Anne Boleyn Part Seven: King Henry VIII's Great Matter Part One of Two

Written By: Katelyn Abbott

King Henry VIII wanted an annulment from Queen Katherine in order for him to be able to marry Anne. It had been probable that the idea of an annulment (not divorce as commonly assumed) had suggested itself to King Henry VIII much earlier than this and clearly was motivated by his desire for an heir to secure the legitimacy of the Tudor claim to the crown. Katherine of Aragon did get married to King Henry VIII’s brother Prince Arthur first who died soon after their marriage. Since England and Spain ended up still wanting an alliance with one another a dispensation was granted by Pope Julius II on the grounds that Katherine of Aragon was still a virgin for her to be betrothed to King Henry VIII. The marriage of King Henry VIII and Queen Katherine finally took place in 1509, but eventually he had come to believe that his marriage to her was cursed because he had married his “dead brother’s widow” and dubious about its validity due to Queen Katherine’s inability to provide a male heir being seen as a sign of God’s displeasure. In a section of Leviticus in the Old Testament it is said that “if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing….they shall be childless” which he interpreted to mean that he should not have married Queen Katherine. That meant that he had been living in sin with Katherine of Aragon for twenty years though Queen Katherine hotly contested this and refused to concede that her marriage to Arthur had been consummated. This also meant that his daughter Princess Mary was a bastard and that the new Pope Clement VII would have to admit the previous Pope’s mistake and annul his marriage to Queen Katherine. King Henry’s quest for an annulment was known as the “King’s Great Matter.”

King Henry VIII formally introduced Anne as his lady to both the English Court and the French ambassadors at Greenwich palace which publicly displayed Anne’s importance on May 5^th, 1527.

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey left for France to embark on a mission of peace knowing of King Henry VIII’s plan to annul his marriage to Queen Katherine of Aragon and bastardize his daughter Princess Mary Tudor, but unaware of any serious liaison with Anne on  July 22, 1527.

King Henry VIII and courtiers of the English Court arrived at Beaulieu on his summer progress at the English Court on July 23, 1527. Queen Katherine of Aragon accompanied him there, but that did not stop Anne from joining him at Beaulieu in July of that year. In what Eric Ives has called ‘ a huge house party’ King Henry VIII stayed there at the palace for over a month in the company of a large number of nobles and their wives including Anne’s father Sir Thomas Boleyn the Viscount of Rochford, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Earls of Essex, Oxford, and Rutland, and Viscount Fitzwalter. There Anne hunted with King Henry VIII and she took supper with him in his Privy Chamber.

In the next few months all of the foreign ambassadors at the English Court became aware of Anne’s great influence over King Henry VIII and King Henry VIII’s intentions to marry her and make her the Queen of England. The foreign ambassadors all reported to their home countries about the shocking developments between King Henry VIII and Anne, but perhaps the Spanish ambassador Mendoza said it best by saying that Anne would be King Henry VIII’s equal if they were to wed not all the obedient Queen Katherine "who can do….little harm.”

                                     A picture of Queen Katherine during the 1520s

A picture of how Anne began to rise by King Henry VIII's side at the English Court

 

A second picture of how Anne began to rise by King Henry VIII's side at the English Court

Anne was determined that she would only yield to King Henry VIII’s sexual advances after they were married and she was his acknowledged queen. She began to rise in her influence at the English Court by taking her place at his side in policy and state, but not yet in his bed. Clearly there were little signs of it at first. King Henry VIII did conserve with her, dance with her, eat meals alone with her, she fashionably dressed in the most expensive and fashionable gowns and finest jewels that he gave to her, he gave her expensive gifts such as art subjects and books, he would go horseback riding with her, he would go on walks in the gardens with her, he would make music together with her, he would play games of cards, chess, and dice and gamble with Anne; he would recite poetry with her, he would sit under a tree to watch the clouds with Anne, he would solve riddles and word games with her, and he wound up paying her gambling debts for her. Anne ended up allowing him to hug and kiss her and let him see her small breasts which he called her “pretty duckies” while King Henry VIII would permit her to sit on his lap. Both of them enjoyed to participate in outdoor pursuits such as archery, bowls, falconry, horseback riding, and hunting and picnicking together in good weather conditions. Family and friends of Anne started to advance at the English Court through King Henry VIII’s influence from his love of Anne. Anne was lodged in luxurious apartments near those to King Henry VIII and maintained by several ladies-in-waiting and a small staff of servants for her own personal needs by the time the English Court spent Christmas at Greenwich in December 1528.

 

A third picture of how Anne began to rise by King Henry VIII's side at the English Court

 

Cardinal Wolsey had soon discovered Anne’s rising status at the English Court with King Henry VIII when he returned from a mission as an embassy to France on September 17, 1528. He had rode at once to Richmond bearing rich gifts for the King from King Francis I and sent a message to King Henry VIII requesting a private audience with him to discuss his mission and where he should meet him at. There Anne was with King Henry VIII and before King Henry VIII could answer she addressed the messenger in ringing tones, “Where else is the Cardinal to come? Tell him that he may come here to where the King is.” King Henry VIII went on to confirm Anne’s commands and Cardinal Wolsey had his audience with King Henry VIII with Anne present in the room.

Anne might have been present at the service of thanksgiving in the Church of the Observant Friars at Greenwich Palace in the morning where King Henry VIII was invested with the Order of St. Michel as part of the peace treaty organized with France on November 1, 1527. She might have been at the great banquet which was held in the Banqueting House to celebrate the treaty with France. Anne de Monmorency, the Grand Master of France, did stand in as proxy for King Francis I of France. Anne ended up retreating to Hever Castle for the winter of 1527 with her mother Lady Elizabeth Boleyn.
For Anne most likely had spent many months making new gowns for herself with the help of maids for her wedding trousseau that winter as she believed that it would not be long before she would be able to marry King Henry VIII and become the Queen of England and the Queen of England clearly had to have gowns worthy enough to grace the English Court.
  

                                   A picture of Katherine of Aragon vs. Anne Boleyn

The differences between Anne and Queen Katherine are striking and they are similar to more a modern example of a man such as King Henry VIII going through a “mid-life crisis” beginning with their age differences. Anne was approximately nineteen years old or twenty years old and  she was basking in her youth at the beginning of King Henry VIII’s flirtation with her while Queen Katherine was approximately forty-one years old or forty-two years old and she had been getting old. Anne had black hair, dark brown eyes, and ivory skin while Queen Katherine had red hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. Anne was beautiful while Queen Katherine was plain since she has lost her beauty over the years. Anne was brilliant, charming, driven, elegant, full of life, good sense of humored, graceful, lively, opinionated, and passionate and she had much in common with King Henry VIII including a love of the arts while Queen Katherine was also brilliant and charming, but she had become dull, entirely retired, and fully devoted to religion to help her get through the suffering and turmoil of losing so many children in her old age which made her increasingly less and less like her husband King Henry VIII. Both women were extremely well-educated and fluent in foreign languages, but Anne had been influenced by the French while Queen Katherine had roots to Spain. Anne was fertile and had a good deal of years of childbearing before her while Queen Katherine had reached menopause and she was unable to have any more children. King Henry VIII had stopped visiting her bedchamber when she was no longer able to bear children and took to seeking out other women to fulfill his sexual needs, but Anne had refused to give into his demands that she be her mistress and this ended up making the tension between King Henry VIII and Queen Katherine more and more intense. Had Anne given in to King Henry VIII’s demands in her becoming his mistress she likely would not have been a real threat to Queen Katherine, but King Henry VIII might most likely have sought a divorce from her anyway. If he had tried to marry a foreign princess instead of one of his own English subjects he may have had better luck in getting himself an annulment in his marriage to Queen Katherine, but Queen Katherine mostly likely would have fought it anyway and she had great foreign connections to powerful people that were able to assist her in her fight against him.

Anne and Katherine of Aragon came to be unable to accept each other for who they were, care nothing for each other, and despise each other though Queen Katherine was civil to Anne in public. Both enemies had to endure each other’s company in public during the long nearly seven years’ wait of the Great Matter. The tension between these two strong-willed women can be illustrated by a legend that occurred during this time. During this time Anne and Queen Katherine ended up playing a game of cards with each other and when it became obvious that Anne needed a king in order to win the game and she received one, Queen Katherine proclaimed to her, “My lady Anne, you have good hap to stop at a king, but you are not like the others, you will have all or none.” Queen Katherine ended up calling Anne "that shameless creature" while Anne might have referred to Queen Katherine as that "Spanish cold fish."  

A picture of William Tyndale’s “The Obedience of a Christian Man” that Anne might have had shown to King Henry VIII

Various are the opinions of historians and scholars as to how deep Anne’s commitment to the Reformation was, how much she was only perhaps personally ambitious in it, and how much she had to do with King Henry VIII’s defiance of Papal power. There is anecdotal evidence, related to biographer George Wyatt by her former lady-in-waiting Anne Gainsford, which Anne had brought to King Henry VIII’s attention a heretical pamphlet, one by Simon Fish called “Supplication for Beggars,” or perhaps William Tyndale’s “The Obedience of a Christian Man” which cried out to monarchs to rein in the evil excesses of the Catholic Church. She was sympathetic to those people who were seeking further reformation of the Catholic Church and took to actively protecting scholars who were working on English translations of the scriptures. Marie Dowling said that “Anne tried to educate her waiting-women in scriptural piety” and she was believed to have reproved her cousin Mary Shelton who was one of her ladies-in-waiting for “having ‘idle poesies’ written in her prayer book. Should Cavendish be believed Anne not accepting Cardinal Wolsey for who he was, caring nothing for him, and despising him and her outrage at him may have personalized whatever philosophical defiance she had brought back to England with her from her time in France. The most recent edition of Eric Ives’s biography admitted that Anne might very well have had a personal spiritual awakening in her youth which spurned her on, not just as a catalyst but the expediter for King Henry VIII’s Reformation, though the process of it took a number of years. 
 

As early as 1528, Anne began using her influence over King Henry VIII for good. She championed two evangelical leaders who were being persecuted by the Bishop of London and Sir Thomas More: Doctor Robert Forman and Thomas Garrett of Honey Lane. Clearly Doctor Robert Forman was the Dean of Queen’s College, Cambridge. Anne did champion Cambridge men known to be radicals and reformers during her time in power. She ended up supporting Doctor Robert Forman and Thomas Garrett through her letter writing campaign by persuading Cardinal Thomas Wolsey to intervene on their behalf. She also persuaded King Henry VIII to twist Cardinal Thomas Wolsey’s arm to rescue another target of More who was the Prior of Reading.  Joanna Denny stated that “Anne ‘was a special comforter and aider of all the professors of Christ’s gospel.’ The Imperial ambassador was to state that the Boleyns were the ‘principal instruments’ of rescuing ‘heretics’ from prison and that Anne was ‘the principal cause of the spread of Lutheranism in this country,’ which made her the enemy of the Catholic Church.” The Scottish reformer Alexander Aless would later tell Anne’s daughter Princess Elizabeth Tudor that, “True Religion in England had its commencement and its end with your mother.”

In January 1528 Anne’s cousin Sir Nicholas Carew was most likely restored to his old place in the Privy Chamber through her influence. In February 1528 King Henry VIII actually ordered Edward Foxe and Stephen Gardiner to stop at Hever Castle to report on their embassy to Anne for their mission was to gain an audience with Pope Clement VIII and be granted a decretal commission allowing the annulment case between King Henry VIII and Queen Katherine to be settled on English soil by Cardinal Wolsey and a representative of the Pope without the ability to Rome. In early March 1528 Anne left Hever Castle to rejoin King Henry VIII at Windsor Castle along with her mother Lady Elizabeth accompanying her as her chaperone. King Henry VIII was attended only by his riding household. He had been into archery, falconry, going on walks, or hunting with Anne every afternoon and in the evenings after supper they amused themselves with backgammon, cards, dice, shuffleboard, and other table games, dancing, making music, and reciting poetry. King Henry VIII and Anne came to be recorded picnicking with them and their friends feasting on larks, partridges, plovers, and rabbits as well as confections with lashings of cream which was supplied by the park keeper’s wife to them in Windsor Great Park during their stay at the Castle. Anne did entertain Thomas Heneage at Windsor by inviting him to have supper with her and famously requested from him to ask if Cardinal Thomas Wolsey would be so kind as to send her some of his good meats such as carps and shrimps and tuna-fish for her mother Lady Elizabeth Boleyn for her table on March 3, 1528.

Anne ended up managing to offend Sir John Russell, an influential member of the Privy Chamber who had become involving in a bitter dispute with her client and cousin, Sir Thomas Cheney, another one of the King’s Gentlemen, over the marriage of Sir John Russell’s two step-daughters, who were Cardinal Thomas Wolsey’s wards. Both Sir Thomas Cheney and another courtier Sir John Wallop wanted to be able to marry them, but Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and Sir John Russell had refused their permission for either of them to do so. Anne came to have had successfully intervened when Sir Thomas Cheney had been in disgrace with Cardinal Thomas Wolsey on another occasion. However this time King Henry VIII did take Sir John Russell’s side and he ended up forbidding Sir Thomas Cheney to enter the Privy Chamber until he had made his peace with Sir John Russell, but the row had gone on to continue between the two men and several months later when Cardinal Thomas Wolsey had banished Sir Thomas Cheney from the English Court, Anne summoned him back, “in spite of the Cardinal, without using rude words to Cardinal Wolsey.” In that moment Cardinal Thomas Wolsey capitulated and Sir Thomas Cheney married his heiress, but while the affair highlighted Anne’s increasing ascendancy in the power struggle between Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and turned Sir John Russell into the first of the many powerful enemies that she would make for herself during the course of her career.

Anne loved hunting with King Henry VIII because this was one of the few occasions when she was able to have him alone to herself with only a few trusted companions in attendance with them. King Henry VIII bought her four French saddles of black velvet with gold and silk fringing complete with footstools, matching harnesses, and reins as well as arrows, bows, and gloves as he was delighted to be able to share his favorite pastime with her. Anne came to sometimes ride behind him on his own mount using a black velvet pillion saddle—which was “a most unusual procedure” commented a scandalized Imperial ambassador. She did order her palfreys herself specially from Ireland. King Henry VIII ended up writing to tell her of his successes in the chase and frequently sent her gifts of venison whenever they were apart from each other.

Anne enjoyed cards and dice games and gambling with King Henry VIII. He gave her only £5 (£1,500) at a time often in small change from his Privy Purse “for playing money.” One of their favorite games was “Pope July” and King Henry VIII often lost large sums of money to her when gambling with her.

On May 6, 1528 Anne did receive Dr. Edward Foxe in her apartments where King Henry VIII had ordered him to do so to deliver the news that Pope Clement VII had agreed to dispatch of a legate.

A picture of Anne surviving from the Sweating Sickness that she contracted in June of 1528

In 1528 a disease called the Sweating Sickness broke out with great severity. In London the mortality rate had been great and the English Court came to disperse. King Henry VIII did leave London and ended up frequently changing his residence to prevent himself from getting it. Anne had gone back to Hever Castle to retreat from the Sweating Sickness at her family residence, but she contracted the illness in June of 1528 as did her father Sir Thomas Boleyn and her brother George and she was deathly sick. Her brother-in-law Sir William Carey died from it. King Henry VIII sent his own physician Doctor  William Butts to Hever Castle to care for her in her illness and shortly afterwards she made a remarkable recovery of it though it was not fortunate for Queen Katherine that she survived it. Anne was to come to accept Doctors William Butt, a fellow evangelical, for who he was, become friends with him, and care about him and she would support him later on. 
 

Anne favored her sister Mary’s sister-in-law Eleanor Carey as the new abbess of Wilton Abbey after Cecily Willoughby died on April 24, 1528 and King Henry VIII had gone to promise her that he would look into the matter while Cardinal Wolsey wished to make Isabel Jourdain the new abbess. However what was found out however about Eleanor put an end to her promotion. Inevitably she confessed to having borne two children by two sundry priests and she was involved with a servant from the household of Lord Willoughby de Broke. The Boleyns and the Careys did propose that Eleanor’s eldest sister, Anne Carey, as a possible candidate, as they ended up claiming that Isabel Jourdain had led an unchaste life when she was younger.  King Henry VIII flatly refused to have either Eleanor, her sister Anne, or Isabel made abbess, but Cardinal Thomas Wolsey went ahead and gave the position to Isabel Jourdain anyway, causing the first major dispute between King Henry VIII and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey.

Queen Katherine had much support from the English people who shouted out to her, “victory over your enemies” whenever she was in public in the summer of 1528. In August 1528 Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Bayonne, the first resident French ambassador to be sent to England, came to present his credentials to King Henry VIII. Soon after his arrival, Jean du Bellay, noted that “Mademoiselle Boleyn had returned to court,” accompanied once more by her mother Lady Elizabeth Boleyn. Anne’s visit to the English Court had not been a long visit, but it clearly was sufficient to further inflame King Henry VIII’s ardor after long weeks of separation. Together they had rode out hunting daily and Jean du Bellay, whose master’s support both King Henry VIII and Anne were keen to secure, was often asked to accompany them, a mark of signal favor. “Madame Anne” ended up setting herself up to charm him by bestowing on him generous gifts-a handsome greyhound, a hat, a horn, and a hunting outfit and told him that everything that she did was “entirely by the commandment of the King,” while King Henry VIII would often take him aside to discuss confidential affairs. The ambassador’s dispatches to King Francis I revealed how flattered he was by this attention shown to him, but he was careful to say that it was really a sign of King Henry VIII of England’s love for France which the King of France who was no fool would get the message to him.

King Henry VIII apparently sent Anne back to Hever Castle due to Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio’s imminent arrival for the Legatine Court and continued to live with Queen Katherine of Aragon as his wife. King Henry  VIII did announce to the court with the citizens and judges present on November 8, 1528 that he was only questioning his marriage to Queen Katherine of Aragon because he had been told by “diverse great clerks” that it was “directly against God’s law and his precept” and that “if it be adiudged by J law of God that she [Catherine] is my lawfull wife, there was neuer thyng more pleasaunt nor more acceptable to me in my lifebothe for the discharge & cleryng of rny conscience & also for the good qualities and condicions the which I know to be in her… so that if I were to mary againe if the mariage might be good I would surely chose her aboue all other women.” King Henry VIII ended up installing Anne in the palatial surroundings of Durham House on the Strand soon after the legate’s arrival, but Anne felt unsatisfied with her new abode and had gone on to demand something even grander. King Henry VIII had arranged for her to temporarily lodge at Suffolk House in Southwark which was the London home of the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk and he paid for the refurbishments of the rooms she would occupy which were furnished with great splendor. Inevitably Anne did keep great state there attended by chaplains, ladies-in-waiting, and trainbearers. Courtiers kept hastening in droves to pay their respects to her and send her gifts of cloth, hairpieces, jewels, rare fruits of all kinds, and sweets while Queen Katherine of Aragon’s chamber, once the hub of courtly entertainments and gatherings, was deserted. Anne was likely not happy that King Henry VIII was still dining regularly with Queen Katherine of Aragon and sharing her bed according to Jean du Bellay, but on King Henry VIII’s own admission to her he was not having sex with her since he was probably doing it to keep up appearances in order to impress the legate.

Despite this semblance of popularity where Anne had lots of people who had once opposed her rushing to befriend Anne knew well enough the fickleness of court life, but she welcomed any form of support, no matter how trivial it was though there were still plenty of people who disliked the entire whole Boleyn family and her at the English Court. Anne ended up being hated by the English people who supported their beloved Queen Katherine. For whenever Anne went out hunting with King Henry VIII villages would hiss and hoot at her and on one occasion when King Henry VIII was riding alone near Woodstock, one of his subjects yelled at him, “Back to your wife!”

Anne did encourage King Henry VIII to undertake reconstruction at Hampton Court during this time.

On Lent of 1529, Loys de Brun, the author of a treatise on letter writing which was dedicated to Anne, saw her reading the Epistles of St. Paul in French and other translations of the Bible.

On Easter 1529 Anne took it upon herself to bless cramp rings which was a ritual that could be performed only by an anointed king or queen.

                                          A picture of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey

King Henry VIII had set his hopes upon a direct appeal to the Holy See, acting independently of Cardinal Wolsey, to who he had at first communicated his desire for an annulment of his marriage to Queen Katherine, but nothing of his plans of marriage related to Anne. In 1527 William Knight, King Henry VIII’s secretary, was sent to Pope Clement VIII to sue for the annulment of his marriage to Queen Katherine had been obtained under false pretenses. King Henry VIII also petitioned, in the event of his becoming free of Queen Katherine, a dispensation to contract a new marriage with any woman even in the first degree of affinity, whether the affinity was contracted by lawful or unlawful connection which clearly referred to Anne.
 

Queen Katherine was able to plead with her nephew King Charles V of Spain, who was the Holy Roman Emperor which made her the aunt of the most powerful man in the world, for assistance when she been able to find out King Henry VIII’s plans for an annulment. King Charles V had been only too happy to oblige her in her request for his help since the annulment of King Henry VIII and Queen Katherine’s marriage would have been a great slight to Spain. William Knight came to have some difficulty in obtaining access to the Pope as he was at that time the Holy Roman Emperor’s prisoner as a result of the Sack of Rome in May 1527. He did end up having to return to England with a conditional dispensation which Cardinal Wolsey insisted was technically insufficient. King Henry VIII ended up having no choice but to put his Great Matter into Cardinal Wolsey’s hands who did all he was able to do to secure a decision in King Henry VIII’s favor even going so far as to convene an ecclesiastical court in England with a special emissary Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio from the Pope himself to decide the matter on the annulment of King Henry VIII and Queen Katherine’s marriage.  This court hearing known as the Trial of Blackfriars began on May 31, 1529.

A picture of Queen Katherine kneeling before King Henry VIII at the Trial of Blackfriars

Both King Henry VIII and Queen Katherine were required to attend the trial with Anne hidden in the background not seen observing it. She was not supposed to have been seen publicly as any reason for the annulment of King Henry VIII and Queen Katherine’s marriage so she was kept away from the court proceedings that were supposed to shape her future. When Queen Katherine was called into the court, she was able to make a heartfelt plea before King Henry VIII begging him on her knees not to proceed with the court hearing in a passionate speech:

“Sir, I beseech you, for all the loves that hath been between us, and for the love of God, let me have justice and right. Take of me some pity and compassion, for I am a poor woman and stranger born out of your dominion. I have here no assured friend, and much less indifferent counsel. I flee to you as the head of justice within this realm.

Alas, Sir, where have I offended you? Or what occasion have you of displeasure, that you intend to put me from you? I take God and all the world to witness that I have been to you a true, humble, and obedient wife, ever conformable to your will and pleasure. I have been pleased and contented with all the things wherein you had delight and dalliance. I never grudged a word or countenance, or showed a spark of discontent. I loved all those whom yet loved only for your sake, whether I had cause or no, and whether they were my friends or enemies. This twenty years and more I have been your true wife, and by me ye have had divers children, though it hath pleased God to call them out of this world, which hath been no fault in me. And when ye had me at the first, I take God to be my judge, I was true maid, without touch of man; and whether it be true or no, you put it to your conscience.

[A pause. Then:] If there be any just cause by the law that you can allege against me, either of dishonesty or any other impediment, to put me from you, I am well content to depart, to my shame and dishonor. If there be none, I must lowly beseech you, let me remain in my former estate and receive justice at your princely hands.

The King your father was accounted in his day as a second Solomon for wisdom, and my father Ferdinand and was esteemed one of the wisest kinds that had ever reigned in Spain. It is not about them as was thought fit by their high discretion. Also, there were in those days as wise, as learned man, as there are at this present time in both realms, who thought then the marriage between you and me good and lawful.

It is a wonder to hear what new inventions are invented against me, who never intended but honesty, that cause me to stand to the order and judgment of this new court, wherein you may do me wrong, if you intend any cruelty. For ye may condemn me for lack of sufficient answer, having no indifferent counsel. Ye must understand that they cannot be indifferent counselors which be your subjects, and taken out of your Council beforehand, and dare not, for your displeasure, disobey your will and intent.

Therefore, most humbly do I require you, in the way of charity and for the love of God, to spare me the extremity of this court, until I may be advertised what way and order my friends in Spain will advise me to take. And if ye will not extend to me so much favor, your pleasure then be fulfilled, and to God I commit my cause.”

        A picture of King Henry VIII and Anne hunting together in Windsor Forest 

Summer time arrived in 1529 and King Henry VIII took Anne along with him on his summer progress visiting Waltham Abbey, Barnet, Tittenhanger, Windsor, Reading, Woodstock, Langley, Buckingham, and Grafton. She hunted alongside King Henry VIII and picnicked with him. Together they entertained Jean Du Bellay who was both the French Ambassador and Bishop of Bayonne. This trip was the trip that Anne fully demonstrated herself as an ‘honorary man’ as Historian David Starkey had called her.

Cardinal Wolsey and Anne probably did not accept each other for who they were, cared nothing for each other, and despised each other and ended up being enemies with each other since Cardinal Wolsey had referred to her as the “midnight crow.” Anne strategically played a game of cat and mouse by constantly testing the Lord Chancellor Cardinal Thomas Wolsey’s loyalties. She had been aware that Cardinal Wolsey was a brilliant and cunning man, but that his career at the English Court had caused him to accumulate a mass of great wealth and he did have several mistresses who ended up giving him illegitimate children which made him a symbol of the corrupt nature of the Catholic Church in the process. Clearly it was right that she do so for Cardinal Wolsey did not feel that King Henry VIII should seek a divorce from his marriage to Queen Katherine and try to marry Anne most likely motivated by his desire to move through the ranks of the Vatican. If he did not do his job right in securing King Henry VIII’s divorce from Queen Katherine then Anne would end up suffering from it. She would end up having to finding another lackey to do Cardinal Wolsey’s job for her or feel that she should abandon hope of being able to marry King Henry VIII and becoming the Queen of England altogether. Anne got Cardinal Wolsey to stay on his guard in him having to keep her happy by him having to spend a great deal of money in banquets for King Henry VIII’s and Anne’s entertainments, fulfilling Anne’s requests, and giving her extravagant gifts and him doing his best to counteract the slanders heard by Pope Clement VII about Anne by praising her for her excellent virtues such as her apparent aptness to procreation of children, her chasteness, her constant virginity, her descent of right noble regal blood, her education in all good and laudable manners, her humility, her maidenly and womanly pudacity, her meekness, the purity of her life, and her soberness. Anne made it clear to Cardinal Wolsey that should she perceive him in being someone who was hindering the process of King Henry VIII’s divorce from Queen Katherine that she would use her influence at the English Court to remove him from King Henry VIII’s services.

   A picture of Anne attempting to cause King Henry VIII to attack against Cardinal Wolsey

The trial continued although it was obviously not going to be resolved and Cardinal Campeggio retired the proceedings until October 1st, but the Pope never had empowered his deputy to make any decision on his behalf for him. The Pope did happen to still be an authentic hostage of the Holy Roman Emperor and King Charles V of Spain was the loyal nephew of King Henry VIII’s wife Queen Katherine. The Pope ended up forbidding King Henry VIII to contract a new marriage until a decision about his annulment to Queen Katherine was reached in Rome instead of in England. Fully convinced that Cardinal Wolsey’s loyalties lay with the Pope, not with England, Anne, and her faction as well as many of Cardinal Wolsey’s enemies, ensured his dismissal from public office in 1529. George Cavendish, Cardinal Wolsey’s chamberlain, had gone to record that the servants who had waited on King Henry VIII and Anne at dinner in 1529 in Grafton heard her say that the dishonor that Cardinal Wolsey had brought upon the realm would have cost any other Englishman his head and then King Henry VIII replied, “Why then I perceive….you are not the Cardinal’s friend.” King Henry VIII finally agreed to Cardinal Wolsey’s arrest on the grounds of praemunire on October 9, 1529 and he had gone on to dismiss him as the Lord Chancellor (Sir Thomas More replaced him as the Lord Chancellor) and sentenced him to imprisonment. King Henry VIII and Anne, accompanied by her mother Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, went by barge to view York Place on November 2, 1529.However Cardinal Wolsey ended up falling ill and he was thought to be dying just after Christmas 1529 so King Henry VIII had been able to send Doctor Butts to him with a message saying ‘he would not lose him for 20,000” and bade Anne to ‘send the Cardinal a token with comfortable words’ to which Anne obediently detached a golden goblet from her girdle and ended up handing it to the physician. In February Anne had supposedly remarked in Imperial Ambassador Eustace Chapuys’s hearing that it would cost her a good 20,000 crowns in bribes before she destroyed Cardinal Wolsey and she had King Henry VIII promise not to see him for as she told him, “I know you could not help but pity him.” Had it had been for his death from illness on November 29, 1530 Cardinal Wolsey might have been put on trial, convicted of high treason, deemed to be sentenced to death, and executed for high treason in conspiring to attempt to force Anne into exile along with the Pope and Queen Katherine. Upon the death of her arch enemy Cardinal Wolsey Anne was said to have held a masque entitled “The going to Hell of Cardinal Wolsey” which King Henry VIII was said to have found to be distasteful.

 A picture of Anne