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What was the dynamic between Henry Percy and Anne Boleyn during their courtship, after their courtship, and when she was Queen?
historians:
betteridge, thomas
cressy, david
kesselring, kj
lipscomb, suzannah
macculloch, diarmaid
mackay, lauren
paranque, estelle
richardson, glenn
skidmore, chris
warnicke, retha
authors:
dalton, heather
gregory, philippa
rounding, virginia
weir, alison
eras:
places:
figures:
Henry VIII, by Dr. Lucy Wooding
The Ebbs and Flows of Fortune: The Life of Thomas Howard, Third Duke of Norfolk, David M. Head
Sarah Bolger as Mary Tudor
The Tudors season 3 (2/2)
Impostures in Early Modern England: Representations and Perceptions of Fraudulent Identities, Tobias Hug
How to rank the English queens of Henry VIII according to their family promotion abilities?
mm, i don't really think i can include his foreign royal consorts, because their family weren't naturally...there, except for the family born there (princess mary).
even then it's difficult to rate because some of them had more family than others (katherine howard, for example, had many full and half-siblings, as her mother had married her father as a widow), so it's like, are we rating by the levels/titles to which they were raised as their relative was queen, or how many were promoted? and then obviously among the english-born wives, anne boleyn spent the longest time as henry's betrothed, so does that time count, or not? and if any of their relatives are arrested or executed, does that 'cancel out' their promotions? and i would assume we're limiting the scope of time what could be reasonably attributed to their influence; and to henry as king.
'estimating' i would say: anne boleyn, katherine howard, jane seymour (that order might be controversial, but none of the seymours were even nominated to the order of the garter while jane was queen, whereas george boleyn was during his sister's time, and henry howard was actually elected), and katherine parr. similar to the 'how much political influence' ask (tags); and another underlooked criteria re: their 'provincial players', and those of their children.
Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn
The Tudors 2.09
"The king never does an unpleasant thing, Lord Cromwell does it for him."
WOLF HALL: THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT - obedience (2.02)
THE LADY MARY
↳ As portrayed by Lilit Lesser in BBC’s Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light
What do you think of the statement 'Thomas Cromwell did not push for Anne Boleyn's downfall because Henry VIII demanded it'?
i think it's a little too vague for me to judge or assess. what point in the timeline is suggested in this statement, if at all? bcus to my estimation there were different pressure points. mid-to-late april 1536, it doesn't seem henry had decided to move against anne. by may 1536 he obviously had.
cromwell knew henry very well and i believe he used sworn statements to the best effect, and chose dates to match accusations that would best inflict his pride, and best appealed to henry's paranoia, psychology, sense of self-righteousness and belief in god's will (remember, he already has the blueprint of how he reads a series of stillbirths/miscarriages: signals from god). the dates in the indictment adhere to a very specific pattern: the first is october 1533, and we see that despite chapuys' hopes, elizabeth thus continues to be acknowledged as the king's daughter, even in the wake of the destruction of her maternal family.
so, what was the implication of the dates cromwell chose? what was his intent, beyond traducing the boleyns and their supporters? he was a politico, he did nothing without purpose. the dates align with conception and pregnancies. thus, the chosen dates are suggestive of either: anne's miscarriages were borne of adultery, and/or caused by adultery (besides dates that align with conception, such as the october 1533 accusation of adultery with henry norris, the other ones are dated during her pregnancies, and sex during pregnancy went against church law and physicians' advice).
henry's personal history matters here. he has lost five children by his first marriage, and an estimated two-three by his second. his emotional connection and bond with anne, as it was, matters also, and cromwell would have been very aware of it: mutual loss can weaken such bonds, but it can strengthen them, too. his first son by his first wife dies, but he doesn't abandon her soon thereafter, they continue to try until they have a healthy child, and then once more. cromwell is not going to survive, either literally (as it was alleged she threatened), or politically (what we have firmer evidence for than chapuys alone, via recounts of the sermons she patronized by 'her bishops' themselves), another few years of anne as queen.
largely, in period dramas, the tightness of this timeline is so propulsive that it relies on a very straightforward narrative: the boleyn(s)/faction was already crumbling, henry's love for anne was already gone, had already turned to implacable hatred, and cromwell merely threw a bundle of dynamite underneath the cliff and speeded matters along. the only one that has gone with the ives-structure, the more nuanced and complex portrait, of anne vulnerable, but not defeated, and perhaps even regaining ground and strength (and this being taken as the threat it was, for her enemies), was anne boleyn (2021).
joann dellaneva theorizes that the 'three men' who presented the accusations to henry were browne, fitzwilliam, and thomas cromwell. all three would have known of how henry comported himself when it came to his wife's pregnancies and miscarriages; and how it was imperative that they tarnish the previous emotional appeals she had made concerning them.
de carles recounts how 'when the queen heard the news [of henry's hard fall, circa january 1536], she barely kept from falling flat out dead from anxiety, such that she greatly hurt [herself], and [miscarried] [...] a fine son', which dellaneva supplements with other sources in-endnote (wriothesley's chronicle and chapuys), corroborative of the details "that the child was a male and the miscarriage was caused by the 'fright' Anne took upon being told of the king's accident." he also recounts henry's anxiety concerning, at least, her first pregnancy, which is commensurate with anne's, above: '[the] anxiety the king would draw from [her pregnancy pains] [...] [were such that he wished her to miscarry, if it would save her own life] [...] [and] [caused him] to treat her so solicitously, taking greater pains to know her every whim than he would have done to save his own life [...] the king himself felt such extreme concern and grief, [that] everyone tried to hard to devise a thousand ways to recover [her] health'.
setting this account in balance with more hostile sources contributes to this portrait: we have anne's emotional appeal, and henry's reaction.
"As yet there is no change with regard to the Princess, who wrote to me yesterday she wished me to send or write again to your Majesty to remedy her case. I learn from several persons of this Court that for more than three months this King has not spoken ten times to the Concubine, and that when she miscarried he scarcely said anything to her, except that he saw clearly that God did not wish to give him male children; and in leaving her he told her, as if for spite, that he would speak to her after she was "releuize."
The said Concubine attributed the misfortune to two causes: first, the King's fall; and, secondly, that the love she bore him was far greater than that of the late Queen, so that her heart broke when she saw that he loved others. At which remark the King was much grieved, and has shown his feeling by the fact that during these festive days he is here, and has left the other at Greenwich, when formerly he could not leave her for an hour."
"God did not wish to give him male children" is key here, as often novels and period dramas addendum the line to "no sons by her". the report of his words is actually more suggestive of a henry accepting this event as judgement from god on him, rather that attributing blame to anne. and the lines that tend to get the most airplay are the allegation that the king has not spoken to his wife 'more than ten times in the past three months' (contradicted by the 'merry together' report of december 1535, in the least) and the 'told her [as if for spite] that he would speak to her once she was well.'
but some elements get sloughed away in this retelling: 1) neither chapuys nor mary seem to take this alleged rift as an encouraging sign ("as yet there is no change with regard to the Princess") for their cause, 2) henry's reaction to anne blaming her miscarriage on his accident and infidelity is of a man 'much grieved'.
hviii, understandably, is generally regarded as a figure absent conscience or guilt. but 'much grieved' would indeed suggest some personal guilt. so we return with that report of his solicitousness, informing:
"The king seeming to affect Jane Seymour, and having her on his knee, as Queen Anne espied, who then was thought to be with child, she for anger and disdain miscarried, as she said, betwitting the king with it, who willed her to pardon him, and he would not displease her in that kind there-after."
so...what does this mean? "willed her to pardon him" is fairly (although, not completely-- perhaps one statement preceded the other) incompatible with "would not speak with her until she was well" (sometimes taken as, "i see you are unwell", ie, gaslighting her accusation of infidelity). "would not displease her in that kind thereafter" is also interesting...i've wondered at times if shades of each retelling are true. maybe 'would not displease her in that kind thereafter' was a promise to quit the 'recklessness' of the joust, omitted here but included in chapuys' retelling as her 'attribution'.
enter the perfect storm arriving: henry has accepted blame, whether from god or from anne. he is within guilt, he has humbled himself in doing so, but has never sat very comfortably with guilt or humility. allegations arrive which suggest that he was never to blame after all, that he has been manipulated into taking blame, and that he has been deeply betrayed and dishonoured.
is there a sense of relief? again, these accusations cover all bases, and will appeal on two possible paths: the miscarriages are not judgement from god on him, the last one was not a sign god was displeased with him, he can still have sons-- a wicked woman has either destroyed his unborn children, through adultery during the pregnancies, or they were not, after all, his unborn children. her emotional appeal is erased: she plotted his death, she never fainted upon hearing of it, her miscarriage was only god's judgement on her, as the ones before, she was probably relieved, or had even plotted that exact fall herself (only one scholar i know of so far has made this connection, but it's plausible it was put to henry that his fall from his horse was actually the design of anne and one of her 'lovers': another appeal to pride and paranoia, foul play as explanation rather than his age or any deficit of skill).
why would he have believed this story, 'appealing' as it was to an exploited paranoia? according to de carles, the three men end with some variation of the 'dead shoes' incident:
'Norris has sworn to the queen that he will marry her, I'm quite sure of it.'
if henry heard of this version before he heard of norris going to her almoner to swear 'she was a good woman', he would have seen both in the worst possible light. it would also have lent credence to some of the other allegations made by these "three men", and indeed, de carles reports that "the king, little by little, began to trust his [these] gentlemen [above] the queen".
there's also a suggestion that the case was not fully "made", but rather, presented to henry in a way to "sound him out". not all the men that are eventually accused are mentioned ("several men included [...] which, for the moment, i will not name [...] in time you will hear about things that are, at present, shrouded in silence"), chapuys suggests cromwell "claimed that it was a prophecy made in Flanders ‘threatening the king with a conspiracy of those who were nearest his person’, which had ‘roused his suspicion and made him enquire into the matter’". henry had had comparably extreme reactions to treason cases involving prophecies in the past, with suspects both 'high' (the duke of buckingham, in this case, the queen and noblemen) and 'low' (elizabeth barton, in this case, mark smeaton) and had them again (also often argued as another case in which cromwell "se mist a fantasier et conspirer le dict affaire") in the 'white rose/exeter' conspiracy.
de carles account of henry's reaction, certainly does not suggest one of a man that has ordered his councilor to find a way out of his marriage:
"The King is astounded, and his colour changes [...] for which he declared himself to be the most miserable of all men, then he said this [...] 'If it should happen that your report is not true [...] you, instead of them, shall suffer pain of death.'"
my own theory, since i first read lipscomb's analysis of this source, has developed over time, somewhat a marrying of ives' theory and her own: cromwell's impetus, and then henry's gradual ("little by little") belief, encouraged by others and reinforced by his own belief that he was chosen and blessed by god, and possibly his own recent hurt and insecurity at his wife's recent 'coolness' towards him (the reason it seems cromwell was the instigator is the masterful framing of the case and indictments, each word seems carefully chosen by someone that is very familiar with henry's vulnerabilities, buried in the lurid details are allegations that are hardly treasonous, but directly mock every vatican-stolen, tenderly penned promise: "affirming that she would never love the King in her heart").
timing wasn't just limited to henry, either: there is a sense also that public opinion had softened somewhat towards anne. whereas years earlier, there were reports of individuals rejoicing to hear of anne's miscarriage, in 1536 wriothesley records that "[her delivery] afore her full time [...] was a great discomfort to all this realm". that could be dismissed as suggestive of sympathy for henry rather than anne, but it neatly parallels with another report: "The Queen has been delivered in her eighth month of a stillborn daughter, to the great sorrow of the nation" (1518).
"great discomfort" and "great sorrow" are not equal terms, but the former still would not have been comforting to boleyn opposition. again, it's suggestive of a 'softening' that presaged a dangerous future for them: anne on the way to regaining her husband's esteem and affection (chapuys notes her loss of favour with him, and its subsequent return, many a time previous) and favour means she's in strength to regain the same for her adherents, add to that the possibility of her gaining the affection of english subjects even in her 'failure' (and the potential of how much more she could gain if she had a prince), and the sum equals an opponent near-undefeatable.
we arrive at the ives-factional theory and narrative: anne might have been down, but she was never really "out", as evidenced by past false dawns for the marian party that were largely dependent on signals of henry's disfavour. his disfavour had to be permanent and deadly, and this was the most viable path to eventuate that.
the answer of the end is often in the beginning. i'll wrap up with one last de carles quote:
"The king held many a courteous conversation with her, not like a king, or a lord, or a husband, but, desiring to be her chosen one, [and endear himself to her], would [...] appease her if she were offended, and he would seek every means to please her."
according to at least one source, henry had indeed, recently attempted to 'appease her [offense]'. such potential reconciliation ("dining and sleeping with her") was a threat to not just cromwell, but several of his [makeshift] allies, although they did not all share motives.
So Henry is still having sex with Mary while actively courting Anne and trying to marry her?
I have to give PGregs credit, most historians say that Henry at least dropped Mary before pursuing Anne but she’s just like naaah, Henry has Anne during the day and Mary at night.
But obviously Anne is still the villain in all of this.
#i’m just picturing an 80s movie style montage #of him laughing with anne during the day #and fucking mary at night
this whole arc was actually one of the most well-developed in the novel (as in plot, obviously there's nothing to speak to its accuracy); the cyrano-ing foreshadowing was also very 80s/90s teen movie:
more so because that excerpt is very early in the novel, and brought home very late:
