Tudor (29 page)

On 2 April Anne felt sufficiently confident in the security of her position to confront Cromwell on a major issue that divided them: what to do with the money made from the dissolution and reform of small and failing monasteries. Anne hoped to see many of the reformed monasteries become teaching establishments, a role that monasteries had always played, with all the money raised ploughed back into charitable enterprises. Cromwell, by contrast, intended to pour the monasteries' wealth into the king's pocket and those of men whose support the king needed. He also disliked monasteries on theological grounds, seeing them as promoters of the ‘superstitious' veneration of saints and their relics.

That morning Anne's almoner, John Skip, delivered a sermon in the king's chapel that broadcast her opposition to Cromwell's activities. Skip complained about indiscriminate abuse being heaped on the clergy, claiming it was done out of greed for the church's possessions; he reiterated Anne's view that the money from the dissolved monasteries should be going on education, laying the blame for the money going elsewhere on evil counsel. Without naming names, he
went on to compare Cromwell to Haman, the corrupt minister of the biblical King Ahasuerus, and Anne to that king's wife, Queen Esther, who had saved the Jews from persecution. Finally the chaplain reminded his audience that Haman had gone to the scaffold.

What Anne had not grasped was that Henry badly wanted the church's wealth. By threatening Cromwell's life Anne had united Henry's vague hope that one day he might be free to choose a new wife with Cromwell's ability to get a nasty job done, and given the king another reason to wish to see the back of her.
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For a short while there was nothing to suggest any change in the king's attitude. Indeed, on 18 April, Chapuys was invited to kiss Anne's ring before meeting Henry at Greenwich Palace. Since this would have been a public recognition of Anne's status as queen, the ambassador made excuses not to do so. But standing in the king's chapel for Mass he was tricked into being positioned in such a place that he was obliged to acknowledge Anne as she entered. Later the same day, the rattled ambassador informed Henry that the emperor wished for an alliance – but only as soon as the princess Mary was restored to the succession and he was reconciled with Rome. A furious Henry shouted back that his relationship with the Pope was none of the emperor's business, and as for his daughter Mary, ‘he would treat her according as she obeyed him or not'.
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Henry was soon sending letters to his diplomats across Europe insisting that his marriage to Anne be recognised wherever they had been posted. Yet this was not about any personal attachment to Anne, only his desire to protect the royal supremacy with which their marriage was, for the time being, associated. His interest in Jane Seymour continued unabated and Cromwell now sought allies amongst her promoters. The first sign of his success was his giving up his rooms at Greenwich to Jane's brother, Edward Seymour, which allowed Henry to meet her more discreetly and conveniently. Meanwhile, that other court romance, between Margaret Douglas and Thomas Howard, had culminated at Easter in a secret betrothal.
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Henry had seemed to smile on his niece's relationship in its early days, but the couple only confided their decision in a few friends. The situation at court remained volatile. From the close quarters of the queen's Privy Chamber, Margaret could see that Anne was extremely angry with her husband. Anne's brother, George Boleyn, would spend time with his sister laughing with her about the clothes the king wore and the ballads he wrote. George let slip once that Anne had even complained about Henry's abilities as a lover, telling him that her husband had neither talent nor vigour in bed.
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Some wondered if he was suggesting that the princess Elizabeth was not her father's child. If she was complaining that Henry was such a poor sexual performer, it followed that she might have a lover. Many noticed the pleasure the queen was taking in the dangerous game of courtly love. Even lowly servants were speaking to her in a familiar manner.

On Saturday 29 April Anne stopped by the round window in the Presence Chamber and addressed a young musician called Mark Smeaton. She asked him why he was looking sad. It was ‘no matter', he replied sulkily. It was an attempt to draw her into romantic banter and Anne reminded him that she couldn't speak to him as if he were a nobleman. ‘No, no madam,' he replied, evidently stung; ‘A look sufficed, and so fare you well.'
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On the same day the king's close body servant, Sir Henry Norris, came to see one of Anne's maids. Anne asked him teasingly why he had not yet married his betrothed. Norris answered that he preferred to ‘tarry a time', to which Anne joked, ‘You look for dead men's shoes, for if ought came to the king but good, you would look to have me.' No sooner were the words out of her mouth than Anne realised that she had overstepped the line. Imagining the death of the king was a treasonous offence. Norris, aghast, replied that ‘if he should have any such thought, he would [wish] his head were off'.
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The next day Anne and Henry had a row. A Scottish visitor at court later recalled seeing Anne in a courtyard, with the princess Elizabeth in her arms, pleading with the king who was looking down at her from
a window. It was clear he was very angry, ‘although he could conceal his anger wonderfully well'.
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That Henry had accused Anne of being unfaithful, and that she believed he suspected Norris, is suggested by the fact that on the same day Anne asked Norris to go and see her chaplain and assure him she was a ‘good woman'. But had Anne got it wrong? Was Henry referring to Norris or someone else? Smeaton was being questioned that very same day on whether or not he had committed adultery with her.

Smeaton's interrogation took place at Cromwell's house in Stepney. We do not know if Cromwell had taken the initiative in arresting him, or if it was on the king's orders. But accusing the queen of adultery would have been very dangerous for Cromwell. He could not be certain how Henry would react. On the other hand, if Henry had learned of a rumour concerning Norris or Smeaton it makes sense that he demanded Cromwell get to the bottom of it. The French learned that ‘the discovery was owing to words spoken by [Smeaton] from jealousy', and according to Cromwell, ‘some of his grace's council . . . with great fear' declared ‘what they heard unto the king's highness'.
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Anne's conversation with Norris gave Cromwell a means of accusing her of treason. But Norris was unlikely to confess to adultery and so make a charge of plotting the king's murder plausible. A weaker man was required if Anne's chastity was to be besmirched – and Smeaton would fill that role.

Before that evening Smeaton had confessed to having committed adultery with the queen on three occasions. According to later gossip Smeaton was kept in a sweetmeat cupboard with Anne calling for marmalade when she desired him. Had this really happened? Anne would go to her death denying any such activity, and to have lied on the eve of eternity was to risk hellfire. Despite later tales of a knotted rope being tightened around Smeaton's head, and of his being racked, there is no evidence that torture was used in his questioning, but it is not uncommon for people to make false confessions under psychological pressure. Strangely, perhaps, suggestible people will sometimes even come to believe that they have committed a crime of which they
are completely innocent, and this too may be true of Smeaton, for he never withdrew his confession.
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On the Sunday evening Henry postponed, but did not cancel, a trip he had planned to take with Anne to Calais in June. He could not yet be certain how matters would continue to unfold. Cromwell had more interviews to conduct. The next morning, May Day 1536, was warm and sunny: the perfect day for the jousts taking place at Greenwich Palace. The king, sitting to the front of the royal stand between the twin towers of the tilt-yard, was enjoying himself. Henry's brother-in-law, George Boleyn, was the leading challenger, while his old friend Sir Henry Norris led the defenders. Also watching them was Anne Boleyn and her ladies. The pennants flew, and horses galloped down the sandy list where only a few months earlier Henry had fallen, and come close to being killed. As the tournament ended a message was passed to the king. Abruptly he rose from his seat and left for Westminster, taking with him only a handful of attendants. Norris was called to join him, while an astonished Anne was left to oversee the closing of the competition.

As the king's party rode off Henry asked Norris an extraordinary and terrifying question – had he committed adultery with the queen? It was usual for courtiers accused of a serious offence to be kept away from Henry since this spared him the embarrassment of their pleading for mercy to his face. But Henry, having read Cromwell's message, had chosen to have Norris ride with him and was acting as his chief interrogator. He made it clear to Norris he wished to play the roles of judge and jury too. He offered the horrified man a pardon if he admitted to sleeping with Anne. Norris was a fellow member of the Order of the Garter, Henry's equivalent to the Knights of the Round Table, and now found he was being cast in the role of Lancelot.
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Norris angrily – desperately – asserted his innocence. It did him no good. He joined Smeaton in the Tower that night. Anne was taken there the following day.

‘Shall I go into a dungeon?' the terrified Anne asked the Lieutenant
of the Tower on her arrival. ‘No madam,' he replied, ‘you shall go into the lodgings you lay in at your coronation.' This reduced the queen to hysterical laughter and bouts of weeping. Anne had heard, she said, that she would ‘be accused [of adultery] with three men'. She knew the names of those already in the Tower. ‘O Norris,' she wondered, ‘hast thou accused me? Thou art in the Tower with me, [and we shall] die together; and, Mark, thou art here too.'
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Since adultery was not a capital offence, Anne expected to be accused of imagining the death of the king. In fact further capital offences were being sought.

As Anne prepared to spend her first night as a prisoner, Henry kissed his son Henry Fitzroy goodnight and, with tears trickling down his face, Henry claimed that Anne had intended to dispose of both his children, poisoning Fitzroy and his half-sister Mary. It also emerged that Anne's brother, George Boleyn, who had followed her to the Tower, was accused of adultery with his sister. This was intended to demonstrate Anne was capable of any horror or perversion and it rapidly became evident she would be accused of adultery with more than merely three men. Interviews with Norris and Anne's own comments led to the arrest of the young Sir Francis Weston, who had flirted with Anne in the summer of 1535, and another courtier called William Brereton was also arrested. A couple of knights and the courtier poet Thomas Wyatt followed, but they had sufficiently powerful friends to escape trial.
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The evidence against Anne and her remaining co-accused was extremely weak, as even Chapuys was moved to comment. According to one of the judges the adulteries had been revealed by a former lady-in-waiting ‘who shared the same tendencies' as the queen and had described Anne's crimes on her deathbed in 1534.
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But how did this confession reach Cromwell two years after the woman had died? The answer may lie in the fact that her family were clients of Anne's old enemy, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, widower of Henry's sister, the French queen. Here was a man always ready to oblige the king, and who disliked Anne. Wyatt blamed Brandon for his arrest
and the accusation that Anne had committed incest with her brother suggests revenge for her accusation in 1531 that Brandon had slept with ‘his own daughter'.

Two of Anne's current ladies were also named as giving evidence for the trial.
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The first was the Countess of Worcester, whose sister-in-law was married to one of Anne's supposed lovers, William Brereton.
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He had few links with Anne, but he was a troublesome figure in the Welsh Marches, and one Cromwell was happy to see out of the way. The second woman named was Anne, Lady Cobham, whose husband was to be one of the trial judges.
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In later generations a case was built to suggest that George Boleyn's wife, Jane, Lady Rochford, was a third, and that she informed against her own husband. This is inspired, however, by later gossip rather than contemporary fact.
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Indeed there is little to suggest that any of Anne's women deliberately betrayed her. The frightened women were pressed hard on what they had seen and heard of Anne's behaviour. Anxious not to be accused of withholding anything, they repeated the jokes between Anne and her brother about Henry's impotence, his gaudy clothes and dull poetry. The pregnant Lady Worcester had been so distressed by the pre-trial interrogations that Anne Boleyn had feared her friend would miscarry her baby (a little girl destined to be named Anne).

At the trial Anne's complaints about the king's abilities as a lover made it easy to assert that she had found her sexual satisfaction elsewhere. George Boleyn was described leading Anne in dances in her Privy Chamber, passing her on to other men, and kissing her. This brotherly affection became, in the hands of the lawyers, sexual perversion: with George's tongue in Anne's mouth, and him passing on his sister not merely to dance with other partners, but for sex. As one judge noted, ‘all the evidence was bawdy and lechery'.
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On Friday 12 May 1536 the four commoners were found guilty of plotting to see the king dead and replaced by one of them. George Boleyn and his sister were condemned on the Monday. All were doomed.