Thomas Cromwell: The Rise And Fall Of Henry VIII's Most Notorious Minister (32 page)

Some others that were with him in the wherry
⁶⁸
needed to go to the Southwark side to look at a bear-baiting that was near the river, where the king was in person.

The bear broke loose into the river [with] the dogs after her. Those that were in the boat leapt out and left the poor secretary alone there.

But the bear got into the boat, with the dogs about her, and sunk it. The secretary, apprehending [that] his life was in danger, did not mind his book, which he lost in the water.

But being quickly rescued and brought to land, he began to look for his book and saw it floating in the river.

So he desired the bearward [bear-keeper] to bring it to him; who took it up but before he could restore it, put it into the hands of a priest that stood there, to see what it might contain.
⁶⁹

The bearward, employed by Princess Elizabeth’s household, could not read. The priest naturally could and quickly realised that the notebook’s contents disputed the Six Articles. He appreciated immediately that the writer was guilty of treason and refused to hand it back to Morice, who stupidly acknowledged it was Cranmer’s book. The Archbishop’s secretary then panicked and sought out Cromwell, to plead for his assistance. The next day they both went to the court at Westminster and saw the bearward trying to hand the book over to one of Cranmer’s enemies. Cromwell ‘took the book out of his hands, [and] threatened him
severely for his presumption in meddling with a privy councillor’s book’.
⁷⁰
The Archbishop was safe.

Overseas, Protestants were aghast at the contents of the Six Articles. The Lutheran reformer Philip Melanchthon was enraged and disappointed and blamed Gardiner for the new measures. He wrote to Henry on 1 November 1539:

It was your bishops who were responsible … not you. Really wise princes are capable of reconsidering their decisions. Do not take up the cause of the Antichrist against us. Your bishops may pretend to take your part but they are in league with the Pope …

I blame the bishops, especially Gardiner. They are concerned about their own incomes.

No one can deny that the church has come through a period of horrible darkness, like paganism, as is still the case in Rome. Now at the end of time, God has intervened against the Antichrist [and] I thought England was leading the way. But your bishops are still plotting to retain idolatry, hence the Articles.
⁷¹

He pleaded: ‘I suggest you think again. Otherwise your bishops will tyrannise the church. Christ will judge.’ John Frederic, Elector of Saxony, was amazed that Henry had been hoodwinked ‘by the conspiracy and craftiness of certain bishops, in whose mind, the veneration and worshipping of Roman godliness is rooted’.
⁷²
Their appeals fell on stony ground in London.

The Six Articles firmly put paid to any hopes of an alliance with the German League of Schmalkalden. But there were more ways of securing foreign support than religion and Cromwell returned once again to the question of Henry’s new bride. Cranmer was unsure whether a politically inspired marriage would be entirely appropriate; would it not be better, he asked, for Henry to marry ‘where he had his fantasy and love, for that would be most comfort for his grace’? Cromwell rejected this opinion out of hand, his mind still firmly fixed on the diplomatic imperatives.

After all the frustrated excitement over the Valois and Hapsburg candidates, he realistically saw that he was left with one suitable foreign candidate: Anne, the sister of the Duke of Cleves, or at a pinch, perhaps,
her sister Amelia. Cromwell enthusiastically told the King of reports he had received that Anne of Cleves was very attractive and that ‘as well for the face, as for the whole body, above all other ladies excellent’. Moreover – and here was the clincher – she excelled the Duchess of Milan ‘as the golden sun excels the silver moon’.

Henry must have been startled by his Minister’s unexpectedly lyrical words. He still wanted some physical confirmation of her looks, thoroughly mistrusting diplomatic enthusiasm. He was quite right to be cautious. The English envoys wanted a good look at the two Clevois princesses, but were frustrated by their discreet, heavy clothing. Under such ‘monstrous habit and apparel’ they complained, they had ‘no sight, neither of their faces, nor of their persons’. Duke William’s chancellor was horrified at the envoys’ forwardness: ‘Why,’ he asked, his starchy susceptibilities thoroughly affronted, ‘would you see them naked?’ A portrait was the neatest solution, but the best local painter, Lucas Cranach the Elder, was sick and in July 1539 Hans Holbein the Younger was sent off to Düren to paint both girls, with £13 6s. 8d in his purse to buy parchment, canvas and paints.

He was back in London by the end of August and Henry seemed pleased by his portrait of Anne. Amelia was forgotten. Cromwell pressed home his advantage, and on 24 September, Duke William’s emissaries arrived in England to negotiate a marriage treaty, pledging that Anne was ‘free to marry as she pleased’. It is a measure of the Minister’s determination to finally settle the issue that the treaty was quickly signed, on 6 October.

Cromwell doubtless heaved a huge sigh of relief that the matter of a new wife had at last been settled.

Henry, enchanted at the prospect of a new young occupant of his bed, ordered preparations for a sumptuous wedding, worthy of a king who had adopted the ringing title ‘majesty’. A 126-strong household was appointed for the new queen, including six ladies-in-waiting, one of them Lady Elizabeth Clinton, better known as Bessie Blount, Henry’s cheerful former mistress.

CHAPTER TEN

The Royal Neck in the Yoke

My Lord, if it were not to satisfy the world, and my realm, I would not do that I must do this day for no earthly thing
.

HENRY VIII TO THOMAS CROMWELL BEFORE HIS MARRIAGE TO ANNE OF CLEVES, GREENWICH PALACE, 6 JANUARY 1540
¹

Anne of Cleves arrived at Calais from Düsseldorf, via Antwerp, at about seven o’clock on the morning of 11 December 1539, at the head of a glittering retinue comprising 263 attendants with 228 horses. Her arrival at the English-held town
²
was as grand and imposing as any entrance of the Queen of Sheba. Henry’s queen-to-be was formally met by Sir William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton, and Lord William Howard, 1 mile (1.61 km) outside the walls of Calais, accompanied by thirty gentlemen of Henry’s household. As befits the Lord High Admiral of England, Southampton wore a gold whistle ‘set with stones of great value’ around his neck as a badge of office.
³
The English entourage was escorted by 400 nobles, knights and yeomen, gorgeously attired in new coats of crimson satin damask and blue velvet. These showy followers included Gregory Cromwell,
⁴
basking in the reflected glory of his in-laws the Seymours, whose contingent was led by Edward, Earl of Hertford, recently appointed commander of the defences of Calais and Guisnes. Gregory’s father was back in England, preoccupied with state business.

The winding mounted procession finally arrived at the Lantern Gate
of Calais. Waiting to greet it were cheering lines of gaudily dressed merchants and the guards of honour provided by the soldiers of the garrison. The mayor, puffed up with civic pride, stepped forward to humbly present Anne with a generous gift of 100 marks (£67 or £26,000 at 2006 prices) to which the merchants of the Staple of Calais added ‘a hundred sovereigns of gold [£100 or £35,000 in modern terms] in a rich purse’ as their own loyal offering.
⁵
Then there was a brief pause to listen to the martial music provided by the thirteen trumpeters given to Anne by the Duke of Saxony. There was also ‘one that plays upon two things as drums made of a strange fashion’. These were kettle drums, a novelty at which the English spectators marvelled. After all the tootling and drumming ended, the party viewed two of Henry’s warships moored in the harbour just outside the town walls. The
Lion
and the
Sweepstake
⁶
were to lead the large flotilla escorting his new bride to England and Anne happily ‘much commended’ these carracks.
⁷
Both vessels were festooned with 100 banners and streamers of silk and gold, and the decks were crammed with 200 cheering master gunners and mariners. Southampton reported to Henry that night: ‘Your grace’s ships were well furnished with men standing in the tops [of the masts], the shrouds [rigging], on the yard-arms and their shot of ordnance therein [was] marvellously well ordered.’
⁸

What Southampton did not tell the King, who was happily celebrating Christmas at Greenwich, was that the thunderous salutes fired in welcome by the ships’ 150 guns created a pall of smoke so thick ‘that one of [Anne’s] train could not see another’. It was not an auspicious beginning and the Earl hurried his regal guest into a sustaining and costly banquet and then on to the Tudor testosterone delights of a joust, ‘where were places prepared and trimmed [decorated] for her grace to stand and also for her ladies and gentlemen and others’. Poor Anne – first deafened by the fusillades of guns, then choked by the smoke of gunpowder and finally confronted by the noisy and boastful gallants of the Calais garrison valiantly trying to unhorse each other or beat their brains out while fighting on foot. The jousts, however, were ‘well handled’, Southampton told Henry.

Moreover, Anne had probably never seen the sea before and certainly
had never sailed on a ship. The prospect of the 25-mile (40 km) voyage to England, then, even in good weather, must have been truly intimidating for a lady from a small landlocked German state. Aside from the daunting dangers of crossing the English Channel, she and her ladies feared that the sea air and the spray might damage her complexion.
⁹
If all this were not bad enough, strong winds postponed Anne’s departure from Calais. Southampton, well aware of Henry’s impatience to see his new wife and his malevolent temper when thwarted, hastened unctuously to explain the delay: ‘I doubt not but that your majesty of your gracious goodness and high wisdom will consider that neither the wind nor the sea will be ordered at man’s will and that more, than men may do, cannot be done.’ Even God’s deputy on Earth could not control the waves with a flourish of his imperious arm.

So to occupy the time until the weather cleared, Anne of Cleves learnt to play card games, in the knowledge that this (and gambling) was a favourite evening occupation of her ageing husband-to-be. Southampton taught her
cent
, later called piquet,
¹⁰
and he remarked that ‘she played as pleasantly and with as good grace and countenance as ever in my life I saw any noble woman’, despite her lack of English. She also wanted to find out about Henry’s dining etiquette – ‘the manner and fashion of Englishmen sitting at their meat’.
¹¹
Southampton, in his dispatches to Henry, studiously tried to avoid mentioning the future queen’s appearance or nature, other than adding, almost as an afterthought, ‘On my faith, her manner, usage and semblance which she has showed us all, was such as none mightier be more commendable nor more like a princess.’

On 19 December, Gregory Cromwell, still in the town, reported that the weather was still ‘too bad to cross, though a passenger or two has been compelled to attempt it. A Hollander hulk has been lost near Boulogne; certain packs of Spanish wool and some white soap [were] cast ashore in the English dominions and therefore reserved to the Lord Admiral’s use.’
¹²
It must have been a trying and tedious time for everyone involved, while the high winds and rain continued to buffet Anne’s lodgings in Calais, called ‘The Checker’.

Two of England’s most experienced shipmasters, William Gonson
and Sir William Spert, had been posted on the Calais coast to watch the weather. At last they were able to report that the gales had finally abated and, on an icy 27 December, Anne and her entourage embarked for the passage to Deal. They departed on the noon tide, escorted by fifty gaily decorated ships, and landed safely on English soil at five o’clock that evening. The bride and her party were met by Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and after a brief respite at the newly built artillery blockhouse at Deal (doubtless to warm up and for her ladies to anxiously inspect her complexion), she was escorted to Dover Castle to continue her recovery from the voyage.

Further north in Kent, frantic construction work at the Abbey of St Augustine, outside the western walls of Canterbury,
¹³
had been finished just in time for Anne’s arrival. The abbot’s former lodgings had been transformed into an opulent royal palace, with a new range of buildings added to the south side of the inner court. The conversion had been under way, night and day, since 5 October, and included new decorative heraldry showing Henry’s royal arms and Anne’s badge of the white swan. Charcoal had to be ordered as fuel for brazier fires to fully dry out the plasterwork on the ceilings and walls.
¹⁴
On 29 December, eight days after the last workmen had hastened off the site, the bride slept in the comfortable new apartments for just one night. One hopes the smell of fresh paint did not bother her.

Two days later, the stately bridal train reached the bishop’s palace in Rochester and would spend the New Year there, before the final leg of Anne’s journey to Greenwich, where Henry was scheduled to joyously welcome her on 3 January 1540.

That was the plan. Henry, however, still at his Palace of Placentia at Greenwich,
¹⁵
grew steadily more impatient to see her in the flesh and impetuously decided on a far more gallant course of action. Throwing aside any notion of royal protocol tediously laid down by Cromwell, he impulsively gathered together five of his favourite gentlemen of the privy chamber and, incognito, galloped off to Rochester, he and his cronies wearing disguises of garish multicoloured cloaks. Their breakneck journey was a daring, romantic gesture and the very stuff of chivalry. Riding through the frozen Kent countryside, the icy wind full in his face, the
years seemed to roll back for the King and Henry could even believe he was a passionate young lover once again.