The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (71 page)
Read The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn Online
Authors: Eric Ives
Cranmer’s decision, of course, could simply have been pragmatic - ‘least said, soonest mended’; Anne was a condemned traitor and the sword would provide reason enough. Tudor minds, however, set great store on due process, and the Second Succession Act of July 1536 specifically states that the marriage with Anne was void because of ‘certain just, true and lawful impediments unknown at the making’ of the legislation protecting it ‘and since that time confessed by the Lady Anne’.
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The ground for this was almost certainly a retrospective construction of a little-noticed qualification in the Dispensations Act of 1534.
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This had decreed that existing dispensations should remain valid but that dispensations should in future be issued in England, not Rome. There was, however, one specific exception: dispensations could not be issued for causes ‘contrary or repugnant to the Holy Scriptures and laws of God’. Henry, of course, had argued for years that the papal dispensation to marry his deceased brother’s wife was repugnant to scripture, but Clement VII had also provided a dispensation to cover Henry’s affaire with Anne’s sister. Supposing that too was ‘repugnant’? As God had revealed to Henry, holy scriptures and the laws of God forbade marriage to a sibling’s widow but might that prohibition not apply to sexual relations per se? If so, Henry had never been validly married to Anne either. The king had known from the first that intercourse with her sister was a barrier; what had been ‘unknown’ to him was that such a barrier was insurmountable. Chapuys was right. Mary was the impediment.
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The ground for this was almost certainly a retrospective construction of a little-noticed qualification in the Dispensations Act of 1534.
69
This had decreed that existing dispensations should remain valid but that dispensations should in future be issued in England, not Rome. There was, however, one specific exception: dispensations could not be issued for causes ‘contrary or repugnant to the Holy Scriptures and laws of God’. Henry, of course, had argued for years that the papal dispensation to marry his deceased brother’s wife was repugnant to scripture, but Clement VII had also provided a dispensation to cover Henry’s affaire with Anne’s sister. Supposing that too was ‘repugnant’? As God had revealed to Henry, holy scriptures and the laws of God forbade marriage to a sibling’s widow but might that prohibition not apply to sexual relations per se? If so, Henry had never been validly married to Anne either. The king had known from the first that intercourse with her sister was a barrier; what had been ‘unknown’ to him was that such a barrier was insurmountable. Chapuys was right. Mary was the impediment.
That this was the argument Cranmer relied on in annulling Anne’s marriage is effectively confirmed by legislation put through two months later. The Second Succession Act includes an incongruous clause stating that:
it is to be understood that if it chance any man to know carnally any woman, that then all and singular persons being in any degree of consanguinity or affinity... to any of the parties so carnally offending shall be deemed and adjudged to be within the cases and limits of the said prohibition of marriage.
This was divine law and could not be dispensed; marriages already made were declared invalid and their offspring illegitimate, exactly as Elizabeth was.
Whatever the ground, the decision to annul Anne’s marriage immediately after accusing her of adultery was, of course, schizoid. If she had never been the king’s wife, plans to marry Norris were perfectly proper. The point, so glaringly obvious to us, does not seem to have been made at the time, probably because (as Chapuys recognized) the divorce was not directed at Anne herself. She was doomed; the target was Elizabeth.
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Henry was determined not to admit the legitimacy of his elder daughter Mary. Bastardizing the younger as well would leave him no legitimate children and a serious case could be made for the only boy, the duke of Richmond, as the heir presumptive. Of course Henry hoped for a son by Jane Seymour, but he would not bank on it as he had with Anne. This line of thinking explains the provisions of the Succession Act of July 1536. This switched the legitimate line from Elizabeth to the offspring of Henry and Jane or any future wives, but it also provided that if Henry had no legitimate heirs, then he could by letters patent or his last will declare who the next ruler would be. Richmond, therefore, could be held in reserve should Jane fail to produce the heir,
sans reproche.
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In the end, however, all this went for nothing. Disease took its grip on the young duke, and four days after the Succession Act became law, he was dead.
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Henry was determined not to admit the legitimacy of his elder daughter Mary. Bastardizing the younger as well would leave him no legitimate children and a serious case could be made for the only boy, the duke of Richmond, as the heir presumptive. Of course Henry hoped for a son by Jane Seymour, but he would not bank on it as he had with Anne. This line of thinking explains the provisions of the Succession Act of July 1536. This switched the legitimate line from Elizabeth to the offspring of Henry and Jane or any future wives, but it also provided that if Henry had no legitimate heirs, then he could by letters patent or his last will declare who the next ruler would be. Richmond, therefore, could be held in reserve should Jane fail to produce the heir,
sans reproche.
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In the end, however, all this went for nothing. Disease took its grip on the young duke, and four days after the Succession Act became law, he was dead.
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Anne Boleyn was not at Lambeth that Wednesday to watch the twists and turns of Cranmer and the lawyers in their attempt to give the king what he wanted. Instead she was facing what she expected to be the last night of her life, and by two o‘clock the next morning the sleepless queen was closeted with her almoner. Her preparation for the sacrament complete, she called Kingston to hear mass with her soon after dawn on the Thursday. It was then that, at the damnation of her immortal soul, she swore on the sacrament that she had never been unfaithful to the king. She did so twice - before and after receiving the body of Christ - and the constable duly passed on her oath, as she knew he would.
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At some stage she made arrangements to distribute the .£20 which Henry had sent her to distribute in alms.
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Then there was only the waiting. Later that morning Kingston was summoned again. Anne had heard that she was not to die until noon: ‘Master Kingston, I hear say I shall not die afore noon, and I am very sorry there for, for I thought to be dead by this time and past my pain.’
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At some stage she made arrangements to distribute the .£20 which Henry had sent her to distribute in alms.
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Then there was only the waiting. Later that morning Kingston was summoned again. Anne had heard that she was not to die until noon: ‘Master Kingston, I hear say I shall not die afore noon, and I am very sorry there for, for I thought to be dead by this time and past my pain.’
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In fact, as Kingston knew, she had never been intended for the scaffold that day. He had just received a letter from Cromwell, instructing him to clear the Tower of foreigners, but the timing of Anne’s execution was only notified early on Friday.
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Where Anne got her mistaken expectation is not clear, and some have suspected deliberate malice.
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More likely, she had jumped to the conclusion that she would follow her brother to death as soon as the divorce was through, and had not realized that it was Kingston’s custom to give the victims warning early on the morning of the day they were to die. The constable avoided revealing his ignorance of the timetable by seizing on Anne’s last remark. The execution, he explained, would not be painful; the blow was ‘so subtle’. Anne replied: ‘I heard say the executor was very good, and I have a little neck’ - and she put her hands round her throat and burst out laughing.
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Where Anne got her mistaken expectation is not clear, and some have suspected deliberate malice.
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More likely, she had jumped to the conclusion that she would follow her brother to death as soon as the divorce was through, and had not realized that it was Kingston’s custom to give the victims warning early on the morning of the day they were to die. The constable avoided revealing his ignorance of the timetable by seizing on Anne’s last remark. The execution, he explained, would not be painful; the blow was ‘so subtle’. Anne replied: ‘I heard say the executor was very good, and I have a little neck’ - and she put her hands round her throat and burst out laughing.
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24
FINALE
I
T was a short journey. Out of the Queen’s Lodgings, past the Great Hall where she had dined on the night before the coronation, through the Cole Harbour Gate, along the west side of the White Tower and then the first sight of the scaffold.
1
It stood three or four feet high, draped in black, surrounded by perhaps a thousand spectators: the lord mayor and aldermen come to see the king’s justice done, and behind them ‘certain of the best crafts of London’ - no foreigners - Englishmen and women come to see the first English queen executed.
2
And around the scaffold itself the faces she knew so well: Thomas Audley, the lord chancellor, whom she had last seen at her trial; Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, whose life had been so entwined with her own, ever since her journey to France as a 13-year-old attendant on the king’s sister Mary, who had married Brandon, had hated her and was now dead; Henry Fitzroy, her 17-year-old stepson, who had only nine weeks to live; and Thomas Cromwell, who had climbed to power behind Anne, and now had to destroy her in order to retain that power.-
3
How Anne and Thomas reacted at this last meeting we can only guess. Pride on her part, and on his, the formal last deference due even to a fallen queen, and the relief that it was Anne, and not himself, at the centre of the drama.
T was a short journey. Out of the Queen’s Lodgings, past the Great Hall where she had dined on the night before the coronation, through the Cole Harbour Gate, along the west side of the White Tower and then the first sight of the scaffold.
1
It stood three or four feet high, draped in black, surrounded by perhaps a thousand spectators: the lord mayor and aldermen come to see the king’s justice done, and behind them ‘certain of the best crafts of London’ - no foreigners - Englishmen and women come to see the first English queen executed.
2
And around the scaffold itself the faces she knew so well: Thomas Audley, the lord chancellor, whom she had last seen at her trial; Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, whose life had been so entwined with her own, ever since her journey to France as a 13-year-old attendant on the king’s sister Mary, who had married Brandon, had hated her and was now dead; Henry Fitzroy, her 17-year-old stepson, who had only nine weeks to live; and Thomas Cromwell, who had climbed to power behind Anne, and now had to destroy her in order to retain that power.-
3
How Anne and Thomas reacted at this last meeting we can only guess. Pride on her part, and on his, the formal last deference due even to a fallen queen, and the relief that it was Anne, and not himself, at the centre of the drama.
Escorted by Sir William Kingston, followed by the four ‘wardresses’ she had disliked, Anne walked the final fifty yards.
4
Over a grey damask gown lined with fur she wore an ermine mantle with an English gable hood.
5
The constable saw her safely up the steps (no Thomas More jokes this time), and following the etiquette of state executions, Anne moved to the edge of the scaffold to address the crowd.
6
4
Over a grey damask gown lined with fur she wore an ermine mantle with an English gable hood.
5
The constable saw her safely up the steps (no Thomas More jokes this time), and following the etiquette of state executions, Anne moved to the edge of the scaffold to address the crowd.
6
Good Christian people, I have not come here to preach a sermon; I have come here to die.
Did she know that she was echoing the words of her brother two days earlier?
For according to the law and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak of that whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never, and to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best [shades of William Brereton]. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me.
Again the submissiveness which the crowd expected, but which reveals the enormous gulf between the sixteenth-century mind and our own. Once more we feel compelled to ask, ‘How could she not protest her innocence, how acquiesce in such injustice?’ Convention demanded it; religion demanded it, and it would be Elizabeth who would suffer from the luxury of defying the king and his supposed justice. But the crowd, far more attuned to nuances than we are, could also see beyond the humility to the silent point Anne was making. There was no public admission of sin, even in general, still less any confession that she had wronged Henry. Anne spoke firmly, ‘with a goodly smiling countenance’, and soon the news would be all round London that she had died ‘boldly’, without the acceptance of the morality of the sentence which a truly penitent adulteress should show.
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7
The speech done, the ermine mantle was removed, revealing the proud neck Sanuto the Venetian had noted years before, and a low collar which would present no obstacle to the sword. Then Anne herself lifted off her head-dress, and the crowd saw for the last time the brief glory of her hair as she tucked it into a cap one attendant had ready. The only sign of nervousness was her trick of continually glancing behind her; like many similar victims, her fear was that the executioner would strike when she was not ready. She had no chaplain with her, no one to repeat a prayer, and no psalm was said, but we can guess what she tried desperately to hold in her mind. In the happy days of 1535 Erasmus of Rotterdam had written for her father
A Preparation to Death:
‘In peril of death, man’s infirmity is overpowered unless instant by instant, unless with a pure affection, unless with an unvanquished trust he crieth for the help of him which only reviveth the dead.’
8
A Preparation to Death:
‘In peril of death, man’s infirmity is overpowered unless instant by instant, unless with a pure affection, unless with an unvanquished trust he crieth for the help of him which only reviveth the dead.’
8
A brief farewell to her weeping servants, a request for prayer, and Anne kneeled down, saying all the while, ‘Jesu receive my soul; O Lord God have pity on my soul.’ Continentals were amazed that she was not bound or restrained in any way: only a blindfold, tied for her by one of the ladies. ‘To Christ I commend my soul!’ And while her lips were still moving, it was suddenly over.
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9
Almost, it seemed, in slow motion, the ladies-in-waiting covered Anne. Then one with the head in a white cloth, quickly red, and the other three with the body wrapped in a sheet, they carried the queen unaided the seventy yards or so into the chapel of St Peter, past the two newly filled graves, Norris with Weston, Brereton with Smeton. There the clothes were removed - the Tower claimed its perquisites even from a queen - and the corpse was placed in an elm chest which had contained bow-staves for Ireland, but was now to go no further than the chancel of the chapel.
10
There, near her brother, Anne Boleyn was buried, three years and thirty-seven days after she had ‘first dined abroad as queen’ on Easter Sunday 1533.
10
There, near her brother, Anne Boleyn was buried, three years and thirty-seven days after she had ‘first dined abroad as queen’ on Easter Sunday 1533.
She had been a remarkable woman. She would remain a remarkable woman even in a century which produced many of great note. There were few others who rose from such beginnings to a crown, and none contributed to a revolution as far-reaching as the English Reformation. To use a description no longer in fashion, Anne Boleyn was one of the ‘makers of history’. Yet historians see through a glass darkly; they know in part and they pronounce in part. What Anne really was, as distinct from what Anne did, comes over very much less clearly. To us she appears inconsistent - religious yet aggressive, calculating yet emotional, with the light touch of the courtier yet the strong grip of the politician - but is this what she was, or merely what we strain to see through the opacity of the evidence? As for her inner life, short of a miraculous cache of new material, we shall never really know. Yet what does come to us across the centuries is the impression of a person who is strangely appealing to the early twenty-first century. A woman in her own right - taken on her own terms in a man’s world; a woman who mobilized her education, her style and her presence to outweigh the disadvantages of her sex; of only moderate good looks, but taking a court and a king by storm. Perhaps, in the end, it is Thomas Cromwell’s assessment that comes nearest: intelligence, spirit and courage.
Life is cruel to the dead, the more so where guilt and fear together censor memory. Francis Bryan had taken the news of Anne’s condemnation to Jane Seymour; and now, with equal alacrity, the rest of the court turned its back on the past.
11
For the first time since the execution of Buckingham in 1521, there was the chance of a bonanza in forfeited property, and competition started as soon as news of the first arrests was out. Rochford had two large annuities, but apart from the Cinque Ports he had only just over £100 a year gross in royal offices, farms and grants, and the Boleyn family lands remained in the hands of his father. Weston, too, was probably worth relatively little. Brereton, however, had over £1000 a year gross from the Crown, and Norris over £1200.
12
On 2 May, the very day of Anne’s arrest, a Gray’s Inn lawyer, Roland Bulkeley, had written to his brother, Sir Richard, in North Wales, sending news of the early victims and urging a swift journey to London to press his suits in person; Roland evidently saw this as an inside tip - ‘when it is once known that they shall die, all will be too late.’ His messenger talked too much and ended up in Shrewsbury town gaol, but Sir Richard, who had been Norris’s deputy in North Wales, still got in quickly enough to secure and apparently advance his interests.
13
Stephen Gardiner, not for the last time, risked his credit with the king by expressing dissatisfation with his share; £200 was cancelled of the 300 pounds per annum he had previously paid to Rochford and Norris, but he still resented the remainder passing to Bryan.
14
Viscount Lisle came too late, and seems never to have found satisfactory replacements for the court contacts he had lost in 1536. When, after fifteen months of solicitation, his stepdaughter was admitted as maid of honour to the new queen, her first and last duty was to take part in Jane Seymour’s funeral.
15
11
For the first time since the execution of Buckingham in 1521, there was the chance of a bonanza in forfeited property, and competition started as soon as news of the first arrests was out. Rochford had two large annuities, but apart from the Cinque Ports he had only just over £100 a year gross in royal offices, farms and grants, and the Boleyn family lands remained in the hands of his father. Weston, too, was probably worth relatively little. Brereton, however, had over £1000 a year gross from the Crown, and Norris over £1200.
12
On 2 May, the very day of Anne’s arrest, a Gray’s Inn lawyer, Roland Bulkeley, had written to his brother, Sir Richard, in North Wales, sending news of the early victims and urging a swift journey to London to press his suits in person; Roland evidently saw this as an inside tip - ‘when it is once known that they shall die, all will be too late.’ His messenger talked too much and ended up in Shrewsbury town gaol, but Sir Richard, who had been Norris’s deputy in North Wales, still got in quickly enough to secure and apparently advance his interests.
13
Stephen Gardiner, not for the last time, risked his credit with the king by expressing dissatisfation with his share; £200 was cancelled of the 300 pounds per annum he had previously paid to Rochford and Norris, but he still resented the remainder passing to Bryan.
14
Viscount Lisle came too late, and seems never to have found satisfactory replacements for the court contacts he had lost in 1536. When, after fifteen months of solicitation, his stepdaughter was admitted as maid of honour to the new queen, her first and last duty was to take part in Jane Seymour’s funeral.
15
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