‘Youth will needs have dalliance,
Of good or ill some pastance …’
But it was not only Henry’s relationships that were being debated. Caroz, the Spanish ambassador, wrote to Katherine of Aragon’s father to express his concern about her close relationship with her Spanish confessor. Another Spanish ambassador, Fuensalida, considered Fray Diego Fernandez a troublemaker. The confessor was extremely controlling of Katherine and her household, demanding her obedience in all things, particularly before her marriage. Yet there is no reason to suspect that Katherine’s reliance on Fray Diego was indicative of a sexual relationship, despite the concerns of some of Katherine’s servants and the ambassadors. It would be almost unthinkable that a woman of Katherine’s character would indulge in an affair.
Yet for a princess, it was not simply the truth, but how it appeared to others that was important. Katherine described Fray Diego as ‘the best that ever woman in my position had’.1 Her behaviour with him was more indiscreet than the friendships Anne Boleyn would have. In an age where men went into the priesthood as often for a good career as out of piety, spending large amounts of time alone with a man – and being affectionate towards him in public – was dangerous behaviour for any lady. Fray Diego was not leading a celibate life in England, and had acquired a reputation as a womaniser. However, Henry must have been unconcerned; Diego did not return to Spain until around five years later.
Henry soon found other mistresses, although most of them were probably short term. In 1513 he was consumed by the idea of war and decided it was time to conquer France. He had been King of England for four years and was determined to assert his authority on the international stage. Since 1337, when Edward III had laid his claim to the French throne, each king of England had also styled himself ‘King of France’. France was far too large for Henry VIII’s medium-sized army to conquer, but he was determined to prove himself in battle. His wife was back home sewing flags for the war effort, running the country and worrying about the danger he was in – while he was careering around the French countryside and entertaining local ladies.
From the beginning it was clear that the enterprise was doomed and Henry would be betrayed by his allies. The Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian, and Henry’s father-in-law, Ferdinand of Aragon, were wily old men – Ferdinand had been praised by Machiavelli himself for his cunning. They wanted the King of England to cause problems in France, but they were not interested in seeing him become the ruler of two powerful kingdoms. Henry was still young and naive and they guessed that a show of support, and the provision of some entertainments – including attractive women – would distract the young king until it was too late.
While he was away, Henry appointed Katherine ‘Governor of the Realm’, giving her all the authority of the king himself. She was kept busy arranging a campaign against the Scots, who had predictably invaded the north of England while the English army was stretched elsewhere. The queen was left in charge of a council that had never taken orders from a woman before and she coped admirably. Once a week she sent Henry a letter, informing him of important matters of state but also showing the genuine concern one would expect from a devoted wife whose husband was at war; she declared that she could be ‘never in rest until I see letters from you’ and begged Wolsey to remind Henry to ‘avoid all manner of dangers’.2 Henry did not respond himself, but asked Wolsey to write the replies.
Henry’s army swiftly conquered their first target, the city of Thérouanne. For a month after this, the weather was too bad for an assault on the next city, Tournai. Henry spent this time building relations with the premier family of Europe and ensuring he mixed business with pleasure. He spent his time with Maximilian, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Emperor’s sister Margaret, Regent of the Netherlands, and Margaret’s court, impressing them with his jousting, archery, dancing and mastery of several musical instruments. Among Margaret’s maids of honour were a Flemish woman named Étiennette de la Baume and a twelve-year-old English girl called Anne Boleyn.
A month later Henry conquered Tournai, an important city which bordered the emperor’s territories and was a major route for transferring goods across Europe – and all without Henry ever personally fighting a Frenchman. After a couple of months, Henry’s army achieved the victory he craved – the Battle of the Spurs, during which the English chased after French soldiers who were under instruction not to fight. It was stretching the truth to label it a battle, but Henry’s army captured some French nobles and sent them back to England to be held for a ransom. The only time this whole adventure was dampened was when Henry’s close friends, Sir Edward Howard and Sir Thomas Knyvett, were killed in a skirmish at sea. The English army had conquered only two significant French towns in an otherwise embarrassingly fruitless campaign, although Henry had shown that he could be a player on the European stage. Queen Katherine was far more successful – the English response to the Scottish invasion had resulted in the death of King James IV and half his noblemen, preventing Scotland from threatening English security for a generation.
The French king had paid little heed to this incursion and after Henry took Tournai, Louis simply paid him to leave. Ferdinand had already signed a peace treaty with France, as had Maximilian; Henry was only informed after the event. Henry returned home to a hero’s welcome which was somewhat overshadowed by his wife’s achievements during his absence. When he was reunited with his wife, ‘it was such a loving meeting that every creature rejoiced’.3 Yet Henry was furious with Katherine for encouraging him to rely on her double-dealing father, and their relationship never quite recovered from this humiliation.
The following year, Henry received a letter from Étiennette and it is from this that we know of Henry’s brief relationship with her. She was a noblewoman, the daughter of Marc de la Baume, Lord of Châteauvillan, and she was not the only de la Baume in history to attract the attention of a king; in the next century, her kinswoman Louise-Françoise de la Baume became the maîtresse-en-titre of King Louis XIV of France. Étiennette seems to have attracted Henry soon after his arrival in Lille. She wrote to Henry because she was about to get married, and he had apparently promised her ten thousand crowns as a wedding present – perhaps as compensation for her lost virtue. In August 1514 Étiennette became the third wife of the elderly Jean Neufchatel, seigneur de Marnay. We have no indication of her age, but her husband was sixty-two, which is perhaps why the marriage was childless.
She sent the letter to Henry with ‘a bird and some roots of great value, belonging to this country’. She first reminded him who she was:
When Madame [Margaret of Austria] went to see the Emperor, her father and you at Lille, you named me your page “et n’avoie autrement nom de par et dautre chouses” and when we parted at Tournai you told me, when I married, to let you know and it should be worth to me 10,000 crowns or rather angels. As it has now pleased my father “me marier”, I send bearer, an old servant of my grandfather, to remind you … la plus que your very humble servant, E. la Baume.4
We do not know if he kept his promise. She also wrote to Henry of how: ‘you spoke many pretty things to me’.5 Henry was by now being regularly linked to other women.
By 1514, cracks were beginning to show in the royal marriage. In this year, Henry, ‘for love of a lady, clad himself and the court in mourning’,6 possibly on hearing that Étiennette was getting married, but probably in connection to a woman at the English court. The infidelities continued, but his strong relationship with his wife had only been damaged, not destroyed. The trickery of her father had dented Henry’s trust in her, and around this time rumours started that Henry was planning to annul his marriage after five years. It was reported in Rome that: ‘The King of England means to repudiate his present wife because he is unable to have children by her, and intends to marry a daughter of the French duke of Bourbon.’7 The next month there were similar rumours in England.8 We must be careful not to let hindsight guide our conclusions on this possibility; Katherine was pregnant at this time, so it is highly improbable.
In the Tower of London it is still possible to see Henry’s armour from 1514, showing love knots with ‘H’ and ‘K’ decorating the metal. The King had been riding into the jousts as ‘Sir Loyal Heart’, paying tribute to the lady he was ‘serving’ in the sense of courtly love – his wife. Their initials and even their images were entwined on candlesticks, cups, basins and salt cellars.9 But during 1514 Katherine lost much of her political influence to Thomas Wolsey, and her place in Henry’s heart to a succession of her own ladies-in-waiting. She was now twenty-eight and had endured several traumatic pregnancies and births, which would have taken their toll on her figure; her foreign connections had helped Henry little and she was no longer the grateful young woman who lived to please her husband. The royal couple were drifting apart.
Around this time, the Venetian ambassador described Queen Katherine as ‘rather ugly than otherwise’. Other sources report similar unflattering comments and Katherine had recently given birth to her third child – by the end of Henry’s affair with Bessie, she had given birth to six children and probably also suffered miscarriages. Her hair was turning from the red which had attracted so much admiration to a dull brown. Around 1518, Katherine is thought to have begun to wear a hair shirt, which would not have made her more attractive to Henry. All her praying had not helped her, but she turned more and more to her religion as Henry turned away from her. It was only as their marriage progressed that their differences, in age and personality, made themselves obvious.
It was understandable that a king who could have anything he wanted should decide to take a mistress from one of the many young, beautiful women at the court. Most of their families would have considered this an honour – although not all, as Henry had discovered. The king was a very attractive man, so many women would have been drawn to him. Despite these affairs, Henry and Katherine continued to have a relatively happy marriage. They had much in common: music and masquerades, scholarship and theology.
Peter Martyr, writing from the Spanish court, reported that, in 1514, Henry had blamed his wife for Ferdinand’s duplicity and had boasted to her that he had been unfaithful; this was said to have upset her so much she miscarried.10 This may or may not have been true – we do not know Martyr’s sources – but it indicates that Henry’s infidelity was well known. Henry may have become angry with his wife as it became increasingly clear that she would not bear him a son, but after only five years, he was probably frustrated, but still hopeful. In 1514, along with the rumours of annulment and adultery, Henry was linked to three ladies-in-waiting. The first was Jane Popincourt, an older woman; the other two, Elizabeth Blount and Elizabeth Carew, were aged around fourteen.
Henry seems to have been particularly attracted to French women. As well as Étiennette de la Baume in Lille, and later the Francophile Boleyn sisters, Henry allegedly had an affair with Mademoiselle Jane Popincourt. During the Christmas festivities of 1514, Katherine was heavily pregnant and therefore could not participate in the dancing and entertainment. Tradition dictated that Henry ask the next highest-ranking lady to dance – his sister, Mary, or in her absence, a duchess. Instead, for the Twelfth Night masque at Eltham Palace, Henry chose Bessie Blount and Jane Popincourt, low-ranking young women, as his partners.
Jane, also referred to as Jeanne or Joan, was one of the few women Henry had regular contact with during his mollycoddled childhood. It is unclear when she arrived in England, but by 1498 she was tutoring Henry’s sisters in French, and she may have occasionally taught the young Henry as well. She would have helped the two princesses, Margaret and Mary, improve their French conversational skills and their understanding of French culture, which was important as it was likely that either Margaret or Mary would marry a French prince. In 1502, when Henry was eleven, Jane Popincourt became a maid of honour to his mother, Elizabeth of York, and then to Katherine of Aragon on Henry’s accession.
Jane was, like Anne Stafford, older than Henry. She must have been at least fourteen when she secured a position as the princesses’ tutor and was probably older. This makes her at least thirty in 1514; at least seven years older than the king. To be unmarried at this age was unusual. And like many woman who had been at court a long time, she did not have an unblemished reputation. Jane had been involved in a scandal four months before she was first linked to the king.
During Henry’s invasion of France the year before, there had been only one battle for Henry to celebrate – the Battle of the Spurs. During this skirmish, Henry’s men captured Louis, duc de Longueville, a member of the extremely powerful Orléans family. Lord Longueville was a charming courtier, and although he was kept in England as a hostage, he was treated more as a guest and as an extra ambassador for France. The English had been allied to Maximilian and Ferdinand, but Henry made it clear to Longueville that he would prefer to work with the French. Longueville negotiated the continuation of France’s annual bribe to England, to stop English kings challenging for the crown of France, and helped arrange the marriage of Henry’s sister to the King of France at the same time. And he also began an affair with his compatriot, Jane Popincourt.
Jane had, by then, been in England for at least sixteen years and had become close to the royal family. She seems to have been not only a tutor to Henry’s sister, Princess Mary, but also a close friend. In September 1514, Jane was chosen to be a maid of honour to Mary when she married Louis XII. Here was an opportunity for Jane to return to her native land as a confidante of the new Queen of France. Apparently this
was at the suit and desire of my lord Longueville, as he told me and my fellows before; for he told him that the Queen loved and trusted her above all the gentlewomen that she had about her.11
The marriage was not a prospect to delight the heart of a young, beautiful and headstrong eighteen-year-old princess. King Louis may have been very popular with the French people, but the fifty-two-year-old man looked much older than his years, was not in good health and had already been married twice. Mary had been betrothed to Charles, the heir to Spain and the likely successor to the Holy Roman Empire, and was therefore the future ruler of half of Europe. Charles’ chin was so deformed that he could not chew his food properly and he was obsessed with clocks; nevertheless, he was young. Mary would have appreciated all the friends she could get when she began her marriage.
Jane would have been a useful ally for the new queen to have at the French court, as she could pass on to her important information and help the English ladies with any linguistic or cultural difficulties. Unfortunately, when Louis saw Mademoiselle Popincourt’s name on the list of those to attend his virgin bride, he was horrified. He declared that: ‘As you love me, speak of her no more. I would she were burned!’12 Mary was said to have been very upset by this. To be considered too immoral for the French court was quite an indictment – the relaxed French attitude to adultery and sexuality would horrify and intrigue much of Europe for generations. But Louis XII wanted his court to be virtuous.
Henry’s affair with Jane probably began after Longueville left in the autumn of 1514. Like many of Henry’s mistresses she had no faction, no power and so was not a threat to anyone at court. She did not even have powerful relatives at court, who might sweep her off to a nunnery as Anne Stafford’s husband had – and she did not have a good reputation to protect. She was first linked to Henry three months after Longueville’s departure, and her relationship with the French nobleman appears to have been common knowledge. We hear little more of Jane until she left England in May 1516. Henry gave her £100 when she returned to France13 and she soon renewed her affair with the duc de Longueville.
There is no contemporary record of an affair between Henry VIII and Jane Popincourt, but there is circumstantial evidence. It rests on the king choosing her to dance with him in 1514, her willingness to embark on an affair with Longueville, and her large leaving gift; these could all be irrelevant. She had no significant influence, and therefore was of little interest to the ambassadors whose reports we rely on for information about Henry’s love life. However, it does seem likely; by tradition, he should have chosen to dance with the highest-ranking lady present, and his choices of Bessie Blount and Jane Popincourt, neither of whom could be argued to fit this criteria, is significant. Jane also, in personality and age, matches the type of woman the king seemed to prefer at this stage of his life.
1. CSP, Spanish supplement, p.25
2. Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, p.115
3. Hall, Hall’s Chronicle, p.567; cit. Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, p.123
4. L&P, I, pt. II, no.3163: 17th August 1514; CSP, Spanish, III, pt. II, no.854
5. CSP, Venetian, II, p.139
6. Ibid., p.152
7. Cit. Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, p.121
8. Ibid.
9. King’s Jewel Book, pp.169, 171 and 174; cit. Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, pp.70–1
10. Byrne (ed.), The Letters of King Henry VIII, p.42
11. Charles, earl of Worcester to Cardinal Wolsey
12. L&P; cit. Weir, Henry VIII: King and Court, p.175
13. TNA, E36/215 f.449