Would Henry marry again after his bitter disappointment and humiliation over Catherine Howard? It seemed a moot point to intelligent observers, including Chapuys.
For by the winter of 1541–2, the ambassador had known Henry for a dozen years. He had seen him change from a fit, if florid, forty-year-old to the prematurely aged and bloated monster he had become a decade later. He had witnessed his reaction to Anne Boleyn’s execution and to Jane Seymour’s death. But he had never seen him behave as he did over Catherine Howard. ‘This King’, he reported on 3 December 1541, ‘has wonderfully felt the case of the Queen, his wife.’ ‘He has certainly shown’, he continued, ‘greater sorrow and regret at her loss than at the faults, loss or divorce of his preceding wives.’
Indeed, the contrast was so great that Chapuys felt the need to offer what we might call a little psychology to explain it. He did so by means of a homely comparison. ‘I should say’, he wrote, ‘that this King’s case resembles very much that of the woman who cried more bitterly at the loss of her tenth husband than she had cried on the death of the other nine put together, though all of them had been equally worthy people and good husbands to her.’ ‘The reason’, Chapuys’s tale continued, ‘[was] that she had never buried one of them without being sure of the next. But after the tenth husband she had no other one in view: hence her sorrow and her lamentation.’
‘Such’, Chapuys concluded, ‘is the case with this King, who does not seem to have any plan or female friend to fall back upon.’1
It can be put more simply. Previously, with the exception of the ever-sainted Jane Seymour, Henry had abandoned his wives. Now, he felt, a wife had abandoned him.
He did not like it.
But Henry’s loss was, Anne of Cleves thought and hoped, her gain. As we have seen, Anne had handled her demotion from wife to ‘sister’ with dignity and aplomb. But that does not mean that she was reconciled to it–or, much less, that she welcomed it. On the contrary. Instead of rejoicing in her escape, as we might imagine, she was eager to put her head in the lion’s mouth once more. ‘I hear also’, Chapuys reported on 19 November 1541, ‘that the Lady Anne of Cleves has greatly rejoiced at [Catherine’s fall], and that in order to be nearer the King she is coming to, if she is not already at, Richmond.’2
A formal diplomatic initiative to restore the Cleves marriage followed from her brother, the Duke. Harst delivered letters from the ducal minister Olisleger to Privy Seal Fitzwilliam and Archbishop Cranmer, to ask for their good offices. But, knowing Henry’s sensitivity on the subject, both refused to have anything to do with the matter and informed the King of the approach. Harst next tried for a personal audience with the King. This, too, was refused on the grounds of his ‘grief ’ about Catherine Howard’s betrayals. Finally, Harst presented his case to the Privy Council on 15 December, when it was politely but firmly rejected. ‘[The King intended]’, the Councillors explained, ‘that the Lady [Anne] should be graciously entertained and her estate rather increased than diminished.’ ‘But the separation’, they continued, ‘had been made for such just cause that [Henry] prayed the Duke never to make such a request [again].’
Unwisely, Harst tried to press the matter. At this point, things turned nasty and Gardiner, speaking ‘with every appearance of anger’, told him the blunt truth. ‘The King’, he said, ‘would never take back the…Lady [Anne].’3
It was a truth that Anne still found difficult to accept. And it is easy to understand why. She had her slighted honour to avenge. She found her position of Henry’s ‘sister’, despite its comfort, both awkward and anomalous. And she had positive reasons for wanting Henry back. As we too easily forget, Henry had been kind and generous to her as he was to all his wives. For he was a good husband–as long as the marriage lasted. Nevertheless, Anne’s attempt to renew the marriage led only to a fresh rejection. But, once again, she had the wisdom to swallow the slight and to submit.
Her situation aroused widespread sympathy. According to Marillac, ‘all regret her more than they did the late Queen Catherine [of Aragon]’. More particularly, another royal lady took a sisterly interest in her plight. Francis I’s sister, Marguerite–who was now Queen of the little Pyrenean kingdom of Navarre after marrying its King, Henri d’Albret, as her second husband–used Marillac to send Anne good advice and her portrait. Anne, the ambassador reported, had no real need of the advice, ‘as she wants neither prudence nor patience’ while her conduct had been above reproach. But he knew, he continued, that Anne would be delighted with Marguerite’s portrait as she had often asked for it. He had already requested hers in return.4
Marguerite’s kindness was not disinterested of course. The renewal of the Cleves marriage would serve French interests by tying England to an enemy of Charles V. It would also, she thought, encourage Henry along the path of moderate religious Reform, which she favoured. But such considerations were secondary. Above all, she wanted to express the solidarity of royal women in the face of the frequently monstrous conduct of royal men.
Anne’s enthusiastic response raises questions of its own. At first sight it would be hard to think of two more different figures or more ill-assorted friends. Anne was ill-educated and abused; whereas Marguerite, thanks to her own intelligence and her brother’s indulgence, was conspicuous for her independence of thought and action. These had secured her a European-wide reputation and made her a role-model for royal women everywhere.
As we have seen, Henry’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, had sought Marguerite’s acquaintance and endorsement. Now, it seemed, Anne of Cleves, despite her apparent submissiveness, was eager to copy Marguerite’s example as well. Or did she see her only as a friendly shoulder to cry on?
Meanwhile, Henry’s black mood continued for several weeks. ‘The King’, Marillac reported from London on 16 December, ‘has left his Privy Council here, and is, with a small company, in the neighbourhood, seeking in pastimes to forget his grief, until it is time to come to Greenwich, where he spends Christmas.’ Henry moved restlessly between the small royal residences of north Surrey–Beddington, Esher, Oatlands, Woking, Horsley and back to Beddington–and hunted their deer parks. He listened to the Council’s reports on their mopping-up of the Catherine Howard affair and issued astringent instructions. Otherwise, Chapuys learned, ‘[he] will not hear of business’. And he delayed his return to Greenwich, for a Christmas which he did not wish to celebrate, until the evening of 23 December.5
Only with Catherine’s formal condemnation did he begin–in the language of psychotherapy–to find ‘closure’. Ever since the discovery of his wife’s affair, Chapuys reported, ‘the King had shown no alacrity or joy’. But on 29 January, as the Parliamentary process against Catherine entered its final stages, the clouds started to lift and Henry ‘gave a grand supper’. ‘There were no less than 26 at his table’, Chapuys continued, ‘and at another table close by 35’. Even his eye for the ladies seemed to have come back. ‘The lady for whom he showed the greatest regard’, Chapuys heard, was Wyatt’s repudiated wife, Elizabeth née Brooke, the sister of Lord Cobham. ‘She is a pretty young creature’, the ambassador noted, ‘with wit enough to do as badly as the others if she were to try.’ ‘The King is also said to have a fancy’, he concluded, for two other ladies: a niece of Sir Anthony Browne and Anne Basset. Anne Basset, as we have seen, had first caught Henry’s attention six years previously when she made her debut at Court as one of Jane Seymour’s maids. And he had continued to show a rather avuncular interest in her ever since.6
Anne was fair, modest and charming. But somehow the spark failed to strike.
Henry’s spirits rose even further with Catherine’s execution: now that the headsman’s axe had drawn the clearest of lines under his fifth marriage, the quest for his sixth wife could begin. But it would prove neither quick nor easy.
Catherine was executed on 12 February. Henry spent the days surrounding the execution privately at Hackney and Waltham. But on the 14th he returned to Whitehall for the feasts that marked the beginning of Lent. In contrast with his miserable Christmas, he decided to celebrate them in fine style. There were three successive days of feasting, with a different group of guests on each day. He entertained the Lords and Privy Councillors on Sunday, 19 February, the Lawyers on the Monday and the Ladies on Shrove Tuesday itself, 21 February. Ever the good host, Henry supervised the arrangements for his female guests in person. ‘The King’, Chapuys reported, ‘did nothing else on the [Tuesday] morning…than go from one chamber to another to inspect the lodgings prepared for the ladies.’
At the party itself he was universally charming: ‘he received [them all] with much gaiety’, Chapuys continued, ‘without, however, showing particular affection for any of them’.7 This behaviour led Chapuys to wonder whether Henry would ever take another wife. More importantly, he speculated, would any woman wish–or dare–to take him?
For, as Chapuys pointed out, the new treasons created by Catherine’s Act of Attainder raised formidable obstacles for any would-be successor. Who was so chaste that no breath of scandal could ever touch her? Or who was so bold, and so confident of Henry’s love, that she would risk confessing her indiscretions beforehand?
The list, it would seem, was not long.
A year later, however, in the early summer of 1543, Henry had chosen. And the woman, after much soul-searching, had accepted. Her name was Catherine Parr.