Six Wives (54 page)

    'Do you not remember', the King asked Campana, 'that the first time you spoke to me you told me that his Holiness would do for me all he could
etiam de plenitudine potestatis
?' Campana said he recalled the occasion perfectly but denied 'the form of words specified'.Wolsey tried to refresh his memory. But Campana stuck to his guns. Then the letters from Rome were thrust under his nose and they 'wished to read the very words which the ambassadors had read in [Campeggio's] letter'.

    Henry blustered furiously. But, as the envoys took leave, he besought their help. 'Be good friends to me', he begged, 'and have pity on me.'
²³

    It was to this that Wolsey's advice had brought him.

    Also on the night of the 17th, Suffolk, who, Du Bellay heard, had been substituted for Russell as a result of Anne's direct intervention, had his final audience with Henry VIII before leaving for France. His 'secret charge' was to pump Francis I on Wolsey's reliability on the Divorce. In his reply Francis damned Wolsey with faint praise and subtle innuendo. Wolsey wanted the Divorce, 'for he loveth not the Queen'. But Henry should 'not put too much trust in no man, whereby he may be deceived'. Instead, he should 'look substantially upon his matters himself '. And, above all, he should remember that Wolsey 'had a marvellous intelligence with the Pope, and in Rome, and also with the Cardinal Campeggio'. Which, Francis added mischievously, made it all the stranger that neither Clement nor Campeggio were doing what Henry wanted.
²⁴

    From this moment, probably, Wolsey was finished. Or he would be, if Anne had her way.

B
ut Anne could not destroy Wolsey just yet – if, indeed, Henry would let her destroy him at all.

          First, the Legatine Trial at Blackfriars had to be gone through. Then, after the abrupt adjournment on 23 July, the proceedings had to be brought to a seemly conclusion. This was easier said than done, and it took two months to find a formula that satisfied both Catherine's quest for certainty and Henry's determination to preserve his kingly dignity.

* * *

While this dragged on, Wolsey enjoyed the twilight of power. He received and wrote letters. He kept the machinery of government ticking over. And he proffered advice, which was received more or less graciously. But the real foundation of his authority – Henry's favour – had gone.

    The minister had last seen his King on 14–16 August 1529 at Tyttenhanger, when Henry's terms for agreeing to the winding up of the Legatine Court dominated the conversation. Thereafter, though he pressed his hospitality on the King and was often only a few miles distant, he was forbidden the Court. The fact soon became notorious, and fed, as it was intended to, rumours of his impending fall. The Cardinal, the new Imperial ambassador reported on 21 September, 'was under sentence of exile from the Court, and ordered to reside three miles away from it, and not to appear unless summoned'. Probably there was nothing so formal as a 'sentence of exile'. But the consequences were the same and when on about 10 September Wolsey had begged a personal audience as he had something to say that was better in speech than on paper, he was sharply told not to trouble the King with false mysteries and to write the matter
briefly and under clear heads
.

    This stylistic requirement, apparently innocent in itself, was possibly the cruellest blow of all. Once, Wolsey's orotund and prolix style, for which he was notorious, had charmed the King; now, he was told, it merely bored him.
¹

    Meanwhile at Court, that magic citadel into which Wolsey would never again freely enter, a new government was forming. Its work-horse was to be Stephen Gardiner, Wolsey's former Secretary, who had expiated his past by the fervour with which he worshipped Anne's rising sun. As soon as the Blackfriars Trial was over, he was appointed royal Secretary in place of the more or less permanently absentee Knight. And on 28 July, as he proudly wrote to his friend Peter Vannes, he went off to Court at Greenwich to take up his appointment.
²

    Wolsey's initial expectation, clearly, was that the new Secretary would, like his predecessors, act primarily as intermediary between himself and the King as equipollent powers. Henry had other ideas: this time his Secretary would be his alone. So on 28 July, when he assigned Gardiner his lodgings at Court and his fees, he gave him special orders not to absent himself. He then drove home his command with a tag taken from the parable of the wise and foolish virgins. Be vigilant, he warned him, for 'you know neither the day or the hour'.
³

    Gardiner, of course, had no intention of proving a foolish virgin and he resisted all of Wolsey's blandishments to lure him into visiting him. He 'would gladly come to Wolsey', he informed him in one letter, 'but dares not'. 'I should have come myself ', he wrote in another, 'but the King's Highness specially commanded me to tarry.'
⁴

    Slowly and unwillingly, the truth dawned on Wolsey: he was being boycotted by the King's new ministers on the King's own orders.

* * *

Gardiner, as Du Bellay recognised, had the talent to turn, in time, into another Wolsey. But in 1529 he was barely out of his apprenticeship. The real locus of power is shown, instead, in the first item of business Gardiner transacted for Henry. This was to act as intermediary in the negotiations about the future of the wealthy and powerful princebishopric of Durham.

    Durham had been vacant since Wolsey had formally exchanged it on 8 February 1529 for the even more valuable see of Winchester. The vacancy presented a double opportunity for the Crown. While the see remained empty, its 'temporalities' (as its landed income was known) reverted to the King. The sums involved were vast: Durham's gross receipts totalled £3,200, while about £2,400 was actually paid net into the bishop's coffers. When, on the other hand, in the fullness of time the bishopric was filled, it would be a plum piece of patronage, to be bestowed carefully and in expectation of some commensurate gain for the government. In the circumstances of 1529, this meant only one thing: Durham would be used to further the Great Matter.
⁵

    The King first, as we have already seen, dangled it as bait in front of Campeggio. But Campeggio, despite his Bolognese bourgeois values, managed to resist. Henry then swung, as he increasingly would, from one extreme to another. Campeggio burned his English boats when he adjourned the Legantine Trial on 23 July. A few days later, Henry gave the temporalities to Thomas Boleyn, now Lord Rochford.

    The gesture was perfectly calculated, both practically and symbolically. At a stroke, it gave Anne Boleyn's father, who, as Lord Rochford, was still only a junior member of the peerage, the magnate income and status that was necessary for him both as the King's future father-in-law and (if both Anne and her father had their way) as his new first minister as well. It also supplied him with a suitably grand London residence in the form of Durham House. This had been Catherine's home during the first years of her widowhood after Arthur's death; more recently, it had served as Wolsey's temporary London house during the rebuilding of York Place. Henceforward, it would be the headquarters of Boleyn power in the capital.
⁶

    But the symbolic effect was at least as important. Back at Easter, Henry had teased Campeggio about confiscating the goods of the Church. Now he showed that he was in earnest. And the first victim, appropriately enough, was Wolsey.

    The details were set out in Gardiner's letter to his former master of (probably) Sunday, 1 August. Wolsey had already been informed of the King's decision about Durham. Once (as with the choice of an Abbess for Wilton) he would have fought tooth and nail. But the fight had gone out of Wolsey and he fell over himself to be co-operative. He had always, he told Henry, regarded the last half-year's rental income for Durham as due to the King, not to himself. So far, he continued, he had received nothing. But, he informed Thomas Boleyn separately, he would now write to his former officials in Durham ordering them to hand over direct the rents payable on Lady Day (22 March) 1529.
⁷

    This eagerness to please gave Thomas Boleyn pause. He thanked Wolsey for his offer but declined it through Gardiner. 'He does not wish it to be known', Gardiner explained, 'that he had laboured for that half year's rent.' Instead, 'he would be content to receive it from Wolsey, without making business with his officers for the receipt'. At first sight, this looks like a piece of scrupulosity on Thomas Boleyn's part. He already had an ugly reputation for greed and was, it appears, unwilling to add to it. But Gardiner glossed the proposal very differently and made clear that it was in fact an ultimatum. Thomas Boleyn was not prepared to wait for the rents to trickle in and be shipped from the north. Instead, he wanted cash. Now. Or at least tomorrow – when, Gardiner advised Wolsey, 'he had better make some arrangement' for payment. Thomas Boleyn had also calculated the amount to the last hundred pounds. 'Rochford', Gardiner reported, 'reckons it at MCC [£1200].' This, as we have seen, is exactly half of the expected net receipts of the bishopric. Anne's father can have arrived at the figure only by checking the records.

* * *

Alongside Lord Rochford, the other key members of the new Council were the two Dukes, Norfolk and Suffolk. They, perhaps, belonged more to the dignified than the efficient part of the administration. But their rank gave them an automatic weight. Norfolk also drew strength from his role as Anne's uncle and his assiduity at business. Suffolk, in contrast, though idle, was even closer to Henry. But his relations with Anne were awkward. And his wife, Mary, the King's sister, frankly hated her. Caught between his friendship with Henry and his increasing enmity with Anne, Suffolk acts as a litmus test of power during these months.
⁸

    The new political world that emerged in the summer of 1529 also had a new observer. This was Eustace Chapuys, who replaced Inigo de Mendoza as the Imperial ambassador to Henry VIII.

    The contrast could scarcely have been greater. Mendoza was a Spanish bishop, fervent in his Catholicism and equally fierce in his national pride. Chapuys, in contrast, was that altogether cooler figure, a Savoyard lawyer. Savoy was one of the debatable lands of Europe: linguistically, it was suspended between French and Italian; while politically it was disputed between the kingdom of France to the west and the Italian territories of Charles V to the east. Polyglot and polyvalent in his identities, Chapuys was the perfect servant for the multi-national, multi-lingual empire of Charles V, who himself (it was said) spoke French to his councillors and his wife, Spanish to his God, and German to his dogs. Faced with this choice, Chapuys sensibly opted to write his despatches to the Emperor in French. He also preferred to speak in French 'being the language most in use' to Henry 'which the King understands and speaks best'.
⁹

    In terms of his personal history, therefore, Chapuys seems the very embodiment of the Renaissance revolution in diplomacy which has been described by historians such as Garrett Mattingly. He was also equipped with conciliatory instructions and was warned by Catherine herself that too open zeal on her behalf could only make her predicament worse.

    Nevertheless, once settled in England, Chapuys threw Catherine's advice to the winds. Soon, his heart was ruling his head, and he became the Queen's partisan as whole-heartedly and intemperately as Mendoza had been. And he was correspondingly savage about Anne Boleyn. No word was too coarse for her; no motive too low; no action too immoral. She was
la putaine
(the whore); a vengeful harpy, who harried her opponents from the Court; a murderess, in thought if not in deed, who would not stop at poison to rid herself of her rival Catherine; and, above all, a heretic, who was at once the bitterest and the most dangerous enemy of the Faith in England.

    But if Chapuys hated Anne, he was also fascinated by her. He reported her every word and action and collected every tit-bit and scrap of gossip about her. Mostly it was scurrilous. But occasionally, despite his better judgement, he found himself impressed by her courage and strength of will. And he had the honesty to report this too. The result is paradoxical: the despatches of one of her greatest opponents provide the most vivid picture of Anne's character and her role in events. The picture, too, is surprisingly nuanced. There is light and shade. There is even humour. And, above all, there is colour.

    So Chapuys's portrait is plausible. It is even seductive. But is it to be believed?

    Understandably, Chapuys's open, violent prejudice against Anne has led some historians to dismiss his evidence almost in its entirety. This, however, is a mistake. There is in principle no reason why a person's enemies should be less likely to tell the truth about him than his friends. The former exhibit one set of prejudices; the latter another. And both kinds of testimony should be handled accordingly. There is also a more particular point. For Chapuys, despite his evident bias, was careful about his sources. He usually gives the names of his informants and, on inspection, they turn out to be an impressive bunch. They include leading councillors and courtiers, as well as intimate hangers-on about the great, such as doctors and priests. All were in a position to see and hear the incidents they reported, and frequently they corroborate each other. Where this happens, Chapuys is to be believed. Elsewhere, in view of his demonstrable reliability, I have given him the benefit of the doubt. And, on the occasions where I have not, I try to indicate my reasons.

* * *