The Taming of the Queen

The king watches the dancers, applauding one or another. He puts his hand around my waist, while I look fixedly at the windows where a pale winter sun is setting over the trees in the gardens. He slides his hand downwards to pat my buttocks. I make sure that I don’t flinch. I don’t look at Thomas, I look blindly out of the window, and when the king releases me and I can step aside, I see that Thomas has gone.

HAMPTON COURT PALACE, WINTER 1546

At the gift-giving for the New Year Princess Elizabeth asks me to accompany her to take her present to the king. Together with Princess Mary we go to his presence chamber where he is receiving his court and giving and dispensing gifts. He almost always gives a purse of money, and Anthony Denny is at his side, tactfully judging the correct weight of the purse for each smiling recipient. Everyone falls back when the princesses and I enter the room and I curtsey to Henry but step aside, so that Elizabeth can go forward alone. I look around for Thomas, and see he is standing near to the king, a fat purse in his hand. Carefully, he looks away from me, carefully, I keep my eyes on Elizabeth.

‘Your Majesty, my honoured father,’ she says in her clear voice, speaking French. As he smiles at her she changes into Latin. ‘I have brought your Christmas gift. It is not riches in the eyes of the world but it is a treasure from heaven. It is worthless from the hands of its maker, for that was I, your most humble daughter, who made the translation and the copy for you. But I know that you love the author, and I know that you love the work and that gives me the courage to offer you: this.’

From behind her back she brings out her beautifully written translation of my private prayers, translated into Latin, French and Italian. She goes towards her father, bows very low and puts it into his hands.

The court bursts into applause and the king beams. ‘This is a work of great learning and good sense,’ he says. ‘Published by my wife and approved by every scholar. And here it is translated by another good scholar into a work of great beauty. I am proud that my wife and my daughter are women of scholarship. Learning is an ornament to a good woman, not a distraction.’

‘And what do you have for your stepmother?’ he asks Elizabeth.

She turns to me and presents my gift. It is another translated book and she has embroidered a cover with the king’s name and my own. I exclaim with pleasure and show it to the king. He opens the book and sees the title, written in Elizabeth’s meticulous hand. It is an English translation of a book of theology by the reformist thinker Jean Calvin. Only a few years ago this would have been heresy, now it is a New Year’s present. It defines precisely how far we have come, what Elizabeth is allowed to read, and that reform is the new religion.

The king smiles at me and says, ‘You must read this to me and tell me what you think of it, and of my daughter’s scholarship.’

Archbishop Thomas Cranmer comes to me during the period of quiet study in my rooms and says that he would like to read to us the reforms he is going to suggest to the king, for our thoughts and comments. He glances at Princess Mary, who loves the old ways; but she bends her head, and says that she is sure that the good bishop will suggest only godly reforms, and that, anyway, nothing made by man is perfect. Anne of Cleves looks up with interest. She was raised as a Lutheran, she always hoped to bring sincere religious feeling into England. I have to take care not to look triumphant. This is God’s victory: not mine.

There is a small lectern in the corner of my presence chamber where the visiting preachers put their Bibles or their books and Thomas Cranmer places his sheaf of papers there, and looks shyly round at us.

‘I feel as if I am about to preach a sermon,’ he says, smiling.

‘We would welcome a sermon,’ I say. ‘We have had many godly preachers here, and you, dear archbishop, would be one of the greatest.’ I take care not to look at Anne of Cleves as I welcome a reformist archbishop to my rooms. If I believed in confession I would have to admit the sin of pride.

‘I thank you,’ he says. ‘But today I want to learn from you. I think my task has been to take the church’s many additions from the old act of the Mass. The challenge is to cut the words and actions of man and keep the intention of God.’

Anne Seymour and Catherine Brandon take up their sewing, but do not make so much as a stitch. I make no pretence of doing anything but listening. I fold my hands in my lap and Princess Elizabeth, sitting beside me, does the same, copying me exactly. Anne of Cleves sits beside her and puts her arm around Elizabeth’s narrow shoulders. I have to suppress a little pang of quite unworthy jealousy. Of course, she still thinks of herself as Elizabeth’s stepmother. She too cared for the motherless child. So does sin come into the smallest moments of daily life; but really, she was Elizabeth’s stepmother for no more than months!