The Boleyn Women: The Tudor Femmes Fatales Who Changed English History (20 page)

Once the ceremony was over Anne and Henry began to prepare for the birth of their child. That summer, the annual progress was curtailed due to Anne’s advancing pregnancy and, instead, she and her ladies spent much time enjoying entertainments in her chambers.
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Anne’s rivalry with Catherine of Aragon had not ceased with her predecessor’s banishment and she asked Henry to send to his former wife to demand a rich triumphal cloth which she had brought from Spain to be used as a christening robe.
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Not surprisingly, Catherine refused to hand over her personal property, declaring that she would not grant such a favour ‘in a case so horrible and abominable’. Anne must have been angered by her predecessor’s refusal, but she can hardly have been surprised. She soon had other things to worry about when it emerged that Henry had taken advantage of her pregnancy to take a mistress, as he had so often done before during his first wife’s pregnancies. Unlike Catherine, Anne was not prepared to ignore Henry’s indiscretion and ‘she used some words to the king at which he was displeased’, to which he responded that ‘she must shut her eyes, and endure as well as more worthy persons, and that she ought to know that it was in his power to humble her again in a moment more than he had exalted her’.
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Anne had held Henry enthralled for six years and must have been shocked at his anger towards her. The couple were quickly reconciled and it was with great ceremony that Anne took to her chamber at Greenwich on 26 August 1533 to await the birth of the expected prince.

Henry’s grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, had created a set of ordinances for a royal birth, which Anne would have been at pains to follow. Margaret decreed that, a month before the birth the queen should retire to a female world. Anne relied on her sister to attend her after the premature end of her final pregnancy in January 1536 and it therefore seems likely that her mother, sister and sister-in-law would have been present with her in 1533. If so, they would have attended Anne when she went into labour, giving birth to a daughter at 3 p.m. on 7 September 1533. The sex of the child was a blow for both her parents and was greeted by them with ‘great regret’.
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Henry’s initial reaction was to cancel the grand tournament that he had planned to celebrate the birth of his son, although after a few days the couple accepted their daughter more happily. The baby was healthy and was proof of Anne’s fertility. In spite of rumours that the child was to be named Mary in order to fully usurp the place of her elder half-sister, she was instead christened Elizabeth, probably primarily after Henry’s mother, Elizabeth of York, although by happy coincidence also the name of her maternal grandmother.
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In the few brief years that she had with her, Anne proved to be a fond mother, regularly visiting the child in her own household and taking decisions in relation to her education.
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In spite of her fondness for the child, however, Anne knew that she would quickly be expected to conceive again and bear the king a son.

Anne used her position as queen to further the religious reform movement in England. According to her chaplain, William Latymer, as soon as she became queen, she called her chaplains to her, telling them that she had ‘carefully chosen you to be the lanterns and light of my court’. She continued,

I require you, as you shall at any time hereafter perceive me to decline from the right path of sound and pure doctrine, and yield to any manner of sensuality, to await some convenient time wherein you may advertise me thereof: the which I promise you to accept in very thankful part, addressing my self wholly to reformation and yielding good example to others, for the discharge of my own conscience. And as to the rest of my court, I straightly charge you vigilantly to watch their doing, curiously to mark their proceedings, lives and conversations, diligently to advertise them of their duties, especially towards almighty God, to instruct them the way of virtue and grace, to charge them to abandon and eschew all manner of vice; and above all things to embrace the wholesome doctrine and infallible knowledge of Christ’s gospel, aswell in virtuous and undefiled conversation as also in pure and sincere understanding thereof.

Given Anne’s notoriously fiery temper, it seems unlikely that any of her chaplains would have dared admonish her for any perceived sin. However, there is no doubt that Anne wanted to preside over a household at the forefront of religious reform and that she wanted her chaplains to ensure that everyone within her household followed her lead.

As well as promoting the reading of the scriptures in the vernacular, she also sought to dispel religious superstitions. For example, sending commissioners to Hailes Abbey to investigate the relic of the blood of Christ held there. On it being discovered to be either red wax or duck’s blood, she had it removed. Anne was charitable, distributing alms to the poor people of towns that she visited. Both she and her brother paid to maintain scholars at Cambridge. Anne’s patronage was not always welcomed, with a letter from the queen to a Dr Crome complaining that she was ‘marvelling not a little that, albeit heretofore we have signified unto you at sundry times our pleasure concerning your promotion unto the parsonage of Aldermany, within the city of London, which we have obtained for you, yet you hitherto have deferred the taking on you of the same’. Dr Crome was a little less eager than Anne that he should take the post, but the queen was prepared to accept no protests. She wanted him there and there he must go, ending her letter by stating that ‘our express mind and pleasure is that you shall use no farther delays in this matter’.

Anne conceived a second child early in 1534 and, by April, she was visibly pregnant.
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The birth was expected at some point in the summer with Anne sending her brother to France in July to request that a proposed meeting between Henry and Francis could be delayed until after she had delivered her child so that she could also attend.
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While Anne was awaiting the birth of her second child at court, a family drama was taking place in the countryside involving her sister, Mary. By 1534, Mary had been a widow for nearly six years. She had spent much of the intervening years in the company of her sister, although it is clear that she had not entirely abandoned her own interests as, in the spring of 1534, she secretly married a servant, William Stafford, who, while a gentleman, was far beneath her socially. Mary herself provided an account of her reasoning for the match, declaring in a letter to the king’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell,

Consider, that he was young, and love overcame reason; and for my part I saw so much honesty in him, that I loved him as well as he did me, and was in bondage and glad I was to be at liberty: so that, for my part, I saw that all the world did set so little by me, and he so much, that I thought I could take no better way but to take him and to forsake all other ways, and live a poor, honest life with him.
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Mary knew that Stafford was no match for the queen’s sister and that he was poor, with little income of his own, but she touchingly believed that, with only the opportunity to prove himself, he could indeed become a success:

For well I might have had a greater man of birth and higher, but I assure you I could never have had one that should have loved me so well, nor a more honest man; and besides that, he is both come of an ancient stock, and again as meet (if it was his grace’s pleasure) to do the king a service, as any young gentleman in his court.

Unfortunately for Mary, her family were not inclined to see William Stafford’s virtues, focussing only on the disparity of rank. There is some suggestion that Mary came to regret her hasty match to some extent, in spite of the fact that she later protested that ‘and seeing there is no remedy, for God’s sake help us; for we have been now a quarter of a year married, I thank God, and too late now to call that again’. Although Mary stated that she would not change her conduct, it is perhaps telling that she was unable to find a way to tell her family of what she had done, instead letting them find out in the worst possible way.

Anne relied on her sister to attend her during childbirth and she recalled Mary to court to attend her in the summer of 1534 with her approaching confinement. Mary received this summons with a heavy heart, travelling up to court with her new husband. Given that she later indicated that she had been married only for three months, it seems likely that they had been forced by circumstances to marry so hastily, with Mary already visibly pregnant when she arrived at court, something which suggests a pregnancy considerably more advanced than three months. Mary perhaps hoped that the publicity of the court would deflect the worst of her family’s anger. If this was the case, she was mistaken. Her parents, brother and uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, were horrified, with Mary later lamenting to Cromwell,

And I beseech you, good master secretary, pray my lord my father and my lady be so good to us, and to let me have their blessings and my husband their good will; and I will never desire more of them. Also, I pray you, desire my lord of Norfolk and my lord my brother to be good to us. I dare not write to them, they are so cruel against us; but if, with any pain that I could take with my life, I might win their food wills, I promise you there is no child living would venture more than I. And so I pray you to report by me, and you shall find my writing true, and in all points which I may please them in I shall be ready to obey them nearest my husband, whom I am most bound to; to whom I most heartily beseech you to be good unto, which, for my sake, is a poor banished man for an honest and a godly cause.

Mary hoped to appease her family by confirming that she wanted nothing more from them than their blessing, suggesting that she hoped that some of their anger was financial.

While Mary was saddened by the response of her parents, brother and uncle to her marriage, she was also deeply worried by the reaction of her sister. For Anne, who was always portrayed as an upstart, the fact of her sister’s marriage to a servant was infuriating and the worst of the anger directed at Mary came from the queen. On seeing her sister, Anne ordered that she and Stafford be banished from the court, refusing to give them the opportunity to plead their case. When she wrote to Cromwell, Mary confirmed that

I am sure it is not unknown to you the high displeasure that both he and I have, both of the king’s highness and the queen’s grace, by reason of our marriage without their knowledge, wherein we both do yield ourselves faulty, and do acknowledge that we did not well to be so hasty nor so bold, without their knowledge.

That it was Anne rather than Henry who was the driving force behind the banishment is clear from Mary’s assertion:

And good master secretary, sue for us to the king’s highness, and beseech his highness, which ever was wont to take pity, to have pity on us; and, that it will please his grace of his goodness to speak to the queen’s grace for us; for, so far as I can perceive, her grace is so highly displeased with us both that, without the king be so good lord to us as to withdraw his rigour and sue for us, we are never like to recover her grace’s favour: which is too heavy to bear.

Henry had, after all, forgiven his own sister her hasty marriage to the Duke of Suffolk and, as a romantic at heart, is unlikely to have been angry for long at his former mistress’s love match.

For Mary, the loss of her sister’s favour was devastating both on a financial level and also personally. Although there is little evidence for their relationship, Mary often appears to have been at court and the sisters were evidently close. Mary herself claimed that a permanent loss of her sister’s love would be ‘too heavy to bear’, something that suggests that she was saddened at the potential loss of her sister. However, Mary’s letter also suggests a tone of defiance and rivalry, which was understandable given the elder sister’s former relationship with the king. Mary made a less than subtle criticism of her sister when she informed Cromwell that ‘if I were at my liberty and might choose, I ensure you, master secretary, for my little time, I have tried so much honesty to be in him, that I had rather beg my bread with him than be the greatest queen in Christendom. And I believe verily he is in the same case with me; for I believe verily he would not forsake me to be a king.’ For Mary, love conquered all other considerations, even if it meant her financial ruin and the loss of her family.

Mary’s disgrace lasted for some time after her banishment from court. The records are unfortunately silent on the fate of Anne’s child and it would appear that she suffered a stillbirth that summer. Given that there is no record of Mary’s own child, it would appear that she also lost a baby, something that would have allowed relations to thaw to some extent. There is no record of Mary being back at court until early 1536 when she attended her sister during her third and final pregnancy. It appears that the two had mended their relationship, although it took time for the wounds to heal. According to reports, Mary was the only person that Anne would allow to attend her in her grief at the loss of her miscarried son.
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Mary was not the only Boleyn to find herself in disgrace in 1534, with Jane Parker Boleyn also suffering banishment from court at the time. Although Anne and Henry were reconciled after he first took a mistress in the summer of 1533, Anne, who had been the sole object of the king’s desire for so long, found it impossible to tolerate her husband’s infidelity as her predecessor had done. For Henry, part of Anne’s attraction had been her refusal to yield to him and, therefore, with the consummation of their relationship, an element of her fascination for him ended. Instead, he reverted to his familiar pattern of taking a mistress during his wife’s pregnancies. In September 1534, Chapuys reported that

ever since the king began to entertain doubts as to his mistress’s [Anne’s] reported pregnancy, he has renewed and increased the love which he formerly bore to another very handsome young lady of this court; and whereas the royal mistress, hearing of it, attempted to dismiss the damsel from her service, the king has been very sad, and has sent her a message to this effect: that she ought to be satisfied with what he had done for her; for, were he to commence again, he would certainly not do as much; she ought to consider where she came from, and many other things of the same kind.