* * *
But, in the crucial early months of 1527, Anne is almost invisible. No English source mentions her. And only the French, to whom she was already a familiar figure, noted her appearance at the Court ball on 5 May.
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The silence is curious. I suspect that Henry kept Anne out of the limelight
because
of her importance to him. Not only was she Henry's partner in the Divorce, she was, in fact, the
reason
he was seeking to annul his marriage in the first place. The chronology alone, established here for the first time, virtually proves the case: Henry had promised to marry Anne on or shortly after 1 January and he launched the first trial of his existing marriage to Catherine on 17 May. It was cause and effect. But, of course, Henry could never publicly admit to the connexion between the two events. To have done so would have been to acknowledge that he was dumping Catherine because he wanted to marry Anne. And that overnight would have destroyed the moral, if not the legal, case for the Divorce.
Instead, both Henry and Anne had to pretend and conceal. Their promise to marry had to be kept secret, as had the very existence of their relationship. Both found the game a strain. Henry was proud of Anne (and perhaps prouder still of his conquest of her) and wanted to show her off. Anne was as bold as brass and wanted to show off too. Hence the extraordinary risk of their appearance together at the Court ball. But they were good enough actors to get away with it.
Probably indeed only Anne's parents and her brother were fully in on the secret. The confidential servants of the Privy Chamber must have guessed that something was up, as must Wolsey. But it is unclear how much even Wolsey was told at this stage.
* * *
Fortunately for historians, one well-informed observer made it his business to cut through the deliberate obfuscation and secrecy. This was Reginald Pole. Pole, unusually, had a foot in both camps. He was Henry's cousin and protégé, while his mother, the Countess of Salisbury, was Catherine's closest English confidante. In 1529, Pole was to use his influence as a scholar of the royal blood to help get Henry a favourable verdict on the illegality of his marriage from the Sorbonne. But Pole's doubts about Henry's case were to harden during his subsequent period of extended study in Padua in 1530–5, and in 1536 he made them public in his
Pro ecclesiasticae unitatis defensione (In defence of Church unity
).
In the treatise, which took the form of an open letter addressed to Henry, Pole turned his spotlight on to the murkiest corner of the King's case: his relationship with Anne Boleyn. As we have seen, Henry's
bona
fide
depended on concealing or at least marginalising Anne's role in the Divorce. Pole, on the contrary, showed that it was central and that it was Henry's desire for Anne, and not his conscience, which first led him to challenge the legality of his marriage with Catherine. All this confirms the case that I have presented here. Indeed Pole may very well have based his conclusions on the same evidence, in particular Henry's love letters to Anne which had, almost certainly, already been spirited away to the Vatican. But Pole also goes further and claims that it was Anne, not Henry, who had come up with the arguments in favour of the Divorce.
She herself sent her chaplains, grave theologians, as pledges how ready her will was, not only to declare to you [Henry] that it was lawful to put her [Catherine] away, but to say that you were sinning mortally to keep her as your wife even for a single moment, and to denounce it as a high crime against God unless you straightway repudiated her.
'This', Pole concludes, 'was the first origin of the whole lying affair.'
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Henry, who had been led by Pole's English friends to expect a defence of his own case, was to receive the shock of his life. But, as he read, the King's surprise was to turn to anger and to a settled determination to be revenged on Pole and his entire family. Henry's feelings are understandable. They are also the testimony to the truth of Pole revelations – and to the extent that they had hit home.
* * *
So Pole's account, written after the event in 1536, was to present a unique picture of Anne's activities in 1527. She was working with Henry on the Divorce, recruiting expert opinion, introducing him to the arguments based on the 'Divine Law' prohibitions in
Leviticus
, and stiffening his resolve. And she was astonishingly successful. By late March Henry was ready to act. The basic arguments against his marriage were worked out (and were to change little in the years that followed). He had chosen a lawyer and agreed a procedure. It remained only to set the machinery in motion.
From its earliest stages, therefore, Henry – that is to say, the collectivity of Henry and Anne – had assumed personal charge of 'Our Matter'. And they would never relinquish it. How could they? Its successful resolution was central to their happiness. Henry, in his letters to Anne, is open about this: 'which [thing], brought to pass . . . you and I shall have our desired end, which should be more to my heart's ease and more quietness to my mind than any other thing in this world'. Getting the Divorce meant everything to Henry and Anne. It was their all in all. How could they fully trust anyone else to act on their behalf?
Henry's chosen lawyer was Dr Richard Wolman, Archdeacon of Sudbury and later Dean of Wells. Wolman – a 'doctor in both laws', that is, in both civil (or Roman) law and in canon law – was one of the small group of royal councillors who were required to give 'their continual attendance' at Court. The group assembled twice each day, at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., in the Council Chamber or, if the King's residence were too small to have a special Council Chamber, in the King's Dining Chamber. There they were to be ready either to advise the King on matters of current policy or to administer justice to the poor. Organising the latter was Wolman's special responsibility. The position, later known as Master of Requests, was the most junior in the Council. Yet it brought its holder into close daily contact with the King. He had to present 'poor men's suits' to the King and to recommend a solution. And, since the cases were trivial, he had to do so with a light touch.
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Wolman evidently got it right. The result was that Henry decided that he was the man to prepare and conduct the case against his marriage. Wolman's forensic skills were of course important in the decision. But so too was his proximity to the King. For Henry was determined to control the process at every stage.
The extent of the King's personal involvement became clear when, in April 1527, Wolman rode to Hampshire to interrogate Bishop Fox about Catherine's two marriages. He had Henry's own letters to present to Fox and an oral message from the King as well. And when the aged bishop at first refused to sign the transcript of his examination, on the grounds that he was blind and that none of his own counsel had been allowed to be present, Wolman was able to extort his signature 'out of deference to the King's command'.
Fox also understood that Wolman was acting as the King's direct agent. He was likewise well aware that his own behaviour as a halfreluctant witness was open to misconstruction. So, on 7 April, the day after the two-day interrogation was over, the seventy-nine-year-old bishop dictated a letter to the King which mingled dignity with pathos. He had answered, he insisted, according to his 'conscience'. But he also begged for Henry's 'gracious consideration of my great age, blindness and lack of good hearing'.
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* * *
The fact that Henry and Wolman had done the ground-work meant that, when Wolsey opened the Secret Trial of the King's marriage in his own house of York Place on 17 May 1527, he came to the case relatively fresh. As of course, as a judge, he should. Henry must have taken him into his confidence to some extent. But Wolsey's own voluminous papers show no trace of his involvement in the preparation of the Trial.
Why was the usually omni-present minister not involved? It may indeed have been due to a sense of judicial propriety (though that rarely bothered Wolsey, whose whole career was a living defiance of the Separation of Powers). Or he may have disqualified himself by opposing, in principle, the King's wish for an annulment. 'I have often kneeled before him in his Privy Chamber on my knees the space of an hour or two', Wolsey protested on his deathbed, 'to persuade him from his will and appetite, but I could never bring to pass to dissuade him therefrom.' Or it may have been that Wolsey, knowing Anne's animus against him, feared the ensuing marriage of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, and was reluctant to do anything to bring it about.
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But, whatever the reason for Wolsey's initial non-involvement, it could not last. His own decision to abort the Trial on 31 May saw to that. Anne had told Henry that his case against the marriage was water-tight and Henry had believed her. Henry had also worked closely with Wolman in the preparations for the Trial and had become confident of the outcome. But his own creature, Wolsey, in his capacity as Papal legate, had denied him his fondest wish! It would now be Wolsey's task, in his other capacity as Henry's minister, to get him the Divorce by some other means.
Or Wolsey's head would pay the price.
Wolsey's personal feelings about the Matter were unimportant. He was there to do, not what he wanted, but what his King wanted. That, in the sixteenth century, was the minister's job, and he excelled at it. Nothing was too big or too small or too dirty. For almost fifteen years now, Wolsey had made war and peace, organised executions and revels, poured out millions at one moment and retrenched fiercely the next – and all at the King's bidding. When Henry wanted a new husband for his daughter Mary, Wolsey had found him one, and then, at the King's behest, changed him for a new model; when Henry wanted to get rid of his mistress, Elizabeth Blount, Wolsey had organised that too. Henry had turned to him even to eliminate his rival for Anne, Henry Percy.
Naturally, the King and Cardinal had not always seen eye to eye. Nor was Wolsey ever a mere passive instrument. Rather, it was a sort of partnership in which Henry called Wolsey his 'friend'. The word had a stronger meaning then than now, and for the King to apply it to his own subject was a unique distinction. In this friendship Henry, of course, had the final say. But Wolsey often seemed the dominant character. He was older, more experienced and more worldly-wise. Henry, for his part, trusted him, with a trust that was almost without limit: he was prepared to give him latitude, a free rein, and a nearly infinite degree of discretion.
6
But could it continue? For Henry now called Anne his 'friend' also. Could Henry have two friends: one his minister and the other his mistress?
Above all, could Wolsey, with the best will in the world, turn the mistress into the King's wife?
And was his heart in it anyway?
For Anne had a very different perspective on Wolsey from Henry. The Cardinal had already meddled twice in her private life, each time disastrously. He had failed to carry through her marriage with Piers Butler. And he had succeeded, much against her will, in calling off her wedding with Henry Percy. Would he serve her any better this time?
But, whatever doubts Anne might have nursed about the minister, Wolsey had none about himself. Instead, he announced his take-over of the Divorce with his usual brazen confidence. 'I have now in hand [the Divorce],' he wrote to Henry on 2 June, only two days after he had suspended the Secret Trial
sine die
, 'wherin such good and substantial order and process hath hitherto been made and used, as the like, I suppose, hath not been seen in any time heretofore.'
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* * *
Despite Wolsey's bustle, however, the fissures soon became clear. And they were provoked by the other main party: Catherine. For it was apparent to Wolsey, if not to Henry and Anne, that Catherine's devastating intervention in the aftermath of the Trial had changed everything. Her determination to involve foreign counsel blew apart the cosy circle of English canon lawyers, who, with a few notable exceptions, had been prepared to do what Henry wanted. Even more important was Catherine's assertion that Arthur had never had sex with her. For if she had indeed emerged a virgin from her first marriage then
Leviticus
and its curse did not apply. She had been Arthur's spouse in name only – which meant in turn that she was now Henry's wife fully and perhaps finally.
Wolsey, as he later explained to the King, had discussed these awkward consequences with Dr Richard Sampson, the Dean of the Chapel Royal and one of Henry's legal experts. The minister's arguments depended on a technical distinction in canon law between 'affinity' and 'public honesty'. 'Affinity' is the relationship between a man and his wife's relations which, after his wife's decease, puts marriage with her female kin out of bounds. 'Public honesty' has the same effect. But the former requires proof of consummation or full sexual relations between the sometime spouses; the latter does not. Instead, the mere fact of a valid, publicly celebrated marriage is sufficient. Wolsey entered into the distinction with an amateur's enthusiasm, for he was no lawyer by training.
'If your brother had never known her,' he told Henry he had said to Sampson, then 'there was no affinity contracted.' 'Yet,' he had continued, 'in that she was married in
faciae ecclesiae
[in the face of the Church] . . . there did arise
impedimentum publicae honestatis
[the impediment of public honesty].' And this he had explained, warming to his theme, 'is no less
impedimentum ad dirimendum matrimonium
[an impediment that invalidates matrimony] than affinity.' Moreover, he concluded triumphantly, the 'Bull maketh no express mention' of public honesty. Which in turn would render the marriage invalid. Q.E.D. –
quod erat demonstrandum
('which is what was to be demonstrated'), as old-fashioned exercises in geometry used to conclude.
8