Hunting the Falcon by John Guy and Julia Fox

Author:John Guy and Julia Fox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

*See also below, here–here, here–here.

23

Dangerous Times

On 15 January 1534, Henry reconvened Parliament, where in early February Thomas Cromwell, in his capacity as the king’s parliamentary manager, introduced bills to abolish payments to Rome and to confirm the reduction of Katherine’s title to that of ‘Princess Dowager’. On 20 March, there followed a bill declaring Katherine’s marriage null and void and settling the succession on Anne’s children. The crown was to descend by primogeniture, first to Henry and Anne’s sons, and then to their heirs. In default of male progeny, Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth, was to succeed. As finally enacted and enforced, the Act of Succession would require the king’s male subjects over the age of fourteen to swear an oath affirming the ‘whole effects and contents’ of the measure. The Act created several new forms of treason: deeds or writings threatening the king or ‘derogating’ or slandering his marriage to Anne were to be adjudged high treason. And in a draconian extension of the law, the definition of treason was widened to include opposition, or incitement to opposition, by words alone, punishable with life imprisonment and loss of property.1

On 23 March, the Monday of Passion Week, the bill settling the succession on Anne’s children cleared its passage in the House of Lords. On the same day in Rome, the cardinals voted unanimously in the Consistory in favour of Katherine, and Clement declared her marriage to Henry to be valid and Anne’s null and void. Jean du Bellay’s last-minute diplomacy in Rome had conspicuously failed. The one glimmer of light was that the question of the king’s excommunication was left ambiguous, as Clement, despite his earlier bluster, was anxious not to provoke war at a moment when Charles was preoccupied with a Lutheran uprising in Germany and with fresh incursions of the Turks in the western Mediterranean and north Africa, where they had captured Tunis. Still, the threat of papal sanctions loomed large over Henry.2

From now on, however, Henry intended to make his break with Rome irrevocable and give legislative status to his claim to be Supreme Head of the Church. His commitment to Anne was as strong as on the day of their marriage. She was his lawful wife and rightful queen, the woman he loved and wanted by his side for the rest of his life and reign. If Clement resisted, he would defy him. If his subjects objected, then he would teach them their duties of obedience to sovereign rulers. Dissidents must suppress or cloak their opinions, or else be prepared to suffer the penalties. Papal jurisdiction, he maintained, had been exercised in England ‘but only by negligence or usurpation as we take it and esteem’. He recognised no superior on earth, ‘but only God’.3

After Anne’s coronation, opposition to Henry’s second marriage had ceased to be confined to backstairs gossip or murmurings in London. And whenever they encountered it, Henry and Anne acted as one. People had to choose which side they were on, theirs or Katherine’s. Much of

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