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

by Martin A. S. Hume

This was not, however, the only move made by Henry against the threatening danger of a joint attack of the Catholic powers. He had hardly thrown off his mourning for Jane before he turned his hand to the old game of dividing his rivals. His bluff was as audacious and brilliant as usual. To the imperial and French ambassadors in turn he boasted that either of their masters would prefer his friendship and alliance to that of the other; and, rightly convinced that he would really be more likely to gain latitudinarian Francis than Charles, he proposed in the spring of 1538 that he should marry a French princess. As the two great Catholic sovereigns drew closer together, though still nominally at war in Italy, Henry became, indeed, quite an eager wooer. His friend, Sir Francis Brian, was sent to Paris, secretly to forward his suit, and obtained a portrait of the Duke of Guise’s second daughter, the sister of the King of Scotland’s bride, Mary of Lorraine; with which Henry confessed himself quite smitten. He had, before this, only three months after Jane’s death, made a desperate attempt to prevail upon Francis to let him have Mary of Lorraine herself; though she was already betrothed to the King of Scots, his nephew; but this had been positively and even indignantly refused. Even the younger daughter of Guise, beautiful as she was, did not quite satisfy his vanity. Both he and his agent Brian, who was a fit representative for him, disgusted Francis by suggesting that three other French princesses should be taken to Calais by the Queen of Navarre—Francis’ sister—in order that they might be paraded before the King of England for his selection, “like hackneys,” as was said at the time.[184] He thought that the angry repudiation of such an insulting proposal was most unreasonable. “How can I choose a wife by deputy?” he asked. “I must depend upon my own eyes”; besides, he added, he must hear them sing, and see how they comported themselves. Perhaps, suggested the French ambassador sarcastically, he would like to go further and test the ladies in other ways, as the knights of King Arthur used to do. Henry coloured at this; but vauntingly replied that he could, if he pleased, marry into the imperial house; but he would not marry at all unless he was quite sure that his new relation would prefer his alliance to all others. When, at length, in June, the truce of Nice was signed, and soon afterwards the fraternal meeting and close community between Francis and Charles was effected at Aigues Mortes, Henry began to get seriously alarmed. His matrimonial offers, to his surprise, were treated very coolly; all his attempts to breed dissension between the imperial and French ambassadors, who were now hand and glove, were laughed at;[185] and the intimate confidence and friendship between his two Catholic rivals seemed at last to bring disaster to Henry’s very doors; for it was not concealed that the first blow to be struck by the Catholic confederacy was to be upon the schismatic heretic who ruled England.

With Francis there was no more to be done; for Henry and Brian, by their want of delicacy, had between them deeply wounded all the possible French brides and their families. But, at least, Henry hoped that sufficient show of friendship with Charles might be simulated to arouse Francis’ jealousy of his new ally. Henry therefore began to sneer at the patched-up friendship, as he called it.[186] “And how about Milan?” he asked the French ambassador, knowing that that was the still rankling sore; and soon he began to boast more openly that he himself might have Milan by the cession of it as a dower to Dom Luiz of Portugal, on his marriage with the Princess Mary; whilst Henry himself married the young widowed Duchess of Milan, Charles’ niece, Christina of Denmark, that clever, quick-witted woman, whose humorous face lives for ever on the canvas of Holbein in the English National Gallery.[187] There had been a Spanish ambassador, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, in England since the spring of 1537, to negotiate the Portuguese marriage of the Princess Mary; but the eternal questions of dowry, security, and the legitimacy of the Princess had made all negotiations so far abortive. Now they were taken up more strongly, by means of Wyatt at Madrid, and by special envoys to Mary of Hungary in Flanders. But it was all “buckler play,” as the imperial agents and Charles himself soon found out. Henry and Cromwell knew perfectly well that no stable alliance with the Emperor was possible then unless their religious policy was changed; and they had gone too far to change it without humiliation, if not destruction, to Henry; the real object of the negotiations being simply to obtain some sort of promise about the cession of Milan, by which Francis might be detached from the imperial alliance. But it was unsuccessful; and, for once, the two great antagonists held together for a time against all Lutheranism and heresy.

Then Henry and Cromwell had to look anxiously for support and alliances elsewhere. To the King it was a repugnant and humiliating necessity. He had puffed himself into the belief that he was the most potent and infallible of sovereigns, and he found himself, for the first time, scorned by all those he had reason to fear. He, the embodiment of the idea of regal omnipotence, would be forced to make common cause with those who, like the German Protestants, stood for resistance to supreme authority; with usurpers like Christian III. of Denmark, and trading democracies like Lübeck. With much hesitation and dislike, therefore, he listened, whilst Cromwell urged the inevitable policy upon him, which led him farther and farther away from the inner circle of potentates to which he and his father had gained entrance in the course of the events related in the first chapters of this book.

Cromwell’s arguments would probably have been unavailing but for the opportune “discovery,” in the usual fortuitous Cromwell fashion, of a dangerous aristocratic conspiracy against Henry himself. Cardinal Pole had been entrusted with the Papal excommunication, and everywhere impressed upon English Catholics the duty of obeying their spiritual father by deposing the King.[188] Whether anything in the form of a regular conspiracy to do this existed in England is extremely doubtful; but the Cardinal had naturally written to his relatives in England, especially to his brother Geoffrey, and perhaps to his mother, the Countess of Salisbury, a princess of the blood royal of York. First Geoffrey was seized and carried to the Tower, and some sort of incriminating admission drawn from him by threats of torture, though, so far as can be gathered, nothing but the repetition of disaffected conversations. It was enough, however, for Cromwell’s purpose when he needed it; and the fatal net was cast over Pole’s elder brother, Lord Montague, the Marquis of Exeter, allied to the royal house, the Master of the Horse, Sir Nicholas Carew, Sir Edward Neville, and half a score of other high gentlemen, known to be faithful to the old cause—all to be unjustly sacrificed on the scaffold to the fears of Henry and the political exigencies of Cromwell. Even the women and children of the supposed sympathisers with the Papacy were not spared; and the aged Countess of Salisbury, with her grandson, and the Marchioness of Exeter, with her son, were imprisoned with many humbler ones.

The defences of the kingdom on the coast and towards Scotland were rapidly made ready to resist attack from abroad, which indeed looked imminent; and when the noble and conservative party had been sufficiently cowed by the sight of the blood of the highest of its members, when the reign of terror over the land had made all men so dumb and fearsome that none dared say him nay, Cromwell felt himself strong enough to endeavour to draw England into the league of Protestant princes and defy the Catholic world. The position for Henry personally was an extraordinary one. He had gradually drifted into a position of independence from Rome; but he still professed to be a strict Catholic in other respects. His primate, Cranmer, and several other of his bishops whose ecclesiastical status was unrecognised by the Pope, were unquestionably, and not unnaturally, Protestant in their sympathies; whilst Cromwell was simply a politician who cared nothing for creeds and faiths, except as ancillary to State policy. Francis, and even on occasion Charles himself, made little of taking Church property for lay purposes when he needed it: he had more than once been the ally of the infidel against Catholic princes, and his religious belief was notoriously lax; and yet he remained “the eldest son of the Church.” Charles had struggled successfully against the Papal pretensions to control the temporalities of the Spanish Church, his troops had sacked Rome and imprisoned the Pope, and his ministers for years had bullied pontiffs and scolded them as if they were erring schoolboys. Excommunication had fallen upon him and his, and as hard things had been said of him in Rome as of Henry; and yet he was the champion of Catholic Christendom. The conclusion is obvious that Henry’s sin towards the Papacy was not primarily the spoliation of the Church, the repudiation of Katharine, or even the assumption of control over the temporalities, but that he had arrogated to himself the spiritual headship in his realm. In most other respects he was as good a Catholic as Charles, and a much better one than Francis; and yet under stress of circumstances he was forced into common cause with the growing party of reform in Europe, whose separation from the Church was profoundly doctrinal, and arose from entirely different motives from those of Henry.

The danger that threatened England at the time (early in 1539) was not really quite so serious as it seemed; for, close as the alliance between Charles and Francis was, old jealousies were not dead, and a joint war against England would have revived them; whilst the Papal plan of treating England commercially as outside the pale of civilisation would have ruined Charles’ subject and was impracticable. But, in any case, the peril was real to Henry and Cromwell; and under the stress of it they were driven into the attempted policy of a Protestant confederacy. At the end of January 1539, Christopher Mont was sent to Germany with the first overtures. He carried letters of credence to Philip of Hesse, and Hans Frederick of Saxony, with the ostensible object of asking whether they had come to any conclusion respecting the theological disputations held in the previous year between their envoys and the English bishops to establish a common doctrinal basis. This, of course, was a mere pretext, the real object of the mission being to discover to what extent Henry could depend upon the German Protestant princes if he were attacked by their suzerain the Emperor. A private instruction was given to Mont by Cromwell, to remind one of the Saxon ministers who had come to England of a former conversation about a possible marriage between the young Duke of Cleves and the Princess Mary; and he was to take the opportunity of finding out all he could about the “beauty and qualities, shape, stature, and complexion” of the elder of the two unmarried daughters of the old Duke of Cleves, whose eldest daughter, Sybilla, had married Hans Frederick of Saxony himself, and was as bold a Protestant as he was. At the same time approaches were made to Christian III. of Denmark, who had joined the Evangelical league; and gradually the forces against the Papacy were to be knitted together. An excuse also was found to send English envoys to Cleves itself to offer an alliance in the matter of the Duchy of Gueldres, which the Duke of Cleves had just seized without the Emperor’s connivance or consent. Carne and Wotton, the envoys, were also to offer the hand of the Princess Mary to the young Duke, and cautiously to hint at a marriage between his sister Anne and Henry, if conditions were favourable; and, like Mont in Saxony, were to close the ranks of Protestantism around the threatened Henry, from whose Court both the imperial and French ambassadors had now been withdrawn.

Whilst these intrigues for Protestant support on the Continent were being carried on, and the defences of England on all sides were being strengthened, Henry, apparently for the purpose of disarming the Catholic elements, and proving that, apart from the Papal submission, he was as good a Catholic as any, forced through Parliament (May 1539) the extraordinary statute called the Six Articles, or the Bloody Statute, which threw all English Protestants into a panic. The Act was drafted on Henry’s instructions by Bishop Gardiner, and was called an “Act to abolish diversity of opinions.” The articles of faith dictated by the King to his subjects under ferocious penalties included the main Catholic doctrine; the real presence in the Sacrament in its fullest sense; the celibacy of the clergy; that the administration of the Sacrament in two kinds is not necessary; that auricular confession is compulsory, that private masses may be said, and that vows of chastity must be kept for ever. Cranmer, who was married and had children, dared to argue against the Bill when the Duke of Norfolk introduced it in the House of Lords, and others of the new bishops timidly did likewise; but they were overborne by the old bishops and the great majority of the lay peers, influenced by their traditions and by the peremptory arguments of the King himself. Even more important was an Act passed in the same servile Parliament giving to the King’s proclamations the force of law; and an Act of attainder against every one, living or dead, in England or abroad, who had opposed the King, completed the terror under which thenceforward the country lay. Henry was now, indeed, master of the bodies and souls of his subjects, and had reduced them all, Protestants and Catholics alike, to a condition of abject subjection to his mere will. The passage of these Acts, especially the Six Articles, marks a temporarily successful attempt of the conservative party, represented by the old bishops and the nobles under Norfolk, to overcome the influence of Cromwell, who was forwarding the Protestant league;[189] but to Henry the policy must in any case have seemed a good one, as it tended to increase his personal power and prestige, and to keep both parties dependent upon him.

Before the summer of 1539 had passed it was evident to Henry that the new combination against him would not stand the strain of a joint attack upon England. Charles was full of cares of his own. The Lutherans were increasingly threatening; even his own city of Ghent had revolted, and it was plain from his reception of Pole at Toledo that he could not proceed to extremes against Henry. It certainly was not the intention of Francis to do so; and the panic in England—never fully justified—passed away. The French ambassador came back, and once more Henry’s intrigues to sow dissension between the Catholic powers went ceaselessly on. In the circumstances it was natural that, after the passage of the Six Articles and the resumption of diplomatic relations with France, the negotiations with the German Protestants slackened. But the proposed marriage of Henry with the Princess of Cleves offered too good an opportunity, as Cromwell pointed out to him, of troubling the Emperor when he liked, to be dropped, even though no general political league was effected with the German Lutherans. Her brother-in-law, Hans Frederick of Saxony, was cool about it. He said that some sort of engagement had been made by her father and the Duke of Lorraine to marry her to the heir of the latter, but finally in August Wotton reported from Duren that Hans Frederick would send envoys to Cleves to propose the match, and they would then proceed to England to close the matter. Wotton had been somewhat distrustful about the previous engagement of Anne with the Duke of Lorraine’s son, but was assured by the Council of Cleves that it was not binding upon the Princess, “who was free to marry as she pleased.” “She has been brought up,” he writes, “with the Lady Duchess, her mother ... and in a manner never from her elbow; the Lady Duchess being a wise lady, and one that very straitly looketh to her children. All report her (Anne) to be of very lowly and gentle conditions, by the which she hath so much won her mother’s favour that she is loth to suffer her to depart from her. She occupieth her time mostly with her needle, wherewithal ... she can read and write (Dutch); but as to French, Latin, or any other language, she hath none. Nor yet she cannot sing nor play any instrument, for they take it here in Germany for a rebuke, and an occasion of lightness that great ladies should be learned or have any knowledge of music. Her wit is good, and she will no doubt learn English soon when she puts her mind to it. I could never hear that she is inclined to the good cheer of this country; and marvel it were if she should, seeing that her brother ... doth so well abstain from it. Your Grace’s servant Hans Holbein hath taken the effigies of my Lady Anne and the Lady Amelia, and hath expressed their images very lively.”[190]

Holbein was not usually a flattering painter to his sitters, and the portrait he sent of Anne was that of a somewhat masculine and large-featured, but handsome and intellectual young woman, with fine, soft, contemplative brown eyes, thick lashes, and strong eyebrows. The general appearance is dignified, though handicapped by the very unbecoming Dutch dress of the period; and though there is nothing of the petite sprightliness and soft rotundity that would be likely to attract a man of Henry’s characteristics, the Princess cannot have been ill-favoured. Cromwell some months earlier had reported to Henry that Mont informed him that “everybody praises the lady’s beauty, both of face and body. One said she excelled the Duchess (of Milan ?) as the golden sun did the silver moon.”[191] If the latter statement be near the truth, Anne, in her own way, must have been quite good-looking. There was no delay or difficulty in carrying through the arrangements for the marriage. The envoys from Cleves and Saxony arrived in London in September, and saw Henry at Windsor. They could offer no great dowry, for Cleves was poor; but they would not be exacting about the appanage to be settled upon the Queen by her husband, to whom they left the decision of the sum; and the other covenants as to the eventual succession to her brother’s duchy, in case of his death without heirs, were to be the same as those under which her elder sister married Hans Frederick.

This was the sort of spirit that pleased Henry in negotiators, and with such he was always disposed to be liberal. He practically waived the dowry, and only urged that the lady should come at once, before the winter was too far advanced. When he suggested that she should come from her home down the Rhine through Holland, and thence by sea to England, the envoys prayed that she might go through Germany and Flanders by land to Calais, and so across. For, said they, by sea there will be great peril of capture and insult by some too zealous subjects of the Emperor. “Besides, they fear lest, the time of year being now cold and tempestuous, she might there, though she never were so well ordered, take such cold or other disease, considering she never was before upon the seas, as should be to her great peril.... She is, moreover, young and beautiful; and if she should be transported by sea they fear much how it might alter her complexion.”[192] No sooner was the marriage treaty signed than splendid preparations were made for the reception of the King’s coming bride. The Lord Admiral (Fitzwilliam) was ordered to prepare a fleet of ten vessels to escort her from Calais; repairs and redecorations of the royal residences went on apace; and especially in the Queen’s apartments, where again the initials of poor Jane had to be altered to those of her successor, and the “principal lords have bought much cloth of gold and silk, a thing unusual for them except for some great solemnity.”[193]