The Wives of Henry the Eighth and the Parts They Played in History

by Martin A. S. Hume

On the 29th January 1536 Anne’s last hope was crushed. In the fourth month of her pregnancy she had a miscarriage, which she attributed passionately to her love for the King and her pain at seeing him flirting with another woman. Henry showed his rage and disappointment brutally, as was now his wont. He had hardly spoken to Anne for weeks before; and when he visited her at her bedside he said that it was quite evident that God meant to deny him heirs male by her. “When you get up,” he growled in answer to the poor woman’s complaints, as he left her, “I will talk to you.” The lady of whom Anne was jealous was probably the same that had attracted the King at the ball given to the Admiral of France two months previously, and had made him, as Anne hysterically complained, “forget everything else.” This lady was Mistress Jane Seymour, a daughter of Sir John Seymour of Wolf Hall, Wilts. She was at the time just over twenty-five years of age, and had been at Court for some time as a maid of honour to Katharine, and afterwards to Anne. During the King’s progress in the autumn of 1535, he had visited Wolf Hall, where the daughter of the house had attracted his admiring attention, apparently for the first time. Jane is described as possessing no great beauty, being somewhat colourless as to complexion; but her demeanour was sweet and gracious; and the King’s admiration for her at once marked her out as a fit instrument for the conservative party of nobles at Court to use against Anne and the political and religious policy which she represented. Apparently Jane had no ability, and none was needed in the circumstances. Chapuys, moreover, suggests with unnecessary spite that in morals she was no better than she should have been, on the unconvincing grounds that “being an Englishwoman, and having been so long at Court, whether she would not hold it a sin to be still a maid.” Her supposed unchastity, indeed, is represented as being an attraction to Henry: “for he may marry her on condition that she is a maid, and when he wants a divorce there will be plenty of witnesses ready to testify that she was not.” This, however, is mere detraction by a man who firmly believed that the cruelly wronged Katharine whose cause he served had just been murdered by Henry’s orders. That Jane had no strength of character is plain, and throughout her short reign she was merely an instrument by which politicians sought to turn the King’s passion for her to their own ends.

The Seymours were a family of good descent, allied with some of the great historic houses, and Jane’s two brothers, Edward and Thomas, were already handsome and notable figures at Henry’s Court: the elder, Sir Edward Seymour, especially, having accompanied the showy visits of the Duke of Suffolk, Cardinal Wolsey, and the King himself to France. So far as can be ascertained, however, the brothers, prompt as they were to profit by their sister’s elevation, were no parties to the political intrigue of which Jane was probably the unconscious tool. She was carefully indoctrinated by Anne’s enemies, especially Sir Nicholas Carew, how she was to behave. She must, above all, profess great devotion and friendship to the Princess Mary, to assume a mien of rigid virtue and high principles which would be likely to pique a sensual man like Henry without gratifying his passion except by marriage. Many of the enemies of the French connection, which included the great majority of the nation, looked with hope towards the King’s new infatuation as a means of luring back England to the comity of Catholic nations and friendship with the Emperor; though there was still a section, especially in the north of England, which believed that their best interests would be served by an open rebellion in the interests of Mary, supported from Flanders by her cousin the Emperor. All this was, of course, well known to Cromwell. He had been one of the first to counsel defiance of the Pope, but throughout he had been anxious to avoid an open quarrel with the Emperor, or to pledge England too closely to French interests; and now that even the French had turned against Anne, Cromwell saw that, unless he himself was to be dragged down when she fell, he must put the break hard down upon the religious policy that he had initiated, and make common cause with Anne’s enemies.

In a secret conference that he held with Chapuys at the Austin Friars, which in future was to be his own mansion, Cromwell proposed a new alliance between England and the Emperor, which would necessarily have to be accompanied by some compromise with the Pope and the recognition of Mary’s legitimacy.[141] He assured the imperial ambassador that Norfolk, Suffolk, and the rest of the nobles formerly attached to France were of the same opinion as himself, and tried earnestly to convince his interlocutor that he had no sympathy with Anne, whom he was ready to throw overboard to save himself. When Charles received this news from his ambassador, he took a somewhat tortuous but characteristic course. He was willing to a great extent to let bygones be bygones, and to forget the sufferings, and perhaps the murder, of his aunt Katharine, if Henry would come to terms with the Papacy and legitimise the Princess Mary; but, curiously enough, he preferred that Anne should remain at Henry’s side, instead of being repudiated. Her marriage, he reasoned, was obviously invalid, and any children she might have by Henry would consequently be unable to interfere with Mary’s rights to the succession: whereas if Henry were to divorce Anne and contract a legal marriage, any son born to him would disinherit Mary. To this extent was Charles ready to descend if he could obtain English help and money in the coming war; and Cromwell, at all events, was anxious to go quite as far to meet him. He now showed ostentatious respect to the Princess Mary, restoring to her the little gold cross that had been her mother’s, and of which she had been cruelly deprived, condemned openly the continued execution of his own policy of spoliation of the monasteries, and quarrelled both with Anne and the only man now in the same boat with her, Archbishop Cranmer, who trembled in his shoes at the ruin he saw impending upon his patroness, ready at any moment to turn his coat, but ignorant of how to do it; for Cranmer, however able a casuist he might be, possessed little statesmanship and less courage.

Lady Exeter was the go-between who brought the imperial ambassador into the conspiracy to oust Anne. The time was seen to be ripening. Henry was already talking in secret about “his having been seduced into the marriage with Anne by sorcery, and consequently that he considered it to be null, which was clearly seen by God’s denying a son. He thought he should be quite justified in taking another wife,”[142] and Jane Seymour’s company seemed daily more necessary to his comfort.

Sir Edward Seymour was made a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber early in March; and a fortnight later the Marchioness of Exeter reported to her friend Chapuys that the King, who was at Whitehall, had sent a loving letter, and a purse of gold, to his new lady-love.[143] The latter had been carefully schooled as to the wise course to pursue, and played prudery to perfection. She kissed the royal letter fervently without opening it; and then, throwing herself upon her knees, besought the messenger to pray the King in her name to consider that she was a gentlewoman of fair and honourable lineage and without reproach. “She had nothing in the world but her honour, which for a thousand deaths she would not wound. If the King deigned to make her a present of money she prayed that it might be when she made an honourable marriage.”[144] According to Lady Exeter’s report, this answer inflamed even more the King’s love for Jane. “She had behaved herself in the matter very modestly,” he said; “and in order to let it be seen that his intentions and affection were honourable, he intended in future only to speak to her in the presence of some of her relatives.” Cromwell, moreover, was turned out of a convenient apartment to which secret access could be obtained from the King’s quarters, in order that Sir Edward Seymour, now Viscount Beauchamp, and his wife should be lodged there, and facility thus given for the King’s virtuous billing and cooing with Jane, whilst saving the proprieties.

When it was too late, even Anne attempted to desert her own political party and to rally to the side of the Emperor, whether because she understood the indulgent way in which the latter now regarded her union with Henry, or whether from mere desperation at the ruin impending, it is not easy to say. But the conspiracy for her destruction had already gone too far when the Emperor’s diplomatic instructions came to his ambassador.[145] It was understood now at Court that the King intended somehow to get rid of his doubtful wife and marry another woman, and Cromwell, with a hypocritical smile behind his hand, whispered to Chapuys that though the King might divorce Anne he would live more virtuously in future. When the imperial ambassador with his master’s friendly replies to Henry’s advances saw the King at Greenwich on the 18th April 1536 the Court was all smiles for him, and Anne desperately clutched at the chance of making friends with him. Chapuys was cool, and declined to go and salute her, as he was invited to do. He was ready, as he said, to hold a candle to the devil, or a hundred of them, if his master’s interests would thereby be served; but he knew that Anne was doomed, and notwithstanding his master’s permission he made no attempt to conciliate her. All the courtiers were watching to see how he would treat her on this the first occasion that they had met since Katharine’s death. As Anne passed into the chapel to high Mass she looked eagerly around to greet her enemy. Where was he? In the chapel, she knew, and to sit close by her side; but he was nowhere to be seen. He was, in fact, standing behind the open door by which she entered; but, determined not to be balked, she turned completely round and made him a profound courtesy, which, as he was bound to do, he returned. In Anne’s rooms afterwards, where the King and the other ambassadors dined, Chapuys was not present, much to the “concubine’s” chagrin; but the Princess Mary and her friends in the conspiracy were suspicious and jealous even of the bow that had been exchanged under such adverse circumstances in the chapel. Anne at dinner coarsely abused the King of France, and strove her utmost to lead people to think that she, too, was hand in glove with the imperialists, as her enemies were, whilst Henry was graciousness itself to Chapuys, until he came to close quarters and heard that the Emperor was determined to drive a hard bargain, and force his English uncle to eat a large piece of humble pie before he could be taken to his bosom again. Then Henry hectored and vaunted like the bully that he was, and upon Cromwell fell his ill humour, for having, as Henry thought, been too pliant with the imperialists; and for the next week Cromwell was ill and in disgrace.

Submission to the Pope to the extent that Charles demanded was almost impossible now, both in consequence of Henry’s own vanity, and because the vast revenues and estates of the monasteries had in many cases replenished the King’s exchequer, or had endowed his nobles and favourites, Catholics though many of them were. A surrender of these estates and revenues would have been resisted, even if such had been possible, to the death, by those who had profited by the spoliation; and unless the Pope and the Emperor were willing to forget much, the hope of reconciling England with the Church was an impossible dream.[146] The great nobles who had battened upon the spoils, especially Norfolk, themselves took fright at the Emperor’s uncompromising demands, and tried to play off France against Charles, during Cromwell’s short disgrace. The Secretary saw that if the friends of France once more obtained the control over Henry’s fickle mind, the revolutionary section of the Catholic party in favour of Mary and the imperial connection would carry all before them, and that in the flood of change Cromwell and all his works would certainly be swept away. If Anne could be got rid of, and the King married to Mistress Seymour, jointly with the adoption of a moderate policy of compromise with Rome and the Emperor, all might be well, and Cromwell might retain the helm, but either an uncompromising persistence in the open Protestant defiance with probably a French alliance against the Emperor, or, on the other hand, an armed Catholic revolution in England, subsidised from Flanders, would have been inevitable ruin to Cromwell.

Anne, then, must be destroyed at any cost, and the King be won to the side of the man who would devise a means of doing it. But how? A repudiation or formal divorce on the ground of invalidity would, of course, have been easy; but it would have been too scandalous. It would also have convicted the King of levity, and above all have bastardised his second daughter, leaving him with no child that the law of the realm regarded as legitimate. Henry himself, as we have seen, talked about his having been drawn into the marriage by sorcery, and ardently desired to get rid of his wife. His intercourse with Jane Seymour, who was being cleverly coached by Anne’s enemies and Mary’s friends, plainly indicated that marriage was intended; but it was the intriguing brain of Cromwell that devised the only satisfactory way in which the King’s caprice and his own interests could be served in the treatment of Anne. Appearances must, at any cost, be saved for Henry. He must not appear to blame, whatever happened. Cromwell must be able, for his own safety, to drag down Anne’s family and friends at the same time that she was ruined, and the affair must be so managed that some sort of reconciliation could be patched up with the Emperor, whilst Norfolk and the French adherents were thrust into the background. Cromwell pondered well on the problem as he lay in bed, sick with annoyance at Henry’s rough answer to the Emperor’s terms, and thus he hit upon the scheme that alone would serve the aims he had in view.[147]

The idea gave him health and boldness again, and just as Henry under Norfolk’s influence was smiling upon the French ambassador, Cromwell appeared once more before his master after his five days’ absence. What passed at their interview can only be guessed by the light of the events that followed. It is quite possible that Cromwell did not tell the King of his designs against Anne, but only that he had discovered a practice of treason against him. But whether the actual words were pronounced or not, Henry must have understood, before he signed and gave to Cromwell the secret instrument demanded of him, that evil was intended to the woman of whom he had grown tired. It was a patent dated the 24th April, appointing the Lord Chancellor Audley and a number of nobles, including the Duke of Norfolk and Anne’s father, the Earl of Wiltshire, together with the judges, a Commission to inquire into any intended treasonable action, no matter by whom committed, and to hold a special Court to try the persons accused. With this instrument in his pocket, Cromwell held at will the lives of those whom he sought to destroy. Anne, as we have seen, had loved and courted the admiration of men, even as her daughter Elizabeth afterwards did to an extent that bordered upon mania. Her manners were free and somewhat hysterical, and her reputation before marriage had been more than doubtful, but the stern Act of Succession, which in 1534 made it treason to question the legitimacy of Anne’s daughter, barred all accusation against her except in respect to actions after Elizabeth’s birth.

Cromwell was well served by spies, even in Anne’s chamber; for her star was visibly paling, and people feared her vengeance little; and not many days passed before the Secretary had in his hand testimony enough to strike his first blow. It was little enough according to our present notions of evidence, and at another time would have passed unnoticed. A young fellow of humble origin, named Mark Smeaton, had by Anne’s influence been appointed one of Henry’s grooms of the chamber in consequence of his skill as a lute player. Anne herself, who was a fine musician and composer, delighted in listening to Mark’s performances; and doubtless, as was her wont, she challenged his admiration because he was a man. A contemporary who repeated the tattle of the Court[148] says that she had fallen in love with the lute player, and had told him so; and that she had aroused the jealousy of her rival admirers, Norreys, Brereton, and others, by her lavish gifts and open favour to Mark Smeaton. According to this story, she endeavoured to appease the former by renewed flirting with them, and to silence Mark’s discontent by large gifts of money. Others of her courtiers, especially Sir Thomas Percy, indignant that an upstart like Mark should be treated better than themselves, insulted and picked quarrels with the musician; and it is evident that Anne, at the very time that Cromwell was spreading his nets for her, was hard put to it to keep the peace between a number of idle, jealous young men whose admiration she had sought for pastime.