Revisiting the “seulle mestres” letter

Applying the modern meaning of mistress to sixteenth-century usage has forced historians to posit that the “seulle mestres” letter must have been written in early to mid-1527. The reason is that by August 1527 the king had revealed his intent to marry Anne: in that month he formulated a request for a dispensation, con­ditional on the successful annulment of his marriage to Catherine, “to marry another, even if she have contracted marriage with another man, provided it be not consummated, and even if she be of the second degree of consanguinity, or of the first degree of affinity.”^[690] Although she is not mentioned by name, the dispensation is generally agreed to refer to Anne, who had entered into an uncon­summated “understanding” with Henry Percy in 1523, and who was calculated as among the second degree of consanguinity or first degree of affinity to Henry VIII because of his prior sexual relationship with her sister, Mary.

This dating, for which no other evidence exists, feeds the narrative of the coquettish Anne by allowing historians to conclude that she retreated strategi­cally to Hever to inflame the king’s longing and lust for her. And yet, no trace of a stay at Hever for Anne exists for 1527, whereas in 1528, as we have seen, she verifiably spent time there on two separate occasions. These sojourns moved the king to write, but they were not contrived by Anne. As we have seen, in the first case, she fled the sweating sickness, in the second, the king sent her away.

Still, how exactly did Henry VIII come to propose marriage to Anne if she did not force him into it with her refusal to become his lover? To reassess the question, it will be useful to return to the “seulle mestres” letter.

The scenario to which Henry VIII appears to respond in the letter is a serious bout of nerves related to the projected marriage on Anne’s part. To make the case, it will be useful to examine the letter in full:

As I debate with myself the content of your letters, I am in great agony, not knowing how to understand them, whether to my disadvantage, as in some places you lay them out, or to my advantage, as in some others I understand them, begging you with all my heart to please make clear to me your sincere intention regarding the love between us two, for necessity forces me to seek your response, having been more than a year [ago] struck by the dart of love, not being sure of failing or finding a place in your heart and certain affection, this last issue recently [“depuis peutemps”] has kept me from calling you my mistress, [because] if you do not love me with another sort of love than com­mon love [“amour commune”], this name is not at all appropriate, because it denotes a singularity [“ung singularis”], which is very distant from the com­mon,^[692] but if it pleases you to assume the role of a true loyal mistress and friend and give yourself body and heart to me, who wants to be and has been your very loyal servant; if you don’t forbid me this by your rigor, not only will the name be your due, but I will take you for my only mistress [“seulle mestres”] and cast aside all others beside you, except you, from my thoughts and affections and serve you alone, begging you to give me a sincere response to this my unrefined letter as to what and on what I can rely, and, if it does not please you to give a written response, assign me a place where I can have it by word of mouth, and I will be there with all good will, no longer in fear of annoying you, written by the hand of he who would willingly remain your H Rex.

The letter shows that the couple had already entered into some kind of agreement because he had been calling Anne his mistress. Only recently (“depuis peutemps”) had her letters made him question whether the term was appropriate. Were the king in fact proposing a long-term sexual affair, he would not have been wonder­ing whether to call Anne by that name, because according to that definition she

Vouspranderaypour ma seulle mestres: Anne Boleyn’s | 197 unambiguously was not his mistress. However, if we substitute the word “fiancee” for “mistress,” after the manner of Henri IV and Marie de Medicis, the scenario makes sense. The matter of marriage had been settled between them, and, for this reason, the king felt the term “mistress” appropriate. But recently Anne has been conflicted, and the baffled and upset king begs her to tell him honestly “on what I can rely.” In other words, is she still willing to marry him?

Looking specifically at the “seulle mestres” expression, it is important to consider it in the context of the imagery within which it is embedded. If Anne assures him of her love, the king writes, giving herself body and heart to him, he will make her his only mistress and cast all others from his thoughts and affec­tion, serving her alone. Although the Book of Common Prayer and its wedding rite would not be published until 1549, those vows derived ultimately from the Sarum rite of mediaeval England, which requires the couple to forsake other men and women. Marriage demands fidelity, a turning away from all others. This is what Henry VIII promises. The vows also contain the affirmation “with my body I thee worship.” The vow first “distinguishes lawful marital intercourse from ‘unlawful copulation’ which ‘doth pollute and dishonour both parties,’ and, second, it positively describes the authority over each other’s bodies that hus­band and wife have, according to 1 Corinthians 7:4.”^[693] The body was integral to marriage; the vows had to be sealed by sexual intercourse to be valid.

But if the king and Anne had already agreed on marriage, why was Anne hesitating at this date? Her fears can easily be imagined. She could not have helped but be aware of the great risk wedding the king would pose for her: how would she ever be accepted as legitimate queen? Henry VIII responds to those fears throughout the correspondence. In letters 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 14, and 17, he either questions her about whether her feelings have changed or reassures her that she need not worry so much. Letter 8 in particular offers insight into the source of her anxiety, the king soothing her fear of marrying so far above her station by addressing his habit of positioning himself as her servant. Again, I translate from the digitized version of the manuscript:

Although it is not fitting for a gentleman to treat his lady as a servant, none­theless, following your desires willingly, I will grant it to you if by this I should

find you less uncomfortable in the place chosen by you than you have been in the place given by me, thanking you very cordially that it pleases you still to remember me.^[694]

By all rights, she is his servant, his subject, not the reverse, she seems to have claimed; and yet, a gentleman should wait on his lady, writes the king. Still, if she would rather be his servant, he will comply with her wishes. It appears that he succeeded in calming her worries, for in the final letter of the series, letter 17, he rejoices that she has come to her senses and left her worries behind, assuring her that if she remains reasonable they will soon achieve the greatest possible tranquility:

To informe yow what Joy it is to me to understand off your co(m)formabylnes to reson and off the sulpressyng off your invtille and vayne thowghys and fan- tesys w(i)t(h) the brydell off reson I ensure yow All the god in thys worlde colde nott co(n)terpause for my satysfaction the knowlege and certente theroff wherfore good swetthart co(n)tynu the same nott wonly in thys but in all your doynge heraffter for therby shall co(m)me bothe to yow and me grettest qui- ettnes that may be in thys world.

Seth Lerer has described Henry VIII’s love letters as “preoccupied with naming and renaming: Henry as lover, servant, scribe, and secretary; Anne as beloved, mistress, and potential Queen.” Translating “tropes of love into expressions of royal power,” the letters “construct an epistolary identity for the King and a social identity for his beloved.”^[695] One of these identities was the “king as suitor” for a reluctant lady’s hand in marriage. Here Henry VIII was in uncharted territory, required to court his potential bride. In marriage negotiations in general, the king was not required to act on his own: that was state business, conducted by diplomats. Not only was the king forced to court for himself, he was courting a woman of much lower rank, whose House, if noble, was not in the same league as Catherine of Aragon’s Trastamaras. Paradoxically, Anne’s very lack of royal status gave her the power to refuse and forced Henry VIII into the role of des­perate suitor. Without her complicity, such a marriage quite simply could not have taken place. Had Anne retired to Hever, the king would have been forced

Vouspranderaypour ma seulle mestres: Anne Boleyn’s | 199 to retreat. Imagining for a moment the spectacle of his announcing to his people, the Pope, and Christendom that he required an annulment to cast aside Queen Catherine in favor of a woman who did not consent to the marriage reveals how preposterous the idea is. Because Anne had to come willingly to the marriage, he created identities for himself and her, he assuming “the mask of servitude” and “ventriloquizing the language of love” to woo his lady, and, most important, comfort her when she worried.^[696]

Anne’s apprehension was well founded. Henry VIII’s annulment was not deplored in principle but, specifically, because he intended to marry Anne. Wolsey seems to have initially believed that he was seeking an annulment on behalf of the king so that the monarch could marry a royal bride, perhaps Renee of France.^[697] In a letter of November 1528 to Charles V’s ambassador Mendoza refers to the projected union with Anne as “so abominable that it may lead to the worst consequences.”^[698] Special envoy from the emperor to Rome Juan Antonio Muxetula writes that “scarcely one courtier can be found who does not despise [the king] for [his relationship with Anne], as well as for what he is doing, or trying to do, against his honour and conscience.”^[699] The Pope writes to Henry VIII in hopes of making him realize that a match with Anne was “unworthy of a religious prince.”^[700] Charles V himself promises that he will try “with the Pope and the Queen, to annul the [marriage] contracted with her Majesty” if Henry VIII agrees to make a suitable marriage instead of going through with his “love match.”^[701] The emperor even suggested a bride: his own sister.

It was because marriage to Anne seemed so farfetched that Henry VIII’s persistence was ridiculed as a function of his excessive sexual desire. Numerous early kings, perhaps most memorably Philip I of France, were accused by popes of lust when it is clear that they wanted to bolster their dynasty with male heirs.^[703] The intermittent insanity of King Charles VI of France was attributed to his youthful debauchery.^[704] The failure of the father of Anne of Brittany to father sons was attributed to his lust.^[705] It is not surprising that in a letter to Charles V of 1528, Mendoza describes the king as “so blindly in love with that lady [Anne] that he cannot see his way clearly.”^[706] A year later imperial ambassador to England Eustace Chapuys reports to Charles V that as far as he “can hear and judge, this King’s obstinacy and his passion for the Lady are such that there is no chance of recalling him by mildness or fair words to a sense of his duty.”^[707] The infatua­tion, writes Muxetula to Charles V in the letter cited above, caused the pope “to laugh most heartily.”^[708] Chronicler Edward Hall observes that—although they were wrong—Queen Catherine’s ladies were saying that Anne had “entised the kyng, and brought him in such amours.” Reginald Pole scolds the king for letting himself be seduced into marriage:

You, a man of your age and with such experience, are miserably burning with passion for the love of a girl. She, indeed, has said that she will make herself available to you on one condition alone. You must reject your wife whose place she desires to hold. This modest woman does not want to be your concubine! She wants to be your wife.^[709]

Henry VIII himself strongly denied that he was driven by sexual desire. Wolsey describes the pope’s “misapprehension” that the king was acting, “not from fear of his succession, but out of a vain affection or undue love to a gen­tlewoman of not so excellent qualities as she is here esteemed.”^[710] According to Hall, the king favored Anne “in all honestie, and surely none otherwise.”^[711] The

Vouspranderaypour ma seulle mestres: Anne Boleyn’s | 201 chronicler records the king’s explaining that it was “no folishe or wanton appe­tite” that caused him to abstain from Catherine’s company but the fact that doc­tors of the universities “haue determined the marriage [to Catherine] to be voyde, and detestable before God.” He is too old to be moved by carnal desire, Halls reports the king as saying, for at forty-one years old “the lust of man is not so quicke, as in lustie youth.”^[712]

We cannot know what motivated Henry VIII. But in 1514 we find the first trace of his plan to repudiate Catherine, “his brother’s widow, because he is unable to have children by her,”^[713] and, given this early interest in an annulment and his well-documented obsession with producing a male heir, there is no par­ticular justification for imagining that lust for Anne drove him to move heaven and earth to marry her. Anne, too, was judged harshly, inculpated for arousing the king’s lust. But blaming women for men’s sexual desire was of course typical, and, despite the contemporary gossip and modern perceptions, we have no real reason to believe that Anne withheld her body from the passionate Henry VIII until she had been guaranteed marriage. I propose in the following section that the opposite seems more likely: that Henry VIII had to work long and hard to convince a reluctant Anne to become his wife.