ANNE BOLEYN
From a portrait by Lucas Cornelisz in the National Portrait Gallery
For the interview to have its full value in the eyes of Henry and his mistress, the latter must be present at the festival, and be recognised by the French royal family as being of their own caste. Francis was not scrupulous, but this was difficult to arrange. His own second wife was the Emperor’s sister, and she, of course, would not consent to meet “the concubine”; nor would any other of the French princesses, if they could avoid it; but, although the French at first gave out that no ladies would be present, Anne began to get her fine clothes ready and enlist her train of ladies as soon as the interview between the kings was arranged. So confident was she now of success that she foretold to one of her friends that she would be married whilst in France. To add to her elation, in the midst of the preparations Archbishop Warham died, and the chief ecclesiastical obstacle to the divorce in England disappeared. Some obedient churchman as Primate would soon manage to enlist a sufficient number of his fellows to give to his court an appearance of authority, and the Church of England would ratify the King’s release.
The effects of Warham’s death (23rd August 1532) were seen immediately. There is every probability that up to that time Anne had successfully held her royal lover at arm’s length; but with Cranmer, or another such as he, at Lambeth her triumph was only a matter of the few weeks necessary to carry out the formalities; and by the end of the month of August 1532 she probably became the King’s mistress. This alone would explain the extraordinary proceedings when, on the 1st September, she was created Marchioness of Pembroke in her own right. It was Sunday morning before Mass at Windsor, where the new French alliance was to be ratified, that the King and his nobles and the French ambassador met in the great presence chamber and Anne knelt to receive the coronet and robe of her rank, the first peeress ever created in her own right in England: precedence being given to her before the two other English marchionesses, both ladies of the blood royal. Everything that could add prestige to the ceremony was done. Anne herself was dressed in regal crimson velvet and ermine; splendid presents were made to her by the enamoured King, fit more for a sovereign’s consort than his mistress; a thousand pounds a year and lands were settled upon her, and her rank and property were to descend to the issue male of her body. But the cloven hoof is shown by the omission from the patent of the usual legitimacy clause. Even if, after all, the cup of queendom was dashed from her lips untasted, she had made not a bad bargain for herself. Her short triumph, indeed, was rapidly coming. She had fought strenuously for it for many years; and now most of the legal bars against her had fallen. But, withal, there was bitterness still in her chalice. The people scowled upon her no less now that she was a marchioness than before, and the great ladies who were ordered to attend the King’s “cousin” into France did their service but sourly: whilst Francis had to be conciliated with all sorts of important concessions before he could be got to welcome “the lady” into his realm. When, at last, he consented, “because she would have gone in any case; for the King cannot be an hour without her,” Francis did it gallantly, and with good grace, for, after all, Anne was just then the strongest prop in England of the French alliance.
Katharine, from afar off, watched these proceedings with scornful resentment. Henry had no chivalry, no generosity, and saved his repudiated wife no humiliation that he could deal her in reward for her obstinacy. He had piled rich gifts upon Anne, but her greed for costly gewgaws was insatiable; and when the preparations for her visit to France were afoot she coveted the Queen’s jewels. Henry’s sister, the Duchess of Suffolk, Queen Dowager of France, had been made to surrender her valuables to the King’s favourite; but when Henry sent a message to his wife bidding her give up her jewels, the proud princess blazed out in indignant anger at the insult. “Tell the King,” she said, “that I cannot send them to him; for when lately, according to the custom of this realm, I presented him with a New Year’s gift, he warned me to send him no such presents for the future. Besides, it is offensive and insulting to me, and would weigh upon my conscience, if I were led to give up my jewels for such a base purpose as that of decking out a person who is a reproach to Christendom, and is bringing scandal and disgrace upon the King, through his taking her to such a meeting as this in France. But still, if the King commands me and sends specially for them himself, I will give him my jewels.” Such an answer as this proves clearly the lack of practical wisdom in the poor woman. She might have resisted, or she might have surrendered with a good grace; but to irritate and annoy the weak bully, without gaining her point, was worse than useless. Anne’s talk about marrying the King in France angered Katharine beyond measure; but the favourite’s ambition grew as her prospect brightened, and when it was settled that Cranmer was to be recalled from Germany and made Primate, Anne said that she had changed her mind. “Even if the King wished to marry her there (in France) she would not consent to it. She will have it take place here in England, where other queens have usually been married and crowned.”[87]
Through Kent, avoiding as they might the plague-stricken towns, the King and his lady-love, with a great royal train, rode to Dover early in October 1532. At Calais, Henry’s own town, Anne was received almost with regal honours; but when Henry went forth to greet Francis upon French soil near Boulogne, and to be sumptuously entertained, it was seen that, though the French armed men were threateningly numerous, there were no ladies to keep in countenance the English “concubine” and the proud dames who did her service. Blazing in gems, the two kings met with much courtly ceremony and hollow professions of affection. Banqueting, speech-making, and posturing in splendid raiment occupied five days at Boulogne, the while the “Lady Marquis” ate her heart out at Calais in petulant disappointment; though she made as brave a show as she could to the Frenchmen when they came to return Henry’s visit. The chronicler excels himself in the description of the lavish magnificence of the welcome of Francis at Calais,[88] and tells us that, after a bounteous supper on the night of Sunday 27th October, at which the two kings and their retinues sat down, “The Marchioness of Pembroke with seven other ladies in masking apparel of strange fashion, made of cloth of gold compassed with crimson tinsel satin, covered with cloth of silver, lying loose and knit with gold laces,” tripped in, and each masked lady chose a partner, Anne, of course, taking the French king. In the course of the dance Henry plucked the masks from the ladies’ faces, and debonair Francis, in courtly fashion, conversed with his fair partner. One of the worst storms in the memory of man delayed the English king’s return from Calais till the 13th November; but when at length the Te Deum for his safe home-coming was sung at St. Paul’s, Anne knew that the King of France had undertaken to frighten the Pope into inactivity by talk of the danger of schism in England, and that Cranmer was hurrying across Europe on his way from Italy to London, to become Primate of the Church of England.
The plot projected was a clever one, but it was still needful to handle it very delicately. Cranmer during his residence in Germany and Italy had been zealous in winning favourable opinions for Henry’s contention, and his foregathering with Lutheran divines had strengthened his reforming opinions. He had, indeed, proceeded to the dangerous length of going through a form of marriage secretly with a young lady belonging to a Lutheran family. His leanings cannot have been quite unknown to the ever-watchful spies of the Pope and the Emperor, though Cranmer had done his best to hoodwink them, and to some extent had succeeded. But to ask the Pope to issue the Bulls confirming such a man in the Primacy of England was at least a risky proceeding, and Henry had to dissemble. In January, Katharine fondly thought that her husband was softening towards her, for he released her chaplain Abell, who had been imprisoned for publicly speaking in her favour. She fancied, poor soul, that “perhaps God had touched his heart, and that he was about to acknowledge his error.” Chapuys attributed Henry’s new gentleness to his begrudging the cost of two queenly establishments. But seen from this distance of time, it was clearly caused by a desire to disarm the suspicion of the Pope and the Emperor, who were again to meet at Bologna, until the Bulls confirming Cranmer’s appointment to the Archbishopric had been issued. Henry went out of his way to be amiable to the imperial ambassador Chapuys, whilst he beguiled the Nuncio with the pretended proposal for reconciliation by means of a decision on the divorce to be given by two Cardinal Legates, appointed by the Pope, and sitting in neutral territory. In vain Chapuys warned the Emperor that Cranmer could not be trusted; but Henry’s diplomatic signs of grace prevailed, and the Pope, dreading to drive England further into schism, confirmed Cranmer’s election as Archbishop of Canterbury (March 1533).
It was high time; for under a suave exterior both Henry and Anne were in a fever of impatience. At the very time that Queen Katharine thought that her husband had repented, Anne conveyed to him the news that she was with child. It was necessary for their plans that the offspring should be born in wedlock, and yet no public marriage was possible, or the eyes of the Papal party would be opened before the Bulls confirming Cranmer’s elevation were issued. Sometime late in January 1533, therefore, a secret marriage was performed at Greenwich, probably by the reforming Franciscan Friar, George Brown,[89] and Anne became Henry’s second wife, whilst Katharine was still undivorced. The secret was well kept for a time, and the Nuncio, Baron di Burgo, was fooled to the top of his bent by flatteries and hopes of bribes. He even sat in state on Henry’s right hand, the French ambassador being on the left, at the opening of Parliament, probably with the idea of convincing the trembling English clergy that the King and the Pope were working together. In any case, the close association of the Nuncio with Henry and his ministers aroused the fears of Katharine anew, and she broke out in denunciations of the Pope’s supineness in thus leaving her without aid for three and a half years, and now entertaining, as she said, a suggestion that would cause her to be declared the King’s concubine, and her daughter a bastard.[90] In vain Chapuys, the only man of his party who saw through the device, prayed that Cranmer’s Bulls should not be sent from Rome, that the sentence in Katharine’s favour should no longer be delayed. It was already too late. The pride of Anne and her father at the secret marriage could not much longer be kept under. In the middle of February, whilst dining in her own apartment, she said that “she was now as sure that she should be married to the King, as she was of her own death”; and the Earl of Wiltshire told the aged kinsman of Henry, the Earl of Rutland, a staunch adherent of Katharine, that “the King was determined not to be so considerate as he had been, but would marry the Marchioness of Pembroke at once, by the authority of Parliament.”[91] Anne’s condition, indeed, could not continue to be concealed, and whispers of it reached the Queen at Ampthill. By March the rumour was rife at Court that the marriage had taken place—a rumour which it is plain that Anne’s friends took no pains to deny, and Cranmer positively encouraged.[92]
Cromwell, in the meanwhile, grew in power and boldness with the success of his machinations. The Chancellorship, vacant by More’s resignation, was filled by Cromwell’s friend Audley, and every post that fell vacant or could be vacated was occupied by known opponents of the clergy. The country and Parliament were even yet not ready to go so far as Cromwell in his policy of emancipation from Rome in spiritual affairs; and only by the most illegal pressure both in the two Houses and in Convocation was the declaration condemning the validity of the King’s marriage with Katharine at last obtained. Armed with these declarations and the Bulls from Rome confirming Cranmer’s appointment, Henry was ready in April to cast away the mask, and the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk were sent to tell Katharine at Ampthill “that she need not trouble any more about the King, for he had taken another wife, and that in future she must abandon the title of Queen, and be called Duchess; though she should be left in possession of her property.”[93] Chapuys was indignant, and urged the Emperor to make war upon England in revenge for the insult to his house. “The moment this accursed Anne gets her foot firmly in the stirrup she will do the Queen all the harm she can, and the Princess also, which is what the Queen fears most.... She (Anne) has lately boasted that she will make the Princess one of her maids, which will not give her too much to eat; or will marry her to some varlet.” But the Emperor had cares and dangers that his ambassador in England knew not of, and he dared not avenge his aunt by the invasion of England.
A long and fruitless war of words was waged between Henry and Chapuys when the news of the secret marriage became known; the talk turning upon the eternal question of the consummation of Katharine’s first marriage. Chapuys reminded the King that on several occasions he (Henry) had confessed that his wife had been intact by Arthur. “Ah!” replied Henry, “I only said that in fun. A man when he is frolicking and dining says a good many things that are not true. Now, I think I have satisfied you.... What else do you want to know?”[94] A day or two after this, on Easter Eve, Anne went to Mass in truly royal state, loaded with diamonds and other precious stones, and dressed in a gorgeous suit of tissue; the train being borne by her cousin, the daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, betrothed to the King’s illegitimate son, the Duke of Richmond. She was followed by a greater suite and treated with more ceremony than had formerly attended Katharine, and, to the astonishment of the people, was prayed for thenceforward in the Church services at Court as Queen.[95] In London the attitude of the people grew threatening, and the Lord Mayor was taken to task by the King, who ordered that proclamation should be made forbidding any unfavourable reference to the King’s second marriage. But the fire of indignation glowed fiercely beneath the surface, for everywhere the cause of Katharine was bound up, as it seemed, with the old faith in which all had been born, with the security of commerce with England’s best customers, and with the rights of anointed royalty, as against low-born insolence.