Guest Post: Remembering Anne Boleyn: Reminisces of Mary Howard & the Devonshire group by Sylvia Barbara Soberton

Remembering Anne Boleyn: Reminisces of Mary Howard & the Devonshire group by Sylvia Barbara Soberton

Happy Sunday! I'm delighted to announce that today we have a guest post by Sylvia Barbara Soberton, author of the best-selling book entitled The Forgotten Tudor Women. 

Over to Sylvia . . . 

In my book, The Forgotten Tudor Women, I explore the tumultuous lives of three courageous women: Margaret Douglas, Mary Howard and Mary Shelton. These three women all started their careers at court as maids of honour to Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn.

Anne Boleyn

On 19 May 1536, Anne Boleyn was beheaded on what her contemporaries and the majority of historians today believe to have been trumped-up charges of adultery with four men, incest with her own brother and plotting the King’s death with one of her alleged lovers. Through the course of her meteoric rise to power right up until her execution, Anne Boleyn was an unpopular figure. The common people believed that she had usurped the place of their beloved Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife and queen. Foreign monarchs were slow to acknowledge Anne’s position as Queen and mother of the heiress to the throne, and the situation at court, where political factions scrambled for power, was even worse.  

Mary Howard

Although Anne Boleyn was surrounded by female servants on a daily basis, only one of them allowed her memories to be recorded for posterity. This woman was Mary Howard, Duchess of Richmond, Anne  Boleyn’s first cousin, who was described as “chief and principal of her waiting maids”.[1] Mary started her career at court on 1 September 1532, when she played a prominent part during the ceremony of Anne’s ennoblement as Marquess of Pembroke. Anne took her young cousin under her wing and, despite the protests of Mary’s mother, she arranged her marriage to Henry VIII’s illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy. Little is known about the personal relationship between Mary Howard and Anne Boleyn, but considering that Mary was known to have been one of the chief and principal ladies serving the Queen, we may assume that they were close.

Anne Boleyn’s tenure as Queen came to an abrupt end in May 1536 when she was arrested and executed. Henry VIII remarried eleven days after his wife’s judicial murder, and it seemed that life at court went on as normal. Behind the closed doors, however, some people gave vent to their despair. Thomas Wyatt, the poet who was imprisoned as Anne’s alleged lover but later cleared of charges and released, wrote a heartbreaking poem where he recorded:

“I was made a filling instrument

To frame other, while I was beguiled”.[2]

Thomas Wyatt’s biographer, Nicola Shulman, explained that Wyatt was a “filling instrument” in the sense of betraying or defiling the honour of other people, presumably those who died with the Queen. The fact that Wyatt was romantically linked with Anne Boleyn in the past answers the question of why he was imprisoned in May 1536 but doesn’t offer an explanation as to why he was released. Thomas Cromwell rewarded Wyatt with a large sum of £100 in May 1536, a date implicating the poet may have been interrogated and coerced into providing damning details about Anne Boleyn’s circle. Whatever he confessed to the authorities, it is clear that Wyatt felt guilty. His poem was copied into the Devonshire Manuscript, a courtly anthology strongly associated with Mary Howard, Margaret Douglas and Mary Shelton, who were among its most prominent contributors. Did they feel the same? Were they forced to testify against their royal mistress? It seems highly likely because Thomas Cromwell later claimed that Anne Boleyn’s ladies-in-waiting provided damning details, and three of her serving women—Elizabeth Somerset, Countess of Worcester, Nan Cobham and one other unnamed maid—were mentioned in contemporary correspondence as the Queen’s accusers.

John Foxe

At some point during the reign of Edward VI, Mary Howard employed John Foxe as tutor to her nieces and nephews, her wards since her brother’s execution in 1547. Living in the Duchess of Richmond’s household provided ample opportunities to talk about people associated with spreading the good religious works during Henry VIII’s reign. Anne Boleyn was seen by her enemies as “the cause and principal nurse” of spreading “heresies” in England.[3] Although Anne’s personal faith is still a matter of debate among historians, it is certain that she was anti-papal, keen on reforming the Church from within and eager to promote reading the Bible in the vernacular. In his Actes and Monuments (best known as The Book of Martyrs), John Foxe recorded that Mary Howard was one of Anne Boleyn’s “chief and principal” ladies-in-waiting and was thus well acquainted with the Queen’s daily doings. When compiling materials for his book, Foxe talked to Mary Howard, who recalled “how Her Grace carried ever about her a certain little purse, out of which she was wont daily to scatter abroad some alms to the needy, thinking no day well spent wherein some man had not fared the better by some benefit at her hands.”[4]

Mary Howard's handwriting

Foxe’s book also contains a rich description of Princess Elizabeth’s christening on 10 September 1533, and this event was most likely related to him by Mary Howard, who carried a rich chrism of pearl and stone. The fact that Mary Howard kept these memories alive proves that she cherished them, and perhaps Mary’s early religious views were shaped by Anne Boleyn’s religious tendencies. Mary had not only sheltered the Protestant John Foxe, but also read the Bible in the vernacular and enjoyed debating its contents with like-minded individuals so much so that her elder brother, the Earl of Surrey, warned her about “going too far in reading the Scripture”.[5] Anne Boleyn had famously encouraged her ladies to read the New Testament translated by William Tyndale, which she held wide open at her desk, and it is possible that Mary began to develop her own religious views under Anne’s wing. 

Mary left court, probably in the summer of 1536, and did not join the household of Henry VIII’s new wife, Jane Seymour. It may be that Mary voluntarily shunned court after Anne’s execution, although the arrest of her half uncle, Thomas Howard, and the death of her young husband, Henry Fitzroy, in the summer of 1536 certainly influenced her decision. 

---

[1] John Foxe, Book of Martyrs: The Actes and Monuments of the Church, Volume 2, p. 372.

[2] Nicola Shulman, Graven with Diamonds, p. 195.

[3] Letters and Papers, Volume 10, n. 601.

[4] John Foxe, Book of Martyrs: The Actes and Monuments of the Church, Volume 2, p. 372.

[5] Letters and Papers, Volume 21 Part 1, n. 769.

RSC Wolf Hall - Aldwych Theatre: Review by Christine Wilson

RSC Wolf Hall - Aldwych Theatre: Review by Christine Wilson 

Ben Miles as Thomas Cromwell

I had managed to get to London’s Aldwych Theatre from Belfast minus the two coveted tickets for Wolf Hall. Luckily I had taken a boastful photo to put on Facebook and duplicates were found for me - even better seats for 4 rows from the front. So I could see the whites of their eyes and not miss a thing. The theatre was full for this, a preview and none of us were disappointed.

The curtain pulled back to a gasp from the audience as we saw a tableau of Tudor characters captured in mid dance - straight from the 1530s, staring out at us in their ghostly dance and instantly drawing us in. This is exactly what Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall did. It draws us the reader back, back to the past so we inhabit the characters and see, smell and feel them. This simple opener instantly told us that Director Jeremy Herrin had understood that and was staying true to the book. This device was used four or five times in the 3 hour duration - the cast appearing on stage; moving together and staring out sightlessly at the audience as if woken from slumber for our entertainment.

Nathaniel Parker as Henry VIII

Could the handsome Ben Miles as Cromwell pull off this mighty role? He looks nothing like the character. But within seconds his manner and severe black costume- had convinced. He played the role in a slightly comic way - although wry humour more like The Thick of It than perhaps Blackadder. He spoke direct to the audience and stared around him constantly as if always on the look-out and never relaxed and his sharp wit quickly showed him a man who could rise to the top - as he did - after the fall of his beloved master Cardinal Wolsey (who continued to appear on stage at key points as a ghost.) Loss was a regular feature in the opening acts - as Cromwell also lost his wife and children but also his family life.

Lydia Leonard as Anne Boleyn

Henry VIII was played by TV’s Nathaniel Parker as a slightly dim but deadly, vain man - very much at the mercy (or merci perhaps?) of the charming and clever Anne Boleyn and the ambitious Cromwell who makes it possible for them to eventually wed. Anne’s brother, George, played by Oscar Pearce, got the biggest laugh of the night as he minced on wearing jewellery and waving a small hanky. It was a controversial interpretation of the character but we have to remember that this is Cromwell’s interpretation of events and how he saw people. And as a theatrical device to bring some small humour to a serious play it worked well and added enormously to the enjoyment. Anne Boleyn was ably handled by Lydia Leonard who perhaps brought nothing especially new to the role but stayed true to Hilary Mantel’s creation and played her witty and taunting ‘Cremuel‘ … She was nearly overshadowed by the quirkiness of the anything -but- humble Jane Seymour played by Leah Brotherhead with confidence. There were also some outstanding young actors in the ensemble, many taking their first stage roles.

The set and costume design deserve a special mention for their authenticity and the simple stage switched easily from being Wolsey’s Palace to a boat being rowed up the Thames and then Greenwich Palace in moments and a bit like the character of Thomas Cromwell himself showed how you can see the same thing in many different ways and guises. Step forward Christopher Oram who did both with brilliance.

Although an ensemble cast, some actors playing several roles, it is very much Ben Mile’s role. He is on stage the entire time and drives the play. He reacts to and initiates everything we see so these characters only exist because they are in his world. And his confidence, poise and rapport with the audience meant we could only emphasise with this very modern man.

On my way for a half time drink - and still feeling slightly spell bound by the production, I could hear some Americans drawling ‘It’s hard to know who all these people are really’. But it turned out that they thought they’d booked The Lion King.