It was 1514 when the first rumour of a possible annulment in Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon drew breath. In 1516 a princess was born and for a time there was hope but by 1525 Catherine was beyond the age of childbearing and Henry ceased to cohabit with his wife. He’d been involved romantically with several of Catherine’s maids by that time and had been dallying with Mary Boleyn since 1522. In 1526 Henry found himself falling in love with Mary’s sister Anne. The following year he proposed and started proceedings to remove Catherine from the picture. She didn’t go without a fight. Of course there was also the small matter of getting rid of all of Catherine of Aragon’s pomegranate symbols from buildings, furniture etc and replacing it with Anne’s emblem and initials.
Anne’s emblem when she became queen in 1533 after a secret marriage ceremony before Henry’s marriage to Catherine had been formally annulled was the white falcon. The white falcon was part of the crest of the Earls of Ormonde from whom Thomas Boleyn, Anne’s father, claimed descent via his mother. Piers Butler was forced to hand over the title to Henry in 1528 and, in turn, he graciously awarded it to his future father-in-law in 1529.
This particular white falcon is alighting onto a barren tree stump, incidentally a Plantagenet badge, which is sprouting a crop of roses – hardly complicated imagery. The old queen had failed to produce a male heir; Anne carrying all before her was going to produce a Tudor sprig. The arrival of another princess, this time called Elizabeth, in September 1533 must have come as a blow.
The crown and the sceptre are doing the job you might suppose them to do. They are reminding everyone who cares to look that God, rather than Henry VIII, has made Anne queen of England.
As well as the falcon Anne also used the leopard which derived from the coat of arms of Thomas of Brotherton who was a son of Edward I and the First Earl of Norfolk – and yes, Anne claimed descent from him as her mother was Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. Clearly Anne was keen to identify her royal connections. Having supplanted bona fide Spanish royalty she went to some lengths to demonstrate the rather thin trickle of Plantagenet blood flowing through her veins.
On her marriage Anne chose as her motto “Most happy.” Before then she’d had the words, in Latin, “Grumble all you like, this is how it’s going to be.” You’ve got to admire the woman’s panache but you can see how she might have irritated the great and the good with her abrasive sense of humour. She is also purported to have had a third motto meaning, “Always the same.” This was the one that Elizabeth I chose to use.
How happy Anne remained is a moot point given that there were rumours of Henry VIII’s attention wandering less than a year into his second marriage. Hart mentions his six month affair with Anne’s cousin in 1535. By this time Anne was proving a disappointment. As well as meddling in political and religious affairs she miscarried two or possibly three babies. There then followed a miscarriage of a boy on 29th January 1536- the same day as Catherine of Aragon’s funeral.
That same year as the monasteries were dissolved and the machinery of Catholicism demolished to furnish Henry’s bank account and ego, Anne found herself arrested and carted off to the Tower where she was duly executed on the colourful, not to mention highly dubious charges, of treason, adultery and incest on the 19th May with a sword rather than an axe. Having made the famous comment about a small neck she also beseeched , “Jesu save my Sovereign and master the King, the most goodliest, and gentlest Prince that is, and long to reign over you.”
Eleven days later Henry, that “goodliest” monarch, wed wife number three and all those master masons, carpenters and glaziers found themselves removing the letter A and replacing them with a J.
Katherine of Aragon’s household included thirty-three ladies in waiting according to Harris. No doubt as the years passed and Henry’s eyes and hands wandered Katherine wished several of them many miles away from the royal court. However, it is interesting to note that in the early years there was a sense of continuity between the household’s of Elizabeth of York and Katherine of Aragon. One of the women who served both Elizabeth and Katherine was Eleanor Pole. It should also be noted that once Henry began to play his royal game of divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived many of the ladies-in -waiting found themselves in situ rather longer than the various queens they served.
ally, however, Parliament became involved with the process of identifying the order in which monarchs would ascend the throne.
As it happened none of Henry IV’s children did much in the way of begetting. Thomas, Duke of Clarence was killed at the Battle of Bauge in 1421. Henry V married Katherine of Valois and had one son who became Henry VI by the time he was nine months old in 1422. John, Duke of Bedford was married twice. His second wife was Jacquetta of Luxembourg who went on to marry one of John’s household knights and have a large family including her daughter Elizabeth Woodville. John of Bedford, on the other hand, had no legitimate children. Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester was initially married to Jacqueline of Hainault but the marriage was annulled without surviving issue. Humphrey then went on to marry his mistress Eleanor Cobham who was ultimately found guilty of witchcraft and imprisoned. He didn’t have legitimate children either. Given that Henry IV had six children who survived to adulthood he possibly didn’t anticipate that his line would prove quite so unprolific when he arranged for Parliament to pass the 1406 Act of Succession.
I’m delivering a session on Henry VII tomorrow so this is by way of a warm up for me. I thought it would be quite interesting to look at the way we perceive Henry through his portraits. The one to the left of this paragraph shows a very young man receiving the book in which he is illuminated (Henry VII’s book of astrology). It could be any medieval monarch- apart from the fact that his robe is embroidered with roses – I’m not sure whether its the red rose of Lancaster or the Tudor rose. It should be noted that the Yorkists and the Lancastrians did not make as much of the roses as history and novelists would perhaps like. It was Henry Tudor who sought to use the red and white rose unified to weld together a new royal house through its symbolism.
Sittow painted other Tudors as well as Henry VII. There is a portrait in Vienna of a demure young girl. It is usually thought of as a youthful Katherine of Aragon following the death of Prince Arthur but in recent years it has been suggested that it might be Mary Tudor. Whoever the young girl might be the reason for the portrait is relatively straightforward – betrothal and marriage. It was a usual part of the diplomatic process of international marriage for portraits to be exchanged. Fitch Lytle dates the Sittow portrait to 1505 and a commission by Margaret of Austria when there were marriage plans in the air between Margaret and Henry (p135). The negotiations came to nothing but Margaret kept the portrait. It remained in her palace at Mecelen until her death in 1540.
Henry VII was twenty-eight when he returned to England from Brittany in 1485 after an exile of fourteen years. Griffiths makes the point that ‘Illicit relationships may have flourished,’ which is a very polite way of saying that penniless male Lancastrian exiles may have looked for a little local female company on occasion.
In 1541, during the reign of Henry VIII, parliament passed the Unlawful Games Act). This law banned all dangerous sports on Christmas Day with the exception of archery. Males aged seven to sixty were required to practice their weaponry skills. Games of skills such as tennis, which Henry VIII excelled at during his youth, were prohibited as were the ever present menace of cards and dice. Presumably the modern equivalent would be trivial pursuit, scrabble and monopoly. Sadly anyone thinking of avoiding any of the above or even a turn at charades on Christmas Day can think again as the law was effectively repealed in 1948.
Erasmus and humanism go hand in hand. And it was through Erasmus that Holbein was able to make his way to England with a letter of introduction. He travelled from Basel to the Low Countries and from there to London and the household of Sir Thomas More. Later Erasmus would write that Holbein coerced the letter; outstayed his welcome in Holland; played fast and loose with the truth to gain admittance to More’s household.
William Wareham left Oxford in 1488 to follow a career in the ecclesiastical courts. His reputation was such that he was soon being sent abroad on diplomatic missions. In 1502 he became Bishop of London, then in 1503 he became Archbishop of Canterbury. The following year Henry VII made Wareham his chancellor.