Anne Boleyn: Henry VIII's Obsession (11 page)
Catherine continued, insisting that Henry had found her a virgin at their marriage, as well he knew. She begged him to let her remain as his wife. Finally, as a mortified Henry sat watching, she stood and left the hall. As Catherine was ordered to return she said ‘it makes no matter, for it is no impartial court for me, therefore I will not tarry’.
Catherine refused to return to court. Without the queen, Henry pushed Campeggio to give sentence, something that the Pope had instructed he could not give. Finally, when it became clear that the king wanted his judgment, Campeggio stood and said that he would give no judgment, revoking the case to Rome. Campeggio’s announcement caused uproar in the court and Suffolk roared that ‘Cardinalls never did good in England’. At that point, both Henry and Anne would have heartily agreed and, after two years of hoping, it was clear to them both that Cardinal Wolsey had failed in his promise to obtain the divorce.
THE NIGHT CROW
Anne Boleyn’s grudge against Cardinal Wolsey dated from his interference in her relationship with Henry Percy and it smouldered throughout the early years of her relationship with the king. Anne was prepared to work with Wolsey when she thought that he could help her achieve her marriage to the king, but she was never happy with the power of the Cardinal and she always intended to bring him down if she could. The debacle at Blackfriars finally provided Anne with this opportunity.
Although Anne was Wolsey’s enemy, she was fully aware of the king’s confidence in his first minister and the need to dissemble in her treatment of the Cardinal. Anne was nothing if not patient and she may even have seen a certain irony in the fact that Wolsey, who was considered to be the man best able to achieve the divorce, should help in bringing her to power. A number of letters from Anne to Wolsey survive showing that she was forced to suffer his presence. In one letter Anne wrote:
‘My lord,
After my most humble recommendation, this shall be to give unto your Grace, as I am most bound, my humble thanks for the great pain and travail that your Grace doth take in studying by your wisdom and great diligence how to bring to pass honourably the greatest wealth that is possible to come to any creature living, and in especial remembering how wretched and unworthy I am in company to his Highness, and for you I do know myself never to have deserved by deserts, that you should take this great pain for me, yet daily of your goodness I do perceive by all my friends, and though that I had no knowledge by them, the daily proof of your deeds doth declare your words and writing towards me to be true’.
It must have grated on Anne to write these words to her greatest enemy and she would also have known that any pains taken by Wolsey were for the king rather than any favour he felt towards her. Anne was prepared to keep up the pretence while it still looked possible for Wolsey to obtain the divorce and she continued by assuring the Cardinal that ‘next unto the king’s Grace, of one thing I make you full promise, to be assured to have it, and that is my hearty love unfeinedly during my life’. Both Anne and Wolsey would have been well aware of the insincerity behind Anne’s words but they both needed to keep up the pretence.
Anne also ensured that pressure was kept on Wolsey to keep working towards the divorce. In one letter, written whilst she was with Henry, Anne took the lead in writing to Wolsey before insisting that Henry add a postscript. In this letter, Anne again took a subservient tone which must have been difficult for her, writing that ‘I do know of the great pains and trouble that you have taken for me, both day and night’. She also claimed that she could never recompense such trouble sufficiently save ‘in loving you, next unto the king’s Grace, above all creatures living’. Once the pleasantries were over, Anne then pressed Wolsey for news in a manner which made it clear that only good news was expected ‘My lord, I do assure you, I do long to hear from you news of the legate; for I do hope, and they come from you, they shall be good; and I am sure you desire it as much as I, and more, and if it were possible, as I know it is not’.
While Wolsey is very unlikely to have desired Anne Boleyn’s marriage to the king, Henry’s postscript made it very clear just how far Anne’s influence over the king extended. The king wrote:
‘The writer of this letter would not cease, till she had caused me likewise to set to my hand, desiring you, though it be short, to take it in good part. I ensure you, there is neither of us, but that greatly desireth to see you, and much more joyous to hear that you have scaped this plague so well; trusting the fury thereof to be passed, specially with them that keepeth good diet, as I trust you do. The not hearing of the legate’s arrival in France, causeth us somewhat to muse; notwithstanding, we trust by your diligence and vigilancy (with the assistance of Almighty God) shortly to be eased out of that trouble’.
For Wolsey, the fact that Anne was so often with the king whilst he was absent must have been ominous and he resolved to try to cultivate Anne’s goodwill towards him. He may, perhaps, have believed that this was working and, in a later letter, Anne thanked him for a present that he had sent to her. She also wrote ‘I trust my lord to recompense part of your great pains; for the which I must require you in the meantime to accept my good will in the stead of the power’, ending ‘written with the hand of her that is most bound to be. Your humble and obedient servant Anne Boleyn’. If Wolsey believed that Anne had forgiven him, he was very much mistaken. She was happy to work with him while it looked as though he would help her achieve what she most desired but, following the debacle at Blackfriars, it became painfully clear to Anne that Wolsey could no longer assist her in securing the divorce.
Anne always blamed Wolsey for the loss of her betrothal to Henry Percy, a man that she may have been in love with, and she must have been further irked by the Cardinal’s failure to simply accept the fact of her growing dominance over the king. The loss of her betrothal was not the only issue over which Anne and Wolsey clashed and, time and again, they found themselves on different sides of an issue with only the king to bind them together.
One such conflict between Anne and Wolsey concerned the nunnery at Wilton. Although Anne escaped the sweating sickness relatively unscathed, her brother-in-law, William Carey, was not so lucky, dying during the same outbreak. Anne was not close to her sister but she promised Mary that she would do something for Carey’s family, approaching the king about her ‘sister’s matter’. Anne suggested to Henry that he appoint Carey’s sister Eleanor, who was a nun at Wilton, as abbess of the same house following the death of the former holder.
In her promotion of the candidacy of Eleanor Carey, Anne placed herself directly at odds with Cardinal Wolsey who petitioned for the election of the prioress, Isabel Jordan. By 1528 Anne felt sure enough of the king’s affections to risk an open conflict with Wolsey and Henry at first favoured the election of Eleanor Carey, presumably to please Anne. Wolsey was not content to allow himself to be beaten by Anne and he carried out an investigation into the nuns at Wilton. This was reported to the king who wrote in shocked tones to Anne setting out the reasons why Eleanor Carey could not become Abbess after all:
‘As touching the matter of Wylton my lord Cardinal hath had the nuns before him and examined them, Master Bell being present, which hath certified me that for a truth that she [Eleanor Carey] hath confessed herself (which we would have had abbess) to have had two children by two sundry priests and further since hath been kept by a servant of the Lord Broke that was, and that not long ago; wherefore I would not for all the gold in the world cloak your conscience nor mine to make her ruler of a house which is of so ungodly demeanour, nor I trust you would not that neither for brother nor sister I should so destain mine honour or conscience; and as touching the prioress or dame Ellenor’s eldest sister though there is not any evident case proved against them, and that the prioress is so old that of many years she could not be as she was named, yet notwithstanding, to do you pleasure I have done that neither of them shall have it; but that some good and well disposed woman shall have it’.
The revelation that Eleanor Carey had given birth to two children by two different priests may not have come as a complete surprise to Anne and she certainly cannot have been happy with Henry’s difficulties of conscience. She must have been annoyed that it was Wolsey who had been the ruin of Eleanor Carey’s candidacy although Anne was appeased to some extent by the king’s assurances that Wolsey’s candidate would also be denied the position. Anne’s annoyance would have quickly turned to fury when Wolsey disregarded the king’s command.
By 1528, Wolsey had been in power for nearly twenty years and he may have failed to recognise that the young and inexperienced king he had originally known had disappeared. Convinced that the prioress was the best candidate, he overruled both Anne and the king’s commands and appointed Isabel Jordan in return for her assurances that ‘I will in the mean season, by the advice of your chancellor, order my sisters in such religious wise and our monastery according to the rule of our religion, without any such resort as hath been of late accustomed’. Wolsey, accustomed to having pre-eminence in church matters in England, must have thought that he could easily explain away the appointment to the king and he was shocked by Henry’s reaction.
Henry was embarrassed and furious at the Cardinal’s actions and wrote angrily to Wolsey saying:
‘Methink it is not the right train of a trusty loving friend and servant, when the matter is put by the master’s consent into his arbitre and judgment (specially in a matter wherein his master hath both royalty and interest) to elect and choose a person who was by him defended; and yet another thing which must displeaseth me more, that is, to cloak your offence made by ignorance of my pleasure, saying that you expressly know not my determinate mind in that behalf’.
Henry would not accept Wolsey’s protestations of ignorance, pointing out to him that he had expressly said that ‘his pleasure is that in no wise the Prioress have it, nor yet Dame Elinor’s eldest sister for many considerations’. Henry knew how angry Anne would be to hear that the prioress had been elected and he was also embarrassed by the fact that, to Anne, Wolsey had made him look as though he was not master in his own kingdom. The tenor of Henry’s letter certainly frightened Wolsey and he replied immediately apologising and explaining his actions. This was sufficient for Henry and he wrote to Wolsey again saying ‘wherefore, my lord, seeing the humbleness of your submission, and though the case were much more heinous, I can be content for to remit it, being right glad, that, according to mine intent, my monitions and warnings have been benignly and lovingly accepted on your behalf’. Wolsey must have been relieved to receive Henry’s forgiveness and he would have felt that he had entirely escaped from any danger. However, for Anne, the continuing appointment of Isabel Jordan as Abbess of Wilton was a constant reminder of the Cardinal’s power and of her enmity towards him. In the Wilton affair, Wolsey consistently failed to appreciate Anne’s increasing political prominence and influence over the king, something which would later prove to his cost.
George Wyatt included a further incident in his
Life of Queen Anne
which shows something of the rivalry between Anne and the Cardinal. He placed this incident in his
Life
after Anne’s marriage which, given the Cardinal’s death in 1530, cannot have been the case. The details of the incident, although inaccurate in places, are likely to be largely correct and show clearly how Wolsey vied with Anne for the king’s favour. According to Wyatt, Anne Boleyn had acquired a copy of Tyndale’s
Obedience of a Christian Man,
a banned book which she then read, marking out passages that she thought would be of interest to the king. Anne then left the book by her window where it was picked up by one of her ladies. Anne’s lady was reading the book when her suitor came in to speak to her, taking the book from her to see what it was. At that moment, Anne called her lady to her, leaving the suitor alone with the book. After he waited for the lady for some time, he left, taking the book with him as he believed it to be hers.
The suitor met a gentleman of Wolsey’s household as he was walking and this gentleman borrowed the book and showed it to Wolsey. Wolsey, seeing what it was, immediately sent for the suitor and questioned him about how he had come by a banned book. Wolsey decided to tell the king what he had learned and:
‘in which meantime the suitor delivered the lady what had fallen out, and she also to the queen [Anne], who, for her wisdom knowing more what might grow thereupon, without delay went and imparted the matter to the king and showed him the points that she had noted with her finger. And she was but newly come from the king, but the Cardinal came in with the book in his hands to make complaint of certain points in which he knew the king would not like of, and withal to take occasion with him against those that countenanced such books in general, and specially women, and as might be thought with mind to go farther against the queen more directly if he had perceived the king agreeable to his meaning’.
Henry, looking through the book and seeing the notes that Anne had written ‘turned the more to hasten his [Wolsey’s] ruin’.
Once again, Wolsey badly misjudged Anne’s influence over the king and it is possible that he never fully understood the power that she wielded. According to a number of sources, an astrologer had once told Wolsey that he would be destroyed by a woman and he assumed that this must be Catherine of Aragon as she always ‘showed but little love towards him’. Wolsey was correct in assuming that Catherine was his enemy and, in their view of the Cardinal if in nothing else, Anne and Catherine were entirely in agreement. Catherine also went out of her way to make things difficult for Wolsey, for example, immediately after the trial at Blackfriars, both Wolsey and Campeggio went to see Catherine at Bridewell, presumably in a last attempt to persuade her to submit to the divorce. Catherine was determined to cause as much embarrassment to the Cardinals as possible and, when Wolsey asked to speak to her in private, she refused saying that there was nothing that he could say to her that she would not want everyone present to hear. Wolsey then attempted to speak to Catherine in Latin before she stopped him and told him to speak in English. Wolsey was embarrassed and frustrated by Catherine’s enmity towards him but if he thought that she had the power to bring him down then he was very much mistaken. The woman who was responsible for the fall of Wolsey was Anne Boleyn, not Catherine of Aragon.