The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (61 page)

Read The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn Online

Authors: Eric Ives

So, as always, Chapuys tells a loaded tale, gleaned from a distance. But we may take the repeated remark, ‘I see that God will not give me male children,’ as genuine, and note that Henry emphasized the will of God rather than the failure of Anne. Yet it is also easy to believe that in the immediate aftermath of the miscarriage, Anne too would have been highly emotional. George Wyatt’s tedious prose probably preserves for us the tradition from her ladies in waiting: ‘Being thus a woman full of sorrow, it was reported that the king came to her, and bewailing and complaining unto her the loss of his boy, some words were heard to break out of the inward feeling of her heart’s dolours, laying the fault upon unkindness.’ To this Henry allegedly replied that ‘he would have no more boys by
her
!’
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Later recusant sources embroider the possibility that Henry, wrapped up in his own disappointment, guilty at his flirtations with Jane and making too little allowance for his wife’s condition, did resent criticism. Sander has Henry answer Anne’s complaints ‘by saying, “Be of good cheer, sweetheart, you will have no reason to complain of me again”, and [he] went away sorrowing.’
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Jane Dormer has Anne ‘betwitting’ the king with his unkindness: ‘who willed her to pardon him, and he would not displeasure her in that kind hereafter.’
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As for Anne Boleyn’s reply, Sander claims that Anne ‘bewailing her mishap, and angry at the transference to another of the king’s affections, cried out to him, “See, how well I must be since the day I caught that abandoned woman Jane sitting on your knees.”’ The Dormer version is that ‘there was often much scratching and bye-blows between the queen and her maid,’ and that ‘anger and disdain’ at finding Jane on Henry’s lap produced the miscarriage.
What makes this late embroidery suspect is that Henry, as will appear, continued determined efforts to persuade Europe to accept Anne as his legitimate wife.
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He clearly had not been poised to discard her should the pregnancy not end as he wanted. Anne, for her part, recovered her resilience, comforting her attendants with the assurance that she would conceive again, and that no one this time would be able to claim that her son was illegitimate.
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The miscarriage of 29 January was neither Anne’s last chance nor the point at which Jane Seymour replaced Anne in Henry’s priorities. It did, nevertheless, make her vulnerable yet again. What Anne had lost was not only a longed-for child but the objective endorsement of her marriage which the birth of a son would have given. A queen from abroad could rely on family identity and the support of her European connections. With the hope of a prince gone, Anne was pitched back into being exclusively reliant on her relationship with Henry. She became exposed again, and to an even greater degree, to attack from the partisans of Mary, resentful at the dominance of the Boleyns and their heretical policies.
The position was, in some ways, a repetition of the autumn of 1534 following her first miscarriage, but with crucial differences. Mary, now motherless, was a much more formidable opponent than Katherine had been. Anne and her daughter were no longer protected by the dilemma that to assert Mary’s legitimacy meant challenging the king’s conviction that the Aragon marriage had been invalid. Now that Katherine was dead, all that was needed was for the girls’ father to accept, as was undoubtedly true, that the elder sister was the child of good faith — ‘
bona fide parentum
gotten, conceived and born’ — and Mary became legitimate in law and would displace Elizabeth as heir presumptive.
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This way round the obstacle of the first marriage offered conservative critics of Henry and Anne a far more realistic agenda than the treason which had been discussed with Chapuys, and one which could be pursued by all the familiar methods of court intrigue. And the omens were good. With the end to all immediate hope of a son, Henry’s intention to exact the succession oath from Mary evaporated, and a relieved princess found her treatment somewhat improved. Ironically, the solution of accepting both daughters by seniority was one towards which Henry himself would move eight years later.
Not only was support for Mary a more promising option than support for her mother had been; for the first time since 1533 it became realistic to hope to unseat Anne herself. No longer was the alternative to the Boleyn match the reinstatement of an aged and barren Katherine, a return to a female heir presumptive and, by implication, submission to papal authority. The possibility that God had condemned his marriage to Anne had already entered the king’s mind, if only briefly. He might now be susceptible to the suggestion that getting rid of Anne would make possible a third and wholly uncontested match, and offspring recognized at home and abroad. Anne’s opponents took heart. Their leader seems to have been Nicholas Carewe, but he was backed by the rest of the privy chamber staff opposed to Anne.
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Exeter, Rochford’s opposite number as ‘nobleman of the privy chamber’, continued as the link with Chapuys, and other courtiers involved included Lord Montagu and his brother Geoffrey, Sir Thomas Elyot, and the king’s cousin, the dowager countess of Kildare.
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The shock of the executions of Fisher, More and the Carthusians had also hardened opinion, and there was an increased willingness to risk the queen’s anger. At court, Nicholas Carewe made no bones about sheltering the king’s fool from Henry’s wrath after he had unwisely praised Katherine and Mary and denigrated Anne and Elizabeth.
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From Rome Richard Pate, archdeacon of Lincoln and a career diplomat though he was, wrote in agonized support of Mary, well aware, even at that distance, of the risk that he was taking.
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Where did Jane Seymour fit in to all this? It is clear, first of all, that Henry’s interest in her began as mere courtly gallantry. As late as 1 April, Chapuys was still describing her by the significant label ‘the lady whom he serves’.
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Effectively, she took the place of the pregnant Anne as Henry’s courtly ‘mistress’. The danger in this was, of course, that convention might again develop a real human content. Jane is generally supposed to have attracted Henry on the strength of a contrast to Anne: fair, not dark; younger by seven or eight years; gentle rather than abrasive; of no great wit, against a mistress of repartee; a model of female self-effacement, against a self-made woman. Chapuys was very under-impressed. ‘She is of middle height, and nobody thinks that she has much beauty. Her complexion is so whitish that she may be called rather pale. She is a little over twenty-tive ... The said Semel is not very intelligent, and is said to be rather haughty.’
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Much to her advantage, of course, was the recent rise of her brother in royal favour. Despite Edward Seymour’s later self-projection as ‘the good duke of Somerset’, no man showed ‘himself more greedy of wealth or ruthless to others than [he] when he built up his fortune during Henry VIII’s lifetime’.
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He needed no reminding of the value of a sister who caught the king’s eye. As Thomas Wyatt explained to aspiring courtiers:
In this also see you be not idle:
Thy niece, thy cousin, thy sister or thy daughter,
If she be fair, if handsome by her middle,
If thy better hath her love besought her,
Advance his cause, and he shall help thy need;
It is but love, turn it to a laughter.
But ’ware, I say, so gold thee help and speed,
That in this case thou be not so unwise
As Pandar was in such a like deed:
For he, the fool, of conscience was so nice
That he no gain would have for all his pain.
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In the event, Edward Seymour received something even better than gold, appointment at the beginning of March to the staff of the privy chamber, an even more promising place from which to act as his sister’s ponce.
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According to contemporary mores, Anne should have shut her eyes to Henry’s pursuit of Jane Seymour. Queens were expected not to notice husbandly diversions. George Wyatt commented that ‘wise men in those days judged’ that if, like Katherine, Anne had been more tolerant of peccadilloes she would have risked less; however, ‘her too great love’ prevented what ‘she might the rather have done respecting the general liberty and custom then that way’.
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Wyatt’s prose is heavy-footed, but it does point to an easily overlooked but drastic weakness in Anne’s position.
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Royal marriages, both before, during and after the sixteenth century, were expected to be business affairs, related to international diplomacy and the continuation of a dynasty. Spouses were suggested to, not chosen by, a monarch. Romance featured only accidentally; its expected place was the affaire. Henry VIII, almost uniquely, defied this expectation and both chose and married Anne for romantic reasons. The only other English or British monarch since the Conquest to do the equivalent was his grandfather, Edward IV. In marrying for love, Henry in effect confused the role of the wife and the mistress, with the result that personal emotion was the basis of his relationship with Anne and hers with him. Anne was therefore right to say that her feelings were more exposed than those of Katherine. The corollary was that, as well as being hurt by royal philandering, Anne was compelled to fight to protect this personal relationship with Henry. She could not distance herself as Katherine of Aragon had. She could not ignore it if her husband had become infatuated with Jane, even though the inevitable result was to make Jane more significant than she need have been. Though tolerating infidelity would have been the safer course, Anne was forced to put herself on a level with Jane and challenge Henry to choose between them.
The highly personal basis of Anne’s marriage explains why she could not ignore the affair with Jane, but it does not explain how a royal flirt in January 1536 was in a position four months later to supplant a queen. That opportunity arose from a coming together of the Seymour dalliance and the sympathy for Mary. The princess’s supporters, particularly among Edward Seymour’s new colleagues in the privy chamber, realized that here was a heaven-sent opportunity to supplant Anne and bring Katherine’s daughter back to her rightful place. As for Seymour, he had already made gains from encouraging Jane’s responses to Henry so far; for his sister to become more than the king’s latest amour promised the jackpot. The alliance between the Seymours and the conservatives was made and Jane was coached to behave accordingly.
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She was instructed to poison Henry’s mind against Anne whenever possible, stressing particularly the illegitimacy of his second marriage — in effect presenting herself as an implicit alternative. However, she was to pick her moments and express such views especially when others of the faction were in attendance to chorus their agreement. The Exeters approached Chapuys to add his voice when opportunity offered. He agreed with alacrity and, with Mary’s approval, also set about active lobbying of Cromwell and others ‘most fit for the purpose’.
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Indeed, the thought of the merit in thereby serving the princess’s interests, striking a blow against heresy and helping to save Henry from mortal sin, quite made him forget to mention the advantage it would bring to Charles V. And above all the schemes to bad-mouth Anne, one thing was firmly impressed on Jane. Her price now was marriage, nothing less.
Henry discovered the new Jane at the end of March. He was in London and she at Greenwich, and Chapuys described how:
[the king] sent her a purse full of sovereigns and a letter. The young lady, having kissed the letter returned it to the messenger unopened and falling on her knees besought him to ask the king on her behalf, to consider carefully that she was a gentlewoman, born of good and honourable parents and with an unsullied reputation. She had no greater treasure in the world than her honour which she would rather die a thousand times than tarnish, and if he wanted to give her money she begged that he would do so once God had sent her a good match.
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Setting aside for a moment Jane’s theatrical exhibition of virtue, why did she not open the king’s letter? The obvious reason is that she knew what was in it — a summons to the royal bed — and that provided she had not read it, she would not need to reply. Henry had propositioned Anne face to face; he thought that with Jane matters were far enough advanced that a letter would be enough. According to the marchioness of Exeter, the effect of Jane’s response was to increase Henry’s interest
‘merveilleusement’
and he announced that he would ‘henceforth
(desormais)’
only speak with Jane in the company of her relations.
‘Desormais’
certainly invites a raised eyebrow and supports the late tradition that the king’s affection was stolen when Anne was well into her pregnancy. The Protestants describe her ‘as not so fit for dalliance’ while the Catholics have Anne saying bluntly: ‘I saw this harlot Jane sitting on your knees while my belly was doing its duty!’
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What is more, the king’s newly announced concern for respectability only amounted to evicting Thomas Cromwell from his room at Greenwich, which had a private passage to the king’s apartment, and putting in Jane’s brother Edward and his wife as the nominal occupants. Chapuys was decidely unconvinced of Jane’s modest unavailability.
As we have seen, a somewhat similar story is told about Anne playing hard to get, and it may appear a kind of justice that Jane’s refusal to sleep with Henry should now help to destroy her predecessor.
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Historians have, however, been somewhat taken in by the Seymour ‘image of virtue and quiet virginity’ which was to a degree a deliberate pose. Jane was willing to be used to oust Anne; Henry’s first marriage was dead before Anne came on the scene; Anne’s sexuality challenged Henry, but Jane dangled her virtue as a bait. Anne offered Henry marriage or nothing, Jane upped her price once the chance of a bigger prize appeared; Anne was no man’s creature, Jane was a willing tool whose personality it is more than kind to describe as ‘pliable’. Agnes Strickland went as far as to declare that the picture of Jane preparing for marriage to Henry while Anne was under sentence of death in the Tower ‘is repulsive enough, but it becomes tenfold more abhorrent when the woman who caused the whole tragedy is loaded with panegyric.’
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That, however, is an over-harsh Victorian judgement. Chapuys considered that the guilt was primarily Henry’s. Londoners watching at the time blamed Henry and Jane, both. The king had to warn his new inamorata accordingly:
there is a ballad made lately of great derision against us, which if it go abroad and is seen by you, I pray you to pay no manner of regard to it. I am not at present informed who is the setter forth of this malignant writing; but if he is found, he shall be straitly punished for it.
 

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