The Other Tudors (34 page)

In February 1534, Chapuys wrote to the Emperor that Mary was living in poverty with hardly any clothes. She had also been refused permission to attend Catholic Mass. He reported that she was ‘kept close at hand’ and was forbidden to do anything without the permission of Lady Shelton. Norfolk and Rochford, he wrote, spoke to Lady Shelton about being less pleasant to Princess Mary, and that she had replied that even if Mary were the bastard of some poor gentleman, she deserved respect and kindness because of her ‘goodness and virtues’. That apart, Mary was threatened with beatings and Lady Shelton told her that if she remained stubborn and refused to take the oath relating to the Act of Succession, she would be beheaded for treason.

The baby Elizabeth, ‘My Lady Princess’, was given her own household at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, and Lady Shelton and Alice Clere, another of Anne’s aunts, were to run it. Margaret Bryan (related to the Norfolks and thus to Anne’s mother) was appointed ‘Lady Mistress’, directly responsible for the baby’s personal wellbeing. Mary was forced to join the household and told to call the baby ‘Princess’. Mary replied that she would call her ‘sister’ as she called Richmond, ‘brother’, but she would not call Anne Boleyn’s child ‘Princess’ as she was Henry’s only lawfully born daughter. Mary was forced to sit at the common table to eat and had to give precedence to the baby. She furthermore was not allowed to leave the house to attend Mass. When the King visited, Mary was also kept out of his sight.
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Lady Shelton told Mary that if she had been the King she would have thrown her out of the house for her stubbornness and disobedience to her father’s wishes. However, Henry had no real intention of harming his eldest daughter. After his affair in 1534 with Joanna Dingley he softened towards Mary, and Lady Shelton’s behaviour reflected this. Early in 1535 Mary fell ill and Lady Shelton took some pains to care for her. Chapuys wrote to Lady Shelton and sent her gifts, complimenting her on her actions but hinting that, should Mary die, she would have to answer for her previous treatment of the young Princess.

Anne Boleyn’s attitude to Mary can best be explained by her feelings of insecurity over Catherine of Aragon, and her feelings of inferiority when she compared her own daughter’s position in the world with Mary’s. Anne was loathed by the people, whereas Catherine was remembered with love, respect and admiration. No matter how many of Catherine’s jewels Anne wore, and no matter how much she pretended it didn’t matter, Anne Boleyn was ‘the goggle-eyed whore’ not the true queen to many of the ordinary people of England.

Since the King’s infatuation with Anne was no longer an all-consuming passion, some of the courtiers decided to introduce him to other ladies who might catch his fancy. With Anne’s example to look to, noble ladies now realised that, far from just accepting a place as a mistress as Bessie Blount had done, they might aspire to actually be queen. Members of the Boleyn faction introduced Margaret Shelton to Henry, who made her his mistress for a time. Presumably they did so to weaken the authority of Anne – they may even have hoped that Margaret could replace her as queen. Margaret may have had a gentler disposition than Anne, one that could be better managed so that the Boleyns and their supporters could hold on to power. This may also have been a safety net; if Henry were to discard Anne in favour of Margaret, his new queen would still represent the Boleyn–Howard interests and they could continue to enjoy the wealth and power that they wielded. It has even been suggested that Anne herself chose her cousin to engage the King’s affections to prevent someone else from a rival faction taking the position.

It is not known when Margaret Shelton was born, although it is likely to have been after 1505. This would have made her close in age to Anne Boleyn, perhaps even a little younger. Since she caught the King’s eye, it can be assumed that Margaret was a beauty (an ambassador wrote that the lovely Christina of Denmark looked a little like Margaret Shelton). She was certainly the kind of lady whom Henry found attractive – possibly fair, and quite possibly quieter and more subservient than her forceful cousin. The difference in temperament may account for the briefness of the affair and explain why the King eventually returned to Anne. He still found her wit, learning and beauty exhilarating.

Anne undoubtedly knew about the affair and may have known that her own family was behind it. She now knew enough to keep quiet and not annoy the King, but she could certainly do her best to punish Margaret. According to one of Anne’s chaplains, William Latimer, Anne severely reprimanded Margaret Shelton for jotting ‘idle poesies’ in her prayer book.
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This was, of course, rank hypocrisy as Henry’s Book of Hours had romantic margin notes by both him and Anne, written during their courtship. However, while Anne the lover might write her beloved a note in a prayer book, Anne the queen would not countenance such behaviour in one of her ladies.

Margaret Shelton’s name was also linked with Henry Norris, later also accused of being one of Anne Boleyn’s lovers. As a young man, Henry Norris had come to Court as a gentleman of the King’s chamber. He was friendly with the King and received lavish awards of posts, including Keeper of the King’s Privy Purse. Norris was one of Anne’s circle and was involved in the plot against Cardinal Wolsey; he was present on 25 October 1529 when Wolsey was forced to resign as Chancellor. In that same year, he became Groom of the Stole, a post once held by Sir William Compton. There was talk of Norris’s marriage to Margaret Shelton but any attraction between the two came to nothing – rumours of an affair with Anne led to his arrest. Although he pleaded his innocence, Norris was subsequently found guilty and executed.

In 1535 Anne accused Francis Weston of spending too much time flirting with Margaret Shelton, and not only ignoring his own wife, but also keeping Margaret away from Henry Norris. Weston countered by saying that Norris was more interested in Anne herself than in Margaret. He continued that he loved a lady much more than either his wife or Margaret Shelton. When Anne asked who it was, Weston replied: ‘It is yourself ’, at which Anne ‘defied’ him, denying such a love. This kind of flirting was part of a romantic chivalric game that Anne had herself introduced to Court. Her old mentor, Margaret of Austria, had been highly adept at such things, but Anne seems to have been far less successful. While such behaviour might work for a single, widowed princess of high rank and impeccable reputation, it did not work for a flirtatious, lowborn queen with a jealous husband.
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As for Margaret Shelton, she always seemed to be in competition with her cousin. In 1535, she was the object of the attention of Henry Norris, Francis Weston and Henry VIII, all also supposedly in love with Anne. It was in that year that Chapuys wrote to his master that the King was enamoured of the daughter of Sir John Shelton, ‘first cousin of the concubine [Anne Boleyn], daughter of the new governess of the princess [Mary]’ and most scholars agree that it was Margaret who was Henry’s mistress. She was certainly part of the circle that surrounded the King, but another Shelton, her younger sister, Mary, could also have been the mistress.

Some research argues that the name ‘Marg’ (Margaret) should be read as ‘Mary’, as the Tudor ‘g’ and ‘y’ were similar, and therefore Henry’s mistress was Mary, not Margaret Shelton. Another piece of evidence presented is that there is a Holbein sketch entitled ‘Mary Lady Heveningham’ (Mary Shelton’s married name); however, it is not definitely Mary.
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A lot of the Holbein sketches were attributed years later and are therefore not credible. The argument that a portrait exists of Mary and not Margaret, which shows that Mary was more important, fails to take into account the number of sketches that have not survived and the number of unattributed sketches held in collections, any of which could be Margaret.

Margaret eventually married Sir Thomas Wodehouse, son of Sir Roger Wodehouse and Lady Elizabeth Ratcliff. Margaret provided her husband with a good number of children: Roger, John, Thomas, Elizabeth, Mary, Anne, Loy and Henry. Margaret’s husband and son Thomas, both died at the Battle of Musselborough in Scotland on 10 September 1547. Margaret’s eldest son, Sir Roger Wodehouse, acted as host to Elizabeth I on one of her progresses at their house, Kimberley Tower in Norfolk. The family owned a valance that had been made for Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, with the initials ‘H’ and ‘A’ entwined and they placed this relic of Elizabeth I’s parents at her disposal, along with other household furnishings. Margaret survived her husband by many years. The Wodehouse line carried on, and one of Margaret’s direct descendents was P. G. Wodehouse, the author of the Jeeves and Wooster, and Blandings novels.

Before Anne Boleyn’s fall from grace, in early September 1535 Henry and Anne stayed at Wolf Hall, Savernake, near Marlborough. This was the home of Sir John Seymour and his family. Sir John’s wife had been born Margaret Wentworth, a distant connection of the Tudor family. One of Seymour’s daughters, Jane (born in 1509, eldest of his eight children), had been a lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon. Jane left her service when her staff was reduced in 1533, but now she served Queen Anne. On New Year’s Day 1534, Jane was one of the Queen’s ladies who received a gift from the King. Henry, therefore, knew her quite well.

Between 1534 and 1535, Henry seems to have become attracted to Jane Seymour. She is described as being ‘full of goodness … not a woman of great wit, but she may have good understanding.’
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She may well have reminded Henry of his mother. It is also tempting to see her pale goodness as an antidote to Anne’s dark liveliness, and that Henry just wanted some peace. In early 1536 the Bishop of Tarbes, also the French Ambassador, noted that Henry seemed interested in Jane. On 10 February 1536 Chapuys also commented on Henry’s behaviour: ‘… towards a damsel of the Court, named Mistress Seymour, to whom he has latterly made very valuable presents.’
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Anne was about five months pregnant at this time.

Jane’s family and its supporters were on hand to coach her. Anne Boleyn had shown what was at stake and what could be achieved if a woman was ambitious enough. Henry had set a precedent in divorce that meant that an English lady of nobility, who might previously have aspired only to be a mistress, could now become queen. The people of England disliked Anne; only the King’s love and the support of Anne’s own faction kept her in her position as queen.

Jane was also an adherent to the New Religion, as were her brothers, Edward and Thomas. She was, however, less extreme than Anne Boleyn. Indeed, she does not appear to have had very strong views about anything.

The needs of the Crown overcame any scruples the King might have had about damaging the Roman Catholic Church. In 1535 the movement to separate the English Church from the Papacy in Rome continued. Henry’s ministers and advisers began inspecting religious houses around the country, looking for corruption, false relics, loose morals – anything that made them unsuitable to continue. Starting with the smaller houses, monasteries were disolved and destroyed with the whole matter culminating in 1540 with the closure of the last great religious house, Waltham Abbey in Essex. The reason for the dissolution was principally twofold – to destroy the Papacy’s powerbase in England and so that the Crown could appropriate all the lands, buildings, goods and precious artefacts that the Church held.

In that same year, Anne Boleyn became pregnant a second time, but lost the child early on. However, she fell pregnant again late in 1535, and waited in hope for a longed-for son to be born. In January 1536 Catherine of Aragon died, and Anne’s case became desperate. If Henry were to rid himself of Anne, he would once again be able to join the European political marriage arena.

On 29 January 1536 Anne miscarried. The lost baby was clearly a boy. Several tales are associated with this event: Henry had been injured at a joust at Greenwich, when his horse fell on him and the King was knocked unconscious. Chapuys reported that Anne blamed Norfolk for her miscarriage, saying that he had burst in on her with news of Henry’s injuries. Also according to Chapuys, Henry told his friends that he saw the hand of God again, that witchcraft had been used to persuade him to marry Anne. Henry is supposed to have said, ‘I see that God will not give me male children.’
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Anne is also rumoured to have told Henry that his affair with Jane had precipitated the miscarriage. George Wyatt, Nicholas Sander and Jane Dormer all reported the latter version, and Sander stated that Anne said, ‘See, how well I must be since the day I caught that abandoned woman Jane sitting on your knees.’ Dormer claimed ‘there was often much scratching and bye-blows between the Queen and her maid.’
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It was even said that Anne cut her hand when she ripped a necklace that Henry had given her from Jane’s neck.
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Henry began making serious overtures to Jane Seymour. He had decided in his own mind that the marriage with Anne was over; it was up to his Privy Council to come up with a sustainable reason. He was busy looking for another wife, and Jane Seymour was the lady he had chosen. She was the opposite of Anne, fair where Anne was dark, shy where Anne was outspoken, gentle where Anne was acerbic, meek where Anne was opinionated.