Six Wives of Henry VIII

by Alison Weir

  She had been at Kimbolton for three weeks when the Bishop of Durham was sent by the King in another attempt to make her swear the oath. She told him she would never relinquish the title of queen, but retain it till death. The Bishop then threatened her, as he had been authorised to do, with the penalty required by the law for persons who refused the oath, but at this her anger flared. 'Hold thy peace, Bishop!' she cried. 'These are the wiles of the devil! I am Queen, and Queen I will die! By right, the King can have no other wife. Let this be your answer.' The Bishop warned her she might be sent to the scaffold if she persisted in her obstinacy. 'And who will be the hangman?' she retorted. 'If you have permission to execute this penalty on me, I am ready. I ask only that I be allowed to die in sight of the people.' At this, the Bishop backed down, for he had rather exceeded his brief. The penalty for refusing to swear the oath was imprisonment, not death, and Katherine could be said to be suffering that already.

  When the Bishop came to administering the oath to Katherine's household, he was neatly outwitted, for the naturalised Spaniards readily swore, in their native tongue, as Katherine had bidden them: lEI Rey se ha heco cabeza de la Iglesia.'The Bishop had expected considerable opposition, and was surprised at such co-operation. He did not know, however, that, instead of acknowledging the King to be head of the Church, they had merely acknowledged that he had made himself head of the Church!

  When the King heard that Katherine had again refused to take the oath, he grumbled bitterly to Chapuys that 'the Lady Dowager is being well-treated in everything, but has very disobediently behaved herself to us'; although he had sent bishops to give her advice 'in the most loving fashion', she had disobediently and wilfully resisted and 'set at naught and condemned our laws and ordinances'. Chapuys, who had his own secret links with Katherine, knew that Henry was lying. It was an alarming situation, and Chapuys was not alone in his concern. He told the Emperor: 'Everybody fears some ill turn will be done to the Queen, seeing the rudeness to which she is daily subjected.' He considered her loyalty to Henry to be superhuman: 'She is so scrupulous, and has such great respect for him, that she would consider herself damned if she took any way tending to war.'

  In the spring of 1534, Mary became very ill. Her sickness was undoubtedly the result of sorrow and stress. The ambassador begged the Council to allow Katherine to nurse Mary herself, but they refused. Henry trusted no one these days, and believed that together mother and daughter would hatch a plot with the Emperor to depose him. Cromwell told Chapuys that Mary's present predicament was her own fault, 'and that if it pleased God . . .'. He did not finish, and Chapuys concluded that the King 'really desires the Princess's death'.

  In July 1534, recovered from her illness and fortified by a letter from her mother secretly conveyed by Chapuys, Mary refused to take the oath. Lady Shelton, who was present, shook the girl violently in front of the Earl of Wiltshire, who had been sent to administer the oath. 'If I were the King,' she cried, 'I would kick you out of the house! I would make you lose your head!' But Mary stood firm, and when Anne heard what had happened, she wrote suggesting Lady Shelton administer 'a good banging' to 'the cursed bastard'.

  By this time, Anne was well advanced into her pregnancy. In June, she was reported to be in good health. The baby was due around the end of July, but before the Queen could take to her chamber, something went wrong and it was born prematurely; it was either stillborn, or died very soon after birth. Such was the secrecy surrounding the event that even the sex of the infant is not recorded - it was probably a girl, and Henry could not afford to lose face a second time. Anne made a quick recovery, but the loss of her child had been a bitter blow and she was very difficult to live with for a time. Late in July, the King and Queen went on their annual summer progress without any official announcement of the end of her pregnancy being made.

  During that summer, Chapuys became increasingly concerned about Katherine's health. He had heard that her condition had deteriorated. In July, Henry agreed he might visit her, but had second thoughts about it and sent a messenger after the ambassador, commanding him to return to court, where he was informed by Cromwell that at no time in the future would he be permitted access to the Princess Dowager. In mid-September, when Katherine's illness grew worse, and it was thought for a time that she was dying, Lady Willoughby begged Cromwell for leave to see her, but it was likewise refused. Hearing of his aunt's illness, Charles V questioned the English ambassadors closely about reports that she had been badly treated. Henry personally instructed his envoys to say that the reports lied, and that the Lady Katherine had an honourable establishment with her own servants and money to meet her needs; as for his daughter, he would deal with her 'as we think most expedient'. Charles was not deceived by all this; he had, after all, read the dispatches of Chapuys, which told an entirely different story.

  In September 1534, Anne thought she was pregnant again. Yet her hopes were premature, for on 23 September, Chapuys informed the Emperor that 'the Lady is not to have a child after all.' Relations between the royal couple were not at all satisfactory just then. Once again, at the end of Anne's last pregnancy, the King had been unfaithful. Chapuys reported that the object of Henry's desire was 'a very beautiful and adroit young lady for whom his love is daily increasing'. She was probably one of the Queen's ladies, but her name is unknown. However, the ambassador had hopes that the affair would serve to diminish Anne's influence with Henry. The young lady was known to be sympathetic towards Katherine and Mary, and that could only be to their advantage. The course of the affair was interrupted by the summer progress, but when Henry returned, he renewed his attentions more ardently than before, and without bothering to conceal what was going on from the Queen, whose sexual attraction had begun to pale; Chapuys noted triumphantly that Henry was 'tired to satiety of her'. Thus, when Anne remonstrated with him, and threatened to send the girl away from court, he turned on her and angrily told her that she had good reason to be content with what he had done for her, which he would not do now if he were to begin again. Chapuys did not attach too much importance to these remarks, 'considering the changeable character of the King and the craft of the Lady, who well knows how to manage him'. But Anne did.

  With the loss of her second child, she realised she had lost much of her influence, and some good measure of Henry's love. Her French ways of love-making were beginning to repel him and drove him into the arms of other women, while Anne was left facing the bitter fact that only by bearing a son could she revive her husband's love and respect. The diminishing of Anne's influence, noted Chapuys, 'has already abated a good deal of her insolence'. Her gradual fall from favour meant that some courtiers now deemed it safe to visit the Lady Mary; even Anne herself wrote her a conciliatory letter, telling Mary to be of good cheer for her troubles would soon be at an end. She perhaps feared she might one day be in need of Mary's clemency, given the insecurity of her own position.

  Anne's discontent and unhappiness were made worse in the autumn of 1534 by the appearance of a pregnant Mary Boleyn at court. It transpired that Mary had secretly married - for love - a young man of little standing and no fortune called William Stafford. This was a highly unsuitable match for the Queen's sister; Wiltshire, learning of it, immediately cut off Mary's allowance, and Anne banished her and her husband from court. It was three months before Mary attempted a reconciliation, and when she did it was by means of a letter to Cromwell, in which she confessed that 'love overcame reason'. Yet while she begged Mr Secretary to help her recover the 'gracious favour of the King and Queen', her letter had a sting in its tail, which perhaps holds a clue as to the true nature of the relationship between the sisters, who had never been close, for it ended:

  For well I might a' had a greater man of birth, but I assure you I could never a' had one that loved me so well. I had rather beg my bread with him than be the greatest queen christened.

  The letter, unfortunately, came into the hands of the Queen, and her reaction to it shattered any hopes of a reconc
iliation, for Anne, naturally, did not take kindly to the obvious comparison with herself. The taunt went too deep. Mary Stafford and her husband were never again received at court, and retired to William's modest house in the country, where they lived together in peaceful obscurity until Mary's death on 19 July 1543.

  On 26 September 1534, Pope Clement died, and three weeks later the College of Cardinals elected his successor, Paul III. The new pontiff was infinitely more resolute than his predecessor, and one of his first acts was to threaten to put into effect the sentenceofexcommunication on Henry VIII drawn up by Clement but never published. Though Henry ignored this, there still remained the ever- present threat that Paul would publish his Bull and incite the Emperor to war: Henry, as an excommunicate ruler standing alone, could not expect aid from the other Christian princes of Europe.

  The King tired of his unnamed mistress by the end of October 1534, although Anne knew by now that there were sure to be others. There are hints in contemporary letters that Henry kept several young girls for his pleasure at Farnham Castle, and Norfolk, who knew Henry well, told Chapuys that his master had always been 'continually inclined to amours'. A man called William Webbe was out on his horse near Eltham Palace one day, with his pretty sweetheart riding pillion, when he chanced to encounter his sovereign on the road. The King pulled the girl from the horse and kissed her in front of the aghast Webbe, then took her straight back to the palace with him. Such encounters were purely sexual and did not last, yet there was a strong anti-Boleyn faction at court that would dearly have loved to see Anne displaced, and who did their best to encourage any amorous intrigues of the King.

  Anne was now ageing visibly. The portrait of her painted at around this time shows she had already lost her looks. Her once vivacious eyes now regard the world with suspicion, her smiling lips are pinched tight shut, and her cheeks are beginning to sag. The frustration, sadness and stress she had suffered had left their marks on her face, and Henry's desire for her had cooled, leaving him susceptible to the charms of younger women. Anne had bitterly resented Henry's last affair, and had conspired with her sister-in-law Lady Rochford to have the girl removed from court, but the King found out and banished Lady Rochford instead. When Chabot de Brion, the Admiral of France, came to England on a state visit in November 1534, the King made a point of inviting a number of beautiful ladies to court to take part in the festivities. 'He is more given to matters of dancing and ladies than he ever was,' observed Chapuys hopefully. A great banquet was given in the Admiral's honour. The Queen was present; she had for some time been trying to bring about a marriage between the Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Angouleme, third son of Francis I. If the French were to agree to it, then Anne would have manoeuvred Francis I into recognising her as Queen - which, to her chagrin, he had never done - and her daughter as lawfully born.

  Chapuys records that at the banquet, the Admiral sat talking to the Queen while they watched the dancing. Then the King arrived and told Anne he would fetch the Admiral's secretary and present him to her. Moments after his departure, de Brion realised that Anne was no longer taking part in their conversation: she was glancing about the hall furtively. Then, to his consternation, she suddenly burst out laughing. The Admiral, ever conscious of his dignity, asked if she were amusing herself at his expense, but she shook her head, still laughing, although tears were in her eyes as she pointed across to where the King was standing. 'He went to fetch your secretary,' she said, 'but he met a lady, who made him forget the matter!' And she laughed again, but without mirth.

  Christmas 1534 was not a happy one. Anne's favourite dog Little Purkoy (from the French wordpourquoi,presumably because of his enquiring expression), a gift from Lady Lisle, died. A great dog lover, the Queen had 'set much store' by him, and no one dared tell her the sad news until, in the end, the King broke it to her. Yet he was feeling less than sympathetic towards her at the time. She had quarrelled again with Norfolk, exercising her peculiar talent for alienating her supporters; Norfolk told the King she had used words to him that should not have been used to a dog; he, however, had retaliated by calling her 'a great whore'. Once upon a time, Anne might have expected Henry to avenge such a gross insult, but not any more. Henry's view was that she had provoked Norfolk beyond endurance, and he sympathised with the Duke.

  Chabot de Brion's secretary, Palmedes Gontier, met Anne at a court banquet on 2 February 1535, and recorded his impressions in a letter to his master sent three days later. He perceived that all was not well. She seemed extremely apprehensive. Three days later he saw her again, and noted how her face fell when she saw that there was no reference in the letters he brought from the Admiral (who had returned to France) to her daughter's proposed betrothal. When the King was out of earshot, she complained to Gontier of the long delay in receiving word on this matter, saying it had 'caused and engendered in the King her spouse many strange thoughts, of which there was great need that a remedy should be thought of. She could only conclude that King Francis intended her to be 'maddened and lost, for she found herself quite near to that, and more in pain and trouble than she had been since her espousals'. She dared not speak as openly as she would have liked, she went on, 'for fear of where she was and of the eyes that were watching her countenance'. She told Gontier 'she could not write, could not see me, and could no longer talk with me.' She then left with the King, leaving Gontier to conclude that she was 'not at her ease' and that she had 'doubts and suspicions' of her husband.

  It seems Henry had finally realised that marrying Anne had been a mistake. No longer did he see her through a lover's eyes: after two years of marriage, he was well able to regard her objectively, and could see little to impress him. Her arrogance, vanity and hauteur all proclaimed her inadequacy as a queen, and her public displays of emotion and temper were embarrassing. She had succeeded in making enemies of those who might have been her friends, and had displayed an unbecoming eagerness to wreak vengeance upon her enemies. She had probably lied about her virginity, and - worst of all - she had failed as yet to produce a son. Not only did Henry regret having married her, he had also brutally acquainted her with the fact. Yet, given any sign that he was contemplating her removal, the imperialists would be urging him to take Katherine back, something he could never contemplate. For the time being, therefore, Anne must remain; she might yet give him an heir. A son would still solve all her problems, as she well knew, but she told Henry early in 1535 that God had revealed to her in a dream that it would be impossible for her to conceive a child while Katherine and Mary lived. They were rebels and traitresses, she said, and deserved death. Henry failed to rise to her bait, another sign that her power was diminishing.

  In February 1535, Mary fell gravely ill, and there were fears she might die. Even the King was alarmed, although he refused to heed his physicians' advice, and Chapuys's pleas, that she should go to her mother for whom she was pining. Katherine, in desperation, wrote to Cromwell, begging him to urge the King to let her nurse Mary herself at Kimbolton: 'A little comfort and mirth with me would be a half health to her.' She would 'care for her with my own hands and put her in my own bed and watch with her when needful'.

  In March, Mary's condition worsened, and Katherine's anguish deepened, for she knew her own sickness to be mortal, and once again she begged Henry to let her see Mary. Yet still he refused. 'The Lady Katherine,' he told Chapuys, 'is a proud stubborn woman of very high courage. She could easily take the field, muster a great army, and wage against me a war as fierce as any her mother Isabella ever waged in Spain.' His remarks are proof that he knew very little about Katherine's illness. Fortunately, Mary recovered, and by April she was well enough to rejoin Elizabeth's household which was then at Eltham.

  In February 1535, the King found a new mistress, thanks to his wife, who had now come to terms with the inevitable and reasoned that, if Henry had to have an affair, it should be with someone sympathetic to her, and not a member of the imperialist faction. She had therefore deliberately selected h
er cousin and lady-in-waiting Madge Shelton, who was the daughter of Lady Shelton; Anne persuaded Madge, who seems to have been quite amenable to the arrangement, to encourage Henry's advances. In no time at all, Madge was in the King's bed, where Anne hoped she would use her influence to make Henry a little kinder to his long-suffering wife. However, the short affair resulted, predictably, in Anne once more suffering pangs of jealousy; nor did it improve her situation at all.

  By mid-March, though, she was in an altogether happier frame of mind, for she had discovered she was pregnant again. By 24 June, her condition was obvious, and Sir William Kingston remarked that 'she hath as fair a belly as I have seen'. But after that no more is heard of this pregnancy, and it is safe to assume it ended in a stillbirth at around the sixth month at the end of June. Again, details of the confinement were kept secret: Henry did not wish to parade another failure before the world. Nor was Anne's disappointment helped by news brought from France by her brother that Francis I would not agree to Elizabeth's betrothal to his son. Her mood now swung from hopeful anticipation to despair, and then to anger. 'She has been in a bad humour,' wrote Chapuys, 'and said a thousand shameful words of the King of France and the whole nation.' Sometimes she managed to hide her chagrin and grief under a faqade of gaiety. Margaret More, visiting her father in prison, told him that there had been nothing else at court but sporting and dancing, and that the Queen 'never did better'.