The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn (12 page)

Anne, who performed her customary queenly function of distributing money to beggars and washing their feet on Maundy Thursday, April 13,
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must surely have heard the continuing rumors about her husband’s affair with Jane Seymour and possibly whispers of his intention of marrying her. She must have wondered, with mounting dread, if Henry did mean to set her aside, and if so, what would happen to her and Elizabeth. Her inner turmoil, and her fears, may easily be imagined.

On April 14, Parliament was dissolved. It has often been suggested that a plot against Anne was hatched before then, in the knowledge that, with Parliament no longer sitting, she would effectively be prevented from appealing to it as the supreme court in the land. However, this would only later be regarded as an advantageous circumstance, for—as Cromwell would confide to Chapuys in June
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—it was not until April 18 that he resolved that the Queen must be eliminated by a more effective and permanent means than the annulment of her marriage, which was, so the surviving evidence suggests, all that the King was at present contemplating.

In fact, the dissolution of the Reformation Parliament, which had sat for seven tumultuous years as the compliant instrument of the King’s will, can be viewed as virtually conclusive proof that Henry himself was not contemplating getting rid of Anne at this time, for her title and the rights of her issue were enshrined in the 1534 Act of Succession, and Henry would have needed Parliament to reverse that.
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On April 15, Chapuys received the Emperor’s instructions of March 28, in which a hopeful Charles V had urged him to press for four things: the reconciliation of England to Rome; the restoration of Lady Mary to the succession, with precedence before Princess Elizabeth; English aid in Charles’s war against the Turks; and a declaration of hostilities toward the French. Chapuys was also to seek out Anne Boleyn’s views, for matters would proceed far more smoothly with her consent. It is evident that he
had acquainted his master with Anne’s precarious situation, for Charles had written:

The English alliance was now so important to the Emperor that he was prepared to recognize the young Elizabeth’s claims too, although Mary’s must take precedence. And now that his aunt was dead, he was ready to be even more conciliatory and pragmatic, to the extent of stating that he was, in the last resort, willing to accept “the continuation of this last matrimony or otherwise;” for with Henry safely married to Anne, he could not seek a marriage alliance with France. However, Charles’s recognition of Anne was conditional upon Lady Mary being declared legitimate and recognized as Henry’s true heir. To this end, the Emperor ordered Chapuys to make cautious overtures to the Boleyn faction, in the hope of bringing about a rapport between England and Rome and restoring Mary’s rights. Charles V’s demands in regard to Mary were communicated to Henry himself, in a letter sent on April 14 from Richard Pate, his ambassador at the Imperial court.
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Early on Easter Sunday, April 16, when Chapuys sought out Cromwell to request an audience with the King to discuss the proposed alliance, Cromwell showed himself delighted and eager, and hinted that his master would soon be ready to conclude an entente with the Emperor.

Henry VIII, in fact, was far less than enthusiastic. The Emperor’s demands were unacceptable on every count, and he was in no great hurry to meet with Chapuys to discuss them. Excusing himself on the grounds that it was Easter Sunday, he told Cromwell he would see the ambassador
two days hence, on Tuesday, April 18. Already, word of the Emperor’s friendly approaches had circulated at court, and the Boleyn faction were aware of his specific proposals; Anne herself was pressing for the alliance. She must have felt confident that the King would circumvent the Emperor’s demands.

Not so long ago, Henry, disappointed at not having a living son, had perhaps been contemplating the annulment of his union with Anne, but now he was determined to secure Charles V’s recognition of her as his lawful wife, which would effectively be an acknowledgment that he had been right all along to set aside Katherine and marry her. With the Emperor endorsing the marriage, the Pope would surely think twice about excommunicating him.

Chapuys was delighted to receive a communication from Cromwell on April 17 that he had shown the King the Emperor’s letters “and reported all our conversations, with which the King had been much pleased, and desired that I would come to court next day, Easter Tuesday, about six in the morning, and that I should have an answer which he doubted not should please me.”
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Chapuys was now expecting to hear Henry say that he had approved the terms of the proposed alliance, but Henry had no intention of doing that; his primary purpose in summoning the ambassador was to afford him every opportunity of publicly paying his respects to the Queen, whose hand he had until now refused to kiss. This became clear when, on April 18, Chapuys was greeted at the gates of Greenwich Palace very cordially by the lords of the council, and in particular by George Boleyn, Lord Rochford, Anne’s brother. Gritting his teeth, no doubt, Chapuys listened as Rochford declared his fervent desire for an alliance between England and the Emperor, and returned the pleasantries, taking care not to touch on the subject of Rochford’s regrettable heretical opinions during their conversation.

Cromwell wasn’t far behind, with a message from Henry VIII inviting Chapuys to visit Anne and kiss her hand—a great honor that was conferred only on those in high favor. Chapuys was assured that, although this “would be a great pleasure to the King,” Henry had left the decision up to him. With studied tact, the ambassador declined on the grounds that he ought to wait until after he had discussed the Emperor’s proposals with the King; until then, paying such a courtesy to Anne was “not advisable, and [he] begged Cromwell to excuse it, in order not to spoil matters.”
Cromwell concurred with this, and went away to confer with the King, then came back to say that his master “had taken it all in good part” and was satisfied with Chapuys’s answer, and that, after dinner, the ambassador would have an opportunity to speak with Henry at leisure.

Chapuys spoke again of his hopes for a happy resolution to the negotiations, and “just after this, the King came out and gave me a very kind reception, holding for some time his bonnet in his hand, and not allowing me to be uncovered longer than himself.” Henry inquired most courteously about the Emperor’s health, and spoke of Charles’s recent visit to Rome, but when Chapuys hinted at what he really wished to speak of, the King said, “Well, we shall have leisure to discuss all matters,” and departed to mass.
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Chapuys was conducted by Lord Rochford to the service in the Chapel Royal. He must have gone with some dread, because he knew he would no longer be able to avoid the woman whose marriage he had for so long refused to recognize; and “another thing made me unwilling, that I was told she was not in favor with the King,” and that it would profit him little to pay court to her.
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Had it been Cromwell, Anne’s enemy, who said this? Cromwell who had agreed that it was best for Chapuys to wait before going to kiss her hand? If the Emperor were to recognize Anne, she might end up in a stronger position, and Cromwell certainly did not want that.

When Henry and Anne entered the chapel, they seated themselves, as was customary, in the royal pew in the upstairs gallery that overlooked the nave where their households worshipped. Chapuys reported that “there was a great concourse of people, partly to see how the Concubine and I behaved to each other when they [the King and Queen] descended to the altar to make their offerings.” Anne, entering the body of the chapel from the staircase, espied Chapuys standing behind the lower door, and seeing her emerge before him, he could do no other than bow to her. “She was courteous enough, for she turned back to make me a reverence like that which I made to her,” he wrote afterward. He then went further and handed her two candles to use in the altar ceremonies, commenting afterward (on April 24) that politeness had required such a courtesy. “If I had seen any hope of the King’s answer, I would have offered not two but two hundred candles to the she-devil.”
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Anne was jubilant, for Chapuys had never paid her such courtesies before, and she emerged from the chapel triumphant. At last, after all
these years, Charles V’s representative had recognized her as queen. That day she could be heard loudly proclaiming that she had abandoned her friendship with King Francis and was sorry that France and Spain were at war, but that she was now on the side of the Emperor. “It seems that the King of France, tired of life on account of his illness [syphilis], wants to shorten his days by going to war,” she opined scornfully.
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Her brother’s warm reception of Chapuys earlier is evidence that the Boleyn faction were aware that their former hopes of a new entente with France or the Lutheran princes were better forsaken in favor of a rapprochement with the Emperor.

But Chapuys’s acknowledgment of Anne was a victory for the King as much as for the Queen. It was Henry who had maneuvered the ambassador into making that bow, because he wanted the Emperor to acknowledge that he had been right all along in putting away Katherine and marrying Anne. It was nothing less than a public endorsement of his marriage. And that would shortly be underlined by Henry when he at last got to speak to Chapuys.

After mass, as was his custom, the King went to dine in the Queen’s apartments with honored guests, and Anne was confidently anticipating that Chapuys would be there, so she could cement her new rapport with him. But, as Chapuys explained to the Emperor, “everybody accompanied [the King] there except myself,” and Anne was disconcerted to see that he was not among the group of foreign envoys waiting at her door to be received.

“Why does not Monsieur Chapuys enter, as do the other ambassadors?” she asked Henry, obviously perplexed.

“It is not without good reason,” Henry answered.
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He knew very well that Chapuys’s courtesy toward Anne had excited much comment at court, and was probably already aware that the Imperialists had reacted with anger and astonishment when they were told of the deference he had paid to the Queen. Lady Mary would send Chapuys a cold note conveying her disapproval, as he was to report on April 24: “The princess and other good persons have been somewhat jealous at the mutual reverences required by politeness, which were done at the church,” even though Chapuys had not kissed “that woman” or spoken to her.
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Ashamed to think that people might believe he had betrayed Mary and his allies, the ambassador had resolved never to speak to Anne again. Instead of attending
the dinner she was hosting, he supped with Lord Rochford and the chief nobles of the court in the King’s presence chamber.

Henry went there after dinner; it was time for his audience with Chapuys. His initial approach was as friendly as it had been that morning and taking the ambassador by the hand, he led him into his Privy Chamber, where only Cromwell, the Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas Audley—“Cromwell’s creature”
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—and, significantly, Sir Edward Seymour, were present, and the king sat down with him in a window embrasure, apparently ready to listen to the Emperor’s proposals. But the King’s mood quickly became irritable and cantankerous, and it became glaringly obvious that his enthusiasm for the alliance had either evaporated or been overstated in an attempt to induce Charles to be a suitor to him, rather than the other way around
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—or, worse still, had been largely a figment of Cromwell’s wishful thinking. It was not long before Chapuys realized that Henry’s affection for the Emperor “was not sincere,” while the King had similar suspicions of Chapuys: in a letter sent on April 25 to his envoys at the Imperial court, he confided his belief that the ambassador was merely “pretending a wish to renew the old treaties” and had other aims entirely.
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In fact, as Norfolk was to tell Chapuys the next day, “whatever overture the Emperor might make, things would not be other than they have been hitherto”
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—in other words, Henry would not agree to acknowledge Mary as his heir or concede to any of Charles’s other demands. Contrary to a popular misconception, these things, rather than Anne Boleyn, were the major stumbling blocks to any accord.

Seated in that window, the King bluntly rejected all idea of an alliance with the Emperor against France, and refused to make any concessions; nor had he any intention of returning to the Roman fold. “He was not a child,” he told Chapuys, “and they must not give him the stick and then caress him.” Launching a tirade, he ranted against the Emperor’s ingratitude for the friendship he had shown him, declared himself on the side of the French in their disputes with Charles, and insisted that the latter acknowledge himself to have been at fault throughout and recognize Anne as queen—all in writing. At the very least, Charles should insist on the yet-to-be-promulgated sentence of excommunication being entirely revoked. As for Mary, Henry declared he would not tolerate any interference: she was his daughter, he would treat her as she deserved, and “nobody had anything to do with that,” for “God, of His abundant goodness, had not
only made us a king by inheritance, but had also therewithal given us wisdom, policy, and other graces in most plentiful sort.”
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