Six Wives (59 page)

    Cranmer's connexion with the Boleyns had begun.

    This too was a meeting of minds – and interests. Thomas Boleyn, like his two bright children, Anne and George, was interested in the new religious ideas. This was enough for Chapuys to brand the whole family as 'Lutheran'. Cranmer was tending in the same direction, for reasons that were both personal and philosophical. He had interrupted his Cambridge career for what looks like a shot-gun marriage with the barmaid of the Dolphin Inn. The marriage ended quickly because of her early death. But Cranmer's interest in the opposite sex remained very much alive. During the lively conversation at Waltham, he had also argued that Papal power must yield to Scriptural truth. This too was a characteristically Lutheran position – as was the attitude he assumed, practically if not yet theoretically, to clerical marriage.

    But of course it was the
political
implications of Cranmer's ideas which mattered and which made him so attractive to the Boleyns. For marriage and the extent of Papal power were the hot issues of the day. And Cranmer, it seemed, had something new to say on them. Or at least he said it better than anyone else. Soon he became Thomas Boleyn's chief theoretician and strategist on the Divorce. At the same time, and drawing largely on Cranmer's ideas, Lord Privy Seal Wiltshire, as Thomas Boleyn now was, turned himself into the minister for the Great Matter.

    There was a sort of inevitability about this. Thomas Boleyn, as Anne's father, had the most obvious personal interest of all Henry's new councillors in bringing about the Divorce. He was also prepared to countenance measures that were, it soon became clear, too extreme for anyone else to stomach. And since the Divorce was the principal item of royal policy, the councillor in charge of it became,
ipso facto
, principal minister.

* * *

    Did Thomas Boleyn protest too much? I do not think so. Nor did Du Bellay. Thomas Boleyn's claim about the power wielded by his daughter, Anne, was, the ambassador concluded, 'as true as the Gospel'.
⁸

    All this meant, as far as Cranmer was concerned, that he reported not only to Thomas Boleyn but also to Anne, as the power behind her father and, evidently, the power behind the throne as well.

    With this backing, Cranmer's rise as head of the Durham Place think-tank was rapid. Already, probably by November 1529, he formed one of a select group of four royal advisers who were nominated to try to persuade Thomas More, the newly appointed Chancellor, out of his unfortunate reluctance to support the Divorce. More lists the group as consisting of Cranmer; the Almoner, Edward Lee; Foxe; and Niccolo de Burgo ('the Italian friar'). And he describes them as 'such of his Grace's learned counsel, as most for his part had laboured and most have found in the matter'. Cranmer was indeed in exalted company and had come far, fast.
⁹

    But his main activity that autumn was to follow up Henry's instructions at his first audience and prepare a 'book' on the King's case for a Divorce. Foxe describes the result as follows: it contained, 'besides the authorities of Scriptures, of general councils and of ancient writers, also his own opinion, which was this: That the [Pope] had no such authority, as whereby he might dispense with the word of God and the Scripture'. The 'book' itself cannot now be securely identified and it is even unclear whether it survives. What is certain, however, is that it was sent to Cambridge. There it was circulated among the theology faculty with a view to softening up opinion on the Divorce. It was clearly effective – at least in persuading the already converted.
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* * *

It is, however, important to put Cranmer's contribution in context. There was, of course, nothing new about Henry consulting learned opinion. Such consultations had formed part of the King's armoury from the very beginning of the Great Matter. Moreover, in the dying days of his ministry, Wolsey had been eager for a canvass of French opinion and had tried on at least two occasions to persuade Ambassador Du Bellay, who was sympathetic to Henry's position, to undertake it on the King's behalf. But what is characteristic of these schemes is their vagueness. 'Wolsey and the King', Du Bellay reported baldly, 'appeared to desire very much that I should go over to France to get the opinions of learned men there on the Divorce.'
¹¹

    It was the same at the beginning of October when Henry decided to send his own envoys to France instead. Chapuys, it is true, reports that Catherine 'is very much afraid' that one of the envoys, Dr John Stokesley, the Dean of the Chapel Royal, was 'sent now to France for no other purpose than that of inducing the University of Paris to write in behalf of the King'. But Catherine, understandably, often anticipated movements against her long before they happened. So it was in this case. For the envoys' instructions replicate the vagueness of Wolsey's would-be commission to Du Bellay. Since Du Bellay had advised Henry that many French scholars were of 'semblable opinion and sentence', the King commanded Stokesley to consult with Du Bellay's brother, Guillaume, the seigneur de Langey, about whom he should approach. Then, 'having conference with such learned men . . . he shall extend his wit and learning to conduce them, and attain their opinions and sentences conformable to the King's purpose'. There is no mention of the Sorbonne or any other university. Instead, the only body specifically named is 'the French Court' – though Stokesley was also authorised to extend his search 'elsewhere'.
¹²

    Chapuys is equally misleading on the status of the Embassy. He compared it dismissively to one sent at the same time to his own master, the Emperor, claiming that its personnel were men 'of less splendour in their equipage and condition': that is, of lower rank. He could not have been further from the truth, since the French Embassy was headed by Anne's own brother, George. Du Bellay, of course, knew differently. He had had some wry amusement at the choice of the Boleyns' 'little prince' as ambassador when he was still barely out of his teens. But he had no illusion about George's importance. Those who sent him, he advised, 'are most anxious for him to be given a good welcome and more honour than is ordinarily necessary'. The choice of Stokesley is equally significant since he too was a Boleyn client. 'Your good lordship', Stokesley wrote a few months later to Thomas Boleyn, 'hath fastly bound me to be your beadsman and servitor at your commandment during the little rest of my life.'
¹³

    In other words, even at this embryonic stage, the canvass of learned opinion was a Boleyn enterprise, to be overseen by members of the family and carried out by its clients. And so it would remain – and more so – after Cranmer's dramatic intervention transformed its nature.

* * *

For that, it is now clear, is what he did. In place of the earlier, vague proposals for consultation, Cranmer produced a fully thought through scheme that had shape, strategy and a
modus operandi
.

    The elements were already there in his remarks at Waltham. But they were refined and developed in his subsequent conversations with the King and Thomas Boleyn and, above all, in his Durham Place writings. We can also be sure that Anne made her own powerful contribution.

    At Waltham, Cranmer had argued that the 'sentence [of the Divines] may be soon known and brought to pass'. This, in the fully developed scheme, translated into a systematic canvass of academic opinion. It was carried out university by university and it was designed to result in a series of formal, legally binding statements or 'determinations', agreed by the appropriate representative body of each university and delivered under its official seal. Cranmer, from the first, had also been clear that the matter was essentially one for 'the Divines'. This was to result in the targeting of faculties of theology. Faculties of canon law were also consulted. But, in general, fewer hopes were entertained of them and less importance was given to their verdicts. But most important was Cranmer's reduction of the complexities of the Great Matter to a straightforward, four-part formula or questionnaire. It was a talent for creative simplification that was to find its fullest and longest-lasting achievement in his later liturgical works. Here, however, he deployed it to devastating polemical effect.
¹⁴

    Was it, the universities were to be asked, permissible to marry the widow of your deceased brother, when the marriage had been childless but consummated? Or was it contrary to divine law? And contrary to natural law? And if it
were
contrary to both divine and natural law, could the Pope dispense from such a prohibition?

    Henry's preferred answers to these questions were 'no', 'yes', 'yes' and 'no,' respectively.

* * *

By late November 1529, Henry was fully up to speed on the new approach to the Great Matter and had persuaded himself that it would work. Indeed, he was confident enough to boast about it to Catherine.

    The two, of course, were leading separate lives, albeit usually under the same roof. But they maintained the decencies. Whatever their increasingly acrimonious private disputes, they preserved a façade of public politeness, behaving, as the Milanese ambassador noted with some surprise, with 'so much reciprocal courtesy . . . that anyone acquainted with the controversy cannot but consider their conduct more than human'. They also kept up the ceremonial of the Court, processing together to the Chapel Royal on the great feast-days of the Church and dining together afterwards. And it was over these meals that their worst quarrels tended to occur.
¹⁵

    So it was on St Andrew's Day, 30 November 1529.

    It was Catherine who commenced hostilities. According to Chapuys, she protested that she suffered the 'pains of Purgatory on earth' from Henry's neglect of her. In particular, she complained of Henry's 'refusing to dine with her and visit her in her apartments'. Henry justified his neglect by pleading business: Wolsey had left things in such a mess that he was having 'to work day and night to put them to rights again'. Then he, in turn, went on the attack. As for 'visiting her in her apartments or partaking of her bed', that was impossible since he was not her husband. All respectable, authoritative opinion, he insisted, agreed on this point. He already had several such opinions, 'founded upon right and canonic law', and, when he had the rest, he would send them to the Pope. That should end the matter. But if the Pope did not 'in conformity with the above opinions . . . declare their marriage null and void, then in that case he would denounce the Pope as a heretic and marry whom he pleased'.

    Catherine, who was as well informed on the case as both Henry and Anne, picked her husband's arguments to pieces. She ended by telling Henry triumphantly that 'for each doctor or lawyer who might decide in your favour and against me, I shall find a thousand to declare that the marriage is good and indissoluble'.

    Did her crowing bring back Henry's memories of an earlier exchange, when, in the aftermath of Flodden, Catherine had told him that, in return for his captive French Duke, she was sending him the coat of the dead King of Scots?

    Then, as now, his wife knew who was the greater victor.

    Bested, Henry retreated to Anne. But he found cold comfort. 'Did I not tell you', Anne snapped, 'that whenever you disputed with the Queen she was sure to have the upper hand?' Some fine day, she continued, Henry would succumb to Catherine's arguments. Then what would happen to Anne? She would be cast off. 'I have been waiting long', she protested with increasing vehemence, 'and might in the meanwhile have contracted some advantageous marriage, out of which I might have had issue . . . But, alas!, farewell to my time and youth spent to no purpose at all'.
¹⁶

    One almost begins to feel sorry for Henry, caught as he was in the cross-fire between two such women.

    In fact, whatever Henry had said to Catherine, it was not until New Year 1530 that the campaign to secure favourable 'determinations' from the universities really got under way, both at home and abroad.

* * *

At home, and even before the royal approaches were made, Cranmer's own university of Cambridge was up in arms. The occasion was two sermons delivered in Advent (the four weeks before Christmas) 1529 by Hugh Latimer, Fellow of Clare Hall. As late as 1524, when he took his degree of bachelor of divinity, Latimer had been a staunch traditionalist. But shortly thereafter he was 'converted' by Thomas Bilney. Overnight he became a powerful preacher and (like most brilliant lecturers) a thorn in the flesh of the university authorities. Things came to a head in his Advent sermons. They were outrageously populist, explaining Salvation by analogy with the rules of a popular game of cards known as Triumph or Trump. And their teaching was inflammatory too. Trumps, according to Latimer were hearts: the heart prostrated and humbled in the Love of God, like Mary Magdalen's. And in the love of your neighbour too. This meant that traditional (Latimer called them 'voluntary') works of piety – such as pilgrimages, offerings to saints and the setting up of candles in church – were, at best, an irrelevance in the quest for Salvation. Instead, saving, triumphing Love showed itself only by the necessary works of mercy and charity, such as relieving the poor, visiting prisoners and comforting the sick.
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