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The Eternal Triangle and Court Politics: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Sir Thomas Wyatt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Retha M. Warnicke
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Extract

The opinion of modern scholars is divided about the nature of Anne Boleyn's relationship to Sir Thomas Wyatt, the Tudor poet. On the basis of a few of his verses and three Catholic treatises, some writers have concluded that Anne and he were lovers. In these analyses not enough attention has been paid to the role of Henry VIII, the third member of this alleged lovers' triangle, who guarded his own honor and inquired into that of his wives, before, during, and after their marriages to him. A comment on the way in which the king viewed and defended his honor will be useful to this examination of the evidence customarily accepted as proof of Anne and Wyatt's love affair.

A gentleman's honor, as Henry's contemporaries perceived it, was a complicated concept. First and foremost it was assumed that a man's birth and lineage would predispose him to chivalric acts on the battlefield where, in fact, only one cowardly lapse would stain his and his family's reputation forever. Secondly, the concept embodied the notion that it bestowed upon its holder certain social privileges and respect. During Henry's reign, moreover, the “realm and the community of honour” came to be viewed as “identical” with the sovereign power of the king at its head. One result of this “nationalization,” was that the behavior of crown dependants and servants affected the king's good name in both a personal and a public sense, and his ministers took care to do all that was appropriate to his reputation in settling disputes and in negotiating treaties.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , Winter 1986 , pp. 565 - 579
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1986

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References

1 I wish to thank Sir Geoffrey Elton for reading an early draft of this paper and for his encouragement of my scholarship. A version of this paper was given at the Pacific Coast Conference of British Studies held at Pomona, California, April 4-5, 1986. For a discussion of the opinions about the relationship of Anne and Wyatt, see Thomson, Patricia, Sir Thomas Wyatt and His Background (Stanford, 1964), p. 276Google Scholar; see also Wiatt, William H., “Sir Thomas Wyatt and Anne Boleyn,” English Language Notes 6 (1968):94–102Google Scholar; Anne's biographers have been divided on this issue. Erickson, Carolly, Anne Boleyn (London, 1984), pp. 55–57Google Scholar, said that the two probably had a love affair.

2 Castiglione, Baldassare, The Book of the Courtier, trans. SirHoby, Thomas, ed. Rhys, Ernest (New York, 1946), pp. 31–36Google Scholar; see also Barber, C. L., The Idea of Honour in the English Drama, 1591-1700, ed. Behre, Frank (Goteborg, 1957), pp. 48–51Google Scholar.

3 James, Mervyn E., English Politics and the Concept of Honour, 1485-1642, Supplement 3, Past and Present Society (Oxford, 1978), pp. 18, 28–30, and 63Google Scholar.

4 Castiglione, , Book of the Courtier, pp. 219–220Google Scholar; Watson, Curtis Brown, Shakespeare and the Renaissance Concept of Honor (Princeton, 1960), pp. 438–446Google Scholar; see also Sharpe, J. A., Defamation and Sexual Slander in Early Modern England: The Church Courts at York, Borthwick Papers, No. 58 (York, 1980)Google Scholar.

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7 Castiglione, , Book of the Courtier, pp. 30–35Google Scholar; James, , English Politics, pp. 8, 59, and 61Google ScholarPubMed; see also Warnicke, Retha M., “Anne Boleyn's Childhood and Adolescence,” Historical Journal 28, 4 (1985): 939–952CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Paget, Hugh, “The Youth of Anne Boleyn,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 54 (1981): 162–170CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argued that Anne was the elder daughter, but born in 1501. Warnicke, “Anne Boleyn's Childhood,” using, in part, Paget's evidence, established that she was the elder daughter, but born in 1507.

9 Ibid.

10 Latimer, William, “A Brief Treatise or Chronicle of … Anne Boleyn,” Bodleian MS. C. Don. 42, f. 22Google Scholar.

11 Richmond, Hugh M., Puritans and Libertines: Anglo-French Literary Relations in the Reformation (Berkeley, 1981), pp. 9–10, 13, 17, and 156Google Scholar; The Political Works of Gavin Douglas, ed. Small, John (Edinburgh, 1874), 1: xxiiGoogle Scholar, quoted by James, , English Politics, p. 16Google Scholar.

12 See, for example, Lambeth Palace MS. 602, f. 71, printed in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. Brewer, J. S., Gardiner, J., and Brodie, R. H., 21 vols. (London, 1867-1920, Reprint, 1965), 3: i, #1004Google Scholar.

13 Cavendish, George, “The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey,” in Two Tudor Lives, ed. Sylvester, R. and Harding, D. P. (New Haven, 1962), pp. 32–37Google Scholar; Kelly, Henry, The Matrimonial Trials of Henry VIII (Stanford, 1976), pp. 50–51Google Scholar, believed the contract was de praesenti although in 1536 Percy denied this claim; Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers Relating to the Negotiations Between England and Spain Preserved in the Archives of Vienna, Simancas, Besancon and Brussels, ed. Bergenroth, G. A., Hume, M. A. S., Tyler, R., and Mattingly, G., 13 vols. (London, 1862-1954), 4: i, no. 302Google Scholar; Letters and Papers, 8, no. 399; for a discussion of the difficulty in distinguishing between the vows, see Houlbrooke, Ralph, Church Courts and the People During the English Reformation, 1520-1570 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 57–60Google Scholar.

14 Calendar of State Papers Spain, 4: i, no. 302Google Scholar; Elton, G. R., Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 277–300Google Scholar; Turner, Sharon, The Modern History of England, 4 vols. (London, 1826-1829), 1: 436Google Scholar, said that Anne's “memory cannot be rescued” because she agreed to marry the king when his “accredited wife, unimpeached in conduct,” was not officially divorced.

15 Calendar of State Papers Spain, 4: i, no. 302Google Scholar; because the poet received a upgrading of his Calais rank in 1530, Wiatt, , “Sir Thomas Wyatt,” p. 99 n 20Google Scholar, suggested that he had returned to England in 1530, but Richard Harrier's interpretation, which Wiatt pointed out, that the upgrading was earned by him in Calais seems plausible; Ives, E. W., “Faction at the Court of Henry VIII: The Fall of Anne Boleyn,” History 57(1972): 173CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has speculated that the revelations in the deceased lady Wingfield's documents at the trial of Anne about her conduct may have been a reference to Wyatt, but it might also be a reference to Percy who was questioned closely about his pre-marital relationship to Anne, or to the king with whom by the standards of her society, Anne did misbehave; for further discussion of this, see Warnicke, Retha M., “Sexual Heresy at the Court of Henry VIII,” The Historical Journal (forthcoming, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Chambers, E. K., Sir Thomas Wyatt and Some Collected Studies (London, 1933), p. 138Google Scholar; Harrier, Richard, “Note on Wyatt and Anne Boleyn,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 53 (1954); 583–584Google Scholar; see also Thomson, , Sir Thomas Wyatt, pp. 20–38 and 71–73Google Scholar; for Suffolk, see Nicholas, N. H., The Privy Purse Expenses of King Henry the Eighth, November, 1529-December, 1532 (London, 1827), p. 24Google Scholar; Friedmann, Paul, Anne Boleyn, 2 vols. (London, 1884), 1: 46, 190Google Scholar, speculated that Wyatt was the rumored gentleman who was sent away from court in 1530 for a second time by Anne and who returned because of the king's intervention. Friedmann also identified as Wyatt an anonymous gentleman who, according to Chapuys, was expelled from court in 1533 because of the king's jealousy. Some of Anne's later biographers have positively identified the man of 1530 and of 1533 as Wyatt although the two descriptions are inconsistent. See, for example, Bruce, Marie, Anne Boleyn, (New York, 1972), p. 213Google Scholar; it is interesting that in a letter dated in 1538, Chapuys specifically referred to Wyatt, then the ambassador to Spain, without discussing his earlier arrest or linking him to Anne, although he did also forward information he had about the king's possible marriage to Anne of Cleves. Calendar of State Papers Spain, 5: ii, 528–30Google Scholar.

17 Calendar of State Papers Spain, 4: i, 366Google Scholar; see also Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Relating to English Affairs in the Archives and Collections of Venice, and in Other Libraries of Northern Italy, ed. Brown, R. (London, 1864), 4, no. 761Google Scholar; Chambers, , Sir Thomas Wyatt, p. 138Google Scholar.

18 Thomson, , Sir Thomas Wyatt, pp. 5–41Google Scholar; Muir, Kenneth, Life and Letters of Sir Thomas Wyatt (Liverpool, 1963), pp. 1–171Google Scholar; Ives, E. W., Faction in Tudor England (London, 1979), p. 15Google Scholar, speculated that Wyatt was hostile to Rochford because Wyatt was a friend to Bryan, but the poet was also a friend of Cromwell, who in 1536, was no friend of Bryan. Wyatt's friendship with Bryan may have become deeper after the execution of both Cromwell and Rochford. For Rochford and Bryan, see Friedmann, , Anne Boleyn, 2: 37–38Google Scholar; Harrier, Richard, The Canon of Sir Thomas Wyatt's Poetry (Cambridge, 1975), p. 72Google Scholar, believed that Wyatt did not write the verse credited to him in which Rochford was described as proud. The most recent editor, Rebholz, R. A., Sir Thomas Wyatt: The Complete Poems (New Haven, 1981)Google Scholar, placed them in the section of his volume with others that were attributed to Wyatt after the sixteenth century.

19 In Devonshire MS. 17,492, British Library, f. 67v is written, “I ama yours an.” Long thought to have been a vow of Anne to Wyatt, Harrier, (“Notes,” pp. 581–584 and The Canon, pp. 29, 32, and 141-142)Google Scholar, has pointed out that the “an” was actually supposed to be “and.” Another poem, which is in Egerton MS. 2,711 and begins with the line, “Sometyme I fled,” is linked to Anne. There is no internal evidence for indicating that this verse about a disconsolate lover on his way to Calais was written in 1532, as has been suggested, when Anne went with Henry to Calais. It could have been written in 1528 when Wyatt left for Calais to become high marshall and could just as easily have been about his wife or another lover. Harrier, (“Notes,” pp. 584)Google Scholar, cautioned about the interpretation of this poem, although in The Canon, p. 4, he linked it to Anne; see also Rebholz, , Sir Thomas Wyatt, pp. 9–31 and p. 96Google Scholar.

20 Collected Poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt, ed. Muir, Kenneth and Thomson, Patricia (Liverpool, 1969), p. 78Google Scholar; Harrier, , The Canon, p. 204Google Scholar; and Rebholz, R. A., Sir Thomas Wyatt, p. 85Google Scholar.

21 For how Englishmen referred to their country, see Zagorin, Perez, The Court and Country: The Beginning of the English Revolution (New York, 1969)Google Scholar, intro.; Thomas, Keith, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England, 1500-1800 (London, 1983), pp. 242–253Google Scholar; see also Elton, G. R., “Tudor Government: The Points of Contact; III: The Court,” in Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1974-1983), 3: 38–57Google Scholar; Peter, John, Complaint and Satire in Early English Literature (Oxford, 1956), p. 107Google Scholar; satire No. CL in Rebholz, R. A., Sir Thomas Wyatt, p. 189Google Scholar.

22 Muir, Kenneth and Thomson, Patricia, Collected Poems, p. 5Google Scholar; Rebholz, , Sir Thomas Wyatt, pp. 7–16 and 77Google Scholar, gives the verses of Wyatt in modern spelling. He also disagrees with Harrier, (The Canon, pp. 4 and 104)Google Scholar, about what should be judged Wyatt's canon.

23 Baldi, Sergio, Sir Thomas Wyatt (London, 1961), pp. 31–32Google Scholar.

24 Warnicke, Retha M., “The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Reassessment,” History 70 (1985): 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; this is the evidence that Thomson, , Sir Thomas Wyatt, p. 21Google Scholar, outlined; Richmond, , Puritans and Libertines, pp. 149 and 156Google Scholar.

25 Harrier, , The Canon, p. 72Google Scholar; Thomson, , Sir Thomas Wyatt, pp. 39–40Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., pp. 20-38 and 71-73; Kingston wrote four letters to Cromwell, now Cottonian MSS. Otho Cx, 222-225, British Library. They have been printed in Letters and Papers, 10, nos, 797, 798, 819 and 840; in Cavendish, George, The Life of Cardinal Wolsey, ed. Singer, George, 2nd edition (London, 1827), pp. 453–55Google Scholar; and in Strype, John, Ecclesiastical Memorials (Oxford, 1822), 1: i, 430–37Google Scholar.

27 Baldi, , Sir Thomas Wyatt, p. 12Google Scholar, agreed that had Wyatt and Anne had an affair, he would never have been released from prison; for a discussion of the guilt of those arrested, see Warnicke, “Sexual Heresy at the Court of Henry VIII.”

28 For the Catholic writers, see below. For Bonner, see Muir, , Life and Letters, pp. 62–69Google Scholar; and Thomson, , Sir Thomas Wyatt, pp. 64–65, 71–73Google Scholar; and Bruce, John, “Recovery of the Lost Accusation of Sir Thomas Wyatt the Poet, by Bishop Bonner,” Gentleman's Magazine 33 (1850):563–70Google Scholar.

29 Chronicle of King Henry VIII of England, trans. Hume, M. A. S. (London, 1889), pp. 19, 30, 63–69Google Scholar; see also Mattingly, Garrett, Catherine of Aragon (Boston, 1941), p. 461Google Scholar.

30 Harpsfield, Nicholas, A Treatise on the Pretended Divorce Between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, ed. Pocock, Nicholas, Camden Society, new series, Vol. 21 (London, 1878, Reprint, 1965), pp. 253 and 332Google Scholar; for a positive view of the testimony of Bonvisi, see Thomson, , Sir Thomas Wyatt, p. 26Google Scholar; for his absence and his relationship with Rochester, and More, , see Letters and Papers, 8, nos. 856 (39, 45, 47) and 987Google Scholar; 10, no. 795; The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More (Princeton, 1947, Reprint, 1970), no. 217, p. 560Google Scholar.

31 Burnet, Bishop Gilbert, The History of the Reformation of the Church of England (Oxford, 1816), 1: i, 75, and 1: ii, 419Google Scholar.

32 Loades, D. M., Two Tudor Conspiracies (Cambridge, 1965)Google Scholar; Tottel's Miscellany. (1557-1587), ed. Rollins, Hyder E., revised edition, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Ma., 1966), 1: 211Google Scholar, for example; Rebholz, , Sir Thomas Wyatt, pp. 9–10Google Scholar.

33 Sander, Nicholas, The Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism (1585), trans. Lewis, David (London, 1877), pp. 24–30Google Scholar; see also Warnicke, Retha M., “The Physical Deformities of Anne Boleyn and Richard III,” Parergon, n.s. 4 (1986): 135–153CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Gilbert Burnet, 1: i, 75, and 2: ii, 419; LeGrand, Joachim, Historie du Divorce de Henry VIII, Roy D'Angleterre et de Catherine D'Arragon, 2 vols. (Paris, 1688)Google Scholar.

35 Wyatt, George, “Extracts from the Life of the Virtuous Christian and Renowned Queen Anne Boleigne Written at the Close of the Sixteenth Century. From the Manuscript Collections of the Rev. John Lewis,” in Cavendish, , Cardinal Wolsey, pp. 425–428Google Scholar; see also Thomson, , Sir Thomas Wyatt, p. 273Google Scholar; all of George Wyatt's stories must be held suspect. He told, for instance, of Anne playing cards with Catherine of Aragon, but the only such incident recorded by Mattingly in his biography of Catherine relied on Wyatt as the source (ibid., p. 260). William Forrest, who probably attended Catherine's funeral, wrote in his versification of her life that she did not play cards. See The History of Grisild the Second, ed. Macray, W. D. (London, 1875), p. 28Google Scholar; for another reference to George's stories, see Warnicke, “The Physical Deformities of Anne Boleyn and Richard III.”

36 Edward, , Lord Herbert of Cherbury, The Life and Reigne of King Henry the Eighth (London, 1694), pp. 230 and 257–258Google Scholar, suggested that she was twenty when she became maid of honor to the queen. See also Warnicke, “Anne Boleyn's Childhood;” for the rumor, see Calendar of State Papers Spain, 3: ii, no. 152Google Scholar.

37 Stevens, John, Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court (London, 1961), p. 150Google Scholar.

38 It was published under the title, Quyete of Mynde. See Muir, Kenneth and Thomson, Patricia, Collected Poems, pp. 440–463Google Scholar.

39 Baldi, , Sir Thomas Wyatt, p. 11Google Scholar.