Anne Boleyn: Henry VIII's Obsession (25 page)
For once, Henry was lost for words and, for a few days at least, did feel remorse, leaving Jane Seymour behind at Greenwich the next time the court moved. For Anne, it was an empty victory. She was still without a son and, with the death of Catherine of Aragon, who had unwittingly held Anne and Henry together, Anne knew that she was in a worse position than ever. Anne was always a great politician and she was determined to fight but, in February 1536, she knew that the cards were heavily stacked against her and that all the enemies she had made were lining up together in an attempt to bring her down.
SICK AND TIRED OF THE CONCUBINE
Anne’s miscarriage at the end of January 1536 put her in a precarious position and she was well aware of the danger that she might be put away as Catherine of Aragon had been, due to her lack of a son. Henry’s reaction to Anne’s miscarriage must have terrified her and Anne would have been aware throughout the early months of 1536, that her influence over her husband was fast slipping away and she tried everything she could to stop it.
Anne spent some time in seclusion following her miscarriage and, on her return to court, she found herself surrounded by rumour and speculation. According to Chapuys in February 1536 ‘for more than three months this king has not spoken ten times to the Concubine, and that when she miscarried he scarcely said anything to her’. While this is likely to have been an exaggeration, the fact that such rumours were flying around court must have been difficult for her. Anne had spent nearly ten years as the object of Henry’s devotion and, while this had waned somewhat following their marriage, he had never shown any signs of beginning a relationship as important to him as that with Anne. In early 1536, Anne, along with everyone else at court, would have been aware that Henry had a new love.
Anne had been aware that Henry had begun an affair with Jane Seymour before her miscarriage and, as before, she erupted into jealousy. Henry had given his new love a locket containing his picture which she wore proudly around her neck. This was too much for Anne and, on seeing it, she tore it from the lady’s neck so fiercely that she hurt her hand. Anne was angry with Henry and furious with his mistress and she had already claimed that the sight of this lady on Henry’s knee had caused her miscarriage. While Anne’s love for Henry had probably evaporated as quickly as his love for her once they experienced the realities of married life, she knew that she needed him and she knew that she had set a dangerous precedent. By early 1536, with no son and a record of miscarriages beginning to resemble that of Catherine of Aragon, Anne was very aware of the danger of the appearance of another Anne Boleyn in the king’s affections. Henry had had mistresses before of course, which Anne had barely been able to tolerate, but soon after her miscarriage she would have realised that Henry’s new love, Jane Seymour, was of a very different mettle to his more casual mistresses and that, using Anne’s own example, she was insisting on marriage or nothing.
In 1536 Jane Seymour was in her late twenties and a lady in Anne’s household. By all accounts, she was no beauty or wit and the fact that no marriage had been arranged for her suggests that she was considered no great prospect on the marriage market. While she is often portrayed as a woman of low intelligence and little ambition, in reality Jane Seymour was a very great danger to Anne and she was intelligent enough to know how to behave in order to attract and hold the king. She also accepted coaching from others in her attempt to become the next Anne Boleyn. By March 1536, Jane and her supporters were well aware of the king’s interest in her and she sought to portray herself as the exact opposite to Anne in order to hold the king’s interest. While Anne had been outspoken and fascinating during Henry’s courtship of her, Jane was meek and mild and conscious of her honour, all characteristics carefully chosen in order to present an appealing contrast to Anne for the king. Jane played this role to perfection and, according to Chapuys, she was given the perfect opportunity to prove her virtue when Henry:
‘Sent her a purse full of sovereigns, and with it a letter, and that the young lady, after kissing the letter, returned it unopened to the messenger, and throwing herself on her knees before him, begged the said messenger that he would pray the king on her part to consider that she was a gentlewoman of good and honourable parents, without reproach, and that she had no greater riches in the world than her honour, which she would not injure for a thousand deaths, and that if he wished to make her some present in money she begged it might be when God enabled her to make some honourable marriage’.
This was the performance of Jane’s life and it immediately attracted the king’s interest, as Anne’s own refusal to become his mistress had done before. Jane’s new protestations of modesty were in direct contrast to her earlier behaviour with the king and it seems likely that, until Anne’s miscarriage, the role she had attempted to gain was that of Henry’s mistress. Following the miscarriage, Anne still had no son to secure her position and Jane and her supporters realised that the role of queen was once again potentially available.
Jane’s message to the king certainly had the desired effect on Henry and his ‘love and desire towards the said lady was wonderfully increased’. Henry, pleased at the contrast he saw between Jane and Anne, swore that he loved her honourably and sent a message to Jane telling her that he would now only speak to her in the presence of a member of her family to prove his honourable intentions towards her. This was exactly what Jane Seymour wanted to hear and a few days later Cromwell obligingly moved from his rooms at court which were conveniently connected to Henry’s by means of a secret staircase. Jane’s eldest brother, Edward Seymour, and his wife moved into the apartments, allowing Henry unfettered access to his new sweetheart. Before long, Henry was also writing Jane love letters, as he had previously done for Anne. One letter survives and, while it is not as passionate as Henry’s letters to Anne in 1527, it does show clearly that the king now had a new love:
‘My dear friend and mistress, The bearer of these few lines from thy entirely devoted servant will deliver into thy fair hands a token of my affection for thee, hoping you will keep it for ever in your sincere love for me. Advertising you that there is a ballad made lately of great derision against me, which if you go abroad much and is seen by you I pray you pay no manner of regard to it. I am not at present informed who is the setter forth of this malignant writing, but if he is found he shall be straightly punished for it. For the things ye lacked I have minded my lord to supply them to you as soon as he can buy them. Thus hoping shortly to receive you in these arms. I end for the present. Your own loving servant and sovereign. HR’.
Jane always continued to portray herself as a virtuous maiden and Chapuys pointed out in one of his dispatches that she:
‘has been well taught for the most part by those intimate with the king, who hate the Concubine, that she must by no means comply with the King’s wishes except by way of marriage; in which she is quite firm. She is also advised to tell the king boldly how his marriage is detested by the people, and none consider it lawful’.
Anne still had her supporters at court and she was fully aware of Jane Seymour. According to Chapuys, this sent her into an ‘intense rage’, and there is no doubt that Anne saw through Jane’s professions of virtue. Just as Henry had been blind to any reports of Anne’s imperfections early in their courtship, in 1536 he was blind to the evidence that Jane had set her heart on being queen as firmly as Anne herself had done. In early 1536 Anne no longer had sufficient influence over Henry to have Jane sent away and she was forced to sit and grit her teeth and hope that Jane would simply disappear, as Catherine of Aragon had no doubt done with her.
While Jane Seymour was herself as ambitious as Anne had been, she also quickly built a strong party around her. In March, Henry made Edward Seymour a member of his privy chamber and Jane’s family were helping to coach her for her role as a future queen. Anne had also made many enemies during her time as queen and these disparate groups quickly fell in together behind Jane Seymour as a potential replacement for Anne. Chapuys was approached by his friend, the Marchioness of Exeter, to take action on behalf of Princess Mary and carefully weighed the situation before committing himself, writing to Charles V that:
‘The said Marchioness would like that I or someone else, on the part of your Majesty, should assist in the matter, and certainly it appears to me that if it succeed, it will be a great thing both for the security of the Princess and to remedy the heresies here, of which the Concubine is the cause and principal nurse, and also to pluck the King from such an abominable and more than incestuous marriage. The Princess would be very happy, even if she were excluded from her inheritance by male issue’.
The addition of Mary’s and imperial support to Jane’s cause was dangerous to Anne and worse was to come when Thomas Cromwell also set himself behind Jane in an attempt to oust Anne.
Anne could never have foreseen that such different parties as the Seymours, Mary and the imperial interests and Cromwell could ever join together and she therefore can never have realised just how dangerous her position was in early 1536, for all the whispering that surrounded her. She and Cromwell both had a shared interest in reform and they had been, if not allies exactly, proponents of the same cause. Cromwell, as the shrewd politician that he was, also recognised the need to serve the king’s every whim, and friendship with the king’s wife had formed part of that policy. Following Anne’s miscarriage and the rise of Jane Seymour, friendship with Anne would have looked a lot less necessary to Thomas Cromwell.
A contemporary of Anne, Alexander Ales, who was present at court during Anne’s last few months as queen, later claimed that Cromwell and Anne became enemies when Anne discovered that he was using religious reform in order to benefit his own financial interests. Anne was passionate about the reform and there may be some truth in Ales’s claim. It seems more likely that Cromwell and Anne had simply never been the firm allies that they were supposed to be. Anne had always found Cromwell a useful servant and she may not have realised that, while he was happy to do her bidding when she was in high favour, as the wind began to change he showed himself to be fully the king’s man. Certainly, by 1 April 1536 word had reached Chapuys that Anne and Cromwell were on bad terms and that a new marriage for Henry was spoken about.
Chapuys was certainly happy to exploit the division between Anne and Cromwell and in late March he dined with Cromwell, telling him that:
‘I had for some time forborne to visit him that he might not incur suspicion of his mistress [Anne] for the talk he had previously had with me, well remembering that he had previously told me that she would like to see his head cut off. This I could not forget for the love I bore him; and I would not but wish him a more gracious mistress and one more grateful for the inestimable services he had done the king, and that he must beware of enraging her, else he must never expect perfect reconciliation, in which case I hoped he would see it better than did the Cardinal’.
Cromwell had been a member of Wolsey’s household at the time of his fall and he well remembered the enmity of Anne towards the Cardinal and her ability to bring him down. Anne was often given to rages and she would scream and shout at people who displeased her. It is easy to see how she could have told Cromwell that she would have his head in one of her outbursts, a comment that she may have made to those who angered her on other occasions. The difference was that in 1536 she was in a uniquely vulnerable position. She was as sonless as Catherine of Aragon and, like her predecessor, she had lost much of the king’s affection. When Anne called for Cromwell’s head, it may only have served to set the clever minister thinking about ways to ensure his own safety, even if that was at the cost of the queen’s head instead.
In their conversation, Chapuys attempted to sound Cromwell out and discover exactly where the minister’s sympathies lay. When he spoke of Henry’s marriage to Anne, Cromwell stopped him and said that ‘he had never been cause of this marriage, although, seeing the king determined upon it, he had smoothed the way’. While the pair spoke, Chapuys noticed that Cromwell had his hand over his mouth in an attempt to either stop himself smiling or to conceal a smile that was already there. Through his smile, Cromwell insisted that Henry was committed to his marriage and intended to live chastely with Anne. Cromwell’s demeanour made it very clear to Chapuys that this was not, in fact, the case.
Although by March 1536, Henry certainly had no plans to live chastely with Anne, he was still very far from deciding to abandon his marriage and probably hoped that he would be able to persuade Jane Seymour to become his mistress. Henry had defied the Pope and the emperor in order to marry Anne and even after her miscarriage he was still committed to her as queen. The death of Catherine of Aragon in January had allowed both Anne and Henry to hope for a reconciliation with the emperor and Henry was determined that Catherine’s nephew would recognise the validity of his marriage.
Charles was certainly still determined that his aunt’s honour should not be damaged and he wrote to Chapuys in March on the subject, stating that his ambassador should not ‘treat anything to the prejudice of the late Queen’s honour, or her [Mary’s] legitimacy or right to the succession’. Charles had also recognised the prospect for friendship with England that was opened up by Catherine’s death and he instructed Chapuys to discuss an alliance and to find out what Anne would agree to. If Anne could have seen this letter, she would have been pleased to find this tacit acknowledgment of her presence by Catherine’s powerful nephew and by 1536 she was certainly ready to attempt to enter into an imperial alliance if one were possible. She would also have been concerned to see that, while Charles ordered Chapuys to consider Anne, he also instructed his ambassador to press the king to remarry if this was found to be his preference. Charles was prepared to do business with Anne if it would secure an alliance with England, but he was very far from being in favour of such a course.