Wolf Hall: Part 5: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

The king’s body is “braced for impact” when he hears that Anne Boleyn had a girl. He asks if she is healthy, and “thanks God for his favor.” Cromwell thinks, “Henry has been rehearsing.” As Henry leaves to go to his rooms, he says over his shoulder that the child should be called Elizabeth, and that the jousts must be canceled. He then pauses and asks Cranmer and Cromwell to join him in his closet.

The king slumps in a chair and Cromwell resists the urge to pat his shoulder, “as one does for any inconsolable being,” and instead “folds his fingers, protectively, into the fist that holds the king’s heart.” He tells Henry that one day, they will “make a great marriage for her.” Cranmer says that the king and Anne Boleyn are young and can have more children, and that perhaps “God intends some peculiar blessing by this princess.” Henry is consoled by their words, and he walks around the palace repeating what they said.

Meanwhile, the prophetess nun called the Maid has been brought to London and is being looked after by the women in Cromwell’s household. The Maid treats even Cranmer “with condescension,” claiming to know more about the Bible than he does because “An angel told [her].” A delegation made up of Cromwell, Cranmer, Speaker Audley, and a legislator named Richard Riche questions her, and she unnerves them with her stories of visions, devils, and a plague that will kill them all. Afterward, Cranmer says he doesn’t have enough evidence to try her for heresy, and Riche says they should burn her for treason. Cromwell says she has made “no overt action”—she has “only expressed intent” to bring harm to the king.

Some of Cromwell’s friends come to dinner at Austin Friars on Saturday night. They discuss Cranmer’s wife, and Vaughan wonders if it is possible for “Henry [to] know and not know.” Cromwell says it is possible because he is “a prince of very large capacities.” Dr. Butts, an astrologer, says that the king’s moon is in Aries, which will make his marriage unhappy. Cromwell says impatiently that it is “not the stars that make us, […] it is circumstance and necessita, the choices we make under pressure.”

Later that night, Alice comes in to tell Cromwell that the Maid is close to her breaking point since she cries at night though she seems brave by day. He is happy to hear this because he is ready to wrap up the whole business. Alice then tells him that his ward, Thomas Rotherham, has asked her to marry him. Cromwell is delighted at the news, and he says Alice’s parents would have been pleased if they were alive, which makes her cry.

After Alice leaves, Cromwell pulls out his wife Liz’s old prayer book to write down details about the marriages of the young people in the household. He thinks that he may finally be over Liz, though he didn’t think it would ever be possible for “that weight [to] shift from inside his chest.” He realizes that he never thinks of Johane anymore—while her body once had “special meaning” for him, “that meaning is now unmade.” He thinks he surely has gotten over Liz, and then strikes out the name of her first husband from the book, thinking that he’d wanted to do that for years. There is a racket outside the house and Christophe wonders if there are wolves in England. Cromwell tells him, “[t]hat howling […] is only the Londoners.”

On Sunday, the Maid is tired and she “confesses that her visions are inventions.” She says she hasn’t spoken to heavenly persons, or raised the dead, or performed miracles. She asks if she can now go home to Kent, and Cromwell says he will see what he can arrange. Cranmer gently tells her that she will have to make a public confession before she can go anywhere. Cromwell tells the rest of the delegation that he will start bringing in her leaders and her followers, so they can be tried too. The Maid is taken away to the Tower.

At court, Cromwell watches the Seymour sisters. The older one, Liz Seymour, is “bold and hazel and eloquent,” while Jane Seymour is “indefinite and blurred” and “her eyes are the color of water.” Jane Rochford tells him the sisters are so different that it seems like their mother took on lovers. She then says that she, too, keeps her eyes open, just like Cromwell does, and she offers to spy for him in places he can’t go. Cromwell is surprised and he wonders what she could want in return. Jane Rochford says she would like his friendship. She says she will give him information, since Mary Boleyn has been sent away because “Anne [Boleyn] is back on duty in the bedchamber.”

Jane Rochford is childless after seven years of marriage, and Cromwell wonders that the woman is always called barren in a childless marriage while no one says the man’s seed is bad. Jane Rochford says that her husband wishes her dead, and that if she were to die, Cromwell should have her body examined for poison since George Boleyn and Anne Boleyn discuss poisons often. She has heard Anne boast that she will poison Mary Tudor, the king’s daughter. Cromwell thinks that Jane Rochford is “lonely, […] and breeding a savage heart.”

Jane Rochford says she knows that Cromwell is in love with Jane Seymour, and that her people are not rich and will happily marry off Jane to him. Cromwell says she is mistaken and that he is interested in the marriages of the “young gentlemen” in his household. Jane Rochford also tells him that for Anne Boleyn to get back in the king’s favor, she has to become pregnant again. She says the passion between Anne and the king has cooled, and she hints that Anne seeks her pleasures elsewhere and that George Boleyn makes arrangements for Anne’s lovers. Jane Rochford mentions that the “sneaking little boy Mark” is the go-between for the courtiers, bearing messages for them.  

Cromwell has been working on rounding up the people who were close to the Maid. The king is hesitant to bring charges against Lord Exeter, Henry Courtenay, who was his boyhood friend. He tells Cromwell he is sure Lady Exeter is to blame since she is “fickle and weak like all her sex.” Cromwell cannot understand how people like Henry ignore evidence and get sentimental over reminiscences.

Henry hears that King Francois has fallen at the Pope’s feet and is furious. Cromwell, however, is happy to hear that Francois kept his bargain and convinced the Pope to suspend his excommunication of Henry. Henry tells Cromwell that he sometimes wishes that Pope Clement and Katherine were both dead. He then tells Cromwell that he may be a father again soon and he is so happy that he embraces Cromwell. For the rest of the day, Cromwell “cannot stop smiling.”

In November, the Maid and her principal supporters do public penance by standing “shackled and barefoot in a whipping wind.” The Maid’s confession is read out. Thomas More is in the crowd, and he comes up to Cromwell to tell him that he had nothing to do with her. Cromwell tells him it is important to remind the king of this, and that More can do this by writing Henry a letter congratulating him on the birth of  Princess Elizabeth and accepting her rights and title. More says he can do so, and Cromwell says he could also write an open letter to say that he has “seen the light in the matter of the king’s natural jurisdiction.” As More leaves, Cromwell thinks they have to find a way for More to retreat from his previous position without losing face.

The next day, the king’s bastard son, Henry Fitzroy, the Duke of Richmond, marries Mary Howard, Norfolk’s daughter. Anne Boleyn has arranged this marriage so Fitzroy can’t be married off to some princess abroad and consolidate his power.

In December, Margaret Pole, aunt to Katherine’s daughter, Mary Tudor, comes to meet Cromwell to say he must not turn Mary out of her house in Essex. Cromwell says that George Boleyn, Lord Rochford needs that house, and that Mary will join her royal sister Elizabeth’s household at Hatfield. When Margaret Pole refuses to budge from her position, Cromwell tells her that he has spies in her house and knows that her sons were plotting with Mary Tudor about how they might induce the Emperor to invade England. Cromwell does not mention that one of her sons is on his payroll, too.

However, when the king asked Cromwell to take the house in Essex from Mary Tudor, Cromwell  advised the king “not to diminish” her circumstances and give her cousin the Emperor a reason for war. Henry  shouted at him then, saying that if he were to go argue with Anne Boleyn about this and if she were to get agitated and lose the baby, Henry would have no mercy on Cromwell. Cromwell tells Rafe that last week he was the king’s “brother-in-arms,” and this week Henry is threatening to kill him. Rafe says it is a good thing that Cromwell is not like Wolsey. While Wolsey expected the king’s gratitude, Cromwell feels he is more fortunate since he “is no longer subject to vagaries of temperament.”