Thomas Cromwell's fateful match-making

Why did Thomas Cromwell arrange Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves?

Charles V and Francis I, King of France – Europe’s two superpowers – had agreed not to ally themselves with Henry without each other’s consent. To make matters worse, the Pope had re-issued the Bull of Excommunication against him. The English King was also without a Queen, having spent over a year grieving his third wife, Jane Seymour.

England – and its King – were looking lonely. Luckily Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s chief minister, had a plan.

A much-needed ally (and wife)

Enter Anne of Cleves

Although the then Duke of Cleves, Johann (Anne’s father) was no Protestant, he – like Henry – had expelled papal authority from his domain. If Cromwell, an ardent reformer, could arrange a marriage between Henry and Anne, it would boost the reformation in England and give Henry a much-needed ally in Europe. It would also prevent a match between the King and one of Cromwell’s aristocratic rivals.

Anne, sister of Duke Wilhelm of Cleves, had first been proposed as a bride for Henry in the closing weeks of 1537. Without confirmation of her beauty, and still in mourning for Jane Seymour, Henry declined. In March 1539, though, after Cromwell raised the matter, the King agreed that negotiations could begin. Ominously, he made it clear that Cromwell was solely responsible for the match. Cromwell had little choice but to press on.

Although Cromwell was quick to relay reports of Anne’s beauty, the increasingly paranoid King no longer trusted his chief minister. To check what he was letting himself in for, Henry dispatched the renowned portrait painter Hans Holbein to Cleves to paint Anne from life.

'She is nothing so well as she was spoken of'

The disastrous first meeting

There is no doubt that Henry hoped his union with Anne would result in more sons to secure his dynasty. While Anne prepared for her journey to England, her future husband gleefully ordered a new bed head (now in Burrell Collection in Glasgow) decorated with fertility symbols. Ever the romantic, Henry rushed to meet his new bride as soon as she arrived at Rochester in Kent – in true chivalric tradition, he dressed in disguise.

According to chivalric theory, a lady would instantly recognise her true love, even if he was wearing a mask. But Anne was not expecting to meet her new husband for another two days, so hadn’t dressed in her finest clothes or prepared herself in any other way. Then, suddenly, a group of masked men burst into the room. Still reeling from the shock, she was assailed by one of them (Henry) who strode up to her and tried to kiss her. She angrily repelled him, cursing in German.

Anne had not only failed to recognise her ‘true love’ but had shown a complete ignorance of the courtly games that he so enjoyed. For Henry at least, the dye was cast. It seemed Anne did not possess the courtly refinements that he expected in a wife. He also felt she had been rather flattered by her portrait; in the stormy audience with Cromwell that followed, the King ranted that his new bride was ‘nothing so well as she was spoken of’.

Even Cromwell’s attendant Thomas Wriothesley (nicknamed ‘Call-Me’ in the Wolf Hall series) urged: ‘For God’s sake, devise for the relief of the King; for if he remain in this grief and trouble, we shall all one day smart for it.’

Faced with a royal master who clearly wanted rid of his new wife, a humiliated Cromwell was forced to admit that there was no way out. Henry would have to marry Anne, or face a major diplomatic incident and lose a much-needed ally.

'Most gracious prince, I cry for mercy'

The end of Thomas Cromwell

Determined to escape his marriage, Henry demanded that Cromwell give evidence from his Tower prison that the union had not been consummated. On 30 June, just a day after he had been convicted by attainder, the obliging Cromwell rushed off a letter to the King in a last-ditch attempt for the King’s pardon. He was, in effect, writing for his life.

The extreme desperation with which Cromwell composed this letter is suggested by the numerous crossings out and redrafting. It ran to eight full pages. On 9 July, partly thanks to Cromwell’s testimony, the marriage was declared illegal based on Anne’s prior betrothal. But it was not enough to save him.

On the morning of 28 July 1540, Thomas Cromwell was led from his apartments in the Tower to the scaffold on Tower Hill. With three blows of the axe, he was beheaded. Later that day, Henry VIII married Catherine Howard, as if to prove how little he cared for the death of his ‘faithful servant’.