Six Wives (68 page)

    This was as far as Parliament would go by way of innovation. And for Anne it was nowhere near far enough.

* * *

It was time instead to return to the old, tried and tested tunes of anticlericalism. These had proved a hit in the first session of the Reformation Parliament, even with convinced religious conservatives, like Lord Darcy or committed supporters of Catherine of Aragon, like Sir Henry Guildford. Now Anne and Cromwell, her new right-hand man, cooperated to stage a revival.

    From the beginning the mood in Parliament was favourable. According to the chronicler Hall, who as MP for Much Wenlock was an eye-witness of proceedings in the Lower House, 'the cruelty of the ordinaries [bishops]' ranked high among the Commons' initial grievances. Lay grumbles about ecclesiastical power were of course nothing new. But what gave them a special edge was the clamp-down on heresy which had followed Wolsey's fall. Spurred on by Lord Chancellor More, the bishops had gone on the offensive against heterodox opinion. And no one was spared. Anne's favourite preacher, Latimer, was arraigned on a heresy charge in the Convocation which met alongside Parliament. And the merchant William Tracy, the father of Cromwell's old friend and fellow MP Richard, was posthumously condemned as a heretic for making a will which was rude about clerical pretensions.
⁹

    All this meant that tensions between the clergy and the laity were already dangerously high when, a fortnight after the start of the session, they were deliberately inflamed by a gesture at Court. For Simon Fish's brilliantly subversive pamphlet,
The Supplication of Beggars
, which had opened the way to the first anticlerical wave of autumn 1529, was given a new lease of life. The fact has been obscured by the carelessness of many historians about detail. The text of
The Supplication
printed by Foxe begins with the note:

This, many have assumed, meant that Fish's pamphlet was distributed at Court on 2 February 1529, the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was known as Candlemas on account of the elaborately decorated candles which were offered up at the altar by the faithful, led by the King himself. But this date is impossible, since on 2 February 1529, Henry was not at Westminster but Greenwich. Nor did he have a palace in Westminster either. This lack was supplied, as we have seen, by his seizure of York Place from the fallen Wolsey in the autumn of 1529. Henry then spent Candlemas at York Place in each of the following years: 1530, 1531 and 1532. But of these dates, 1532 is much the most probable for the 'throwing and scattering' of the pamphlet in the procession before the King. And it is likely, too, that Anne, who had first brought Fish's work to Henry's attention, had a hand in its dramatic re-entry on to the public stage.
¹⁰

    Meanwhile, in Parliament, Cromwell was engineering his own, parallel reprise. Back in 1529, the Commons had begun to codify their anticlerical grievances into a series of petitions. The petitions seem not to have been submitted to the King before they were quietly allowed to lapse as part of Henry's scheme to call off the parliamentary attack on Wolsey. But Cromwell, always good with paper, seems to have kept copies – just in case they came in useful. And come in useful they did in 1532.
¹¹

    The papers were reworked into a single, omnibus petition. It was retitled, in a deliberate, provocative echo of Fish's pamphlet,
The
Supplication against the Ordinaries
. And, in a series of carefully coordinated moves, it was rewritten and reused to force Convocation into a complete surrender of its legislative independence to Henry. All existing canons were to be submitted to him for approval; all future ones would require his consent. The surrender took place on 15 May 1532, when Convocation also acknowledged Henry as Supreme Head of the English Church, now without reservation. Parliament itself had been prorogued on the 14th and, on the 16th, Lord Chancellor More resigned. He had lost the behind-the-scenes battle for the King's mind.
¹²

    Henceforward, Henry's 'good servant' would be forced into an increasingly public struggle with the King himself. It could end in only one way.

* * *

The other great loser from the 1532 session was Gardiner. In the autumn of 1531 he had been given the choicest of Wolsey's benefices, the bishopric of Winchester, which was the richest see in England. And as late as January 1532, shortly before he was recalled from a brief Embassy to France, Henry (according to Cromwell) had complained of his absence as 'the lack of my right hand'.
¹³

    But the hand was to offend Henry, for, in the debates on
The
Supplication
, Gardiner immediately took a high line in defence of the privileges and independence of the Church. The boy from Bury St Edmunds had not climbed to the top of the greasy pole to see it cut from beneath him. But, for once, he miscalculated.

    The King, Chapuys reported on 13 May, 'is very angry, especially with the Chancellor [More] and the Bishop of Winchester'. Gardiner, however, had made a more dangerous enemy still. He had been one of Anne's earliest and most effective partisans in the Great Matter. But, as the Boleyns' anticlerical and even heretical policies became clear, his attitude changed. By the time of the Council's confrontation with Catherine in June 1531 he was showing, according to Chapuys, some sympathy with the Queen's position. In return, 'the Lady [now] strongly suspects and dislikes him'. Anne's suspicions were confirmed by his behaviour in Convocation and she became openly hostile.
¹⁴

    Henry, as usual, softened first. But Anne could be won over only by a valuable sacrifice. In 1530, Gardiner, then the King's newly fledged Secretary, had acquired the use of the royal manor of Hanworth. It was an up-to-date building, extensively remodelled by Henry VII; it had a fine park and gardens and it was very convenient for Hampton Court. It was, in short, good enough for Anne and certainly too good for one of Anne's enemies. So in June 1532, Gardiner, as a precondition for his forgiveness, was required to surrender his interest to the King. Henry promptly regranted Hanworth to Anne, and rebuilt it and refurbished it as her own country seat. That it had been prised from Gardiner only added, no doubt, to the delights of its strawberry beds and terra-cotta Classical medallions.
¹⁵

* * *

But Parliamentary manoeuvres, however important, were not the be-all, still less the end-all of the Divorce – despite the fact that English historians, with their narrow national focus and their excessive concentration on 'the Constitution', often write as though they were. Instead, managing the Great Matter was a complex affair. It was like playing a game of chess or conducting an orchestra. Each piece had to be moved to its right place on the board; each section of the orchestra be brought in at the right time. One false entry and the harmony of the English political élite, which was already strained to breaking-point, might collapse entirely; one wrong move and the beleaguered Queen might yet escape.

    Then where would be the climax, where the consummation of checkmate for Anne?

    In this complex of factors, foreign policy was of paramount importance. The new understanding with France – the final achievement of Wolsey's foreign policy – had always been the precondition for Henry's freedom of manoeuvre over the dissolution of his first marriage to the Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon. Only France was strong enough to make Catherine's nephew, the Emperor Charles, think twice about invading England or launching trade sanctions. And only France had enough influence at Rome to counter-balance the formidable pressure on the Pope of the Spanish cardinals and ambassadors.

    But if Henry was at last to get rid of his Spanish-born Queen, England's understanding with France had first to be made water-tight.

    Here Anne was in her element. Her skill in the French language, her understanding of French ways and her enthusiasm for her adoptive country, all conspired to make her the key instrument in the charmoffensive which Henry now launched against France.

* * *

It had got underway in late 1531, when, on Christmas Eve, the new French ambassador, Gilles de La Pommeraye, arrived to replace Giovanni Gioachino di Passano. Anne 'feasted' both the incoming and the outgoing ambassadors. And she mingled business with pleasure. 'With all their pastimes', Chapuys sourly reported, 'they were not idle, and have this day [29 December] sent [the Bishop of] Winchester to France.' In his turn, De La Pommeraye was frank with Chapuys about his own mission. 'Pommeraye is here', Chapuys informed the Emperor, 'for the process of the Divorce to be decided in this kingdom.' 'And', he continued, 'he tells me that it is impossible to conceive how much the King has the said affair at heart and that his master [Francis I] will refuse him nothing.'

    Henry soon put Francis's good intentions to the test. His initial aim was to get the French King to agree the scheme for mutual aid against the Emperor which had first been discussed with Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Bayonne in the summer of 1530. This time, negotiations moved smoothly. On 5 May, De La Pommeraye re-embarked at Southampton for final consultations with Francis I, who was then in Brittany. De La Pommeraye returned to England on 10 June, with Francis's present of a brace of fine greyhounds for Henry. He also bore an even better gift in the form of Francis's agreement in principle to the treaty of mutual aid. There followed a fortnight of lavish entertainment mingled with intense negotiations at the end of which, on 23 June, the treaty was signed. The ambassador represented the French, and Anne's father and Dr Edward Foxe, her leading intellectual supporter, the English.
¹⁶

    The forces which either ally was to send to the aid of the other in the event of an attack by the Emperor were relatively small. Depending on the circumstances, each side was to supply a fleet manned by 1,500 soldiers, while the English were to send a force of 5,000 archers to France, if she were the party attacked, or the French a force of 500 spears to England, if the Imperial offensive were launched there. Archers or long-bowmen were (despite the increasing effectiveness of artillery) still regarded as the best English troops; while 'spears' or heavily armed cavalry were likewise (despite their rout at the Battle of the Spurs) considered to be the crack French troops. The apparent disparity in numbers is accounted for by the fact that 'a spear' was not an individual but a small fighting formation, consisting of the mounted man-at-arms himself, supported by one or more mounted archers, light horsemen and 'custrels' (that is, shields-bearers attending on the man-at-arms).
¹⁷

    But numbers, however calculated, were not really the issue. Instead the treaty was a statement of intent, as far as the signatories were concerned, and a warning, which the Emperor would have to heed. For it signalled that an attack on England was also an attack on France. And not even Charles V was strong enough to contemplate having to deal with both at once.

    Chapuys, who had a scent for such matters, realised the meaning of the treaty even before it was formally announced or he had discovered its terms. For some days he had, he complained to its target, Charles, 'the bad odour of this new treaty in my nostrils'.
¹⁸

    Much would happen before he could free himself of the stench.

* * *

But the treaty was soon overtaken in importance for Henry by another, overtly symbolic scheme. He and Francis, he decided, would broadcast their union by a personal meeting of the two Kings and their Courts.

    The model, of course, was the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520. This was scarcely a happy precedent from the French point of view, since on that occasion the English, by a masterpiece of duplicity, had betrayed their promises of eternal friendship even before they had made them. But things were different this time. It was not that Albion had become less perfidious. Instead, Henry
needed
Francis. Indeed, thanks to the Great Matter, his need for Francis was rather greater than Francis's need for him. It was a good basis for assuming that Henry might keep to his promises.

    The germ of the scheme for a personal meeting had been sown on Gardiner's Embassy to France. The language of the English King's despatches was unusually warm; he also expressed the desire for an upto-date portrait of the French King. And he did so in terms which suggest that the mirror (or perhaps Anne) had been reminding Henry that time flies.

    'Forasmuch,' Henry informed Gardiner, 'as it is long passed sith [since] we did see our said good brother's person, and being much desirous to have the portraiture of the same, in that form and favour that it now is, specially considering that few years do always change a man's countenance'. To satisfy this desire, Henry continued, the bishop, was 'to procure and get unto us, not only the same his portraiture and picture in the most like, best and curious fashion, but also the images and portraitures of our said good brother's children [that is, the recently released Princes]'. These would, Henry assured Gardiner, become treasured objects: 'which to behold shall always be unto us great rejoice and comfort'.
¹⁹

    Cromwell, who could spot a trend a mile off, had already anticipated part of this request in his New Year's gift to the King. It consisted of 'a ring with a ruby and a box with the images of the French King's children'. But then, anticipating Henry's wishes was something that Cromwell was to become increasingly good at.
²⁰

* * *

By the summer, Henry's desire to behold Francis's portrait had openly turned into one to see his person. The desire was loudly and vehemently expressed – by Henry and still more perhaps by Anne. And once more, as so often previously, the Progress and the hunt provided her best opportunities.