‘All goodly sport
To my comfort
Who shall me let?’
On 8 January 1536, Katherine of Aragon died. A growth was found on her heart that was ‘completely black and hideous’ leading some to pronounce that she had died of a broken heart. Henry declared himself relieved that there was now no danger of invasion and the royal couple wore yellow, paraded Princess Elizabeth and danced all night. From Katherine’s deathbed, she wrote one last letter to the man she still considered her husband, who she had devoted herself to for twenty-seven years. She signed off: ‘Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things. Farewell.’1 Anne miscarried on the day of the funeral. This would have been seen as more than a coincidence by the people of the sixteenth century – Henry may have felt that this was proof his second marriage had offended God.
Katherine was buried in Peterborough as the dowager Princess of Wales, merely the widow of Prince Arthur and sister-in-law of Henry VIII. Her legacies were the controversial reign of her daughter, who went down in history as Bloody Mary and led a very unhappy life, and the end of the Catholic Church’s authority in England and Wales. It was not what she would have wished for – but she has also been remembered as a woman of great courage, who followed her conscience no matter what the consequences.
On 17 January 1536, nine days after Katherine’s death, Henry had an accident that ended his jousting career. He fell from his horse and remained unconscious for two hours; onlookers feared he was dead. Many of his later medical problems – his headaches and dramatic mood swings – may have been caused by this, and a strong argument has been made that he suffered brain damage. Falls like this can cause a major change in someone’s personality, and from this point on we see an increasingly grumpy and irritable middle-aged man replacing the jovial and energetic young king. The loss of his great love, jousting, would have been a terrible blow to him and may, coupled with the effects of his injuries, have caused serious depression. Within four months of the fall, he had discarded the woman he had loved so passionately for ten years and married her attendant.
On 31 March 1536, Thomas Cromwell told Chapuys that although Henry was ‘still inclined to amours’, he believed the king’s marriage to Anne was solid and that the king would ‘henceforth live honourably and chastely’.2 This appears to have been a case of saying one thing with words and another with body language; Chapuys came away with the impression that the king might repudiate Anne soon. It was already known that Henry was enamoured with Jane Seymour, and had ‘latterly made very valuable presents’ to her.3 Chapuys had reported on Henry’s pursuit of Jane, but did not think this would topple Queen Anne from her position. The ambassador reported that Henry could not bear to be parted from Jane for even an hour,4 but this still appeared to be just another infatuation – his latest mistress. The world had seen what Henry was prepared to do for a woman who would not consent to be his lover, yet few considered the plain and passive maid of honour any match for Anne Boleyn. It was probably these very qualities that attracted Henry to Jane.
Polydore Vergil described Jane as ‘a woman of the utmost charm both in appearance and character’5 and Sir John Russell said she was ‘the fairest of all his wives’.6 John Skelton, the poet laureate, had written a poem describing the beauty of Jane’s mother, but few could honestly say as much for Jane. Chapuys was less complimentary than Vergil and undoubtedly more accurate:
She is of middle stature, and no great beauty, so fair that one would call her pale than otherwise. She is over 25 years old. I leave you to judge, whether being English she would not hold it to be a sin to be still a maid … Seymour is not a woman of great wit, but she may have good understanding. It is said she inclines to be proud and haughty.7
The physical description confirms what we see in her portrait.
Thanks to the tutoring of her family and their allies, Jane succeeded in entrancing the king. Playing on her virginity and virtuous manner, Jane delighted the king by being everything his feisty wife was not. Plain in both looks and personality, Jane was happy to play her part until the king agreed to discard his wife. Jane may have lacked Anne’s abrasiveness, but she did not lack her ambition. As Anne was being tried for treason, Jane was choosing her wedding dress.
Jane’s character is something of an enigma. Cardinal Pole described her as ‘full of goodness’.8 She does not seem to have ever had the strong influence on her husband that Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn had enjoyed, but he was now older and more aware of his own power. This does not prove that she was placid, but perhaps that she had learnt to be obedient. Any woman who Henry fell in love with would now be very aware of the women the king had loved before and the potential danger they were in.
It was not until Jane Seymour that any woman came close in Henry’s eyes to Anne, the woman he had loved obsessively for ten years. He was not discreet although he did not flaunt her as he had Anne in front of Queen Katherine. On 18 March 1536 Chapuys wrote that: ‘The new amours of this king with the young lady of whom I have written still go on, to the intense rage of the concubine.’ Jane was only about seven years the queen’s junior – so around twenty-seven or twenty-eight in 1536 – and seems to have had none of her sex appeal, intelligence, wit and charisma.
Jane was allegedly encouraged to criticise Anne to Henry, in the company of those who would agree with her. She had known and served Anne for years. Jane had the support of the whole conservative faction, plus her very able brother Edward Seymour, who under the reign of Jane’s young son would rule the country. Various court factions joined together, united temporarily in their dislike of Anne Boleyn and in pursuit of the benefits of backing the right horse. The whole court was watching to see which way the wind would blow.
In many ways, Henry’s pursuit of Jane echoed his courtship of Anne Boleyn: the handwritten notes, the declarations of love, the offer of anything she wanted if she would only consent to be his mistress. He showered Jane with presents and on one occasion sent her a purse filled with coins and a letter. Jane was well aware (or had been made well aware) that to accept money from the king would leave her open to accusations of impropriety. Jane handed back the letter to the messenger, then dropped to her knees and told him to
ask the King on her behalf to consider carefully that she was a gentlewoman, born of good and honourable parents and with an unsullied reputation. She had no greater treasure in the world than her honour which she would rather die a thousand times than tarnish.
She added that if the king wished to give her money, he could do so when she made a good marriage. Henry responded that she had behaved ‘very modestly’; exactly how a woman should behave.9
This was a very shrewd response, and is likely to have been the work of shrewd advisers. Jane had as many allies as Anne had enemies, who now included the Machiavellian Thomas Cromwell. Henry was utterly charmed by this shy young woman who needed his help and protection. His sweetheart’s brother, Edward Seymour, was made a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, which gave him constant access to the king. Seymour and his wife were also placed in the room next to Henry’s, with a private passageway between the rooms. This was so that Henry could sneak along to meet Jane regularly, but always chaperoned, so no doubt was cast on her virtue.
Everywhere Henry and Jane went, her brother accompanied them. Chapuys wrote that Jane had been ordered by her brother ‘not in any wise to give in to the King’s fancy unless he makes her his queen’.10 Anne now seems to have realised that her marriage was in danger, although she was probably only thinking of annulment. She began making overtures towards Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador, who had still not acknowledged her, and even to Henry’s daughter, Mary; neither could be persuaded to recognise her as Queen of England.
Now that Cromwell was sure the king wanted rid of his wife, he began to look for evidence to justify an annulment, and Henry’s former mistress, Mary Shelton, had her name mentioned in some of the reports. We have the details of two conversations Anne had about her cousin in the lead-up to the arrests: one of these condemned Mary’s fiancé and the other condemned the man paying court to her. Henry Norris had been engaged to Mary for a long time, and the queen is said to have asked him why they were not yet married. He replied that he ‘would tarry a time’; Anne was upset at this and accused Norris of wanting to marry the queen herself. ‘You look for dead man’s shoes’, Anne is said to have shouted, ‘for if aught came to the King but good you would look to have me.’ Norris was shocked at this suggestion and the two argued loudly – loudly enough for others to hear.11
Anne was often reported as unable to keep her temper, but this time it was very costly for both of them. She realised how her words would sound when the quarrel was gossiped about – for Norris and Anne to talk about the king dying, and for Norris to allegedly be wishing for it, was high treason, and thus punishable by death. Anne asked Norris to seek out the witnesses and promise them that she was a ‘good woman’. He agreed.12 Although they probably did not know it, the plot was already forming and the faction round the Seymours were trawling for the names of those they could ‘prove’ were Anne’s lovers. Norris had just nominated himself.
Perhaps the queen’s response was an ill-judged attempt to remind herself that she was attractive, and she was hoping for compliments. Anne may have encouraged Norris to name the day because she wanted someone to rein in Mary’s behaviour; Norris may have prevaricated because he was unsure if he wished to marry someone who had acquired a reputation – or perhaps he was standing aside because of the king’s interest in his fiancée. It may also be an indication of Mary’s young age. If Mary Shelton married and became pregnant, she would probably be sent to his country estate and therefore not be a temptation to the king; a situation Anne would probably have been pleased with. Now all the queen’s conversations and flirtations were being reported to Cromwell, including those of a man who was probably closer to Mary Shelton than Norris was.
Another courtier, Francis Weston, also had a conversation with the queen about Mary. She playfully scolded him for flirting with Mistress Shelton and not paying enough attention to his wife.13 Weston replied that there was someone there who he loved more than Mary or his wife. When Anne played the innocent and asked who this was, he replied that it was her. This was normal court banter, but now it was enough to convict him of adultery. Both men were executed alongside the queen and the other men accused with her. It is a possibility, though there is nothing to corroborate the theory, that Weston’s pursuit of a woman so recently the king’s mistress may have counted against him when the witch-hunt to find ‘lovers’ of Queen Anne began in earnest. We cannot be sure exactly when or why Henry’s relationship with Mary Shelton ended, or whether Weston’s friendship with Mary was courtly love or a sexual affair.
These reports show that Mary was part of the same social circle as Queen Anne. As three of the five accused men were closely linked to Mary – her first cousin, George Boleyn, as well as a man who was courting her and her fiancé – it was important that the Sheltons showed their loyalty to the king. There was nothing she or any of her family could do to help them. Norris had significant influence at court and throughout London; Weston’s family offered the king everything they had. It made no difference.
On 1 May 1536 Henry left Greenwich without saying goodbye to his second wife; he never saw her again. (With the four wives who he annulled his marriages to, he did not say goodbye, but left without their knowledge and sent a messenger. The only one he ever saw again was Anne of Cleves.) Sir Henry Norris was soon arrested; over the next few days other courtiers were questioned and several men were sent to the Tower, where the queen was now also contemplating the change in her fortunes. Chapuys described Anne around this time as ‘that thin old woman’; she was no longer the striking young girl who had attracted Henry ten years previously; she had become a thirty-five-year-old virago. Henry VIII did not appear devastated to find out that the love of his life had committed adultery with dozens of men and had been plotting to have him killed.
It was reported that: ‘You never saw a prince nor husband show or wear his horns more patiently and lightly than this one does. I leave you to guess the cause of it.’14 He was showing ‘the joy and pleasure a man feels in getting rod of a thin, old and vicious hack in the hope of getting soon a fine horse to ride’.15 Henry visited Jane regularly during May, while putting out the rumour that he had no desire to marry again and would only do so if his Council insisted it was his duty to do so. No one was fooled.
Henry then announced he had been ‘seduced and forced into this marriage by means of sortileges and charms’16 – he probably now believed this. She was no longer ‘our most dear and most entirely beloved wife, the Queen’; she was a woman who had bewitched him into marrying her. Henry’s grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville, had been accused of using witchcraft to persuade Edward IV to marry her. Witches were thought to routinely indulge in incest and sodomy (sodomy was a word used to describe various sexual practices, including male homosexuality, bestiality and anal intercourse between men and women. Laws against sodomy had only recently been enacted in England), which may be the reason for the charge of sodomy against Anne and all the accused men except Norris.
Cromwell initially planned for the accused men to walk through the streets of London, so that the people of the capital could see the traitors; he hoped it would win sympathy for the cuckolded king. This was cancelled, however, apparently because Norris was so popular with the common people they feared it would cause a riot. Despite Anne’s deep unpopularity, opinion again swayed to the underdog and few seem to have believed that she was guilty, even at the time. The common people were now singing songs in the streets of London criticising the king’s new love, Jane Seymour; it was widely known she was in the background.
Thomas Boleyn was excused from sitting in on the trials of his children – although he delivered a ‘guilty’ verdict on the four men accused with them, just as all the other jurors did. Despite Thomas’s fiery temperament, which he had passed on to both Anne and George, all three Boleyns involved in the trials appear to have kept calm and the siblings attracted admiration for their dignified conduct. The same could not be said for Henry Percy, the new earl of Northumberland and Anne’s old paramour. He claimed he was ill and left before the end of her trial.
Over two thousand people attended the trials of George and Anne Boleyn. Both were well known for their intellect and wit; both impressed the audience with their courage in the face of the inevitable. The charges of incest and adultery were patently absurd; Cromwell had not even bothered to make the dates sexual intercourse was meant to have occurred plausible. For some of the times he specified, Anne was still under constant supervision, recovering from the birth of her daughter. But some of the charges relating to George Boleyn appear to have been true.
Anne ‘was likewise charged, as was her brother, with having ridiculed the King, and laughed at his manner of dressing, showing in many ways that she did not love him, and was tired of married life with him’.19 Anne and her friends also seem to have insulted the king in other ways. ‘There were certain ballads, which the King himself is known to have composed once, and of which the concubine and her brother had made fun, as of productions entirely worthless, which circumstance was one of the principal charges brought against them at the trial.’20 Henry was the absolute ruler of England; it seems that the Boleyns may have begun to take for granted his support for them.
At George Boleyn’s trial, it was revealed that Anne ‘had said to his [George Boleyn’s] wife that the King was impotent. This, however, was not read in public; it was given to him in writing, under protest that he was only to say yes or no, without reading aloud the accusation; but to the great annoyance of Cromwell and others, he read it aloud and said that he was unwilling to engender or create suspicion in a matter likely to prejudice the issue the King might have from another marriage. He was likewise charged with having spread the rumour or expressed a doubt as to Anne’s daughter [Elizabeth] being the King’s, to which charge, however, he made no answer.’21 Jokes within their risqué circle of friends were now treasonous, but George’s response suggests that Anne had indeed made some of these comments.
The two siblings, who were often with each other, may have criticised the king’s sexual performance, which George might have heard about from both his sisters, at least one cousin and others at the court. It was claimed that: ‘The King was incapable of making love to his wife and he had neither skill nor virility.’22 Perhaps the pressure of trying to conceive with Anne caused sporadic impotence, although he was still able to perform with other women; yet all the letters from this time show that Henry was still powerfully attracted to his wife. One possible explanation is that Henry suffered from a condition causing sexual dysfunction. The theory that Henry had syphilis was widely believed up until the twentieth century, but this rumour started long after his death. Henry did not have any of the conventional treatments for syphilis, such as sweating or mercury.
There is only one mention of Henry and syphilis in contemporary documents: that Cardinal Wolsey tried to infect the king with it. This bizarre accusation was included in the bill of attainder against Wolsey, which was rejected by the House of Commons. The attainder stated that
The same Lord Cardinal knowing himself to have the foul and contagious disease of the great pox, broken out upon him in divers places of his body, came daily to your grace, rowning in your ear, and blowing upon your most noble grace with his perilous and infective breath, to the marvellous danger of your highness, if God of his infinite goodness had not better provided for your highness. And when he was once healed of them, he made your grace believe that his disease was an impostume in his head, and of none other thing.23
It is possible that the cardinal suffered from syphilis, but there is no evidence for this and no reason is given as to why he would try to infect his benefactor. This could have been an attempt to explain away Henry’s syphilis, but the attainder specifically states that Wolsey was unsuccessful in his attempts to infect the king.
Francis I of France was a famous victim of the disease, and his syphilis-ridden body apparently burst in its coffin. There has been a suggestion that Mary Boleyn caught syphilis from the King of France and gave it to the King of England, although the evidence clearly refutes this. Neither she, nor any other of Henry’s wives or known mistresses, showed any symptoms of the illness as far as we know, and nor did any of his children. An ulcer on the thigh, like Henry’s, would more likely be caused by syphilis than be a varicose ulcer, but that is not proof that Henry had this sexually transmitted disease. It is, however, impossible to diagnose any medical conditions from a distance of nearly five centuries.
Neither is Henry’s unfortunate lack of heir proof of any disease. Anne Boleyn conceived three times in three and a half years (Katherine of Aragon had four children who were stillborn or died shortly after birth, at least two miscarriages, two Prince Henrys (who lived only a few weeks) and Princess Mary. Three of those stillborn children were boys. Anne Boleyn gave birth to the Princess Elizabeth and suffered at least two stillbirths. This used to be considered a sign that Henry had given his wives syphilis, but there is nothing to support this. This record does not suggest any serious fertility problems. Katherine’s religious devotions were thought to have made her periods irregular and Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour produced healthy children. It is only after 1540, when he was forty-nine, that he shows signs of infertility.
After Anne was condemned, she was kindly allowed to have her usual ladies attending her – this did not include Mistress Seymour, who was apparently busy preparing for her wedding. Anne’s attendants may have now included Mary Shelton, who had not given evidence against the queen. Surprisingly, none of Anne’s ladies were accused of aiding and abetting her adultery, despite Henry’s claims ‘that upwards of one hundred gentlemen have had criminal connexion with her’.24 This was in contrast to the arrest of Catherine Howard. As Anne’s ladies would have been with her twenty-four hours a day, unless she was with the king, a number of them must surely have helped her arrange these rendezvouses. Mary, as one of Anne’s ladies and closely associated with the others accused, was an obvious target if someone wanted to blame one of Anne’s attendants. The king’s former affection for her and her parents’ influence may have helped protect her, but the fact that no women were implicated shows, as if further proof was needed, that the entire case was a farce.
Anne was to die, not with the status of queen, but as the king’s former-mistress. Before the executions, Chapuys wrote that
I have also been informed that the said Archbishop of Canterbury had pronounced the marriage of the King and of his mistress [Anne] to have been unlawful and null in consequence of the King himself having had connexion with Anne’s sister, and that both he and she being well aware and well acquainted with such an impediment, the good faith of the parents could not possibly legitimise the daughter [Elizabeth].25
Shortly after Anne Boleyn’s death, the Succession Act was passed. One of its clauses made marriage between two people, who had been made siblings through permitted or illicit sexual conduct, illegal. We know that at this time, Henry Percy wrote to the Council insisting that he had never had a precontract with Anne – there had been rumours the royal marriage would be annulled on these grounds – and so it would have been very difficult to use this to dispute the validity of the marriage; yet Henry’s ego could not allow his first marriage to be declared valid after all. Henry claimed he had never been legally married and had no legitimate children. It was the final insult to Anne, who was now to be executed for adultery despite the proclamation that she had never been legally married.
Anne and the five men accused with her were convicted. It was thought that if George Boleyn had denied all the charges, he would have been spared; bets were being made that he would be found ‘not guilty’. William Brereton, a man Anne had not known well, Francis Weston, Henry Norris, Mark Smeaton and George Boleyn were beheaded on 17 May 1536, fifteen years to the day since the execution of the duke of Buckingham. The lieutenant of the Tower said Anne was the first condemned prisoner he had seen who was anxious for death. Two days after the executions of the accused men, she was beheaded by a French swordsman, and no one had even thought to arrange a coffin for her, putting her in an empty arrow chest with her head tucked under her arm. Her initial hysteria had given way to impressive self-control by the time of her trial. At her execution it was reported that: ‘In her dignity and composure she had never looked more beautiful.’26 Anne’s last words were the same as Katherine of Aragon’s: ‘To Jesus Christ, I commend my soul.’ Katherine spoke them in Latin, the language of antiquity, tradition and Catholicism; Anne was said to have spoken them in English. Both women were now in Henry’s past.
From the moment Henry decided to marry his mistress, Anne Boleyn, every woman he glanced at was a potential queen of England. Therefore, women who would have been more accommodating in the past were encouraged by their families to aim for a crown. It was this possibility, that there were richer pickings to be had than just some small grants for the family and a besmirched reputation, that was one of the reasons Henry married six times. Yet the king was always the one who held the power.
None of Henry’s mistresses had enjoyed real political authority, until Anne Boleyn. She was astute enough to build a faction around her that was prepared to fight for the royal annulment. She recruited key players in the Reformation such as Thomas Cranmer, who was promoted from her family chaplain to archbishop of Canterbury. She built excellent links with the French ambassador and developed alliances throughout the court; effectively Anne was one of Henry’s ministers from 1527, but like many of Henry’s other advisers, she became a victim of political infighting. It was often safer not to rise too high at Henry’s court; to be a mistress, rather than a wife.
1. Cit. Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, p.280
2. L&P, VII, no.1040
3. CSP, Spanish, 1536–38, no.21 and L&P, X, no.282; 17th February 1536
4. L&P, X, no.351
5. Vergil, Anglica Historia, p.337
6. Cit. Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, p.290
7. Cit. Martienssen, Katherine Parr, p.78
8. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I, I, ii, 304
9. L&P, X, p.245
10. Cit. Lindsey, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII, p.119
11. Cavendish, (ed. Singer), The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey, p.452
12. CSP, Spanish, V, p.214; L&P, XII, no.48
13. Cavendish, (ed. Singer), The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey, p.453
14. CSP, Spanish, 1536–38, no.54; Chapuys to Granvelle, 18th May 1536
15. Cit. Fox, Jane Boleyn, p.202–3; Chapuys
16. CSP, Spanish, V, pt. II, p.28
17. Byrne (ed.), The Letters of King Henry VIII, p.171; letter from Henry to Norfolk
18. CSP, Spanish, IV, pt. II, p.84
19. CSP, Spanish, 1536–38, no.55
20. Ibid.; Chapuys to Charles V, 19th May 1536
21. CSP, Spanish, 1536–38, no.55
22. CSP, Spanish, V, pt. II, p.126; L&P, X, no.908
23. McNalty, Henry VIII: A Difficult Patient, p.16
24. CSP, Spanish, 1536–38, no.54; Chapuys to Granvelle, 18th May 1536
25. Ibid.
26. De Carles; cit. Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, p.315