The titles Fitzroy had been granted, together with wealth and offices, prompted speculation then, as well as later, that Henry was considering making the boy his heir.5 But these were not the titles of a Prince of Wales. Richmond was the title Henry VI had given Edmund Tudor in 1453, while Somerset was a Beaufort title. It signalled that his place was as a member of the extended royal family and made Fitzroy a potentially valuable asset on the diplomatic marriage market, while acknowledging that this situation might change under extra ordinary circumstances – as it had for Edmund Tudor’s heir, Henry VII. Katherine of Aragon was said to resent Fitzroy’s elevation, and understandably so, for it was a public acknowledgement that she could no longer bear children. But for the time being the princess Mary was treated very much as Henry’s heir, and it was as such that she was poised to play her part in Wolsey’s new anti-Imperial stance.
Henry’s bitterness towards the emperor Charles for ending his ambitions in France meant Wolsey was able to persuade him to re-establish his friendship with the French king. Negotiations began on yet another marriage for the princess Mary, this time to the widowed King Francis. As one foreign observer noted, ‘in time of war the English make use of the princess’ as if she was a ‘lure’ to hunt birds.6 Mary received the French delegation sent to conclude the terms of the alliance at Greenwich on 23 April 1527. The eleven-year-old was, like her father, an exceptional musician, and her accomplishments in this regard were much praised. She was proving clever too. Her translation of a prayer by St Thomas Aquinas was being circulated so that learned courtiers might ‘not only marvel at the doing of it, but further, for the well doing’.7 But Mary was still only a child, and the delegation judged her ‘so thin, spare and small as it to be impossible to be married for the next three years’.
When the ‘perpetual peace’ was finally signed with France on 30 April, it was agreed Mary might be married instead to Francis’ second son, the Duke of Orléans. The festivities celebrating the treaty culminated on 5 May when Henry took the French ambassadors to see Mary with her mother at Greenwich Palace. The slightly built princess looked very pretty as she danced with the French ambassador that night. Her dress shone in the ubiquitous cloth of gold favoured by royalty, flattering her auburn hair, and Henry danced with one of her mother’s ladies. The young woman was rather sallow-skinned, with a long narrow face and high-bridged nose, but she was graceful and striking with her dark hair and flashing black eyes.8 King Francis’ ambassadors were impressed by her knowledge of their country and fluency in their language – but then Anne Boleyn had spent many years at the French court.9
It was quite usual for the children of the higher gentry to leave home between the ages of eight and twelve, to be raised and educated in a great household. But Anne, the younger daughter of the ambitious courtier Sir Thomas Boleyn, had been sent further away than most – to the court of Maximilian’s daughter Margaret of Austria, in Mechelen. Sir Thomas wanted her to learn French and Anne did well there until, aged fourteen, she was called upon to attend Henry’s sister Mary, the French queen, at her coronation. After the French queen returned to England Anne had remained in France – perhaps so she would not expose the scandal of Mary’s secret second marriage to Brandon. Anne was recalled eventually late in 1521. By then she was hardly likely to talk about a scandal concerning the king’s sister, given that her own sister, Mary Boleyn, had been sleeping with him.
Henry’s relationship with Mary Boleyn has generated a lot of smoke, but we know little about the fire. Anne’s leading biographer, Eric Ives, believed the affair would have followed a similar pattern to that of Henry’s earlier affair with Elizabeth Blount. Henry had slept with Blount when Katherine of Aragon was carrying her last baby. When Blount became pregnant with Henry’s son his attentions turned to Mary Boleyn. She, in turn, may have become pregnant – or thought she was. In any event she was married off, just as Blount had been, in February 1520 to a gentleman of the Privy Chamber called William Carey. The king was the principal guest.10 The affair may or may not have come to an end: the malicious gossip was that Henry fathered some of Mary Boleyn’s children.11
Following Anne’s return to England she had narrowly missed two possible marriages. At first her father had intended that she be married to the heir to the Irish earldom of Ormond (a title that had been held by his own maternal grandfather).12 Irish politics, or her father’s greed, had put paid to that. She had then attracted the attention of a still more eligible groom: Henry Percy, heir to the earldom of Northumberland. He served in Wolsey’s household and when the cardinal was at court Percy would often visit the queen’s chamber. There, according to Wolsey’s servant and later biographer, George Cavendish, he would ‘fall in dalliance among the queen’s maidens’.13 Amongst them, Anne Boleyn had stood out, combining French sophistication with Irish spirit, and Percy was not alone in his interest in her.
With wives left at home, male courtiers, both unmarried and married, swarmed round the few women that attended the queen. Relations between the sexes were supposed to be controlled by the code of courtly love, but a woman needed a quick wit to avoid the flirting becoming potentially ruinous: as one book on court etiquette advised, they had to learn how to ‘come just to certain limits, but not to pass them’.14 For Anne the French court had been an effective school in this art and as she became familiar with the English court she discovered how best to deploy her charms. Percy was fascinated, and in time ‘there grew such a secret love between them that at length they were ensured together, intending to marry’, Cavendish recalls. Unfortunately Percy was already promised to Mary Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury. Breaking such a commitment would anger Shrewsbury, with potentially dangerous consequences. So, when Wolsey learned of Percy’s intentions, he informed the king. According to Cavendish, Henry told Wolsey to send Percy packing, admitting he was interested in Anne himself. She was the most desired woman at court and it was natural for Henry to want the star prize.
The first public hint of Henry’s affections came at a joust on Shrove Tuesday, the eve of Lent, 1526. His costume was embroidered with a heart in a press surrounded by flames and the words ‘Declare I dare not’.15 Anne’s other suitors soon began to notice they had royal competition. The courtier poet Thomas Wyatt compared Anne and her following of male courtiers to a hunted deer with a pack in chase, running in vain for ‘graven with diamonds in letters plain, There is written her fair neck round about: Noli me tangere [do not touch], for Caesar’s I am, And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.’16 Henry Percy married Mary Talbot (unhappily) in September 1526, and as Anne’s other admirers dropped away she found she was left with one suitor: Henry. But she would not sleep with him.
Anne had no desire to be a discarded royal mistress, married off to a gentleman, when she might have been Countess of Northumberland. But if Anne hoped Henry would become bored and move on, she proved mistaken. Henry was willing – even delighted – to hold back. It appealed to his love of chivalric romance and the ideal of the unobtainable mistress. Henry did not wish to break the spell Anne cast by sleeping with her. Sex was available elsewhere if he wanted it. Consciously or otherwise he was also playing out the story of his grandparents, Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. That had begun with Woodville refusing the king, and had ended in their marriage and the birth of two sons, as well as several daughters. Henry needed a wife with whom to have a legitimate son to continue his line, and wives must be chaste. Anne seemed to be the answer to his prayers.
Seventeen undated love letters from Henry, thirteen of which survive in the Vatican archives, record the unfolding romance from courtship to betrothal. At first Henry is ‘in great agony, not knowing how to interpret’ Anne’s letters. Then he asks her to accept a role as his official and sole mistress. Finally she is his ‘darling’, and he longs to be ‘in my sweetheart’s arms, whose pretty dukkys [breasts] I trust shortly to kiss’. The problem for Henry and Anne (now obliged to play for the highest marriage stake of all) was that he rem
ained married to Katherine of Aragon. There was a possible solution, however, in the new revisionist theology of a depressive German former monk called Martin Luther.
In his monastery Luther had struggled to be good, fearful that whatever he did, be it going to Mass, or confession, or helping the poor, he remained a miserable sinner. In 1515, however, it had come to him that man ‘can neither will nor do anything but evil’, but that acceptance by God (known as ‘justification’) came as His unmerited gift, through the sacrifice of Christ, for a chosen few – the elect. The church had little role in this and he came to see the clergy as just another venal interest group. Truth and certainty had to be found direct in Scripture. In 1520 Luther had published The Babylonish Captivity of the Church, which declared that of the seven sacraments of the church, he found no reference to support four of them in any biblical text and so considered them worthless: confirmation, holy orders, extreme unction (given to the dying) and marriage.17 Luther argued that it was therefore permissible to dissolve a marriage and divorce.
Henry loved theological arguments, but Luther’s views appealed to very few in England and certainly not to the king. With some scholarly help he had even composed a reply to The Babylonish Captivity defending the seven sacraments, not least marriage. Pope Leo X had been delighted by Henry’s loyalty and rewarded the king with the title ‘Defender of the Faith’ (having toyed with the idea of naming him ‘Protector of the Holy See’). Henry would never divorce and would burn Lutherans as heretics until the end of his reign. Nevertheless, he struggled to understand why God had not listened to his prayers for a male heir by Katherine. A son, Henry believed, was a blessing ‘naturally desired of all men’, and he feared his loss was also his kingdom’s loss. Women came second to men in the divine hierarchy and if the princess Mary became queen, it was obvious to him that she could not ‘long continue without a husband, which by God’s law, must then be her head and direct this realm’. Either she would marry a foreign prince or an English subject, and if the latter, Henry observed it would be hard to find someone suitable for ‘so high an enterprise’, and still harder ‘to find one with whom the whole realm could and would be contented’.18
An insight into his state of mind is revealed in his commission at around this time for a set of large and very valuable tapestries telling the story of the biblical King David. The themes were obedience to God, the inevitability of divine retribution on those who fail to do so, and childlessness as a curse, with the tapestries illustrating King David’s adultery with Bathsheba and the death of their child, followed by David’s repentance, his forgiveness by God and, finally, God granting David a military victory over his enemy.19 It was clear to Henry that like David he had been cursed – but in what way had he failed to obey the Almighty? Henry later claimed it was the French delegation, negotiating the betrothal between his daughter Mary and the Duke of Orléans, who unwittingly suggested the answer to that question.
According to Henry the French had queried Mary’s legitimacy, pointing out that he and Katherine had broken a well-known injunction from the Old Testament book of Leviticus. It warned, ‘If a man shall take his brother’s wife it is an impurity; he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.’ This seems unlikely given the French clearly regarded Mary as legitimate, but someone else may well have helped remind Henry of it, perhaps even Anne Boleyn (in which case, no wonder he pointed the finger elsewhere). In any event, he was now genuinely convinced his marriage was cursed, that Pope Julius II had been wrong to grant a dispensation to allow him to marry his sister-in-law against divine law, and that the current Pope, Clement VII, must annul this false marriage as soon as possible. Katherine, Henry was sure, would understand the situation, and retire gracefully. She had always been obedient to his wishes. However, it was important to Henry that everyone should recognise what he himself perceived, which was that in seeking an annulment he was motivated purely by issues of conscience, and not, as he said, by ‘any carnal concupiscence, nor for any displeasure or dislike of the queen’s person, or age’. To ensure there was no question about his virtue he kept his intention to marry Anne secret, even from Wolsey. Henry had told the cardinal only that he required Clement VII to overturn Julius II’s dispensation.
Popes were usually understanding about marital difficulties within royal families, and on 11 March 1527 the Pope had annulled Henry’s sister Queen Margaret’s marriage to the Earl of Angus. There had been signs that all was not well with Queen Margaret’s marriage even before she had returned to Scotland in 1517. The Duke of Albany had given Angus permission to travel to England to see his wife, and when he had declined to do so, it had given ‘her much to muse’.20 After she had returned she found Angus spent his time with his mistress, Lady Jane Stuart of Traquair, to whom he had been briefly betrothed, while also depriving Margaret of her revenues. In November 1518 she had informed Henry that she and Angus had not ‘met this half year’ and that she planned to divorce him ‘if she may by God’s law and with honour to herself, for he loves her not’.21 Margaret’s annulment was granted on the basis of Angus’ earlier betrothal to Lady Jane Stuart. Henry was certain that he would be similarly successful and it was with the high hope that Anne Boleyn was his future wife that he danced with her in front of Katherine, Mary, and the French ambassadors on the night of 5 May 1527. But at dawn the following morning, as Henry rested at Greenwich, in far-off Rome the world was about to change.
19
A MARRIAGE ON TRIAL
THE EARLY MORNING LIGHT ON 6 MAY 1527 REVEALED NONE OF Rome’s customary beauty. The great Renaissance city was under attack: the culmination of Franco-Imperial rivalry and the role of the Renaissance popes as territorial princes. Clement VII was allied with France, Venice, Florence and Milan against the emperor, and now the war had come to Rome’s very gates. By 7 a.m the enemy forces were smashing through the city walls. Despite the emperor’s traditional Catholic faith, amongst his army there were thousands of Lutheran troops from Germany, mutinous, unpaid, and filled with religious hatred for Rome. As tidal waves of armed men poured down the streets, Romans fled home to protect their families and goods. Those who stood and fought alongside the Pope’s Swiss Guard against the terrifying odds were annihilated.
In the Vatican, Pope Clement was interrupted while hearing Mass and told to flee immediately. A Spaniard in Rome, Francisco de Salazar, heard ‘So narrow was the Pope’s escape that had he tarried for three creeds he would have been taken prisoner in his own palace.’1 Meanwhile, the emperor’s army was killing everyone they came across. The little orphans of the Pieta were no more spared their lives than the sick at the Hospital of San Spirito. The Lutherans took particular pleasure in raping nuns and tormenting clerics before they were killed: one old priest was slaughtered after refusing to offer Communion to an ass. Palaces and churches were sacked and desecrated, libraries were burned, and unique manuscripts from the ancient world lost for ever.
For days the killing in Rome continued, men ‘committing such atrocities that the pen actually refuses to write them down, and that there is no memory capable of recording them’, Salazar wrote. When it was over Renaissance Rome was no more. At St Peter’s, ‘Many dead bodies lay about, so much disfigured that it was impossible to recognise them; and in the chapel itself, close to the altar of St Peter, were great pools of blood, dead horses, &c’; ‘It seems all like a dream’, Salazar observed, ‘no one can now visit a church or go about Rome, such is the stench of corpses’.2
The news of what had happened was still spreading across a horrified Europe, when in England, Wolsey opened a secret court the king had instructed him to set up at York Place. Henry stood accused of having lived in an incestuous relationship with his sister-in-law, Katherine. He expected to be found guilty, and be obliged to separate from her. Then the Pope would confirm an anulment. The secrecy was intended to allow the lawyers to build up the case against Henry’s marriage to Katherine before she learned about it, but she discovered what was
going on within twenty-four hours of the court opening. Angry and humiliated, she kept up a pretence of ignorance as she began to work out a strategy to defend her honour and her daughter’s inheritance. Henry’s plans were further stymied when on 1 June England learned of the sack of Rome.
It emerged that the Pope was under siege by the emperor at the fortress of Castel Sant ’Angelo. There was no point in continuing with the court at York Place until the situation in Rome was clarified, and so the court sessions were abandoned. Henry, frustrated and impatient to get his way, decided to reveal to Katherine his ‘discovery’ that they were living in mortal sin, in the hope she would agree to an annulment immediately. To Henry’s complete shock Katherine’s reaction was instead to burst into tears. Katherine had always made Henry comfortable. This display of heartbreak was most uncomfortable. Stunned, Henry tried and failed to reassure Katherine that an annulment was for the best. He also ordered her to keep the matter secret. This too was naive, for as one observer noted, his desire to annul his marriage was by now ‘as notorious as if it had been proclaimed by the public crier’.3
Henry’s discomfort worsened as he learned of the public reaction to the news of his intentions. After eighteen years Katherine was a much-loved queen and in the streets and taverns people expressed their disgust that she was being shamed. Women in particular resented the idea that a good queen should be abandoned simply because she had grown old and had been unlucky enough not to give her husband a surviving son, for many knew the pain of losing children. On one occasion when a crowd of Londoners spotted the queen walking across the bridge from the royal residence at Bridewell, they started to shout out that her case must succeed or God would punish England and that they prayed for her victory. Katherine also needed international support, however, and in seeking it she first turned to her nephew, the emperor Charles at Valladolid in Spain. If the Pope would not take orders from the emperor whose troops had sacked Rome, he could not afford a final break with him either – and the emperor duly promised his aunt his backing.
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