Six Wives (48 page)

    Whose verdict on Knight's Embassy was right: Knight's or Wolsey's? Most historians have been eager to endorse Wolsey's condemnation of Knight's efforts. There is, however, as I have already suggested, little reason to do so. Far from Knight's embassy being a disaster, Henry was
never nearer to a papally recognised divorce and remarriage than on New Year's Day 1528. That he threw the chance away was his own fault, for listening to Wolsey. But the final blame must rest with Wolsey, who was happy to damage Henry's case in order to cling to his own power.

* * *

Anne cannot have been over-pleased at Wolsey's restoration to something like his old favour and, as soon as he was out of the way, she was probably instrumental in making amends to Knight who, in December 1529, was appointed to the wealthy archdeaconry of Richmond.

    Her protection was exercised much more effectively, however, over her own creature Barlow, who had couriered the offending documents. In August 1528 her father, Lord Rochford, asked Wolsey to appoint Barlow to the living of Sundridge in Kent. Wolsey obliged but his office confused the name of the living by writing 'Tonbridge' instead of 'Sundridge'. Anne wrote to him to request him to clear up the difficulty and make the grant to Barlow in proper form. It would, she assured him, 'be very well bestowed'. 'For all these that hath taken pain in the King's Matter,' she continued, 'it shall be my daily study to imagine all the ways that I can devise to do them service and pleasure'.
¹⁴

    She was as good as her word: Barlow got Sundridge.

B
y the time Nuncio Gambara arrived in England with the dispensation and the commission, Anne had already left the Court for her parents' house at Hever.
¹

    This, probably, was to preserve the decencies. The fact that Henry had sought the dispensation showed of course that he was eager to marry again; while the particular provisions of the dispensation pointed directly to Anne as the woman in question: the 'affinity contracted whether by licit or illicit intercourse' arose from Henry's affair with Anne's sister Mary; 'the previous betrothal' referred to Anne's aborted marriage with Percy. Indeed, her actual name seems already to have become known in Rome, together with a not very favourable view of her virtue: she was 'not', it was considered, 'of so excellent qualities as she is here esteemed [in England]'. None of this was helpful to Henry's case. But it was not seriously damaging either. On the other hand, for the Papal Nuncio to have found Henry and Anne living together in apparently open sin at Greenwich would have entirely destroyed Henry's moral
bona fide
.

    So Anne had to leave. At least it spared her having to witness Wolsey's triumph. But equally her temporary rustication probably smoothed Wolsey's path.
His
absence in France in the previous summer had led directly to Knight's secret mission to Rome; now
her
absence in turn helped Wolsey to regain control of the Divorce suit.

* * *

Cardinal Wolsey moved with his customary single-mindedness and expedition. In little more than a week, Gambara was debriefed; the dispensation was dissected and a new mission to Rome was agreed on. Gambara would return to Rome, this time effectively as Henry's ambassador to the Pope. And he would be accompanied by two new English envoys: Stephen Gardiner, Wolsey's brilliant young aide, and Edward Foxe.
²

    Foxe came from the same stable as Gardiner. He went up to Cambridge in 1512, the year after Gardiner, and became Provost of King's College in 1528, three years after Gardiner became Master of Trinity Hall. The two men thus enjoyed, as they said themselves, 'old amity and fast friendship', with Foxe deferring to Gardiner as the elder and the more brilliant. In the Embassy, for instance, Foxe had been given the precedence, since he was already a royal councillor, though it had always been intended that Gardiner was to do the bulk of the talking. But, between the two of them, they agreed that Gardiner should be named first, as well as speaking first. They also had rather different functions: Gardiner was the hard-hitting lawyer; Foxe, a Doctor of Divinity, was there to argue the theology of Henry's case. It was a quieter role. But, in the long-run, it proved to be the more subversive.

    The two had a long private meeting with Wolsey 'in his chamber' at his town palace of York Place on the night of Friday, 7 February. They probably accompanied the minister to Greenwich on Sunday the 9th and had an audience with Henry. Then, on the Monday, as Wolsey returned to London, they rode off, post-haste, on the first leg of their twothousand-mile round trip. They left in such a hurry that much of the documentation of the Embassy – still in preparation at the time of their departure – had to be sent on after them by the courier Thaddeus. He was a crack rider; even so, dreadful weather conditions meant that he did not catch up with them until they were in France.
³

* * *

Meanwhile, Henry and Wolsey proclaimed their renewed agreement on policy with a typical fireworks-display of co-ordinated speeches and actions. On Tuesday, 11 February, Henry went to stay the night with Wolsey at York Place. Late that same evening, in retaliation for the arrest of the English ambassadors in Spain, Mendoza, the Imperial ambassador, was arrested at his house in St Swithin's Lane in the City and taken to Sir John Daunce's house in Mark Lane near the Tower. On the Wednesday, the King and Cardinal summoned the ambassadors of most other powers to York Place jointly to explain their actions. The Emperor, they claimed, had persistently rejected their overtures for peace; therefore they had no choice but to declare war to protect the freedom of Italy and all Christendom from Charles V's overweening power. That at least was what they said; their real motive, of course, was to free the Pope from Spanish control so that he could be brought to agree to Henry's Divorce.
⁴

    Finally, on Thursday the 13th, Wolsey alone tried to justify the declaration of war to an assembly of English notables in the Star Chamber. They were more sceptical about the prospect of war with England's major trading partner and her traditional ally. So, according to the chronicler Hall, the speech was received badly: members of the audience nudged each other ('some knocked other on the elbow') and whispered hostile comments. But that, for the moment, was the limit of the opposition.
⁵

    Publicly, therefore, Henry and Wolsey stood as one, shoulder-toshoulder in support of a policy that carried high risks at home and abroad – and big opportunities too.

    But all was not quite as it seemed. Just before he dismissed Foxe and Gardiner at the end of their audience on Sunday, Henry slipped Foxe a letter. It was for Anne, on whom the envoys were to call at Hever on their way to Dover.
⁶

* * *

In contrast to Henry's earlier, florid epistles in French, this letter was in English. And it was short, even terse. 'This bearer and his fellow', Henry told Anne, 'be despatched with as many things to compass Our Matter and to bring it to pass as our will could imagine or devise.' Henry drove the point home: the mission
would
result in rapid action: everything possible
was
being done. 'Yet I will assure you,' he continued, 'there shall be no time lost that may be won, and further cannot be done; for
ultra
posse non esse
.'

    Henry doubtless intended that his excess of rhetorical devices – the repetition, the proverbial phrases, the rhyme, the translation into Latin for extra emphasis – would underscore his resolution and confidence. But they have the opposite effect. Was Henry doubtful about what he was doing? Or, more likely, did he fear that Anne was?

    'Keep him not too long with you, but desire him for your sake to make the more speed,' Henry concluded, 'for the sooner we shall have word from him the sooner shall Our Matter come to pass.'
⁷

    For both Henry and Anne, however, there was immediate consolation. Nuncio Gambara had left London on the same day as Gardiner and Foxe. So the coast was clear and Anne could come back to Court. Henry trusted she would make a 'short repair [a quick return]'. But it could not be short enough for him 'which desireth as much to be yours as you do to have him'.
⁸

    Then a hitch occurred. Somehow, Henry's longing for Anne's return became public knowledge. It was 'better known at London than with any that is about me', Henry informed Anne in another short, urgent note. He 'much marvelled', suspecting 'lack of discrete handling [appropriate secrecy]'.
⁹

    He was right. For the cover of the one-time Secret Matter was long since blown. Instead, whether in public or (as they thought) in private, their love was played on an open stage. Henry reacted with irritation to the perpetual scrutiny, to the leaks and the rumours, whether true or false; Anne, in contrast, had the confidence of a natural celebrity and almost seemed to welcome the exposure.

    Did she also see it as a sort of guarantee? As something which ensured that Henry was in too far to go back on his word?

W
hen Anne returned to the Court at Windsor in late February, she found a new face in the King's personal entourage: Thomas Heneage. Heneage had been the most important member of Wolsey's Privy Chamber, and, as such, Cavendish's boss. Now Wolsey, flushed with his success in regaining control of policy, had engineered Heneage's appointment to a similar position in Henry's Household. His task was to hold a watching brief on Henry – and on Anne.

    Anne quickly found work for idle hands.

    'As the King was going to dinner', Heneage noted in his first report to Wolsey on 3 March, 'Mistress Anne spake to me, and said she was afeared your Grace had forgotten her.' The reason for her anxiety was that Wolsey had sent a messenger to Henry and, in his haste, had omitted to instruct him to pay his compliments also to Anne. Heneage made excuses for his former master. But Anne was not satisfied. She would make sure that Wolsey never forgot her again. And she would use Heneage as the means.

    That night at supper, Henry ordered Heneage to take a dish from his table 'down' to Anne, who was evidently lodged beneath the King's private apartments at the foot of the Privy Stairs. Heneage did so and found himself invited to supper with Anne. She immediately turned on the charm. But she also made demands. 'She wished', Heneage reported to Wolsey, 'that she had some of your good meat, as carps, shrimps and other.' Meanwhile, her mother, Lady Rochford, had already pressed Heneage for 'a morsel of [Wolsey's] tunny [tuna-fish]'. Heneage, finding the business fishy in both senses of the word, excused himself for getting involved in it. 'I beseech your Grace to pardon me', he wrote, 'that I am so bold to write unto your Grace hereof: it is the conceit and mind of a woman.'
¹

    But Wolsey understood better. Anne required tribute, and he paid it, sending her a letter and, no doubt, her carps. Anne transmitted her elaborate gratitude, again via Heneage. 'Mistress Anne', he informed Wolsey on the 16th, 'thanketh your Grace for your kind and favourable writing unto her, and sayeth she is much bounden unto your Grace.'
²

    This charade of mutual compliment, beautifully played and patently insincere, testified to the fact that, after the political ebbs and flows of the winter of 1527–8, Wolsey and Anne were now in need of each other. Wolsey had recovered power on the premise that he had found the key to Henry's Divorce and remarriage. So he needed to keep Anne on his side by convincing her that he was serving her cause effectively and with enthusiasm. Anne, in turn, had been told by Henry that Wolsey was her best, perhaps her sole, hope of marrying the King. So it was in her interest to sweet-talk Wolsey and encourage him in his efforts (as she did all others who laboured on the Divorce).

    A moment's reflexion, however, shows that the need was not reciprocal. Wolsey needed Anne more than she needed him. Anne – and her marriage – was, after all, the end; Wolsey was only the means. If he failed, he would be discarded, as had nearly happened in late 1527.

    But this time, it is clear, Wolsey intended to put up a fight.

* * *

Wolsey's weakness in 1527 had been his lack of reliable intelligence about the King. Treasurer Fitzwilliam had been loyal but did not form part of Henry's inner circle. And Secretary Knight, who did, had betrayed Wolsey.

    Heneage's appointment to Henry's Privy Chamber went some way to remedying this deficiency. Even more important was Wolsey's placement there of Sir John Russell, the ancestor of the Dukes of Bedford. Russell was one of Wolsey's oldest and most loyal clients: 'I have', he later protested to Wolsey, 'borne my heart and service unto your Grace above all men living, saving only the King.' Russell's appointment to the Privy Chamber took place in January 1526 at the latest. But he spent most of the subsequent two years as a sort of military attaché with the Imperial armies in Italy. It had been intended to send him to Italy again in late 1527, this time as Henry's representative with the French armies of Marshal Lautrec. But the mission was aborted. Wolsey had a more important campaign for him at home: the minister's own political survival.
³

    But Wolsey was not the only one who was manoeuvring for advantage around the King. Back in January 1526, with the major Household reforms known as the Eltham Ordinances, Wolsey had at last seemed to get full control of the Privy Chamber. He secured the expulsion of some persistent troublemakers, including the brothers-inlaw Sir Nicholas Carew and Sir Francis Bryan. He bought out others. And he even managed to get rid (for a consideration) of Anne's own brother, George Boleyn, who had been one of the King's pages.
⁴

    In the winter of 1527–8, however, with the temporary eclipse of Wolsey's power, those whom he had driven out came knocking on the door of the citadel once more. In December, Sir John Wallop, the intimate friend of Sir Thomas Cheyney, one of the few long-serving Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber to have survived all Wolsey's purges, was appointed to the department. Wallop's appointment was noted by the French ambassador, who added, with evident surprise, that 'Bryan is not yet reappointed.' Instead, Bryan's brother-in-law Carew beat him to it when Carew was reinstated in the Privy Chamber in January 1528.
⁵