Rumour has it that Anne had been Cranmer’s pupil. He cannot have taught her during her youth, which had of course been spent in France. Instead, she would have been an adult student of his–in late 1529, when he had been lodged at her father’s newly acquired town palace of Durham House, or again after his return from Italy in late 1530, when he had been part of the King’s legal and theological team at Court. But however cloudy these details, one thing is certain: pupil and master developed a mutual regard, which survived throughout extraordinary swings of fortune. The first of these was about to occur. Cranmer would make Anne Queen. But first she had to make him Archbishop of Canterbury.1
The incumbent Archbishop of Canterbury was the aged, disillusioned and marginalised William Warham. Born in 1456, chosen as Archbishop and Chancellor by Henry VII, respected by the young Henry VIII and elbowed aside by Wolsey, Warham had seen it all. His face, as painted by Holbein, is as gnarled and wrinkled as an ancient oak tree. And he was as tough. He had skilfully obstructed Henry’s wishes: first over the Divorce, and then over the royal headship of the Church. His strength was a masterly inactivity: he was a delayer and a survivor. But even he could not cheat death and he died on 22 August 1532 at the age of seventy-six.2
Henry could now appoint a more malleable primate–providing, that is, that he could persuade the Pope to agree to his choice. But he seemed to be in no hurry. News of Warham’s death was reported by the Venetian ambassador, Carlo Capello, soon after the event on 26 August. ‘Four days ago’, he wrote, ‘the Reverend Archbishop of Canterbury died. The King sent the Duke of Norfolk to take possession as usual; he will keep it for a year and then give it to Dom. Gramello or to Master [Reginald] Pole.’3
Assuming, as most scholars do, that by ‘Gramello’ the ambassador meant Cranmer, the prophecy is remarkable. Capello was also right about the immediate lack of urgency. Henry and Anne had one thing on their minds in late August and it was the planned meeting with Francis. Against this, the nomination of a new archbishop was a remote affair. But the postponement of the Calais/Boulogne interview from the beginning to the end of October gave a breathing space. Henry made use of it to clear the backlog of business which had built up during his exclusive concentration on the negotiation and planning of the interview.
There were two key items. The first was the timing of the next session of Parliament. In late September or early October, Sir Thomas Audley, More’s successor as Keeper of the Great Seal, wrote to ‘his loving and hearty friend’ Cromwell to inform him that Henry, ‘this afternoon’, had decided to prorogue Parliament from its planned date of reassembly in November till 4 February 1533. Audley had lobbied hard for that particular date. He thought ‘it a very good time, being about the middle of Hilary term, when the days will be improving’ and the worst gloom of winter would be past.4
The other important policy decision was to summon Cranmer, who was on an Embassy to Charles V, back to England. This was decided on Tuesday, 1 October. Drafting, writing and despatching the various letters took at least twenty-four hours and it was not until ‘Wednesday toward evening’ that Dr Nicholas Hawkins, who was carrying the letters of recall, obtained ‘licence’ to leave, following an audience with Henry at Greenwich.
Interestingly, Hawkins also had another, apparently fuller, meeting with Anne before setting off. ‘My Lady Marquess of Pembroke showed me’, he reported back to Henry from Mantua, ‘that it was your Highness’s commandment that we should seek out such books, as be found here [concerning Papal power].’ He was sending one which, he understood, ‘treateth this matter very substantially’. But it was in German and Henry would have to ‘command Master Cromwell to find an interpreter’.
This is incontrovertible evidence of Anne’s direct involvement in the gathering of learned materials on the Divorce and Supremacy. It is also striking that, to judge from the actual language of the passage in Hawkins’s letter, Anne had described the required books in Latin as de potestate Papae.5
Cranmer, it would seem, had done his tutoring well.
But his lessons had stopped early in 1532, when he had been sent on his Embassy to the Emperor Charles V. Bearing in mind later events, he seems a bizarre choice for such a mission. But, with his calm good manners, his outward reasonableness, and his careful reserve, he won golden opinions. This is the more surprising considering the range of his secret contacts: not only did Cranmer have formal dealings with the Emperor and his ministers, he was at the same time in semi-clandestine communication with some of the German reformers. And, most clandestine of all, he got married.
Cranmer had of course been married before. But that was before he joined the priesthood. His remarriage now represented an extraordinary flouting of one of the basic rules of the clerical estate: even Henry, with all his future theological wanderings, was to remain committed to the necessity of clerical celibacy till the end.6
What drove Cranmer? Lust certainly, I suppose, and perhaps love. But the consequences were at least as important as the causes. Cranmer now had a personal investment, of the deepest sort, in the further progress of Reform. Similarly, the experience of his own frailty gave him a most untypical understanding, for a cleric, of the demands of human sexuality. This meant that he not only agreed with the theological arguments behind Henry’s determination to end his first marriage (which, as we have seen, he did on first principles), he also sympathised with the psychological imperatives which drove the King ever onward on his extraordinary marital journey. Cranmer seems even to have sympathised with Anne.
Meanwhile, his marriage had to be a guilty secret which profoundly conditioned his behaviour over the next few months.
For his recall–the news of which was brought by Hawkins–came as no surprise. His friends in England (that is, the Boleyns and Cromwell) had already given him advance warning of Henry’s intention to nominate him as Archbishop of Canterbury. According to Cranmer’s enemies, the appointment was the result of a cynical deal between Cranmer and the King. ‘Give me the Archbishopric of Canterbury’, Cranmer is supposed to have promised Henry, ‘and I will give you licence to live in adultery.’ In fact, the opposite seems to have been the case and, far from grasping at the appointment, no man has said nolo episcopari (I am unwilling to be made a bishop) more fervently than Cranmer.7
And it is easy to see why. To be a married priest was awkward enough; to be an archbishop with a wife was unthinkable. Moreover, Cranmer could become archbishop only by acknowledging, with the most solemn oaths, the authority of the Pope, which he had already rejected on grounds that were both conscientious and intellectual. These barriers between himself and Canterbury were unavoidable; instead he would have to slither over them by an unlovely combination of hypocrisy and perjury. For a man who valued his integrity it was not a happy prospect.
No wonder he made his journey home from Mantua, where Hawkins finally caught up with him, last as long as possible. Twenty years later, when his world had collapsed in ruins and he was on trial for his life, the memory of those days was still vivid. ‘I protest before you all’, he told his judges, ‘there was never man who came more unwillingly to a bishopric, than I did to that: in so much that when King Henry did send for me in post, that I should come over, I prolonged my journey by seven weeks at the least, thinking that he should be forgetful of me in the meantime.’8
There was little chance of that, since Anne and Henry were counting the days to his arrival. But (as Cranmer intended) the weeks went by with no news of him. Nothing had been heard from the man himself, of course. Still worse, there had also been silence from Hawkins. Justifiably, Hawkins was ‘right pensive’ when he imagined what Henry’s reaction might be and wisely he excused himself at length. The reason, he explained in his despatch of 21 November, was ‘that in all my journey I never met with post, nor courier, or any other man of England’, whom he could trust to carry letters home.9
By early December, Henry and Anne were thoroughly alarmed. They had now been sleeping together for almost a month; Anne may even have had intimations of pregnancy. Something must be done! As they tended to do at such moments, they turned to Cromwell. And Cromwell turned to the faithful Vaughan, who was sent to track down Cranmer and hurry him home.
Cromwell despatched Vaughan on Sunday, 1 December. He embarked at Dover at 10 a.m. on the Monday and made landfall at 10 p.m. at Whitesand Bay (that is, the modern Wissant) to the east of Boulogne. The weather was atrocious, with heavy snow that froze immediately it touched the ground. The result was that he ‘could not get a horse for any money, the roads being so dangerous’. Not to be defeated, he walked the twelve miles to Boulogne, ‘not [e]scaping more falls than I have fingers’. At Boulogne he took post-horses. But riding proved even more dangerous than walking. He and his horse fell near Abbéville and the injury to his leg ‘was scantly eased by an application put on at Amiens’. The accident and its treatment cost him half a day. Nevertheless he arrived at Paris on the morning of the 5th.
But still there was silence about the whereabouts of his quarry. He ‘has heard nothing of the man during his journey’, Vaughan informed Cromwell in deliberately obscure language. ‘A post who came from Lyon today had met with no such person.’ On the 6th, Vaughan set out for Lyon himself.10
The bad weather continued, with ‘the ways’, he told Cromwell, ‘being so perilous by the frost that I never expected to come home without a broken leg’. Nevertheless he arrived at Lyon only three days later and was rewarded with the information he wanted. ‘I met an Englishman who had come from Mr Cranmer, who is ten leagues off, and is expected here.’ ‘The news’, he added with nice understatement, ‘will please the King.’
Vaughan was writing, he explained, at night. Early the next morning he would ride towards Cranmer. And, he swore, ‘I will conduct him in safety, or die by the way.’ It was a boast we should believe. But even Vaughan had to acknowledge that his youthful energy was up against a formidable obstacle in Cranmer himself: ‘Mr Cranmer is disposed to make only small journeys’, he reported. Nevertheless, ‘I trust by Christmas we shall be in England’.11
It would be the best present that Henry and Anne could receive.
In fact, Cranmer managed to drag things out a fortnight further at least and it was not till the end of the second week of the New Year that he arrived at Greenwich, where Henry and Anne were spending the holidays. And it was there, amid the festivities (a hostile reporter claims that the audience took place at a bear-baiting), that Henry informed him formally of his decision to appoint him archbishop. Cranmer, who had been considering his position for the two months of his homeward journey, at first tried to refuse. When he was pressed by Henry, he invoked his conscientious scruples about taking an oath to the Papacy. And on this he proved immovable. The King consulted a panel of legal experts, led by Dr Oliver, who came up with a solution.12
Cranmer would enter a ‘protestation’ or disclaimer. This would assert that (as Cranmer himself put it): ‘I did not acknowledge [the Pope’s] authority any further than as it agreed with the express word of God, and that it might be lawful for me at all times to speak against him, and so to impugn his errors, when time and occasion should serve me’. The protestation would apply to two sets of oaths: to those which Cranmer’s proctor would swear in Rome to secure his Bulls of appointment; and to those which Cranmer himself would, in the fullness of time, make at his consecration.
The procedures were explained to Cranmer thus: ‘I might do it by way of protestation, and so one [his proctor] to be sent to Rome, who might take the oath and do everything in my name’. Cranmer’s response had been to declare he was not his brother’s keeper: ‘Which, when I understood, I said he [his proctor] should do it super animam suam [on his own conscience]’.13
Cranmer, as he himself realised, had enough to do to look after his own.
Agreement on all this was not reached till 24 or 25 January. By a curious coincidence, Henry’s most effective agent in Rome, Dr Edmund Bonner, arrived home at the same time for further instructions. Bonner came from the same stable as Gardiner. Like Gardiner, to whom he was junior by about three years, he was a bright young canon lawyer, who had been recruited by Wolsey. He remained in the Cardinal’s service after his fall and accompanied him on his fatal journey to the north. And it was from Wolsey’s Household at Scrooby in Nottinghamshire on 4 September 1530 that he wrote to his fellow Wolseyian, Thomas Cromwell, in London. Cromwell, he reminded him, ‘willing to make me a good Italian [had] promised unto me, long ago, the Triumphs of Petrarch in the Italian tongue’. Would he please send it now, by Dr Augustine’s servant? And would he also supply other such works, especially ‘the book called Cortegiano in Italian’? This last was Baldassare Castiglione’s classic account of how to navigate the treacherous waters of the Renaissance Court. Bonner evidently learned more than the language from it and he made a seamless transition to the royal service.14
On Bonner’s return from Italy Henry was at York Place. Bonner had an audience on the morning of 25 January 1533, and he found the King in an excellent mood–or, as he put it in full Cortegiano mode to his colleague in the Roman Embassy, Dr William Benet, ‘I repaired to his Grace, which, being a Prince of most virtue, honour and goodness, gave me most gracious and benign audience’.
Henry had, as we shall see, good reason to be cheerful that morning.
Bonner reported to Benet that Henry was delighted with the signs of a softening in the Pope’s position–for so the King chose to interpret recent developments. In return, the King promised to resume his accustomed loyalty to the Holy See. But first the Pope must back up his words with corresponding deeds. What would most please the King at the moment, Benet was to inform the Pope, was for the formalities of ‘my Lord Elect of Canterbury, Mr Doctor Cranmer’, to ‘be…favourably handled, especially concerning the Annates, and charges of his Bulls’. If not, the suspension of Annates, ‘which is in communication greatly and only stayed by the King’s goodness’, would be implemented forthwith. That was the stick. The carrot, as Bonner reported it, was equally clear: ‘the good and favourable handling of this man shall stay, as me thinketh, many things, and cause diverse, and the King especially, to take it in good part’.15
Clement, in other words, was being offered a deal. There was also the further inducement, as Chapuys quickly discovered, that Henry was prepared to pay Cranmer’s fees at the Papal Court upfront. Was there, the ambassador himself now wondered anxiously, ‘some secret intelligence between the Pope and this King’? Certainly Henry was giving every impression that such an agreement had been reached: ‘I know very well’, Chapuys reported, ‘that the King boasts of having gained the Pope to his side, or at least talks of having done so to the Gentlemen of his Privy Chamber.’16
From this moment, Cranmer’s appointment was considered to be in the bag and the following day, 26 January, at about 3 p.m., after Henry had returned to Greenwich, ‘Thomas Cranmer, elect of Canterbury’, appeared as second in order of precedence of the witnesses of the investiture of Sir Thomas Audley with the office of Lord Chancellor.17
And indeed the signs, both in Rome and England, were that Clement was eager to grasp the proffered hand of friendship. Whether he would have been quite so eager if he had known of Henry’s previous engagement, before he met Bonner on the 25th, is another matter.
For, earlier that day, Anne and Henry had been married for the second time. This marriage, like the first, was ‘secret’. Unlike the first, however, the news leaked. Within the month, Chapuys was confidentially informed that the marriage had taken place. And the celebrant, naturally, was assumed to be Cranmer. But Cranmer hotly denied the charge. Far from having solemnised the marriage, he told Nicholas Hawkins, his friend and successor as ambassador at the Imperial Court: ‘I myself knew not thereof a fortnight after it was done’.18
But if not Cranmer, who? Chapuys was informed two years later that the marriage was performed by an Augustinian friar, who was rewarded by being made head of his Order. The friar in question has been convincingly identified as George Brown, later Archbishop of Dublin. But a more likely candidate still is Dr Rowland Lee, who became Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield in 1534.19
Lee figures as celebrant in the account of the marriage given by Nicholas Harpsfield in his Treatise on the Pretended Divorce between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. The Treatise was written in the reign of Catherine’s daughter Mary, and is a compendium of recusant tradition. It is, of course, bitterly hostile to Anne and Henry and, other things being equal, I would be inclined to discount its evidence. Harpsfield’s account also contains one assertion which can be verified independently and which, at first sight, seems to be wrong.
Harpsfield claims that the marriage ceremony took place ‘at Whitehall’, as York Place soon became known. But the manuscript itinerary of Henry VIII in the Public Record Office shows the King to have remained at Greenwich for the whole of January 1533. However, on closer examination, it becomes clear that the compilers of the itinerary had failed to notice Bonner’s letter to Benet. This shows, incontrovertibly, that Henry was at York Place overnight on Friday/Saturday, 24/25 January. It was, it is true, a brief visit. The King had not left Greenwich till late enough on the 24th to have signed a warrant before his departure, and he was back there soon enough on the 25th to sign another. But, brief though the visit was, it gave quite enough time for one of the most momentous acts of his life–and of Anne’s.20
Bonner’s evidence thus stands the argument on its head. Two independent witnesses (Cranmer and Chapuys) state that the marriage took place on the 25th. Harpsfield says that Henry was married at York Place. And indeed it now turns out that Henry was at York Place on the morning of the 25th–and, moreover, that this was (so far as we know) his only visit to York Place between Christmas 1532 and the opening of the new session of Parliament on 4 February 1533. The congruence of these facts is, surely, too much for mere coincidence. Harpsfield must be right about the place of Henry’s marriage and he is likely to be correct about the other details also.
The marriage, Harpsfield says, took place ‘very early before day’. The only witnesses were Henry Norris and Thomas Heneage, the two principal Gentlemen of Henry’s Privy Chamber, and Anne Savage, later Lady Berkeley, who attended on Anne. And the celebrant, Harpsfield says, was Rowland Lee.
According to Harpsfield, Lee had been previously briefed by the King, who informed him that he had ‘gotten of the Pope a licence to marry another wife’. But ‘to avoid business and tumult’ the King felt that the ceremony must be performed ‘very secretly’. The two agreed the time and place.
But when the party assembled, Lee was ‘in a great dump and staggering’. For Henry had not produced the necessary documentation from the Pope. Lee pressed him once more: ‘Sir, I trust you have the Pope’s licence?’ ‘What else?’ Henry replied lightly. Still Lee was not satisfied and, fully vested for mass, demanded that the licence be read. Henry was ready for this as well. The licence, he said, was ‘in another, surer place whereunto no man resorteth but myself ’. But if he were seen to go to get it so early in the morning, it would give the game away. ‘Go forth in God’s name, and do that which appertaineth to you!’ the King ordered at last, ‘and I will take upon me all other danger’.21
What (assuming that the words were said) was going on? Was Henry, as one historian has speculated, revealing even at this stage ‘a psychological dependence on the papacy’? And how does the dithering, anxious Lee of Harpsfield’s account square with the man we know elsewhere? For Lee’s own correspondence presents a very different picture. He was the intimate friend of Cromwell, a shrewd and efficient administrator and, when necessary, as accomplished a bully as the great minister himself: later in 1533 he forced the Northern Convocation to accept the Divorce and, still more remarkably, he compelled the Welsh Marchers to submit to law and order when he was president of the Council of Wales.
So was he overcome by the moment on the 25th? Or was he acting? And how sincere, come to that, was Henry?22
The answer, surely, is that the whole ceremony was a carefully contrived performance. The first marriage in November had been designed to reassure Anne. This second, with its half-invocation of Papal authority, was intended to reassure Henry’s subjects. When news of it leaked, which it quickly did, it would suggest that Henry had received the nod from Rome.
The marriage thus forms part of the great game of 1533 in which Henry decided to get his Divorce by deceiving everybody: Rome, his English subjects and even his French allies. The game was for the highest stakes and he played it well. So well indeed that, at moments, Anne seems to have wondered whether he might be deceiving her as well.
But she had ways of dealing with that.