But though her presence is off-stage, as it were, it remains the dominant one: Henry might be King, but he could neither command this woman nor her love.
* * *
The first batch of Henry's letters are written in his own, heavy hand and composed in his best literary French. They are wonderfully polite, and labour under the weight of simile and circumlocution. Henry anatomises his heart and compares his love to the sun which (according to contemporary astronomy) was hottest when it was farthest away. He addresses Anne as 'my mistress and friend' and he signs himself 'your loyal servant'.
1
These letters, in other words, still belong to the fantastical world of the masques and revels where Henry had first glimpsed Anne. It is the realm of Courtly Love, with its conventions, its artifice and its elaborate games with words. Henry's previous extra-marital relationships, with Elizabeth Blount and with Mary Boleyn, had remained at this level. But, at some point, Anne wrought an alchemy. She turned Henry's stilted sighs into real passion. She made him, for the first and last time in his life, fall properly in love. Like his rival Wyatt, he experienced the vicissitudes of passion: 'now joy, now woe'. He burned for fulfilment – in vain. And, the least patient of men, he had to school himself to wait.
But, revealing in so many ways, Henry's letters have a crucial defect: they are undated. And, since they deal with the never-never land of Courtly Love, they are almost undatable by the usual scholarly techniques. The result is that historians have assigned them to a wide range of dates: from 1526 at one extreme to 1528 at the other. As I shall show, the earlier date is probably correct for the first batch of letters: whatever else it was, Henry's love for Anne was not a thing of quick growth and rapid accomplishment.
What is probably the first letter in the sequence was written after Anne had withdrawn from Court and returned to her parents' house at Hever. The likeliest date is the late summer of 1526. Henry had spent many months pressing his suit and thought that he had persuaded her. Anne was not so sure and had gone away to escape his importunity – and to think. To begin with, however, Henry was all confidence.
His pains at their separation would be, he writes, 'almost intolerable' were it not 'for my firm hope of your indissoluble affection'. Since he could not be with her himself, he sent the next best thing: 'my picture set in a bracelet with the device [motto] which you already know'. But, above all, he longed to be in the place of his gift and in her arms himself.
2
The exchange of symbolic jewellery, like the bracelet which Henry sent Anne, formed another important part of the rituals of Courtly Love. The great Hans Holbein himself, for whom no commission seems to have been too small, designed several similar pieces for presentation to Anne. None matches the miniature in a jewelled setting, which Henry sent on this occasion. But almost all incorporate a 'device' or 'cipher' of interlaced letters. These vary from straightforward initials, including the 'AB' pendant which hangs round Anne's neck in her standard portrait, to complex and esoteric sequences of letters, whose meaning, always intended to be private, can now only be guessed at. Sending such trinkets conveyed messages between lovers. But wearing them in a prominent place might speak of commitment and possession – as when little Princess Mary wore her 'Emperour' brooch at her breast and dreamed of her husband to be.
3
* * *
By the time of the next letter, Henry's confidence in his possession of Anne had taken a severe knock. He had heard, though not from Anne herself, that she had 'wholly changed' her mind. She would not come back to Court. He told her frankly that he 'marvelled' at the report: he was sure he had never wronged her, and that it was a poor return for 'my great love' to be kept at a distance from the 'conversation and person of the woman whom I most respect in the world'. Did not she suffer from the separation, even a little? And was it really her will to prolong it? If so, he warned her, he would try to wean himself from his passion: 'I could do no other than complain of my ill-fortune, while abating little by little my great folly.'
4
Anne ignored the implicit threat. It was, she probably guessed, beyond Henry's power to give her up. Her intuition was right. Soon Henry was writing again, begging for news of her. He sent her a buck, freshly killed with his own hand. When she ate it, he hoped, it would 'remind you of the hunter'. The present was nicely calculated: Anne seems to have acquired a gourmet's palate in France, and relished all kinds of rare meats. But the venison was also intended to remind Anne that Henry, like Wyatt, was hunting a different quarry: herself.
5
In vain. Anne eluded Henry's clutches, just as she had Wyatt's. And what she gave with one hand, she took back with the other. She relented enough to agree to return to Court. But it would not be, she insisted, as Henry's mistress but as his wife's servant. The King protested at her decision as unbefitting and ungrateful. And he ended his short note with a riddle:
v. n. A. 1. de A. o. na. v. e. r.
Historians have found it hard enough to transcribe the letters accurately, let alone to understand them. And full interpretation remains elusive. But the gist is fairly clear. It depends on a series of multi-lingual plays on 'Ann' (English), 'Anne' (French) and 'Anna' (Latin). 'Un an' is the French for 'a year'; 'anno' is the Latin for 'in the year', and is often abbreviated as 'Ao'. So Henry's riddle seems to commemorate the first anniversary of their involvement: a year of Anne, even the first year of Anne's reign over his heart.
6
Probably mindful of the same anniversary, Anne at last replied in writing. But far from quelling Henry's anxiety, her letter put him to greater 'agony' still. He could not understand it, since it seemed so ambiguous. Did she want him or not? Did she love him or not? 'Having been for more than a year now struck with the dart of love', he demanded she put his mind at rest, one way or the other. For some time, he explained, he had stopped calling her his mistress.
For if you only love me with an ordinary love the name is not appropriate to you, seeing that it denotes a uniqueness very remote from the ordinary. But if it please you to do the duty of a true, loyal mistress and friend, and to give yourself body and heart to me, who have been, and will be your very loyal servant –
Then he would make a corresponding vow. 'I promise', he continued,
That not only the name will be due to you, but also to take you as my sole mistress, casting off all others than yourself out of mind and affection and to serve you and you alone.
7
Henry wrote this letter just before Christmas. Anne probably brooded on her response over the holidays. Then, at New Year, she gave him a double response, in the form of a gift and a letter. It is the former that dates the whole letter sequence. For in his reply Henry thanked her for her 'estrene'. Historians usually translate the word as 'gift'. But
étrenne
, as it is written in modern French, is a special sort of gift: one given on New Year's Day. It has no other meaning. And only one New Year's Day is possible as the occasion for this gift: 1527. That of 1526 is too early. It would mean that Henry's solemn engagement to Anne was followed by eighteen months of inaction – which, bearing in mind what we know of Anne's character, is inconceivable. Equally, 1528 is too late. For what would have been the point of the exchange of vows months after Henry had begun formal Divorce proceedings in both London and Rome and when, as a result, his affair with Anne had become notorious throughout Europe?
8
The date of 1 January 1527 for this letter acts thus as a sort of anchor for Anne's story. First – bearing in mind Henry's earlier reference to the period of 'more than a year' that he had been in love – it fixes the beginning of the King's serious infatuation with her to the later part of 1525. Second, it makes sense of the subsequent course of their affair and, in particular, of its sudden eruption into the public domain in the course of 1527.
In short, it rewrites history.
* * *
Anne's New Year's gift to Henry was another symbolic jewel. It was set with a fine diamond and took the form of a ship in which a lonely maiden was storm-tossed. The gift was accompanied by a letter, which contained 'a beautiful interpretation' of the jewel. The 'interpretation', no doubt, explained that the maiden was Anne herself and that Henry would, henceforth, be her refuge from the storms of life. She had done what he wanted. She had made 'a too humble submission' to his proffered love.
Henry was ecstatic. He would match her devotion; he would even outdo it, if it were possible. He was hers and wholly hers – mind, soul and body. Or rather, his heart was hers, and his body he hoped might be. 'Again assuring you', he wrote, 'that henceforward my heart shall be dedicated to you alone, with a strong desire that my body could also be thus dedicated.'
Evidently, Anne had not made an unconditional surrender. She had given Henry only half of what he wanted: her heart and her love. But, as for her body, he would have to wait. Only when – if – they were married would she give him that.
For a woman thus to bargain with the King was audacious. To put the bargain into writing, which Anne appears to have done, was unheard of. But there can scarcely be any other interpretation of Henry's reply. He spoke of his 'immovable resolution' (
immuable intention
). He swore
aut
illic aut nullibi
– 'either there or nowhere'. He prayed, he said, 'once a day' for the circumstances which would enable him to consummate his love – 'which God could bring about if it please him'. The oath, the prayers, the resolution, can only be for one thing: for his marriage to Anne and therefore, of course, for his divorce from Catherine.
Henry signed his letter with a new device: in the centre is a heart enclosing the initials 'AB' ; on either side are his own initials 'HR' and the motto
aultre ne cherse
: 'I seek no other'.
9
The gesture is that of a love-sick schoolboy. But the resolution behind it was kingly. It needed to be, as the obstacles in the way of its fulfilment were so formidable. Ranged against Henry were his people, his Church, his nobility, his own past – and, above all, his wife, Queen Catherine. His minister, Wolsey, was ambivalent and even Anne's own father sometimes hesitated. Only a single voice spoke out unequivocally in favour of the great revolution Henry proposed: Anne herself.
Would it be enough?
42. Sole mistress
E
ven after their exchange of vows, Anne kept Henry waiting. Her father was to be her escort back to Court from Hever and problems – real or manufactured – rendered the timing of his departure uncertain. Now it was planned for this day; now that. Henry was on tenterhooks and was reduced to petitioning Thomas Boleyn, his own servant and councillor, like any humble suitor. Please come two days earlier, he begged. Or at least at the time originally agreed. 'For otherwise', Henry wrote lamely to Anne, 'I shall think he has no wish to serve the lovers' turn as he said he would.'
1
But, whenever Anne returned, her reception was assured. Just as her absence, Henry told her, had given him 'greater heart-ache than the Angel [Gabriel?] or Scripture could express', so their reunion would be more than the joys of Heaven. He was her 'secretary'; he longed to be with her 'privately'; he was 'and ever will be, your loyal and most assured servant, HR, who seeks no other than AB'.
He was well and truly caught.
Now at last Anne could return to Court, confident that Henry would fulfil his vow and more: she would be his 'sole mistress' certainly, and, if he (and she) could manage it, his wife and Queen as well.
* * *
Four months later, Anne appeared with Henry in public for the first time. The occasion, one of the grandest and most lavish events of Henry's reign, was the reception given for the French ambassadors at Greenwich in May 1527. It took place in a specially constructed banqueting house and theatre: the decorations of the theatre were painted by Holbein, while the banqueting house was hung with Henry's most precious tapestries and stacked with his finest gold and silver plate. The festivities culminated in the evening entertainments of 5 May, when, by the King's command, De Turenne, the principal French ambassador, danced with the Princess Mary, 'and the King with Mistress Boleyn, who was brought up in France with the late Queen [Claude]'.
2
What the two women thought of each other during this encounter we can only guess.
Mary, in fact, probably noticed nothing. After all, she was the star of the ball. She was publicly doted on by her father, who showed off her splendid auburn hair (so like his own before he had begun to go bald) to the ambassadors. So if she deigned to acknowledge Anne at all it would only have been as a courtesy to a nobody, who was enjoying a brief moment of glory with her father because she could communicate with the ambassadors in her excellent French. And the King's partner seems to have been similarly invisible to the rest of the English Court, no doubt for the same reason.
But Anne knew better. She knew, though Mary did not, that she and Mary would be inveterate enemies in a struggle that would last for both their lives. And she knew that the struggle would start soon.
43. Henry and Anne:
'Our Matter'
O
n 17 May 1527, only twelve days after the Court ball and only four months after Anne's New Year's exchange of pledges with Henry, Wolsey opened the Secret Trial of the King's marriage. 'Our Matter', as Henry called the Divorce in his love letters to Anne, had begun.
Henceforward, in the Divorce, Anne and Henry were one. They debated it and discussed it; they exchanged ideas and agents; they devised strategies and stratagems. And they did all this together. Even when they were apart (in absences that were themselves calculated to further the Divorce) they communicated almost daily by letter. They were, in short, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth – and Anne, like Lady Macbeth, frequently took the initiative. She was the bolder one of the pair, the more radical and, arguably, the more principled. The girl from Hever, the cocotte of the Court of Queen Claude of France, had metamorphosed into 'one of the makers of history'. It was an astonishing transformation.