Hi history lovers and welcome or welcome back to the channel, where I bring you new videos
every week on all aspects of the past. In this latest addition to my playlist on the six wives
of Henry VIII (which I’ll leave linked on screen and below for you), I’m doing a follow-up video to
my documentary on the funeral of Anne of Cleves by looking at the dying wishes of this former
Queen of England as expressed within her last will and testament. Stick with me to learn what Anne
considered to be her most prized possessions and who she left them to, how she treated her servants
and the poor who lived in the vicinity of her many houses, the friends she’d made in England
after Henry VIII dumped her in 1540 and what objects she left to her former step-daughters,
Mary and Elizabeth Tudor. I’ll also show you an up-to-date photograph of her tomb in
Westminster Abbey and if you stay til the end, I’ll explain the striking omission in her will.
To learn more about the Tudors, English royalty and history in general,
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the description box below along with links to books, movies and TV shows about Anne’s life.
Anne of Cleves was the fourth wife of Henry VIII and though their marriage lasted only
6 months before he abandoned her in favour of her teenaged lady-in-waiting, Katherine Howard,
such is the fascination with this King and his spouses,
that her brief union with him has arguably made her one of the most famous Queens in history.
Finding herself single again at the age of 24 and banned from leaving England under the terms of the
annulment agreement which dissolved her marriage, Anne lived out the rest of her days in her adopted
country having been given the courtesy title of ‘the King’s sister’. She died aged 41 on 16 July
1557 at Chelsea Manor in London. If you see my video on whether she was Henry’s luckiest wife,
it will provide you with a much fuller biography of this one-time Queen of England,
but for now let’s focus on the legal preparations made just before her death.
We don’t know what Anne died of, but (as the last will and testament we’re going to look at states),
she’d been ill for some time and cancer has been suggested as a possible cause of death.
Of all the King’s wives, she was the only one to make a formal, written will.
A married woman couldn’t usually do this as her belongings were her husband’s and although Henry’s
first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had also seen her marriage annulled by Henry, unlike Anne she
had refused to accept this and still considered herself his wife. This left her unable to make
an official last will and testament, though she did make verbal requests on her deathbed. This
is also what happened to wife number 6, Catherine Parr, who had remarried after Henry’s death and
who requested as she lay dying in 1548, that all her possessions go to her new husband,
Thomas Seymour (though this was a bit moot as he would have inherited anyway). Wife number 3, Jane
Seymour, was still married to Henry at the time of her death, so she left no will. Wives 2 and 5,
Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard were executed for treason, so it is hardly surprising that
they made no wills either. See my six wives playlist for more videos on all of these women.
Anne of Cleves then was in a unique position amongst Henry’s Queens. By the time of her death,
she’d outlived all of them, as well as Henry himself and was the third lady in the Kingdom
after Queen Mary I and Mary’s half-sister, who was then known as the Lady Elizabeth. She was also
very wealthy. Henry, in his relief at how easily she’d accepted the annulment of their marriage,
had settled a fortune on her by way of homes, goods and a huge income of between £3000 and
£4000 per year and despite complaints during the final portion of her life that money was tight,
as we’ll see from the details of her will, ‘poor’ is a relative term and in fact the
King had seen to it that Anne had a great deal of money and possessions at her disposal
and a huge household full of servants to leave much of them to. She’d also built up an impressive
social network in England and the bequests she made indicate who her friends there were.
The will is dated the 12 and 15 July 1557, indicating that it was written between those
dates and that it was only around four days before her death that Anne realised that whatever was
wrong with her, she wasn’t going to recover from it. It opens with a brief discussion of what had
occasioned its writing and what Anne wanted done with her remains. She noted that she was ‘sicke
in bodie but hole in mynde and memory’ and left her soul to ‘the holie Trynytie, and our bodie
to be buried where it shall pleas God’. Later in the will though she specified that she should be
buried wherever Queen Mary thought best and asked that she ‘maye have the suffrages of the holie
Chirche accordyng to the Catholicke faithe wherein we ende o[u]r lief in this transitorye worlde’.
If you’ve seen my video on her funeral, you’ll know that Mary obliged. Anne was given a large and
expensive Catholic funeral prior to her interment here in Westminster Abbey, where she now lies
about a 20 second walk from Mary and Elizabeth’s joint resting place. Her grave is on the south
side of the High Altar with the reverse side being the only bit you can walk right up, though it’s
quite easy to miss because it is almost completely hidden by other monuments. The monument itself was
never finished and the inscription you can see in my modern photograph was added in the 1970s.
Her burial aside, most of the will covers financial matters. Anne asked first and foremost
that her executors would petition Queen Mary to ensure that her outstanding debts were paid.
She also requested that the Queen allow those executors to bring in the money from her estates
up to and including Michaelmas 1557 (which was on 29 September), so that that money could be
put towards the payment of debts. Additional money was to be raised to cover these expenses
by the sale of any plate, jewels, robes and cattle not bequeathed elsewhere.
Such money was also to be put towards her funeral costs and the payment of legacies
left to individuals, of which there were many. In fact most of the document contains such bequests.
These can be broken up into 4 sections: what Anne left to her servants;
her charitable donations; what she left to her friends and what she left to her family. These
groups aren’t always recorded together and instead one gets the impression that as Anne
remembered additional gifts she wanted to leave someone, they were added to the growing list.
For her servants, she left 1 year’s wages from 1 July 1557 to 1 July 1558. There were also specific
legacies for all 18 of her gentlewomen. Of these, two were left £100 each as marriage portions
(a hefty sum for a mere servant) and another named only as Mother Lovell was gifted 40 shillings
‘for hir attendaunce upon us in this tyme of this o[u]r sickenes’.
The rest were left between £10 each and the oddly specific sum of £66.13.4 which went to Katherine
Chare and her daughter Anne. This is so specific in fact, that I wonder if it included outstanding
wages. As well as her women, Anne remembered the men and children of her household too.
In addition to the year’s wages already left to them, the 8 gentlemen who attended on her daily
were bequeathed £10 each, while her grooms and yeomen were all to receive 40 shillings.
Her cofferer, Thomas Pearce (he’s the man who’ll have taken care of her money for her),
plus her clerk comptroller and the clerk of her kitchen got the same amount,
but there was an extra £4 for John Guligh, who was a servant from home. In fact Anne showed
a special care for all her foreign servants, whether they were still in her employ or not,
mindful of the fact that with her dead, they might have little reason to remain in England.
Listing eight of them, she bequeathed 40 shillings to each in order to defray their
travel expenses in leaving. Another 20 shillings per head was to go to ‘evy of o[u]r children
of o[u]r house. A former laundress, Ellen Turpin, was left £4 to pray for Anne’s soul.
Her doctor, John Symonds and surgeon, Aland Blonde, were left £20 and £4 respectively, with
special mention made of Symonds’ ‘greate paynes labo[r]s and travayles taken often tymes with us’.
She was concerned too that her servants be able to wear mourning for her and
left the officers of her household, her gentleman waiters and her gentlewomen
‘so moche blacke clothe as will make evy of theme a gowne with the hood and coate.’
This cloth was to cost 13 shillings, 4d per yard. Two yards each of cheaper cloth
costing 9 shillings was designated for all of her yeomen, grooms and the children of her household.
Anne was not to suffer the indignity of being unmourned by her own servants.
Next we have the charitable bequests. These consisted of 40 shillings per child for
the education of all of the alms children under Anne’s jurisdiction as a landowner,
plus £4 a head ‘unto all the poore people in Richmond, Blechinlegh, Hever, and Dartford’,
all places where Anne either had, or had previously had, homes. Richmond Palace and the
manor at Bletchingley by the way, had been part of her annulment settlement, but soon after Henry’s
death, the minority council which ruled for his son, Edward VI, had forced her to swap them for
Penshurst Manor and Dartford Priory in Kent. This money was to be delivered by the church wardens of
those parishes ‘by the advice & in the presence of one of o[ur] s[e]rv[a]nts thereabouts dwellynge’.
I’d love to know if it actually made it to its intended recipients, but sadly I don’t have
that information. Even Anne seems to have been worried that some of her instructions might not
be followed, especially with regards to her servants, for she asked that the Queen would
‘be o[u]r overseer of this o[u]r saied laste will and testament’
and included a fascinating little throwback to the arrangements made for her after the annulment to
help to persuade Mary to do this, saying that she beseeched her former step-daughter to ensure that:
o[u]r poore s[e]rv[a]nts maie enjoye suche small gifts and graunts as we
have made unto theym in consideracon of their longe s[e]rvyce donne unto us,
beinge so appointed to doo at the firste erection of o[u]r house by hir Ma[jes]tes late father of
moste famous memory Kinge Henry the Eight, for that his Ma[jes]tie saied then unto us that
he wolde accompte o[u]r s[e]vants his owne and their s[e]rvyce to us donne as to his highness.
We can only hope that the current Queen
received the former Queen’s message and ensured that Anne’s wishes were carried out.
Next we have the executors of Anne’s will whose efforts Mary was to oversee
and who I’d like to think Anne counted amongst her friends. These were Nicholas Heath, who was the
Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor of England, Henry, Earl of Arundel, Sir Edmund Peckham and Sir
Richard Frestone. For their trouble in handling her will, Anne left Heath ‘a faire boll of golde
with a cover’, while Lord Arundel was to receive ‘a mawdlyn standing cuppe of golde with a cover’.
For Sir Edmund there was ‘a jugge of gold w[i]th a cover or a cristall glasse
garnyshed w[i]th gold and sett w[i]th stone’ and for Sir Richard there was ‘our best gilte
boll with a cover or els that pece of golde plate whiche Mr Peckham leavith if it be his pleasure.’
Already we can see that Anne was indeed very wealthy.
She had income from her lands, a household full of servants and plenty of high status
goods made of gold and crystal which could be left to specified individuals.
The bequests made to her favourite friends and family only emphasise this impression of wealth,
but they differ from what was left to her servants and executors. While servants got money and cloth
for mourning clothes (which was very nice for them I’m sure, but quite impersonal),
executors got the more valuable golden cups, plates and bowls that Anne would have used in
daily life. Furthermore, as we’re about to see, for family and those friends who were
apparently closest to her, it was jewellery all the way, as Anne left to them items she would
have actually worn herself and which were studded with precious gems, making them the most expensive
objects and showing her high regard or at least respect for those to whom she left them.
Anne had obviously befriended Katherine Willoughby, dowager
Duchess of Suffolk and widow of Henry VIII’s great favourite Charles Brandon,
for she left the Duchess ‘a ringe of golde having therein a fayre table diamond somewhat longe’.
The countess of Arundel (wife of one of Anne’s executors), was to receive ‘a ringe of golde
w[i]th a faire table dyamonde havynge an .H. and an .I. of golde set under the stone’.
I wish I knew who the H and I initials referenced, but the will doesn’t explain that.
It’s tempting to say that the H was for Henry, but I really don’t know. For the Lord Privy Seal,
Lord Paget, there was another gold ring, this time with a three cornered diamond set into it.
Now we get to Anne’s family. For her cousin, the count of Waldeck, there was a gold ring,
with ‘a faire grete holowe rewby’. Annoyingly though, I couldn’t be sure of how this cousin
was related to her. I suspect it was through her paternal grandfather, but as I couldn’t find a
reliable source to explain the relationship, I’ve left him off this particular family tree.
Her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Cleves (who was married to Anne’s brother William),
received something similar; a black enamelled ring containing a ‘grete rocke rubye’. Closer blood
relations and her former step-daughters got the choicest items. Anne’s sister Amalia (also called
Amelia or Emily) was left a gold ring containing ‘a fayre pointed dyamond’. Their brother,
Duke William, was to receive another gold ring containing a heart shaped diamond ‘with sundrie
square cutts in the same’, which I think means there were additional diamonds in the ring.
Perhaps unsurprisingly (given that she was living in England,
hadn’t seen her siblings for many years and wouldn’t have wanted to offend her Tudor family),
Anne left Queen Mary her ‘best juell’ as a remembrance of her former step-mother. The Lady
Elizabeth got her second best. This distinction between the sisters will have been a nod to their
difference in age and status and I wouldn’t read it as a mark of favouritism for Mary.
Anne also asked that Elizabeth take in one of her servants, named Dorothy Curson, which I think
shows the high esteem she held Henry’s younger daughter in. She obviously trusted Elizabeth to
take care of one of her favoured servants (and I say favoured because Dorothy was the only person
who she sought a new position for and was also one of the women given a £100 marriage portion).
The will doesn’t specify what the 1st and 2nd best jewels actually looked like, so I think we must
assume that it was obvious just looking at Anne’s collection, what the two best items in it were.
To finish up, as promised I’d like to draw your attention to what isn’t in the will and that’s
Anne’s houses and their furnishings. All of these (and I think the most famous is Hever Castle,
which had previously been the home of Anne Boleyn), were only hers for life and so
the reason they aren’t in her will is that they reverted to the Crown upon her death.
With her last will and testament made, signed and witnessed by a large number of Anne’s
household servants, she quickly passed away. The will was probated in London on 2 September,
just a few weeks after her burial and we are left to guess how many of Anne’s bequests
actually made it to their intended recipients, but hopefully most, if not all of them, did.
If you’d like to learn more about this former Queen’s life and death try one of these videos
next and let me know below what you think her will tells us about her as a person
and her life after Henry. I’ll be back next week with a new video and until then, keep learning.