Such is the story Cavendish tells, and the final act in the romantic tragedy was the ruin of Henry Percy.
4
He did succeed his father as sixth earl of Northumberland in 1527, but his marriage to Mary Talbot disintegrated and his health and his personality collapsed. In February 1535, accepting that he had no chance of a legitimate son and rejecting the king’s wish to see one of his hated brothers groomed to succeed him, he made Henry his heir.
5
When in 1536 his brothers earned glory and martyrdom as leaders of the Pilgrimage of Grace, the head of the Percys skulked in Wressle Castle, a broken reed to both king and rebels. By June 1537 he was dead.
How much are we to credit Cavendish’s account? Was Percy engineered out to let Henry in? David Starkey has argued that this was the case, citing hitherto overlooked evidence that the Percy-Talbot marriage did not take place until between March and August 1525 and possibly later.
6
However, the legalities for the Percy-Talbot marriage (which had been under discussion since 1516) were in their final stages in the autumn of 1523, with the marriage intended for the new year of 1524. The hitch obviously occurred then and thus is too early to be royal interference. Henry was probably sleeping with Anne’s sister. The earl of Northumberland made an unexpected journey to London in June 1523 and it is tempting to see that as the occasion of the confrontation of father and son.
7
Cavendish’s interpretation of Anne’s reaction is also improbable. To go about making threats against the cardinal in 1522 or 1523 was both unwise and childish, and Anne was neither. When we have some first-hand evidence of her relationship with Wolsey some six or seven years later, it is far more subtle than is explicable by a long-held grudge.
It also seems likely that it was not Henry VIII who was incensed by the young Percy’s ‘folly’. Wolsey was committed to ‘perfect’ the marriage between Anne and James Butler, and he was adept at threatening royal wrath when he was the one frustrated.
8
Given the probability that Boleyn was dragging his feet with the Butlers, it could even be that Anne’s encouragement of Percy had her father’s approval. And if Wolsey had made clear a determination to get his own way, this would also explain the panic-stricken reaction Cavendish saw in the earl of Northumberland, who had learned at great cost in 1516 the lengths to which the cardinal would go.
9
There must be doubts, too, about the conversations reported by Cavendish. His eyewitness irrelevancies confirm events in outline, but after thirty-five years he can have retained only an impression of what was said. Hindsight plays a further part in the dialogue he writes - noticeably the earl’s prophecy that his son will be ‘a wastetul prodigal’ and ‘the last earl of our house’.
We cannot, however, ignore Cavendish. Wolsey’s mention of the alternative plans for Anne certainly fits the discussions on the Boleyn-Butler marriage. Equally, Cavendish’s stress on the seriousness of Percy’s commitment can be echoed later. Indeed, in 1532 Mary Percy claimed that her husband had admitted that before he had married her, he had promised himself to Anne.
10
The earl was a known supporter of the queen, and the pre-contract story was, Chapuys said, common knowledge.
11
And it would not go away. Chapuys picked it up again in 1536 and Charles Wriothesley, another contemporary, stated categorically that Anne was divorced because of a pre-contract with the earl.
12
A relationship of some sort is thus certain, but we cannot be sure about the level of the commitment between Anne and Henry Percy. Each denied Mary Percy’s story. Her estranged husband would later write that before the king married Anne, he had been not only:
examined upon my oath before the archbishops of Canterbury and York, but also received the blessed sacrament upon the same before the duke of Norfolk and other the king’s highness’ counsel learned in the spiritual law... to my damnation if ever there were any contract or promise of marriage between her and me.
13
At the time, Chapuys believed that the earl had been got at, or was impelled by fear, and he certainly was frightened at the time of Anne’s fall. The later information reaching the ambassador was that the Percy-Boleyn marriage had even been consummated. This seems improbable. Such a relationship no one could have overturned, not even a combination of Henry VIII, Wolsey and the fifth earl of Northumberland. Given the Butler negotiations, it would also be surprising if so insuperable an obstacle had not already been discovered. Chapuys’ sources were, in any case, less than reliable, for he dates the supposed marriage to 1527.
If a consummated marriage is the unlikely extreme possibility, the minimum would be an understanding. Perhaps Henry Percy ended up pledged to both women, or felt himself more deeply committed to Anne than she to him — hardly novel situations. That, however, makes too little of the evidence. The Boleyn-Butler marriage plan did founder, and an entanglement of Anne with Henry Percy could explain why Piers Butler lost patience in 1523.
14
Something similar might explain the delay between Northumberland discussing the marriage of his son with the earl of Shrewsbury and the chief baron of the exchequer in the autumn of 1523 with an expectation of a wedding in the New Year, and the ceremony actually taking place more than twelve months later.
15
Plainly there was a problem, and the most plausible explanation is that Lord Henry’s commitment to Anne had introduced obstacles which the lawyers needed time to resolve. Evidence from Anne’s side agrees. The dispensation which Henry VIII sought from the pope in 1527, allowing him to marry when he was free to do so, sought cover also for problems with the intended bride. It allowed him to marry any other woman and any other woman to marry him, even where she had ‘already contracted marriage with some other person, provided she has not consummated it’.
16
Does that refer to abortive marriage proposals we know nothing about and which might explain why Anne was still unmarried in 1527? Or had she been contracted to Percy, or perhaps even betrothed to Butler and then contracted to Percy?
17
Of course, dispensations attempt to cover every conceivable contingency; they are not evidence of fact. But the one thing we can be sure of is that matters had gone far enough between Anne and Percy or Butler or both, or unknown third parties, for Henry VIII to seek cover against possible future objections.
18
And yet? Was it just legal caution? The decree annulling Anne’s marriage to Henry in 1536 does refer to ‘certain just true, and lawful impediments, unknown at the making’ of the statute in support of the Boleyn marriage, and now ‘confessed by the said Lady Anne before the ... archbishop of Canterbury, sitting judicially’.
19
How long Anne Boleyn was away from court after the Percy episode — if she was away at all — is not known. The next evidence we have concerns Thomas Wyatt. This, second to her relationship with Henry VIII, is the episode in Anne’s life which has commanded the greatest attention from subsequent generations: Anne Boleyn and the first great Tudor poet.
The Wyatt home at Allington Castle, near Maidstone, was some twenty miles away from Hever and the family was not only a neighbour of the Boleyns but moved in the same court circles. Despite this, their tradition that Thomas met Anne only on her return from France is probably correct, for at the time she left for Brussels he was barely 10 years old. But when they did meet, he was bowled over. His grandson George has it thus:
The knight, in the beginning, coming to behold the sudden appearance of this new beauty, came to be holden and surprised somewhat with the sight thereof; after much more with her witty and graceful speech, his ear also had him chained unto her, so as finally his heart seemed to say,
I could gladly yield to be tied for ever with the knot of ber love,
as somewhere in his verses hath been thought his meaning was to express.
20
What we cannot assume is the nature of the relationship between Anne and Thomas. Ever since the sixteenth century there has been disagreement over this, and even sedate modern scholars seem strangely committed in their attempts to demonstrate that Anne did or did not share Wyatt’s bed. His verse provides the only first-hand evidence, but this raises the age-old question, ‘how autobiographical is poetry?’ Some of, particularly, Wyatt’s later or supposed poems do arise from specific events: the executions of Anne Boleyn’s alleged lovers and later of Cromwell, his own misfortune and imprisonments. But verses which arise from relationships are much more difficult to pin down. One Wyatt poem does, however, combine event and relationship and can serve as a datum line. It was written in 1532 when Wyatt was in the entourage accompanying Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn to Calais:
Sometime I fled the tire that me brent
By sea, by land, by water and by wind;
And now I follow the coals that be quent
From Dover to Calais against my mind.
Lo how desire is both sprung and spent!
And he may see that whilom was so blind,
And all his labour now he laugh to scorn
Meshed in the briars that erst was all to-torn.
21
Taken literally, this suggests that Wyatt had been in love with Anne, had had to struggle not to become more deeply involved, and now, cured of his passion, ruefully contemplated the fool he had been. But are we to take this literally? Wyatt was writing within the often complex and baffling convention of courtly love, whose nature resembles nothing so much as an onion, where to peel away one layer is only to reveal a further layer underneath.
Courtly love was an integral element in chivalry, the complex of attitudes and institutions which was central to the life of the Tudor court and elite. To modern eyes, this appears to be a tissue of artificialities which fails to disguise the ephemeral nature and conspicuous waste of tournaments, pageants, dances and masques. In fact, the idiom of chivalry enabled society to say many important things and regulate many important relationships. At a tournament, for example, the focus was always the king — even if someone else actually won. By participating, men drew attention to their personal prowess, but more so to their service to the sovereign; by attending as spectators, the rest of the court elite demonstrated that it too was loyal. The fancy dress and role-playing of tournaments and indoor festivities could also make a specific statement about the royal person, as when Henry VIII appeared at the Field of Cloth of Gold in the guise of Hercules. There was also international one-upmanship. The forms of display were common throughout Europe, and a country was judged by its spectacles. There was as nice and as subtle a gradation in chivalric ballyhoo as in the cordiality (or otherwise) of the welcome accorded by a modern government to a visiting statesman.
At a very basic level, chivalry was also a defence against boredom and vice. The mark of a gentleman was, in the well-known words of Thomas Smith, Elizabeth I’s secretary of state, being able to ‘live idly and without manual labour’, but there were still twenty-four hours in the day to fill. Chivalric convention therefore created as busy a lifestyle as ever would be experienced by future generations worn out by the exigencies of the London Season. The serious pursuit of entertainment was the only alternative to demoralization, as
Pastime with good company,
Henry VIII’s most famous song, makes clear:
Youth must have some dalliance,
Of good or ill some pastance.
Company methinks then best
All thoughts and fancies to digest.
For idleness
Is chief mistress
Of vices all;
Then who can say
But pass-the-day
Is best of all?
22
Out of doors, when not engaged in war or training for the pseudo-war of the tournament, the gentleman was busy with its substitute, hunting. Indoors - dancing, music, poetry, good conversation and the game of courtly love.
The notion that courtly love was an antidote to boredom when the weather was bad or hunting out of season is hardly romantic. Nor is the idea that another of its functions was to constrain gender relationships within an accepted convention. Among the Tudor elite, property considerations were accorded more importance than emotional satisfaction when it came to making a marriage. When Anne Boleyn was proposed as the bride of James Butler, personal feelings were not consulted, and when they did surface, as in the case of Henry Percy, material considerations allowed them short shrift. In some, perhaps in many, cases a relationship begun in property could grow into passion, but others were left to seek emotional or personal fulfilment with someone other than their spouse, not to mention those who were not yet economically free to marry, or might never be. The problem was at its most acute at the court, overwhelmingly masculine but not monastic, and with a queen and her attendant ladies at its centre. Courtly love was the safety device which prevented this critical mass from exploding.
The fictions of courtly love were based on the same ideal which disposed men to attend the king: service. The courtier, the ‘perfect knight’, was supposed to sublimate his relations with the ladies of the court by choosing a ‘mistress’ and serving her faithfully and exclusively. He formed part of her circle, wooed her with poems, songs and gifts, and if she was gracious enough to recognize the link he might wear her favour and joust in her honour. He might have a wife at home, but that was a separate life. In return the suitor must look for one thing only, ‘kindness’ — understanding and platonic friendship. A lady might, in fact, be older than her ‘lover’, and she would then act as his patroness and launch him into court society. At a deeper level too, courtly love could be important psychologically, meeting the need for emotional ties. To twenty-first-century eyes conditioned to see normal relationships between men and women as active sexually, such a convention appears repressive, but it worked well enough to regulate gender relations acceptably.