The Other Tudors (38 page)

In fact it was several months before Anne and Katherine went to London. Lady Lisle believed she was pregnant; both she and her husband hoped for a son and heir. Unfortunately the ‘pregnancy’ dragged on well beyond the customary nine months, and by August it became obvious that her symptoms were the result of illness. It was not until September that the girls arrived, and John Hussee was able to write to Lady Lisle on 17 September 1537, ‘Your ladyship shall understand that Mrs Anne your daughter is sworn the Queen’s maid on Saturday last past, and furnisheth the room of a yeoman-usher … Mrs Katherine doth remain with the Countess of Rutland till she know further of your pleasure.’

Henry VIII was not oblivious to the charms of Anne Bassett. He had already mentioned her preferment to the Queen, although this was before she came to London with her sister Katherine from Calais, and he merely supported the Queen in taking one of the Bassett girls into her household, as his cousin Lisle’s stepdaughter. However, Peter Mewtas wrote a letter to Lord Lisle on 9 October, indicating that Anne had made quite an impression on Henry, ‘Sir, the King’s Grace, not two days past, talked of you and your children, amongst which I advertised him of your daughter that last came out of France. Howbeit his Grace thought Mistress Anne Bassett to be the fairest, but I said how that your youngest [Mary] was far fairer.’
¹⁴

On 12 October, Jane Seymour gave birth to Edward, the Prince of Wales, but five weeks after Anne Bassett joined the Queen’s household, Jane was dead. Anne had attended the Prince’s christening, and now she performed her last office for the late Queen at Jane’s funeral. At the age of 16, Anne was once again out of a post. She went into the house of her cousin, Lady Sussex, while her sister Katherine was still with the Countess of Rutland. However, all was not lost. Presumably Anne had made a significant impression on Henry and he appears to have wanted to keep her in the queen’s household until he could marry again. John Hussee, the family’s London servant, wrote to Lady Lisle, ‘The King’s Grace is good Lord to Mistress Anne, and hath made her grant to have her place whensoever the time shall come.’
¹⁵

Anne Bassett joined the circle of beautiful, clever, talented young people around the King. Even though they presently had no queen to serve, the ladies of the queen’s privy chamber paid a visit to Portsmouth in August 1539 and wrote a round robin letter to Henry concerning his ‘Greate Shippe’ (the
Harry Grace a Dieu
) which they had visited. The signatories were ‘Maybell Sowthampton’, ‘Margaret Tayleboise’, ‘Margaret Howarde’, ‘Alys Browne’, ‘Anne Knevytt’, ‘Jane Denny’, ‘Jane Meows [Mewtas]’, ‘Elisabeth Tyrwhyt’, ‘Elsabeth Harvy’ and ‘Anne Basset’. The ladies laid on their praise of the King and the Prince of Wales with a liberal hand, and of the ships that they had seen:

Anne continued to be singled out by Henry for appreciation. He made her a present of a horse and riding saddle. When Anne was indisposed, she wrote to her mother that Henry ordered that she spend time with Jane Denny, a distant relative: ‘… I am now with my Cousin Denny, at the King’s grace’s commandment; for whereas Mistress Mewtas doth lie in London there are no walks but a little garden, wherefore it was the King’s grace’s pleasure that I should be with my Cousin Denny; for where as she lieth there are fair walks and a good open air; for the physician doth say that there is nothing better for my disease than walking …’
¹⁶
Henry was entering upon one of his courtship rituals, giving Anne Bassett the means to ride out and take walks, both circumstances that could lead, quite naturally, to a sudden and ‘unexpected’ meeting between Henry and the lady away from the public gaze.

As matters progressed with the political marriage to Anne of Cleves, it seemed that Anne Bassett would soon be able to renew her position in the household of the queen of England. As luck would have it, Anne of Cleves spent some time in Calais, travelling to England, and Anne’s parents were able to write to her about her new mistress. Unfortunately, Lisle was ordered to stay in Calais, and Honor stayed with him, so Anne never got her wish to see her parents accompany the new Queen to London. Lady Lisle had written to Anne expressing her disappointment on not coming to Court, and Anne had duly relayed the information to the King: ‘This shall signify your ladyship that I received your letter … and according to the contents thereof, I have declared unto the King’s Highness all things, as your ladyship willed me to do, so that his Grace took the same in right good part, accepting your good will and towards mind ... For I knowledge myself most bound to his Highness of all creatures: if I should, therefore, in any thing offend his Grace willingly, it were a pity I should live.’
¹⁷

Muriel St Clare Byrne, editor of one edition of the
Lisle Letters
, says that Anne was one ‘whom the king so fancied at one time that she was tipped for the dangerous honour of being the fifth Queen of Henry VIII.’ However, unlike Anne Boleyn or Catherine Howard, Anne Bassett could not or did not try to wrap Henry VIII around her finger. She wrote to her mother on 19 February 1540, thanking her for the preserves she had sent which Henry enjoyed. Lady Lisle had hoped for some gift or ‘token’ from the King, but Anne could not guarantee that one would be sent. A woman who enjoyed the king’s favour might be more forceful in getting her own way. Anne Bassett may have been unsure of how strong the King’s affection for her actually was; perhaps she adored Henry to the point of worship (as she says in her letter) and was too shy to press for any favours either for herself or her family. It is more likely that her upbringing under such a domineering mother meant that she was naturally shy and diffident. It may have been this diffidence that reminded Henry of Jane Seymour, so that this, coupled with her beauty, initially attracted him.

Lord Lisle fell from favour during his time as Governor of Calais. The city was a haven for Catholics fleeing England, and Lisle was accused of sympathy with them, of allowing them to stay too long, and of not doing enough to deal with these enemies of the state. Lisle and his Council were away from the changing religious and political scene in London, and he was unable to apply the current rules, as he often did not know what they were. In July 1538 he wrote to Cromwell: ‘My lord, herebefore your lordship hath written and hath alleged that papish dregs did remain here with us of Calais. My lord, I dare well say, the King’s Highness hath not within his realm no manner of people who favour less the traditions of popes than the King’s servants and subjects do here, from the highest degree to the lowest … therefore I may know the King’s pleasure and yours, which shall be obeyed to the last drop of blood in my body.’
¹⁸

He was further seen as a partisan of Reginald, Cardinal Pole, the outspoken enemy of Henry VIII. Pole and Lisle were cousins, as Lisle’s father, Edward IV, was the brother of Pole’s grandfather, George, Duke of Clarence. Lisle was a close friend of Reginald’s mother, the Countess of Salisbury. Despite this, Lisle was aware of a plot hatched by Henry VIII to have Pole kidnapped and brought to England to stand trial for treason, yet did nothing to warn Pole. Pole knew of the plot when he realised he was being watched. However, despite his continued service to the King, Lisle’s loyalties in this area were always suspect as far as Henry VIII was concerned. In November 1538 Henry had Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, her two sons, Lord Montague and Geoffrey Pole, who stayed in England, and her cousin Henry Courtney, Marquis of Exeter, (grandson of Katherine, youngest daughter of Edward IV) arrested on suspicion of treasonable plotting with Cardinal Pole. Lisle would have known that he would always be in a suspect position, because of his parentage. Undoubtedly, only his bastardy had saved him from execution as the last of the direct male heirs of the Plantagenets.

In April 1540, Lisle, who was visiting England on the invitation of Henry VIII, was arrested on Cromwell’s orders and confined to the Tower of London. Cromwell was desperately trying to save his own career by sacrificing anyone else who could be blamed for any of the religious confusion that the ill-thoughtout elements of the Reformation had thrown up. Lord Lisle was effectively ‘framed’ as being responsible for the religious confusion in Calais, and for supposedly having knowledge of a pathetically inept (and possibly imaginary) plot to surrender Calais to French and Papal forces. In fact, the arrest of Lord Lisle only delayed things. Cromwell was arrested and executed with considerable speed when Henry, in his turn, needed someone to blame for the failures of his own religious policy.

In Calais, Honor Lisle was held under house arrest in the Palace, and her daughters were sent to lodge with various families within the town. The matter of Honor’s arrest was complicated by the discovery that her daughter Mary had become secretly betrothed to Gabriel de Montmorency, seigneur de Bours, the son of her French hostess. The French were the enemy, and Mary should have told her parents, who should, in turn, have asked Henry’s permission for such a marriage. Honor Lisle ended up staying in the house of Francis Hall, a Calais official (a ‘Spear’), while she waited for news of her husband’s situation. Records suggest that she had a nervous breakdown.

It became obvious quite quickly, however, that Henry did not hold his cousin to blame for any of the feeble charges against him. For one thing, during a torrent of executions, Lisle was not marked for death immediately, as happened to so many of those whom Henry VIII suspected of treason. Henry was supposed to have remarked that Lisle had fallen, ‘more through simplicity and ignorance than through malice.’ A further point in his favour was that Anne Bassett maintained her position in the queen’s household.

Lord Lisle remained in the Tower for 18 months, but the replacement of his arms in the Garter Knights’ chapel at Windsor, removed at the time of his indictment, suggested that he was soon to be released and returned to favour. At the end of January 1542, Henry VIII was dining with his courtiers, when the Imperial Ambassador noted that he was paying much attention to Lord Cobham’s sister. He also commented that the King was paying similar attention to ‘a daughter that the wife of the former Deputy of Calais had by her first husband.’ This suggests that Henry was already thinking about a new queen, and that at least two ladies – young and lovely 16-year-old Elizabeth Cobham and Anne Bassett– had taken his fancy.

As it turned out, Elizabeth Cobham did not marry Henry VIII, but her married life was almost as complicated as the King’s. In 1547 Elizabeth married William Parr, Marquis of Northampton, the brother of Catherine Parr. He had previously been married to Anne Bourchier, only child and heiress of Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex. Once the marriage was finalised, Anne had almost immediately left William and set up home with ‘one Hunt alias Huntly’ who was the father of her children. Northampton divorced her in 1547, but he retained the title of Earl of Essex and married Elizabeth Cobham. Unfortunately, it later turned out that the divorce had not been correctly completed, so a bizarre farce unfolded. Firstly, in 1552, an Act of Parliament was passed ‘disannulling’ the marriage of the Marquis of Northampton and Lady Anne Bourchier, and for ‘the confirmation of the marriage between him and Lady Elizabeth, daughter of Sir George Broke, Lord Cobham and for the legitimation of the children that shall be between them’. In order to fully legitimise the marriage of Northampton and Elizabeth Cobham, in 1553 another Act revoked the Act for their marriage. This meant that now a formal divorce could be completed correctly between Northampton and Anne so that he and Elizabeth could marry again and the whole thing would be legal. Elizabeth died in 1565 from breast cancer. Despite all the efforts to legitimise the marriage for the sake of the heirs, she and her husband were childless. Northampton married again, this time to Helena von Suavenburgh, who survived him.

With Catherine Howard arrested and awaiting trial and death, her household was disbanded. Anne Bassett, however, was retained at Court. Some of the Queen’s attendants returned to their families, while, ‘One maid of honour, Anne Basset, daughter of Lady Lisle, who had originally come from Calais to serve Anne of Cleves, was now specially favoured.’
¹⁹
It may be that because Henry liked her (and even briefly considered her as his next wife) that he was reluctant to execute her father; she may have used her influence to ask the King to be lenient. In fact, there is little evidence that Henry really believed Lord Lisle was guilty of anything serious, and so he had no reason to be hard on Anne, or her stepfather.