Anne Boleyn: Henry VIII's Obsession by Elizabeth Norton Read Free Book Online Page B

would have been the first consideration for the practical and ambitious Anne. However, it is possible that she also had feelings for Percy coincidental to the advantages of the match. Henry Percy was aged around twenty in 1522, a similar age to Anne and the couple may well have had interests in common. Anne’s enmity towards Wolsey also stems from his interference in this match. It is possible that she bore him a grudge for the loss of her future position as Countess of Northumberland. This would seem unlikely since, by the time she acted against the Cardinal, Anne knew that she would become queen. It seems more likely that Anne’s feelings were hurt by the Cardinal’s interference and the loss of her relationship with Percy.
    Anne was pleased with the effect that she had on Henry Percy and she willingly entered into an engagement with him as soon as he asked. The exact nature of the engagement between Anne and Percy has often been debated and the formalities that they did or did not go through in establishing the connection would have a dramatic effect on their future lives. In 1532 Percy’s wife, Mary Talbot, whom he was forced to marry soon after the end of his relationship with Anne, claimed to the king that her husband had entered into a binding betrothal with Anne. The Percys’ marriage was notoriously unhappy and this was probably a move by the Countess to attempt to secure her own divorce on the basis that Anne had been precontracted to Percy. This was also something that would be raised, to much greater effect, in the days leading up to Anne’s death.
    In the sixteenth century, a precontract was taken to be as binding as marriage and the existence of an earlier precontract was a legitimate ground for divorce. In 1483 Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was able to invalidate the marriage of his brother, Edward IV, on the basis that the king had earlier entered into a precontract. Given this security, precontracts were frequently consummated and Anne and Percy would both have considered themselves married following their engagement and it is likely that they also consummated their relationship.
    Henry Percy, of all Anne’s earlier suitors, is the man that Anne Boleyn is most likely to have consummated her relationship with. It was the Percy engagement which kept coming back to haunt Anne in her later life and Anne, who was not prepared to throw herself away without a secure promise of marriage, may well have been prepared to consummate her relationship in the hope of concluding the marriage more quickly. This was certainly Anne’s tactic in her relationship with Henry VIII and, once she was certain that she would be married soon, Anne was happy to consummate her relationship to ensure that marriage was achieved more quickly.
    There is also a tantalising hint that Anne was a woman with a past in her own correspondence. An unusual letter was written by Anne in 1532 before her marriage to Henry VIII. Anne wrote to a Lady Wingfield, who was probably a member of Henry’s court. In this letter Anne took an unusually subservient tone:
‘Madam, though at all times I have not shewed the love that I bear you as much as it were indeed, yet now I trust that you shall well prove that I loved you a great deal more than I made fayn for, and assuredly, next to mine own mother, I know no woman alive that I love better’.
     
    Anne’s letter continues in the same tone and it is clear that she was anxious to remain on friendly terms with Lady Wingfield. The reason for Anne’s desperate need to keep Lady Wingfield friendly is not clear but it also appears that a deathbed confession by Lady Wingfield, of something that she knew about the queen, was used in the investigation into Anne that ultimately led to her arrest and execution. Lady Wingfield was, perhaps, present at court during Anne’s relationship with Henry Percy. She may have been friendly with Anne and learned the secret that Anne, considering her marriage to Percy to be a