Weir A. Henry VIII: The King and His Court

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her view was to be shared by many other people, notably Charles V. It was inconceivable to her that

Henry himself could have instigated these proceedings.

Henry and Wolsey soon realised that the Pope, who was the Emperor’s prisoner, would be unlikely to

offend Charles by annulling the marriage of his aunt. In July 1527, therefore, Wolsey went to France to

seek Francis I’s support for the restoration of Pope Clement and the annulment and discuss the

possibility of a French marriage for the King. As yet, the Cardinal had no idea that Anne Boleyn was

anything more to Henry than his previous mistresses had been. He did fear that his enemies would be

undermining his influence during his absence. In a letter to Sir William Fitzwilliam he inquired what

the King was doing and who was with him. Fitzwilliam replied that the King was on progress. “He

daily passeth the time in hunting. He suppeth in his privy chamber [and] there suppeth with him the

Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Marquess of Exeter and the Lord of Rochford.”

Wolsey cannot have

been reassured.

Katherine accompanied Henry on his progress, but he did not visit her in the evenings. They put on a

united front when they visited Mary at Hunsdon, and when it was time to move on to Beaulieu,

although Henry was “ready to depart by a good space, he tarried for the Queen, and so they rode forth

together.”

At Beaulieu, however, Henry was reunited with Anne Boleyn, who stayed a month, hunting

with him and taking supper in his privy chamber.

Anne was still playing hard to get. When the King became too passionate, she would tactically

withdraw home to Hever—presumably Katherine, who now knew what was going on, was only too

happy to let her—and then Henry would have to beg her to come back. It is likely that Anne had

realised that, if she played her cards right, she could win not just her King but also the consort’s crown.

Although monarchs did not normally marry commoners, there was a precedent: in 1464, Edward IV

had married Elizabeth Wydeville, a knight’s widow, for love.

Others were wise to the game Anne was playing. In August 1527, Mendoza reported: “The King is so

swayed by his passions. It is generally believed that, if he can obtain a divorce, he will end by marrying

a daughter of Master Boleyn.”

Seventeen of Henry’s letters to Anne, dating from 1527–1529, survive in the Vatican archives; her

replies are unfortunately lost. The King’s letters betray his deep passion and longing to possess his

elusive lady, and convey a barely restrained eroticism: “Henceforth my heart shall be dedicate to you

alone, greatly desirous that so my body could be as well,” one read, and it ended, “Written by the hand

of the servant who in heart, body and will is, Your loyal and most ensured servant, H. autre ♥ ne

cherche R.” “Give yourself up, body and soul, to me,” he pleaded, adding that he wished himself “at

this time private with you.” “I wish you in my arms,” he declared in another letter, and then, very

daring, told her he was sending her “some flesh, representing my name, which is hart’s flesh for Henry,

prognosticating that hereafter you must enjoy some of mine, which I would were now. . . . I would we

were together an evening.” One letter was written with “the hand of him that longeth to be yours,”

while another ended with him “wishing myself, specially an evening, in my sweetheart’s arms, whose

pretty dukkys [breasts] I trust shortly to kiss.” Growing ever more ardent, he avowed in a later letter: “I

trust within a while after to enjoy that which I have so longed for, to both our comforts. . . . I would you

were in my arms, or I in yours, for I think it long since I kissed you.” In one letter he refers to his

having had rooms prepared for Anne at court, “which I trust ere long to cause you occupy; and then I

trust to occupy yours.” It must have required all Anne’s strength and presence of mind to resist such

passionate addresses.

Yet resist them she did. That the affair was not consummated is attested to by the fact that in 1530, the

Spanish ambassador reported that there was “no positive proof of adultery; . . . on the contrary, several

letters proving the opposite.”

In 1531, Henry himself swore to Katherine that he had not committed

adultery with Anne.

A rumour reached Rome in 1531 that Anne had miscarried of a child, but there is

no other evidence for this.

Late in 1526, Henry had realised that he was not Anne’s only suitor. The poet Thomas Wyatt was

enamoured of her and one day stole her locket. Despite her protests, he would not return it, but wore it

as a trophy. A day or so later, the King took one of her rings as a keepsake. Soon afterwards, Henry was

playing bowls with Suffolk, Bryan, and Wyatt when a dispute arose between Henry and Wyyatt as to

who had won. Pointing with the hand on which Anne’s ring was prominently displayed, Henry cried, “I

tell thee, it is mine.” Craftily, Wyatt asked permission to measure the distance and, taking off Anne’s

locket, used the chain to do so, saying, “I hope it will be mine.” The King was furious, and stalked off,

muttering, “It may be so, but then I am deceived.” When he questioned Anne on the subject, she denied

that Wyatt meant anything to her.

Anne Boleyn’s relationship with Thomas Wyatt has long been the subject of controversy. George Wyatt

claimed that the poet had expressed his feelings for Anne “somewhere in his verses,” and historians

have searched ever since for that allusion, drawing all kinds of conclusions. But in fact only four poems

could be said to be evidence for the affair, if affair it was, since all the interest seems to have been on

Wyatt’s side; Anne appears to have spurned his advances. The first is a riddle entitled

“Of His Love, Called Anna”:

What word is it that changeth not,

Tho’ it be turned and made in twain?

It is mine Anna, God it wot,

And eke the causer of my pain,

Who love rewarded with disdain.

The second poem is the famous “Noli me tangere” (Do not touch me), which is based on a work by

Petrarch:

Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt;

As well as I may spend his time in vain!

And graven with diamonds in letters plain

There is written her fair neck round about,

“Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,

And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.”

The third poem was written after Wyatt had found a new mistress, who may have Elizabeth Darrell,

with whom he was involved as late as 1537:

Then do I love again;

If thou ask whom, sure since I did refrain

Her, that did set our country in a roar.

After Anne Boleyn’s execution, when it was dangerous to refer to any previous entanglement with her,

Wyatt amended this last line to “Brunette, that set my wealth in such a roar.” The fourth poem was

written when Wyatt accompanied Henry and Anne on a state visit to Calais in 1532:

Sometime I fled the fire that me brent [burned]

By sea, by land, by water and by wind,

And now I follow the coals that be quenched

From Dover to Calais, against my mind.

Lo, how desire is both sprung and spent!

The tale of Henry’s altercation with Wyatt comes from the poet’s grandson, George Wyatt, and was

probably handed down in the family; there is no reason to disbelieve its substance, although the details

may have been embroidered. This and the above poems are sufficient testimony to Wyatt’s pursuit of

Anne.

Some have claimed that other evidence for it lies in the so-called Devonshire Manuscript, a book of

nearly two hundred poems composed by, and circulated within, the Boleyn circle at court.

In one

margin are written the words, “I am yours, An.” The handwriting is not, however, that of Anne herself,

and the manuscript must date from the 1530s since the original owner, whose initials are on the

binding, was probably Norfolk’s daughter, Lady Mary Howard, who was only seven in 1526. Other

contributors appear to have been Anne’s cousin Madge Shelton and the Lady Margaret Douglas, both

of whom came to court in the 1530s, but not Anne herself. One hundred twenty-five of the poems have

been attributed, some erroneously, to Wyatt, who was writing throughout that decade.

In May 1530, the imperial ambassador, Eustache Chapuys, informed the Emperor that the Duke of

Suffolk had been banished from court for warning an unreceptive King that Anne was unfit to be queen

because she had had “criminal” relations with an unnamed courtier, “whom she loves very much and

whom the King had formerly chased from court for jealousy.” When Anne heard what Suffolk had said,

she was fearful of the scandal being revived, and begged the King to send the unnamed gentleman

away from court once more. Henry complied, but immediately regretted this decision and persuaded

Anne to agree to the man’s return.

At that time, Suffolk, who was falling out of favour, had good reasons of his own for discrediting Anne,

and Chapuys himself was not above reporting mere rumours as fact, so perhaps this tale should not be

taken too seriously. Furthermore, the reports may not even refer to Wyatt, although other writers

believed they did.

Three later Catholic sources—the Spanish Chronicle (written before 1552),

Nicholas Harpsfield (c.

1557), and Nicholas Sander (1585)—all eager to defame Anne Boleyn’s memory, would repeat the tale

that Anne and Wyatt had been lovers. The author of the Spanish Chronicle gives lurid details of the

affair, which is said to have begun one night at Hever. According to this source, when later Wyatt

confessed all to the King, Henry refused to believe him. Harpsfield also says it was Wyatt who warned

Henry that Anne was “not meet to be coupled with Your Grace,” admitting that he knew this “as one

that have had my carnal pleasure.” According to this account, Henry praised him for his honesty and

told him not to repeat what he had said. Harpsfield claimed he had got his facts from a merchant,

Antonio Bonvisi, who had been close to Wolsey, More, and Thomas Cromwell, and had been

acquainted with Wyatt. Sander states that Wyatt told the Council about his affair with Anne before he

went to the King, and claims that Henry accused the poet of calumny. When Wyatt sent Suffolk to the

King with a message to say he could prove what he said, Henry declined to probe further, saying that

Wyatt was a bold villain who could not be trusted. It is of course possible that Anne had had an affair

with Wyatt before she became involved with the King, and that in 1526 he had tried to revive it despite

her indifference and her desire to dissociate herself from a questionable past.

It would appear that Wyatt’s position at court became untenable as the King’s passion for Anne

intensified. In January 1527, learning that Sir John Russell was about to depart on an embassy to Rome,

Wyatt sought him out. “If you please, I will ask leave, get money and go with you,” he said. Russell

agreed.

After their return in May 1527, Wyatt maintained a low profile and stayed away from Anne.

During Wolsey’s absence in France, Anne Boleyn’s influence was steadily increasing. The Cardinal did

not know it yet, but his monopoly on power was gradually being weakened. Once Anne’s affair with

the King became public knowledge, courtiers came to view her as an important alternative source of

patronage,

and she began immediately to use her new power to advance her family and friends. As her

confidence increased, she grew “very haughty and stout [proud], having all manner of jewels or rich

apparel that might be gotten with money.”

With the Queen, however, her behaviour was circumspect,

and her mistress treated her with distant courtesy. Yet Katherine was not able to resist the occasional

jibe. Once, when the King was playing cards with them both, and Anne turned up several kings in a

row, Katherine turned to her and said, “My lady Anne, you have good hap to stop at a king, but you are

not like others, you will have all or none!”

Wolsey was soon to discover with a nasty jolt how things stood. When he returned from France on 17

September, he rode at once to Richmond, bearing rich gifts for the King from Francis I. As was his

usual custom, he sent a message to Henry requesting a private audience to discuss his mission, asking

where his master would receive him. But Anne was with the King, and before Henry could answer, she

addressed the messenger in ringing tones, “Where else is the Cardinal to come? Tell him that he may

come here, where the King is.”

The gauntlet was thrown: from now on, there would be a bitter power

struggle between the King’s minister and his sweetheart.

After the treaty with France had been formally confirmed in September 1527, Henry VIII and Francis I

exchanged orders of chivalry. Henry sent Francis the Order of the Garter, and Francis bestowed on

Henry the French equivalent, the Order of St. Michael, which had been founded by Louis XI in 1469 in

imitation of the Burgundian Order of the Golden Fleece. Each sovereign sent the other a beautifully

illuminated copy of the statutes of each respective Order.

Henry accepted the Order of St. Michael

with pride, and formally promised to wear, on appropriate occasions, its collar of gold scallop shells

with a pendant of the Archangel Michael, its long, ermine-lined mantle of white cloth of silver edged

with gold scallop shells, and its cape and hood of crimson velvet embroidered in gold.

Henry’s ambassador to France, the “comely”

Sir Anthony Browne, half-brother to Sir William

Fitzwilliam and a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, had been present at the chapter of the Order of St.

Michael that was traditionally (but not regularly) held on the feast of Michaelmas, 29 September, but

he was disparaging about the ceremonies he had witnessed, and told Henry, “They would fain follow

the fashion of your Order, but they fail in everything. I think in all the world there is no such Order as

yours.”

On 10 November, the same day that Francis I had received the Garter from Arthur Plantagenet,

Viscount Lisle, Henry VIII was formally invested with the Order of St. Michael. Once again, the

banqueting house at Greenwich was decked out in rich tapestries, and the disguising house was adorned

with a white marble fountain and two trees fashioned from silk: a Tudor hawthorn and a Valois

mulberry. After the investiture, in which the King was robed in his insignia by Anne de Montmorency,

Great Master of France, there was a tournament (which ended early because the autumn light was

poor), a banquet, and a masque. So brilliant was the occasion that the next day it seemed to have been

“a fantastical dream.”

The winter of 1527–1528 was exceptionally bitter—even the sea froze in places. The King kept

Christmas at Greenwich, but Anne Boleyn remained at Hever. In January 1528, probably through her

influence, Sir Nicholas Carew, who was her cousin, was restored to his old place in the Privy Chamber,

much to Wolsey’s chagrin. But Carew was no longer the wild rake he had once been, and was now a

sober politician and supporter of the French alliance.

The weather was much improved when, in March, Anne and her mother stayed as the King’s guests at

Windsor. Henry was attended only by his riding household, and every afternoon he and Anne went

hunting or hawking in Windsor Forest, returning after dark, or walked together in the Great Park. In the

evenings, they amused themselves with cards, dice, and dancing, played music, and recited poetry. One

day the King ordered a picnic, which was held at Windsor Manor. Tables and stools were borrowed

from the townsfolk of Windsor, and food and kitchen equipment were brought down from the castle.

Henry and Anne and their friends feasted on plovers, partridges, larks, and rabbits, as well as

confections with lashings of cream, which was supplied by the parkkeeper’s wife.

On another

occasion, Anne asked Thomas Heneage, one of Wolsey’s servants who was about to be appointed a

Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, to ask the Cardinal if he would be so kind as to send her some carps

and shrimps for her table.

Anne loved hunting with Henry, because this was one of the few occasions when she could have him

almost to herself, with only a few trusted companions in attendance. He was delighted to be able to

share his favourite pastime with her, and bought her four French saddles of black velvet with silk and

gold fringing, complete with footstools, matching harnesses, and reins, as well as bows, arrows, and

gloves.

Sometimes she would ride behind him on his own mount, using a black velvet pillion saddle

—“a most unusual procedure,” commented a scandalised imperial ambassador.

Anne herself ordered

her palfreys specially from Ireland.

When they were apart, Henry would write to tell her of his

successes in the chase, and send her gifts of venison. Not all of their hunting expeditions were

felicitous: once, Anne’s greyhound savaged and killed a cow, and the King had to pay 10s (£150) in

compensation to its irate owner. Anne was also fond of archery, and once tried her hand at bowls,

although she was beaten by Richard Hill, the Sergeant of the Cellar who was one of the King’s

gambling partners. Henry paid him £12 (£3,600) on Anne’s behalf.

Anne was “well skilled at all games fashionable at court.”

She was an inveterate gambler, but often

rash, so the King gave her only £5 (£1,500) at a time, often in small change, from his Privy Purse, “for

playing money.”

Nevertheless, his accounts show that he often lost large sums to her. One of their

favourite games was “Pope July,” which appears to have been a satirical interpretation of Henry’s

nullity suit.

While she was at Windsor, Anne managed to offend Sir John Russell, an influential member of the

Privy Chamber who had become involved in a bitter dispute with her cousin and client, Sir Thomas

Cheney, another of the King’s Gentlemen, over the marriage of Russell’s two step-daughters, who were

Wolsey’s wards. Cheney and another courtier, Sir John Wallop, wanted to marry them, but Wolsey and

Russell had refused their permission. On an earlier occasion, Anne had successfully intervened when

Cheney had been in disgrace with Wolsey. However, this time Henry took Russell’s part, and forbade

Cheney to enter the Privy Chamber until he had made his peace with Russell. But the row continued,

and several months later, when Wolsey banished Cheney from court, Anne summoned him back, “in

spite of the Cardinal, not without using rude words to Wolsey.” At that point, Wolsey capitulated, and

Cheney married his heiress.

The affair highlighted Anne’s increasing ascendancy in the power struggle

between her and Wolsey, and turned Russell into the first of the many powerful enemies she would

make during the course of her career.

“A Thousand Cases of Sweat”

Until 1528, Henry VIII enjoyed good health, but from then on he was troubled by a series of minor

ailments. He began to suffer feverish headaches and “rheums,” which could have been due to catarrh,

migraine, rising blood pressure, or even the head injuries he had received. In 1528, he had a bladder

infection, and around the same time a sore appeared on his leg; this may have been a varicose ulcer, an

abscess or a septic condition of the bone, such as osteomyelitis, caused by injury. His surgeon, Thomas

Vicary, temporarily cured it, but it would later recur.

There is a persistent but erroneous belief that Henry suffered from syphilis, a disease thought to have

been introduced into Europe around 1493 from the newly discovered Americas; that his so-called ulcer

was its primary sore, which would have healed spontaneously; and that his feverish headaches were

symptomatic of the disease’s progress;

if this had been the case, the headaches would have appeared at

a later stage, not at the same time as the primary sore. It is true that, after Wolsey’s fall, his physician,

Dr. Augustine Agostini, who was almost certainly a creature of the Boleyns, stated that the Cardinal,

knowing that he had “the foul and contagious disease of the great pox,” yet “came daily” to the King,

breathing in his ear and blowing upon him “with perilous and infective breath.”

But there is no

evidence that Wolsey had syphilis, and even if he had he could not have transmitted it to Henry in this

way. It has also been claimed that a portrait of Henry VIII at Hever Castle shows him with the

collapsed bridge of the nose that is a symptom of the advancing disease. This portrait is in fact a poor

copy of a lost original by Holbein that was painted around 1543/4; better-quality copies of the same

portrait at Castle Howard and in the National Portrait Gallery, and other later representations of the

King, all show him with his familiar high-bridged nose.

No hostile foreign envoy ever claimed that Henry had syphilis. In all the detailed records of purchases

of medicaments by the King’s doctors and apothecaries, there is not a single mention of mercury, which

was the most effective treatment for syphilis, and which was administered over a period of six weeks

with such unpleasant side effects that no ambassador could have failed to understand what ailed the

King. Nor was Henry given the various remedies that were prescribed for Francis I, who did have what

was known as the French disease. Henry did devise for himself a plaster made from “lignum

guaiacum,” a hardwood imported from the New World that was ground into ash and dissolved in water

for the relief of syphilitics; however, that substance was, and still is, a proven remedy for gout, sore

throats, and pains in the leg.

Henry never suffered the disfiguring rash and skin eruptions of the second

stage of the illness, nor the blindness, paralysis, and dementia that are characteristic of its final stages:

he was lucid to the end. Neither did his children show any symptoms of having inherited the disease.

The King was undoubtedly something of a hypochondriac. He considered himself an expert on diseases

and ailments, and, as we have seen, was fond of devising cures for them. This concern was extended to

his courtiers. When, in 1528, Sir Bryan Tuke, who had succeeded Sir Henry Wyatt as Treasurer of the

Chamber, developed a painful kidney complaint, he confided in Wolsey, who in turn told the King. But

somewhere along the line the information became garbled, and when Tuke next sought an audience

with Henry to discuss secretarial business, the King “began to tell me of a medicine for a tumour in the

testicles. I immediately said His Highness was not well informed of my disease, which is not there but

in my kidneys.” Undeterred, “His Highness had me by and by, and gave me direct counsel, and showed

me the remedies, as any cunning physician in England could do.”

In an age without painkillers, Henry’s minor complaints alone could have accounted for his increasing

tetchiness, even without his frustration at the delay in obtaining a decision on his marriage. For the

Pope, anxious to play for time, had decided to send a legate to England to hear the King’s case, but the

man he had chosen, Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, suffered from gout and could travel only in slow

stages. Henry, who was now determined to marry Anne Boleyn, was desperate with impatience.

Now Fate, it seemed, might snatch from him what he most desired, for in May 1528 the dreaded

sweating sickness broke out again.

In great fear, the King dismissed most of his courtiers and servants

and left Greenwich for Waltham Abbey in Essex, taking the Queen and Anne Boleyn with him. When

news came that there was plague near Pontefract, where Richmond was staying, a worried Henry

ordered his son to move further north, and sent him remedies that he himself had concocted, in case he

fell ill. Fortunately, the regular bulletins on his health that reached the King were all reassuring.

This visitation of the sweat proved particularly virulent, with forty thousand cases in London alone,

although not all of them proved fatal. “The term of Parliament was adjourned, and the judges’ circuit

also.”

Eighteen members of Wolsey’s household died within the space of four hours, and two others

succumbed after the Cardinal had sought refuge at the More.

At Waltham, two Ushers, two Grooms of the Chamber, George Boleyn, and Sir William Fitzwilliam all

sickened but recovered. When one of Anne Boleyn’s maids fell ill in June, Henry sent his sweetheart

home to Hever, then fled in terror to Hunsdon, where he “strengthened” himself with medicines

made

up by his apothecary Cuthbert Blackden, and remained isolated in a tower with Dr. Chamber and his

other physicians.

To begin with, he was so “much troubled” by fear of the sweat that he ordered Sir

Francis Bryan to sleep in his bedchamber with him. However, as time went by and no one in the

household fell sick, the King grew “very merry” with relief.

He bombarded Wolsey with good advice, sent through Bryan Tuke: the Cardinal was to avoid any

places where there was a risk of infection, and if any of his household fell ill, he was to remove with

speed. “His Highness desireth Your Grace to keep out of the air, to have only a small and clean

company about him, to use small suppers and to drink little wine, and once in the week to use the pills

of Rhazis” (which were named after the Arab physician who had invented them). If Wolsey himself fell

ill, the King had devised a posset of herbs that would bring out the sweat most profusely. Otherwise,

the Cardinal was to look to his soul “and commit all to God.”

Wolsey responded with news that the

Dowager Duchess of Norfolk had had some success in curing a number of the sick: she made them fast

for sixteen hours and stay in bed for a whole day and night, then kept them in isolation for a week,

dosing them with treacle and herbs.

Soon afterwards, the King received the devastating news that Anne and her father had caught the

sweating sickness, and in a fever of anxiety he sent his second physician; the kindly and urbane Dr.

William Butts, who had formerly been in the household of the Princess Mary at Hunsdon, to attend

them, with a letter to Anne “praying God that He may soon restore your health.”

Butts was soon back

at court with the cheerful news that Anne and her father had recovered. Soon, a relieved Henry was

writing to tell her, “Since your last letters, mine own darling, Walter Welch, Master [John] Browne,

John Carey, Urian Brereton and John Cocke the apothecary be fallen of the sweat in this house and,

thanked be God, all recovered. As yet the plague is not fully ceased here, but I trust shortly it shall. By

the mercy of God, the rest of us yet be well, and I trust shall pass it.”

But the King’s hopes of the sweat abating were in vain, and “for a space, he removed almost every day,

till at the last he came to Tittenhanger,” one of Wolsey’s houses, “where he prepared to bide the time

that God would allow him.”

The house was “purged daily by fires and other preservatives,”

such as

vinegar, and the King had the window in the Cardinal’s closet enlarged, so as to admit more fresh air.

Fearing that the plague might be a sign of divine displeasure, and realising that he should prepare for

the worst, he kept the Queen with him and followed a strict devotional routine, attending mass and

taking communion more frequently than usual, and going to confession daily.

His mornings were

devoted to business, his afternoons to hunting.

Wolsey, meanwhile, had gone to Leeds Castle, where

he spent his time dealing with the rush of requests for the offices and property of those who had died.

Back in London, the Duke of Norfolk caught the sweat and survived, but it carried off three of the

King’s most favoured Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber: Sir William Compton, Sir Edward Poyntz, and

William Carey, the husband of Mary Boleyn. Compton, who had been “lost by negligence by letting

him sleep in the beginning of the sweat,”

left no heir; his servants stole his effects, and there was a

stampede for his vacated offices. Even young Richmond wrote to his father urging that some be given

to Sir Edward Seymour, “the Master of my Horse.”

Compton’s will bequeathed his wealth to Anne

Hastings, and to the King he left personal mementos, “a little chest of ivory with a gilt lock” filled with

jewels, a chessboard, and a backgammon set.

William Carey died suddenly on 22 June, aged only thirty-two. The King granted the wardship of his

son, Henry Carey, to the boy’s aunt, Anne Boleyn,

and warned her in a letter that her sister Mary was

in “extreme necessity”; in Henry’s opinion, it was her father’s responsibility to support her. At Anne’s

request, he ordered Rochford to take her under his roof and give her succour. Later that year, at Anne’s

further behest, Henry himself assigned Mary an annuity of £100 (£30,000) that had formerly been

enjoyed by William Carey.

Carey’s death left a vacancy in the Privy Chamber, which was filled three days later by Sir Francis

Bryan,

who was another of Anne’s cousins and had long desired to recover his former place. Anne’s

good offices may have brought this about; certainly Bryan was one of her earliest supporters. Yet for all

his brilliance, he—unlike Carew—had not been sobered by the advancing years; although he was now

an established cipherer, diplomat, and courtier, he still behaved like the profligate libertine he had

always been. He would now become highly influential, riding high in the King’s favour: he was

Henry’s constant companion in the privy chamber, and his favoured opponent in gambling, bowls, and

tennis.

Another Privy Chamber member who was well thought of by the King was the young page Francis

Weston, a gifted lute player and a superb athlete, whom Wyatt described as a “pleasant” individual.

Henry liked his company and often chose him to sleep in his bedchamber at night.

Anne also favoured

him; he and Bryan sometimes joined her and the King for cards.

From Tittenhanger, Henry moved north to the healthier air of Ampthill, where he began to complain of

pains in his head, causing a momentary panic. He was still feeling poorly when he moved to Grafton,

but there the pains disappeared. What began as a flight from the plague had now turned into a progress,

but the King was careful to visit various shrines and religious houses for the health of his soul.

In high summer, the sweat began to abate in England, although it was rapidly spreading across Europe

for the first time. Henry, on his way to Woodstock, was met by a messenger who warned him that one

of the servants of the Duke of Suffolk, who had gone ahead to prepare for his arrival, had died of the

sweat some days before. The King “could not a little marvel” that Suffolk had failed to warn him of

this earlier; now the giests had to be changed at a moment’s notice, much to the King’s irritation.

This

resulted in his moving north to Old Moor Hall at Sutton Coldfield, where he stayed as the guest of John

Vesey, Bishop of Exeter. While hunting in nearby Sutton Chase, Henry tracked down a rare boar, but it

turned viciously on him, and his life was saved only by the timely intervention of a local girl who,

being fortuitiously nearby with her bow and arrow, shot the beast dead.

In August, the King’s plans were altered again because there were still cases of plague nearer to

London. A sojourn at the More was abandoned, and the King lodged at Tittenhanger instead.

At every

stage of his journey, his officers were sent ahead to check that each house was free from infection.

Around this time, Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Bayonne, the first resident French ambassador to be sent to

England, came to present his credentials to the King. Soon after his arrival, du Bellay noted that “Mlle.

Boleyn has returned to court,” accompanied once more by her mother. It was not a long visit, but

sufficient to further inflame the King’s ardour after the long weeks of separation. Together they rode

out hunting daily, and du Bellay, whose master’s support both Henry and Anne were keen to secure,

was often asked to accompany them, a mark of signal favour. “Madame Anne” set herself to charm

him, bestowing on him generous gifts—a hunting outfit, hat, and horn, and a handsome greyhound—

and telling him that everything she did was “entirely by the commandment of the King,” while Henry

would often take him aside to discuss confidential affairs. The ambassador’s despatches reveal how

flattered he was by this attention, but he was careful to say that it was really a sign of the King of

England’s love for France.

The King of France, no fool, would get the message.

“Back to Your Wife!”

The Great Matter polarised opinion among the elite and led to a vicious struggle for power. By 1528,

three distinct factions were emerging at court, in the Privy Chamber and in the Privy Council: those

who were adherents of Wolsey and supported the King, notably Sir John Russell; the aristocratic

conservatives, among them Exeter, the Staffords, the Nevilles, the Poles, and the Duchess of Norfolk,

who discreetly supported the Queen, but also wanted Wolsey out of power; and the Boleyn faction,

which would soon be the most powerful and was led by Anne herself, Rochford, George Boleyn, and

Sir Francis Bryan. The members of this group, who included Sir Thomas Cheney and his friend John

Wallop, were determined to break Wolsey’s monopoly on power, and they seized every opportunity to

poison the King’s mind against him.

They were joined by the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, who, although they disliked Rochford and his

family, had long plotted the Cardinal’s downfall, and saw in Anne Boleyn a means of achieving it.

Norfolk was also motivated by self-interest, since Anne was his niece and her advancement could only

benefit the Howards. Anne was a willing tool: George Cavendish says she was agreeable to the requests

of her supporters because she had “an inward desire to be revenged upon the Cardinal” for the breaking

of her affair with Lord Henry Percy and her subsequent banishment in disgrace, but her enmity is more

likely to have been fuelled by her father’s removal from two very lucrative and prestigious offices.

Henry Norris, the Groom of the Stool and one of the King’s chief confidants, was a loyal supporter of

the Boleyns but not committed to bringing down the Cardinal. Discreet and levelheaded, he did his best

to strike a balance between opposing interests.

The Queen enjoyed the support of several churchmen, among them John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester,

the frail Richard Foxe, Bishop of Winchester, who made his views clear before his death that year, and

her brave chaplain Thomas Abell, who in 1530 wrote a treatise supporting her case, which Henry

banned. William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, was also of the opinion that the royal marriage

was valid, but compromised his principles by supporting the King.

Another person who deeply disappointed Katherine was her protégé, Juan Luis Vives, who also sided

with Henry, as did many humanists, Sir Thomas More and John Fisher being notable exceptions. When

Katherine asked Vives to defend her in the coming legatine hearing, he declined and left England for

Bruges.

The Queen stopped his pension.

There is no doubt that, thanks to the influence of Anne Boleyn, Wolsey’s power was declining. In

August 1528, Jean du Bellay told Francis I that Wolsey no longer enjoyed the King’s fullest

confidence, and that Henry was making decisions without his knowledge;

three months later, Mendoza

reported that the Cardinal was “no longer received at court as graciously as before.”

In the past, Wolsey’s power had been such that he could easily neutralise emerging factions, who had

never held much sway at court because of his overriding political dominance, but that was no longer

the case. Now he had to jostle for supremacy with everyone else. As his grasp weakened, the Boleyn

faction flourished, and his enemies prepared to destroy him. To counteract their influence with the

King, Wolsey secured the appointment of his own clients to the Privy Chamber, among them Thomas

Heneage, who was on good terms with Anne Boleyn, and the Cardinal’s former secretary, Sir Richard

Page, who would soon switch his loyalty to the Boleyns. Wolsey also did his best to sweeten Mistress

Anne with gifts and entertainments and by his strenuous efforts to obtain an annulment in the face of

the Pope’s stalling tactics. He knew that Anne’s elevation to the consort’s throne would mean his own

downfall, yet he had no choice but to do the King’s bidding. Relations between Anne and Wolsey were

always outwardly cordial, but that deceived no one.

The King, meanwhile, had been reading as many authorities on canon and civil law as he could lay

hands on, to perfect his case in readiness for the legate’s arrival. In one letter to Anne Boleyn, he

claimed he was spending up to four hours each day poring through vast theological tomes, and

suffering “some pain in my head” as a result.

This new passion for study led to the acquisition of more

and more volumes for the royal libraries, while some books were obligingly loaned to the King by the

abbots of various monasteries. Henry even sent the humanist scholar Richard Croke to Italy to acquire

or consult obscure works, giving him detailed instructions as to what to look for and transcribe.

He had

convinced himself that his case was sound, and he was prepared to go to astonishing lengths to prove it.

Cardinal Campeggio arrived in London in October 1528. The Pope had secretly instructed him to bring

about a reconciliation between the King and Queen, but if that was not possible he was to persuade

Katherine to enter a convent, thus freeing Henry to make another marriage. Campeggio soon saw that

there was no chance of the former, and the Queen made it very clear that she had no vocation for the

religious life: she insisted she was the King’s true wife, and nothing would make her say otherwise. As

for the Cardinal, who took the opposite viewpoint, Campeggio had no more success with him “than if I

had spoken to a rock.” Moreover, it soon became obvious to the legate what drove the King, and he

reported to Clement: “He sees nothing, he thinks of nothing but Anne; he cannot do without her for an

hour. He is constantly kissing her and treating her as if she were his wife.” However, he was quite

certain that they had “not proceeded to any ultimate conjunction.”

Campeggio soon made it clear that Clement was prepared to offer Henry anything except the

annulment he so desired, even a dispensation for a marriage between the Princess Mary and her half-

brother Henry Fitzroy. He insisted that Pope Julius’s dispensation was sound, but the King would not

accept this. Campeggio felt that, “if an angel were to descend from Heaven, he would not be able to

persuade him to the contrary.” Wolsey, who by virtue of his own legatine powers was to work with

Campeggio to reach a solution, was becoming increasingly desperate, as it became alarmingly clear

that the Italian Cardinal was not to be manipulated.

The King did not help matters by installing Anne Boleyn in the palatial surroundings of Durham House

on the Strand soon after the legate’s arrival. But Anne was not satisfied with her new abode, and

demanded something even grander. Henry arranged for her to lodge temporarily at Suffolk House in

Southwark, the London home of the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk, and himself paid for the

refurbishment of the rooms she would occupy, which were furnished with great splendour. Here, Anne

kept great state, attended by ladies-in-waiting, trainbearers, and chaplains. Courtiers hastened in droves

to pay their respects to her, while Katherine’s chamber, once the hub of courtly entertainments and

gatherings, was deserted.