[53] The dispensation asked for was to permit Henry to marry a woman, even if she stood in the first degree of affinity, “either by reason of licit or illicit connection,” provided she was not the widow of his deceased brother. This could only refer to the fact that Mary Boleyn, Anne’s sister, had been his mistress, and that Henry desired to provide against all risk of a disputed succession arising out of the invalidity of the proposed marriage. By the canon law previous to 1533 no difference had been made between legitimate and illegitimate intercourse so far as concerned the forbidden degrees of affinity between husband and wife. In that year (1533) when Henry’s marriage with Anne had just been celebrated, an Act of Parliament was passed setting forth a list of forbidden degrees for husband and wife, and in this the affinities by reason of illicit intercourse were omitted. In 1536, when Anne was doomed, another Act was passed ordering every man who had married the sister of a former mistress to separate from her and forbidding such marriages in future. Before Henry’s marriage with Anne, Sir George Throgmorton mentioned to him the common belief that Henry had carried on a liaison with both the stepmother and the sister of Anne. “Never with the mother,” replied the King; “nor with the sister either,” added Cromwell. But most people will conclude that the King’s remark was an admission that Mary Boleyn was his mistress. (Friedmann’s “Anne Boleyn,” Appendix B.)
[54] It would not be fair to accept as gospel the unsupported assertions of the enemies of Anne with regard to her light behaviour before marriage, though they are numerous and circumstantial, but Wyatt’s own story of his snatching a locket from her and wearing it under his doublet, by which Henry’s jealousy was aroused, gives us the clue to the meaning of another contemporary statement (Chronicle of Henry VIII., edited by the writer), to the effect that Wyatt, who was a great friend of the King, and was one of those accused at the time of Anne’s fall, when confronted with Cromwell, privately told him to remind the King of the warning he gave him about Anne before the marriage. Chapuys, also, writing at the time when Anne was in the highest favour (1530), told the Emperor that she had been accused by the Duke of Suffolk of undue familiarity with “a gentleman who on a former occasion had been banished on suspicion.” This might apply either to Percy or Wyatt. All authorities agree that her demeanour was not usually modest or decorous.
[55] Calendar Henry VIII., vol. 4, part 2.
[56] Not content with her Howard descent through her mother, Anne, or rather her father, had caused a bogus pedigree to be drawn up by which the city mercer who had been his grandfather was represented as being of noble Norman blood. The Duchess of Norfolk was scornful and indignant, and gave to Anne “a piece of her mind” on the subject, greatly to Henry’s annoyance. (Spanish Calendar Henry VIII., vol. 4, part 2.)
[57] They took with them a love-letter from the King to Anne which is still extant (Calendar Henry VIII., vol. 4, part 2). He tells her that “they were despatched with as many things to compass our matter as wit could imagine,” and he trusts that he and his sweetheart will shortly have their desired end. “This would be more to my heart’s ease and quietness of mind than anything in the world.... Keep him (i.e. Gardiner) not too long with you, but desire him for your sake to make the more speed; for the sooner we have word of him the sooner shall our matter come to pass. And thus upon trust of your short repair to London I make end of my letter, mine own sweetheart. Written with the hand of him which desireth as much to be yours as you do to have him.” Gardiner also took with him Henry’s book justifying his view of the invalidity of his marriage. A good description of the Pope’s cautious attitude whilst he read this production is contained in Gardiner’s letter from Orvieto, 31st March 1528. (Henry VIII. Calendar, vol. 4, part 2.)
[58] Hall tells a curious and circumstantial story that the declaration of war, which led to the confiscation of great quantities of English property in the imperial dominions, was brought about purely by a trick of Wolsey, his intention being to sacrifice Clarencieux Herald, who was sent to Spain with the defiance. Clarencieux, however, learnt of the intention as he passed through Bayonne on his way home, and found means through Nicholas Carew to see the King at Hampton Court before Wolsey knew of his return. When he had shown Henry by the Cardinal’s own letters that the grounds for the declaration of war had been invented by the latter, the King burst out angrily: “O Lorde Jesu! he that I trusted moste told me all these things contrary. Well, Clarencieux, I will be no more of so light credence hereafter, for now I see perfectly that I am made to believe the thing that never was done.” Hall continues that the King was closeted with Wolsey, from which audience the Cardinal came “not very mery, and after that time the Kyng mistrusted hym ever after.” This must have been in April 1528.
[59] For Erasmus’ letter see Calendar Henry VIII., vol. 4, part 2, and for Vives’ letter see “Vives Opera,” vol. 7.
[60] The Pope was told that there were certain secret reasons which could not be committed to writing why the marriage should be dissolved, the Queen “suffering from certain diseases defying all remedy, for which, as well as other reasons, the King would never again live with her as his wife.”
[61] This was written before the death of the courtiers already mentioned.
[62] See the letters on the question of the appointment of the Abbess of Wilton in Fiddes’ “Life of Wolsey,” and the Calendar Henry VIII., vol. 4, part 2, &c.