Six Wives (55 page)

    It took Chapuys a day or two to complete his investigations and, on the 4th, he wrote up the results. 'The Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk and Lord Rochford, the father of the Lady Anne Boleyn, are the King's most favoured courtiers and the nearest to his person', he reported. They also 'transact all state business'. But Chapuys then distinguishes between this 'transaction of business' and real power. This, Chapuys had discovered, lay elsewhere:

Chapuys had not yet met Anne. But already he had arrived at a judgement. 'The King's affection for La Boleyn', he continued, 'increases daily. It is so great now that it can hardly be greater; such is the intimacy and familiarity in which they live at present.'
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    Ten days later he secured his first audience with the King at Grafton in Northamptonshire. He found a Court where Queen Catherine enjoyed only the shadow of a consort's place while the substance belonged to Anne. Even diplomatic business waited on Anne's whim. Chapuys had outlined his instructions to Henry before 'dinner' (about 11 a. m.) and was expecting a reply when the King had finished eating. But he found himself denied an answer as Henry had a more pressing appointment, the nature of which he scarcely bothered to disguise. 'The King', Chapuys reported, 'was in a great hurry to repair to the meeting place of the morning, where the Lady [Anne] was ready to open the chase'.
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    This is the Anne of Wyatt's poem, at once the hart and the hound, the hunted and the huntress:

And Anne had her own quarry, too: Wolsey.
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    The hunting season, and with it the Progress, normally ended at Crouchmas, that is, the Day of the Elevation of the Holy Cross. This falls on 14 September. Coincidentally (or perhaps not), Chapuys's first audience with Henry had been on this day. And its significance was quickly brought home to him by the King's eagerness to conclude their conversation. 'He was', as Chapuys explained in a separate despatch to the Archduchess Margaret, 'in a hurry to go to dinner, in order to repair afterwards to the hunting field and take leave of the chase, as he is in the habit of doing at this time of year.' The fact, as Chapuys discovered later, that Anne herself was mistress of the hunt only lent a further edge to Henry's impatience.
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    But despite the cavalier treatment of the new Imperial ambassador, neither the Progress nor the hunt were to end at Crouchmas. Instead, both were prolonged for almost a fortnight after their usual time. And it was not till 29 September that Henry reached Windsor, which was to be his autumn residence that year.
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    There were probably straightforward reasons for the extension of the holiday season. It was Henry and Anne's first uninterrupted summer together and naturally they revelled in the experience. Anne also had her own reasons for not wanting the summer to stop. She was an expert sportswoman and could show off to advantage her intrepidity in the chase, in contrast with Catherine's much staider enjoyment. Finally, the sport in Northamptonshire must have been unusually good that season.

    But there were also deeper motives at work. The King's extended absence from the vicinity of the capital made it easier to prolong Wolsey's political purdah. And when that purdah ended, and Wolsey was allowed to visit the Court, the restricted accommodation offered by a house such as Grafton would also make it easier to manage the meeting. For Wolsey might be down but, as Anne and her friends were well aware, he was not yet out. And a meeting between Henry and his not-yet-quitefallen minister could not be postponed much longer.

    By the beginning of September, the negotiations about the windingup of the Legatine Trial had reached a reasonably satisfactory conclusion, and on the 11th, Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio formally renounced their powers. The latter was now eager to be off from a country where he had outstayed his welcome. He was granted an audience at Grafton on 19 September; he was also given permission to bring Wolsey with him.

    Cavendish, who accompanied his master, gives a set-piece description of the scene. Bets were laid that Henry would not speak to Wolsey. And the odds must have shortened considerably when it became clear that no Chamber had been allocated to him in the little palace. Instead, and highlighting the King's ambiguous role, Henry Norris, the Groom of the Stool and the royal
alter ego
, offered Cardinal Wolsey his own room in which to change from his riding clothes.

    The two legates, Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio, were then summoned to the Presence Chamber, where the Council stood in a row in order of rank. Wolsey doffed his cap to each, and each similarly uncovered himself to Wolsey. The rest of the Chamber was crowded with courtiers. They were there for one thing: to see how Henry would greet his former favourite. Would it be with smiles? Or frowns?

    They did not have to wait long. Henry entered and stood under the Cloth of Estate. Wolsey eased down his great bulk and knelt to him. Henry first gave him his hand and then 'took my Lord up by both arms'. All bets were off. The Cardinal seemed safe.

    The King and his minister then stood in earnest conversation, which Cavendish was able to overhear in part. 'I heard the King say, "How can that be? Is not this your own hand?" and plucked out from his bosom a letter.' Wolsey's answer apparently satisfied the King and they went off to dine separately: Wolsey with his fellow councillors and Henry with Anne. Neither had an easy time.

    For Anne was 'much offended with the King' that he seemed to be letting Wolsey off so lightly. Cavendish was not of course there. But he got a report of the conversation from 'them that waited upon the King at dinner'. Anne launched furious accusations, which Henry batted away. Wolsey had brought the King into debt with his own subjects by the forced loan, she said; he had dishonoured and slandered him; if any nobleman had done half so much, he would have lost his head. 'I perceive', Henry observed coolly, 'ye are not the Cardinal's friend.'

    After dinner, Henry saw Wolsey again: first in the Presence Chamber and then in the Privy Chamber, where they were closeted alone till nightfall. And Wolsey was told to return early the following morning.

    The situation now seemed black for Wolsey's enemies. The minister had had only a few hours with the King but already he appeared to have recovered his former influence. What would be their fate if he was restored to power? Doubtless, the betting was running on that too.

    It was time to invoke Anne.

    The two Cardinals spent the night in a nearby house at Easton Neston. Early the following morning, according to the King's command, Wolsey returned to the Court. But there were to be no more private conversations. Instead Henry was booted and spurred. He ordered Wolsey to meet with the Council, took his farewell and rode off to the chase. Anne had done her work well.

    Cavendish is clear about what had happened. 'The King's sudden departing in the morning', he asserts, 'was by the special labour of Mrs Anne, who rode with him to lead him about because he should not return until the Cardinals were gone.' Just to make sure, she had arranged a picnic dinner at the site of a new park which they were to inspect. The park, Cavendish concludes, 'is called at this day Hartwell Park'.
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    Anne had got her kill.

* * *

It is a brilliant narrative: the detail is circumstantial and the psychology plausible. But, alas, the story is flawed. The only question is by how much.

    For another of Wolsey's Chamber servants, Thomas Alvard, also accompanied him to Grafton and described his reception in a letter written only three days after the event. As far as the Sunday is concerned, Alvard's account agrees closely with Cavendish's. But for the Monday he tells a very different tale. According to Alvard, Wolsey
did
see Henry again in the morning. The two had another long private conversation in the Privy Chamber; then they sat together with the Council. In the afternoon, Wolsey escorted Campeggio to the King and they took their leave 'in as good fashion and manner . . . as ever I saw before'.
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    Only then did the King go hunting. And there is no mention of whether it was with Anne.

* * *

Does this mean we must discard the whole of Cavendish's story? Anne's best academic biographer thinks so. My guess rather is that Cavendish, who rarely makes fundamental mistakes about events to which he was an eye-witness, simply telescoped things. At thirty years' distance, he remembered only the King's hasty departure for the field. Alvard's account fixes this to the early afternoon; Cavendish placed it instead for dramatic effect first thing in the morning. But, whenever it happened, the
effect
on Wolsey was the same: a conversation begun was unfinished; a deal half-brokered remained unclinched.
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    Just the same thing, after all, had happened to Chapuys a few days previously, when Henry's post-prandial departure for the hunt, also instigated by Anne, had broken off his business with the King. The ambassador was sanguine: he would soon have another audience at which he could pick up the threads.

    Wolsey, on the other hand, would have no second chance.

* * *

After Grafton, Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey went their separate ways: Henry moved by slow stages to Windsor; while Wolsey rode first to his nearby house at The More and thence to London for the start of the legal term on 9 October. On that day, with magnificent courage or supreme blindness or some mixture of the two, he processed as usual to Westminster Hall. There he sat in judgement as Chancellor. But he could not preside over Star Chamber because 'all the lords and other the King's council were gone to Windsor to the King'. A shift in the centre of political gravity had occurred – from Wolsey's entourage to the Court and from Wolsey himself to Anne.

    That same day in King's Bench the Attorney General, Christopher Hales, launched the legal proceedings that would complete Wolsey's fall.

* * *

    This, of course, is an ambassador's gossip. But Wolsey himself took the same view of his plight in a letter written a few days later. The letter is damaged. But the drift is clear enough. 'If the displeasure of my Lady Anne be somewhat assuaged', Wolsey wrote, 'as I pray God the same may be, then it should be devised that by some convenient mean she be further laboured.' 'For this', he continued, 'is the only help and remedy. All possible means must be used for attaining of her favour.'
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    And all means were used. Her favourite, her brother George, was bribed with the offer of great pensions from Wolsey's ecclesiastical preferments. And eventually Wolsey screwed up courage to write directly to Anne. To no avail. 'She gave kind words', Wolsey was informed, 'but will not promise to speak to the King for you'.
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    He was naked to his enemies. And she, it seemed clear, was the worst of them.

* * *

Meanwhile, the ascent of the Boleyns continued and on 8 December 1529, in one of the first royal ceremonies to be held in Wolsey's confiscated palace of York Place, Anne's father Thomas Boleyn, Lord Rochford, was created Earl of Wiltshire in the English peerage and Earl of Ormond in the Irish. The following day there was a celebratory banquet. The greatest ladies of England were present, including the King's sister Mary, the Queen Dowager of France and Duchess of Suffolk, and the two Duchesses of Norfolk, the Dowager and the wife of the present Duke. But Anne took precedence of them all. She was 'made', Chapuys noted with outrage, 'to sit by the King's side, occupying the very place allotted to a crowned Queen'. 'After dinner', he continued, 'there was dancing and carousing, so that it seemed as if nothing were wanting but the priest to give away the nuptial ring and pronounce the blessing.'
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    Thomas Boleyn now had both wealth and status. It remained only to give him appropriate great office. This was done, once more, at the expense of a churchman. Cuthbert Tunstall, the distinguished humanist and friend of More and Erasmus, was Bishop of London and Lord Privy Seal. In the New Year, he was promoted to the still-vacant bishopric of Durham. But at a price. He was required to resign the Privy Seal, the third ranking office in the kingdom, so that it could be conferred on Boleyn. He also had to confirm the transfer of Durham House to Boleyn and agree to make it permanent. Finally, he had to wait till 25 March, when the half-year rents were due, for a grant of the temporalities of his see. By this transparent device, Boleyn had managed to get his hands on another £1,200.
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    It is a story of pillage that anticipates the vast secularization of the 1530s. In this, as in so much else, the Boleyns were pioneers.

    Thomas Boleyn had attained the summit of ambition for a subject. Neither Anne nor her family could go any further till that 'nuptial ring', which Chapuys had seemed to see proffered to her at the December banquet, were hers indeed.

    But, for that, new measures and new men were needed. Anne set about to provide them.

B
ack in November 1528, when the English negotiations in Rome were about to enter their last, desperate phase, Wolsey had instructed Henry's ambassador to remind the Pope of the terrible consequences that would follow if the Divorce failed. Pope Clement VII was to be told that Henry VIII would be driven 'to adopt those remedies which are injurious to the Pope, and are frequently instilled into the King's mind'. 'I cannot bear up against the storm,' Wolsey had continued. The Devil himself was at work. And 'the sparks of that opposition here, which have been extinguished with such care and vigilance, will blaze forth to the utmost danger of all'.
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