Sex with the Queen by Eleanor Herman

torrent of vitriol against the very man who had moved heaven m e d i e v a l q u e e n s , t u d o r v i c t i m s 6 7

    and earth to place her on the throne. She hacked away at him with her sharp cleaving tongue, something which patient Queen Catherine had never done.
    Thin and worn, her eyes feverishly bright, she looked older than her age. At court her sharp desperation, nervous nastiness, and sense of impending doom contrasted unpleasantly with plump sweet young things buzzing around her. And Anne no-ticed the king’s eye roving to her ladies-in-waiting. These ladies no longer hoped only to become the king’s mistress; they wanted to become queen. Anne had proven that a queen could easily be replaced; in her greatest victory were the seeds of her ultimate defeat.
    But it was the men, after all, who proved more dangerous. On her scramble to the top Anne had alienated powerful courtiers.
    Sensing Henry’s growing dislike of his queen, political factions sprang into action against her. Anne was a religious reformer; there were many at court who yearned to go back to the bosom of the old church and thought that with Anne removed, the king would be so inclined. Politically, Anne was pro-French; she had been raised at the French court and hated Spain, the native land and staunch supporter of Henry’s first wife, Queen Catherine.
    But many at court wanted to drop the French alliance and form one with Spain.
    There were those who wanted to remove Anne for reasons of pure personal greed. The cunning Seymour brothers, knowing of the king’s increasing interest in their plain sister Jane, saw riches and power coming their way as soon as Anne was gone.
    Those who had been displaced from lucrative court positions by Anne’s powerful family joined the fracas.
    Henry, who had waited seven years in a messy divorce from his first wife to marry Anne, was now heartily sick of her and im-patient to marry Jane Seymour. He wouldn’t tolerate another protracted divorce that raised questions about the legitimacy of future children. The easiest way to disencumber himself from Anne would be to charge her with a capital offense—adultery was always a good missile to sling at a queen—and have her executed.
    The newly minted widower could then remarry immediately.
    s e x w i t h t h e q u e e n
    6 8

    Possibly there were more sinister forces at work than just Henry’s longing for an heir combined with Anne’s political en-emies. Some modern scholars believe that the fetus she delivered in January 1536 was deformed, the surest sign of God’s displea-sure in the sixteenth century. If this was true, Henry must have felt the accusing finger of God pointing straight at him. The king refused to accept the verdict; the deformed child could not have been his. Anne must have had a lover. Moreover, such abominations were Satan’s spawn. Anne must have been dab-bling in witchcraft.
    That theory explains why some courtiers saw Anne holding Elizabeth, a perfectly formed child, up to Henry on the day be-fore her arrest, and arguing emotionally, perhaps trying to prove to him that she brought one well-formed child into the world and could produce another.
    Accusations of adultery must always include the name of the lover, preferably a political enemy. Two Boleyn supporters con-trolled access to the king and would have to be neutralized im-mediately: Henry Norris—groom of the stool and gentleman of the privy chamber; and William Brereton—a leading gentleman of the privy chamber. While their titles sound humble, these men who handed the king his clothes or tidied up his rooms were immensely powerful. They had the royal ear and permitted or forbade entrée to the king’s apartments; it was, indeed, the highest honor to obtain such a position.
    George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, Anne’s influential brother, would also have to be removed at the same fell stroke.
    His wife, Lady Jane Rochford—perhaps revenging herself for his sexual neglect of