Three Sisters, Three Queens

SUFFOLK PALACE, LONDON, ENGLAND, SUMMER 1532

Dear Sister,

The supporters of Anne Boleyn—her family who have done so well from her rise and her kinsmen the Howards—have become increasingly unbearable. She has taken up residence in the queen’s rooms and she is served like a royal. You can imagine how I feel, seeing her in Katherine’s chair, sleeping in Katherine’s bed. Now she has ordered that Katherine’s jewels be brought from the royal treasure house for her to wear on state occasions. The crown jewels—as if she were a queen crowned.

I said out loud what everyone thinks: that you don’t make a queen by putting a silk gown on a farmhand’s granddaughter. You can put a gold chain on a pig and it still makes nothing but hams. Of course, everyone in our household repeated it and there was some sort of brawl with the Howard servants—as there have been dozens of brawls. And this is not my fault because I only said what everyone says.

Anyway, our man Sir William Pennington was getting bested and ran from the fight and took sanctuary in Westminster Abbey, and those brutes of the House of Norfolk ran after him and killed him, killed him before the altar, with his hand on the sacred stone and his blood on the chancery steps. Charles arrested them, and threw them into jail for breach of sanctuary and murder, but the Howards ran to tell the king that their men were defending the honor of the woman Anne—as if she had any. They have Harry’s ear and his attention, they are the new favorites, and now Harry is furious with Charles and me, and I don’t know what we’re going to do.

We’ve had to leave court—one of our household killed before an altar but it is us who have to leave! We have to wait till it blows over but we have simply no money, we never have enough money, and if Charles is not at court with Harry giving him fees all the time I don’t know how we will manage. And anyway, how can I go to court if she is taking precedence and behaving like a queen? I can’t give way to her. I can hardly bear to curtsey to her. What if she demands me to attend her in her rooms? Will Harry make me her lady-in-waiting? How terrible does it have to be before he sees that he is breaking my heart and Katherine’s spirit, and destroying everything we have ever achieved?

They tell me that Christmas was very quiet, the court was at Greenwich, and for the first time ever Katherine was not at court but alone at Wolsey’s old house, the More. That’s where she lives now. They have sent her away. The Anne woman showered gifts upon Harry but he sent back the gold cup that Katherine gave him. Sent it back, as if she were an enemy.

I don’t feel well at all but I suppose it is just worry about all this. Your life, so far away from England and with a good son and a loving husband, seems better than mine. Who would have thought that I would ever envy you? Who would have thought that we would both be happier than Katherine? Pray for us, your unhappy sisters.

Mary

And . . . they say that Thomas More will have to resign as Lord Chancellor for he cannot bring himself to swear that Harry is true head of the Church. Harry is tender for Thomas’s conscience and says that he can leave high office and live privately. How many of us are going to have to leave court and live privately when that woman comes in as queen?