The Boleyns (12 page)
Part of that battle was fought in parliament where, early in 1534, the Act of Succession described the ‘lawful matrimony had and solemnised between your Highness and your most dear and entirely beloved wife Queen Anne’, and decreed the succession to lie in the offspring of that union. This was followed by a Treasons Act later in the year, which declared it to be high treason to deny the King any of his titles, notably that of Supreme Head of the Church.
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Both these Acts were drafted by Thomas Cromwell, and it is not clear that the Earl of Wiltshire played any part other than that of a councillor, who would have been expected to approve the draft before it was submitted to parliament, and to speak in its support in the House of Lords. It was under the terms of this Act of Treasons that John Fisher, Thomas More and the Carthusian priors were arraigned in 1535. The Earl of Wiltshire was a member of each of the Commissions of Oyer and Terminer which tried these offenders, and was certainly present at the execution of the priors. As a councillor it was a duty which he could not have avoided. Perhaps it had been in anticipation of such a responsibility that he had in November 1533 asked the great Erasmus to write a treatise ‘how everyone should prepare for death’, although at the age of fifty-seven his concern was probably more personal.
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Whereas Anne’s fingerprints are all over the public policy of the period 1533–36, and her role and importance are well attested by correspondents both foreign and domestic, her father is a shadowy figure. That she was the real leader of the family-based faction seems beyond all reasonable doubt, and Lord Wiltshire may well have found this hard to stomach. Most of the records of his activity refer to his official functions as councillor and Lord Privy Seal. Even his diplomatic role seems to have been taken over by his son George. We catch glimpses of him from time to time. He apparently joined with the Duke of Norfolk to browbeat his kinswoman Anne Shelton for being too lenient with the Lady Mary, whose outspoken defiance was a source of great irritation to Anne.
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In June 1535 he wrote to Cromwell asking for the Secretary’s favour over a bill of complaint which had been brought against himself and his brother James by one Leonard Spencer of Norwich. He obviously thought that Spencer was acting out of mere malice. The rights and wrongs of the case are obscure, but it is significant that the favour was sought that way around.
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In August 1535 he apparently asked for a bill in the Irish parliament concerning the legitimacy of the Earl of Ossory’s siblings to be deferred while he and his ‘copartner sentleger’ searched their own evidences. In this case it would appear that he was not successful, because a week later he signed an instruction to the Lord Chancellor to process certain acts for that parliament, including one of repeal for a previous act which had legitimated the Earl’s bastard brethren. The Earl himself had sought this bill so presumably it was a safeguard against colateral claims on his estate.
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Cromwell instructed the Chancellor to ensure that neither the Earl of Ormond’s interests nor the King’s were adversely affected. It may also be that the search of his own ‘evidences’ produced nothing relevant. As late as March 1536 the Earl of Wiltshire secured a beneficial extension of his lease on the Crown honour of Rayleigh, including his son George in the terms and reducing the rent. All the evidence suggests that Thomas Boleyn remained a favoured courtier right up to the last minute, and that when the crash came in the King’s relations with Anne, he was not directly involved.
There are, however, signs of tensions within the Boleyn ‘camp’. The whole logic of their position suggested that they should support the evangelical party – those seeking reform of the Church – which the Royal Supremacy was ostensibly designed to facilitate. Anne was certainly of that opinion, and so was Thomas Cromwell. John Foxe was right when years later he described her as a ‘great promoter’ of the Gospel.
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That did not make her a Lutheran, but it did make the infiltration of Protestantism easier, and to that extent she was a promoter of heresy. This the Duke of Norfolk found totally unacceptable, and his acceptance of the Supremacy was conditional upon its being used for the suppression of heresy, which was Henry’s first expressed intention. The Earl of Wiltshire’s position seems to have been rather similar. He supported a fact finding mission in 1535 and 1536 by one of Cromwell’s agents named Thomas Trebold, who reported on the arrest of William Tyndale and the affair of the placards in France. Trebold’s surviving reports are directed partly to Cromwell, but also to Cranmer, and to Lord Wiltshire. His cover was scholarship, and he travelled widely in Germany, meeting Luther in Wittenburg and Martin Bucer in Strasburg. Part of his mission seems to have been to convince the continental reformers, not only of the merits of Henry’s position, but also of the potential of the Earl of Wiltshire as a patron.
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At one point he sent to the latter a work published by the French reformer Clement Marot. Anne’s affinities were with the Christian humanists of France, and Trebold may have assumed that her father’s were the same, but in fact he seems to have sat on the conservative wing of the King’s affinity, and to have followed his daughter’s lead only reluctantly. He patronised the scholar Robert Wakefield, but that was in the context of annulling the King’s first marriage rather than of evangelical reform, and, unlike Anne, his promotion of reforming clergy is hard to be discerned.
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It would be wrong to suggest that the Boleyns as a political party were divided by these differences, but whereas Anne and her brother were undoubtedly in the evangelical camp, their father did not go much beyond the ecclesiastical supremacy which was the fundamental underpinning of their whole position. Time was to show that his position was closer to that of the King than theirs was.
THE BOLEYNS AS A POLITICAL FACTION – THE WHITEHALL YEARS
Viscount Rochford became a member of a recognisable group within the council as the result of two developments of the summer of 1527. The first was the emergence of his daughter Anne as a realistic queen in waiting, and the second was a serious wobble in the confidential relationship between the King and Cardinal Wolsey. Because of the importance of Anne’s personal and political ties to Henry this is normally known as the ‘Boleyn faction’, but its acknowledged leader was not her father but her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. It was a group primarily defined by its negative purpose – to get rid of Wolsey – and for that reason included among its members both the Duke of Suffolk and Lord Darcy, neither of whom was particularly sympathetic to Anne’s ambitions.
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According to Inigo de Mendoza, the Imperial ambassador, this group had coalesced during the Cardinal’s absence in France, for the express purpose of exploiting the apparent fact that the King no longer trusted him as fully as he had once done. He suspected that Wolsey feared Anne’s advance, and would retire from active politics if she became queen. Because the Cardinal had no desire to be forced out in this manner, he was doing his best to sabotage Henry’s plans and would try to convince the King that he was in error.
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The French ambassador came to the same conclusion, and expressed the view that Rochford’s hostility was grounded on the fact that Wolsey had forced him out of the treasurership of the Household when he was created a viscount. There is no evidence for the latter conclusion, and in any case Wolsey reasserted his supremacy after his return from France, particularly through the organisation of various set pieces, notably on 1 November when a French delegation invested the King with the Order of St Michael. At about the same time, news was received of the failure of Henry’s latest bid in Rome, and both the King and Anne seem to have come to the conclusion that the Cardinal was even more indispensable.
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His credit was fully restored, and his enemies, both within the council and outside it, controlled their fury and awaited another opportunity. Throughout the first half of 1528 Anne was studiously polite to Wolsey and his agents, and he returned the compliment, sending her fish for Lent from his famous ponds, and solicitously enquiring after her health when she was indisposed in June. Whatever his private thoughts may have been, when she was recovering from the dreaded sweat in July, he was even more fulsome, and sent her a ‘rich and goodly’ present into the bargain. She responded in kind, professing herself ‘most bound of all creatures, next to the king’s Grace, to love and serve your grace’ and concluding that she will do everything possible to further Wolsey’s favour when the King’s great matter was at ‘a good end’.
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There is no sign of the lurking grudge which Cavendish attributes to her, although the conditional element in her professions of love and service might well have given him pause for thought.
Anne may have been dissimulating, but then so may Wolsey; except that neither of them had any obvious cause to deceive the other. The granting of the Legatine commission, and Campeggio’s arrival in October appeared to signify important progress, and Wolsey’s stock was riding high. However, trouble was lurking just below the surface. Anne was understandably suspicious that she was being kept out of Campeggio’s way, and a month after his arrival nothing had happened. Wolsey became increasingly exasperated, and warned the Pope that ‘many people’ were pressing the King to solve his problem at home, which would be disastrous for the papal authority.
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There is no doubt as to who these people were, and at the end of November Henry sent Anne’s cousin, Francis Bryan, to Clement with a virtual ultimatum, threatening the withdrawal of obedience. At the same time the Boleyns were beginning to press for another policy involving a great petition from the elite of England, seeking an annulment in the national interest. This was not aimed specifically against Wolsey, but he was no party to it because it would have meant bypassing his efforts altogether, and that was something which he could not contemplate.
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By the third week of January 1529 the French ambassador noticed that Norfolk and his allies were talking themselves up, and Mendoza had picked up a story to the effect that Anne had concluded that the cardinals were out to frustrate her, and had formed an alliance against them with her father and the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk. This was the first time that the latter had featured so prominently in these rumours, and the first time that Anne had been recognised as the political equal of the King’s councillors.
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Nevertheless, for the time being the anti-Wolsey coalition made no progress because Henry was not to be persuaded, and throughout the spring the King and the Cardinal worked in apparent harmony to apply increased pressure in Rome. The opening of the Blackfriars court on 18 June was a fruit of that collaboration. Anne, however, was not convinced, possibly because her supporters in Italy, notably Francis Bryan, were warning her of the papal intransigence, and representing Wolsey as (at best) a dupe, which turned out to be pretty near the mark.
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It was a bad sign when the Cardinal’s representative, Sir John Russell, was due to go to France in June, that his mission was countermanded and the Duke of Suffolk sent instead. Suffolk achieved nothing, but that is not the point; when he returned in July he found Wolsey bogged down in the Legatine court, and the Boleyn faction geared up for a showdown. Lord Darcy, who had his own reasons for hating the Cardinal, had drawn up an action plan, which ambitiously proposed the immediate arrest of Wolsey and his agents, the impounding of their papers and a thorough investigation of their administration.
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When the Legatine court was adjourned, many thought that the moment to strike had come. Anne had apparently convinced Henry that he had been doublecrossed, and a document detailing thirty-four charges against the Chancellor was presented to the King before he left for his summer progress, that is not later than 4 August.
When the nobles and prelates perceived that the king’s favour was from the Cardinal sore minished, every man of the king’s council began to lay to him such offences as they knew by him, and all their accusations were written in a book …
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Yet for the time being, nothing happened. This may have been partly because when he had exchanged the see of Durham for that of Winchester, that had left the revenues of the former office in the King’s hands, and at the end of July Wolsey had used his influence to secure the grant of those revenues (which amounted to nearly £3,000 a year) pro tempore to Lord Rochford.
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It was also partly due to the fact that Henry simply could not make up his mind. The progress went on for nearly six weeks, and during that time Wolsey continued to run affairs as usual. Nevertheless, Anne was not prepared to give up. As a result of the failure of the Legatine court, she had decided that the Cardinal was a broken reed, and with his papal allegiance actually an obstacle to the course which now appeared to be increasingly necessary – some kind of a unilateral declaration by the King. Her professions of goodwill evaporated and she began to exercise her considerable powers of persuasion to bring about his overthrow. However, when it came to the point, her persuasions were less important than the fact that Wolsey made mistakes. The Legatine court fiasco was not his fault, but the mess over the treaty of Cambrai was, and he also misread the King’s mood during the latter part of August. Wolsey was well aware of the peace negotiations planned for Cambrai, but was in ignorance when they would begin, and how seriously they were intended. He asked that they be postponed until the Legatine court had finished its deliberations, but he had no leverage, and his request was ignored.
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When he learned that they were due to commence on 5 July, he wanted to go, but the King insisted that the Blackfriars court took priority, and he sent Cuthbert Tunstall and Thomas More instead. In the event they wasted their time, being kept on the sidelines and largely in ignorance of the proceedings. The treaty of Cambrai was signed on 3 August, and although Tunstall and More were signatories, English interests were virtually ignored.
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Not only was this a humiliation for Henry, it also meant that his diplomatic leverage against the Emperor had disappeared. A series of meetings with du Bellay, the French ambassador, failed to produce a text of the treaty, and Henry became increasingly suspicious, not only of the French but also of Wolsey, whom he believed to have been duped. A detailed examination of the treaty, when it became available, convinced him that he was wrong to doubt the French, but not Wolsey. On 1 September du Bellay reported that Norfolk, Suffolk and Rochford were in high favour, and that Wolsey was on the way out.
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The Cardinal knew that the only way to redeem this situation was through a face to face interview with Henry, and that Anne now set herself to prevent. His attempt to go to Cambrai in July was represented as an attempt to sabotage the Legatine court and thus delay any annulment of the King’s marriage in the interests of his own position. He was accused of having been for years in the pocket of Louise of Savoy, the Queen Mother of France, from whom he had undoubtedly received large payments, but not larger than his position in England merited. The charges of pride and vainglory, levied in the earlier ‘book’ were revived. On 12 September he was instructed to write to the King outlining the topics to be discussed. This was an unprecedented request and probably indicates Anne’s determination not to be surprised, because the letter was sent in the name of a council now dominated by her allies.
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Accounts of the interview, when it came, were much embroidered by contemporaries anxious to show Anne’s malice towards the Cardinal, and her influence over Henry. However, other observers noted nothing unusual in the fact that the two men were closeted together for many hours, nor in the demeanour of Rochford, Tuke and Gardiner, the latter two having supposedly deserted Wolsey as a sinking ship. They had showed ‘as much observance and humility to my Lord’s Grace as ever I saw them do …’. If they were inwardly fuming, they did not show it.
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So if Anne was victorious over this interview, it was by no means obvious to a well positioned observer. Nevertheless, some one, or something, convinced Henry that he was not being well served, because about a fortnight later, on 9 October, the Cardinal was dramatically charged with
praemunire
in King’s Bench, and about a week later deprived of the Great Seal.
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The King’s change of mind is not visible to the naked eye, but it is reasonable to suppose that the Boleyns and their allies, working both in council and through Anne’s unique personal access, succeeded at last in persuading him that Wolsey had a case (or several cases) to answer. According to Cavendish his enemies prepared an attack against him in the parliament, but abandoned it in favour of a
praemunire
, presumably on the grounds that it would enjoy a better chance of success. The stories about the interviews at Grafton may not have been literally true, but they were a convenient and persuasive metaphor for a victory gained somewhere behind the scenes.
It is quite possible that, although the King’s decision appears to have been sudden, it was based upon accumulating doubts over a number of years. As we have seen, there is evidence of uncertainty in their relationship going back at least to the failure of the Amicable Grant in 1525, and becoming noticeable to hostile observers in the summer of 1527. There was also the little matter of the nunnery of Wilton.
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When Cecily Willoughby, the abbess died in April 1528, there had been competition over the appointment of her successor. The obvious choice was the prioress, Isabel Jordayn, but William Carey was anxious to promote his sister Eleanor, who was nun at Wilton. He apparently secured the support of both Wolsey and the King, the latter as a favour to Carey’s sister-in-law, Anne, in what was clearly a little bit of Boleyn networking. It transpired, however, that Eleanor was a most unsuitable candidate, having produced illegitimate children by at least two priests, although whether before or after taking the veil is not clear. Henry withdrew his support, and asked Anne to do the same, which she did. In order to preserve her credibility, however, he also instructed that Jordayn was not to be appointed either, ‘but that some other good and well disposed woman should have it’.
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Meanwhile Wolsey, apparently ignorant of the King’s order, had nominated Isabel, which provoked a terrifying letter of rebuke from Henry, and grovelling apology from the minister. At that time Anne had continued her professions of good will, but it had been demonstrated that even the Lord Chancellor could not cross the Boleyn party with impunity. A year later the memory of that mistake could well have contributed to the decision to oust Wolsey, because it was another demonstration of his fallibility. By that time William Carey was dead, and the Wilton controversy long since resolved, but Anne’s influence in the patronage market was as strong as ever, and may well have contributed to Henry’s decision to promote her father to the earldom of Wiltshire in December.