Anne Boleyn Part Fifteen: Struggling With Other Problems

                                         Written By: Katelyn Abbott

                                          A picture of Queen Anne of England

Anne nearly caused an international incident at a banquet by bursting into laughter when she was talking to the French ambassador Admiral Chabot on December 1, 1533. He had been offended by this and came to ask her, “How, now Madam! Are you amusing yourself at my expense or what?’ Anne did her best to mollify the situation with him by explaining that King Henry VIII had gone to bring another guest for her to entertain and an important one at that, but on the way there he had met a lady and the errand that he went on ended up going completely out of his head.

Anne had been pregnant for the second time in 1534. King Henry VIII had been elated and in March 1534 King Henry VIII had paid Anne the supreme compliment of providing for her to be regent and ‘absolute governess of her children and kingdom’ in the event of his early death. He came to take Anne with him to the medieval palace at Eltham in April 1534. There they did sent for their daughter Princess Elizabeth to join them and King Henry VIII ended up often being seen carrying her in his arms and playing with her.  For while they were there Anne’s apartments at Eltham were converted into a nursery “against the coming of the prince” with an arraying chamber, a bedchamber in which was a cradle covered with a canopy of iron, and a great chamber. The roof timbers had gone on to all be painted yellow ochre and King Henry VIII had ordered his goldsmith, Cornelius Heyess, to make a silver cradle of estate, which may have been designed by Hans Holbein. It had pillars adorned with Tudor roses with precious stones set in a gold border around the rim and gold figures of Adam and Eve were crafted by Heyss and painted by Hans Holbein. The bedding had been embroidered with gold and cloth of gold had been purchased for a layette. From there the couple soon returned to Greenwich where every care was taken of the expectant mother for when her morning rest was disturbed by  the noise made by King Henry  VIII’s peacocks and pelican which had been a gift from the “ New Found Land” (America) and now had run of the gardens at Greenwich he had Sir Henry Norris remove them to his own nearby house and set out to pay for three timber coops to be built for them there so that Anne would be able to rest in the mornings in peace.

King Henry VIII had launched into plans for a meeting with King Francis I of France in June at Calasis in order to sign a treaty with him and Anne had been looking forward to a reunion with King Francis I and her old friend Marguerite de Angloume now Queen of Navarre, but King Henry VIII had postponed it since Anne was unable to accompany him to it due to her pregnancy. King Henry VIII left on a summer progress where he stayed at the More, Chenies, Woking, and Eltham where he visited his daughter Princess Elizabeth leaving Anne to stay at the palace probably out of concern for her health, but Anne had planned to join him at Guildford when he arrived her on July 28, 1534 though it is unknown if she actually did so. Anne either miscarried or gave birth to a stillborn baby or a child who died soon after its birth in late July or early August 1534. The baby was a boy who had been named Henry after his father King Henry VIII. King Henry VIII and Anne’s relationship was strained from this bitter disappointment to them and their relationship soured even worse when Anne angrily reproached him for having a mistress which King Henry VIII was said to have threatened her in return, but the couple soon made up with each other.

Anne was angry when Lord Dacre, who did not accept her for who she was, cared nothing for her, and despised her as he had long supported Katherine of Aragon and been one of Anne’s bitterest enemies, had been arrested and brought to trial for treason, but had not been  convicted for his crimes sometime in 1534. He had been unanimously acquitted of all charges against him by twelve judges and twenty-four peers after they had heard him speak for seven hours in his own defense. Anne came to be aware along with King Henry VIII that Lord Dacre’s acquittal was symbolic of the general mood.

Anne had to deal with the big scandal that her sister Mary Boleyn had made in the autumn of 1534. Mary had been secretly married beneath herself to the soldier William Stafford and came to the English Court pregnant with his unborn child. Mary could have come to accept William Stafford for who he was, care about him, and deeply fallen in love with him and decide to marry him for love, but a marriage for personal happiness was an unacceptable arrangement back in the 1500s. Mary had dishonored the entire whole Boleyn family and most of all her sister Anne who was the Queen of England by marrying beneath her own station without asking Anne for her permission to do. Anne ended up being furious over it and had gone on to banish both Mary and her husband William Stafford from the English Court. Inevitably poor Mary pleaded to Thomas Cromwell to intercede on her behalf to her sister Anne writing, “For well I might have had a greater man of birth, but I assure you I could never have had one that loved me so well. I had rather beg my bread with him than be the greatest queen christened.” Anne made a partial reconciliation with her sister Mary by working with Thomas Cromwell to acquire a residence for Mary and her new husband in the country in Essex and sent a magnificent golden cup and some money to her, but she still refused to receive Mary again at the English Court. The sisters were thought to never have seen each other again after Mary’s court exile from the English Court, but Mary ended up naming her daughter with William Stafford Anne when she was born in 1536 after the birth of her son Edward in 1534 most likely in honor of her sister Anne.

In late 1534 Anne, accompanied by the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk and other courtiers visited Richmond Palace where both the Lady Mary and Princess Elizabeth had resided. Anne came to enter her daughter’s rooms only to realize that the two dukes had left her. They did pay court to the Lady Mary and they ended up remaining with her until Anne had left.

Christmas in 1534 was not a happy one for Anne. Her favorite dog Purkoy, a gift from Lady Lisle, died from falling out of a window. Anne was a great dog lover and had loved him so much that no one had dared to tell her the sad news of the little dog’s fate. In the end King Henry VIII was the one who had to gently break the news to her of Purkoy’s death. King Henry VIII and Anne had kept “a great house” and inevitably King Henry VIII displayed “his most hearty manner,” but the tension between the royal couple at the English Court was palpable that Christmas of 1534.

 

Katherine of Aragon apparently continued to claim to be King Henry VIII’s lawful wife and the Queen of England while her daughter Lady Mary continued to claim that she was the Princess of England despite many attempts by King Henry VIII and his government officials to get them to take the oath which ended angering Anne. Anne had been frustrated that they continued to do so since it made her own position as King Henry VIII’s wife and the Queen of England as well as her daughter Princess Elizabeth’s position as the Princess of England unsecure. She came to sometimes urge King Henry VIII to arrest them, bring them to trial, convict them for the crime of high treason, deemed them to be sentenced to death, and execute them as the law required anyone who refused to sign the Oath be punished out of her paranoia at the insecurity of her daughter Princess Elizabeth's position and her own position as the Queen of England , but King Henry VIII did not do so for he was fearful that if he did Spain would invade England though he used the threat often against Katherine of Aragon and his daughter Lady Mary. Anne ended up coming to tell King Henry VIII early in 1535 that God had revealed to her in a dream that it would be impossible for her to conceive a son while Katherine of Aragon and his daughter Lady Mary lived after they passionately made love, but he dismissed Anne’s claims as ludicrous. It is important for one to remember that Anne was a religious woman and fear of the afterlife was a major force in Tudor Society. Anne was rash at times and she had a sharp tongue and a terrible temper, but Anne’s urging for the deaths of Katherine of Aragon and Lady Mary were more out of her paranoia from how insecure her position as being King Henry VIII’s wife and her being the Queen of England and her daughter Princess Elizabeth’s position as the Princess of England as long as the both of them continued to claim those titles for their own instead of a truly malicious desire to see them both dead. Anne most likely would have realized that it was politically dangerous for her if Katherine of Aragon and Lady Mary were put to death since King Henry VIII would never be able to put her aside as long as Katherine of Aragon lived and their deaths would have brought Spain to declare war on England which was something that England could hardly afford to happen when her head was more rational and she snapped back into her senses. She most likely never truly plotted to murder them herself though she may have thought about it when she ranted and raved in a rage as it is highly likely that her conscience and her strong Christian beliefs would never allow her to commit murder since it was a major sin where she would have been breaking one of the ten Commandments.

 

Anne frequently hid her depression under a façade of gaiety with her hosting banquets and constant other entertainments by reveling in good cheer for she knew how to appreciate life to the fullest unlike Katherine of Aragon. Margaret More, visiting her father Sir Thomas More, in prison, said to him that there had been nothing else at court but dancing and sporting and that the Queen “never did better.” Sir Thomas More told her of Queen Anne, “Alas, it pitieth me to remember into what misery, poor soul, she will shortly come. These dances of hers will prove such dances that she will spurn our heads off like footballs, but it will not be long ere her head will dance the like dance.” None knew better than he how easily King Henry VIII’s favor and good will could turn to wrath against a person close to him.

Anne’s determination to play the virtuous queen found further expression at Easter 1535 when Anne had distributed large purses of Maundy money than any other English queen had ever given out to the poor and she washed the feet of beggars.

In the spring of 1535 the shadow of treason, imagined or real, and King Henry VIII’s wrath with those who opposed his marriage to Anne and his policies hung over England as in April an Oxford midwife was jailed for calling the Queen a ‘goggle-eyed whore and a bawd’ and a priest Robert Feron was also imprisoned for saying that ‘the King’s wife in fornication, this matron Anne, be more stinking than a sow.” These had been the small fish. King Henry VIII came to snare more influential traitors when he unleashed a minor reign of terror as he demonstrated to his subjects just how terrible his justice and his vengeance could be. He ordered the executions of monk Richard Reynolds and Carthusian priors Augustine Webster, John Houghton, and Robert Lawrence on May 5, 1535 by hanging, drawing, and courting. Cardinal John Fisher was executed by beheading on June 22, 1535. Anne was said to have suffered pangs of conscience on the day of Cardinal John Fisher’s execution so she attended a mass for the repose of his soul though by the evening of the next day she had composed herself sufficiently enough to stage for King Henry VIII’s entertainment in a masque depicting divine approval of the recent events in England that so pleased him to see himself cutting off the heads of the clergy that he told Anne she must have the performance repeated on the Eve of St. Peter which was a day formerly dedicated to honoring the Pope. Sir Thomas More was executed by beheading on July 6, 1535. King Henry VIII sought to blame Anne for his decision in having Sir Thomas More executed and Anne took to trying to distract his mind from the matter by arranging feasts and revels to keep himself occupied though it is unknown whether or not she had encouraged him to execute both Cardinal John Fisher and Sir Thomas More.

In 1535 King Henry VIII ended up actually threatening to kill his fool Will Sommers with his own hands and banished him from court for a while after Sir Nicholas Carew dared him to call his wife Anne a “ribald” and their daughter Princess Elizabeth as a “bastard.”

July of 1535 had Anne quarreling with Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cromwell said to Imperial Ambassador Eustace Chapuys that Anne had told him that she had wanted his head off of his shoulders.

Attended by a vast train of baggage, courtiers, and servants, King Henry VIII and Anne on July 5, 1535 traveled west from Windsor to Reading, Ewelme, Abingdon, Woodstock, Langley, and Sudeley Castle where they stayed a week. By late July they had reached Tewkesbury and they came to ride south to Gloucester where they lodged at nearby Painswick Manor which afforded them excellent hunting. They did stay at Berkeley Castle from August 2 to August 8, 1535 and they ended on moving on to Thornbury. For at Thornbury King Henry VIII was presented with gifts of livestock to feed his itinerant household while Anne was gifted with a parcel-gilt cup and a cover filled with one hundred marks in cash to which Anne prettily replied that she desired “to demand or have none other gift” but only that she should be able to return to Bristol in the future. From there a delegation of leading citizens waited upon them at Thornbury and they had gone on to stay at Acton Court at Iron Acton where Sir Nicholas Ponytz had built a lavish new Renaissance-style eastern range especially for their visit. They had moved onto Little Sodbury and Bromham, where two fervent supporters of reform, Sir Edward Baynton, the Queen’s Vice Chamberlain and Sir John Walsh, were respectable hosts to their sovereigns. Inevitably they made their way for their much-celebrated visit to Wulfhall, the home of Sir John Seymour, where they stayed there for three nights. In October 1535 there were reports that all of the nobles and the King and Queen were in good health and happy and hawking daily. Anne lately had cause for concern since Thomas Cromwell had brought King Henry VIII devastating news: Tunis had fallen to Charles V the Holy Roman Emperor and the Turks had been crushed. Imperial Ambassador Eustace Chapuys said to his master that King Henry VIII and Anne looked ‘like dogs falling out of a window” for they were so dismayed were they by the news. There had been reports of a ruined harvest due to the bad weather that year and Anne was widely blamed even for this by the common people of England for they saw it as a sign from God that He was displeased with King Henry VIII for marrying her.

During October 1535 Katherine of Aragon actually was writing to the Pope to beg him to find a remedy for what was happening in England. By doing so she was putting herself in grave danger for if intercepted her letter could have been used as evidence that she had tried to incite a foreign power to make war upon King Henry VIII and that was treason. King Henry VIII came to suspect that Katherine of Aragon was up to something of the sort and he did in November 1535 told his Privy Council that he would no longer remain in ‘this fear and suspicion and trouble” engendered by Katherine of Aragon and Lady Mary and he insisted that proceedings be taken against them in the next session of Parliament or he would do it himself. Anne ended up feeling mistakenly as it turned out that while Katherine of Aragon lived her own life was in danger. For she had said at this time, “She is my death and I am hers so I will take good care that she shall not laugh at me after my death.”
 

King Henry VIII had hoped to cement his alliance with King Francis I by arranging a betrothal of his daughter Princess Elizabeth to King Francis I’s son Prince Charles II de Valois the Duke of Orleans. However after Anne had troubles bearing King Henry VIII a son the King Francis I grew wary of such a betrothal. He was not interested in making a marriage betrothal to his son Prince Charles unless he was sure that Anne’s marriage to King Henry VIII and her position as the Queen of England would remain permanent. It was in King Francis I’s interests to promote Queen Anne and Princess Elizabeth for the sake of France as Katherine of Aragon and her daughter Lady Mary were King Charles V’s pawns, but his doubts about making a marriage betrothal between Princess Elizabeth to his son Prince Charles highlighted the instability of Queen Anne’s and Princess Elizabeth’s positions.