The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (30 page)
Gardiner’s reply to the Supplication was, therefore, an unequivocal assertion of the ancient privilege of the Church: ‘We your most humble subjects may not submit the execution of our charges and duty, certainty prescribed by God, to your highness’s assent.’
27
Henry reacted as Cromwell knew he would. If churchmen believed this, the title ‘supreme head’ was empty of meaning and their concession in 1531 had been a dishonest attempt to deceive. Gardiner’s reply reached the king about 27 April, and Henry reacted with stunning force to this impugning of his God-given position. He unmanned Gardiner by his fury, and called up Thomas Audley to invite the Commons to renew agitation against the Church; then on 10 May he sent Edward Fox to convocation to demand unequivocal surrender. When the clergy showed signs of fight, Henry stepped up pressure in parliament and Cromwell produced a bill to strip the Church of its powers. Thomas More, realizing that the crisis had come, threw his weight openly against the king, most probably by mobilizing again the conservative lobby in the Lords which had emasculated the annates bill, and he too received the full blast of Henry’s wrath.
With Gardiner and More both in disgrace the Church offered a compromise, but the king promptly prorogued parliament, so blocking the ability of the bishops, abbots and lay peers of a conservative turn of mind to support from the Lords the sort of rearguard action that had won the day in 1531. Instead, convocation itself was ordered on 15 May to adjourn that same day - having first, of course, given the king what he wanted - and to make the point clear, a party of leading courtiers and counsellors made a quite unprecedented descent on the upper house (the bishops and abbots). Significantly, this was made up of Norfolk, Anne’s uncle, Wiltshire and Rochford, her father and brother, Oxford, father-in-law to Norfolk’s son and on close terms with Cromwell, Sandes, the lord chamberlain and an archetypal sycophant, and Katherine’s ally, the marquis of Exeter, in yet another exhibition (or test) of his loyalty to Henry rather than to principle.
28
Their ultimatum given, they took the Church’s answer back to the king, only to return later in the day with Henry’s final terms. Warham knew he was beaten. Resistance would invite a series of disastrous
praemunire
prosecutions, and anticlerical statutes in the next session of parliament. It would also infuriate the king. Better to save what could be saved. Sending home the hot-headed lower house of convocation, he gathered varying degrees of support from six other bishops and perhaps a further half-dozen abbots, and gave in to the king’s demands. The following day, when the king’s anger had sufficiently cooled, Norfolk was able to arrange a relatively harmonious audience for Sir Thomas More to surrender the great seal.
There is no contemporary evidence of Anne Boleyn’s reception of the news of the submission of the clergy, but it revolutionized her position. Thomas Audley replaced More, and Thomas Cromwell became undeniably the key man in government.
29
Within the royal household where, in May 1532, death had conveniently removed Anne’s old critic, Henry Guildford, his place as controller was taken by another of Cromwell’s allies, William Paulet.
30
With her brother already one of the two noblemen of the privy chamber, and her father lord privy seal, Anne Boleyn now had supporters in many of the vital positions in government and court. As always, of course, her uncle, the duke of Norfolk, had survived, despite growing disquiet at Anne’s independence of mind and hatred of the religious radicalism with which she was associated, and despite the defeat of the policy he had been advocating of even more pressure on Rome. But whatever his doubts and however substantial the lead that Cromwell now had in royal favour, the duke, with his willingness to ‘suffer anything for the sake of ruling’, had predictably finished up on the winning side and remained, if somewhat shaken, still a piece on the political board for Cromwell and Anne to reckon with.
31
Among those who had overtly resisted the radicalism of Anne and her supporters, the rush was on to make amends.
32
None moved more rapidly than Stephen Gardiner. In 1530 he had marked his successful beginning as the king’s secretary by buying out Sir Richard Weston’s interest in the royal estate at Hanworth in Middlesex. Henry VIII and his father before him had created a fine country property there, with a moated manor-house connected by bridges to the gardens (which were noted for their strawberries), an aviary, ponds, an orchard and a park beyond - and very convenient for Hampton Court and the River Thames. All this the bishop now surrendered to Anne in an effort to retrieve his monumental blunder.
33
Henry moved in workmen, fitted out the house with specially made furniture and instructed his Italian experts to provide the latest fashion in Renaissance ornament, some of which was taken from Greenwich (see plate 48).
34
Not that the king was wholly mollified. Gardiner was never entirely comfortable as secretary thereafter, and his formal replacement by Cromwell in the spring of 1534 only recognized the realities. Even his brilliant exposition of the royal supremacy in his 1535 best-seller,
De Vera Obedientia,
never quite persuaded Henry to trust him as he once had.
We may also detect signs that realists were recognizing where the future lay. Honor, the wife of Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle, made strenuous efforts in the summer of 1532 to secure Anne’s attention, sending first a present of peewits and then a bow, a gift which fell somewhat flat when it proved too heavy for Anne to draw. What Lady Lisle wanted was some concessions for a trading venture, and although Anne replied that the time was not opportune ‘for certain causes’ - no doubt the unhappy state of the royal coffers following parliament’s failure to vote adequate taxes in May - she did promise ‘to do you good in some other way’.
35
Court gossip also blamed Anne’s influence for the shocking spectacle of a young priest being drawn and hanged without first being degraded from his orders, and this for a coining offence which was naive rather than treasonable. When her own father had asked her to intercede for the prisoner, she was supposed to have replied that there were too many priests in the country already.
36
It was clear too that the relationship between Henry and Anne had moved to a different level: the signs were that marriage was an imminent possibility. As well as the gift and furnishing of Hanworth, the king talked openly of marrying again.
37
There was also a distinct jump in the amount of money Henry spent on Anne. In both 1530 and 1531 he had paid out from his privy purse about
£
220 on or for Anne. In 1532 the figure jumped to
£
330, although that did include nearly
£
50 lost to her in ten days playing ‘Pope Julius’, an early version of the card game ‘Commerce’. Much of the expenditure went on clothes, and while it is anachronistic to talk of a ‘trousseau’, Anne was certainly being fitted out for the role of queen. Two garments are described in particular detail. One was an open-sleeved cloak of black satin, lined throughout in the same material and with three and three-quarter yards of matching velvet at the collar and hem. The other was a black satin nightgown (dressing-gown), lined with black taffeta and edged with velvet. And lest we forget how striking this must have been with Anne’s dark hair, there was an equally calculated gown in green damask.
38
Preparations necessary for a coronation were put in hand, with building workers being impressed in every part of the land to assist in the renovation of the royal lodgings in the Tower of London, an important venue for part of the ritual.
39
Cromwell too was busy drafting legislation to protect the king’s new powers from opponents at home and abroad. Archbishop Warham - a longed-for bonus, this - died after forty years serving the Crown and two defending the Church, and the Boleyns were able to secure the immediate selection of Cranmer to succeed him, a remarkable demonstration of influence, since a bishopric was usually left vacant for a year in order to milk the income for the Crown.
40
And the imperial ambassador became aware that something else was afoot that summer. The English were, in great secrecy, feeling their way towards a meeting between Henry VIII and Francis I.
41
The basic plan was for Henry to spend some time on French soil at Boulogne, and for Francis to visit Calais in return, but the detail proved difficult. Henry and Anne wanted as public a triumph as possible, to confer the European recognition she needed, and they angled for the attendance of Marguerite d’Angoulême and an impressive array of French noblewomen (Francis’s second wife, Eleanor, was a niece of Katherine of Aragon and quite out of the question).
42
This was agreed, but later Marguerite withdrew, pleading ill-health - a polite way, it was said, of showing her disapproval of Henry’s intended marriage.
43
More likely, she was responding to second thoughts by Francis, who was anxious to avoid anything that could hinder the alliance he was hoping to make with the pope.
44
The French did suggest the duchesse de Vendôme instead, but she was too closely associated with the livelier side of Francis I’s court to please Henry, who was intent on the utmost propriety. In the end it was agreed that no ladies would be officially present on either side, but that as Anne would go to Calais with Henry, Francis would meet her when he arrived there.
The proposal was kept secret for as long as possible. Any hint of a summit meeting with the French was guaranteed to rouse English hostility. In the event, much of the credit for achieving the less grandiose final scheme belonged to Anne herself. Giles de la Pommeraye, the French ambassador, was invited on the royal progress that summer. Hunting was the great entertainment and La Pommeraye was often asked to escort Anne, sharing a butt as they shot the deer with crossbows or going with her to watch coursing, and she presented him with a huntsman’s coat and hat, a horn and a greyhound.
45
When the arrangements for the Calais meeting were complete, Anne had La Pommeraye as a guest at the dinner she gave for Henry at Hanworth.
46
The ambassador claimed in his despatches that Anne was doing all this at the behest of the king to honour Francis I, but he admitted privately to Chapuys that her services to France were more than could ever be repaid.
47
This is not to say that Henry did not join in with enthusiasm. He was determined to make a good show, and called up almost all the English nobles who were fit and could be spared from duties at home.
48
An agreement was made to limit display by both sides, especially the wearing of cloth of gold or silver, but even so, Henry’s own expenditure on the spot may have exceeded
£
6000, and the limitation on attire did not, of course, apply either to the king or to Anne.
49
Henry also seems to have seized the opportunity to reset much of the royal jewellery, setting aside many of the best stones for Anne, as in the case of four bracelets, which yielded her no fewer than eighteen tabled rubies.
50
On top of this, Henry stripped Katherine of her jewels. The indirect message, that he wished her to give them to him - the customary way in which the king expressed requests that could not be refused - elicited the response that ever since the new year she had been forbidden to give Henry anything, and the rare barbed comment that it would be a sin to allow her jewels to adorn ‘the scandal of Christendom’. This riposte forced a typically self-righteous reply from the king, and the vulgarity of a direct order.
51
Jewels were not, however, all that Anne needed to be fitted for the European stage. When Francis I had last seen her she had been a lady-in-waiting to his wife. If she was to meet him now as England’s intended queen, she needed status. This she was given at an impressive ceremony in Windsor Castle on the morning of Sunday, 1 September.
52
There, her hair about her shoulders and her ermine-trimmed crimson velvet hardly visible under the jewels, Anne was conducted into the king’s presence by Garter King-at-Arms, with the countesses of Rutland and Derby, and her cousin Mary Howard, the duke of Richmond’s prospective wife, carrying the crimson velvet mantle and gold coronet of a marquis. Henry was flanked by the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk. and surrounded by the court, with the officers at arms in their tabards and La Pommeraye as a guest of honour. Anne kneeled to the king, while Stephen Gardiner read out a patent conferring on her in her own right and on her offspring the title of marquis of Pembroke.
53
Henry placed on her the mantle and the coronet and handed her the patent of nobility, plus another granting lands worth
£
1000 a year. Anne thanked him and withdrew, after which the king proceeded to St George’s Chapel and a solemn high mass sung by Gardiner. Henry and Francis (represented by La Pommeraye) swore to the terms of a treaty between England and France; Edward Fox preached a sermon extolling their intention to co-operate against the Turkish infidel, and announced the plan for the two to meet at Calais. The service ended with a magnificent
Te Deum,
with trumpets and orchestration, after which everyone returned to the castle for a great banquet.
For several weeks afterwards diplomatic Europe buzzed with rumour and counter-rumour about the prospective meeting - would it even take place? Speculation was ended on Friday, 11 October, when before dawn Anne took ship with Henry at Dover, on
The Swallow,
and found herself at ten in the morning, and after almost twenty years, landing once more at Calais. But this time she was at the side of her intended husband and being greeted by the thunder of a royal salute, the attentions of the mayor and lord deputy of Calais, and a parade of the garrison. Not that her own party was very prominent. Among the 2000 or so nobles, knights and lesser men escorting Henry, Anne’s twenty or thirty ladies must have been almost lost, and despite his best efforts they were only from the Boleyn faction, or else they were time-servers.
54
Many of the more important Englishwomen were missing - most noticeably his sister Mary.