Tudor? I Hardly Knew Her! : Anne of Cleves

The original royal family Photoshop scandal

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Before this week’s discussion, I’m delighted to have late-breaking news. There is not often late-breaking news about these six well-documented 16th-century women, but the Louvre conservation team has recently revealed their makeover of the famous portrait of Anne. Here’s the before and after:

Before and After!

I love that this just happened because this portrait plays an essential role in Anne of Cleves’s whole story, not to mention inspiring the bop Haus of Holbein in the musical Six. And so, on with today’s saga!

Previously on in Tudor? I Hardly Knew Her! Katherine of Aragon part one, Katherine of Aragon part two, Anne Boleyn part one, Anne Boleyn Part Two, and Jane Seymour.

Note: As we’re now veering into the repeating names of Henry’s wives, I’ll refer to the woman known as Anne of Cleves by her German name, Anna, to avoid confusion with her predecessor, Anne Boleyn.

Henry VIII had six wives, which makes it tempting to catalogue each by their closest stereotype: Katherine of Aragon as the frigid religious fanatic, Anne Boleyn as the witch/temptress, and Jane Seymour as the inoffensive, boring one. Not so coincidentally, these were also the narratives Henry and his entourage promoted following the dissolution of each marriage. The same thing happens again with Anne of Cleves, whose legacy of “the ugly/uneducated one who grossed out even Henry, a revolting mass of human flesh” is what’s most often known about her brief tenure as Mrs. Henry VIII. Anna’s story, falling right between the more dramatic tales of the other Katherines and Annes, is bonkers and ridiculous, and more importantly? A nice respite from the horror litany of the other five tales. So let’s do it!

Anna’s parents were the Duke of Cleves and the Duchess of Julich-Berg, two nobles whose marriage had united Cleves with Julich and Berg, joining three formerly separate principalities into the duchy of Cleves. Anna, born on September 22, 1515, was her parents’ second child and second daughter. When Anna was 11, she was betrothed to the similarly-aged son of the Duke of nearby Lorraine; the betrothal was cancelled in 1535. Three years later, her father died, and the Dukedom was passed on to her younger brother, William. William practiced the Protestant Lutheran faith, but the rest of the family followed their mother’s Roman Catholicism. The main selling point of Anna as a possible match for the newly single English King was that, under the rule of William, Cleves was butting heads with the Holy Roman Emperor — making them an ideal ally for England. A marriage would help solidify this connection… or so they thought.

Here’s the thing: Henry VIII mourned for nearly three years after the death of Jane Seymour. For a guy who previously always had a backup ready in case a relationship ended, this lengthy period of bachelorhood was unusual. And for a King with two daughters and one very young, sickly son, it was becoming increasingly problematic. Henry was obsessed with having sons and continuing his Tudor family legacy, but so was everyone else around him. The usual warring factions supported different young women for him to marry, and Anna was the pick of Henry’s trusted chief minister, Thomas Cromwell (you may be familiar with him as the main character in the book and miniseries Wolf Hall).

Henry had known all three of his previous wives before he married them, so the prospect of a sight-unseen arranged marriage was entirely new to him. To ensure he knew what he was getting into, the artist Hans Holbein the Younger was sent to Cleves to paint portraits of the two possible new wives who lived there: Anna and her younger sister Amalia. Just laying some foreshadowing, Henry specifically told Holbein to paint both portraits accurately, not to flatter either woman, but to do like the painting version of a #nofilter photograph. Do you see where this is going? I think you do.

Long story short, Henry preferred Anna’s looks to Amalia and, combined with Cromwell’s description of her as gentle, virtuous and docile, agreed to marry her. Cromwell, I think, knew what he was doing. He had seen Henry's happiness with the submissive, inoffensive Jane and how his dramatic marriage to the opinionated Anne Boleyn had nearly ruined the country. The bit he was potentially neglecting was the importance of education. Katherine and Anne had both been extremely well educated, and even Jane Seymour had a level of cultural sophistication that Anna did not possess. Anna had received literally zero formal education and was raised away from the skulduggery and scheming of a royal court. Oh, and she couldn’t read or write in English. Holbein’s portrait is similar to others painted of her throughout her life, showing heavy-lidded eyes in a heart-shaped face, her facial expression one of serene bemusement.

A lifelong Catholic, Anna converted to Anglicanism immediately upon arriving in England. She had been told that her first meeting with her future husband would be once she arrived in London; Henry, unfortunately, had different plans. Remember that in 1540, Anna was 25, and Henry was a hard-lived 49. In his grief over Jane’s death, he had gained weight, which exacerbated his old jousting leg wound, which could never be permanently treated and which festered and ulcerated. I’m not sure if it was then, but in this general period, he grew to a size that required “mechanical inventions” to help him move around. So, on the one hand, this is an interesting history of disability accommodations. On the other side, imagine yourself as 25-year-old, sheltered Anna, hanging out in some manor home en route to meet her future husband. Imagine that, while sitting at a window, someone who looks like the above description of Henry struts in wearing a mask and doesn’t say who he is. This person embraces and kisses you, handing over a gift he says is from the King.

You may react like Anna apparently did, being embarrassed at this stranger’s weirdo behaviour, finally trying to ignore him by looking back out the window. The strange man leaves, then returns without the mask and explains that SURPRISE! He’s the King, your future husband! Like: can you even imagine? And this all happened. There are records. Henry was engaging in standard courtly romantic love behaviour, but Anna wasn’t familiar with this tradition. So we’ve now got two people potentially judging one another very shrewdly based on appearance. One of them is a delusional and narcissistic King; the other is a mostly powerless, naive young woman. Guess who gets the upper hand??

After this catastrophically humiliating meet cute, Henry instantly tried to cancel their betrothal. Cromwell and his other advisors talked him out of this because there was no way to do that without destroying the vital alliance with Cleves. The engaged couple had their first official meeting two days after the Incident of the Mask, where Anna was welcomed and given a grand reception. Notably, everyone other than Henry wrote that she was lovely in appearance and personality. Already, Henry was laying track for his “she’s so ugly I can’t get it up” alibi, stating that he had been misled by both Holbein’s portrait and Cromwell’s reference. Still, there was no way out of this and two more days later, the two were married in what I’m sure was The Wedding Event Of The Season* (* not really). Like Henry’s other wives/Queens before her, Anna selected a motto at this time: “God send me well to keep.”

Now, unlike Katherine and Anne, we don’t have Anna’s diaries or writings to back up what was going on from her point of view. It is very clear that she and Henry did not consummate their marriage on their wedding night; even Henry freely admitted he was unable to become aroused because — YET AGAIN — “did they or did they not have sex” became a cornerstone of the dissolution of this marriage. Of course, as per Henry, this was totally 100% not his fault, but it was Anna’s fault because Henry found her so physically repulsive that his penis, I guess, shrank away in terror? Not at all to do with his aforementioned age, health, gout, pus-filled sores, etc., or any medical issue on his part. And the thing is, it’s entirely possible that Anna also didn’t know what sex was because she had been raised in a very sheltered environment with little education. 

A month after the uneventful wedding night, Anna is recorded as having lovingly described her husband’s affection as follows: “When he comes to bed he kisseth me, and he taketh me by the hand, and biddeth me ‘Good night, sweetheart’; and in the morning kisseth me and biddeth ‘Farewell, darling.'” Her companion responded, “Madam, there must be more than this, or it will be long ere we have a Duke of York, which all this realm most desireth.” At least publicly, she was carrying on apparently content with her new life as the English Queen. Behind the scenes, Henry already had the wheels in motion to end their marriage. Perhaps because Anna was still not fluent in English, she couldn’t have understood the gossip swirling around that a) Henry was desperate to get rid of her and b) he had fallen for her lady-in-waiting, the teenaged Catherine Howard.

On June 24th, just over five months after their wedding, Anna was commanded to leave court. On July 6th, she received her first official notice that Henry was “reconsidering” their marriage based on, and yes, this is true, how unattractive he found her. This is the same King who fought for seven years to annul his first marriage based on the Bible and the law; he was on his fourth wife now and I guess was just over it. If the “removed from court/having a third party explain he was dumping her” was a remix of the Katherine of Aragon situation, Henry began dabbling in the way he treated Anne Boleyn, starting to spread rumours that Anna was promiscuous, and had not been a virgin when she married him. How would you know, Henry? You never had sex with her, you loathsome pus-covered narcissistic asshole.

Ahem.

But here’s where Anna’s story takes on its own amazing twist. Henry demanded that she consent to an annulment, and… she agreed! Unable to take out his rage on a woman, as he’d been able to when Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn had fought back against him, the King turned on Cromwell, arresting him for treason. The logic here is that it is treason to describe a lovely young woman as a lovely young woman to an unstable, megalomaniacal has-been. Her inadvertent connection to Cromwell’s downfall is one of the things Anna had in common with her predecessor, Anne Boleyn, whose actions had also tangentially led to the execution of one of Henry’s previous trusted advisors. Anna and Henry’s marriage was officially annulled on July 9. Nineteen days later, Henry married his fifth wife, Anna’s former lady-in-waiting Catherine Howard AND also Cromwell was executed.

Now, we’re in unchartered territory here for Anne. Katherine of Aragon lived out the rest of her days in exile; Anne Boleyn was beheaded; Jane died of birth complications. Anna was still alive, 25 years old, healthy, and not disgraced. Henry, grateful that she stepped aside so obligingly, gave her a very generous settlement that included numerous properties (one of which is now known as Anne of Cleves house in Lewes, Sussex, and I’m dying to go and visit it). She was named King’s Beloved Sister and joined Henry, Catherine, and his children at family events. She and Henry became great friends (???), and he decreed that she should be treated as the most important woman in England besides his current wife and daughters.

So Anna lived an amazing single-lady life among her many properties, winning the affection of her servants and the English people. When Henry found himself wanting a new wife two years later (we’ll get into why that is later on), Anna’s family suggested that Henry marry her again. Wouldn’t it have been so amazing if he did? He didn’t, but this is an interesting Sliding Doors moment. Anyway, Henry himself died seven years after his brief marriage to Anna. His children continued to treat Anna as a respected honorary member of their family, and she was known to be particularly close to Henry’s younger daughter, Elizabeth. When her former stepdaughter, now Queen Mary I, was wed to King Philip of Spain in 1553, Anna and Elizabeth took part in the coronation procession. To honour the new Queen, Anna converted back to Catholicism.

In 1554, Elizabeth was implicated in a Protestant rebellion (more on that when I write about Elizabeth; it’s quite the story). Anna’s longstanding friendship with Elizabeth caused Queen Mary to suspect her, too, so Anna was never invited to the royal court again. Anna fell ill, likely of cancer, in 1557 and passed away shortly before her forty-second birthday, on July 16th. In her will, she requested that Queen Mary and Lady Elizabeth look after her servants, entreating them to employ them in their households. She was buried in Westminster Abbey, the only one of Henry’s wives to be laid to rest there. Her epitaph there reads:

ANNE OF CLEVES
QUEEN OF ENGLAND
BORN 1515 * DIED 1557

Vulgar History a la Carte is a companion newsletter to the Vulgar History podcast. This week on the podcast, I’m talking about Saint Margaret of Scotland with E.K. McAlpine of It’s Like History!

References:

Anna, Duchess of Cleves: The King’s ‘Beloved Sister’ by Heather R. Darsie
Anne of Cleves: Henry VIII’s Discarded Bride by Elizabeth Norton
Anne Of Cleves: Henry VIII’s Unwanted Wife by Sarah-Beth Watkins