The Boleyn Women: The Tudor Femmes Fatales Who Changed English History (24 page)

Anne then claimed that her miscarriage had been caused by coming upon Henry sitting with his new mistress upon his knee, with the queen remonstrating with Henry ‘that the love she bore him was far greater than that of the late queen, so that her heart broke when she saw he loved others’ and she lost her child.
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For once, Henry was lost for words and, for a few days at least, did feel remorse, leaving his mistress behind at Greenwich when the court moved. Henry’s mistress, who was a second cousin of Anne’s named Jane Seymour, quickly proved to resemble the queen more closely than anyone would have thought, refusing absolutely to consummate any relationship with the king other than marriage. In the early months of 1536 Anne was still the established queen and she remained in a relatively strong position. Her enemies were, however, beginning to gather around her.

Anne and Henry’s relationship continued to be troubled for some time after her miscarriage. 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’.
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While this is likely to have been an exaggeration, Henry’s relationship with Jane Seymour certainly troubled the queen, with Anne snatching a locket containing Henry’s picture from around Jane’s neck. Jane Seymour, who was no beauty, captivated Henry with her virtue and the seeming contrast that she presented to Anne. He became devoted to her after sending her a purse full of sovereigns and a letter which she refused to accept, declaring 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’.
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Jane’s message had the desired effect and Henry’s ‘love and desire towards the said lady was wonderfully increased’.

Jane Seymour was as ambitious as Anne had been and built a strong party around herself, headed by her brother, Edward Seymour, who was made a member of the king’s Privy Chamber in March 1536. Anne had made many enemies as queen, with a number of disparate groups falling in together behind her rival. Princess Mary and Chapuys both signalled their support for a new marriage to Jane, with Mary considering that she ‘would be very happy, even if she were excluded from her inheritance by male issue’.
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The addition of Mary’s and Imperial support for Jane was dangerous to Anne and worse was to come when Thomas Cromwell also set himself behind Jane.
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Cromwell had been a member of Wolsey’s household and well remembered Anne’s animosity towards the cardinal and her role in his downfall: his decision to desert Anne, following a quarrel with her in which she declared that ‘she would like to see his head cut off’, was therefore unsurprising.

Anne could never have foreseen that such an alliance would ever be possible, with the only common ground of the various parties being their hatred of her. The only main participant in the plot who remained undecided in the early part of 1536 was Henry himself, who had still not entirely decided to abandon his sonless marriage. The death of Catherine of Aragon had allowed both Anne and Henry to hope for a reconciliation with the Emperor and Henry was determined to finally be the victor in their dispute, with Catherine’s nephew recognising the legitimacy of his second marriage, regardless of his own bitter feelings towards Anne. In spite of writing to Chapuys that he 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 that Catherine’s death largely cleared the obstacles to peace and was prepared to discuss an alliance with Henry.
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Interestingly, in his instructions to Chapuys Charles also asked his ambassador to find out what Anne herself wanted in order to secure an alliance. Her price was imperial recognition of her marriage and status.

On Easter Sunday 1536, Anne finally received the recognition that she craved from Catherine’s own family.
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Chapuys, who had earlier refused a request from Cromwell to visit her and publicly kiss her, was escorted to Mass by George Boleyn. He must have been aware of what was planned for him since, in his own report, he acknowledged that a great crowd of people were in attendance ‘to see how the Concubine and I behaved to each other’. Anne deliberately waited to make her entrance until her brother had manoeuvred the ambassador behind a door, ensuring that Chapuys could not escape until he had done Anne reverence as queen. This was Anne’s moment of triumph and secured for her the final acknowledgement of her royal status. It was also her final triumph. While the Emperor had instructed Chapuys to deal with Anne if necessary, he also asked his ambassador to assure the king of his support if he chose to remarry. Charles, like many in Europe, considered that Catherine’s death left Henry a widower.

Catherine’s presence had, in fact, protected Anne, in spite of the fact that she, like Henry, wore celebratory yellow at her death. If Henry abandoned Anne during Catherine’s lifetime he knew that he would be under pressure to return to his former wife, something that held him to his second bride. On 29 April 1536 Henry finally showed his displeasure in Anne openly by appointing Sir Nicholas Carew, a supporter of Jane Seymour, as a Knight of the Garter, in preference to George Boleyn. Chapuys gleefully reported that ‘the Concubine has not had sufficient influence to get it for her brother’. This was probably the moment that Henry decided to commit himself to Jane and abandon Anne; there was no point in going to the expense of commissioning a garter stall for a man he intended to sacrifice.

By 30 April 1536, Cromwell was ready to strike against Anne, inviting Mark Smeaton, a young musician in Anne’s household, to dine with him that day.
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This was a flattering invitation for the low-born Smeaton, and he went gladly, hoping for patronage from the king’s minister. He was completely unsuspecting when he arrived at Cromwell’s house at Stepney and, rather than being offered a meal, found himself arrested and taken to the Tower for interrogation. Smeaton must have been terrified and there were rumours that he had been racked or subjected to some other torture. In the face of threats, or worse, he admitted to adultery with Anne.

Anne is unlikely to have noticed Smeaton’s disappearance and attended the May Day jousts at Greenwich the following day. These were a great affair, attended by the entire court, with Henry sitting close to his queen. Anne may have hoped to speak to her husband and her mood was lighter than it had been for several weeks as she watched her brother and other gentlemen, including Henry Norris, a favourite of the king, and her old favourite, Sir Thomas Wyatt, participate. During the tournament Anne dropped her handkerchief to one of the jousters to allow him to wipe his face, a typical action in the chaste game of courtly love. She noticed nothing amiss and was horrified when, midway through the jousts, Henry suddenly rose to his feet and stalked away without saying a word. This was to be the last time that Anne saw her husband as he swiftly rode away to Westminster Palace, accompanied by only six attendants. On the journey Henry closely questioned Henry Norris, offering him a pardon if he would only confess a crime to the king. Norris was completely taken by surprise and did not give the king the answer that he required; the following morning Norris, like Smeaton before him, was committed to the Tower on a charge of adultery with the queen.

Anne spent an anxious night at Greenwich. The following morning her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, with several other members of the king’s council, came to arrest her. When Anne was told that she was accused of adultery, she immediately exclaimed that she was wronged and begged to see the king, something that was not permitted. She spent much of the day being interrogated, before being taken by water to the Tower of London at 5 p.m. that evening. There is no doubt that Anne was terrified and, on her arrival, she fell to her knees before her interrogators, ‘beseeching God to help her as she was not guilty of her accusement, and also desired the said lords to beseech the king’s grace to be good unto her’.
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When Anne asked, ‘Shall I go in a dungeon?’ she was reassured that she would be staying in the royal apartments which were familiar to her. Nonetheless, she was still very much aware that she was a prisoner and her composure entirely left her for a time.

When Anne arrived at the Tower, she was disconcerted to find that her aunt, ‘Lady Boleyn’, had been sent to attend her, along with a Mistress Coffin. This Lady Boleyn is usually identified as Anne Tempest Boleyn, the wife of Thomas Boleyn’s brother, Edward. As previously discussed, Anne Tempest Boleyn had been a favoured attendant of Catherine of Aragon and she does therefore seem to be a likely candidate for Queen Anne Boleyn’s attendant in the Tower, who was far from favourable to her niece.

The alternative candidate would be Elizabeth Wood Boleyn, the wife of Sir James Boleyn. Elizabeth Wood Boleyn had served her niece during her time as queen, something that suggests that the two women enjoyed a friendly relationship.
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She was reputed to be close enough to her niece for Lady Lisle, the wife of Henry VIII’s controller of Calais, to send a token to her in July 1535 in an attempt to obtain a place for her daughter in the queen’s household.
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Elizabeth was evidently not particularly taken with her gift, sending a reciprocal token which Lady Lisle’s agent referred to as of little worth. Anne was in the habit of lending sums of money to those with whom she was friendly, such as the Countess of Worcester. At the time of her death, Elizabeth’s husband, Sir James Boleyn, owed her £50, a sum that was substantial enough to suggest a friendship: this again does not suggest that his wife can have been the Lady Boleyn at the Tower.
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Another piece of evidence which counts against her presence in the Tower is that the will of her husband, Sir James Boleyn, which was written in 1561, makes it clear that he died an adherent of the reformed faith, commending his soul to the Holy Trinity, rather than, as had earlier been the custom, to a specific saint or saints.
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This does not prove that James, or his wife, had earlier been followers of the religious reform which Anne Boleyn certainly adhered to, but it is possible, particularly since James was appointed as his niece’s chancellor when she became queen.

The Lady Boleyn who awaited her niece at the Tower was there to spy on the queen and report on her conversation. Queen Anne fully recognised this, complaining to the Lieutenant of the Tower that ‘I think much unkindness in the king to put such about me as I never loved’.
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She was unconvinced by Kingston’s answer ‘that the king took them to be honest and good women’. Anne replied that ‘I would have had of my own Privy Chamber which I favour most’, something which again strongly indicates that it was Anne Tempest, who was not one of the queen’s attendants, rather than Elizabeth Wood, who was present at the Tower. Lady Boleyn’s hostile role was stated by Gilbert Burnet, who wrote in the seventeenth century and appears to have used a lost contemporary account of the fall of Anne Boleyn, written by one Anthony Anthony, who was a Surveyor of the Ordnance at the Tower. He recorded the hostile relationship between the two women, due to the fact that they had long been on ‘very ill terms’ and that Lady Boleyn went out of her way to obtain evidence against her niece: ‘she engaged her into much discourse, and studied to draw confessions from her. Whatsoever she said was presently sent to the court.’
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Lady Boleyn and Mistress Coffin were deputed to sleep on a pallet bed in the queen’s own chamber: a proximity that cannot have been welcomed by either aunt or niece.
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To further emphasise the fact that she was under observation, the Lieutenant of the Tower, William Kingston, and his wife slept outside the door. While there was little love lost between the queen and her aunt, it is possible to suggest that Anne Tempest Boleyn had some sympathy for her niece. While Kingston wrote to Thomas Cromwell to inform him that ‘I have everything told me by Mistress Coffin that she thinks meet for me to know’ he did not record any information actually provided by Lady Boleyn. It was Mrs Coffin who rushed to tell Kingston that Anne had spoken of Henry Norris and his professions of love for her. A few days later Kingston recorded that he had sent specifically for Mistress Coffin and his wife for an update on Anne’s conduct, with no mention of Lady Boleyn.
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The surviving evidence for Lady Boleyn’s conduct in the Tower suggests disapproval of her niece rather than hatred. According to Kingston in one of his reports, Anne complained one evening that ‘the king wist what he did when he put such two about her as my Lady Boleyn and Mistress Coffin, for they could tell her nothing of my lord her father nor nothing else, but she defied them all’.
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In response, Lady Boleyn declared that ‘such desire as you have had to such tales has brought you to this’. Clearly Anne could expect little sympathy from an aunt who thought that she had brought her fall upon herself, although Lady Boleyn may not have been quite the enemy the queen believed her to be. Lady Shelton, whom Anne remained estranged from, was also one of the ladies employed as a potential informer on the queen.
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Lady Boleyn and Lady Shelton were not the only Boleyn ladies to play a potentially hostile role in the fall of Anne Boleyn. Jane Parker Boleyn, Lady Rochford, is usually assigned a great role in the fall of her husband and his sister. Gilbert Burnet believed that Jane played a major role in providing evidence against her husband and sister-in-law due to the fact that she was jealous of her husband’s close relationship with his sister and was ‘a woman of no sort of virtue’.
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Burnet claimed that Jane