The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (35 page)

How much all this cost we do not know, still less the expense for the whole four days. The Milanese ambassador guessed that it cost the City an incredible
£
46,000 (200,000 ducats) and the king half that amount, but whatever the figure, it was clearly huge. Equally clearly, Henry found it all worthwhile.
23
Chapuys’ description of the events as ‘cold, meagre and uncomfortable’ is sour grapes; the ‘concubine’ had been accorded the fullest possible inauguration as queen.
24
No doubt the elaboration, the attention to detail, the evident overkill does indicate a measure of insecurity, and we must remember that all the participants knew that the king was watching, just as he had watched the court’s original acceptance of Anne the previous Easter. Nevertheless, in the same way that the popular and the religious liturgies had been performed, so had the banquet. It had been a test, a sacrament of loyalty. The great of the land had dined to honour Anne Boleyn, their queen; they had drunk to their sovereign’s new consort; whatever their inner doubts, they had identified with her. In More’s simile, they had been ‘deflowered’ - raped. The seductiveness of the old magic is seen in the reactions of those hard-headed judges for whom Westminster Hall was the normal workaday environment. When summoned to the coronation, they had felt it necessary to meet to discuss how to respond. There is even, in Justice Spelman’s account, a hint of minimal acquiescence, of the tradition of avoiding as far as possible taking political sides. But by Sunday they were scrambling for places on the stands in the abbey and flattered by the honourable positions accorded them at the feast. Spelman noted with pride that, as they kneeled to Anne as she left the hall, she smiled and said, ‘I thank you all for the honour ye have done to me this day.’ And even though we may suspect that this was a general thank-you to the company, the judges clearly thought it was just for them.
The coronation banquet marked the end of the official ceremonies, but custom dictated that a court celebration should follow. Monday, 2 June, therefore, was devoted to jousting, balls and a ‘goodly banquet in the queen’s chamber’, though it is only the first that we know much about. The original plan had been to have the jousters, challengers and answerers, ride in the coronation procession with all the elaborate costumes and devices that had been prepared for the tilting, but when Lord William Howard, who was to lead the challengers, had been obliged to deputize as earl marshal elsewhere in the procession, the idea was dropped.
25
These ‘great jousts’ were perhaps the first to be held in the new tiltyard that had been built opposite the gate of the new palace of Whitehall, and as usual, there were plenty of guests as well as the general public.
The entertainment, however, was not a success. The eight jousters in each of the two teams ran six courses apiece, but there were not, as the published account pretended, ‘broken many spears valiantly’.
26
Very many of the horses veered away from the central barrier, or tilt, so that the riders found it difficult to secure flush hits on their opponents. The likely explanation for the poor sport is some unexpected problem presented by the new arena, although since Anne’s enemy, Nicholas Carewe, was leading the answerers, one might in other circumstances suspect lack of enthusiasm. However, one can hardly imagine that Sir Nicholas would publicly invite the suspicion of the king or risk his own standing in jousting circles. Whatever his private emotions, he knew very well that refusing to accept Anne would destroy his career. Carewe, along with everyone else, except for More and a few stiff-backed men like him, was busy doing his best to impress the royal couple with his enthusiasm to honour them. That was certainly the atmosphere remembered by a somewhat effusive French tradition:
The initiatives of the gentlemen and lords were notable as the English sought, unceasingly, to honour their new princess. Not, I believe, because they wanted to, but in order to comply with the wishes of their king. The lords and ladies set to dances, sports of various kinds, hunting expeditions, and pleasures without parallel. Numerous tournaments were held in her honour - each man put his lance under his thigh or fought to the death with the sword - and everything a success. And as well as magnificent and joyful celebrations, everyone strove to be as attentive and solicitous as possible to serve their new mistress.
27
 
The psychological dominance that had been established over the court was very real.
The end of the celebrations did not mark any end to the high spirits at court. Anne’s chamberlain, writing to her brother in France, reported that ‘pastime in the queen’s chamber was never more. If any of you that be now departed have any ladies that they thought favoured you, and somewhat would mourn at parting of their servants, I can no whit perceive the same by their dancing and pastime they do use here.’
28
The death of the king’s sister Mary on 24 June seems to have made little difference. Any mourning was brief. What mattered was the delivery at Greenwich on the 28th of Anne’s wedding gift from Francis I, a magnificent litter with three mules specially purchased from the dauphin, and originally presented to George Boleyn in Paris. She immediately took it on a three-mile trial.
29
Henry did find time to issue a proclamation warning of the penalties of according royal honours to anyone but Anne.
30
The authority for this was the Act of Appeals, though it is doubtful how many of the members of parliament or peers who passed the bill had expected it to be used to outlaw a lifetime of respect to Katherine and Mary, a habit which even the duke of Norfolk found it embarrassingly hard to break.
31
Neither mother nor daughter had been willing to accept relegation to the status of ‘princess dowager’ and ‘Lady Mary’, while their household servants backed them in every way they could - with shows of dumb stupidity or feminine tantrums to the limits of caution and beyond. There was, after all, remarkably little that Henry could do when Katherine put her people into new liveries embroidered, as for the last twenty-four years, with ‘H’ and ‘K’ - remarkably little, that is, unless Chapuys’ wilder fantasies about poison and treason trials were turned into fact.
32
Efforts to deprive Mary of plate and jewels now thought excessive were defeated by the disappearance of the inventory, while Katherine, who was willing to surrender like a dutiful wife everything Henry had ever given her, refused point-blank to let Anne have the splendid christening robe she herself had brought from Spain:
33
‘God forbid that I should ever be so badly advised as to give help, assistance, or favour, directly or indirectly in a case so horrible as this.’ And for once Henry had to acquiesce.
More and more, indeed, attention began to focus on Anne’s fast-approaching confinement. For some time after the coronation, reports of her health continued to be good, but there is reason to believe that the advanced stages of the pregnancy were, in fact, difficult. Henry, it was later said, had been at his wits’ end, even hoping for a miscarriage if it would save Anne’s life.
34
Certainly, he declined to go on the usual summer progress because of his wife’s condition, and the couple retired to Windsor, where he could hunt in the forests thereabouts, while she waited until it was time for her ‘to take her chamber’.
35
This curious custom, part religious, part medical, part feminine mystery, would keep her secluded through the last weeks of pregnancy until she was ‘churched’, or purified, a month or more after delivery.
36
‘Chamber’ must be understood in the usual court sense of a suite of rooms, duplicating the normal privy chamber suite but specially prepared, with an oratory (prayer was often the only obstetric help available), ‘the rich font of Canterbury’ (in case a weak baby needed instant baptism), and heavy, draught-proof hangings. Outside, her presence chamber was divided by a curtain, beyond which the queen stayed for the whole time; a special ‘bed of state’ was built there for her to preside on, instead of the usual chair. The male officers of her household were never openly allowed further than the outer or great chamber, where they had to kick their heels in attendance while their duties were taken over by the ladies of the court. Details of the arrangements were handed on from one royal confinement to the next, so that in late July Katherine of Aragon’s former chamberlain had sent the necessary papers to Cromwell to be passed to the new incumbent, and in early August the carpenters and joiners moved into Greenwich, where the confinement was to take place.
37
On Thursday the 21st Anne and Henry together left Windsor for Whitehall. After spending the weekend there they went on to Greenwich, where Anne took formal leave of the masculine world on the Tuesday following.
38
With his wife in her chamber, Henry took his mind off his anxieties by planning a splendid joust to mark what he hoped would be the safe delivery of a son to be called Henry or Edward, but he was not left in suspense for long. His daughter was born at three in the afternoon on Sunday, 7 September.
39
The sex of the baby was some disappointment to Anne and Henry. The pundits (all but one) had been predicting a son, and Chapuys made the most of this. There is, however, no evidence of the crushing psychological blow that some have supposed. After all the alarms, Anne had had an easy labour; the child was perfect and took after her father.
40
Henry’s predominant emotion was relief. The jousts, of course were abandoned; as with the arrival of Mary in 1516, public celebrations for the birth of a princess were low-key, but a herald immediately proclaimed this first of Henry’s ‘legitimate’ children, while the choristers of the Chapel Royal sang the
Te Deum
.
41
Letters announcing the news were sent out far and wide, a second and public
Te Deum
was sung at St Paul’s, and preparations were at once put in hand for a magnificent christening on Wednesday, 10 September, to be followed by bonfires and free wine in London.
42
Edward Hall waxed eloquent over the ceremony: the procession from the Great Hall at Greenwich, along a carpet of green rushes and between hangings of arras, to the church of the Observant Friars; the lavish arrangements in the church, and the splendour of those taking part. Elizabeth was brought back from the ceremony that autumn afternoon, escorted by over 500 lighted torches. Henry had, as the French noted (again their ambassador was a guest of honour), ensured that once more ‘the whole occasion was so perfect that nothing was lacking.’
43
The occasion was also used to humiliate Anne’s critics even further. The friary itself had been the centre for the most vehement and public opposition to the divorce. The name Elizabeth was given to the child, rather than the name of one of the godmothers, deliberately to identify her with the royal dynasty, especially Henry VIII’s mother. The marquis of Exeter was called on to carry ‘the taper of virgin wax’; the duke of Suffolk escorted the child; John, Lord Hussey, ‘Lady Mary’s’ chamberlain, helped to carry the canopy. Most striking of all, Katherine’s friend, the marchioness of Exeter, was one of the godmothers, and it was common knowledge that ‘she really wanted to have nothing to do with this,’ but took part ‘so as not to displease the king’; the need for her to give an impressive christening present as well - three engraved silver-gilt bowls with covers - can only have rubbed salt into the wound.
44
Humiliation for the conservatives was accentuated by the triumphant role played by the Boleyns and the Howards and their allies. Among the twenty-one participants listed by Hall, there were Anne’s father and brother and eight Howard connections, Thomas Cranmer (as godfather), one person who was linked to William Brereton and another to Thomas Cromwell.
45
We also know that Cromwell himself was among the observers; he had been largely responsible for the success of the coronation and it seems probable that he organized the christening as well.
46
Those who had backed the Boleyn marriage might well triumph. Anne and Henry had won.
 
Or had they? Hindsight suggests that there is another and more disturbing conclusion that should have been drawn from this impressive end to a climactic twelve months - twelve months that had made Anne, still only the younger daughter of a newly elevated earl, first lady marquis of Pembroke, then the king’s wife, next the queen crowned and finally mother of the heir to the throne. The birth of Elizabeth may have cemented the relationship between the parents, but it undeniably weakened Anne’s position in the eyes of the world. Before the marriage she had seemed to embody the hope of a son for England; in pregnancy she could be presented as the promise that that hope would be fulfilled. But with a daughter in the cradle, Anne had still to establish her claim to the throne. The birth of Elizabeth undid much of what the coronation had set out to achieve; Anne Boleyn remained a pretender. If she had had a son in September 1533, her position would have been beyond challenge. All but the most intransigent of Katherine’s friends would have seen the wisdom and advantage of accepting the new heir and his mother; the Boleyn marriage would have become the accepted reality in political life, and court faction would have realigned accordingly. Charles V would have recognized that the restoration of Katherine and Mary was a lost cause. Even Mary herself would have been hard put to resist the prior claims of a boy. Katherine of Aragon was able to resist demotion of herself and her daughter because she had powerful Habsburg connections. Anne Boleyn had no such protection. The birth of a son would have given her precisely the objective endorsement she lacked; passion would have been underpinned by parenthood. As it was, the birth of a daughter ensured that Anne would continue under pressure from both enemies at court and hostility abroad. It also kept Mary’s claim alive; even if she were of doubtful legitimacy, so was Elizabeth, and age and the imperial connection made her much the stronger candidate as heir presumptive. Thus instead of faction being stabilized by the marriage, the coronation and the birth of a prince, the arrival of Elizabeth revived and perpetuated instability. Security would come only if Anne could have a son.

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