by Tracy Borman
But as the new year arrived, things turned more decisively in Anne’s favor. On January 8, 1536, Catherine of Aragon, the woman whom most of England still regarded as the rightful queen, died at Kimbolton Castle in Cambridgeshire. Her daughter was devastated. The king, perhaps encouraged by his wife, had refused Mary’s heartfelt pleas to be allowed to go to her mother as she lay dying. Now she would never see her again. Mary’s hatred of Anne was more implacable than ever.
By contrast, Henry and Anne were overjoyed, both relieved that this enduring challenge to the legitimacy of their marriage had finally disappeared for good. For one who set so much store by these things, it was surely a sign that God had not forsaken the king after all. He immediately ordered great festivities at court. A delighted young Elizabeth was summoned from Hatfield and arrived to behold her father, “clad all over in yellow from top to toe,” in great high spirits. The princess was immediately conducted to Mass, accompanied by “trumpets and other great triumphs.”39 After giving thanks to God, a sumptuous banquet was staged, and Elizabeth, who had so recently been weaned, might have enjoyed her first taste of the rich foods of court: spit-roasted boar, peacock, and swan, venison pies, sweetmeats, marchpane, and spiced fruitcake. The bland milk and white meat of her diet at Hatfield would never seem quite the same again.
When the feasting was over, the king processed into an adjoining chamber, where dancing was already under way, and “there did several things like one transported with joy.”40 Anne looked on in triumph as he lifted their daughter in his arms and proudly paraded her in front of the whole court. The pride she felt in Elizabeth was matched only by the hope she felt for the child that was now growing inside her.
But if Anne had learned anything from her years at Henry’s court, it was how quickly things could change. Barely three weeks after the celebrations that seemed to crown her triumph as Henry’s queen and the mother of his heir, disaster struck. On January 29, Catherine of Aragon was laid to rest at Peterborough Cathedral. What should have been a joyful day for Anne was marred when she discovered her husband cavorting with Jane Seymour. Her fury was immediate and uncontrollable. She raged and lashed out in an increasing frenzy as her shocked attendants looked on, fearful for her unborn child. They were right to be afraid. That evening, overcome with fevered exhaustion, Anne miscarried. This time, God had surely shown his hand, for the fifteen-week-old fetus had all the appearance of being a boy. Chapuys was quick to convey the news to Charles V. With barely suppressed satisfaction, he told his master: “the Concubine had an abortion which seemed to be a male child which she had not borne three and a half months, and on which the King has shown great distress.” His conclusion was brutal but accurate: “She has miscarried of her saviour.”41
According to Chapuys, Anne immediately put the blame on her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, for deliberately shocking her with news that the king had suffered a bad fall while jousting. But this accident had not proved too serious and had in any case happened six days before the miscarriage. Furthermore, news of it had been broken to Anne “in a way that she should not be alarmed or attach much importance to it.”42 Chapuys preferred to put the blame on Anne’s “incapacity to bear children,” a view that was shared by many at court. It is possible that she had gynecological problems, given her mother’s many miscarriages and stillbirths, and her sister’s history. But it seems at least equally likely that the miscarriage had happened as a result of the acute stress under which she had labored throughout this difficult pregnancy, together with the constant dread that Henry would find a means to get rid of her. Chapuys noted that many at court attributed it to “a fear that the King would treat her like the late Queen.”43
Whatever the cause, things now began to unravel rapidly for Anne. This second miscarriage convinced Henry that their marriage had offended God, and that for as long as it continued, He would deny him the male heir that he so craved. Chapuys was perhaps exaggerating when he claimed that “for more than three months this King has not spoken ten times to the Concubine … when formerly he could not leave her for an hour.”44 But there was no denying that he harbored a growing resentment toward his second wife and treated her with barely concealed distaste.
The king now switched his attentions firmly to his new mistress, showering her with “great presents.” In plotting to ensnare the king’s affections for good, Jane Seymour employed some of the same tactics that she had seen Anne Boleyn put to such powerful effect. She knew that a mistress could become a queen, and was determined to follow suit. For a start, she refused to yield her virginity and met all of Henry’s advances with a show of maidenly modesty. When in April 1536 he sent her a purse of money with an accompanying declaration of love, Jane reverently kissed the letter before sending it back unopened, begging the king to consider that there was “no treasure in the world that she valued as much as her honor, and on no account would she lose it, even if she were to die a thousand deaths.” She added cunningly that if the king wished to send her such a present in future, then he should wait “for such a time as God would be pleased to send her some advantageous marriage.”45
If Henry experienced an uneasy feeling of déjà vu, he did not show it. Jane’s ploy worked just as successfully as Anne’s had done. Before long, the king’s passion for her was known throughout the court. In a striking repetition of history, courtiers now flocked to Jane in the hope of advancement, just as they had to Anne. Henry appointed rooms for Jane next to his own in Greenwich Palace, and also installed her brother Edward and sister-in-law Anne there so that they could act as chaperones when the couple met.
Meanwhile, Queen Anne was forced to endure the humiliation of seeing gifts and love messages arriving for her lady-in-waiting. Occasionally it all became too much, and she lashed out at the placid creature with slaps and curses. Years later, her daughter, Elizabeth, would use similar treatment toward her ladies when they provoked her.
It was upon Elizabeth that Anne now lavished all her affection, perhaps seeing her little daughter as the only friend she had left in the world. During those bleak early months of 1536, while her enemies at court were plotting her downfall and the king was seeking solace with his new mistress, Anne turned her back on all of it and busied herself with ordering pretty new clothes for her infant daughter. In April she was overjoyed when the king agreed that the child could visit her at Greenwich, where the court was then residing. Anne sought Elizabeth’s company a great deal during this time, playing with her and dressing her in new velvet frocks and embroidered satin caps.
But all the while, the king’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, was quietly gathering evidence that would rid his master of Anne’s irksome presence for good. The Queen had delighted in surrounding herself with lively, flirtatious, and attractive courtiers—men such as Henry Norris, who was Cromwell’s main rival; Mark Smeaton, a court musician; and her brother, George Boleyn, with whom she had always enjoyed a close relationship. Her flirtations with these men were almost certainly harmless: Anne had far too much to lose to risk adultery. Besides, her ability to keep Henry at bay for the seven years of their courtship had proved that she was not lacking in self-control. But Cromwell had the means he sought to bring her down, and he wasted no time in collecting innocent tales that could be twisted into damning evidence.
Anne, preoccupied with her daughter at Greenwich, knew nothing of the horror that was about to unfold, and even the king was kept in ignorance until Cromwell judged that he had a suitably compelling case to take to him. Finally, on the first day of May, the minister confronted Henry with the evidence. Outraged, dismayed, but—sadly for Anne—not disbelieving, he ordered that his wife’s alleged lovers be thrown into the Tower. The news spread like wildfire, and all too soon it had reached the ears of the Queen herself.
Gathering her daughter in her arms, she ran to the king, desperate to convince him of her innocence. The scene was witnessed by Alexander Ales, a Scottish theologian and protégé of Cromwell, who was then visiting court. He
later recounted what he had seen in a letter to Elizabeth, written soon after she had ascended the throne. “Never shall I forget the sorrow which I felt when I saw the most serene Queen, your most religious mother, carrying you, still a little baby, in her arms and entreating the most serene King, your father, in Greenwich Palace, from the open window of which he was looking into the courtyard, when she brought you to him.” Ales had not been close enough to hear what had passed between them, but he judged that from “the faces and gestures of the speakers,” it was clear that an argument had ensued and that the king had been very angry.46
Perhaps Anne had seized upon Elizabeth as being the best means of persuading her husband that she was innocent. The charges had hinted that the child might not be his, but with her fiery red hair and long, straight nose, she was the very image of Henry. If Anne had used her daughter in a last, desperate attempt to save her own life, it was in vain. The king remained steadfast.
Following Henry’s discovery of his wife’s alleged adultery, events at court moved with bewildering speed. On May 2, Anne was arrested and taken to the Tower. Her trial took place a little over two weeks later, and she faced a string of lurid and scandalous charges. Her crime, they said, was not just adultery, but incest and perversion. Driven by her “frail and carnal lust,” she had kissed her brother by “inserting her tongue in his mouth, and he in hers,” and had incited others in her entourage to yield to her “vile provocations.”47 She had taken Henry Norris to her bed just six weeks after giving birth to Elizabeth. In vain, Archbishop Cranmer defended her to the king, telling him that he could not believe her guilty of the charges against her because “I had never better opinion of woman.”48 His was virtually a lone voice amidst the growing tide of accusations.
As the details of her supposed crimes grew ever more explicit, Anne remained impassive. When the time came for her to speak, however, she presented a spirited and articulate defense, giving “so wise and discreet aunswers to all thinges layde against her, excusinge herselfe with her wordes so clearlie as thoughe she had never bene faultie to the same.”49 Her daughter would inherit this talent for oration and use it to much greater effect than Anne was able to on this occasion. In the event, it did nothing to move the hearts either of her accusers or of the king himself, who, upon hearing of her bravery, remarked: “She hath a stout heart, but she shall pay for it!” According to Chapuys, even if his wife had been found innocent, he had already resolved to abandon her.50
The jury returned the verdict that was expected of them: Anne was convicted of high treason and sentenced to death. When she was escorted back to her rooms in the Tower, she gave way to hysteria, telling the lieutenant, Sir William Kingston: “I heard say the excutor was very gud, and I have a lytel neck,” before putting her hands around it and “lawynge [laughing] hartelye.” Aghast, Sir William exclaimed that “this lady hasse mech joy and plesure in dethe.”51 The night before her execution, Anne chattered and joked endlessly, telling her astonished companions that it would not be hard for her enemies to think of a nickname for her when she was dead, for they could call her “la Royne Anne sans teste [tête].” She then “laughed heartily, though she knew she must die the next day.”52
On May 19, 1536, as Anne stood on the scaffold, stripped of her title as queen and all the honors that had accompanied it, she gave a last, dignified speech to the hushed crowds that had gathered at the Tower. Rather than bemoaning her fate and rejecting the charges against her, she was full of praise for the king, lauding him as “one of the best princes on the face of the earth.” Such a calm acceptance of her impending death could hardly have been expected of a woman whose frequent bursts of temper had become notorious at court, and who had often complained bitterly to her husband about much more trivial matters than those of which she now stood accused. Surely now, with the sword about to strike, she had nothing to lose in railing against the man who had so easily accepted the trumped-up charges against her in order to rid himself of her for good? That she chose rather to praise him could have been to protect those whom she left behind—none more so than Elizabeth. She knew that things already looked bleak for her daughter, who had been rendered illegitimate by the dissolving of Henry’s marriage to Anne. She might therefore have resolved to do anything she could to soften the king’s heart toward herself, and thereby their child.
Anne made no recorded mention of Elizabeth during her imprisonment in the Tower, but there is evidence to suggest that she took great care to protect her daughter’s future, even as she saw her own crumbling into the dust. In 1535, when her favor with the king was declining rapidly, she had written a conciliatory letter to her stepdaughter, Mary. Perhaps sensing which way the succession was turning, she wished to ensure that her cruel treatment of the young woman would not prejudice her against her half sister, Elizabeth.53 Then in late April 1536, just a few days before her arrest, she had had an earnest discussion with her chaplain, Matthew Parker. According to Parker, she commended her daughter to his spiritual care and shared her hopes for Elizabeth’s education. It may be that he subsequently exaggerated the importance of this conversation when it turned out to be their last. But the fact that Parker was one of the most fervent reformers at court and Anne herself had shown sympathies in that direction suggests that she wished her daughter to follow the same path. In the event, Elizabeth’s intellectual and religious upbringing would be assigned to the care of others, but when queen, she would appoint Parker as her first Archbishop of Canterbury. Her religious leanings would prove her to be very much her mother’s daughter.
Anne would have a far greater influence upon her daughter than has long been supposed. Even at her young age, Elizabeth already resembled her, and she would grow to do so more strikingly as the years passed. She would also inherit some of her mother’s personal traits, notably tenacity, self-discipline, and charisma. Equally, there would be flashes of Anne’s cruelty and vindictiveness. But above all, it would be the example provided by Anne’s life—and in particular its end—that would prove her greatest legacy to Elizabeth. From this, her daughter learned not to trust expressions of love and devotion; she learned to guard her reputation fiercely; and she learned to be a self-reliant, political pragmatist. Anne had had qualities that would have made her a great queen, but she had also had a number of fatal flaws. It was in learning from both that Elizabeth was able to become the queen that her mother was never able to be.
Her final speech over, Anne knelt on the scaffold with great composure and commended her soul to God. A highly skilled executioner had been brought over from Calais and used a sword in the French fashion, rather than the traditional axe—the only mercy that Henry showed toward his estranged wife. With a clean strike, Anne’s head was severed from her body. The sombre crowd looked on aghast as her eyes and lips continued to move, as if in silent prayer, when the head was held aloft. She was apparently as bewitching in death as she had been in life. When the spectators had finally dispersed, Anne’s weeping ladies sought in vain for a coffin in which to lay their mistress’s body. In one final indignity, they were compelled to use an old arrow chest, and it was in this that Henry’s second queen was laid to rest in the Tower chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula.
For her daughter, Elizabeth, life would never be the same again.
CHAPTER 3
The Royal Nursery
The blood of her mother, soon put to death by the King, sprinkled even to her cradle with the blot of bastardy.1
When the sword struck off her mother’s head, Elizabeth was just two years and eight months old. Blissfully unaware of the ghastly event that had just taken place at the Tower, she was in the company of Lady Bryan at Greenwich Palace, playing or learning her letters like any normal royal offspring. But it soon became obvious, even to a child of Elizabeth’s tender years, that something was badly wrong.
Her father had ordered that she be kept to her rooms in the days immediately following Anne’s execution. Elizabeth’s Master of the Horse, Sir John Shelton, wrote
to Cromwell upon receiving his instructions: “I perceive by your letter that my lady Elizabeth shall keep her chamber and not come abroad, and that I shall provide for her as I did for my Lady Mary when she kept her chamber.”2 Although the king may have wished to shield his youngest daughter from the scandal surrounding her mother’s trial and execution, it seems more likely that it was because she was an uncomfortable reminder of a painful episode that Henry would rather forget.
Lady Bryan, who was no longer a second mother to her but the only mother the child had, stayed with her at all times. Did she tell Elizabeth the truth during this time, or did she judge it best to wait until the girl was of an age to better understand what had happened? The surviving evidence provides little clue. Any conjecture must rest upon what is known of Lady Bryan’s character and her approach to her duties. She was certainly competent: Henry VIII would not have tolerated anything less than excellence in the woman to whom he had entrusted the upbringing of his heirs. Her letters to Anne Boleyn also suggest that she was a warm and caring person, with a genuine affection for the precocious young girl in her charge.
Lady Bryan’s correspondence with the court, in particular the letters that she exchanged with the king’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, infer a highly organized, no-nonsense approach to her duties, and a formidable will that would brook no challenge to her authority from the rest of the household. If, therefore, Lady Bryan had decided that it was in Elizabeth’s best interests to shield her from the truth about her mother during the immediate aftermath of the execution, then it can be reasonably assumed that the other household members would have been sworn to secrecy. The fact that the child had to ask why her status had changed suggests that this was the case. “Why Governor,” she demanded of the hapless Sir John Shelton, “how happs it yesterday Lady Princess and today but Lady Elsabeth?”3 Quite how long Lady Margaret chose, or was able, to maintain the pretense cannot be known. She at least seems to have done so during those turbulent days at Greenwich.
