Six Wives (85 page)

    Then, before the requiem mass for the Knight who had died in the previous year, the King announced his choice. There were many of the nominees, he said, 'who were indeed most exceeding worthy'. 'But at that time', he continued, 'he thought good that Sir Nicholas Carew should be preferred in the election.' Carew was summoned, fell on his knees and delivered an oleaginous disabling speech. He owed his appointment, he protested, not to his own merits or actions, but only to Henry's 'most excellent goodness'.
¹⁷

    He also owed it, indirectly, to Anne since, in her decline, her opposition had become a recommendation to Henry.

    Anne, naturally, was furious, especially since Henry's decision made her fall from the King's favour public knowledge. '[She] has not . . . sufficient influence to get it for her brother,' Chapuys noted gleefully. But Anne was also afraid, because Carew was the leading supporter of her rival, Jane Seymour. Still worse, he made little effort to conceal the fact. Indeed, Chapuys learned, he was boasting to anyone who would listen that he would soon pitch Anne out of the saddle.
¹⁸

* * *

Also on 24 April, as the drama and pageantry of the Garter was unrolling at Greenwich, a judicial commission of 'Oyer and Terminer' was issued at Westminster. Such commissions – 'to hear and to determine' a wide list of offences, including treason and the misprision of treason – were routine. But was this one intended for routine purposes?

    And three days after that, on the 27th, writs were issued for a new Parliament. The old Parliament, the 'Reformation', which had legislated the break with Rome, enabled Anne's marriage and protected it with the penalties of treason, had only been dissolved on 14 April. To summon another so quickly was without precedent. What was it intended to do?
¹⁹

    Probably the truth is that no one, not even the ruling triumvirate of Henry, Cromwell and Lord Chancellor Audley, quite knew. Meanwhile, Carew and his friends were floating a variety of schemes. One would divorce Anne on the grounds that her precontract with Northumberland amounted to a valid marriage. And another would legitimate Mary because she had been born
bona fide parentum. Bona fide parentum
(during the good faith of her parents) was a technicality of canon law which nicely squared the circle. By it, Henry's first marriage was acknowledged to be null (for Henry would never accept anything else); but, equally, because Catherine and Henry had
thought
that they were married, their offspring, Mary, was presumed to be legitimate despite the invalidity of her parents' marriage.

    Stokesley, the Bishop of London, and a leading canonist, was consulted on the legal situation. But, wisely, he declared 'that he would not give any opinion to anyone but the King himself '.
²⁰

    There is, in short, the powerful impression that Anne's opponents were flailing around. They had her on the defensive. But they had not come up with an open-and-shut case against her. She might easily escape and turn the tables.

    But then, over the weekend of 29–30 April, there took place two incidents which delivered Anne into her enemies' hands. Or rather, perhaps, she delivered herself.

* * *

For Anne the religious Reformer was only one side of the Queen. The other is glimpsed in Baynton's description of the goings-on among the Queen's ladies in the weeks after her coronation. Absent lovers and husbands, he had said, were forgotten, as the women rejoiced in their new conquests. For life in the Queen's Chamber was not all Bibles, sermons and politics. There was dancing, singing and poetry. There were wordgames and acrostics, gossip and jokes. Above all, there was love. Sometimes it was real. Sometimes it was a game. And often it was difficult to tell the two apart.
²¹

    Anne in her days as a maiden in the Queen's Chamber had been mistress of this game of Courtly Love: it was how she had attracted and won Henry in the first place. But now that she was Queen, her expected role changed from practitioner to president. As Queen, she was the focus of the sighs of musicians, poets and Court gallants. But the sighs were supposed to be ceremonious and chaste. As was she.

    She was also expected to preserve discipline among her ladies and maids and their male suitors. This was a tall order. For the Court, as Kingston's wry remarks show, was the kingdom of youth. It was filled with young men and young women who were attractive, athletic and ambitious. They were on the make and had time on their hands. In the circumstances, constant virtue, on the part of either sex, must have been something of a miracle. And miracles were no more common in the sixteenth century than in the twenty-first. Nor was it only the young. For even the middle aged, as Kingston admits against himself, caught the prevailing ethos and behaved as though they too were young. Likewise the married were tempted to act as though they were not.
²²

    Anne's relationship to all this was ambiguous. She had the character, intelligence and presence to keep control. But she also had a shrewish side, and was tempted to bandy words, which was undignified and could easily escalate. There was a fundamental issue as well. She was the most successful poacher of her age or any preceding one. This might make her an equally effective gamekeeper. On the other hand, her life story was a testament to the fact that, while virtue may be its own reward, vice really pays.

    Anne, in short, might command: 'Do as I say.' But the temptation was to reply: 'Why? I am only doing what you did.' And, as we shall see, many found it hard to resist temptation.

* * *

The first incident of that fatal weekend took place on the Saturday. And it shows Anne in a proper, if rather snobbish, light. When she went into her Presence Chamber or Throne Room she found Mark Smeaton, a favourite young musician of the King's Privy Chamber, standing in the bay-window.

    What happened next was a scene from tragi-comedy, which Anne later described in her own words. Smeaton was pensive, probably extravagantly so, in the manner of a romantic poet smitten with love. 'Why are you so sad?' she asked. He replied, 'It was no matter'. And then he sighed. Her patience snapped. Not only was Smeaton making an exhibition of himself, he was getting above himself as well. A cat may look at a Queen, but a mere musician should not make love to her.

    So, ruthlessly, she slapped him down. 'You may not look to have me speak to you as I should do to a nobleman', she said, 'because you be an inferior person.'

    'No, no, Madam,' he replied, 'a look sufficed me; and thus fare you well!'

    He had swallowed the reproof. It was his place to do so. And he had the memory of those coal-black eyes, that had bewitched many a greater man.
²³

* * *

    Henry Norris, the Groom of the Stool and Chief Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, was the head of the King's private service and Henry's principal personal favourite. He had also become close, personally and politically, to Anne. He had spent most of the spring away from Court on his estates in Oxfordshire, where he was a beneficiary of Suffolk's fall from grace the previous summer.

    There was only one fly in the ointment. For it was a truth, universally acknowledged in the sixteenth as much as in the nineteenth century, that a single man, in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. And Norris was both rich and unmarried. Or rather, he was between marriages. His first wife, the daughter of Thomas Fiennes, Lord Dacre of the South, had died before 1530. He had subsequently had an on-off relationship with Anne's cousin, Margaret Shelton, the daughter of Mary's custodians, Sir John and Lady Shelton. But he had made no commitments.

    'Madge' Shelton was a bit of a goer. She was vivacious and attractive and had for a time been the King's mistress. She also had a string of other conquests. Maybe Norris delayed tying the knot because she was shopsoiled goods. Maybe he was worried that her Boleyn blood was turning into a liability. Or, most likely, he hesitated because he was not sure he loved her.

    Anne, however, was determined to force the issue. 'I asked him', she recalled later, 'why he went not through with his marriage?' He replied 'he would tarry a time'. Irritated by his prevarication Anne snapped back: 'You look for dead men's shoes. For if aught came to the King but good, you would look to have me.' Norris was appalled. 'If he should have any such thought', he said, 'he would his head were off.' Anne then became openly threatening: 'She could undo him if she would.' And the two had a violent quarrel.

* * *

Anne's words were unutterably foolish. And they can be explained only by the nervous strain she was under. Cromwell had deserted her. Now it seemed that Norris was abandoning her as well. In her fear, she lashed out.

    Quickly, of course, both realised their folly and, that same day at Anne's command, Norris informed Almoner Skip 'that he would swear for the Queen that she was a good woman'. But this was a remedy that was almost worse than the disease.
²⁴

    And, in any case, the damage was done. For some of Anne's ladies had high-powered brothers and husbands and, in the echo-chamber of the Court, such an incident could not be kept quiet. By the afternoon, Henry himself knew. He confronted Anne directly. She said what she could. But her words seemed damning and Henry, in disgust, thrust her away and retreated to sulk alone in the bay-window.

* * *

In this extremity, the Queen played her trump card.

    Elizabeth had spent the spring with her parents. Probably she had stayed at Eltham, Greenwich's satellite palace. Anne lavished attention on her. She bought her beautiful caps, made out of rich fabrics and exquisitely trimmed with gold nets and laces. She even paid for a craftsman to come from London only 'to take measure of caps for my Lady Princess'.
²⁵

    Henry, as his behaviour after Catherine's death shows, was fond of his pretty auburn-haired daughter. Would the child speak to Henry as Anne's words could not?

    The resulting scene was witnessed by the Scottish Reformer, Alexander Alane ('Alesius'). And he claimed to remember it vividly – though it was by then over twenty years later, and the child was Queen herself.

'I did not perfectly understand what had been going on', Alane continued, 'but the faces and gestures of the speakers plainly showed that the King was angry, although he could conceal his anger wonderfully well.'
²⁶ 

* * *

For the moment, however, Anne's gesture worked and Henry seemed pacified. Or perhaps he was merely biding his time. For the signals were mixed. The decision was taken that the May Day jousts should proceed as planned the next day. On the other hand, very late at night (at about 11 o'clock), the forthcoming Progress to inspect the new harbour and fortifications at Dover was cancelled.
²⁷

    For a new front had opened up. Somehow, and again probably through Anne's ladies, Cromwell had heard about the Queen's conversation with Smeaton on Saturday. The young musician was seized and was taken to Cromwell's house at Stepney, where he was 'in examination on May Even'. Maybe it was the results of this preliminary examination, without the use of torture, which led to the last-minute decision to cancel the Progress.
²⁸

    Nevertheless, the tournament went ahead in the presence of the King and Queen. Both behaved as though nothing had happened. Henry, indeed, with that mastery of self-control to which Alane referred, went out of his way to be gracious and even lent Norris a horse when his own mount refused to charge. Anne, too, put up a good show and appeared as her radiant self, presiding over the jousts from her viewing-box hung with cloth of gold and encouraging the combatants with smiles and gestures.
²⁹

    It was a final triumph in a familiar arena. For Henry and Anne never saw each other again. Just as he had done with Catherine, Henry slipped away without a word.

* * *

The moment the jousts were over, Henry returned to York Place. He was in such a hurry that he did not wait for the tide to turn. Instead, he rode. And riding at his side was Norris.

    But instead of the usual easy banter between master and favourite attendant, Norris was talking for his life. 'All the way', George Constantine, Norris's servant, reported, '[the King] had Mr Norris in examination and promised him his pardon in case he would utter the truth.' The pressure was intense: 'but whatsoever could be said or done, Mr Norris would confess nothing to the King'.

    Norris was held overnight at York Place and committed to the Tower at dawn the following morning. During this second journey, according to his own chaplain, a confession of sorts was wrung out of him by Treasurer Fitzwilliam. But Norris later claimed 'that he was deceived to do the same'.
³⁰

    Meanwhile, Smeaton had been admitted to the Tower at 6 p.m. on May Day. Constantine later heard that 'he was . . . grievously racked'. Probably he was put to the torture as soon as he arrived. His ordeal lasted almost four hours, as 'it was 10 of the clock or he were well lodged [in his cell]'.
³¹

    The time taken shows that he put up impressive resistance. But finally the pain and Cromwell's brutal questions broke him, and he confessed to adultery with the Queen.

    Cromwell had his first breakthrough.