The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3)Froude, James Anthony
History
The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3)
Froude, James Anthony
Great Britain -- History -- Henry VIII, 1509-1547; Henry VIII, King of England, 1491-1547
From the account which was written of her by the grandson of Sir Thomas
Wyatt the poet, we still gather the impression (in spite of the admiring
sympathy with which Wyatt writes) of a person with whom young men took
liberties,[186] however she might seem to forbid them. In her diet she was
an epicure, fond of dainty and delicate eating, and not always contented if
she did not obtain what she desired. When the king's attentions towards her
became first marked, Thomas Heneage, afterwards lord chamberlain, wrote to
Wolsey, that he had one night been "commanded down with a dish for Mistress
Anne for supper"; adding that she caused him "to sup with her, and she
wished she had some of Wolsey's good meat, as carps, shrimps, and
others."[187] And this was not said in jest, since Heneage related it as a
hint to Wolsey, that he might know what to do, if he wished to please her.
In the same letter he suggested to the cardinal that she was a little
displeased at not having received a token or present from him; she was
afraid she was forgotten, he said, and "the lady, her mother, desired him
to send unto his Grace, and desire his Grace to bestow a morsel of tunny
upon her." Wolsey made her presents also at times of a more valuable
character, as we find her acknowledging in language of exaggerated
gratitude;[188] and, perhaps the most painful feature in all her earlier
history lies in the contrast between the servility with which she addressed
the cardinal so long as he was in power, and the bitterness with which the
Bishop of Bayonne (and, in fact, all contemporary witnesses) tells us, that
she pressed upon his decline. Wolsey himself spoke of her under the title
of "the night-crow,"[189] as the person to whom he owed all which was most
cruel in his treatment; as "the enemy that never slept, but studied and
continually imagined, both sleeping and waking, his utter
destruction."[190]
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