The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn (9 page)

But, as Retha Warnicke has convincingly demonstrated, the notion of a political alliance between Anne and Cromwell has been largely overstated by modern historians, who have relied too heavily on the dispatches of Chapuys, and inferred too much from them. Nor is there any hard evidence to suggest that queen and secretary were allied in a court faction for the purpose of furthering reform. In fact, there are remarkably few known instances of their acting together: on the contrary, the evidence shows them usually to have operated independently of each other. By the summer of 1535 they were moving, crucially, in different directions, and Cromwell’s attitude toward Anne had changed, probably because she resented the more radical direction in which his planned closure of the monasteries was taking him: he was pushing for their wholesale dissolution, while she appears to have favored their reform.

Perhaps Anne had also come to resent—or even fear—Cromwell’s growing power as a threat to her own influence. She was a Francophile, while his instincts, honed by his good relations with the merchants of London, were beginning to lean toward the Empire, where they had their markets.
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In consequence of these fundamental differences, Cromwell and Anne—far from working together for a common aim—had become rivals for power. That was evident as early as June 1535, when Cromwell, bent on smoothing relations with the Emperor, discussed with an astonished Chapuys the desirability of restoring Mary to the succession, since she was loved by the people and would have a better chance of holding the throne than the young Elizabeth. He told the ambassador that if Anne learned of this, “she would live to see his head cut off.” But he remained unruffled. “I trust so much on my master that I fancy she cannot do me any harm,” he said comfortably, although his complacency would turn out to be misplaced. Chapuys could hardly believe what he was hearing. All I can say,” he observed incredulously, “is that everyone here considers him Anne’s right hand.” He could only conclude that Cromwell desired “to lower the great ones,” and assumed that he might begin with the Queen’s estranged uncle of Norfolk.
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Despite his earlier interest in a Protestant German alliance, Cromwell was now moving toward an Imperial one; in the wake of Katherine of Aragon’s death, the councillors increasingly pushed for that, and Master Secretary had no desire to put himself in an isolated position, and every
reason to distance himself from the Queen. On the evening of January 29, the day Anne miscarried, he had a secret meeting with Chapuys to broach the subject of an Imperial alliance, and even said that Katherine’s death had been beneficial to relations between Henry and Charles. Cromwell had already anticipated that Anne might well prove an insurmountable obstruction, and the ambassador obviously felt the same way, for at that meeting he told Master Secretary that the world at large would never acknowledge her as the King’s lawful wife, although it might well be prepared to acknowledge any other lady whom Henry might marry.

Cromwell was aware of Anne’s continuing support for an alliance with the Lutheran princes; the English delegation was still at Wittenberg (it would not return until after May). She had good cause to oppose a pact with the Emperor, which was one reason why she was pushing Henry in the other direction. Alexander Aless, who had himself visited Wittenberg and embraced the doctrines of Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon, held the biased opinion that Anne’s zeal for an alliance with German heretics was the reason why her enemies united against her, for there was always a risk that the King might succumb to her persuasions.

Cromwell evidently felt it would be useful to have Chapuys on his side. We do not know if Chapuys told Cromwell what Henry had reportedly said about having been seduced into his marriage by witchcraft, and taking another wife. But whether he did or not, the tenor of their conversation would have led both men to the unspoken conclusion that it would be in everyone’s interests for Henry to rid himself of his unpopular queen.

The Frailty of Human Affairs

W
hen Henry VIII left Greenwich early in February to go to London for the Shrovetide celebrations and the final session of the Reformation Parliament, which opened on February 4, he left Anne behind to recover and “to her own pursuits.”
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Chapuys believed the King was still angry with her, still hardly speaking to her, and that he had “shown his sentiments by the fact that, during these festive days, he is here, and has left her in Greenwich, whereas formerly he could not leave her for an hour.”
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Certainly that was how the situation must have appeared outwardly, yet Parliament’s business was exceptionally important, and Henry always made a point of being near at hand when crucial matters were being debated,
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while Anne would have needed time to recover from her miscarriage: this was, after all, an age in which women were expected to lie in bed for two weeks after parturition, so she could not have been expected to accompany the King to London just days after losing a baby of fifteen weeks’ gestation. Indeed, Henry would surely have preferred her to be with the court—and would indeed summon her back as soon as she had recovered—because he could not see Jane Seymour otherwise. For since the Queen was remaining at Greenwich, he was obliged, for propriety’s sake—his own household being an exclusively male preserve—to leave Jane there too.

Yet, proving that Anne was not entirely out of favor, Parliament passed legislation assuring the manors of “Hasyllegh,” Essex, and Collyweston, Northamptonshire, to the Queen.
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Collyweston had once been the property of Henry’s grandmother, Margaret Beaufort, and latterly in the hands of his bastard son, Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond; the King must have approved Richmond giving Queen Anne that manor and palace in exchange for Baynard’s Castle and Durham House in London.
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This indicates that Henry was still determined outwardly to support Anne, that she still exerted some hold over him, and that Jane Seymour was, for the moment, just another passing fancy, like Mary Boleyn and Madge Shelton.

For all that, Anne must have been deeply unhappy at this time, mourning for her lost baby and fearing that she had lost her husband’s favor. Isolated at Greenwich, her only companions were her ladies and “Her Grace’s woman fool.”
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Anne was no dunce: having leisure to reflect on what had happened, she was probably wondering if Henry would abandon her. On March 6, Dr. Ortiz, the Emperor’s ambassador in Rome, would report to Empress Isabella that “La Ana fears now that the King will leave her to make another marriage.”
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There may have been more wishful thinking and garbled rumor in this than well-founded truth, but it was possibly not far off the mark.

The presence of Jane Seymour was a constant trial to Anne. If Chapuys’s sources were correct, a number of “valuable presents” and loving messages had arrived for Jane from York Place (soon to be known as Whitehall Palace), where the King—who was said by Cromwell on February 4 to be “merry and in perfect health”
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—was residing. Chapuys mentioned the presents on February 10, the first time he referred to Jane by name in one of his dispatches. Anne evidently was upset to learn about the presents and tormented by jealousy. She watched Jane continually, and “there was often much scratching and by-blows between the Queen and her maid,”
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it being the prerogative of any mistress whose servant gave offense to resort to slaps. Thomas Fuller, in his
History of the Worthies of England
(1662), records a tale of how Anne, seeing Jane wearing a new jeweled pendant about her neck, asked to see it; when Jane showed herself unwilling, Anne lost control of her temper and ripped the locket from Jane’s neck with such force “that she hurt her hand with her own violence; but it grieved her heart more when she perceived in it the King’s
picture.” Fuller could have had access to sources lost to us, or his story may be apocryphal, but it is credible within the context of contemporary testimony.
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As soon as Anne fully recovered, Henry sent for her to join him in London. She had left Greenwich for York Place by February 24, on which day she and the King celebrated the feast day of St. Matthias there. Chapuys reported that Henry had been sufficiently moved by Anne’s distress over his affair with Jane to forsake the latter’s company for hers on this occasion. It was on the following day that Chapuys wrote: “I have learned from several persons of this court that, for more than three months, this king has not spoken above ten times to the Concubine.”
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But it would seem that Chapuys was rather overstating the matter, or that Henry had now thawed a little, for relations between him and Anne were on the mend, as would be borne out over the coming weeks. On February 28, Anne felt confident enough to intercede with him on behalf of Joyce, the former Prioress of Catesby, offering him 2,000 marks (£235,000) so the priory could escape dissolution; however, he did not immediately give her “a perfect answer” because the prioress had also appealed to Cromwell, who told the King that the nuns could no longer support themselves, at which Henry quite reasonably turned down Anne’s request.
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It was at this time that the University of Cambridge wrote to the Queen to thank her for using her influence in persuading the King to remit their dues of first fruits and tenths.
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Late in April, Henry, Lord Stafford, wrote to Cromwell and the Earl of Westmorland, soliciting their support for his petition to the Queen in respect of his being granted Ranton Priory, Staffordshire.
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So clearly Anne’s influence was still considerable, and perceived to be so.

At this time Anne was perhaps occupying herself with her charitable works, as well as with dressing up her daughter. Between February 19 and April 28 she spent lavishly on garments for the two-year-old Elizabeth, whom she loved intensely.
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Her purchases included purple, white, and crimson satin caps with cauls of gold; crimson satin and fringe for the princess’s cradle head; “fine pieces of needle ribbon to roll Her Grace’s hair;” and a fringe of gold and silver “for the little bed.”
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Agnes Strickland, the Victorian author of
The Lives of the Queens of England
, describes Anne being very melancholy during these weeks, and withdrawing from
“the gaieties of the court” to the peace of Greenwich Park, or one of the palace courtyards, where she sat silently for hours, playing with her dogs, but Strickland does not state where she obtained this information.

By February 1536 the fragile alliance between the Emperor and King Francis I of France was breaking down, with the French threatening Imperial interests in Italy. That, and the death of Katherine of Aragon, had conveniently paved the way to an alliance between Charles V and Henry VIII, a circumstance of which Cromwell now wished to take full advantage. With Pope Paul III on the brink of promulgating the bull of excommunication that had been drawn up by his predecessor, Clement VII, which would deprive Henry VIII of his throne, and the implications that would have for England’s future in a largely Catholic Europe, the friendship of the Emperor would be a highly desirable asset. Given the instability of England’s relations with France during the past year, it offered the greatest hope for the future security of the realm, for it would also reduce the risk of France and the Empire coming to terms and leaving England dangerously isolated.

On February 25, Cromwell asked Chapuys to meet him in secret at the church of the Augustine friars, which lay between the ambassador’s London residence and the fine house that Master Secretary was building for himself. He told Chapuys “he wished to speak to me himself, and not by command of the King.” At their secret meeting, as Chapuys reported to Charles V, Cromwell revealed “that he considered continually night and day how to cement” an alliance between the King and the Emperor. He emphasized that Henry “desired nothing more earnestly” than the Emperor’s friendship,” and that his councillors, including some of the formerly pro-French Boleyn faction, were “strongly urging” him in that direction, hoping that, now that Francis I had moved closer to the Pope, the Emperor would be their friend. They had heard that Charles, desperate to prevent Henry from setting aside Anne and making a marriage alliance with France, and eager to mend the breach with England, had recently prevailed upon the pontiff not to issue his bull against Henry, and that Charles was even ready to persuade him to recognize Henry’s marriage to Anne in return for Henry acknowledging Mary’s legitimacy on the grounds that she had been born of a marriage entered into in good faith.
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Having a half-Spanish princess as next in line to the English throne
augured well for the future of Anglo-Imperial relations and could only benefit both powers.