Anne Boleyn; a chapter of English history, 1527-1536

Preface

In this book I do not profess to present a complete biography of Anne Boleyn, or an exhaustive history of her times. It contains merely a sketch of some events in the reign of Henry VIII. with which the name of Anne Boleyn is intimately connected. Short and incomplete as my account of these events is, it will, I hope, draw attention to certain aspects of the period between 1527 and 1536 which have not hitherto been sufficiently explained.

The sources from which I have derived my materials may be roughly divided into five great classes. First of all, there is the English correspondence of Henry, his ministers, and his subordinate agents, with sundry proclamations, accounts, treaties, and similar papers. Secondly, there is the correspondence of Charles V,, of his aunt, sister, and brother, and of his ministers, a good deal of which relates to England. Thirdly, vi PEEFACE.

tliere is the Frencli correspondence of the same kind. Fourthly, there is the little we have of the correspondence of the papal agents and of the neutral States. Fifthly, there are sundry diaries, chronicles, memoirs of contemporaries, accounts compiled by trustworthy writers from sources now lost, and similar miscellaneous documents.

Of these sources the English State papers might naturally be expected to be the most important ; but though a good many papers of the time have been preserved, they contain comparatively little information, and that little is not quite trustworthy. In the private letters which Englishmen then wrote to one another there were very few references to public events. Letters were frequently intercepted, and if the authorities found in them any reflections on the Government or anything which might be considered a betrayal of trust, both the writer and the recipient were in danger of losing life or liberty. People wrote, therefore, as seldom as possible, and when they did write they dared not abuse even the opposition, for by some caprice of the king those who were one day out of favour might next day be controlling the royal council. If, by chance, some man, bolder than the rest, expressed his real opinions,

PEEFACJE. vii

the person who received the letter was generally careful to burn it at once. Thus the private correspondence which has come down to us from the age of Henry VIII. throws hardly any light upon the feelings of the nation and of the court.

In the correspondence of the royal ministers there is a very incomplete and untrustworthy picture of the negotiations which were carried on. The agents of Henry VIII. were usually much more eager to flatter the king by representing matters in a light agreeable to his vanity, than to serve him faithfully by accurately reporting what they knew. Even the few who did not absolutely betray him did not scruple to suppress facts or to tell downright lies, if by doing so they might hope to please him. Whole series of negotiations came to nought because Henry never understood the real state of the case.

The dishonesty of the royal agents was bad enough, but it was not worse than that of their master. In the despatches and instructions addressed by Henry to his agents both at home and abroad, he told the truth only when the truth happened to suit his purpose. Of course official documents issued by the Government often contained garbled accounts of events ; but in this respect the English were not viii PREFACE.

singular ; they acted in accordance with the custom of all other Governments of the period. Even Henry's secret despatches, however, were frequently so misleading that his agents abroad found it most difficult to obey his orders.

It would be possible to think with equanimity of the annoyance which these misrepresentations caused to Henry's ambassadors and ministers, and of the difficulties they occasioned in the work of administration ; but a historian may be pardoned if, for his own sake, he sometimes becomes a little impatient with Henry. The task of sifting the English evidence, of examining how much in each despatch is true, and how much is simply boasting and misrepresentation, is extremely laborious and tiresome.

The imperial correspondence is of a very different kind. The agents of Charles V., knowing that to flatter their master by deceiving him as to current negotiations would not serve their interests, spoke the truth, or what they believed to be the truth. Now and then they took a little too much credit for ability and energy ; but they never gave an essentially false idea of the events they had to report. This correspondence, therefore, of which the larger part has been preserved, is of the greatest value ; and

PREFACE. ix

for my present work its value is much enhanced by the fact that, with the exception of the papers printed by Mr. Weiss/ Dr. Lanz/ Dr. Heine/ and Bucholtz/ very little use has hitherto been made of it by historians.

The imperial correspondence is preserved at many different places. Of the papers preserved at Besancon, the Papiers d'JEtat de Granvelle contain all that is most important. Of those preserved at Simancas, Barcelona, Madrid, and in the National Archives at Paris and Brussels, a great many were copied for the late Mr. Bergenroth, and a part of his collection is now in the British Museum.^ I need not say that I have made very considerable use of these transcripts.

The papers preserved in the Imperial Archives of State at Vienna contain the correspondence of three successive ambassadors resident in England, the

1 Papiers d'Etat du Cardinal de Granvelle, edited by Ch. Weiss, Paris, 1841—1852.

2 Correipondenz des Kaisers Karl V., edited by Dr. C. Lanz, Stuttgart, 1844; and Staatspapiere zur Geschichte des Kaisers Karl v., by the same, Stuttgart, 1843.

3 Briefe an Kaiser Karl V., edited by Dr. G. Heine, Berlin, 1848.

* Geschichte der Eegierung Ferdinand des Ersten, by F. v. Bucholtz, Vienna, 1834—1838.

5 BritisL Museum Add. MSS., vol. 28,572 to 28,597.

X PE.EFACE.

Bisliop of Badajoz, Don Inigo de Mendoca, and Eustache Chapuis. As my narrative is based chiefly on tlie letters to and from Chapuis, I may be permitted to examine the charges which have been brought against him by some writers.

In 1844 a few of the letters of Chapuis were printed by Dr. Carl Lanz. A translation of a few more was published in 1850 by the Eev. W. Bradford.^ About 1869 a part of the Chapuis correspondence was inspected at Vienna by Mr. Froude/ and in an Appendix to the second volume of his History of England he printed extracts from the letters he had seen. Subsequently Mr. Brewer and Mr. Gairdner, in the Letters and Papers of the reign of Henry VIII. / gave abstracts of a certain number of these papers ; and Don Pascual de Gayangos, in his Calendar, presented what he called a '"full translation of their contents."

The little volume of the Eev. W. Bradford is of no great importance, for it contains very few papers, and the translations are not quite correct. The two or three papers printed by Dr. Lanz are very accurately

1 Correspondence of Charles V., by W. Bradford, 1850.

2 History of England, hy 3. A. Froude, 1872, vol. ii. Appendix.

3 Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII., vols. iv. — vii.

PEEFACE. xi

given, but they form a nearly infinitesimal part of the correspondence. Unfortunately the extracts published by Mr. Froude, which might have been of great value, are full of mistakes. The abstracts in the volumes edited by Mr. Brewer and Mr. Gairdner are certainly much more correct than Mr. Fronde's quotations and translations, but even they contain a good many errors. They were made from copies sent from Vienna, which in some cases were not exact ; and the writers have occasionally misunderstood Chapuis, whose French is often rather puzzling. The full translations of -the letters of Chapuis said to be contained in the Calendar of Don Pascual de Gayangos must also be accepted with caution. Like the abstracts of Mr. Brewer and Mr. Gairdner, most of them have been made from copies which are not always trustworthy ; passages are "sometimes incorrectly rendered ; and the whole is interspersed with explanations and additions without any indication that they are the work of the editor. In reading this Calendar one can never be certain whether it is Don Pascual or Chapuis who speaks.

The shortcomings of nearly all the printed collections, abstracts, and translations of the letters of Chapuis have raised a doubt as to his entire trustxii PREFACE.

worthiness. Mr. Froude says of him : "It is necessary to say that Chapuis was a bitter Catholic ; " and further on : " He speaks of the king throughout as the one person whose obstinacy and pride made a reconciliation with Eome impossible. In some instances his accounts can be proved untrue, in others he recalls in a second letter the hasty statements of a first." ^

For these assertions Mr. Froude advances no evidence whatever. It is not the fact that Chapuis speaks of Henry VIII. as the one person whose obstinacy and pride made a reconciliation with Eome impossible. On the contrary, Chapuis speaks of the king as a weak and vacillating man, and it is not Henry but Anne Boleyn whom he calls the principal author of heresy. And as to the accounts of the ambassador which can be proved untrue, it is a pity that Mr. Froude has not shown what they are. Partial the accounts given by Chapuis may be ; he may blame that which to many people appears right ; he may call his adversaries bad names ; and he may take pleasure in repeating the malevolent gossip of the town. But his statements as to facts are always made — as he takes care to show — on what seems to 1 History of England, 1873, vol, ii. p. 602.

PEEFACE. xiii

him to be good authority, and I have found no " untrue accounts " in his letters.

Of the strange way in which the ambassador is dealt with by Mr. de Gayangos, whose charges are more precise than those of Mr. Froude, I need give but one instance. In a letter of the 10th of May, 1533, he makes Chapuis say : " Whoever has a revenue of forty pounds sterling shall be compelled to accept the said order [of the Garter] or give up all the income of his estates, however large it may be, during three years. . ." ^ If Chapuis had really said this, it would have proved that after a residence of three years and a half in England he remained illacquainted with its institutions and with its laws. After some time Mr. de Gayangos himself noticed the absurdity of the passage, and in an Appendix of additions and corrections he offered the following explanation : "I should say that the order to be bestowed on the occasion of Anne Boleyn's coronation was not that of the Garter, but the less ancient and less esteemed Order of the Bath ; but thus it appears in Chapuis' original despatch, or rather in the deciphering."^ It would occur to few readers to

1 P. de Gayangos, Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, vol. iv. part ii. p. 675. ^ Ibid. p. 996.

xiv PREFACE.

doubt the accuracy of so definite an assertion, yet the statement attributed to Chapuis occurs neither in the original despatch nor in the contemporary decipher.

The charges of inaccuracy brought against Chapuis are generally based upon mistakes of this kind. The original despatches contain perfectly trustworthy information ; and I fully concur, therefore, in the high estimate of their importance which has been expressed by Mr. Brewer and Mr. Gairdner.

But like all other political letters, those of Chapuis are one-sided. If he alone had described for us the events of the period, it would have been possible to see only one-half of the picture. It is necessary to supplement his accounts by those of other ambassadors, to compare his judgments with those of members of the party which he opposed. Unhappily the materials for this part of my work have not been so full as those found among the Bergenroth transcripts, and in the Archives of Vienna. The correspondence of the French ambassadors at the English court has not, as a rule, been carefully preserved, and for whole years we have but two or three letters to guide us.

Whether the ambassadors did not always keep their papers, whether the French secretaries of state lost many of the despatches which came from

PEEFACE. XV

abroad, or whether the missing documents were subsequently destroyed during the wars and revolutions by which France was afflicted, I am not in a position to say. But historians may well express their gratitude to some Frenchmen who lived at the time of Anne Boleyn — above all, to her namesake Anne, the grandmaster of the French court (later on well known as the constable of Montmorency), and to the brothers Jean and Guillaume du Bellay. Montmorency kept all his letters, and to this day there are in the Biblioth^que Nation ale, in Paris, many volumes of his correspondence with all kinds of persons. The brothers du Bellay did even more. Guillaume intended to write a complete history of his times (some say he did write it, but that the manuscript was lost) ; and he and his brother, who had long been ambassador in England and in 1535 had become a cardinal, collected originals and copies of a large number of State papers, to which they added most interesting notes of their own. These papers are scattered among many volumes in the Bibliotheque, some of them without any proper indication of their contents. The reader will see that I have made ample use of them.

Some of the despatches of Jean du Bellay's xvi PREFACE.

successor in England, Jean Joaquin de Vaulx, as he is generally called, are preserved in Paris. Only a few letters of Jean Joaquin's successor, Giles de la Pommeraye, survive, but the letters addressed to him by Francis are in the Biblioth^que. They are unhappily very brief. The distance from Paris to London being so short, special agents were sent over very frequently, and they carried either verbal messages or instructions which have been lost.

Of the letters written by Montpesat, who succeeded de la Pommeraye, we have but two or three. The correspondence of Jean de Dinteville, Bailly of Troyes, who resided in England from the spring to the autumn of 1533, has been preserved tolerably complete in several volumes of the Collection Dupuis, now in the Bibliothfeque Nationale. A good many of the letters have been published by Camusat,-' but there are many more to which I have been able to refer. Dinteville was succeeded by Monsieur deCastillon, and very few letters belonging to the time of his first embassy to England are to be found. After Castillon came Morette, and I do not remember to have seen a single despatch written by him during a mission of about six months. Finally, in June, 1535, Antoine 1 Meslanges Historiques, edited by N. C. T, Troyes, 1619.

PREFACE. xvii

de Castelnau, Bishop of Tarbes, was appointed to reside in England, and scarcely a letter of his remains.

For the time, therefore, when Castillon's letters fail us, to the death of Anne, we know very little either of the aims of King Francis in regard to England, or of what the French ambassadors thought and said about English affairs. This leaves many a gap in the present history, for it is impossible, even by the most careful use of every little scrap of information, to jnake up for the loss of the correspondence of the ambassadors. Perhaps further search may bring some papers to light to remedy this defect, but for the present nothing more can be done.

As to the fourth group of papers, a part of the correspondence of Cardinal Campeggio has been published, and throws considerable light on the events of the years 1528 and 1529.^ The correspondence of the papal nuntio. Baron de Burgo, has not been printed, and I cannot even say whether it exists, as the papal archives were not open to the public when I was in Rome. My inquiries on the subject have

^ Vetera Monumenia, edited by Dr. A. Theiner, Kome, 1864; Monumenta Vaticana, edited by Dr. Hugo Laemmer ; and Lettere di tredici huoniini illustri, edited by Porcacohi.

VOL. I. ^ xviii PREFACK

led to no result. Of the ambassadors aud agents of minor states, only two contribute to some extent to the materials for my work. The despatches of the Venetian ambassadors and the Venetian secretary, with sundry reports, were calendared by the late Mr. Rawdon Brown ; ' and the letters and the very interesting diary of Peter Schwaben, . twice Danish ambassador at London, have been carefully edited by Mr. C. F. Wegener, the keeper of the Danish State Archives.^

Besides this mass of documents there are a great many contemporary histories, chronicles, and accounts, which I could not leave unnoticed. Some of them are very trustworthy, as, for instance, a long memoir drawn up by Cardinal du Bellay for the work of his brother Guillaume. Most of them, however, are confused and misleading, and it is necessary to test with the greatest care the evidence for every statement they contain. If in some instances I have failed to reject an unfounded assertion as to details, or to accept what is true, I hope I may be pardoned on

1 Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, edited by 'R. Brown, vols, iv. and v.

2 Aarsheretninger fra det kongelige Geheime-Archiv, edited by C.F. Wegener, vol. iii., Copenhagen, 1860 — 1865.

PREFACE. xix

account of the difficulties I liave had to encounter. As a rule, I have not accepted the evidence of chroniclers and the writers of diaries, except when they report facts which must have been well known to the general pubKc. About other matters they wrote from mere hearsay, and as they were not generally men of high station or men who were trusted by the chief ministers, they were much oftener ill-informed than otherwise.

Having now spoken of my sources in general, I must say a few words as to the shape in which the materials present themselves to the historian. A great many State papers have been printed in full in the numerous collections which have been published during the last three hundred years or more ; but these printed collections are of very different value. In some of them there is scarcely a misprint or a wrong reading in a hundred pages. Others, on the contrary, have been so carelessly edited that they are absolutely worthless. Papers have been issued as authentic, which have since been proved to be forgeries ; and some party writers have even tampered with the documents from which they print, entirely changing the sense. I am sorry to say that this practice has not wholly died out even in our century.

h 2

XX PREFACE.

In cases in which the original paper can no longer be found, a printed document cannot, therefore, be accepted as genuine or as correctly given, without a very close examination of the text and of other papers attributed to the same author. The result of such an examination often is that a printed document is shown to be either quite spurious, or very incorrectly rendered, or (and this is the most frequent blunder) something altogether different from what it is said to be. I need only point to the letter (printed by Jjurnet) which Anne Boleyn was formerly supposed to have written from her prison in the Tower, but which is now generally admitted to be a forgery, and to the letter of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII. to Wolsey, printed by Sir Henry Ellis as a letter of Catherine. These are very glaring examples, which have long been known, but they are by no means singular. There are a good many more printed letters, the testimony of which must be rejected.

Another difficulty is occasioned by the wrong dates given to papers, or by the absence of all dates. In the time of Anne Boleyn the year was reckoned in four different ways — from the 25th of December, from the 1st of January, from the 25th of March, and from Easter-day. The editors of printed collections of

PEKFACE. xxi

documents, either ignorant of this fact or failing to keep it in mind, have frequently misplaced the papers by a whole year. Even when the year may be readily determined, it is not always easy to indicate the day on which a paper was written, for papers were often dated simply by the day of the month (the month itself not being mentioned), or by the day of the week, or by the name of a saint who has several days in the calendar. This causes much confusion ; but in most instances I hope I have succeeded in placing correctly the documents from which, I have drawn my information. Of papers about the date of which I have remained in doubt I have preferred to make no use.

Even manuscript sources cannot, of course, be accepted without inquiry. Papers preserved in Archives of State may in general be considered genuine ; but in public and private libraries there are a great many volumes of originals and copies which are not so free from suspicion. In the case of documents which profess to be originals, the question of authenticity is comparatively easily solved, and the number of forgeries is, I am happy to say, very small. It is in dealing with papers pretending to be copies that historians have to be most on their guard. Is xxii PEEFACE.

the paper really a copy of a genuine original ? And, if so, is it a full and exact copy 1 These questions present themselves nearly every day to the careful inquirer, and often tax his critical power to the utmost. For it would, of course, be very rash to reject the testimony of a paper only because it is a copy, while it would be dangerous to admit it without having tested its authenticity by thorough investigation and comparison. I need not say that in examining copies which relate to my subject I have done my best to hold an even balance between extreme suspicion and misplaced confidence.

Finally, I have to offer some remarks about a very bad habit adopted by many editors of State papers. A great part of the documents of Henry VIII.'s time are written in cipher, with a contemporary decipher on the margin or on a separate sheet. Editors have been too ready to assume that such deciphers are always correct, and to print or abstract them as if they were the original letters. The secretaries who had to decipher the despatches were often very careless, or they read the cipher so quickly that they did not think it necessary to note the whole of it on the margin. The consequence is that those who accept the contemporary decipher as indubitably correct are

PREFACE. xxiii

frequently misled, and mislead others in their turn. Invariably, therefore, when a passage has seemed to me to be of great importance, or when the decipher has appeared suspicious, I have re-deciphered the original letter, and the result has sometimes been very different from the previously accepted reading. The fact that I frequently quote from the original despatch will explain some of the discrepancies between my quotations and those of Mr. Gairdner and Mr. de G-ayangos.

It would scarcely be possible to give a complete list of those who have aided me in my inquiries ; but I cannot conclude without expressing my obligations to Mr. James Gairdner, Mr. Trice Martin, and Mr. Selby, at the Eecord Office ; to Mr. A. Pinchart of the Archives du Eoyaume at Brussels ; to Mr. C. F. Wegener, the keeper of the Eoyal Archives at Copenhagen ; to His Excellency Baron von Arneth, and to Archivar Felgel of the Archives of State at Vienna ; to the Commendatore Bartolomeo Cecchetti, director of the Eoyal Archives at Venice; to Don Manuel de Goicoichea, keeper of the Archives of the Academia de Historia at Madrid ; and to Don Pascual de Gayangos. To these gentlemen my best thanks are due for the kindness with which they have xxiv PREFACE.

facilitated my researches or helped me by advice and information.

My friend Mr. James Sime has done me the favour to read the proof sheets. By his excellent advice many passages have been recast, and the whole has taken a form far superior to the original manuscript. I am greatly indebted to him for his invaluable assistance.

PAUL FRIEDMANN.

Table Of Contents

Chronological Table xxxvii. to ]xxxiv.

INTEODUCTION.

The state of England under Henry VIII.

Chapter I. Annb And Wolsey

Fantastic pedigree of Anne Boleyn

Her real descent ......

Anne born in 1502 or 1503 ....

The position of her father improves

Anne sent to France

She returns to England in 1522

A marriage with Sir James Butler negotiated

Mary Boleyn becomes Henry's mistress

Sir Thomas Boleyn is created Viscount Rochford

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Sir Henry Percy wants to marry Anne

The king shows preference for Anne

Anne is at first rather reticent

Rumours of a contemplated divorce

Henry and Wolsey, offended by Charles, side with France

Way of obtaining a divorce .

Anne begins to aim at the crown .

Ability with which she plays her game

First steps taken towards a divorce

A collusive suit begun ...

The bishops secretly consulted

Most of them are against a divorce

Catherine is warned of Wolsey's secret proceedings

Henry tells Catherine of his pretended scruples .

Wolsey commits a blunder by leaving for France

Anne begins to show her game ....

Wolsey proposes a new plan for obtaining a divorce

Henry decides to act behind Wolsey's.back .

Secretary Knight leaves for Rome with a secret mission

Wolsey in ignorance of Anne's power .

He returns to England and is made aware of it

He dissembles and regains Henry's confidence

PAGE

44 45

45,46 47 48 48 49 49 50

60,51 51 52

62, 53 63 54

64,65 66

66,57 67 58 59 60

Chapter II. The Legatine Court

Anne and Wolsey form an alliance Wolsey discovers the secret of Knight's mission Henry implores Knight not to betray him . Knight meets the pope at Orvieto .

His blunders

The briefs he sends to England are found to be insufficient

Stephen Gardiner and Edward Foxe sent to Orvieto .

Their instructions drawn up by Wolsey

And communicated to Anne . .

Apparent success of the new mission .

Anne loudly proclaims her gratitude .

Foxe returns to England

Is ordered to show Wolsey the papal briefs

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Wolsey is not satisfied with them and wants a decretal Anne has the sweating sickness and recovers "Wolsey appoints Isabel Jordan abbess of Wilton .

Henry rebukes the cardinal

Wolsey makes a humble apology

Anne assures Wolsey of her entire devotion Cardinal Campeggio leaves Rome for England

Clement VII. unjustly blamed

His position more difficult than that of his predecessors The royal power excessive ......

The national spirit unfavourable to the papacy

The strife between Charles V. and Francis I. obliges the pope to

make a cboioe between them

Leo X. and Adrian VI. side with the emperor

Clement goes over to the French

And is punished for it by the sack of Rome .

He decides on a new policy ......

He hopes to raise enemies against Charles . And to force the emperor to seek his alliance Clement hampered by his duties to his clergy He loses the allegiance of England, but retains that of the

emperor and of the French king

PAGE

82 82 82 83 83 84 85 86

CHAPTER IIL

THE DEATH OF WOLSEy.

Campeggio is instructed to procrastinate

After his departure the French are routed

The emperor behaves with great moderation towards the pope

Who is favourably inclined towards him

Henry is angered by Campeggio 's attempt to conciliate

He wants to obtain possession of the decretal

John Casale vainly asks the pope to have it given up .

The queen produces copy of a brief of dispensation .

The reported death of the pope delays the proceedings

The legatine court is held and prorogued

Anne becomes hostile to Wolsey

Gardiner made chief secretary by her influence .

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

tbe divorce

Wolsey's fall postponed

Campeggio's luggage searched

The decretal destroyed .

Wolsey is dismissed and submits

The Lords form a government

They summon a new parliament

Way in which the members were elected

An election at Canterbury

The king and Anne inspect York Place

Sir Thomas More reads the king's speech to parliament

Lord Eochford created Earl of Wiltshire

Anne's allies begin to grow lukewarm .

The emperor and the pope meet at Bologna .

Lord Wiltshire is sent to persuade them to consent to

He has an audience of Charles V. .

Who refuses to abandon his aunt ....

Lord Wiltshire is served with a citation for Henry

The pope grants a delay

Henry angry at Wiltshire's failure

Attempts made by Wolsey to regain the king's favour

His pensions from France made over to Henry

But the French will no longer pay them

Anne alarmed at Wolsey's intrigues

He is ordered to leave for York ....

He wishes to be helped by Francis

Henry tries to obtain opinions of universities in his favour

To this end the assistance of Francis indispensable

The English government therefore most friendly towards France

The Earl of Wiltshire remains as ambassador in France

Several French universities decide in favour of Henry .