English Histories - The Six Wives of Henry VIII Part 6

The referral of the case to Rome had been a consolation to Queen Katherine: the Pope had listened to her, and she was still confident that her husband would eventually return to her. But the King, as if to underline his determination to have his way, left her behind when he went on progress that August, and took Anne Boleyn instead. When he returned, matters were very strained between the royal couple, and at the beginning of October a heated exchange took place, when Katherine told Henry that she knew she had right on her side, and that as she had never been a true wife to his brother, their marriage must be legal.

Katherine now had a new champion in England. In the autumn of 1529 the new Spanish amba.s.sador arrived. Eustache Chapuys was a cultured attorney from Savoy, a man of great ability and astuteness. Never afraid of speaking his mind, he was devoted to the service of the Emperor and those connected with him. He had been well briefed about the treatment meted out to Queen Katherine by her husband, and when he arrived in London he was already committed to her cause. Nor would it be long before, having come to know her, he conceived the deepest admiration and respect, and a very sincere affection, for the Queen.

From the first, Chapuys carried out his duties with more zeal than any of his predecessors, even Mendoza. His initial brief was to bring about a reconciliation between the King and Queen by using 'gentleness and friendship'. But it would only be a matter of of time before Chapuys had far exceeded these instructions and became a continual thorn in the side of Henry VIII. He was distrusted by the King's courtiers and advisers, and hated by the Boleyn faction, who feared his influence. The enmity was mutual. Chapuys would never refer to Anne Boleyn as anything other than 'the Concubine' or 'the Lady'. Sir William Paget, one of the King's secretaries, did not consider Chapuys to be a wise man, but a liar, a tale-teller and a flatterer, who had no regard for honesty or truth. Paget, it must be said, was biased, but his comments should be borne in mind, for the dispatches of Chapuys form a major proportion of the source material for this period. time before Chapuys had far exceeded these instructions and became a continual thorn in the side of Henry VIII. He was distrusted by the King's courtiers and advisers, and hated by the Boleyn faction, who feared his influence. The enmity was mutual. Chapuys would never refer to Anne Boleyn as anything other than 'the Concubine' or 'the Lady'. Sir William Paget, one of the King's secretaries, did not consider Chapuys to be a wise man, but a liar, a tale-teller and a flatterer, who had no regard for honesty or truth. Paget, it must be said, was biased, but his comments should be borne in mind, for the dispatches of Chapuys form a major proportion of the source material for this period.

206 By October 1529, Chapuys had met the King, the Queen, Cardinal Wolsey, and the Privy Council, and had a.s.sessed the situation in England. 'The Lady is all powerful here, and the Queen will have no peace until her case is tried and decided at Rome,' he told Charles V. He was right. Henry could not do enough to make up for the disappointment Anne had suffered at the prorogation of the legatine court. In October 1529, the amba.s.sador reported: 'The King's affection for La Boleyn increases daily. It is so great just now that it can hardly be greater, such is the intimacy and familiarity in which they live at present.' In October 1529, Lord Rochford boasted to the French amba.s.sador that the peers of the realm had no influence except what it pleased his daughter to allow them.

It now pleased her to urge them to seek revenge on the man whom she considered to be responsible for her present position, Cardinal Wolsey. After the legatine court had been formally closed on 31 July, this was brought home to Wolsey himself by a letter Anne sent him, in which she accused him of abandoning her interests in favour of those of the Queen. In future, she said, she would rely 'on nothing but the protection of Heaven and the love of my dear King, which alone will be able to set right again those plans which you have broken and spoiled'. There would be no more need for hypocrisy.

For the moment Henry was still reluctant to proceed judicially against Wolsey. Nevertheless, it was soon obvious to the court that the Cardinal had fallen from favour. In August, Henry and Anne went on progress, visiting Waltham Abbey, Barnet, t.i.ttenhanger, Holborn, Windsor, Reading, Woodstock, Langley, Buckingham and Grafton before returning to Greenwich in October. When they were at Grafton in the old royal hunting lodge deep in the Northamptonshire countryside, Campeggio, accompanied by Wolsey, arrived to take formal leave of the King before returning to Rome. No accommodation had been prepared for Wolsey, and he was left standing at a loss in the courtyard until Sir Henry Norris, the King's Groom of the Stole, came and offered him his own room. Norris also advised the King of his arrival, and later brought a summons from Henry, requiring the Cardinal to attend him in his presence chamber with Campeggio.

Wolsey approached the packed room with trepidation, fearing 207 public humiliation, and seeing Norfolk, Suffolk, Rochford and their supporters waiting like birds of prey for the kill. But when the King entered, he greeted Wolsey warmly and helped him up from his knees, gripping him on both arms. Then he led him to a window embrasure where he chatted affectionately to him until dinner was announced. Meanwhile, Norfolk and Rochford had gone straight to Anne Boleyn and warned her what was going on. Consequently, when Henry dined with her that evening, she was in a dangerous mood, showing herself- according to George Cavendish - 'much offended' with him, and reminding him that 'there is never a n.o.bleman within this realm that if he had done but half so much as the Cardinal had done, he were well worthy to lose his head.' 'Why then, I perceive that you are not the Cardinal's friend,' said Henry, with devastating naivety. 'Forsooth, Sir,' cried Anne, 'I have no cause, nor any other that loves your Grace, if ye consider well his doings.'

She was still sulking when, later in the evening, Henry resumed his talk with Wolsey, but the next morning, knowing that the King had planned to sit in council with the Cardinal, she seized her opportunity and persuaded Henry to go hunting with her instead. Thus, when the Cardinal appeared, he found the King, dressed for riding, already mounted in the courtyard. Henry ordered him to return south with Campeggio, and bade him a fond farewell with the whole court looking on. They would never meet again.

Campeggio left England on 5 October. He took with him Henry's love letters to Anne Boleyn, which had been stolen from Anne's London house by one of his agents. Nor were they ever returned, for they are still in Rome today in the Vatican archives. The King's officials searched Campeggio's luggage at Dover, in the hope of securing the decretal bull. They never found it, or the letters.

Anne and her faction did their work thoroughly. In October 1529, the King stripped Wolsey of his office of Lord Chancellor of England and demanded that he surrender the Great Seal. He also commanded his attorney general to prepare a bill of indictment against the Cardinal. In a desperate attempt to placate the King, Wolsey surrendered to him York Place and most of his other property, before retiring to his more modest house at Esher in Surrey. The 208 King was elated at the acquisition of York Place, and in October 1529 he announced it was to be renamed Whitehall and renovated as a palace for Anne Boleyn. That same month, he took Anne and her mother to inspect it, and notwithstanding the presence of a great army of workmen, all engaged upon refurbishment, Anne moved in at once. Whitehall boasted no lodging suitable for Queen Katherine, and Anne was tired of giving precedence to her rival. Now she had her own court and was queen in all but name.

In November, Wolsey, in an agony of anxiety over his future, sent the King a message begging for mercy, and Henry, whose anger had to a great extent been dispelled by the acquisition of his property, placed the Cardinal under his own protection, graciously permitting him to retain the archbishopric of York. And when, thanks to Anne's adherents, Parliament presented the King on 1 December with a list of forty-four articles or charges against Wolsey, Henry declined to punish him further. Anne must perforce wait.

Henry VIII met the man who would present him with a solution to his marital problems in the autumn of 1529. When Stephen Gardiner and Edward Fox were returning from Rome in September, they lodged in a house belonging to Waltham Abbey in Ess.e.x. There they met a cleric called Thomas Cranmer, who had sought hospitality in the same house because there was plague in Cambridge, where he was resident in the university.

Cranmer was then forty. Cambridge educated, he had gained a degree in divinity, but soon ruined his career by marrying a barmaid called Black Joan. Marriage was then an impediment to any career in the Church; however, when Joan died in childbirth, the university readmitted Cranmer, who shortly afterwards took holy orders and devoted himself to a lifetime of study. Fox and Gardiner had been fellow students of Cranmer's in their youth, so their meeting turned out to be a friendly reunion, the envoys treating Cranmer to a good dinner. Over the meal, they asked him his opinion on the King's nullity suit. He had not really studied the matter, he said, but he ventured the opinion that the King's case should be judged by doctors of divinity within the universities, and not by the papal courts. 'There is one truth in it,' said Cranmer, and the Scriptures would soon declare it if they were correctly interpreted by learned 209 men trained for such a task; 'and that may be as well done in the universities here as at Rome. You might this way have made an end of the matter long since.' The case, so his argument ran, should be decided according to divine law, not canon law, therefore the Pope's intervention was unnecessary. If the divines in the universities gave it as their opinion that the King's marriage was invalid, then invalid it must be, and all that was required was an official p.r.o.nouncement by the Archbishop of Canterbury to that effect, leaving the King free to remarry.

This was a radical solution, but to Gardiner and Fox it made sense, and when the King returned to Greenwich in October after his progress they told him about Dr Cranmer's suggestion. 'Marry!' exclaimed Henry, 'This man hath the sow by the right ear!' Cranmer was duly sent for, and came to Greenwich, where Henry was impressed with the sober, quietly spoken, rather timid cleric. He ordered Cranmer to set all other business aside, and 'take pains to see my cause furthered according to your device'. He could begin by writing a treatise expounding his views.

Lord Rochford, Anne's father, was asked to prepare accommodation for Dr Cranmer at his London house, so that he could write in comfort. Rochford gladly complied, and seeing the admiration Dr Cranmer conceived from the first for Anne, he made much of his guest. Not only was Cranmer learned and rea.s.suring, but he was also interested in the new learning and in the arguments for Church reform that were so often aired in the Boleyn household. In no time at all Rochford made Cranmer his family chaplain, and he stayed in that capacity for some time, being allowed frequent access to the King.

Henry VIII's acceptance of Cranmer's suggestion to sound out the universities marks the beginning of a new phase in the 'great matter'. Hitherto, the King's main concern had been to have his marriage declared invalid by the Pope, but now he began to take cognizance of the wider issues involved. He was politically isolated in Europe, and, disillusioned with the Holy See, he perceived himself also as an outcast from a corrupt Church of Rome. Even before the advent of Cranmer, Henry had contemplated severing the Church of England from that of Rome. Now, this seemed a very real possibility for the future if the King wanted his marriage dissolved, for it was almost 210 certain that the Pope would not help him. In this way what began as a matrimonial suit became transformed, very gradually, into a political, theological and ultimately a social revolution. The period of Wolsey's tutelage was over; the lion was at last discovering the full extent of his strength and power. The King was now intent on becoming absolute ruler in his own realm, and More's prophecy, made eight years earlier, would soon be fulfilled.

210.

211It is my affair!

In November 1529, Henry VIII was as much in love with Anne Boleyn as ever, and still showering her with gifts; although these were now more in the way of peace offerings, for the relationship between them was by then often a stormy one. Anne felt that time was pa.s.sing her by. She accused the King of having kept her waiting; she might, in the meantime, have contracted some advantageous marriage, she said, and had children- a pointed barb, this. Peace was bought with a length of purple velvet for a gown, linen cloth for underclothes, a French saddle of black velvet fringed with silk and gold with a matching footstool, and a black velvet pillion saddle and harness so that Anne could ride in intimate proximity to her royal lover.

Often, she would threaten to leave Henry, as in January 1531, when they quarrelled violently. At the prospect of losing her, Henry went hotfoot to Norfolk and Anne's father, and begged them with tears in his eyes to act as mediators. When the quarrel was made up, he placated Anne with yet more gifts: furs and rich embroideries. This charade was repeated on several occasions, with Anne lamenting her lost time and honour, and Henry weeping, begging her to desist and speak no more of leaving him. And, always, there were the peace offerings.

As the months, and then the years, went by, Anne became increasingly difficult to deal with. The Long delays and the resultant stress, coupled with the constant strain of holding Henry at arm's length, tested her endurance to the limit. Her position was insecure, 212and she knew it. Yet she seemed unable to avoid friction with her royal lover. She was furious to discover that the Queen was still mending Henry's shirts. She herself was an expert needlewoman, and the King's admission that the shirts had been sent to Katherine on his orders did little to sweeten her temper. After such quarrels, however, Anne would soon be fervently a.s.suring Henry how much she loved him. 'Even if I were to suffer a thousand deaths,' she told him - referring to an old prophecy that a queen would be burned at this time - 'my love for you will not abate one jot!' Chapuys drily observed that, 'As usual in these cases, their mutual love will be greater than before.'

Once installed at Whitehall Palace, Anne was attended like a queen and courted like one. In December 1529, her father was formally created Earl of Wiltshire which meant that she herself would from henceforth be styled the Lady Anne Boleyn, and her brother be known as Viscount Rochford. To celebrate Wiltshire's elevation, the King gave a banquet at Whitehall, at which Anne took precedence over all the ladies of the court and sat by the King's side on the Queen's throne. Chapuys was present and, after seeing the lavish feast, the dancing and the 'carousing', came away with the impression he had just witnessed a marriage feast: 'It seemed as if nothing were wanting but the priest to give away the nuptial ring and p.r.o.nounce the blessing.' Anne also presided over a magnificent ball hosted by the King on 12 January in honour of the departing French amba.s.sador, who was sympathetic to her cause.

For all Anne's prominence in the life of the court, the King was at pains to convince everyone that he and the Queen were still on good terms, and kept Katherine constantly with him. She even followed the hunt each day. The Venetian amba.s.sador observed that 'so much reciprocal courtesy is being displayed in public that any one acquainted with the controversy cannot but consider their conduct more than human'. Both were good at concealing the tensions that lay below the surface.

In private, however, it was a different story. On 30 November 1529, when Henry paid a rare visit to her after dinner, Katherine blurted out that she had been suffering the pangs of purgatory on earth, and that she was very badly treated by his refusing to dine with her and visit her in her apartments. He told her she had no cause to 213 complain, for she was mistress in her own household, where she could do as she pleased. He had not dined with her as he was so much engaged with business of all kinds, the Cardinal having left the affairs of government in great confusion. As to his visiting her in her apartments, and sharing her bed, she ought to know that he was not her legitimate husband. He had been a.s.sured of this by many learned doctors.

'Doctors!' retorted Katherine, in a pa.s.sion. 'You know yourself, without the help of any doctors, that you are my husband and that your case has no foundation! I care not a straw for your doctors!' For every doctor or lawyer who upheld Henry's case, she went on, she could find a thousand to hold their marriage good and valid.

But she was getting nowhere. Henry was immovable on that issue, and the quarrel ended with him leaving to seek comfort from Anne Boleyn. Yet she, knowing he had been with Katherine, was decidedly unsympathetic. 'Did I not tell you that whenever you argue with the Queen she is sure to have the upper hand?' she scolded. 'I see that some fine morning you will succ.u.mb to her reasoning, and cast me off!' With this, Henry had had enough, and fled back to his own apartments in search of peace.

Gradually the concept of radical change had become firmly rooted in Henry Tudor's mind, and on Christmas Eve he told the Queen that if the Pope p.r.o.nounced sentence against him, he would not heed it, adding that 'he prized and valued the Church of Canterbury as much as the people across the sea did the Roman'. Severing the Church of England from the main body of Christendom was an idea entirely repugnant to Katherine, and she had difficulty in believing that this was what the King really intended. But, as far as his own case was concerned, Henry was being realistic. The long silence from the Vatican was proof that his suit was being deliberately shelved, and it seemed inevitable that he would soon have to take matters into his own hands.

In February 1530, Charles V went to Bologna to be crowned by the Pope, and Henry, resolving to turn the situation to his own advantage, sent an emba.s.sy headed by Cranmer and Wiltshire newly appointed Lord Privy Seal - to stress to the Emperor that the King had pressed for an annulment only 'for the discharge of his conscience and for the quietness of his realm'. The emba.s.sy was not a 214 success, due partly to the aggressive and provocative att.i.tude of Wiltshire, an ardent reformist, and although Charles told the amba.s.sadors that he would abide by whatever decision the Pope reached, he added that he thought Julius II's dispensation was 'as strong as G.o.d's law'. It was painfully obvious that Clement would not dare gainsay him, and in April Henry told the French amba.s.sador that he intended to settle the matter within his own kingdom by the advice of his Council and Parliament, so as not to have recourse to the Pope, 'whom he regards as ignorant and no good father'. Katherine, conversely, was relying entirely on the Pope. In April, she wrote to Dr Pedro Ortiz, whom the Emperor had sent to represent her interests in Rome, and begged him to put pressure on Clement to give a ruling in her case. 'I fear that G.o.d's vicar on earth does not wish to remedy these evils,' she wrote. 'I do not know what to think of his Holiness.' Throughout the summer months, she sent letter after letter to Clement, beseeching him to take pity on her and pa.s.s sentence, but he ignored them, fearing that a decision in the Queen's favour might provoke Henry into creating a schism within the Church.

Henry's subjects were as supportive as ever of Katherine, and in the spring of 1530 a rumour was circulating widely that the King had separated the Queen from her daughter out of spite. This was not true, and to prove it Henry summoned the Princess to Windsor to be with her mother, and left them there together when the court moved on elsewhere. Mary was now fourteen, old enough to realise what the presence of Anne Boleyn at court betokened. Hitherto, she had been studiously sheltered from her parents' troubles, thanks to the diligence of her mother and her governess, Lady Salisbury. When Katherine left Windsor to rejoin the court, Mary went back to Hunsdon, where her father visited her on 7 July. He had seen very little of her in recent years, and one purpose of his visit was to rea.s.sure himself that she had not been infected by what he was pleased to call Katherine's obstinacy. Yet when he left Hunsdon, he almost certainly carried with him the realisation that both Mary and her governess were already staunch supporters of the Queen.

In July 1530, a pet.i.tion was sent to the Pope from all the lords spiritual and temporal of England - including Wolsey - beseeching 215His Holiness to decide the case in Henry's favour. Clement peevishly accused them of having troubled him for little cause, and warned them that he had to consider all the interested parties. Nor could he deny the Queen's right of appeal to Rome.

Meanwhile, Henry's agents had canva.s.sed most of the European universities on the issue of the validity of the King's marriage, and where it was felt necessary, bribes were issued to the learned divines in order to obtain the opinions the King hoped to hear. In July 1530, Henry tested his Council's reaction to the prospect of him declaring himself a free man and marrying Anne Boleyn without the Pope's sanction. One councillor threw himself on his knees, and begged his master to wait at least until winter to see what transpired, and Henry, seeing the others to be of like mind, reluctantly agreed. Even the Emperor, however, was certain that the King would marry Anne with or without the Pope's permission. After three years of tortuous negotiations to end his marriage, Henry was still obsessed with her, and more than ever convinced that G.o.d was guiding his actions. He described his flexible conscience as 'the highest and most supreme court for judgement and justice', and - according to Chapuys - told the Queen he 'kept her [Anne] in his company only to learn her character, as he had made up his mind to marry her. And marry her he would, whatever the Pope might say.' He was, in truth, no longer the same man who had lodged a plea in Archbishop Warham's ecclesiastical court in 1527. The despot was emerging, determined to have his own way, and even if necessary to alter the process of law to get it.

Throughout 1530, the Emperor pressed Clement VII to p.r.o.nounce in 'the sainted Queen's' favour, and he urged him to order Henry to separate from Anne Boleyn until judgement was given. In August, Charles granted Chapuys special powers to act on the Queen's behalf, and this gave the tireless amba.s.sador the freedom he desired and needed; from that time on, he would be more zealous than ever in the Queen's cause. Katherine herself liked and trusted him implicitly, and her warm feelings were reciprocated. Years later, after his retirement in 1545, Chapuys would remember her as 'the most virtuous woman I have ever known, and the highest hearted, but too quick to trust that others were like herself, and too slow to do a little ill that much good might come of it'. Here, Chapuys was 216 referring to Katherine's continual refusal during the 1530s to agree to an imperial invasion of England on her behalf. Chapuys would try again and again to convince her that this alone would put an end to her troubles, but such was her loyalty to the man she considered to be her husband that she consistently refused to have anything to do with the plan. Her att.i.tude exasperated Chapuys, but it also increased his admiration for her.

In spite of the pressure from Charles V, Dr Ortiz and Chapuys, the Pope avoided giving a definitive sentence on the King's case. In March 1530, he issued a brief forbidding Henry to contract a new marriage before sentence was given; in May, another brief was issued forbidding anyone to express an opinion on the case if prompted by bribes or unworthy motives - even Clement had heard how Henry had bought off some of the universities. Then, in August, a papal encyclical forbade all persons to write anything against their consciences concerning the 'great matter'; this was a threat to the unity of the English government itself, as the new Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, was known to be against annulment on moral grounds. Then, to add insult to injury, in September the Pope suggested that Henry 'might be allowed two wives', as he could permit this with less scandal than granting an annulment. The King's anger was further fuelled in December, when he was cited to appear in Rome to defend his case. He ignored this, and also a brief issued by Clement in January 1531, ordering him to 'put away one Anne whom he kept about him', and forbidding his subjects to meddle with his case.

Thanks to Clement's conduct, Henry was losing all respect for the Holy See, and paying greater heed to the clamour of Anne Boleyn's faction for reform of the Church in England. This prompted him to consider that the English Church might be better off with himself as its head than owing allegiance to a weak and vacillating Pope. It was a notion that appealed vastly to the King, and once it had taken root in his mind, a break with Rome was inevitable. Both he and Anne were antic.i.p.ating that much would be accomplished in the new session of Parliament that was due to commence in January 1531, and that their marriage could not be far off. 'The Lady feels a.s.sured on it,' commented Chapuys.

By late 1530, Henry was beginning to feel a certain amount of 217 resentment towards Anne Boleyn, and was not above reminding her on one occasion how much she owed to him and how many enemies he had made for her sake. She remained unimpressed. 'It matters not,' she shrugged, refusing to be baited. Nevertheless, according to the Venetian amba.s.sador, her will was still law to him. This had been demonstrated clearly in what had happened to Wolsey.

Just after Christmas 1529, the Cardinal had fallen ill and was thought to be dying. The King sent Dr b.u.t.ts to him with a message saying he 'would not lose him for 20,000', and bade Anne 'send the Cardinal a token with comfortable words'. Anne knew when not to oppose the King, and meekly detached a gold tablet from her girdle, which she handed to the physician. As a result of these signs of goodwill, Wolsey's health improved daily, though the longed-for summons back to court never arrived.

But while Anne was sending comforting messages to the sick man, she was still plotting his downfall. In February, she remarked in Chapuys's hearing that it would cost her a good 20,000 crowns in bribes 'before I have done with him'. She also made Henry promise not to see Wolsey, for, as she told him, 'I know you could not help but pity him.' Chapuys was convinced that 'to reinstate him in the King's favour would not be difficult, were it not for the Lady'. Because Henry would not order Wolsey's arrest, Anne sulked for several weeks, and was enraged when, on 12 February 1530, the King formally pardoned the Cardinal and confirmed him in his See, which meant he ranked second only to the Archbishop of Canterbury within the Church hierarchy. After that, Anne was 'incessantly crying after the King' for Wolsey's blood. Wolsey himself realised that 'there was this continual serpentine enemy about the King, the night crow, that possessed the royal ear against him.' She was, he told Cavendish, the enemy that never slept, 'but studied and continually imagined his utter destruction'.

At heart, Wolsey was a conventional churchman, and had never supported an annulment of the royal marriage. During the summer of 1530, he began taking an interest in the progress of the Queen's case, and in a letter to Chapuys urged strong and immediate action as the key to its success. In July, he supported Charles V's call for Clement to order Henry's separation from Anne Boleyn, and in August, he wrote to the Pope to urge a speedy conclusion to the 218 King's case, and to ask why the Queen's cause was 'not more energetically pushed'. In Chapuys's opinion, Wolsey was hoping for a return to power once the 'great matter' was settled, but this would only be possible if it were settled in Katherine's favour. With Anne Boleyn out of the way, and a grateful Queen Katherine exerting her influence upon a contrite husband, the path would be clear for him. But Wolsey, like many other people, underestimated the strength of the King's feelings for Anne Boleyn, and this time the miscalculation would be fatal.

Rumours of Wolsey's activities provoked Anne to fresh efforts. Her uncle, Norfolk, was a willing ally, and was not above bribing the Cardinal's physician into falsely accusing his master of having urged the Pope to excommunicate Henry VIII and lay England under an interdict in the hope of provoking an uprising on the Queen's behalf, perhaps dethroning the King and seizing power for himself. When this information was laid before him, Henry, who had recently been informing his councillors that Wolsey 'was a better man than any of you', was shocked and suspicious. For a while, images of the two Wolseys warred in his mind: the mentor of his youth who had devoted his energies to running the kingdom, the kindly avuncular man whom he had chosen as G.o.dfather to the Princess Mary; and the arch-traitor of Anne Boleyn's imagination and the evidence put forward by her party.

Anne won. On 1 November, a warrant was drawn up for the Cardinal's arrest and - in a form of poetic justice - was sent to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, Anne's former suitor. Percy waited on Wolsey at his episcopal palace at Cawood in Yorkshire, and apprehended him on a charge of high treason. Then began the slow journey back to London, the Tower, and inevitable death. But Wolsey was a sick man, and on the way he succ.u.mbed to the ill health that had plagued him in recent months, dying at Leicester Abbey, where his escort had been obliged to find him shelter. 'If I had served G.o.d as diligently as I have done the King,' he said on his deathbed, 'he would not have given me over in my grey hairs.' He was buried next to Richard III in what Chapuys was pleased to call 'the tyrants' sepulchre'.

The King was saddened by news of his death: 'I wish he had lived,' he remarked. Anne Boleyn, however, was jubilant, and staged a 219masque for the edification of the court ent.i.tled 'The going to h.e.l.l of Cardinal Wolsey'. Though Henry found this distasteful, Anne's temper was such these days that he dared not cross her. Early in 1531, Chapuys reported: She is becoming more arrogant every day, using words in authority towards the King of which he has several times complained to the Duke of Norfolk, saying that she was not like the Queen who never in her life used ill words to him.

Henry did not have the courage to say these things to Anne's face, for he was afraid of losing her, although she had no such qualms. Her thwarted ambition and repressed s.e.xuality had turned her into a virago with a sharp tongue, with which she managed to alienate many of her former supporters. For all this, her power over the King remained, based as it was on s.e.xual blackmail and shared aims.

With Cranmer's plan now being put into effect, Anne was preparing for queenship. In December 1530, she commissioned the College of Arms to draw up a family pedigree that invented a descent from a Norman lord who had supposedly settled in England in the twelfth century. 'The King is displeased with it, but he has to be patient,' Chapuys wryly commented. On the same day she ordered new liveries for her servants embroidered with the device:Ainsi sera, groigne qui groigne(Thus it will be, grudge who grudge). When the court rocked with suppressed mirth, Anne was at a loss to know why, until the King bade her get rid of the device, explaining that the motto was meant to read:Groigne qui groigne, Vive Bourgogne!(Grudge who grudge, long live Burgundy!), a device used by the Emperor.

Anne's att.i.tude towards the Queen had by January 1531 deteriorated into outright hatred. Chapuys wrote: The Lady Anne is braver than a lion. . . . She said to one of the Queen's ladies that she wished all Spaniards were in the sea. The lady told her such language was disrespectful to her mistress. She said she cared nothing for the Queen, and would rather see her hang than acknowledge her as her mistress.

220 Because of Anne's att.i.tude, and the King's resentment of the Queen's stand, Katherine's supporters were finding that their lives were becoming increasingly uncomfortable. There were also signs that the King was no longer prepared to tolerate any defiance on his wife's behalf. Late in 1530, the d.u.c.h.ess of Norfolk was smuggling letters received from Italy to the Queen concealed in oranges. Katherine pa.s.sed them to Chapuys, who sent them on to the Emperor. The d.u.c.h.ess's actions were noticed, and she was warned not to help the Queen, Anne using 'high words' to her aunt in front of the courtiers. Katherine was of the opinion that the d.u.c.h.ess had sent the letters 'out of the love she bears her' and because she loathed Anne Boleyn, but Chapuys suspected that she might have sent them at the behest of the Duke, who perhaps hoped to implicate the Queen in a conspiracy. His fears were without foundation, for, in 1531, the d.u.c.h.ess again acted as go-between for the Queen and the Spanish amba.s.sador, and when the King found out, he banished her from court.

Then there was Thomas Abell, one of Katherine's chaplains. In 1530, he published a book in her defence, ent.i.tled Invicta Veritas, Invicta Veritas, which argued that 'by no manner of law may it be lawful for King Henry the Eight which argued that 'by no manner of law may it be lawful for King Henry the Eight [sic] [sic] to be divorced'. It was a very brave thing to do, for Abell incurred the King's severe displeasure, and the book went immediately on to the banned list, although not before some copies had been circulated. It would soon be apparent that one supported the Queen at one's peril. to be divorced'. It was a very brave thing to do, for Abell incurred the King's severe displeasure, and the book went immediately on to the banned list, although not before some copies had been circulated. It would soon be apparent that one supported the Queen at one's peril.

On 21 January 15 31, the Convocations of the clergy of Canterbury and York met at Westminster, and anyone with any grasp of English affairs would have reckoned this significant, for it was only with the a.s.sent of Convocation that important ecclesiastical reforms could be implemented. Something momentous was indeed at hand: the meeting marked the beginning of the English Reformation.

It was Thomas Cromwell who had finally convinced the King of the advantages of severing the Church of England from Rome. Cromwell's promotion to the King's service from Wolsey's had been arranged in 1521 by the Cardinal, when Cromwell was thirty-five. The son of a blacksmith, a thick-set bull of a man with black hair and small, porcine eyes, Cromwell had led a somewhat disreputable early life, and had soldiered as a mercenary in Italy, where he may 221 have learned to admire the Machiavellian ideal of political expediency. Upon his return to England in 1513 he had taken up law, and in this capacity had attracted the attention of the Cardinal, to whose service he had been recruited the following year. To great intelligence and ability Cromwell added a complete lack of scruple, although he always professed to be a devout Christian. It was this facet of his unattractive personality that would in time make him essential to the King. Unscrupulous and efficient, his spy network, inst.i.tuted after his rise to favour following the disgrace of Wolsey, was to become a model for future governments.

Henry was aware that England's relations with the papacy had often lacked harmony over the centuries: several medieval kings had come into conflict with the pontiffs, and the English had always resented paying the burdensome levy to Rome known as 'Peter's Pence'. In the late fourteenth century, John Wycliffe and his Lollards had spoken out against the wealth and corruption of churchmen, and now, in the more enlightened world of Renaissance Europe, there was even more cause for criticism. Henry was no heretic, but he was determined to govern his kingdom 'in concert with his lords and commons only', and even some supporters of the Queen were disillusioned with the Holy See, which had become an inst.i.tution increasingly at odds with the burgeoning nationalism of the English people. It was in this climate that the English Reformation was planned.

On 7 February 1531, the King stood in Parliament and demanded that the Church of England recognise and acknowledge him from now on to be its 'sole protector and supreme head'. Neither Parliament nor Convocation dared defy the King, and on 11 February, Archbishop Warham announced that the clergy were prepared to acknowledge the King as supreme head of the Church of England 'as far as the law of Christ allows' - a qualification conceded by Henry after some heated negotiations. From henceforth the English Church would not recognise the Pope, who would be referred to as the Bishop of Rome, and he would not receive allegiance from the English bishops or enjoy any canonical jurisdiction in England.

Henry VIII's Church of England remained Catholic in its precepts. The only immediate change was in its leadership, which since that day has remained vested in the sovereign. Parliament at once pa.s.sed 222an Act confirming the King's new t.i.tle, and the news was conveyed to the people of England by proclamation. They learned that Henry VIII was now effectively King and Pope in his own realm, with complete jurisdiction over his subjects' material and spiritual welfare. There was little resistance. Anne Boleyn was ecstatic, and Chapuys wrote: 'The woman of the King made such demonstrations of joy as if she had actually gained Paradise.' Her father, sharing her enthusiasm, offered to prove from scripture that 'when G.o.d left this world He left no successor or vicar.' Like Wiltshire, most of the n.o.bility supported the King, and the clergy had no choice. Even Chapuys conceded that the Pope's 'timidity and dissimulation' had been the cause of Henry's break with Rome, and had done much harm to the Catholic Church.

Yet one or two brave voices were raised against the King. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, made no secret of his opinion that it was against G.o.d's law for the King to be Head of the Church of England. Henry was becoming increasingly irritated by Fisher's resistance, and Anne Boleyn and her faction were so furious that they made plans to remove the Bishop from the scene. On 20 February 1531, Fisher's cook, Richard Rouse, added a white powder to the soup which was served to Fisher and his household. Several men died at table, others fell seriously ill, but Fisher himself ate only a little soup and, although he suffered terrible stomach pains, he escaped what was obviously an attempt on his life. Rouse was arrested, even though it was widely believed he had been acting on the instructions of Wiltshire who was said to have given him the poison, and that Anne herself was privy to the plot. However, the King refused to credit the rumours, and pressed Parliament into pa.s.sing a new law providing for harsh treatment of poisoners: in future, they would be publicly boiled to death, a punishment meted out to the unfortunate Richard Rouse. Chapuys thought the King had been wise to deal so severely in this case; 'nevertheless, he cannot wholly avoid some suspicion, at least against the Lady and her father.' Anne's involvement was confirmed in October 1531, when she sent a message to Fisher warning him not to attend the next session of Parliament in case he should suffer again the sickness he had almost died of in February. If she had not actively intrigued for Fisher's death, she had at the very least condoned the attempt to murder him.

223.

Thomas More was appalled by the break with Rome, the more so because, as Lord Chancellor, he could not do other than condone it. His reluctance to become involved in the 'great matter' was widely known, and he had made enemies because of it. His old friendship with the King had been strained to the limit, and Cromwell, recently appointed to the Privy Council, had taken his place as Henry's chief adviser. How long he could continue in his office was anybody's guess, but he feared it would not be long before he and the King came into open conflict, something he would have given much to avoid.

In July 1531, Chapuys was writing: 'The Lady allows only three or four months for the nuptials. She is preparing her royal state by degrees, and has just taken an almoner (Edward Fox) and other officers.' Visiting amba.s.sadors were warned to 'appease the most ill.u.s.trious and beloved Anne with presents'; she went about decked like a queen and dispensed favours as one. Save for the crown and the t.i.tle, her reign had in effect begun.

Although Anne was not, as Chapuys alleged, 'more Lutheran than Luther himself, she certainly supported the idea of radical reform in the Church, while at the same time observing all the conventions of traditional Catholicism. One of the staunchest advocates of the royal supremacy, she was now openly flaunting her controversial views, and was still reading forbidden literature with the King's knowledge. She also had in her possession more conventional works: a volume of the letters of St Paul, as well as a beautifully bound edition of Lord Morley's translation ofThe Epistles and Gospels for the LII Sundays in the Year,presented to her at Christmas 1532, and several devotional and other works in the French language, among them theEcclesiasteand a letter-writing treatise by Louis le Brun, the first book ever dedicated to her, as 'Madame Anne de Rochefort'.

One reason for Anne's strong anti-clericalism was because she felt there were too many priests supporting the Queen. When Henry put in a good word for an erring priest brought before his justices, Anne said loudly to her father that the King 'did wrong to speak for a priest, as there were too many of them already'. She had no love at all for the Church of Rome, and because she supported the newly established Church of England with such conviction it was widely 224.

believed that she would urge the King to do away with traditional forms of worship as well. At the end of 1532, Queen Katherine would warn the Emperor that, thanks to Anne Boleyn, Henry had already seized a great deal of Church property. Like Chapuys, Katherine believed Anne to be a heretic, and Anne's own behaviour tended to confirm this: in 1532, she obtained a reprieve from the stake for a noted Protestant, John Lambert, who had been examined and found guilty of heresy by Warham. Her patronage of such people suggested she was one of them, though in truth she was merely putting into effect her own views on religious enlightenment, which were revolutionary enough in her time.

Parliament had, as yet, done nothing about the King's nullity suit, but every day leave of absence was being granted to those Members who supported the Queen, which Chapuys thought ominous. From the p.r.o.nouncements made by the universities - all of which had now been received - it was easy to see which way the wind was blowing. So confident was Henry of receiving favourable opinions, and of the effect of his bribes, that there was no room in his mind for the possibility of the body of learned opinion being against him. Nor was it. Of the sixteen European universities canva.s.sed, only four supported the Queen. The majority of the finest and most learned minds in Europe - not all of them susceptible to bribes - p.r.o.nounced the King's marriage to be incestuous and against the law of G.o.d; it was therefore null and void, and the papacy had had no business in the first place to dispense with it.

The verdicts of the universities were read out in Parliament at the end of March, and were later published. Most of the King's subjects accepted them, but women, who were, according to Hall, 'more wilful than wise or learned', spoke out and accused the King of having corrupted the learned doctors. A similar reaction was met with by Henry's own treatise on the 'great matter', ent.i.tled A Gla.s.s of the Truth, A Gla.s.s of the Truth, which was published that year. which was published that year.

In the spring of 1531, Henry tried again to force Katherine to withdraw her appeal to Rome. Again, she refused, and wrote to the Emperor, begging him to press Clement to give a ruling before October, when Parliament was due to reconvene. In April, a papal nuncio arrived in England, and told the King his case could only be tried in Rome and nowhere else. Henry told him he would never 225consent to such a thing, even if the Pope were to excommunicate him. 'I care not a fig for his excommunications!' he stormed.

It was Archbishop Warham who now stood in Henry's way. Warham was old and ailing, a staunch religious conservative who had already gone against his principles to acknowledge the King's supremacy, but without him there could be no annulment. Henry, knowing Warham to be near death, did not press the point. He could afford to wait a little longer, and when Warham was dead, Cranmer, who had already shown Henry the way out of his dilemma, could take his place.

Henry was now seeing as little of Katherine as possible, and when they did meet he only pestered her to retire to a convent or withdraw her appeal to Rome. She had been ill in November 1530, and he left her to recover at Richmond while he went to London with Anne. 'He has never been so long without visiting her now,' wrote Chapuys a few weeks later. However, the Queen was well enough to travel to Greenwich for the Christmas season, sitting enthroned with the King in the great hall on Twelfth Night to watch a masque and some dancing. Henry made a point of dining with her every night, and showed her every respect.

After Christmas, Katherine confided to the Pope that her complaint was not against the King, my lord, but against the instigators and abettors of this suit. I trust so much in my lord the King's natural virtues and goodness that if I could only have him with me two months, as he used to be, I alone would be powerful enough to make him forget the past. They know this is true, so they try to prevent his being with me.

This was a viewpoint from which Katherine never wavered, whatever the King might do to prove she was wrong: she could never accept that Anne Boleyn's influence was more powerful than hers could be, given the chance.

In March 1531, Henry was still playing the part of a man who had been forced to set aside a beloved wife against his will, and was visiting the Queen regularly, even though it was a charade he had grown heartily sick of. 'The Queen is now firmer than ever,' wrote 226 Chapuys in April, 'and believes the King will not dare to make the other marriage.' In fact Henry was doing his best to provoke Katherine into giving him grounds for a divorce by deserting him. When the Princess Mary fell seriously ill with a digestive disorder in March, Katherine, learning that her daughter had not kept any food down for eight days, wanted to go to her. Henry, seeing his advantage, replied meaningfully that 'she might go and see the Princess if she wanted, and also stop there.' The implication was ominous, but Katherine guessed his purpose and refused to leave his side, even though she was desperate to see her child. Throughout the course of her marital problems, her chief aim had been to protect her daughter's interests. According to canon law, a child conceived of a marriage made in good faith could not be declared illegitimate if that marriage were found to be invalid. Mary therefore had a lawful right to a place in the succession, either as Henry's heiress or after any legitimate sons born to the King. Yet Katherine feared that any issue of a marriage between Henry and Anne would oust Mary from her place in the succession. For this reason, she was determined to preserve Mary's rights, with her own life-blood if need be.

Mary's illness marks the beginning of the bouts of ill health that were to ruin her const.i.tution and her life. At fifteen, she was fully aware of the rift between her parents and her ailments were almost certainly the products of anxiety. Her problems were further complicated by a difficult adolescence and the onset of painful and irregular periods and debilitating headaches. Mary loved her father, but, from the first, her sympathies had lain with her mother. She rarely saw either of them, and in her loneliness and grief she turned to her religion for solace: it would very soon become the dominant influence in her life.

Ten days after their confrontation, Henry and Katherine dined together in public. Chapuys was present, and heard the Queen, 'with supernatural courage', ask Henry once again to dismiss 'that shameless creature', Anne Boleyn. He angrily refused. Undeterred, Katherine again asked if she might visit the Princess Mary, who was still very poorly. 'Go if you wish and stop there!' he snapped, to which she replied quietly: 'I would not leave you for my daughter or for anyone else in the world.'

Henry now, belatedly, began to feel concerned about his child's 227health, and guilty for having deprived her of the comfort of her mother's presence. On 24 March, he arranged for Mary to be brought by litter to Richmond Palace, and for Katherine to join her there. By April, Mary was much better, well enough for Katherine to return to court and leave her in the care of Lady Salisbury. On 4 May, Katherine suggested that Mary visit the court, but Henry was in a cantankerous mood and refused, although a month later he arranged for the Princess to join her mother when the court moved to Windsor.

Henry was still trying to make Katherine withdraw her appeal to Rome. On 31 May 1531, he sent a deputation from the Privy Council to wait on her at Greenwich, its purpose being to ask her to 'be sensible'. She refused to do as the King asked. She denied his supremacy, declaring that the Pope was 'the only true sovereign and vicar of G.o.d who has power to judge in spiritual matters'. Then she said: I love and have loved my lord the King as much as any woman can love a man, but I would not have borne him company as his wife for one moment against the voice of my conscience. Iamhis true wife. Go to Rome and argue with others than a lone woman!

Then, when the bishops attempted to prolong the dispute, she cut them short, saying, 'G.o.d grant my husband a quiet conscience, but I mean to abide by no decision save that of Rome'. Afterwards, Chapuys told Charles V that the deputation had been 'confounded by a single woman', and the Duke of Suffolk told Henry VIII that Katherine was ready to obey him in everything save for the obedience she owed to two higher powers. 'Which two?' Henry fumed. 'The Pope and the Emperor?' 'No, Sire,' replied Suffolk, 'G.o.d and her conscience.'

This incident provoked Henry's decision to separate from Katherine for good. The court was then at Windsor, but was due to move to Woodstock on 14 July. On that day, Henry left Windsor Castle early, without informing the Queen of his departure, and she, left behind with only her daughter and her attendants for company in the deserted royal apartments, was not immediately aware of the momentous step he had taken, nor that she would never see him 228again. Then she was informed by a messenger that it was the King's pleasure that she vacate the castle within a month, and in that moment everything fell into place. He had gone, had left her, without saying goodbye. Even in her distress, she remained calm. 'Go where I may, I remain his wife, and for him I will pray,' she told the messenger, and bade him convey a message of farewell, saying how sad she was that Henry had not said goodbye to her, and enquiring after his health as a good wife should. The King, hearing her message, fell into a violent rage, crying, Tell the Queen I do not want any of her goodbyes, and have no wish to afford her consolation! I do not care whether she asks after my health or not. Let her stop it and mind her own business. I want no more of her messages!

Nor did his spite end there. He wrote to Katherine warning her it would be better for her if she spent her time in seeking witnesses to prove her 'pretended virginity' at the time of their marriage than in talking about her cause to whoever would listen to her; she must cease complaining to the world about her imagined wrongs. To be fair to Henry, it is likely that, had she agreed to the annulment of their marriage, he would have treated Katherine generously and remained on good terms with her - his later treatment of Anne of Cleves argues this. Yet time and again she had opposed him, seemingly blind to the very real dilemma he was in with regard to the succession, and when thwarted Henry could, and frequently did, become cruel.

Katherine remained at Windsor until early August 1531, when she received a message from the King commanding her to leave court. Having seen Mary off to Richmond, she moved with her household to Easthampstead, where, on 13 October, she was visited by another deputation of the Council, come to explain to her what the determinations of the universities meant and to inform her that Julius II's dispensation was 'clearly void and of none effect'. Katherine remained unmoved, declaring on her knees that she was the King's true wife; he had succ.u.mbed, she said, to There pa.s.sion'. And when the lords warned her of what the King might do to her if she persisted in her defiance, she answered, 'I will go even to the fire 229if the King commands me'. A few days later, Henry sent her to The More in Hertfordshire, a manor house formerly owned by Wolsey, very well appointed and set in excellent parklands. Here, for a time, Katherine kept great state, being attended by 250 maids of honour. At the end of October, thirty Venetians were her guests and were impressed by her vast household and the splendour of their surroundings. On that day, they noticed, thirty maids of honour stood round the Queen while she dined, and a further fifty waited at table. As for Katherine herself, they found her of short stature, 'inclined to corpulence, of modest countenance; a handsome woman of good repute. She is neither disheartened nor depressed,' but 'virtuous, just, replete with goodness and religion, constant, resolute, prudent, good, and always smiling.' But while foreigners were happy to visit The More, Henry's courtiers stayed away.

When winter came, Katherine's mask slipped, and in November, she told the Emperor that what I suffer is enough to kill ten men, much more a shattered woman who has done no harm. I am the King's lawful wife, and while I live I will say no other. At The More, separated from my husband without having offended him in any way, Katherine the unhappy Queen.

In another letter written that month, she begged Charles, 'for the love of G.o.d, procure a final sentence from His Holiness as soon as possible. May G.o.d forgive him for the many delays!' The Emperor, touched to the heart by her pleas, summoned the papal nuncio and told him he thought it 'a very strange and abominable thing, that the l.u.s.t of a foolish man and a foolish woman should hold up a law suit and inflict an outrageous burden upon such a good and blameless Queen'. Then he ordered the nuncio to press for Henry VIII's excommunication, in the hope that that would bring the King to his senses. The Pope, as usual, refused to do anything that might provoke Henry to further excesses against the Church: 'His conduct cuts me to the soul,' wrote Katherine of Clement.

On 10 November 1531, Henry and Katherine hosted two separate banquets for dignitaries of the City of London at Ely Place in Holborn, Henry in one hall and Katherine in another. They did not 230meet, and this was to be the last state occasion that Katherine would attend. On her way home to The More afterwards, crowds gathered to see her and to shout words of encouragement, which greatly displeased the King. He did not invite the Queen to court that Christmas, and the absence of mirth from the festivities at Greenwich was put down to her absence. Mary, too, was absent, being at Beaulieu in Ess.e.x. Nevertheless, Katherine sent Henry a gift of a gold cup, with a humble message, for they had always exchanged presents at Yuletide. Henry sent it back with a curt message commanding her not to send him such gifts in future, for he was not her husband, as she should know. 'He has not been so discourteous to the Lady,' observed Chapuys; Anne had given him 'darts of Biscayan fashion, richly ornamented', and in return he had given her a room hung with cloth of gold and silver and crimson satin heavily embroidered. And he even remembered Mary Boleyn, who received a shirt with a collar of black-work lace.

Anne was still as unpopular as ever. Her reputation throughout most of Christendom was dire, and she was openly called a wh.o.r.e, an adulteress, and sometimes even a heretic in the courts of Europe. At home public feeling made itself felt in an incident that occurred on 24 November 1531. On that day, Anne went with only a few attendants to dine with one of her friends at a house by the Thames. Word spread quickly through the City of London that she was there, and before very long a mob of seven or eight thousand women, or men dressed as women, were marching upon the house with intent to seize her, even lynch her. Fortunately for Anne, she received warning of their coming, and escaped by barge along the river. She was, however, badly shaken by this evidence of just how unpopular she was with her future subjects. Since Henry could not arrest every woman in London, he was powerless to do anything about it; all he could do was hush up the affair, so that word of it should not incite further incidents, though the Venetian amba.s.sador learned what had happened, and recorded it for posterity.

News that Anne Boleyn had usurped the Queen's place at court during the Christmas season provoked an outcry in London, and in March 1532, the Abbot of Whitby made history by being the first man brought to justice for calling her a 'common stewed wh.o.r.e'. The Nun of Kent had continued to prophesy against the King, 231accusing him of wishing to remarry for his 'voluptuous and carnal appet.i.te', and by the winter of 1531, the government had begun to view her as a threat to national security since she was inciting disaffection among the King's subjects, and was secretly believed by Cromwell to be in league with the Bishop of Rochester. From this time on, she would be watched by Cromwell's agents.

On Easter Sunday 1532, Friar William Peto preached before Henry and Anne at Greenwich, and warned the King that if he made 'an unlawful marriage' with the woman sitting next to him, he would be punished as G.o.d had punished Ahab, and the dogs would lick his blood. Henry, hearing this, went purple with rage and walked out, with Anne hard on his heels. A month later, one of his own priests, Dr Richard Curwen, delivered a sermon denouncing Peto as a 'dog, slanderer, base and beggarly rebel and [a] traitor. No subject should speak so audaciously to his prince!' Peto was then banished; he went to Antwerp, and later to Rome, where he was eventually made a Cardinal, dying in 1578.

Anne had not only made enemies of the people and Katherine's supporters, but she had also alienated some of her own supporters by her behaviour. By the summer of 1531, she was on increasingly bad terms with Norfolk, although he would for some time to come continue to promote her cause, seeing in her advancement future benefits for himself. Yet he could not approve of the way she treated the King. It was to Norfolk that Henry came running, often in tears, when Anne had been unkind to him, and the Duke's estranged wife told Chapuys that her husband had confided in her that Anne would be 'the ruin of all her family'. Anne had also managed to offend the Duke of Suffolk in the spring of 1530, and he had gone straight to Henry with lurid tales of her supposed affair with the poet Wyatt. Henry refused to listen, lost his temper, and temporarily banished Suffolk from court, but the rift upset him. Suffolk was a close friend and a staunch supporter, even in the face of opposition from his wife, Mary Tudor. Lastly, there was Sir Henry Guildford, the comptroller of the King's household, who in 1531 said complimentary things about Queen Katherine in Anne's hearing. Furious, she threatened him with the loss of his highly remunerative and prestigious office. 'You need not wait so long!' he retorted in anger, and immediately offered the King his resignation. Henry tried to talk him out of it, 232 saying he should take no notice of women's talk, but Sir Henry was adamant: he would go.

On New Year's Day 1532, Anne returned to court after visiting her family at Hever, and was lodged by the King in the Queen's old apartments with almost as many female attendants as Katherine had had. Two weeks later, the King reconvened Parliament 'princ.i.p.ally for the divorce [sic]'. In May, as a penalty for their past loyalty to the- Pope, he exacted a heavy fine from Convocation. This open defiance of the Holy See was not without repercussions, for the next day Sir Thomas More resigned from his office of Lord Chancellor and surrendered the Great Seal of England to the King. He could no longer reconcile his conscience to Henry's reforms, and he wanted nothing to do with the King's plans to marry Anne Boleyn. The King was upset, disappointed, and rather angry, but he let More go, and Sir Thomas was grateful to retire to his house at Chelsea, his family, and his books. Sir Thomas Audley, a staunch King's man, was shortly afterwards appointed Lord Chancellor in his place.

In May 1532, Henry was busy spending a small fortune on providing Anne Boleyn with a wardrobe fit for a queen. One gown was made entirely of gold-embroidered velvet, and cost over 74. Then there was the glamorous nightgown, supplied in June, made of black satin lined with black velvet, which was not to be worn in bed, but to keep warm and to receive guests out of it. That same month, Henry granted Anne the manor of Hanworth, which boasted a fine house in which she frequently stayed.

Meanwhile, in Rome, the King's case still dragged on. A hearing had been set for November 1531, but then it was adjourned again until January 1532, when 'that devil of a Pope' (as the French amba.s.sador described him to Chapuys) once more postponed it. It would not take place until after Christmas, even though Francis I had told Clement, at Henry's behest, that if he agreed to an annulment then Henry might forget all about his new-found supremacy and once more become a dutiful son of the Church. Clement was waiting for Henry to appear in Rome and answer for himself, which Henry dismissed as a foolish 'fantasy'. He would never go, he said. Then the Pope sent a solemn injunction to the King, ordering him to restore Queen Katherine to her rightful place at court and remove 'that diabolic woman' from his bed forthwith; whereupon Henry, 233who had waited so long and with such impatience to manoeuvre Anne into that bed, reacted with hot fury. 'It is my affair!' he cried. How dared the Pope interfere! But interfere Clement did, threatening excommunication, a threat that Henry ignored. And in May, he issued a brief ordering Henry to treat Katherine with more kindness. In July, in secret consistory, he decreed that if the King did not appear in Rome by 1 November, he would be declared contumacious, and the hearing would go ahead wit