“England,” he says. “You too, Your Grace, as an English princess. You are required to call Katherine of Aragon the dowager princess. You are required to say that the Holy Father has made a mistake.”
Levelly, I look at him, as he presumes to tell me what I am to think, what Harry wants me to say.
“His Grace the King of England has decided that the Holy Father cannot rule the Church in England,” the archdeacon goes on, his smooth voice dropping lower on this outrageous news. “Since the king is ruler in his kingdoms there can be no other ruler. The king is therefore going to be Supreme Head of the Church of England. The Pope is understood to be a bishop, a spiritual ruler, not a worldly one: the Bishop of Rome.”
This is incomprehensible to me. I look quite blankly at him. “Would you repeat that?”
He does.
“Harry has asked you to tell me this? He is announcing it to all the foreign courts? He is telling the Pope that the Pope does not rule the Church?”
The archdeacon nods as if words fail him too.
“And he has told the Church itself? The clergy?”
“They agree with him.”
“They can’t do,” I contradict him. I think of my lady grandmother’s confessor. “Bishop Fisher will never agree. He took his oath to be obedient to the Pope. He won’t change that because Harry does not want the Pope’s opinion.” I think of the great churchman, scourge of heretics, Thomas More. “And others. The Church cannot possibly agree.”
“It is not a question of the Pope’s opinion, but of his traditional right,” the archdeacon parrots at me.
“Apparently he had the right to rule when Harry asked him to send a cardinal.”
“Not now, not now,” the archdeacon says.
I look at him with horror. “This is heresy,” I whisper. “Worse, it is madness.”
He shakes his head. “It is the new law,” he says. “I am hoping to explain to your son the advantages . . .”
“Like what?”
“Tithes,” he mutters. “The Church’s fruits. Pilgrimages, the great riches of the Church. They now belong to the crown in England. If your son came to the same holy decision he too could rule his own Church, he too could be Supreme Head, and then he would receive the Church’s wealth. I know the taxes of Scotland are insufficient . . .”
“You want the King of Scotland to deny the Pope too?”
“He would find it an advantage, I feel sure.”
“James is not going to steal from the Church,” I snap. “James is devout. He’s not going to set himself up as a Scottish pope.”
“The king is not setting himself up,” the archdeacon tries to correct me. “He is restoring the traditional rights of the kings of England.”
“What next?” I demand. “What other traditional rights? The rule over women? The subjection of Scotland?”
The flicker of his eye as the archdeacon bows in silence tells me that Harry will claim these too if he ever can. That woman has inspired him to be the spoiled boy that he was born to be. I believe she is making a terrible mistake. She is showing Harry his power. Will she also show him where he must stop?
The archdeacon is as unsuccessful with James as I knew he would be.
“He dared to suggest to me that we might reform the Church in Scotland,” my son rages. He comes storming into my privy chamber before dinner when I am alone but for a couple of ladies, one of whom I know for a fact is James’s lover. She takes herself off to the window seat and out of hearing. Anything he wants her to know he will tell her later. Now he wants to talk to me.
“The Pope has been a good friend to Scotland,” he says. “And your brother had no complaint about the rule of Rome until he wanted them to declare his marriage invalid. He is so obvious! He’s so shamefully obvious! He’s tearing the Church apart so that he can marry his whore.”
I can’t argue with my son when he is angry like this.
“And what is going to happen to the Church? Not every clergyman will consent. What is your brother going to do to those who refuse to accept him as Supreme Head? What is going to happen to the monasteries? To the abbeys? What if they don’t bow to his rule?”
I find I am trembling. “Perhaps they will be allowed to retire,” I say. “The archdeacon said there would be an oath. Everyone will have to take an oath. Perhaps those that don’t agree will be allowed to retire.”
James looks at me. “All of them? You know that can’t happen,” he says scornfully. “Either there’s an oath or there isn’t. If they won’t take the oath then he’ll have to call it treason, or heresy to his Church, or both. You know the punishment for treason and heresy.”
“Bishop Fisher will have to leave England,” I whisper. “He’ll have to go away. But he would never leave Katherine without a confessor, without a spiritual advisor.”
“He won’t go,” James predicts grimly. “He’s a dead man.”
SUFFOLK PALACE, LONDON, ENGLAND, SUMMER 1532
Dear Sister,
The supporters of Anne Boleyn—her family who have done so well from her rise and her kinsmen the Howards—have become increasingly unbearable. She has taken up residence in the queen’s rooms and she is served like a royal. You can imagine how I feel, seeing her in Katherine’s chair, sleeping in Katherine’s bed. Now she has ordered that Katherine’s jewels be brought from the royal treasure house for her to wear on state occasions. The crown jewels—as if she were a queen crowned.
I said out loud what everyone thinks: that you don’t make a queen by putting a silk gown on a farmhand’s granddaughter. You can put a gold chain on a pig and it still makes nothing but hams. Of course, everyone in our household repeated it and there was some sort of brawl with the Howard servants—as there have been dozens of brawls. And this is not my fault because I only said what everyone says.
Anyway, our man Sir William Pennington was getting bested and ran from the fight and took sanctuary in Westminster Abbey, and those brutes of the House of Norfolk ran after him and killed him, killed him before the altar, with his hand on the sacred stone and his blood on the chancery steps. Charles arrested them, and threw them into jail for breach of sanctuary and murder, but the Howards ran to tell the king that their men were defending the honor of the woman Anne—as if she had any. They have Harry’s ear and his attention, they are the new favorites, and now Harry is furious with Charles and me, and I don’t know what we’re going to do.
We’ve had to leave court—one of our household killed before an altar but it is us who have to leave! We have to wait till it blows over but we have simply no money, we never have enough money, and if Charles is not at court with Harry giving him fees all the time I don’t know how we will manage. And anyway, how can I go to court if she is taking precedence and behaving like a queen? I can’t give way to her. I can hardly bear to curtsey to her. What if she demands me to attend her in her rooms? Will Harry make me her lady-in-waiting? How terrible does it have to be before he sees that he is breaking my heart and Katherine’s spirit, and destroying everything we have ever achieved?
They tell me that Christmas was very quiet, the court was at Greenwich, and for the first time ever Katherine was not at court but alone at Wolsey’s old house, the More. That’s where she lives now. They have sent her away. The Anne woman showered gifts upon Harry but he sent back the gold cup that Katherine gave him. Sent it back, as if she were an enemy.
I don’t feel well at all but I suppose it is just worry about all this. Your life, so far away from England and with a good son and a loving husband, seems better than mine. Who would have thought that I would ever envy you? Who would have thought that we would both be happier than Katherine? Pray for us, your unhappy sisters.
Mary
And . . . they say that Thomas More will have to resign as Lord Chancellor for he cannot bring himself to swear that Harry is true head of the Church. Harry is tender for Thomas’s conscience and says that he can leave high office and live privately. How many of us are going to have to leave court and live privately when that woman comes in as queen?
JEDBURGH, SCOTLAND, AUTUMN 1532