The Six Wives & Many Mistresses of Henry VIII: The Women's Stories by Amy Licence

Author:Amy Licence [Licence, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
Published: 2014-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

33

Love Letters, 1526–27

Nothynge yerthly to me more desyrous

Than to beholde youre bewteouse countenaunce:

But, hatefull absens, to me so enuyous,

Though thou withdraw me from her by long dystaunce.1

Anne Boleyn’s royal suitor was undergoing a period of transition. The years 1524–26 had been a time of intense personal challenge for the king and queen, bringing them to the recognition that their relationship had permanently changed. Their hopes of another child had been dashed and the future path of the Tudor dynasty was uncertain. Henry was no longer the ‘green’ young man who had wooed women entirely for pleasure, as sexual adventures and playthings, as parallels for the hart he hunted in the forest, and outlets for his physical needs. After each previous romance he had returned to Catherine as his wife and equal, whose breeding and position meant that none of his paramours could really offer any competition. By 1526, those days were gone. Henry was thirty-five and his wife was forty. In these years, the king was facing some difficult decisions about his future.

Henry appears to have fallen in love with Anne by early February 1526. At the Greenwich Shrovetide jousts, he dressed in embroidered gold and silver bearing the device of a ‘mannes harte in a presse, with flames about it’, and the motto ‘declare, I dare not’. His opponents, headed by the king’s cousin Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, were dressed in green-and-red velvet decorated with burning hearts. Over this image was that of a woman’s hand ‘commyng out of a cloud, holdyng a garden water pot, which dropped silver drops on the harte’, giving relief. This symbolism revealed a new object of affection, the pain of concealed love and the remedy, which was within the reach of the right woman.

During the celebrations, Henry ‘did service’ to the queen and her ladies. This would have included Anne, to whom his cryptic message was directed. It is likely that, by this time, she was aware of his meaning. Equally Catherine may have seen the signs but not known the identity of her rival; it is impossible to know just how aware she was of the flirtations taking place in her household. However, the joust then took a violent and shocking turn. In an accident reminiscent of that Henry himself had endured in 1524, when a lance splintered against his helmet, Sir Francis Bryan was injured by the ‘chance shivering of the spere’.2 He lost an eye and would always wear a patch as a consequence. Such an accident would kill the French king Henri II in 1559. It was another reminder of the fragility of life and that death could strike at any time, even in the royal circle. If the king was to meet an untimely end, the realm would be left in the hands of a ten-year-old girl.

Henry’s embroidered motto may have stated that he dared not declare his love, but this was only in a public arena. He knew the queen was watching. In private, though, he did not hesitate to make his feelings plain.

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