Six Wives (95 page)
Authors: David Starkey
Other consultations with his doctors followed, in which Henry described the problem as he saw it. 'He found her body in such sort disordered and indisposed to excite and provoke any lust in him,' he explained. 'Yea,' he continued, '[it] rather minister[ed] matter of loathesomeness unto [him], that [he] could not in any wise overcome that loathesomeness, nor in her company be provoked or stirred to that act.'
On the other hand, he was not, God forbid, impotent. And he had evidence to prove it. 'He hath had', he confessed to Butts, 'two wet dreams [
duas pollutiones nocturnas in somno
].' He also told him that '[he] thought himself able to do the act with other, but not with her'.
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duas pollutiones nocturnas in somno
].' He also told him that '[he] thought himself able to do the act with other, but not with her'.
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Nevertheless, Henry continued to go through the motions and, every other night at least, solemnly processed to the Queen's apartments to sleep with her.
But sleep was all he did.
* * *
What, however, of Anne in all this? It is difficult to be sure of her reaction. She was still escaping from her mother's shadow and found it hard to say what she wanted. Indeed, until she picked up some English, she found it difficult to say anything at all. But, as Wotton predicted, she proved a quick learner and, a few months after her marriage, she had a frank exchange with her ladies.
It began when 'they [all] wished her Grace with child'. 'She knew well', she replied, 'she was not with child.' 'How is it possible', asked one, 'for your Grace to know that and lie every night with the King?' 'I know it well I am not,' Anne insisted.
This was too much for Lady Rochford, George Boleyn's widow, who seems to have learned little from her late husband's fate. 'By Our Lady', she said, 'I think your Grace is a maid still indeed.' 'How can I be a maid', the Queen replied, 'and sleep every night with the King?' 'There must be more than that,' said Lady Rochford, with an insolent directness.
But instead of slapping her down, the long-suffering Anne entered into a patient explanation. 'Why,' she said, 'when he comes to bed, he kisses me and taketh me by the hand and biddeth me, "Goodnight, sweetheart"; and in the morning [he] kisses me and biddeth me, "Farewell, darling". Is this not enough?'
'Madam,' replied the Countess of Rutland, 'there must be more than this, or it will be long ere we have a Duke of York.'
'Nay,' said the Queen, 'I am content with this, for I know no more.'
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* * *
Was Anne really as naïve as this exchange suggests? Or was she trying to keep up appearances? Was she even, perhaps, trying to protect Henry?
For there is a clear indication that she knew that something was wrong from the start. 'The Queen [has] often desired to speak with me,' Cromwell told Henry on 7 January, during their post-mortem discussion on the disaster of the wedding night. 'But I durst not.' 'Why should [you] not?' Henry replied. 'Alleging', Cromwell remembered, 'that I might do much good in going to her, and to be plain with her in declaring my mind.'
Despite Henry's encouragement, however, Cromwell managed to avoid having the awkward conversation himself. Instead, he shuffled off the responsibility onto the Earl of Rutland, who was Anne's Lord Chamberlain. Cromwell had a private word with Rutland, in which he begged him 'to find some means that the Queen might be induced to order [her] Grace pleasantly in her behaviour towards [the King], thinking thereby for to have had some faults amended'. Cromwell also spoke more generally to the Queen's Council, 'to counsel their mistress to use all pleasantness to [the King]'.
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We have no means of knowing whether anyone acted on this advice. The suspicion must be that they did not. If, Rutland and the rest must have reasoned, Cromwell himself was afraid to speak to the Queen directly, why should they risk their necks on his behalf?
For Cromwell was only reaping what he had sown. He had instituted a reign of terror, in which careless talk cost lives. And no talk, of course, was more careless than talk which cast doubt on the succession. But none, in the present circumstances, was more vital either.
Somehow, the circle had to be squared. Anne had to be taught the facts of life. She had even, in the face of Henry's 'loathesomeness', to be taught to take the sexual initiative. But how to do this without offering the least hint of Henry's incapacity or outright impotence? After all, it was only three years since Rochford had gone to the block after doing just that.
It was an awkward but not impossible task and Cromwell, of all men, should have been able to do it. He had the King's direct authority to proceed. He also had the most powerful incentive, since, as he well knew, such a conversation with Anne was the best hope of rescuing the Cleves marriage. But, on his own admission, he lacked the courage even to try.
* * *
There was, of course, an alternative route. Rutland may not have spoken to the Queen, but it seems pretty clear that he spoke to his wife, the Countess. For she, as a woman, could go where a man could not. She could tackle the Queen, woman to woman, in the secrecy of her private apartments. And she could raise the dreaded topic naturally, without an overt political context or agenda. That is the background, I think, to the conversation between Anne and her ladies which has already been described.
But, equally, this conversation shows the limitations of this approach. It did not take place till June, by which time the breakdown in the marriage was irretrievable. And, even then, it quickly encountered barriers of language and of trust. But the most important obstacle was Anne's own attitude. 'Did not your Grace tell Mother Loew this?' asked the Countess.
Mrs Loew was a German gentlewoman, who had accompanied Anne from Cleves. Unlike most of Anne's German entourage, who, as was the custom, were sent home soon after the marriage, she was allowed to remain in England. And she quickly established a pre-eminent position in the Queen's Household. She was the 'mother' of the German maids. She was also Anne's chief confidante. Apply to Mrs Loew, the Countess of Rutland advised her friend Lady Lisle, for she 'can do as much . . . as any woman' to secure the appointment of Anne Basset's younger, uglier sister, Catherine, as one of the Queen's maids.
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In view of all this, Mrs Loew should have been Anne's natural comforter and adviser in the problems of her marriage. She was a shoulder to weep on. She was also, as 'mother' of the maids, expected to be a fount of knowledge and woman's lore.
But Anne apparently was too embarrassed to invoke her. 'Fie, fie, for shame!' Anne said, when the Countess of Rutland asked if she had discussed Henry's behaviour in bed with Mrs Loew. 'God forbid!'
Between Cromwell's cowardice and Anne's shamefacedness, any hope of rescuing the marriage from Henry's initial disgust was lost.
* * *
But Henry's cup of sorrow was not yet full. For, little more than a month after the marriage, the latent toughness of Anne's character started to appear. The bone of contention seems to have been the treatment of Henry's elder daughter, Mary. Mary was now fully restored to her father's good graces and marriage negotiations were in full swing for a match between her and the Duke of Bavaria. In Lent, which began on 11 February, Henry had some discussions with Anne about his daughter. But Anne, Henry complained bitterly to Cromwell, had begun 'to wax stubborn and wilful'.
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It was not what the King was used to after Jane Seymour.
* * *
The outside world, however, knew none of this. Nor, for that matter, did most of the King's intimates. They could, and did, draw their conclusions from the external signs of Henry's behaviour. But at first only Cromwell and the two doctors were in the King's full confidence.
Thereafter, however, the circle of those in the know steadily widened. A week after the wedding, Cromwell told Admiral Fitzwilliam. He also, Fitzwilliam claimed, tried to pin the blame on him for having over-praised Anne in his letters from Calais. Heneage seems to have learned the truth at about the same time. But even Denny remained in the dark for almost a month.
In Denny's case, it is true, it was probably a wilful blindness. As a partisan of Reform, he was desperately anxious for the marriage to succeed. So he stuck loyally to the script which Cromwell had given him, and continued to praise Anne 'at the first arrival of the Queen and long after'. Finally, just before Lent, Henry lost patience and decided to take Denny into his confidence as well, 'as . . . servant whom he used secretly about him'. Denny heard out the King's description of Anne's body and his own repulsion from it. Then he tried to comfort his master.
'The state of Princes . . . in matters of marriage', he said, '[was] far of worse sort than the condition of poor men.' 'For Princes', he continued, 'take as is brought them by others, and poor men be commonly at their own choice and liberty.'
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This was Job's comfort indeed.
* * *
Meanwhile, the machinery of ceremony ground on obliviously. On 4 February, Anne and Henry removed from Greenwich to Whitehall in another great river pageant. The Lord Mayor and citizens gave their attendance. And the Tower shot off 'above a thousand chambers of ordnance, which made a noise like thunder'.
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On 18 April, Cromwell, the author of the Cleves marriage, had his reward. He was created Earl of Essex and Lord Great Chamberlain of England. After the ceremony, the King went to dine with the Queen in her Chamber, while the newly created Earl dined in the Council Chamber with his fellow magnates. There Garter King of Arms proclaimed his style: 'Earl of Essex, Vicegerent and High Chamberlain of England, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Justice of the Forests beyond Trent'. Short of a dukedom, he could rise no higher.
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May Day, too, was celebrated with the accustomed pageantry. Henry, increasingly lame as he was, was no longer able to ride as Anne's knight. But a new generation of coming young men, including Sir Thomas Seymour, the late Queen's younger brother, and Richard Cromwell, the minister's nephew, showed off their jousting skills before the new Queen in the tilt-yard at Whitehall. After the tournament, the jousters kept open house at Durham Place, 'where they feasted the King's Majesty [and] the Queen's Grace and her ladies'.
Finally, there were rumours, which Anne sought eagerly to turn into reality, that she would be crowned round Whitsuntide.
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It was just like old times.
But it was all a façade. Soon, rumours were circulating of another sort of entertainment. Henry was seen crossing the Thames in a little boat, often in broad daylight and occasionally even at midnight. His destination was either the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk's house in Lambeth or Winchester Palace in Southwark, where Gardiner was providing 'feasts and entertainments'.
For Henry had fallen in love again, with a 'young lady of diminutive stature'. Her name was Catherine Howard. She was one of the Queen's ladies and, like Anne Boleyn, was niece to the Duke of Norfolk.
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* * *
However the relationship began (and its origins are unknown), it soon became as political as the Cleves marriage, to which it was the perfect counterpoise. For all year the political pendulum had swung wildly from one extreme to the other. First Reforming friends and clients of Cromwell, such as Robert Barnes, were humiliated and arrested. Then Cromwell struck back in May with the arrest of leading conservatives, including Lord Lisle, the Deputy of Calais, and Bishop Sampson of Chichester, who was also Dean of the Chapel Royal.
The moment of crisis had been reached. On 1 June the French ambassador, Marillac, reported that 'things are brought to such a pass that either Cromwell's party or that of the Bishop of Winchester must succumb'. And his money, he made clear, was on Cromwell to emerge as the victor.
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It is easy to see why. For Cromwell, despite his fatal lack of courage in speaking to Anne, was the bolder and better politician. But the failure of the Cleves marriage proved the chink in his armour and on 10 June he was arrested at the Council Board, insulted by his fellow-councillors, whom he had terrorised and humiliated for so long, and taken straight to the Tower.
Only Cranmer dared to speak up for him, in the sort of ambiguous phrases he had once used about Cromwell's earlier victim, Anne Boleyn. 'I loved him as my friend,' the Archbishop wrote to Henry. 'But now, if he be a traitor, I am sorry that I ever loved him or trusted him.' 'I am very glad his treason is discovered in time', he continued, 'but again I am very sorrowful. For who shall your Grace trust hereafter, if you might not trust him?'
'Alas, whom should men trust?' Henry had asked Russell.
Not Cromwell, he had decided at last.
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* * *
The fallen minister was not even given the dignity of a trial. Instead, he was condemned by a Parliamentary process known as an Act of Attainder. The charges were a fantastic mixture of treason, heresy and
scandalum magnatum
, or being rude and oppressive to nobles. Only the last had any vestige of truth. But truth, as Cromwell had fatally taught Henry, was not important.
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scandalum magnatum
, or being rude and oppressive to nobles. Only the last had any vestige of truth. But truth, as Cromwell had fatally taught Henry, was not important.
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Only Henry's convenience was.
With the Act of Attainder, Cromwell was legally dead. And he was kept alive for a few weeks only to facilitate the now inevitable divorce from Anne of Cleves.
His co-operation was not in doubt. He would do and say anything to avoid the full, horrible penalties for treason or heresy, which, in view of his humble birth, were likely to be his hideous fate. He also had the temperament of a bully: strong and bold when he was in the ascendant, but craven in defeat. 'Most gracious prince, I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy!' he wrote at the end of one of the letters in which he supplied the required circumstantial detail about the Cleves marriage and its debacle.
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