Read The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn Online
Authors: Alison Weir
Tags: #General, #Historical, #Royalty, #England, #Great Britain, #Autobiography, #Biography & Autobiography, #Biography, #Biography And Autobiography, #History, #Europe, #Historical - British, #Queen; consort of Henry VIII; King of England;, #Anne Boleyn;, #1507-1536, #Henry VIII; 1509-1547, #Queens, #Great Britain - History
Chapuys knew very well that Anne was deeply unpopular with the people of England. She and her faction were perceived to be responsible for the harsh and rigorously enforced laws that passed in recent years, for promoting heresy and radical religious change, for the deterioration of England’s relations with other European powers, and for the slump in her hitherto-lucrative trade with the Empire.
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Many of the King’s subjects, especially women, resented this “goggle-eyed whore” usurping the place of the much-loved Queen Katherine. In 1531 a lynch mob of seven thousand descended on the London house in which Anne was dining, and had she not made a rapid escape by barge, they would probably have lynched her.
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Anne had been hissed at in several villages while accompanying the King on a progress, and was eventually obliged to turn back.
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By 1532 some MPs had taken to meeting at the Queen’s Head tavern, just off Fleet Street, to plot ways of opposing the King’s plans to marry her.
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When she first appeared as queen, going in state to chapel at Easter 1533, there was dismay and consternation at court and a torrent of public protests;
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one London
congregation, when asked to pray for this woman who was “the scandal of Christendom,” walked out in disgust “with great murmuring and ill looks,” while a priest who preached in favor of the marriage in Salisbury “suffered much at the hands of women” for doing so. A parson in Lancashire indignantly asked, “Who the devil made Anne Bullen, that whore, queen?”
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People in general were “greatly agitated” at Anne’s elevation to queenship, and a priest, Ralph Wendon, who had been hauled before the justices in 1533 for calling her “a whore and a harlot,”
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was only voicing the opinions of many. Some people were even calling for the “common stewed whore” to be burned at Smithfield.
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At her coronation in June 1533, Anne passed in procession through largely silent, hostile crowds, while some sneered “Ha! Ha!” when they saw the entwined initials of Henry and Anne on the decorations.
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In 1534 the Act of Succession made it treason to impugn the King’s marriage to Anne and their issue.
It did not silence her critics. In October 1534 the French ambassador, Jean de Dinteville—who appears to the left of Georges de Selve, Bishop of Latour, in Holbein’s famous double portrait,
The Ambassadors
, informed Francis I that “the lower people are so violent against the Queen that they say a thousand ill and improper things against her, and also against those who support her in her enterprises.”
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Chapuys was more happy than most to be able to report evidence of Anne’s unpopularity, but although he was biased, he was probably not exaggerating, for throughout the years 1533 to 1536, official records and other sources contain numerous instances of people being arrested for uttering opprobrious words about the Queen.
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In 1535 the unpopular Queen was perceived to be responsible for the executions of the much respected Sir Thomas More, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and several Carthusian monks, all of whom had refused to acknowledge the validity of her marriage;
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this was the final straw for many conservatives.
Early in February 1536 an Oxfordshire midwife, Joanna Hammulden, on being told by a grateful patient that “she was worthy of being midwife to the Queen of England,” said that she would be pleased to serve a queen “provided it were Queen Katherine, but she was too good for Queen Anne, who was a harlot.” She added that “it was never merry in England when there were three queens in it”—a pointed reference to Jane Seymour, whose dalliance with the King was now evidently known beyond the court—and she trusted “there will be fewer shortly.” For uttering
these words, Joanna Hammulden was imprisoned.
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Her slander was typical of the crimes the authorities were now dealing with on a fairly regular basis. Opposition to Anne could not be silenced.
Over the years, Anne had managed to alienate several of the King’s friends and nobles, among them her own uncle and former supporter, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, whose sister was Anne’s mother, Elizabeth Howard. Norfolk was now sixty-three, “small and spare of stature, and his hair black.” His portrait by Holbein depicts a granite-faced martinet, but his contemporaries thought him “liberal, affable, and astute,” “a man of the utmost wisdom, solid worth, and loyalty.” As Earl Marshal of England and the realm’s leading peer, the duke was one of the foremost members of Henry VIII’s Privy Council, having “great experience in the administration of the kingdom,” an admirable grasp of affairs, and ruthless ambition.
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There was no love lost between Anne and Norfolk: two strong characters, they had quarreled too often, and in 1531 the duke had predicted that she would be “the ruin of all her family.”
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By 1533 they were barely on speaking terms, and Norfolk had taken to comparing her unfavorably to Queen Katherine;
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in 1535, Anne’s former suitor, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland (whose marriage to her had been prohibited by Cardinal Wolsey in 1523), “began to complain of the wickedness of this King’s woman, saying that lately she used more insulting language to Norfolk than one would to a dog, such that he was obliged to leave the room, and moved to heap abuse on the said Lady. One of the least offensive things he called her was ‘great whore.’”
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Six months later Chapuys wrote that Anne did not “cease day and night to procure the disgrace of the Duke of Norfolk, whether it be because he has spoken too freely of her, or because Cromwell, desiring to lower the great ones, wishes to commence with him.”
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Norfolk had not profited as he might have hoped to from his niece’s elevation; he was further disadvantaged by his traditional Catholic views. Ten years later, in the Tower and facing execution himself (although the King did not, in the end, sign the death warrant), he reminded the lords of the council “what malice” his niece, “as pleased the King’s Highness to marry, did bear unto me,” saying it “was not unknown to such ladies as kept [her] in this house”—he meant during her imprisonment in the Tower.
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Norfolk was one among the many enemies Anne had made at court. “There is little love for the one who is queen now, or for any of her race,” Jean de Dinteville reported.
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Anne, whose father was one of the “new men” who had made their fortunes at the Tudor court, had been insolent toward the older nobility, who detested her;
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the Imperialists hated her because she was the staunch friend of the French, had supplanted Katherine of Aragon, deprived Lady Mary of her rights, and entertained what they regarded as heretical views. She had become a target for political opposition, for she also made enemies of those whose influence she had overridden, or who were opposed to the radical religious reforms she enthusiastically promoted. Alexander Aless, the Scots reformist, was to tell Elizabeth I in 1559 that, because Anne had pushed Henry toward an alliance with the German Lutherans, “all the bishops who were opposed to the purer doctrine of the Gospel, and adhered to the Roman Pontiff, entered into a conspiracy against your mother.” Given Aless’s friendship with Cranmer, he was in a position to know.
Abroad, in Catholic Europe, Anne’s reputation was dismal; she was the subject of obscene propaganda, and was frequently reviled as a whore, an adulteress, and a heretic. There would be few to champion this unpopular queen in her hour of need.
“Having thus so many, so great factions at home and abroad set loose by the distorted favor of the King, and so few to show themselves for her, what could be?” asked George Wyatt, with mournful hindsight. “What was otherlike but all these lighting on her at once should prevail to overthrow her?”
As early as January 8, the day after Katherine of Aragon’s death, the King took the first significant step toward renewing his former friendship with Katherine’s nephew, the Emperor. On that day, Thomas Cromwell, the King’s Principal Secretary, wrote a letter to Sir John Wallop and Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, England’s envoys at the Imperial court, informing them that “considering the death of the Lady Dowager, and as the Emperor has now no occasion of quarrel” and might seek the King’s friendship, they were to try to “hasten agreement before the King is pressed by the Emperor” and seek advantageous terms. The King commanded Cromwell to add a postscript telling the ambassadors that, now that Katherine was no more, they need not be so accommodating toward
the French king—who had, of course, long showed himself friendly toward Anne Boleyn.
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Henry also told Chapuys he was eager for an alliance “now that the cause of our enmity no longer exists.” Cromwell, who was the King’s chief and most trusted minister, and who was to play a crucial part in Anne Boleyn’s downfall, had for some time been anxious to promote a new Anglo-Imperial pact.
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Cromwell, the son of a Putney blacksmith,
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was a former mercenary who had traveled in Italy in his youth, and there conceived an admiration for the political ideas of Machiavelli. He had been (in his own words) “a ruffian”
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before he settled down and became a merchant and property lawyer, in which latter capacity he came to the notice of Cardinal Wolsey, the King’s former chief minister, who found him to be vigorously hardworking and “ready at all things, evil or good.”
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He had remained in the cardinal’s employ until Wolsey’s fall in 1529.
Cromwell then rose rapidly to political prominence, impressing the King with his efficiency, and undertaking “to make him the richest sovereign that ever reigned in England.”
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He had been preferred to the Privy Council in 1531, then made Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1533; he was also Master of the Jewel House and Master of the Rolls, and such was his grasp of affairs and administration that in April 1534 he was appointed Principal Secretary to the King, an office that—thanks to his abilities and machinations—would soon become of supreme political importance; effectively, he became Henry’s chief adviser, having “risen above everyone, except it be the Lady … Now [wrote Chapuys] there is not a person who does anything except Cromwell.”
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It is clear, though, that Cromwell was not yet as powerful as he would later become, especially within the Privy Chamber, where the King’s favored intimates had the sovereign’s ear and controlled patronage.
Hans Holbein’s portrait of Cromwell shows a burly, black-haired man with watchful, porcine eyes, and betrays none of the personal charm or conviviality that won Master Secretary a circle of admiring friends. Chapuys found him “a person of good cheer, gracious in words and generous in actions.” But while Cromwell was known for his affability, there was steel beneath the charm. He was clever, resourceful, intelligent, and able, an administrative and financial genius, knowledgeable, pragmatic, hard-headed and ruthless, all qualities that were much admired by—and useful
to—the King. Cromwell adhered to Machiavelli’s principle that a prince may publicly be above reproach but might privately do evil or cruel things in order to maintain the stability of the state and ensure the greater good. George Cavendish, who had been his fellow servant in Wolsey’s household, thought Master Secretary one whom “all others did excel in extort[ing] power and insatiate tyranny.”
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Alexander Aless saw Cromwell as “the King’s ear and mind, to whom he entrusted the entire government of the kingdom.”
Cromwell now wielded authority by exercising his formidable talents, charming people into his confidence, or intimidating them with threats, overtly or by implication. Even though Henry VIII is now thought to have been the driving force behind the break with Rome and the revolutionary legislation of the Reformation,
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Cromwell was instrumental in implementing these changes and the propaganda of the New Monarchy, while the efficient spy network he had established—a web of paid informers and numerous grateful clients anxious to do him a service—would become a model for future governments, and brought him a wealth of confidential and sensitive information.
Controlling access to the King and occupying a position of enormous influence made Cromwell equally envied and resented, and while the nobles disdained him for his humble origins, they, like most people, feared him. But it was important to have such a powerful operator on one’s side. The Boleyns wasted no time in cultivating him, and he had risen to power with their support, to the extent that, in 1533, Anne Boleyn had referred to Cromwell as “her man.” As proponents of the Reformation and the royal supremacy, and advocates of religious reform, both shared, for a time, common aims.
Cromwell, a fellow reformist, had originally been Anne Boleyn’s staunch supporter and done all in his power to facilitate the annulment of the King’s first marriage; he agreed with Anne that Lady Mary’s precarious position was her own fault,
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and he was active in enforcing the King’s persecution of Katherine of Aragon; he told Chapuys in 1534 that a lot of trouble would have been avoided “if God had taken to Himself the Queen.”
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It was Cromwell who relayed orders from Henry and Anne to their daughter’s nurse, Lady Bryan; Cromwell, whose duties now encompassed such diverse responsibilities as the running of the royal nursery and preliminary preparations for the wholesale dissolution of the monasteries.