Ladies-in-Waiting: Women Who Served at the Tudor Court by Evans Victoria Sylvia

Author:Evans, Victoria Sylvia [Evans, Victoria Sylvia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Avid Reader Publishing
Published: 2014-07-28T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8: Anne Boleyn, Queen-in-waiting, 1527-32

Anne Boleyn could never have envisaged in May 1527 that it would be nearly seven long years before Henry VIII was able to marry her. The King’s strongest argument in his quest for divorce was that his conscience was troubled by his marriage to Katherine of Aragon, who was his brother’s widow. He believed that his lack of surviving male heirs was due to the fact that the Bible, in the book of Leviticus, stated that a man who married his brother’s widow would remain childless. Henry, of course, had a daughter, Princess Mary, but the lack of sons, in his own perception, meant that he was literally childless.

The irony of Henry VIII’s situation was that he was eager to apply for a papal dispensation to marry Anne based on a proven degree of affinity with Anne Boleyn’s elder sister, Mary, who had previously been his mistress, but he demanded a divorce based on a rumoured degree of affinity between Katherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur. The irony was not lost on courtiers who sympathised with Katherine of Aragon. The fact that Henry stood in the same degree of affinity to Anne as he did to Katherine undermined his credibility, casting Anne Boleyn in the role of a manipulative mistress who desired to topple the Queen from her throne.

Anne was exposed to the hostility of women at court. The French ambassador opined that “if the matter were decided by women, the King would lose the battle”.[200] Most women were afraid that if the King could get rid of his wife of twenty years standing, their husbands could do exactly the same. Anne thus became the other woman who ensnared the King, although, as it is clear from Henry VIII’s passionate love letters, Anne put up resistance when she was offered the role of sole mistress. Perhaps she learned from her sister’s example.

Mary Boleyn Carey became Henry VIII’s love interest at an unknown date during the 1520s. Some contemporary rumours implied that Mary’s children, Katherine and Henry Carey, were fathered by the King, although he never acknowledged them as his own because the legal implication was that they were fathered by Mary’s husband, William Carey. It remains unknown how long Henry VIII’s liaison with Mary Boleyn lasted or what their mutual feelings were. The evidence suggests, however, that Mary Boleyn Carey was more than just a passing fancy.

When the imperial ambassador Chapuys arrived in England in 1529, he quickly discovered that the King had a sexual relationship with Anne Boleyn’s sister. “I am not sure that Your Majesty will believe what I am about to state”, he wrote to his master, Charles V, “people say that it is only the King’s evil destiny that impels him, for had he as he asserts, only attended to the voice of conscience, there would have been still greater affinity to contend with in this intended marriage than in that of the Queen, his wife, a fact of which everyone here speaks quite openly.

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