Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [39]
Gertrude Courtenay (née Blount), marchioness of Exeter, and her husband, the marquess, who was the honorific head of the Privy Chamber and Henry’s first cousin, reported that Henry had shared with someone “in great confidence, and as if it were in confession” his doubts about Anne. “He had made this marriage,” he said, “seduced by witchcraft and for this reason he considered it null; and that this was evident because God did not permit them to have any male issue.”
He now believed that he might take another wife.4 He had been “making much of a lady of the Court, named Mistress Semel [Seymour], to whom, many say, he [Henry] has lately made great presents.”5 Jane Seymour, the twenty-five-year-old daughter of a Wiltshire gentleman, had formerly been in the service of Katherine of Aragon and was now the focus of the king’s affection. As for Anne, “her heart broke when she saw that he loved others.”6
IN EARLY FEBRUARY, Mary changed residence. The imperial ambassador reported that the princess was well and “better accompanied on her removal and provided with what was necessary to her than she had been before.” Her father had put “about 100,000 crowns” at her disposal to distribute in alms. It had been rumored that the king meant “to increase her train and exalt her position.” But, as Chapuys wrote, this had been before Anne’s miscarriage:
I hope it may be so, and that no scorpion lurks under the honey. I think the King only waited to summon the said Princess to swear to the statutes in expectation that the concubine would have had a male child, of which they both felt assured. I know not what they will do now.7
Mary’s supporters, including the marquess and marchioness of Exeter; Lord Montague (the son of Margaret Pole); Sir Nicholas Carew, the master of horse; and the imperial ambassador sought to capitalize on Anne Boleyn’s loss of favor and looked toward restoring Mary as the rightful heir to the throne. Jane Seymour’s sympathy for Mary was well known. Two years before, she had sent to Mary to “tell her to be of good cheer, and that her troubles would sooner come to an end than she supposed, and that when the opportunity occurred she would show herself her true and devoted servant.”8
On April 29, it was reported that Sir Nicholas Carew was promoting Jane Seymour and communicating with Mary, telling her “to be of good cheer, for shortly the opposite party would put water in their wine.”9 Carew and his allies at court coached Jane as to how she should behave to secure the king’s affection, urging her “that she must by no means comply with the King’s wishes except by way of marriage.”10 When, in March, Henry sent her a letter and “a purse full of sovereigns,” Jane returned them unopened and, falling to her knees, begged that Henry “consider that she was a gentlewoman of good and honourable parents, without reproach” and that if he “wished to make her some present in money she begged it might be when God enabled her to make some honourable match.”11 As Gertrude Courtenay, the marchioness of Exeter, put it, “Henry’s love and desire … was wonderfully increased.”12 It was claimed that “[Anne] and Cromwell were on bad terms, and … some new marriage for the King was spoken of.”13 Now, with the king looking to marry once more, Cromwell sought to bring about Anne Boleyn’s downfall.
EASTER WEEK PROVED to be of fateful consequence. Two public rows—the first between Anne and Mark Smeaton, one of the queen’s musicians, the other between Anne and Sir Henry Norris, the chief gentleman of the king’s Privy Chamber—gave Cromwell the excuse he needed. The conversations had suggested that they were infatuated with the queen and desired the king’s death. By the afternoon of Sunday, March 30, Henry had been told of the exchanges and had angrily confronted Anne. They both