that their services were still required, albeit on a more modest scale.

  Anne remained ‘at the king’s pleasure’ at Richmond Palace, which now formed part of her settlement along with Bletchingley. It was at Richmond that Henry visited her on 6 August, to inform her in person that he had married her former maid-in-waiting, Catherine Howard.

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  Rose Without a Thorn, 1540–41

  My husband doth sit like a Mome [Mummy] all the day

  And at night in the bed he is cold as the clay

  I would rather he would go and drink a pot or two

  And come home and night and do what he should do.1

  Henry and Catherine were married on 28 July at Oatlands Palace in Surrey. Like his wedding to Jane Seymour, which had also followed quickly upon the heels of the previous queen’s removal, it was a quiet, secret affair, far removed from the elaborate ceremonials staged to mark Anne of Cleves’ arrival. It seems probable that the marriage had already been consummated, with Henry keen to prove his vigour and manhood and Catherine able to draw on her sexual experience without shattering the illusion of her innocence. It is now impossible to know whether she explicitly claimed virginity, or put on a show of it, or whether this was entirely Henry’s assumption. That night they shared the magnificent new ‘pearl bed’ bought from a Pierre Conyn, which was moved from Greenwich to Oatlands especially for the occasion.2 This wedding night was clearly far more successful than the king’s brief, disappointed handing of Anne of Cleves’ breasts and belly. On that occasion, Henry had incorrectly believed his wife’s body to be offering him the visual evidence that she was no virgin; with Catherine, he drew the wrong conclusions again. He believed himself to be his young, nubile wife’s first and only lover.

  On the same day that Henry and Catherine were married, Thomas Cromwell was beheaded on Tower Hill. His head was placed on a spike on London Bridge, along with those of other traitors. The fallout from such a death could be far reaching, impacting on an entire family’s fortunes, so measures were necessary in order for the survivors to retain their position. Aware of this, Cromwell had written to the king from the Tower, beseeching him, on his knees, to be a good ‘and gracious lord to my poor son, the good and virtu[ous lady his] wife, and their poor children’.3 Three days after his death, Cromwell’s daughter-in-law, Elizabeth, sister to the former Queen Jane, and wife to his son Gregory, wrote to Henry thanking him ‘for the mercy he has shewn her poor husband and herself, which has much relieved the extreme indigence brought upon them by the heinous offences of her father-in-law’.4 She had been ‘unwilling to make any suit for fear of being troublesome, until the king is partly relieved from the pressure of his great affairs’. Elizabeth and Gregory, along with their surviving children, did receive the king’s mercy, perhaps as a reflection of his new found marital happiness. Both would live long enough to see their nephew Edward on the throne, and Elizabeth would make a third marriage after Gregory’s death from the sweating sickness in 1551.

  Catherine made her first appearance as queen at Hampton Court on 8 August. Henry’s infatuation with his new wife was immediately apparent to everyone, almost embarrassingly so, as he had never behaved like this towards any of his previous queens. It was a mark of the success of their physical relationship that he simply could not keep his hands off her, even in public. Marillac reported that he was ‘so amorous of her that he cannot treat her well enough and caresses her more than he did the others’, while the king’s secretary, Ralph Morice, wrote that ‘the king’s affection was so marvellously set upon that gentlewoman as it was never known that he had the like to any woman’. As the new queen, Catherine’s role was simply to please Henry in bed, to be cheerful and merry, to divert him from his illness and increasing old age and to appear on ceremonial occasions in the new clothes and jewels with which he showered her. There were plenty of precedents of girls in their teenage years marrying men of fifty, but few with such material and social advantages, such fine dresses, baubles and glittering trinkets as the new queen now enjoyed.

  There is little doubt that the marriage was a dazzling and unexpected career move for Catherine, but this is not to suggest she was any more calculated or cynical than any other woman of her generation. She may not have been in love with Henry but she would certainly have been in awe of him; of his status, his physical person and the whole theatre of royalty, of which he was the heart. The kind of love a subject might feel for a king, of respect, admiration and devotion, was prized more highly in the marital stakes than romantic attachment; in serving and pleasing Henry, a doting older husband, Catherine had fallen on her feet. Her relationship with Dereham may have been a love match but, along with her contemporaries, she had hoped to attract a wealthy and powerful husband and her own romantic feelings were not necessarily relevant. She cannot have anticipated just how successful she would be at this. As Marillac reported, ‘the new queen has completely acquired the king’s grace’.

  The inevitable rumours surfaced that Catherine was pregnant, that in fact she had been expecting a child before the marriage, which spurred the king to divorce Anne of Cleves and make her his wife. Once Catherine had submitted to his advances and allowed him to make love to her, he could not risk the legitimacy of any child she may bear. No doubt the speed of his remarriage ignited debate but it is also possible that Catherine, or her supporters, may have encouraged him in the belief that she would soon provide him with a Duke of York. Even before their marriage, on 21 July, Marillac reported gossip that the ‘sudden settlement of so important an affair’ was due to the fact that ‘this king has already consummated marriage with this last lady … and it is feared she is already enceinte’.5 Manuel Cyrne also believed the pregnancy story and repeated it to John III of Portugal: ‘Some say that there was a previous contract with the Duke of Lorraine, some that the king would marry an English lady, niece of the Duke of Norfolk, daughter of his brother, and that she is already with child … there must be some other secret reason.’6 Rumours reached Vatican in mid-August that Catherine was expecting a child, which had necessitated Henry’s repudiation of the ‘patient’ Anne of Cleves. On 17 August, Philip Melanchthon urged, ‘Let us cease to sing the praises of the English Nero. I know not whether you have heard of his cruelty to the queen.’7 The circumstances of Henry’s fifth marriage cemented his international reputation as a cruel husband. Absorbed in his newfound love, though, Henry really could not have cared less.

  In September, Marillac visited the court at Grafton, where Henry was staying ‘with a small company’ for hunting and ‘banquets being given to the new queen’.8 He saw Catherine there for the first time, describing her as ‘rather graceful than beautiful’ and of short stature, dressed in the French style, along with her ladies.9 Henry lavished wedding gifts on his new bride, including jewels from the royal coffer that had previously adorned his other wives, among them a pendant of gold set with a diamond, ruby and pearl; a square necklace of clustered rubies and pearls; and the gold trimming for a French hood adorned with diamonds.

  Catherine’s household featured many familiar names, those of women who had now served several queens, who had watched them rise and fall and sometimes participated in the process. Some, like Eleanor, Countess Rutland; Jane, Viscountess Parker; and Catherine, Lady Edgecumbe, had served the king as witnesses in his marital affairs; others were his relatives by blood or marriage, such as Margaret, Lady Douglas; Mary, Lady Howard; Elizabeth Seymour, Lady Cromwell; and Agnes Tilney, step-grandmother to both Catherine and her cousin Anne Boleyn. A few on the list may have been the king’s lover, including Jane Ashley and Anne Bassett, or related to his lovers, like Margaret Arundel and Catherine Skipwith. Soon, though, two new arrivals among her household created a link with her past. Katherine Tilney and Alice Restwold had been lodged in the maiden’s chamber with Catherine at Lambeth, and when they b
ecame her maids-in-waiting they brought their memories of her nightly antics with Dereham dangerously close. There was also Joan Bulmer from Lambeth, who asked Catherine to give her a place so she could share in her ‘great destiny’. This could be read as a thinly veiled attempt to blackmail the new queen to share her success with those who knew her secrets.

  Catherine continued to entice and captivate her husband. Always taking a keen interest in medicine and cures for various bodily ailments, Henry approached his fiftieth birthday with a newfound enthusiasm for life, no doubt continuing to ask the advice of Dr Butts when it came to his ability to perform in the bedroom. He was no longer the chivalric hero of his youthful affairs and, wary of the old literary clichés about old men unable to keep up with their young wives, he would have sought to sustain their love life in whatever ways he could. Contemporary medical texts recommended various herbal treatments for the penis, including the application of poultices made from boiled olive leaves with alum and honey, bathing in myrrh, saffron, oak galls and rose leaves and sometimes binding the member up to the stomach. In total, the surviving records of Henry’s doctors show over two hundred different prescriptions for his various afflictions, to which total Henry also contributed his own remedies of plasters and ointments. That December, under the guidance of Dr Boorde, he began a new regime designed to assist in weight loss that involved rising at dawn and riding for two hours. As Lydgate’s poem ‘The Dietary’ advised, moderation in work, sleep, habits and food was essential: