Read The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn Online
Authors: Robin Maxwell
The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn (21 page)
9 June 1530
Diary,
It much pleases me that in recent days I have come to be schooled in the arts of intrigue and politicks and my tutors — Norfolk, Suffolk, Thomas More, and my Father Lord Wiltshire — are the greatest artists in the land. I watch mindfully as they and Henry weave the fabric of government into a fine tapestry, the warp and woof of fiefdoms, subjects, wars and taxes shot with golden strands; embroider it with elegant diplomacy and laws; and stitch together staunch borders with the thread of loyal lords and fighting men.
I was called upon by one Master Cromwell, Cardinal Wolsey’s secretary, and that audience has piqued my mind. This little man dressed all in lawyers black — beady eyes, large pointed nose, small mouth set upon a boxy face — came to beg on behalf of his now humble, still banished master a kind word from my self and Henry. As he spoke of Wolsey, very ill of dropsy and despair he said, and in great need of comfort, I sensed within the man a second meaning. ‘Twas nothing in the words he said that made me think he was disloyal. Just a glint in those clever eyes, a half smile upon thin lips that told of other purposes and schemes. Perhaps this brewer’s son, risen so high, has an admiration for a girl who’d turned the once grand Cardinal to some grovelling supplicant.
This strange man did excite my curiosity, he seems so sure, so confident. But I held my counsel and pretending generosity, gave a small gift to him for Wolsey — a golden tablet that I wore round my waist on which I wrote some comfortable words and commendations. He thanked me humbly, bowed low and then withdrew.
Thomas Cromwell seems to be somewhere near in my future. Time will tell, I’m sure.
In his passionate attachment to my self, the King has found a clever strategy for claiming his divorce. My family’s new chaplain, Thomas Cranmer late of Cambridge and a mild and friendly man, made a bold suggestion that
Henry had no need of Rome’s approval
, just opinions of divers European theologians saying if they felt the Pope had right, or not, to have given dispensation for Henry’s wedding to his brother’s wife. Or even could they judge the case at all? This simple idea was like a bomb dropped upon the King’s head.
Altogether impressed with this cleric’s vision, Henry swore that Cranmer “had the sow by the right ear” and with no delay sent to all the Universities of Europe many envoys, with their pockets bulging full of gold. Their intent — to guide the minds of scholars of the canon law and help them see the logic of divorce from Katherine, and to write their positive opinions on the matter. What I learn from this is that the means are sometimes unimportant if the ending justifies. And this coming marriage of ours is cause enough for all and every type of Machiavellian scheme.
‘Tis cause for much confusion too. The town and country folk despise the English Priests and Bishops, but when those very clerics defend within their pulpits Henry’s right to seek divorce from Katherine and Roman rule, they’re boo’d and pelted with abuse. Even Henry vacillates on issues of heretical intent. First made furious by Tyndale’s tract called “Practices of Prelates” that crucified Wolsey and condemned the King’s divorce, Henry suddenly then made offer that the author have a seat within the Royal Council, if the man would publicly change his mind!
I swear, sometimes methinks the world is going mad and I with it. But I must hold my course and steady Henry on his, if we are to have our way.
Yours faithfully,
Anne
1 December 1530
Diary,
T Carlis Ebor is dead. Not beheaded as Henry had ordered, but felled by common dysentery on his way to London Tower. I feared that Wolsey’s final battle for Henrys love would see him once again victorious. For the King, of late, had been most displeased with his councillors Wiltshire, Suffolk and Norfolk, lamenting loudly that the Cardinal was a better man than all of them together. He’d given back the Cardinal’s properties, let him remain as York’s Archbishop and given him a pretty present of some £3,000. ‘Twas worrying in deed. What if Henry raised again that vicious prelate to his counsel? Wolsey hated me still. In weeks past I had learned thro certain spies of mine that in his absence from the Court, the Cardinal’d been in treasonous correspondence with the Pope, giving his approval to an edict forcing my separation from the King.
The Duke of Norfolk, no doubt within his selfish interests, tho happily in league with my desires, wrested from the Cardinal’s Doctor Agostini, a statement that old Wolsey’d asked the Pope for Henry’s excommunication unless he sent me from the Court. And worse, the Cardinal plotted a great uprising in which he him self could grab the reins of government. In Parliament, newly called Chancellor Thomas More spoke rancorously about the lately fallen “eunuch” Wolsey and of the King’s necessity to purge his flock of all rotten and faulty men. My loud protestations added to Mores, and Norfolk’s information were far too strong to be ignored. Stony faced, silent, no doubt broken hearted, Henry signed a warrant for Cardinal Wolsey’s quick arrest.
‘Twas undecided who would make its presentation to the man, and truly there were few who had the heart for such a job. I therefore took the reins and chose the deputy myself. My choice, as sweet as it was bitter, was Henry Percy Lord Northumberland. O sweet revenge! How I wish that I had been a fly upon the Cardinal’s wall that night — the eve of what he thought would be triumphant celebration of his reinstatement in the Bishopric of York. Instead, Percy strode into his dining chamber and spoke the words “My Lord, I arrest you now, charged with high treason.”
Then under heavy guard, making his way south in foul weather to London and his inevitable execution, slow in miserable progression he sickened and fell. And there at Leicester Abbey Cardinal Wolsey died more peacefully than I had hoped, depriving my eyes the sight of his humiliating end.
Yours faithfully,
Anne
7 February 1531
Diary,
God bless Master Cromwell. In close clandestine consort with His Majesty — he has a room at Greenwich Palace and the King has secret access there — he has struck upon a plan so ruthless, so brilliant and outrageous that an end to Henry’s Great Matter is now in sight. What cunning mind has this little man to conceive the King consecrated Supreme Head of the Church of England!
At the Canterbury Convocation, Cromwell stood before the meeting pointing out that English clergymen give their whole authority to a foreign power — the Pope. Then like a double swordsman wielding this fact in one hand and terror in the other, charged each and every cleric on this isle with the ancient law of Praemunire, the same treasonous crime for which Wolsey found himself arrested and brought down. Finally he demanded payment from the clergy, ransom if you will, for King Henry’s pardon of them! Cromwell contends that when the Church’s back is broken, the Holy Father toppled from his throne, and Henry made Christ’s Vicar here in England, the King can then command the highest prelate in the land — Archbishop of Canterbury — him self to grant him his divorce. And we shall be wed. Well, all Hell broke loose within that Convocation. Appalled but helpless in their rage, they tried but failed most miserably to come to some conclusion short of making Henry Protector and Supreme Head of Church and Clergy in England!
Lord Chancellor More was livid at the act. But he has proven impotent in his new role, once wielded like a cudgel by old Wolsey. As I told Henry he would, More never moved from his position on the King’s divorce, remaining hard against it. But Thomas More is also Henrys feckless puppet, far too mild and malleable to work against his will. In Mores time in office this family man, this person of supposed high principles has persecuted heretics most mercilously. Stating disbelievers needed no less than full extermination, he showed no tolerance at all. His constant writings on the subject did annoy the King most righteously but worse, when citizens were found out reading Master Tyndale’s “Practices of Prelates,” those books were tied about their necks on strings and they were made to march thro London streets and later throw the books on burning pyres. He whipped and tortured men and women, threatened burnings too.
Unmoved by his Chancellors sore discomfiture, the King commanded More to make a speech before the House of Lords and later to the House of Commons, there defending Henry’s motive for divorcing Katherine. Anguished and humiliated he argued his King acted not for love of a lady, as some said, but purely out of conscience and for his scruple’s sake. More must have choked on those bitter and lying words.
Henry’s great act is historic and most frightening to me, for it is for my hand alone that he has snatched the Pope’s hat to sit atop his King’s crown. I tremble at the thought… and yet I smile as well. I remain.
Yours faithfully,
Anne
I
HOPE I HAVE FOUND
that which Her Majesty desires,” said Lord Steward Francis Knollys above the loud clanking of heavy keys on the chain that hung around his slender waist. Elizabeth’s tall and long-legged cousin topped her by several inches but still had a difficult time keeping up with her brisk pace down Greenwich Casde’s long hall.
“My mother was one of your mother’s ladies near the end of her life,” he said. “It was, she told me, dangerous to show any interest or sympathy for Queen Anne, and most of her things were qui-etly dispersed or discarded at her death.”
Elizabeth felt a small shiver of pain sweep through her body at the thought of a woman once so beloved by her husband, whose memory had been so quickly and ruthlessly forgotten. It was strange and uncomfortable to be speaking openly of the convicted traitoress, one whose name she had barely uttered in her twenty-five years. But Knollys, a Boleyn relative, seemed happy to be able to talk of her.
“Our friend Thomas Wyatt, God rest his soul, always said his father had been in love with your mother. Wrote verses about her. Made the King jealous. He was loyal to her till the day she died.”
Her mother’s Wyatt, Elizabeth thought to herself, had given Anne not only the diary but the confidence to write in it, and had weathered the King’s wrath many times, to live out his life and die a natural death. His son and namesake, a Protestant patriot, had died but a few years ago under the executioner’s axe after leading the failed rebellion against Queen Mary’s taking a Spanish bridegroom.
“Here, Your Majesty.” Knollys had stopped at a carved door at the end of the corridor and now sorted amongst his jangling ring of keys for the one that fit the rusted lock. “There is not much here, but I do believe the contents of the room belonged to the Queen.” He swung the heavy door open into a room which, though not much bigger than a closet, must have once been some lucky waiting lady or courtier’s private apartment. Knollys pulled aside a heavy arras revealing a filthy window. Dust played along the streaks of sunlight that managed to shine through the glass. “Shall I bring you a torch?”
“No, no. Push open the window. That will do.” With a great creaking, the leaded glass was thrown wide and the chamber was now awash in morning sun.
“Thank you, Francis. I am very grateful. You may leave me.”
“Your Majesty.” Knollys bowed stiff-legged and backed out the door, closing it quietly behind Elizabeth. Finally alone with all that was left of her mother, she found herself looking around greedily, her eyes falling on one object after another — here an embroidered pillow, there a carelessly folded tapestry, a pair of brass candlesticks, a crucifix, a cracked Venetian glass bell.
Elizabeth pulled open the rude wooden wardrobe. Inside it there limply hung a faded overgown trimmed in russet and orange, its tiny waist and bodice giving credence to the rumors of Anne’s birdlike frame. Crumpled on the wardrobe floor beneath it were the gown’s sleeves, their silk laces still hanging in tatters from the eyelet. Elizabeth lifted one of them and noticed a long pointed flap at the small finger side of the wrist. This was the fashion her mother had inspired to hide that tiny bit of nail and flesh, her “witch’s mark.” Elizabeth held the sleeve to her face. She took her breath in deeply, for age had muted the odors. Yet there was something left of sweet perfume and a human scent, part spice, part musk. Her mother. Yes. It was so distant yet so familiar. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the face, but all she could evoke was a blinding light, the memory of gay laughter and bits of a French nursery song sung in a rich and lilting voice.
Elizabeth turned her attention to the low pallet now devoid of bedclothes but piled with several wooden crates and a large domed chest painted in the Italian style. She opened the chest to find a hundred dead moths and a jumble of small personal objects, as though they had been hastily hidden away. There was a basket of dainty heeled slippers, a pair of green satin ones fringed with curly lace, another of looped gold brocade, and one of black velvet silk trimmed with silver tassels. In each shoe was the faint imprint of Anne’s slender foot, a sight from which Elizabeth found she could not easily tear her eyes.
But there was more. Wrapped in shredded tissue cloth was a moth-eaten red fox muff, a large silver box of cosmetics — ghostly white face powder which had long ago lost its perfume, a pot of Vermillion cheek coloring, jars of once oily lotion now hard and cracked. In tiny bags with drawn strings were herbal potions and medicinal concoctions, long since turned to dust. A miniature of an unnamed and handsome man was framed in tiny pearls, perhaps her Uncle George. She found, carefully folded, one of Anne’s servants’ liveries — a purple and royal blue velvet jacket with the embroidered motto on its breast “La Plus Heureuse.” The Most Happy.