Six Wives (76 page)
Authors: David Starkey
What struck Cranmer, like all other observers, was 'the good order' of the event. The service was so efficient 'that meat or drink nor anything else, needed not to be called for' – 'which', as the chronicler Hall noted, 'in so great a multitude was a marvel'. The food was likewise excellent – or at least expensive: 'there could be devised no more costly dishes nor subtleties'. Even more impressive, perhaps, was the discipline imposed on the company (especially after all that food and drink). For at the end of the meal everybody was required 'to rise and to stand still in their places' while the Queen washed: those seated with their backs to the wall stood on the benches, while the rest stood in front of the tables.
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Two people (apart from Anne herself) took particular satisfaction in all this: Cromwell, sitting below the lords in a specially designed crimson outfit furred with miniver, and Henry, who, accompanied by the French and Venetian ambassadors, watched the proceedings from a latticed viewing platform, built out from St Stephen's cloister. From the platform he had an excellent view of the ladies, who had all been seated facing him 'on the left side of the table along, and none on the right side'.
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After Anne had washed, there came a final round of ceremonies. The Lord Mayor offered her a gold cup of wine. She drank the wine and then gave the cup to the Mayor, with her thanks. Then, at the entry to her chamber, she presented the canopy, which the Barons of the Cinque Ports had borne over her during all the ceremonial processions, to the bearers, again 'with her great thanks'. As she was withdrawing the judges too knelt in a body to her and once more she said to them: 'I thank you for all the honour you have done me today'.
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The next time she spoke to the judges, it would be in the Tower, when she was on trial for her life.
By now it was 6 o'clock. She had been on show for ten hours and still there were the coronation jousts to sit through on the following day. It would have tested anyone's stamina and she, we must remember, was six months' pregnant.
* * *
Naturally, there were dissenters. And their feelings were brilliantly captured in a paper which may be Chapuys's report to Charles's minister, Granvelle. No one in the crowd would kneel, doff their caps and cry 'God Save the Queen'; the royal cipher 'HA', for Henry and Anne, was wilfully misinterpreted as 'Ha, ha!'; 'the crown became her very ill, and a wart disfigured her very much'. And so on. No doubt some people saw the event in this light and said such things. But at this stage they were a minority and probably a small one. For Anne was visibly, as Cranmer reported, 'somewhat big with child'. And if, as everybody confidently predicted, the child was a boy, it would be the heir of England and Anne would be impregnable.
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A few, like More, were conscientious (or fanatical) enough to ignore these calculations. Well-wishers (including Gardiner) sent More £20 to buy a new gown, but still he stayed away.
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The rest, however, knelt to the Queen and waited for the birth of her child.
63. Christening
T
he person who was most eager for Anne's child was, of course, Henry. He was forty-two. Mary, his only surviving child, had been born seventeen years previously. And Henry was desperate for another. Above all, he was desperate for a son. So Chapuys touched the rawest of nerves when, just after the coronation, he told the King that he should be content with Mary as his heir. 'I know better', Henry replied, 'I wish to have children.' But children could not be guaranteed, Chapuys coolly pointed out, even with a new wife. That was the last straw for the King. 'Am I not a man a man like any other? Am I not a man, a man like any other?' Henry burst out, repeating the question three times.
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he person who was most eager for Anne's child was, of course, Henry. He was forty-two. Mary, his only surviving child, had been born seventeen years previously. And Henry was desperate for another. Above all, he was desperate for a son. So Chapuys touched the rawest of nerves when, just after the coronation, he told the King that he should be content with Mary as his heir. 'I know better', Henry replied, 'I wish to have children.' But children could not be guaranteed, Chapuys coolly pointed out, even with a new wife. That was the last straw for the King. 'Am I not a man a man like any other? Am I not a man, a man like any other?' Henry burst out, repeating the question three times.
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Here indeed was the man behind the King. The King longed to give his kingdom an heir; the man was even more desperate to prove his continued virility.
And it rested on Anne, and Anne alone, to satisfy both King and man.
* * *
For the moment, however, Anne behaved as though she had not a care in the world. Her coronation had been a triumph, whatever her detractors might say. And she and her women were determined to celebrate, as Vice-chamberlain Baynton informed Rochford, who was on Embassy in France. 'As for pastime in the Queen's Chamber', Baynton wrote only a week after the ceremony, '[there] was never more'. 'If any of you', he continued with rough humour, 'that be now departed have any ladies that they thought favoured you, and somewhat would mourn at parting of their servants, I can no whit perceive the same by their dancing and pastime that they do use here.'
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Some six weeks later, however, preparations for the birth were underway in earnest. Anne and Henry had spent their post-coronation honeymoon at Greenwich, which, like the Tower and York Place, had been extensively refurbished for Anne. It had also been decided that Anne would 'take to her Chamber' there: Greenwich was Henry's own birthplace and his mother's favourite palace, and the omens were good.
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But first both Henry and Anne took a break. They left Greenwich at the end of June and moved by water, in slow stages and with lengthy pauses at York Place and Chertsey, to Windsor, where they arrived on 17 July. Then they went their separate ways. The new Queen remained at Windsor, while Henry, despite his ambitions for fatherhood, absented himself on a short Progress, staying with his courtier friends and hunting their parks. He was never very distant (Guildford was the farthest point he reached) and the Progress lasted only a month. But it was the first time that Henry and Anne had been apart since 1529 and the separation was enough to set tongues wagging. 'The long time the King has been away from the Lady', reported Chapuys hopefully, '[suggested] that he has begun to repent'.
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The rumours were moonshine, of course. Instead, all the couple's energies were focused on the forthcoming birth. On 24 July, Mountjoy, Catherine's Chamberlain, who had seen it all so many times before, wrote to Cromwell to hand over the baton. 'I send you', he wrote, 'certain remembrances of things to be provided against the Queen's taking her Chamber, of which I had experience when I occupied the room [position] . . . Please send it to [Anne's] Chamberlain.'
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In fact, Cromwell had matters in hand already and, soon after Anne vacated her apartments at Greenwich, the builders moved in to prepare them for her confinement. The workmen built 'a false roof in the Queen's Bedchamber for to seal it and hang it with cloth of arras'. They also constructed 'a cupboard of state . . . for the Queen's plate to stand on' in the Bedchamber, together with an altar, a platform and a stool where the Queen could sit during her devotions. Finally, they erected a 'great bed of state' in her Presence Chamber, or Throne Room.
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Meanwhile Anne was making her characteristic contribution to the preparations. Catherine, apparently, had brought with her from Spain 'a very rich triumphal cloth . . . to wrap up her children with at baptism'. Anne determined that the cloth, like Catherine's jewels and Catherine's barge, should be hers, and she got Henry to make the request. Catherine reacted with a predictable mixture of indignation and horror: 'It has not pleased God', she said, '[that] she should be so ill-advised as to grant any favour in a case so horrible and abominable.'
The source is Chapuys, and from what we know of both women, his story seems all too likely to be true. But it cannot be independently vouched for. On the other hand, Catherine certainly clung on to other tokens of her many unhappy encounters with childbed. Among her goods stored at Baynard's Castle, her principal London residence, were the 'Counterpanes [of state] of tissue [of cloth of gold], furred with powered ermine, provided for [the ex-Queen] what time she lay in childbed'. Similarly, she had kept the 'necessaries, provided for . . . child-bed'. They included three smocks of fine Holland cloth, two petticoats and three breast cloths. There were also items for the baby, such as two rollers or swaddling bands and 'a lawn [fine linen or cambric cloth], to cover a child, fringed with gold'. The latter sounds like the 'very rich triumphal cloth' which Anne had coveted. But it can hardly be the same, since, when she had the opportunity, she did not bother to take it for herself.
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* * *
Henry, for his part, was thriving on the prospect of renewed fatherhood. 'The King's Highness is merry and in good health,' reported Sir John Russell on 6 August. Indeed, he continued, 'I never saw him merrier of a great while than he is now; and the best pastime in hunting of red deer that I have seen.' But, within a week, the party would return to Windsor, 'and soon after the Queen removeth from thence to Greenwich where her Grace taketh her chamber'. Once again, the river journey was done by easy stages. Henry rejoined the Queen at Windsor according to plan on the 17th. On the 21st they removed to York Place and on the 26th they went to Greenwich.
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Anne's confinement now began. Her Chamberlain, Lord Burgh, briefed by Mountjoy, offered the pledge, unheard at Court for over a dozen years, 'to the Queen's good hour'. The procession formed and accompanied Anne towards her Chamber. They passed the great bed of state. This Anne had turned into another triumph over her fallen rival. For hung on the frame constructed by the carpenters, were the ceiler, tester and counterpane, all 'richly embroidered upon crimson velvet', of the 'Bed of Alençon'.
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According to Chapuys, the bed had formed part of the ransom of the Duke of Alençon who had been captured at the Battle of Verneuil in 1424. And certainly a bed of this name was carefully kept among the royal treasures, with its precious stuff protected by '16 yards of old red cotton to fold the same in'. Now why should Anne so want this magnificent but ancient relic? For Chapuys its opulence was grounds enough. As well, Anne may have been interested in its French associations.
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But I would guess that there was a livelier motive. Was Anne confusing Alençon with that other French Duke captured by the English, Longueville? Longueville was the trophy of Henry's victory at the Battle of the Spurs in 1513 and the King had sent him back to England as a pledge of his love for Catherine. Meanwhile, Catherine's forces won the much greater victory of Flodden; and Catherine, as we have seen, was able to reply proudly to her husband that, for his French Duke, she sent him the coat of the dead King of Scots. It was Catherine's finest hour in England. Had Anne decided that the 'Bed of Alençon' was its symbol and that now, at the time of
her
finest hour, she would persuade Henry to let her appropriate it for herself?
her
finest hour, she would persuade Henry to let her appropriate it for herself?
It seems a real possibility.
At the Chamber door, the Chamberlain and other gentlemen stood aside. Anne entered. She had wanted Catherine's place and Catherine's possessions. Now she had them. Less desirably, she also faced Catherine's predicament. Would she, unlike Catherine, deliver?
What made the pressure worse, probably, was Henry's serene confidence. 'His physicians and astrologers', Chapuys reported, had told him that it was 'certain . . . that the Lady would bear a son'. The King clearly believed them and had made arrangements accordingly. He had already started planning the celebratory jousts. The French were approached to send a 'notable personage' to represent Francis I at the christening of the Prince. And the royal clerks prepared circular letters announcing the 'deliverance and bringing forth of a Prince' and requiring the addressees to 'pray for the good health, prosperity and continual preservation of the said Prince'. The letters were written in Anne's name and sealed with the Queen's signet, and they needed only the date to be filled in.
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* * *
Chapuys was writing on 3 September, a week after Anne had taken to her Chamber. But just before she stepped into this other, female world, Chapuys reported, Henry and Anne had their first quarrel. It was, needless to say, about another woman – perhaps indeed one of the Court beauties whom Henry had had such opportunity to scrutinise at Anne's coronation banquet. In response, Anne, 'full of jealousy . . . used some words to the King at which he was displeased'. And this time Henry did not swallow his displeasure. Instead, he told her 'that she must shut her eyes, and endure as her betters had done'. And he added a threat: 'she ought to know that it was in his power to humble her again in a moment more than he had exalted her'.
Anne was finding out the difference between being a mistress and a wife. And she did not like it. There was 'a grudge' (a sulk) and Henry did not speak to her for two or three days.
Chapuys, naturally, was gleeful. But he was wise enough in the ways of the world to warn the Emperor about taking the story too seriously. 'No doubt these things are lovers' quarrels,' he cautioned, which blow over almost as soon as they have begun.
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* * *
The Royal Book
specified only that the Queen should take her Chamber 'when it pleaseth [her]'. But a confinement of some weeks was usual. However, after only twelve days, Anne's labour began. Either her doctors had miscalculated or the baby was premature. The former seems the more likely as the delivery was smooth and the baby, born between 3 and 4 p.m. on Sunday, 7 September, was 'fair' and healthy. Henry had everything he wanted.
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specified only that the Queen should take her Chamber 'when it pleaseth [her]'. But a confinement of some weeks was usual. However, after only twelve days, Anne's labour began. Either her doctors had miscalculated or the baby was premature. The former seems the more likely as the delivery was smooth and the baby, born between 3 and 4 p.m. on Sunday, 7 September, was 'fair' and healthy. Henry had everything he wanted.
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Except that the baby was a girl.
* * *
We know nothing of the immediate response of either Anne or Henry. But it is certain that the baby's gender was a heavy blow. On no account, however, could they give their opponents the satisfaction of showing their disappointment. So they carried on regardless. The pre-prepared letters announcing the birth were sent out, with the word 'Prince' altered to 'Princes[s]' with a stroke of the pen. And arrangements for a magnificent public christening were put into immediate effect. It would take place three days after the birth, on the afternoon of Wednesday, 10 September. Once more, the Lord Mayor, aldermen and common councillors of London were summoned in a body to Greenwich. The French ambassadors were invited. Only one thing – the planned celebratory jousts – was cancelled.
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