Anne Boleyn, a King's Obsession

“I think you had best watch yours!” she retorted.

“I’m doing just that,” he told her. “I see the way you treat His Grace; I hear how you speak to him. You think you can rule him, but you forget that he is the King. It’s folly to see him as just a man like any other. Go on like this and you’ll be the ruin of all your family.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, uncle,” Anne retorted. “His Grace loves me. He has no complaints.”

“He’s complained to me of the words you use to him.”

That stung. “He has said nothing to me.”

“He’s afraid of you, Anne—and the day will surely come when he hates himself for it. So be warned. Temper your arrogance with a little respect.”

“You should talk!” she flung after him.



Sir Henry Guildford, Comptroller of the King’s Household, was holding forth to his friends in Henry’s near-deserted privy chamber when, nursing her resentment both at Norfolk and at Henry, Anne arrived to tax the King for complaining about her. Sir Henry had long shown himself friendly to her, and was well liked by Henry, so she was astonished to hear him saying to Norris that he was sorry, but he could not countenance a divorce without the Pope’s sanction, and that he admired the Queen for holding steadfast. Norris, seeing Anne, nodded a warning to Sir Henry, who spun around.

“My lady Anne,” he said, bowing.

She was in no mood to be forgiving. Such talk was subversive and must be stopped.

“I am sorry to hear such disloyal sentiments expressed in His Grace’s own chamber,” she snapped. “If I ask the King, he will dismiss you from your office.”

“You need not wait so long,” Sir Henry retorted angrily. “I do not like what is happening in this kingdom. When His Grace returns, I am offering him my resignation.”

“What’s going on here?” interrupted a familiar high voice, and there loomed Henry, sweating in his tennis slops and short velvet coat, racquet in hand.

“Sir Henry is resigning,” Anne said.

“No!” Henry said. “I will not allow it. Come, Guildford, and talk with me,” and he led the comptroller into the closet that served him as a study.

Anne stood looking after them. As the door closed, she heard Henry say something about taking no notice of women’s talk. She could have breathed fire.

She turned to Norris and tried to fill the silence. “I hear that the King has made you chamberlain of North Wales and a wealthy man. They are saying that you are richer than many of the nobility. I congratulate you!” She knew her voice sounded brittle.

“You are unhappy,” he said in a low voice. “Is it all worth it, Lady Anne?”

She was biting back tears now; to have the man she loved show her compassion was almost too much. “I pray God it is,” she said, aware that this conversation was teetering dangerously on the intimate. “I should go. I will see the King another time.”



She did not like to go out these days. The hatred of the people was palpable, an obscene thing. Hearing them yelling insults terrified her as much as it enraged her. Wherever she went she was accompanied by an escort of the King’s guards. It did not help that Bishop Fisher and other friends of Katherine—a dwindling yet vocal minority—were constantly writing and spouting against the divorce.

As the next session of Parliament loomed, Anne sent a terse message to Fisher warning him not to attend in case he should suffer a repetition of the sickness he had suffered in February. After the messenger had left, she realized that what she had meant to sound sarcastic actually sounded incriminating. But it was too late now to recall the message. Oh, God, let them think what they liked!

She rarely visited Durham House now, but some of her belongings were still there, and in November she went to see what she would need when she became queen. That prospect still seemed some way off. She had been urging Henry to get Parliament to sanction asking Archbishop Warham to declare his marriage invalid, but he was reluctant. Warham was an old man now, and wanted a quiet life in his declining years. Henry thought he could not last much longer, and was loath to put pressure on him, but oh, Anne thought, why could not the bumbling old fool either write the declaration or shuffle off to his Maker?

She was going over and over all this in her mind as she sat in her great chamber in solitary splendor, eating the dinner that had been prepared for her, when she became aware of shouting in the distance. It grew louder and louder.

“What’s that?” she asked one of the servitors who were standing, impassive, behind her chair.

“I do not know, my lady,” he said, looking perturbed, for the din was becoming more menacing by the moment. Voices, lots of them, and they sounded very angry.

There was the sharp splinter of breaking glass, and Anne jumped up. “Summon the guard,” she ordered, trying not to give way to panic. And then she heard, among the shouting, “Kill the whore!” “Burn the whore!”

Suddenly the royal guards came thundering into the room, brandishing their ceremonial pikes.

“Make haste, Lady Anne, make haste! There’s a mob out there, seven or eight thousand strong, coming for you. We must leave now. Follow me!”

Shaking uncontrollably, Anne ran after them on legs that seemed to have turned to jelly, down to the service quarters and out into the kitchen garden that led to the river. And all the time she expected the mob to catch up, with the lust of violence in their eyes, and set upon her. They would tear her apart, she knew. Her breath was coming in short, harsh gasps, but they were nearing the jetty now, where her barge was moored. Pray God her legs would carry her that far.

The shouting was much louder now, and closer. They were in the gardens already! With no one guarding the house, they must have surged through unchallenged. She dared not look back.

“Hurry!” the guards were urging, and in one final spurt they reached the boat. Picking up her skirts, Anne leapt in, followed by the guards, and the bargemen pushed away—just in time. As the great mob came to a halt at the shore, jeering and shaking their fists, their quarry was out of reach in the middle of the Thames.

“Sirs, I thank you,” she panted. “Without your help, I would be dead.” She was trembling as if she had the ague, shuddering at the thought of what might have happened.

“Lady Anne, we answer to the King for your safety,” one guard said, a tall, strong fellow in his splendid red livery embroidered with the King’s initials. “We are sworn to protect you with our lives.”

The crowd stayed there, gesticulating and yelling, as the barge was steered around in the direction of Greenwich. “Look at them—they’re like animals,” one of the boatmen said.

Anne fixed a basilisk stare on the rabble on the bank. “Why, most of them are women! But one has a beard under her coif. Look, there are men there dressed as women!”

“Cowards, the lot of them,” the guard said. “The King shall hear of this.”



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