EP 06 - Henry VIII: the King, his wife, his lover, the French

Henry VIII: the King, his wife, his lover, the French

- Episode 06 -

Marrying Anne Boleyn, best of a bad job

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Marrying Anne Boleyn, best of a bad job

Wednesday 10 August 2022

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Henry destroyed every image of Anne after having her executed so although there are many images said to be Anne, nobody actually knows what she looked like

Henry finally allows Anne to try to become pregnant

After meeting the King of France in Boulogne and Calais in the autumn of 1532 (their first meet-up in 10 years since wrestling together at the Field of the Cloth of Gold) Henry had privately decided that he didn’t really need the French anymore, even if they need his help against the Spanish.

He'd signed his own peace treaty with the Spanish but without an annulment, no big-time European princess was going to marry him. He’d distanced himself from Katherine and their daughter Mary. NOW he needed an heir without Spanish ancestry.

If he and Anne could have a child it would be the best of a bad job. Marrying Anne would upset the French, but Henry would take that risk.

Now, as they planned to leave Calais, Henry and Anne dallied. They put off their voyage for a fortnight, blaming bad weather. Once across, they took a full ten days to get from Dover to the royal palace at Eltham [well worth a visit], where they arrived on Sunday 24 November.

Exactly 41 weeks later Anne would give birth to a daughter, Elizabeth. She had got pregnant on the trip back from France.

The best evidence is that Henry married Anne privately sometime towards the end of January 1533, once her pregnancy was confirmed.

It had been, of course, important for Henry to prove Anne’s fertility before marrying her. Having sex after engagement, but before marriage, wasn’t unusual for an aristocratic, or even for a commoner couple in early modern England.

Anne had not bounced Henry into marriage by getting pregnant. She had just proved that, after all the effort, she was actually worth marrying.

'The Ambassadors', by Hans Holbein the Younger, National Portrait Gallery

The French mourn the loss of the long worked-for harmony with Henry and Clement

At Easter 1533 Hans Holbein, who’d been painting portraits at Henry VIII’s court on and off since 1526, painted a large canvas of the French Ambassador to England, Jean de Dinteville, and a man who is probably his gay lover George de Selve.

It’s now in the National Gallery in London and is known as ‘the Ambassadors.’ From clues in the painting we know it’s meant to be 11 April 1533.

Now that was the day Henry’s Privy Council formally accepted Anne as queen. It was also Good Friday and, according to calculations at the time, reckoned to be exactly 1500 years to the day since Christ was crucified. It could hardly have represented a more solemn moment.

The Ambassador in the painting, Jean de Dinteville, had previously spent months in Rome, negotiating with the Pope on Henry’s behalf. So he knew Anne’s case intimately.

The painting is full of symbolism and there are many different interpretations. But most agree that it shows a world broken, threatened by turbulence and confusion, perhaps even chaos. A lute lies between the two men. Its broken string seems to sum up a world out of tune, lost, unable to sing.

At one level it expresses the sense among the French that their long worked-for harmony with Henry had snapped. They were no longer working together.

#51 Marrying Anne Boleyn, the best of a bad job. LISTEN HERE

Henry's desperate decision to marry Anne Boleyn brings to an end his long game to remain at the centre of Europe

Rarely seen portrait of Catherine in mourning for her husband in 1561. She's Queen Regent of France now, with her arm around her newly crowned son Charles IX of France

A desperate last bid by the French to bind the pope to Francis and Henry through his niece Catherine de’Medici

Henry’s French allies were appalled. Keeping the pope on their side, and out of Spanish control, would be much more difficult now.

After all the years of stringing this affair out between them, Henry’s priorities had changed and he had finally deserted the French. But Francis I was not going to give up straight away.

The French needed the English – and the papacy - too badly.
So they pressed on with the plan, discussed by Henry and Francis at Boulogne, to meet again with the pope in Marseilles. There they would marry the French king’s second son, 14-year old Henri, to Pope Clement’s 14-year old niece Catherine de’Medici. They would use the occasion to orchestrate a reconciliation between Henry and Rome. The wedding was planned for October 1533.

Clement would later call the marriage 'the greatest match in the world'. Even so it wouldn't have crossed anyone's mind that they had launched what would become known as the age of Catherine de’Medici 1547-1589.

When Henri and Catherine were both just 17-years old, Henri’s older brother died and Henri became the Dauphin. Henri became king in 1547.

But Catherine's period of power really began in 1559 when Henri died and she found herself in turn Queen Regent of France to no less than 3 of her ten children: Francis II, Charles IV, and Henry III.

According to Mark Strage, one of her biographers, Catherine was for most of the 16th century ‘the most important woman in Europe’ - see Women of Power: The Life and Times of Catherine de' Medici

Photos & read more - all episodes on our website here

Meeting of Clement and Francis I, Marseilles, 13 October 1533, by Charles-Philippe Larivière [possibly the Dauphin and second son Henri in matching costumes beside their father]

When October 1533 came, the Spanish had taken all the boats, so Pope Clement sailed along the coast to Marseilles in French ships.

Clement was escorted ashore but his young niece Catherine was left bobbing about in the harbour for another fortnight while her uncle did the political negotiations. Poor girl, she was used to this kind of thing. When she was 8-years old she’d been held hostage in Florence for some months after the rebellion there.

Henry had promised to come to Marseille to meet the pope in person (it would be his first papal encounter). Instead he sent Anne’s hapless brother Lord Rochford, the Duke of Norfolk, some bishops and a few councillors.

They were totally unequipped to deal with the grenade hurled at them as they rested at Lyons about 8 days’ ride from Marseilles. The pope they were going to meet had just passed a sentence of excommunication against Henry VIII.

Now Clement had actually told the French that he’d had to give into Spanish pressure BUT that nothing would actually happen if Henry were excommunicated. It could all still be patched up at Marseilles.

When they heard the news, Rochford and most of the English delegation went home, leaving just two bishops to deal with Clement and Francis.

Francis I later told his ambassador to England what happened when they all got to Marseilles. Clement had offered to help Francis obtain Milan if only he would stay out of Henry’s affair. But Francis had turned him down. Instead he successfully negotiated the pope’s agreement to do everything possible to assist Henry in his annulment.

Imagine his horror then, to discover Henry’s two bishops in an angry row with the pope and Clement folding and unfolding his handkerchief as he did when he was upset. The English were loudly threatening a General Council of the church, which was probably the thing Clement feared the most since it had the power to declare him illegitimate.

Incandescent, Francis accused the English of undoing a week’s work in an hour. ‘As fast as I study to win the pope, ye study to lose him…. Ye have clearly marred all.’ But by now Henry had stopped caring about what Francis thought.

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