marriage to Anne, you go to him and tell him that Anne has had an affair with Thomas Wyatt; you’re trying to save him from himself. At this point it’s the last thing Henry wishes to hear, and he kicks you out. You’re soon back at Court and happily blundering along. You love Henry, in spite of all.
You are baffled by Cromwell. But you find it best generally to do as he says.
After Mary Tudor’s death in 1533, you marry a fourteen-year-old heiress who was intended for your son. She grows up to be a witty and strong-willed religious reformer who keeps a small dog called Gardiner, which she shouts at in public: it’s the most successful joke of the English Reformation.
You remain rich. You remain honoured. You are a thread that connects Henry to his young self and to the England he inherited. You die in your bed, 1545. Henry pays for a magnificent funeral.
EUSTACHE CHAPUYS
You are born in Savoy, to a respectable but not wealthy family. You are a lawyer with university training, a meritocrat, able to make your way in the vast field of opportunity offered by service to the Holy Roman Emperor. You are in your late thirties (but, a fragile man, you seem older) when you come to London in 1529 to represent your master and to act as councillor and comforter to the embattled Queen Katherine. You will stay until 1545, with a brief intermission when diplomatic relations are broken off. That fact in itself is a testament to your endurance, and the faith placed in you by your distant boss.
You are a cultured man with a humorous turn of phrase. You are astute and subtle, but also passionately engaged in Katherine’s cause, and you give wholehearted commitment to her, and then to her daughter Mary. For you, this is not just a matter of duty, it’s personal. You labour under certain disadvantages; you don’t speak English. But who does, in the Europe of the 1530s? (How much English you understand is a matter of debate.) Visiting Henry’s Court, you never know what to expect. You have to swallow insults and threats, being snubbed and ignored. You are bobbing about in a sea of barbarians. Really, the only thing that makes life bearable is your regular suppers with Thomas Cromwell.
With Cromwell you can rattle along in colloquial French, your native tongue. You can pick up all the gossip. It may not be accurate, and you are aware that he may be teasing and misleading you, and yes, you know he’s the Antichrist. But you can’t help but like him, you tell the Emperor. He’s so generous and so entertaining and neighbourly. You do believe he’s on the Emperor’s side, if only he could be brought to say so.
It takes all your courage to face Henry. Luckily you have a lot. You will not only face him but needle him, probing the areas of vulnerability. Perhaps, you say, he will never have a son: God has his reasons. Henry bellows at you: ‘Am I not a man like other men? Am I not? Am I not?’
Your problem is this: your confidants are the old aristocratic families who support Katherine and Mary, and because you listen to them you misperceive the situation; you report to the Emperor several times that the English are ready to revolt and replace Henry, and you urge him to invade; in fact, the families you are involved with have little popular support. It is difficult for you to understand that the power structure is changing from below. There’s something you’re persistently not grasping. Perhaps it’s Cromwell. One day when you are deep in conversation, he starts to smile and can’t stop. You tell the Emperor that he has the grace to cover his mouth with his hand.
You are an arch-conspirator doomed to ineffectuality, a brave man on a failing mission. When the Emperor finally allows you to retire, on grounds of ill-health, you limp to the low countries and found a college for young men from your own country of Savoy. And you die peacefully, 1556: having made more of a mark on the history of England than you could ever have believed possible when you were sent among the savages.
SIR HENRY NORRIS
You are known as ‘gentle Norris’ the perfect courtier: emollient, but also, it seems, a man of genuine tact and kindness. You are chief of the King’s Privy Chamber, and Henry’s close friend; almost a brother: the man he wakes up to talk to, when he can’t sleep. Your closeness to him makes your friendship invaluable to other courtiers. You are at the centre of a network of patronage and favours. You are very powerful because you can control who is admitted to the King’s presence, and what he signs, and when. You grow discreetly rich. Like William Brereton, you are one of the ‘marcher lords’, with lands on the Welsh borders.
You are roughly Henry’s contemporary, and like him a star jouster, but you are also clever enough to take on a role in the management of his finances which is deliberately impenetrable: you are in charge of the ‘secret funds’.
This may be your undoing. When Thomas Cromwell comes marauding along, he doesn’t want secrets; he wants complete charge of the revenue and what happens to it. You may take a certain amount of pleasure in thwarting him. As long as you and your friends control how the King lives day to day, you can limit Cromwell’s access. It’s a setback when he is given rooms at Greenwich that communicate directly with Henry’s. But the Privy Chamber’s mandarin workings are very hard to challenge.
You are also aware that Cromwell is involved in a clean-up of border jurisdiction, and is intent on reforming the ineffectual government of Wales. You’re not stopping him. But you’re not exactly helping him either. The present situation suits you nicely.
You have an area of weakness; though you’re not a child, like Francis Weston, and you should know better, you’ve become too close to Anne Boleyn.
You are a widower, and you are considered engaged to Mary Shelton, Anne’s cousin and lady-in-waiting. You’d better hurry up, because Mary is being hotly pursued as a lover, not least by Weston. But you don’t hurry: why is that? Anne puts the question in public, on 30th April 1536. Tormented, you quarrel with her, and are overheard. It sounds as if you and Anne plan to marry, in the event of the King’s premature death. This is dangerous; it’s a short step from saying ‘the King might die’ to saying ‘the King will die.’ Preparing for a tournament at Greenwich, you are ignorant of the construction being placed on the quarrel.
On the day of the joust, Henry is in the spectator’s stands. You’re having a bad day; your horse acts up and won’t enter the lists, and Henry offers you one of his own standby string of mounts. But before the sport gets underway, Cromwell’s nephew, the irritatingly confident Richard, strides up to Henry and whispers something to him: a nasty piece of news. Henry rises from his place. He will ride back to London. You are commanded to ride with him.
On the journey he tells you that you are an adulterer. You have slept with his wife. You are shocked; and probably, you are also innocent. Confess, he says, and I’ll be good to you. There can be mercy.
You don’t believe it. It’s an escalating horror. Back in Whitehall you are interrogated by Master Treasurer, William Fitzwilliam, one of Cromwell’s wingmen. You admit something. Perhaps that, yes, you are in love with Anne. You immediately retract what you have said. You don’t admit adultery. But you seem resigned to what follows. You make no inelegant protest. Perhaps you have too much experience to think you can fight off Cromwell. You must wonder why the King has so abruptly turned against you. Possibly you know the one secret Henry tries to keep from the world; he’s sometimes impotent. Perhaps Anne told you. But perhaps it was Henry himself, in an outbreak of late-night confidence: later regretted, and with fatal consequences. Perhaps he thought you were laughing at him, together with his wife: that’s the one thing he can’t forgive.
SIR WILLIAM BRERETON
You come from a powerful Cheshire family and, like your friend Norris, you are a marcher lord, with lands on the disturbed and contentious Welsh border. You are a member of Henry’s Privy Chamber, one of his inner circle, but when you are arrested
