TUDORS IN LOVE
By Sarah Gristwood (Oneworld £20, 400 pp)
Anne Boleyn was coronated in 1533 by a four-day party that was held across the country. It was cleverly organized to celebrate her chastity, even though she was heavily pregnant.
The parade on Thames was the highlight of day one. It featured more than 300 vessels, 50 state barges decorated with gold and packed with musicians.
The celebrations were perhaps the high point of Henry VIII’s courtship of Anne, and we all know how it ended. This highbrow chronicle by Sarah Gristwood, a historian, reveals that it was typical of Tudor courtly love techniques, which were popularised in the 11th and 12th century. The main idea was the veneration and love of women. A knight of chivalry would suffer for the love of his lady.
Sarah Gristwood looks at the Tudors courtly love techniques in a new book. Pictured: Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII
Henry did indeed deploy techniques of courtly love — he flattered and wrote gushing letters — but the famous rhyme suggests his veneration of women had its limits: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.
Take Catherine of Aragon. Henry VII had seen her as a good match for his heir Prince Arthur. The couple married in 1501, but it was not a successful wedding. Catherine’s Spanish doctor reported, diplomatically: ‘The prince had been denied the strength necessary to know a woman.’ Five months later, Arthur was dead of tuberculosis or testicular cancer and Catherine was passed to the new heir, who became Henry VIII.
Being married to Catherine didn’t stop Henry venerating other women. He had an affair with Mary Boleyn, Anne’s sister, and Bessie Blount, whose illegitimate son was made Duke of Richmond and Somerset.
The author is scathing when talking about the execution of Anne, his second wife, on charges of adultery that were almost certainly false: ‘Ultimately, the king’s romance was with himself. The idea that the woman could hold the power in this relationship was nothing more than illusion.’
THE TUDORS IN LOVE By Sarah Gristwood (Oneworld £20, 400 pp)
Sex and romance in Henry’s court was almost always about power, and that was just as true of Elizabeth, his daughter by Anne, who was a classic courtly lady: capricious, demanding, constantly testing the fidelity of her admirers. Optimistic courtiers wrote her passionate letters: ‘Would God I were with you but for one hour’, wrote Sir Christopher Hatton, who also sent her a ring to ward off the plague, advising her to wear it between her ‘sweet’ breasts.
In truth, she was keeping all men at arm’s length. In those days, a husband would have wanted to share political power.
One of the traditions of courtly love was that couples didn’t always end up between the sheets. It’s a good thing, as Henry VIII was a terrible bed-fellow. According to Anne Boleyn, he was ‘not skilful in copulating with a woman and had neither virtue nor potency’.
But a capricious lady in the tradition of courtly love would say that, wouldn’t she?