The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots Read online

  Anne wanted the baby always with her. When the queen returned to court after her confinement, the courtiers were shocked to see the baby princess next to the queen, on a velvet cushion, under the canopy of estate. Infants were never seen at court. Anne begged Henry to allow her to breastfeed the child, but the king refused such a scandalous request. Anyone of rank hired a wet nurse – breastfeeding was simply not done by aristocratic women, let alone a queen. Anne poured her heart into caring for her daughter, playing with her openly in public and giving her dozens of gifts. But the baby was also a form of protection – she proved Anne could have children and give birth to a son. And once Anne had the longed-for prince in her arms, her enemies would never be able to unseat her, no matter how much they hated her or called her ‘the Great Whore’.

  As was customary for the heir to the throne, Elizabeth was to have her own establishment. Royal children should live in the countryside, away from the poor air of London. Henry had chosen the beautiful palace of Hatfield in Hertfordshire. At the end of the year, Elizabeth, aged just three months, was sent there, along with a host of female attendants – nurses, governesses, stewards and servants. Anne had ensured that her own relations were at Hatfield, including her aunts Lady Shelton and Anne Clere, and Lady Bryan, Anne’s mother’s half-sister, was Elizabeth’s ‘Lady Mistress’. Still, Anne was deeply pained to lose her daughter just before Christmas. The baby was taken off in a velvet litter by the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk and a large train of ladies and gentlemen and paraded around London for the cheering crowds on her way to Hatfield. Anne was bereft, but she knew that her place was smiling at the king’s side. She must fall pregnant again and the child had to be a boy.

  Chapter Six

  ‘A Thousand Deaths’

  Little Princess Elizabeth flourished in the countryside, full of physical energy and ‘as goodly a child as hath been seen’.1 She was taken out for airings and lived a regular life overseen by Lady Bryan and surrounded by her attendants, twenty senior staff posts given to members of the gentility, and a hundred servants. Henry accommodated Elizabeth with excellence and grandeur, as a princess should be kept. Elizabeth clearly did not know her mother well and most likely did not remember her. Her first memories would have been of Lady Bryan and the rest. As she later said, ‘we are more indebted to them that bringeth us up well than to our parents’.

  Elizabeth and her retinue moved frequently between palaces, as was customary, both for changes of air and to allow the palaces to be cleaned, travelling from Hatfield to Eltham, Hunsdon, Langley, the More and Richmond. Anne could see her only infrequently and had to rely on the letters of Lady Bryan. She continued to lavish presents on the baby girl and sent the most ornate gowns of velvet, which she rarely saw her wear. But even the smallest question was important. In the autumn of 1535, it was reported to the king that the two-year-old princess could now drink from a cup and was ready to be weaned. The king and council considered and agreed she should be weaned with ‘all due diligence’. Anne sent her own private letter to Lady Bryan with details on how it should be done. Tudor children moved to purée and then were supposed to eat plain food. Lady Bryan was adamant that Elizabeth should not sit up to eat at the table, as she might get overexcited.

  Elizabeth’s life was that of her nurses and household. But the king did occasionally come to see her, and to her nurse’s relief, she won him over. ‘Her grace is much in the king’s favour’, reported one courtier after he visited. Elizabeth was clever, charming and looked just like Henry – so how could he not be delighted?2

  When Elizabeth was just a month old, Henry told his daughter Mary that she was to lose her household and must go to attend on the baby princess. Foreign ambassadors were shocked, declaring Mary was being treated as little more than a lady’s maid. She was sent there in a litter of leather rather than velvet, attended by a small selection of attendants rather than the grand train of golden-clad gentlemen she had been used to. At Hatfield, she refused to submit to her new role. When told to pay her respects to the princess, she declared she ‘knew of no other princess except herself’.3 Henry gave her barely any allowance and she was without attendants or even enough clothes. When Mary was spotted by some locals walking in the gallery at Hatfield, they saluted her. Henry was angry and from then on Mary was kept as a virtual prisoner, her windows barred so that no one could see her.

  Henry visited Hatfield but refused to see Mary and sent Thomas Cromwell to speak to her. Mary bided her time and, when the king was about to depart, she clambered to the top of the house and appeared at a terrace, kneeling to him. The king was charmed and, always keen to accept reverence, bowed to her. But if she had hoped he might improve her position, she was wrong. He may have still loved his first daughter, but all his hopes were focused on the next Tudor. If he gave too much favour to Mary, it would work to the power of his enemies and his former wife. And Anne was pushing him to treat Mary with disdain – for she saw Mary’s every gain as Elizabeth’s loss. ‘She is my death and I am hers’, she said of her eighteen-year-old stepdaughter.4

  When, in 1535, Mary refused to accompany her sister to Eltham Palace, she was put in her litter by force and her jewels were confiscated. Mary protested vociferously, declaring she feared being poisoned by the mistress of the king. She frequently fell ill, tormented by low spirits, the miserable situation of her mother and the cruel treatment she received from her sister’s household. Lady Shelton had shaken her, threatened to have her dismissed from the house and when Mary was seriously ill, told her she hoped Mary would die. We might say that her captors were in an impossible position, expected to ‘persuade’ Mary to respect her father’s new alliance and afraid of showing her too much favour. And Mary never had her sister’s emotional charm or winning ways. She was vulnerable and surrounded by enemies, and the unkindness of those around her only drove her into herself more, and confirmed her view that her God was the true God. Although Mary hated the way she was treated and the drop in her status, she found solace in the childish innocence of her half-sister, the only purity in a court that seemed to her all vicious corruption.

  Catherine was growing more ill in exile, but Henry was intransigent. Unless Mary accepted that her mother was princess dowager (as the widow of Arthur) and that she herself was illegitimate, she could not see Catherine. She would also have to accept that her father was Supreme Head of the Church of England. For Mary, to do so would be an act of sin and she would never relent. Henry was genuinely fond of his first daughter and if she had given in, he would have treated her with respect. But she could not, and so the battle lines were drawn.

  Meanwhile, Anne tried to bolster her own position by attempting to gain an alliance for Elizabeth. She wanted Catholic Europe to see Elizabeth as the true daughter of the king, not Mary – and if a foreign power engaged in a betrothal with Elizabeth, it would be a tacit acceptance of Henry’s and Anne’s marriage. Indeed, a French ambassadorial party went to see the princess at Eltham and she was presented to them entirely naked – as was not uncommon, they wished to be satisfied that her fine clothes hid no physical flaws. Henry negotiated with King Francis I of France for a marriage between Elizabeth and Francis’ third son, Charles. A junior son was hardly the most glittering alliance, but it would give Anne and Elizabeth much-needed legitimacy. Unfortunately the talks collapsed, largely because the French disliked the demand that Charles be sent to England for his education.

  Anne had been too imperious to engender much love at court and she was becoming increasingly isolated. But she was confident that she could solve all her troubles at a stroke by giving her husband a prince. Then, in July 1534, she was delivered of a stillborn child. This time, Henry was less hopeful. His thoughts turned to wondering if God was punishing him for marrying Anne – and so he began to turn on his wife. Childlessness was always the woman’s fault – and a man such as Henry, who believed God had a direct and daily hand in his life, felt any failure to be a form of judgement. He even began to wonder if she had
been a virgin before they took up together – for she had been excessively experienced, he thought. And he allowed himself to fall into a suspicion that she had entranced him with witchcraft. Anne grew frantic, took to following the king around, trying to regain his affection. But the shock of the stillbirth and the insecurity was taking its toll on her looks. In 1533, she had been the most glamorous woman at court. Now, she looked tired and her skin was sallow and sunken. The Venetian ambassador called her ‘that thin old woman’.5 Henry had long since moved his affections to the ladies at court – but in late 1534, Anne’s greatest fear happened. The ever-susceptible king fell in love.

  Mistress Jane Seymour was a quiet and virtuous lady-in-waiting to the queen and had once served Catherine of Aragon. Jane was respectable and reliable, but she was judged no great beauty and she was still unmarried at twenty-seven, even though families sent their daughters to court in the hope that they would gain husbands. She was ­excessively pale and had a rather plump face, small eyes, thin lips and something of a double chin. Unlike Anne, she had little wit and was not greatly interested by books. But even Chapuys, who hated Anne for he blamed her for the break from Rome, struggled to see what the king found so appealing in her lady-in-waiting, deciding that she must have a fine ‘enigme’, or ‘secret’, a reference to the female genitalia. But in that he was wrong – Jane was holding the king off. She had learned from Anne that it was possible to resist the king and retain his respect (and one’s head).

  The king fell in love with Jane because she was the absolute opposite of Anne. She appeared meek and submissive, spoke little and was always calm. For the king, weary of his queen’s tempests and jealousy, Jane was an oasis of tranquillity. She deferred to him in everything – except relinquishing her chastity. In this, and only this, she borrowed from her mistress’s early strategy, coyly refusing the king and protesting her modesty. When he sent her a purse of money with a love letter, Jane kissed the letter but sent it back unopened, saying there was ‘no treasure in the world that she valued as much as her honour, and on no account would she lose it, even if she were to die a thousand deaths’.6 Jane’s aim was to add to the downfall of the queen. She had been devoted to her first mistress, Catherine of Aragon, and then saw how Anne had treated the queen when she was in her ascendancy over the king. Jane was a follower of the Catholic religion and Princess Mary – and when the king began to pay her serious attention, Jane sent messages to Mary promising her that her troubles would soon be at an end.

  Jane hoped to push forth the king’s disaffection and see Anne put aside. The king was being played with exactly the same tools that Anne had used – but he seemed delighted by the game and keen to act out the role of chasing lover all over again. Jane’s family and supporters wondered if he might go all the way to marriage. In 1535, the king made a summer progress with Anne Boleyn and paid a visit to the Seymours at Wolf Hall that cast Anne into paroxysms of jealousy, thanks to the attention he paid Jane.

  On that same summer progress, Anne played her trump card. She fell pregnant again. Henry was delighted by the news and began to show her more respect in public. But in private, he had little interest in her. All his attention was bound up in Jane. Sick and exhausted, Anne was more jealous than ever and prone to dark moods. Forced to see Jane every day, for she was her lady-in-waiting, Anne grew wild and slapped and insulted her rival. Jane calmly accepted the attacks, which infuriated Anne even more.

  In late 1535, Catherine of Aragon was dying. There were whispers that she had been poisoned, but she probably had a cancer of the heart. The king would not relent and had declared that Mary could only attend her dying mother if she accepted that she was illegitimate and that he was the Supreme Head of the Church. He cruelly ignored his daughter’s pleas for mercy. The former queen died at the age of fifty on 7 January 1536. Mary was told of her death abruptly by Lady Shelton, who had no patience with her heartbreak.

  Anne and Henry were delighted that Catherine was dead. The king ordered great celebrations and he and Anne dressed themselves in festive yellow for a grand banquet. Elizabeth was already at court and, after being taken to church to the sound of trumpets, Henry took her to the banquet and then to the chamber where the court was celebrating with a dance. He carried little Elizabeth in his arms and lifted her high for everyone to see, ‘like one transported with joy’.7

  Anne felt as if all her prayers had been answered. She was pregnant, and her great enemy was dead. What she didn’t realise was that Catherine had been a form of protection for her. If Henry had divorced Anne or tried to set her aside, Catholic Europe would have attempted to push him to reconcile with Catherine. It was a conflict he could ill afford. But with Catherine gone, he could, if he wished, put Anne aside and take another wife. He could choose Jane.

  On 29 January, Catherine was buried at Peterborough Abbey. Poor Mary was refused permission to attend. Anne hoped to celebrate with her husband. But when she went to find him, he was hidden away, enjoying the private attentions of Jane Seymour. The queen was possessed by a rage greater than any her attendants had ever seen. She attacked the king and Jane and her attendants feared for her unborn child. They were right to do so. A few hours later, overcome by distress, Anne miscarried after fifteen weeks of pregnancy. Those with her thought it might have been a boy. She had lost everything. ‘I see that God will not give me male children’, said the king.8 As Chapuys wrote, ‘the king shows great distress’. He was not just mourning the baby – it was also the end of his love for Anne. Although he appeared next to her at court and made a good face of it in public, he no longer had any feeling for her and was regretting he had ever married her. That evening, Thomas Cromwell had a secret meeting with Chapuys in which the ambassador suggested that, now Catherine was dead, the king might consider an imperial alliance. Although, the ambassador said, the world would never accept Anne, the same would not be true for a bride taken after the death of Catherine. Anne was assailed on all sides. Chapuys put it with a terrible clarity in a letter to the emperor: ‘she has mis­carried of her saviour’.9

  Anne took solace from her misery in ordering beautiful clothes for Elizabeth. In April, the king allowed the princess to visit the queen at Greenwich. Anne was transported with happiness and played with her little girl, now a delightful two-and-a-half-year-old with a grasp of language and a sunny personality. She hoped that the little girl might win over Henry too. But he was fully occupied in chasing Jane Seymour. He had rooms for Jane installed next to his own in Greenwich, for he had to see her constantly. As Chapuys carped, ‘for more than three months,the king has not spoken ten times to the Concubine [Anne] . . . when formerly he could not leave her for an hour’.10 Now it was Jane whom Henry could not leave. Thomas Cromwell was gathering evidence to rid Henry of Anne for ever.

  Anne played with her daughter unawares. She knew that she was losing the king’s favour – she had even written a friendly letter to Mary, although Mary, of course, was having none of it. But the queen thought only that she would have to suffer a parade of mistresses. She did not see the truth. Cromwell occupied himself in creating a solid case against her. For Henry had a problem. He could have simply annulled the marriage, on the basis of his prior relations with Anne’s sister, Mary Boleyn. But Catherine of Aragon had refused to go quietly, and she had been a constant thorn in his side. Catherine had dealt in quiet resistance, but Anne was outspoken. She was younger, more energetic and could be a focus of Protestant plots. He needed to set Anne aside with a ven­­­geance, with charges she could never protest. And in doing so, he would have to expose her to the possibility of execution.

  Cromwell interviewed, pressed and sent his spies for evidence that the queen had been committing adultery. Anne had always been fond of receiving handsome young courtiers – and had been particularly enamoured of the musician Mark Smeaton and Sir Henry Norris, Groom of the Stool to the king. Anne had captured Henry with her skill at the verbal barbs of flirtation, exchanging pretty verses and engaging in mockery of other
s. She was a genius at the art – and when the king no longer wished to play the game with her, she unwisely played it with others.

  Anne was no Catherine of Aragon, embroidering virtuously in her rooms. A queen should receive men in order to introduce her maids to possible suitors – but she had certainly received more than necessary. And she had been guilty of flirting and of making some indiscreet and risqué comments. But that was all. It would have been impossible for her to be unfaithful to Henry without the information getting out before, surrounded as she was by enemies and spies. Moreover, despite her ambition, she did truly love the king and prized his love for her. And there was certainly nothing untoward in her relationship with her brother, George Boleyn. He was something of a lothario at court, but Anne was no incestuous lover. Unfortunately, Anne was friendless at court and had no reputation for virtue – and even some of her family had turned against her, including her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. She had long since alienated Cromwell, after clashing over how the revenues from the ­dissolution of the monasteries should be spent.

  Even her arch enemy, Chapuys, reported no gossip of affairs back to his imperial master. If he had heard even the vaguest imputation of faithlessness, he would have passed it on with glee. Still, the rumours about flirtatious chatter played into Cromwell’s hands. Her handsome musician, Mark Smeaton, was arrested on 30 April, tortured and confessed to hiding in the queen’s cupboard until she pulled him into her bed after hours. At some point, Anne heard that there were plots against her and she threw herself on Henry’s mercy. She seized Elizabeth in her arms and dashed to the king, begging him through his open window to see her and have mercy upon her. Surely, she thought, he could not abandon the mother of his most beloved child. But even little Elizabeth could not move him. The king was angry with Anne and refused her pleas. It was the last time Elizabeth would ever see her mother.