There is no doubt that Anne and Wyatt quickly began some kind of relationship and that Wyatt cherished hopes that it would be consummated. The exact nature of the relationship has often been debated. Certainly, Wyatt was in love with Anne and several of his poems plainly refer to her and speak of his love for her. To Wyatt, Anne was the exotic ‘Brunet’ and it is clear that it was her dark looks that drew him to her, as it did with her other suitors. One poem of Wyatt’s written some time after his affair with Anne speaks of her place in his heart:
‘Be sign of love. Then do I love again,
If thou ask whom, sure since I did refrain
Brunet that set my wealth in such a roar
The unfeigned cheer of Phyllis hath the place
That Brunet had: she hath and ever shall’.
That Wyatt wrote this poem to refer to Anne is clear from his original draft. The third line quoted above originally read ‘Her that did set our country in a rore’. Anne was mysterious and glamorous and Wyatt was in love with her, as his own poems demonstrate.
Wyatt had been married for several years before he became interested in Anne but it would appear that the marriage was always unhappy. Anne may have awakened in Wyatt feelings that he did not have for his wife. Wyatt’s marriage proved to be disastrous and, by some point before 1526, he had denounced his wife for adultery, refusing to maintain her. This separation proved to be permanent and, by 1541, Wyatt was openly living with Elizabeth Darvell, a maid of Queen Catherine Howard. Although Wyatt’s separation from his wife coincides with his relationship with Anne it is unlikely that she was the cause of the breakdown and she would have been very much aware that Wyatt would be unlikely to secure a divorce. Wyatt’s marriage had always been tumultuous and his love for Anne is likely to have been kept entirely separate from his domestic woes.
While Wyatt was in love with Anne, her feelings for him are less clear. One sixteenth century writer went so far as to suggest that Anne was ‘passionately in love’ with him. A number of accounts also suggest that the relationship between Anne and Wyatt might have been less platonic than that suggested by George Wyatt.
This is certainly the view of the anonymous author of the
Chronicle of King Henry VIII
, which is contemporary with Anne. The anonymous Spanish chronicler claimed that, before Henry VIII married Anne, Wyatt came to him and said that he should not marry her as ‘she was a bad woman’. According to the
Chronicle
, Henry refused to listen to Wyatt, sending him away furiously but Wyatt managed to get a letter to Henry at the time of Anne’s death. Wyatt apparently wrote:
‘Your Majesty knows that before marrying Queen Anne you said to me, Wyatt, I am going to marry Anne Boleyn, what do you think of it? I told your Majesty then that you had better not do so, and you asked me why; to which I replied that she was a bad woman, and your Majesty ordered me to quit your presence for two years’.
In this letter Wyatt continued saying that, driven by lust for Anne, he had arrived one night at her home and climbed into her room. Wyatt found Anne in bed and, on seeing him she exclaimed ‘Good God! Master Wyatt, what are you doing here at this hour?’. Wyatt replied ‘Lady, a heart tormented as mine has been by yours for long past has urged me hither to ask for some consolation from one who has caused it so much pain’. Anne then allowed Wyatt to kiss her and to move to even greater familiarities before a great stamping in the room above disturbed them and Anne rushed upstairs. When she returned over an hour later, Anne sent Wyatt away peremptorily and, according to the story, Wyatt later suspected that she must have had another lover upstairs.
The Chronicle of Henry VIII is contemporary with Anne and suggests not only that Anne was prepared to consummate her relationship with Wyatt but that she also took other lovers. This story clearly formed the basis of two later accounts written during the reign of Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth, and intended to be unfavourable to the queen and her mother. One writer, Nicholas Harpsfield, wrote that Wyatt also informed the king that Anne was not a fit wife for him and that he had had ‘carnal pleasure with her’. The Catholic propagandist, Sander, claimed that Wyatt had informed the council of ‘how shameless Anne’s life had been’. In his account, the Council agreed that ‘Anne Boleyn was stained in her reputation’ and no fit wife for the king. According to Sander, the Council rushed to inform Henry of Wyatt’s disclosure:
‘Henry was silent for awhile, and then spoke. He had no doubt, he said, that the council, in saying these things, was influenced by its respect and affection for his person, but he certainly believed that these stories were the inventions of wicked men, and that he could affirm upon oath that Anne Boleyn was a woman of the purest life’.
Sander claims that Wyatt was angry with the king’s response and offered to arrange a meeting with Anne so that the king could see for himself. Henry angrily refused saying that Wyatt ‘was a bold villain, not to be trusted’. Both Sander and Harpsfield claim that Wyatt and Anne had a sexual relationship. Sander even went further to claim that Wyatt was only one of many lovers for Anne and that her first had been her father’s butler when she was only fifteen.
It is impossible now to say for certain whether Anne and Wyatt consummated their relationship. The account of the
Chronicle of Henry VIII
and later writers have often been believed and it has been claimed that Anne had several lovers before her marriage to the king and acquired a reputation for not being chaste. It is certainly true that Wyatt was arrested at the time of Anne’s fall along with several other young men accused of adultery with Anne, and Wyatt was one of only two that survived. It is therefore possible that the
Chronicle’s
claim is correct, that it was Wyatt’s disclosure of his relationship with Anne before her marriage that saved him. However, the
Chronicle
, although contemporary, does not appear to have been written by someone who moved in royal circles and it is just as likely that Wyatt was saved by the king’s affection for him than by claims that he had had sexual relations with Anne. It is also implausible that Wyatt would have remained in favour after disclosing that he had slept with the king’s fiancée and, as George Wyatt pointed out, such a disclosure would almost certainly have broken the marriage. Anne was no fool and was determined to make the best marriage that she could. No evidence that survives of her character suggests that she would have risked ruining her prospects by sleeping with a married man. George Wyatt in his
Life of Queen Anne,
perhaps best sums up the unlikelihood of Anne agreeing to consummate her relationship with Wyatt ‘for that princely lady, she living in court where were so many brave gallants at that time unmarried, she was not like to cast her eye upon one that had been then married ten years’. Wyatt, as a married man, was a very different proposition to Henry Percy and it is inconceivable that Anne, who stood out against the married king for so long, would have risked throwing herself away on Wyatt.
That Wyatt and Anne’s relationship was also one of flirtation and pursuit on his part and aloofness on hers is clear from another of Wyatt’s poems. This poem makes it clear that whilst Wyatt chased Anne she would never consent to be his and, as a married man, he was the least of her suitors:
‘Whoso list to hunt: I know where is an hind
But as for me, alas I may no more;
The vain trevail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow, I leave off therefore,
Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list to hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain,
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written her fair neck round about:
‘Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame’’.
Anne allowed herself to be pursued and she enjoyed the chase, encouraging her pursuers where necessary. As Wyatt found, she was unavailable to anyone who could not offer her marriage and she certainly had other suitors. Anne Boleyn caused a sensation on her return to court and ‘she drewe all mens thoughts and sett upon her the highest, and deerest price of woorthiness’. The names of these other suitors are no longer recorded and within a few months of her return to court Anne had another, much greater suitor, who had first noticed her due to her relationship with Wyatt.
Henry VIII’s affair with Anne’s sister, Mary, had ended some time before 1526. He was therefore looking for a new mistress during the early months of that year when he first noticed the object of his friend, Wyatt’s, affections. Wyatt may not, at first, have realised how serious the king’s feelings were and he attempted to compete with the king for Anne. One day, while Wyatt was in conversation with Anne, he playfully stole a small jewel from her which she kept hanging on a lace from her pocket. Anne immediately asked for it back but Wyatt refused, wearing it around his neck as a trophy and ‘promising to himself either to have it with her favour or as an occasion to have talk with her’. Anne ignored Wyatt after her first appeals for the jewel were not successful and it was simply part of the affectionate way in which their flirtation was conducted. Anne probably enjoyed the attention, knowing that Wyatt, as a married man, was harmless and could cause her no difficulties with her other suitors.
Anne probably quickly forgot all about the jewel that Wyatt stole. Some time afterwards, while she was talking to the king, Henry also took a jewel from Anne, taking her ring to wear on his little finger. The king wore this trophy proudly, perhaps seeing it as the first sign that Anne returned his affection. He was still wearing the ring a few days later when he invited Wyatt and some other gentlemen to join him in a game of bowls. Flushed from his success with Anne, Henry was in an excellent mood and claimed to have won a game when it was clear that he was not the winner. The other team cautiously protested:
‘And yet, still he pointing with his finger whereon he wore her ring, replied often it was his, and specially to the knight he said, Wiat, I tell thee it is mine, smiling upon him withal. Sir Thomas, at length, casting his eye upon the king’s finger, perceived that the king meant the lady whose ring that was, which he well knew, and pausing a little, and finding the king bent on pleasure, after the words repeated again by the king, the knight replied, and if it may like your majesty to give me leave to measure it, I hope it will be mine; and withal took from his neck the lace whereat hung the tablet, and therewith stooped to measure the cast, which the king espying, knew, and had seen her wear, and therewithal spurned away the bowl, and said, it may be so, but then am I deceived; and so broke up the game’.
Henry was furious with Wyatt and stormed away to speak to Anne who, according to George Wyatt, managed to reassure the king of her innocence. This may have been the first moment that Henry came to realise how seriously he felt for Anne Boleyn.
Following the game of bowls, Wyatt was sent away for a time to ensure that the way was clear for the king to make his advances. Wyatt’s appointment as Marshall of Calais in 1528 also suggests that the king wanted him out of the way and the poet was only permitted to return in 1532 when the king was, for the first time, sure that his marriage to Anne was a certainty. Wyatt was certainly not in disgrace and the appointment in Calais was a prestigious one. It is likely that Henry wanted to ensure that there was no rival for Anne’s affections at his court. Anne retained an affection for Wyatt throughout her life and he played a prominent role at her coronation in 1533. He was also involved in her fall and was perhaps saved only by his enforced exile from Anne.
Anne Boleyn and Thomas Wyatt enjoyed a flirtation that could never lead to anything more due to the fact of Wyatt’s marriage. By the middle of 1526 Anne found herself in a very similar relationship and one that would ultimately be much more significant for both her and England as a whole. Although Henry VIII would originally have considered Anne as a potential mistress, his relationship with her quickly turned to a deep obsession and the most serious love affair he was ever to have.
FOR CAESAR’S I AM
In 1526 Henry VIII was thirty-five years old and in his prime. Handsome, cultured and athletic, the king was well known for his affairs with women of the court and, at the beginning of the year, he found himself without a mistress. Henry always drew his mistresses and English wives from the selection of women at his court and the incident of his game of bowls with Thomas Wyatt demonstrates that his eye quickly turned to Anne following her return to court.
Henry VIII would have at first considered only a flirtation with Anne when she came to his attention through Wyatt. Henry wanted a casual mistress and, after Anne’s sister, Mary, had already filled that role, he may well have thought that Anne was the perfect candidate. It is unclear when Henry first began to look more seriously at his friend Wyatt’s exotic mistress, but in February 1526 he arrived at a joust wearing the motto ‘Declare I dare not’. This may be the first external sign of his love for Anne and the confusion he felt over his relationship with her. Henry also very clearly wanted to warn Wyatt away from Anne with his display of her ring during the game of bowls and he probably also ensured that her other suitors abandoned their suits. While it was Wyatt that first brought Anne to Henry’s attention, the king quickly became fascinated with her and he was determined to ensure that he was her only suitor. The king rarely needed to warn anyone twice and, with Henry’s interest declared, Wyatt and Anne’s other suitors quietly abandoned their chase of her noting that, as Wyatt suggested, Anne was off limits and marked ‘for Caesar’s I am’.