The King, The Archbishop, and a Bear

Bishop Burnet, writing a century after the event, relates a bizarre incident that took place in Henry VIII’s reign during the aftermath of the six articles. The Six Articles was an act that set out quite clearly and reinforced six points of medieval doctrine which Protestants at that time had begun to undermine. The act also specified the punishments due to those who did not accept them and was known by many protestants as ‘the bloody whip with six strings.’ As a married man, Archbishop Cranmer must have taken particular exception to Article Three which stated that priests should not be allowed to marry.

He set down his objections quite strongly, making detailed notes, all backed up with citations from the bible and learned scholars, and it is believed he planned to present his findings to Henry.  His secretary, Ralph Morice, duly copied the notes into a small book and set off with it to Westminster.

The king, meanwhile, was attending a bear-baiting across the river at Southwark and, just as Ralph Morice and company were passing in a wherry, the bear broke loose from the pit and with the dogs in hot pursuit, leapt into the river and made straight for the boat. Bishop Burnet goes on to relate that;

‘Those that were in the boat leaped out and left the poor secretary alone there. But the bear got into the boat, with the dogs about her, and sank it. The secretary, apprehending his life was in danger, did not mind his book, which he lost in the water.’

You can just picture it, can't you? Dripping wet bear, soaked dogs, terrified clerk, wildly rocking boat?

When Morice reached the shore he saw his book floating and asked the bearward (who was not perhaps as ‘in charge’ of the bear as one might hope) to retrieve it for him. But before he could get hold of it, the book fell into the hands of a priest who, realising what the book contained, declared that whoever claimed it would be hanged.

Burnet says that, ‘This made the bearward more intractable for he was a spiteful papist and hated the archbishop, so no offers or entreaties could prevail on him to give it back.’

In no little panic Morice sought the immediate assistance of Cromwell who, on discovering the bearward about to hand the book over to Cranmer’s enemies, confiscated it, threatening him severely for meddling with the book of the privy councillor. Thus saving the life of the Archbishop.

This all sounds rather like a scene from  a farce, far too unlikely to be true. I cannot help but wonder what Henry made of the spectacle. I was so struck by the scene that I couldn't resist including it in The Winchester Goose, a short excerpt of which follows. Joanie Toogood, a prostitute from Southwark visits the bear-baiting where Henry VIII is watching with his new queen Katherine Howard.

*

“Come, come with us.'Twill be a lark.” Peter’s laughter pulls me back from me thoughts and I reluctantly let him lead me from the bear pit, knowing that he will want to use me later. Oh well, he has an ample purse and it may save me the chore of turning out for punters after dark.

As we near the river’s edge a great cry goes up from the crowd and we turn, craning our necks to see what all the fuss is. To our amazement, those gathered at the pit are scattering, men, women and childer fleeing, wide eyed, half laughing, half afraid, their great shrieks tearing the air while the tormented bear, who has broke free of his chains, comes lumbering after.

The dogs are still following, baying and yelping as they snatch at his bloodied fur with their lathered jaws. Women snatch their bairns into their arms and hide in doorways as in a great, snarling, madcap parade, they pass close to us. Peter the Costermonger gallantly pushes me behind him and I cling to his goose-turd green jerkin to peer over his shoulder, watching in astonishment as the bear lumbers past and casts itself, with a great splash, into the stinking river, the yelping dogs not hesitating to follow after.

With wild hoots of laughter the crowd rush to the bank where the sudden appearance of the bear and his savage train are causing a deal of trouble on the water.

 Several passing barges are thrown into disarray, rocking wildly in the murky waves. I see a man standing in the prow of an abandoned wherry, the other occupants having leapt into the water. With flailing arms they struggle for the shore. I nudge Peter in the ribs as the dripping bear clambers onto the side of the barge, over-tipping it, dragging it down so that it begins to fill with water, throwing the hapless cleric into the drink. The air around us is filled with screeching laughter.

Peter’s arm is tight about my waist and, with the sharp edge of the balustrade digging into my ribs and the sun warm upon my back, I open my mouth to bellow insults at the struggling man who, with his books and parchments floating rapidly downstream, cannot decide which is the greater danger, the bear or the water.

He is a sorry sight, his robes streaming water, his hat lost, his face turning blue with cold. The onlookers roar with merriment as he wades up the bank, sits on the mud and begins to empty his shoes of water. Then, on seeing the bearward preparing to lure his charge home, he gestures to his treasures that are threatening to sink beneath the waves. The fellow runs obligingly along the water’s edge to fish them out with his stave and dump them some way up the river bank.

The spectacle has raised my spirits and, in a better mood now, I follow Peter across the bridge. The hand on my waist may not be the one I long for, but Peter is a merry lad and will warm me for a while and help to keep a roof over my head.

I can be content with that for now.

You can buy a copy of The Winchester Goose by clicking Here if you are in the UK and Here if you are in the USA. Available at all Amazon sites.

Illustrations Wikimedia Commons:

 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/The_Act_of_Six_Articles_1539.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Panorama_of_London_in_1543_Wyngaerde_Section_2.jpg

A thousand times, I thank you.

Judith Arnopp

October and November have been mad bad months for me so far. At the end of October we were devastated by the news that our house buyers were pulling out and all our plans thrown into chaos. The news came on the morning of my other half's 60th birthday and it wasn't easy to shake off our disappointment and enjoy the day but, thanks to our lovely bunch of kids, all of whom joined us for the celebrations, we managed.

As is often the case, hot on the heels of the bad news came better tidings, this time in the shape of my latest novel, The Kiss of the Concubine (available now on a kindle near you). I am not very good at marketing but I organised a few blogs and interviews to alert the reading public that the book was released, then I sat back and waited to see if anyone would notice.

To my surprise it is flying off the shelves - well, it would be if e-books were kept on shelves. I have now ok'd the paperback version and that will also be available via Amazon, myself, or direct from the publisher very soon. but it isn't just the new book that is selling, my back catalogue is moving too and some wonderful reviews are coming in.

So, this blog is really to acknowledge and thank all  you wonderful people who enable me to carry on writing books. I want to thank the bloggers who hosted me, the reviewers who spread the word and most of all the people who buy my novels. Without you I would have been forced to give up long ago. I cannot describe the thrill I experience each time one of you emails or flags on Facebook how much you enjoyed a particular book/character/scene/blog. I don't crave fame or riches. It is your enjoyment makes it all worth while. So, thank you. I love you all :)

In case you've not noticed. The Kiss of the Concubine is the story of Anne Boleyn, from her own perspective tracing her love affair with Henry VIII and charting her downfall. It is a frank and often painful account of a doomed romance.

Here are some examples of what the reader reviews have said so far. "Well formed characters, great Tudor atmosphere. One of those reads where you feel a bit bereft when you get to the end - my measure for five stars"

" Highly recommended to any lovers of historical fiction. Worth buying."

" The reader is swept along with Anne, and the book is impossible to put down. Warmly recommended to those wanting to know more, but also to those who just love a good read"

"Judith Arnopp has found such a unique and fresh approach to this most famous of love/hate relationships that readers will be drawn into her atmospheric prose. She is so skilled at conjuring the sights and sounds of her chosen setting that you can almost hear the courtly music, smell the pomanders, and taste the suckling pig."

You can watch a trailer here.

Below is the introduction.

The Kiss

of

The Concubine

28th January 1547 – Whitehall Palace

It is almost midnight and January has Whitehall Palace clenched in its wintery fist. The gardens are rimed with frost, the casements glazed with ice. Like a shadow, I wait alone by the window in the silver-blue moonlight, my eye fixed on the bed.

The room is crowded, yet nobody speaks.

I tread softly among them. The flickering torchlight illuminates a sheen of anticipation on their faces, the rank odour of their uncertainty rising in a suffocating fug. Few can remember the time that went before, and both friend and foe balance upon the cusp of change, and tremble at the terror of the unknown.

I move through the heavily perfumed air, brush aside jewelled velvet sleeves. At the high-canopied bed I sink to my knees and observe his face for a long moment. He is changed. This is not the man I used to know.

They have propped him on pillows, the vast belly mountainous beneath the counterpane, and the yellow skin of mortality’s mask is drawn tightly across his cheeks. There is not much time and before death can wipe his memory clean, I speak suddenly into his ear, a whisper meant only for him. “Henry!”

The king’s eyes fly open and his eyeballs swivel from side to side, his disintegrating ego peering as if through the slits in a mummer’s mask.

He knows me, and understands why I have come.

He whimpers like a frightened child and Anthony Denny steps forward and leans over the bed. “Your Majesty, Archbishop Cranmer has been summoned; he cannot be long now.”

Henry’s fat fingers tremble as he grips the coverlet, his pale lips coated with thick spittle as he tries to speak. I move closer, my face almost touching his, and the last rancid dregs of his breath engulf me. “They think you fear death, Henry. But you fear me more, don’t you, my Lord?”

“Anne?”

The sound is unintelligible, both a denial and a greeting, but it tells me what I need to know. He recognises and fears my presence. Those assembled begin to mutter that the king is raving, talking with shadows.

I sink into the mattress beside him and curl my body around his bulk. “How many times did we share this bed, Henry?” His breathing is laboured now and sweat drips from his brow, the stench of his fear exceeded only by that of his festering thigh. I tighten my grip upon him. “Did you ever love me, Henry? Oh, I know that you lusted but that isn’t the same. Do you remember how you burned for me, right to the end?”

I reach out to run my fingertip along his cheek and he leaps in fright, like a great fish floundering on a line, caught in a net of his own devising. One brave attendant steps forward to mop the king’s brow as I continue to tease.

“Poor Henry. Are you afraid even now of your own sins? To win me you broke from Rome, although in your heart you never wanted to. Even the destruction of a thousand years of worship was a small price to pay to have me in your bed, wasn’t it?”

Henry sucks in air and forgets to breathe again. A physician hurries forward, pushes the attendant aside and with great daring, lifts the king’s right eyelid. Henry jerks his head away and the doctor snatches back his hand as if it has been scalded.

Even now they are fearful of him. Although the king can no longer so much as raise his head from his pillow, they still cower. How long will it take for them to forget their fear?

Mumbling apologies, the physician bows and backs away to take his place with the others. As they watch and wait a little longer, the sound of mumbled prayer increases. “Not long now, Henry,” I whisper like a lover. “It is almost over.”

A door opens. Cold air rushes into the stifling chamber and Archbishop Cranmer enters, stamping his feet to dislodge the snow from his boots. He hands his outer clothes to a servant before pushing through the crowd to approach the bed, his Bible tucked beneath his arm.

I playfully poke the end of Henry’s nose. “Time to confess your sins, my husband.” Cranmer takes the king’s hand, his long slim fingers contrasting with the short swollen digits of his monarch. As he begins to mutter the last rites, I put my mouth close to Henry’s ear to taunt him.  “Tell the truth, Hal. Own up to all the lies you told; how you murdered and how you cheated. Go on ….”

But King Henry has lost the power of speech, and cannot make a full confession. Gasping for one more breath he clings tightly to Cranmer’s hand, and I know there is not long to wait before he is mine again. A single tear trickles from the corner of his eye to be lost upon his pillow.

“It’s time, Henry,” I whisper. “And I am here, waiting. For a few short years I showed you Paradise and now, perhaps, I can do so again. Unless, of course, I choose to show you Hell.”

***

If you would like to read more The Kiss of the Concubine is available in kindle format on Amazon UK and Amazon US and other Amazon outlets. The paperback will be available shortly.

The Quest for Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn

The true personality of Anne Boleyn was lost the moment the sword struck off her head.  After her death only the bravest, or most fool hardy spoke out in her defence. She was the subject of poems, histories, scandals, and it wasn’t until her daughter Elizabeth’s reign, twenty-two years after her execution, that it was safe to speak well of her again.

Recorded feelings among her contemporaries are mixed, John Hussey, a former supporter of Anne wrote, “...that which hath been done and committed by Anne the Queen...which is so abominable and detestable that I am ashamed that any good woman should give ear thereto.”

Sander, a Catholic priest and not an admirer of Anne, writing long after her death, published a scathing attack, describing her with witch-like features, and the child she lost in 1536 to be a “shapeless mass.”

At the time of her arrest Archbishop Cranmer wrote to the king of his shock and horror. As a friend

Thomas Cranmer

and supporter of the queen, he was clearly on edge and aware that should she fall, her supporters could be suspect too. It is interesting that he qualifies his condemnation of her with the little word, “if.”

“If the reports of the Queen be true, they are only to her dishonor, not yours. I am clean amazed, for I had never better opinion of woman; but I think your Highness would not have gone so far if she had not been culpable. I was most bound to her of all creatures living, and therefore beg that I may, with your Grace’s favor, wish and pray that she may declare herself innocent. Yet if she be found guilty, I repute him not a faithful subject who would not wish her punished without mercy. And as I loved her not a little for the love which I judged her to bear towards God and His Gospel, so if she be proved culpable there is not one that loveth God and His Gospel that ever will favor her, but must hate her above all other”

Thomas Wyatt

A few were more outspoken in their support. Her long-time friend, and (some say) one-time sweetheart, Thomas Wyatt, made his feelings quite plain. “These bloody days have broken my heart.”

And even her enemy, the Spanish ambassador Eustace Chapuys, raised some doubt as to her guilt in his remark, "there are some who murmur at the mode of procedure against her and the others..."

During Elizabeth’s reign, the poet John Foxe included Anne in his Book of Martyrs, declaring that Elizabeth’s long reign was God’s way of testifying to her mother’s innocence.

Later historians and, more recently, novelists have taken Anne’s name and molded her into something unrecognisable, in some cases bordering on the inhuman. By the late nineteenth century her guilt was a bone of contention. In 1884 Friedmann’s,  Anne Boleyn: A Chapter of English History 1527-1536 the author places the blame squarely with Cromwell, seeing her downfall as a political coup. And Agnes Strickland, with supreme elegance, states quite plainly that Anne, “never incurred the crimes for which she was brought to the block.” Strickland denounces Henry as a “despot” in pursuit of an heir.

Similarly, the twentieth century did not find a resolution to the question of Anne’s character and, like Strickland, the leading Tudor historian A. F. Pollard regards Anne as a victim of Henry’s quest for an heir, although, instead of Cromwell, he cites Chapuys as being behind the initial rumours against her. 

Henry VIII

In the 1970’s Anne becomes the heroine of feminists and Anne Chapman, while agreeing that her failure to produce a son was the main reason for her fall, puts the blame squarely on Cromwell’s shoulders. In Chapman’s hands Anne is not so much a maligned innocent as a heroine, a tragic martyr flying the flag for the cause of feminism.

“In these conditions of capricious hatred and undeviating ruthlessness, Anne Boleyn lived, triumphed – and perished.”

As we approach the 1990’s Anne character changes once again in a study by Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII, in which she states Anne’s fall was due to her having given birth to a monster, a fetus so deformed as to suggest witchcraft. Warnicke argues that during the period in question doctors believed birth defects to be the result of sexual misconduct. This may well be true but charges of sexual misconduct, incest in particular, had long been used against women who stepped far enough from their prescribed role s to become a nuisance to their male contemporaries.

Thomas Cromwell

In her book published in 1995, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived, Karen Lindsey returns to the idea of Anne as a feminist icon, reconfirming that Anne’s failure to provide an heir caused her fall, but this time citing Cromwell as the main instigator of her arrest.

Today, the leading historian in Anne Boleyn studies is the late, great Eric Ives whose concise and in-depth research has, in my opinion, yet to be bettered. The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn provides a balanced opinion, citing not just Anne’s failure in childbirth  as the catalyst for her fall but extending her crimes to include meddling in politics and fervour for reform.

 Initially, the shared desire for reform brought Cromwell and Anne together but, where Cromwell wanted to bring down the church and enrich Henry’s coffers, Anne desired to restructure the existing church, iron out the rough edges, remove the wheat and throw away the chaff.

Ives also cites the Anglo-Imperial alliance, during which negotiations Henry and Chapuys fell out over Charles V's refusal to acknowledge Anne as queen. When Henry, quite typically, refused to back down Cromwell was unwilling to jeopardise his dealings with the Spanish ambassador and Ives says, “…Anne Boleyn had become a major threat to Thomas Cromwell…A hostile Anne threatened both his standing with the king and his key financial achievements…Despite the risk, despite all his past debts, Cromwell’s very survival no longer coincided with the survival of the queen. She must go.”

There are still those who persist in seeing Anne as she was originally personified and G. W. Bernard in his book Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions asserts that the accusations against Anne were all true and that, according to Tudor law, her death was deserved. Although he accepts that the accusations made against her, (mostly by clergy) could be the product of gossip, Bernard maintains that “Gossip is not necessarily false.”  The unfortunate death of Princess Diana in 1997 gave rise to all sorts of conspiracy theories, none of which have any real basis in fact. Royals will always be the focus for gossip and rumour, and since Anne's prominence in church reform made her some powerful enemies, it seems only fair to regard the charges laid against her with some suspicion.

When it comes to fiction, Anne’s reputation has suffered even more, and she appears either as a too-good-to-be-true heroine of all the virtues, or a depraved, incestuous, power-hungry mother of monsters. I think I have shown that opinion has been divided since the moment of her arrest and, considering the historical material available to novelists (as discussed above) there is little surprise that historical ‘truth’ (whatever that is) has been lost along the way. Readers of novels should always be aware of the distinction between historical fact, and historical fiction.

In my forthcoming novel, The Kiss of the Concubine, I have tried to keep my feet more firmly on the ground and find a middle way. Of course, there is no hope of ever knowing the ‘real’ Anne Boleyn, or categorically defining the reasons behind her fall, but it seems we never tire of trying.

In writing The Kiss of the Concubine, I have juggled with all these sources, wrestled with the conflicting opinions and applied some commonsense but, in the end, Anne tells her own story. I haven’t tried to purify or excuse her, and neither is she demonised. The voice that speaks from the pages of my novel comes from the inner ‘Anne;’ the hidden ‘self’ that nobody can ever really know. As human beings we always rationalise our own actions and justify even our cruelest moments, and maybe her proud, power-seeking ways were like a suit of armour, covering perceived inadequacies and protecting a vulnerable, ordinary woman, who just happened to attract the attentions of a king. 

If you read my novel, please remember it is fiction.

The Kiss of the Concubine will be published very soon.

Watch a trailer of The Kiss of the Concubine here.

Illustrations from Wikimedia Commons.

Further Reading and works consulted: 

A.F.Pollard, Henry VIII, (London: Longmans,1905)

Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, from the Norman Conquest, vol. 2 (London: George Bell & Sons,1882)

Alison Weir, The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn (Reading: Random House, 2009)

G.W. Bernard, Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010)

Greg Walker, “Rethinking the Fall of Anne Boleyn,” The Historical Journal 45, no.1 (March 2002)

Joanna Denny, Anne Boleyn (Chatham: Piatkus Books, 2007)

Karen Lindsey, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII (Reading,MA: Addison‐Wesley,1995)

Paul Friedmann, Anne Boleyn: A Chapter of English History,1527‐1536, vol.1 (London: MacMillan,1884)

Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII (New York: Cambridge UP, 1989)

Hester Chapman, The Challenge of Anne Boleyn (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1974)

Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn: The Most Happy (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004)