It was midday before the Queen’s procession rode down Shooter’s Hill to the tents, where she was met by her official household and greeted with a long Latin oration which she did not understand, whilst she sat in her chariot. Then heartily kissing the great ladies sent to welcome her, she alighted and entered the tent to rest and warm herself over the perfumed fires, and to don even more magnificent raiment than that she wore. When she was ready for her bridegroom’s coming she must have been a blaze of magnificence. She wore a wide skirt of cloth of gold with a raised pattern in bullion and no train, and her head was covered first with a close cap and then a round cap covered with pearls and fronted with black velvet; whilst her bodice was one glittering mass of precious stones. When swift messengers brought news that the King was coming, Anne mounted at the door of the tent a beautiful white palfrey; and surrounded by her servitors, each bearing upon his golden coat the black lion of Cleves, and followed by her train, she set forth to meet her husband.
Henry, unwieldy and lame as he was with a running ulcer in the leg, was as vain and fond of pomp as ever, and outdid his bride in splendour. His coat was of purple velvet cut like a frock, embroidered all over with a flat gold pattern interlined with narrow gold braid, and with gold lace laid crosswise over it all. A velvet overcoat surmounted the gorgeous garment, lined also with gold tissue, the sleeves and breast held together with great buttons of diamonds, rubies, and pearls. His sword and belt were covered with emeralds, and his bonnet and under-cap were “so rich in jewels that few men could value them”; whilst across his shoulders he wore a baldrick, composed of precious stones and pearls, that was the wonder of all beholders. The fat giant thus bedizened bestrode a great war-horse to match, and almost equally magnificent; and, preceded by heralds and trumpeters, followed by the great officers, the royal household and the bishops, and accompanied by the Duke Philip of Bavaria, just betrothed to the Princess Mary, Henry rode through the long lane of his velvet-clad admirers to meet Anne, hard by the cross upon Blackheath. When she approached him, he doffed his jewelled bonnet and bowed low; and then embraced her, whilst she, with every appearance of delight and duty, expressed her pleasure at meeting him. Thus, together, with their great cavalcades united, over five thousand horsemen strong, they rode in the waning light of a midwinter afternoon to Greenwich; and, as one who saw it but knew not the tragedy that lurked behind the splendour, exclaimed, “Oh! what a sight was this to see, so goodly a Prince and so noble a King to ride with so fair a lady of so goodly a stature, and so womanly a countenance, and especial of so good qualities. I think that no creature could see them but his heart rejoiced.”[202]
ANNE OF CLEVES
From a portrait by a German artist in St. John’s College, Oxford
There was one heart, at all events, that did not rejoice, and that was Henry’s. He went heavily through the ceremony of welcoming home his bride in the great hall at Greenwich, and then led her to her chamber; but no sooner had he got quit of her, than retiring to his own room he summoned Cromwell. “Well!” he said, “is it not as I told you? Say what they will, she is nothing like so fair as she was reported to be. She is well and seemly, but nothing else.” Cromwell, confused, could only mumble something about her having a queenly manner. But Henry wanted a way out of his bargain rather than reconciliation to it; and he ordered Cromwell to summon the Council at once—Norfolk, Suffolk, Cromwell, Cranmer, Fitzwilliam, and Tunstal—to consider the prior engagement made between Anne and the Duke of Lorraine’s son.[203] The question had already been discussed and disposed of, and the revival of it thus at the eleventh hour shows how desperate Henry was. The Council assembled immediately, and summoned the German envoys who had negotiated the marriage and were now in attendance on Anne. The poor men were thunderstruck at the point of an impediment to the marriage being raised then, and begged to be allowed to think the matter over till the next morning, Sunday. When they met the Council again in the morning, they could only protest that the prior covenant had only been a betrothal, which had never taken effect, and had been formally annulled. If there was any question about it, however, they offered to remain as prisoners in England until the original deed of revocation was sent from Cleves.
When this answer was carried to Henry he broke out angrily that he was not being well treated, and upbraided Cromwell for not finding a loophole for escape. He did not wish to marry the woman, he said. “If she had not come so far, and such great preparations made, and for fear of making a ruffle in the world—of driving her brother into the hands of the Emperor and the French King—he never would marry her.” Cromwell was apparently afraid to encourage him in the idea of repudiation, and said nothing; and after dinner the King again summoned the Council to his presence. To them he bitterly complained of having been deceived. Would the lady, he asked, make a formal protestation before notaries that she was free from all contracts? Of course she would, and did, as soon as she was asked; but Henry’s idea in demanding this is evident. If she had refused it would give a pretext for delay, but if she did as desired, and by any quibble the prior engagement was found to be valid, her protestation to the contrary would be good grounds for a divorce. But still Henry would much rather not have married her at all. “Oh! is there no other remedy?” he asked despairingly on Monday, after Anne had made her protestation. “Must I needs against my will put my neck into the yoke?” Cromwell could give him no comfort, and left him gloomy at the prospect of going through the ceremony on the morrow. On Tuesday morning, when he was apparelled for the wedding, as usual in a blaze of magnificence of crimson satin and cloth of gold, Cromwell entered his chamber on business. “My lord,” said Henry, “if it were not to satisfy the world and my realm, I would not do what I must do this day for any earthly thing.” But withal he went through it as best he might, though with heavy heart and gloomy countenance, and the unfortunate bride, we are told, was remarked to be “demure and sad,” as well she might be, when her husband and Cranmer placed upon her finger the wedding-ring with the ominous inscription, “God send me well to keep.”
Early the next morning Cromwell entered the King’s chamber between hope and fear, and found Henry frowning and sulky. “How does your Grace like the Queen?” he asked. Henry grumblingly, and not quite relevantly, replied that he, Cromwell, was not everybody; and then he broke out, “Surely, my lord, as you know, I liked her not well before, but now I like her much worse.” With an incredible grossness, and want of common decency, he then went into certain details of his wife’s physical qualities that had disgusted him and turned him against her. He did not believe, from certain peculiarities that he described, that she was a maid, he said; but so far as he was concerned, he was so “struck to the heart” that he had left her as good a maid as he had found her.[204] Nor was the King more reticent with others. He was free with his details to the gentlemen of his chamber, Denny, Heneage, and others, as to the signs which it pleased him to consider suspicious as touching his wife’s previous virtue, and protested that he never could, or would, consummate the marriage; though he professed later that for months after the wedding he did his best to overcome his repugnance, and lived constantly in contact with his wife. But he never lost sight of the hope of getting free. If he did not find means soon to do so, he said, he should have no more issue. His conscience told him—that tender conscience of his—that Anne was not his legal wife; and he turned to Cromwell for a remedy, and found none: for Cromwell knew that the breaking up of the Protestant union, upon which he had staked his future, would inevitably mean now the rise of his rivals and his own ruin.
He fought stoutly for his position, though Norfolk and Gardiner were often now at the King’s ear. His henchman, Dr. Barnes, who had gone to Germany as envoy during the marriage negotiations, was a Protestant, and in a sermon on justification by faith he violently attacked Gardiner. The latter, in spite of Cromwell and Cranmer, secured from the King an order that Barnes should humbly and publicly recant. He did so at Easter at the Spital, but at once repeated the offence, and he and two other clergymen who thought like him were burnt for heresy. Men began to shake their heads and look grave now as they spoke of Cromwell and Cranmer; but the Secretary stood sturdily, and in May seemed as if he would turn the tables upon his enemies. Once, indeed, he threatened the Duke of Norfolk roughly with the King’s displeasure, and at the opening of Parliament he took the lead as usual, expressing the King’s sorrow at the religious bitterness in the country, and demanding large supplies for the purposes of national defence.
But, though still apparently as powerful as ever, and more than ever overbearing, he dared not yet propose to the King a way out of the matrimonial tangle. Going home to Austin Friars from the sitting of Parliament on the 7th June, he told his new colleague, Wriothesley, that the thing that principally troubled him was that the King did not like the Queen, and that his marriage had never been consummated. Wriothesley, whose sympathies were then Catholic, suggested that “some way might be devised for the relief of the King.” “Ah!” sighed Cromwell, who knew what such a remedy would mean to him, “but it is a great matter.” The next day Wriothesley returned to the subject, and begged Cromwell to devise some means of relief for the King: “for if he remained in this grief and trouble they should all smart for it some day.” “Yes,” replied Cromwell, “it is true; but it is a great matter.” “Marry!” exclaimed Wriothesley, out of patience, “I grant that, but let a remedy be searched for.” But Cromwell had no remedy yet but one that would ruin himself, and that he dared not propose, so he shook his head sadly and changed the subject.[205]