On this day in 1536, Passion Sunday, Anne Boleyn had her chaplain, John Skip, preach an audacious sermon in the Royal Chapel at Greenwich Palace. It was a strike against her enemies at court, and it caused something of a sensation.
Skip used the Bible story of Esther as a metaphor to convey the current political-religious scheming taking place under the disguise of reform for the New Religion.
Esther was the Jewish wife of King Xerxes. She discovered a plot by her husband’s wicked counsellor Haman to destroy the Jews and take their wealth and she begged her husband to spare them. There could have been no doubt to those present in the Royal Chapel for Skip’s sermon, that Haman represented Thomas Cromwell and his evil counsel, while Anne was Esther and Xerxes was Henry.
To better understand Skip’s sermon and what it meant we must to go back to 1st January 1535 when the King Henry VIII made Cromwell Vicar-General of the Monasteries. This title gave Cromwell precedence over all the bishops in England, including the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Cromwell wasted no time planning to take the wealth of the Church. On 21st January, the King, now Supreme Head of the Church in England, issued Cromwell with a commission to visit all the churches, monasteries, and their clergy to investigate their behaviour. In October 1535, Cromwell set up his ecclesiastical court, a court that had the power to install and dismiss bishops and monastic priors as well as to issue licenses to approve preachers, wills, and to hear petitions. Cromwell ordered what was known as the Valor Ecclesiasticus, the most extensive survey of property since the Normans’ Doomsday Book, to establish the full wealth of the Church. The voice of God had taken on a political tone.
On 11th March 1536, the bill for the Dissolution of the Monasteries was passed. All religious houses with an income less than £200 a year were ordered to yield their lands to the King for better use. King Henry wanted the wealth of the Church, but Anne argued with the King and Cromwell over the redistribution of that wealth. Anne supported non-schismatic reform. She put her store on educating the people, on keeping some of the rituals of the Church that conveyed deeper meaning but enabling the people to understand that meaning through education, and doing away with the corrupt practices of the Church, such as the selling of indulgences, purgatory, prayers to saints and pilgrimages, and to free the people from superstition. Moreover, Anne’s charities were in growing conflict with Cromwell and his clients, to whom he planned to award grants and monastery land.
In the story of Esther, King Xerxes married the Jewish woman Esther and made her his Queen. Like Anne, Esther had to conceal her true religious beliefs. The sermon was fitting because Haman wanted to destroy all the Jews and take their wealth. Haman whispered in King Xerxes’ ear: “There is a certain people dispersed and scattered among your peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom whose customs are different from all other people and who do not obey the King’s laws; it is not in the King’s best interest to tolerate them. If it pleases the King, let a decree be issued to destroy them, and I will put ten thousand talents of silver into the royal treasury for the men who carry out this business.”
Dispatches were sent out to all of Xerxes’ provinces. The instruction was to kill the Jews and take their wealth. Esther’s cousin Mordecai learned of this and he told Esther. The King had been closeted with Haman in his inner court, planning war. The penalty for approaching the King in his inner court without being summoned was death, but Mordecai instructed Esther to do so. King Xerxes held out his gold sceptre to Esther, saving her from death.
When King Xerxes asked Esther what her request was, she asked that he and Haman come to a banquet she had prepared for him.
The King and Haman went to dine with Queen Esther as she had requested. The King asked Esther what her request was. Esther answered: “If I have found favour with the king, and if it pleases the king to grant my request, I ask that my life and the lives of my people will be spared.” King Xerxes granted his Queen her petition, and had Haman hanged.
Cromwell, terrified, removed himself from the court, feigning illness, and plotted Anne’s demise. The outcome, of course, we know.
Skip’s sermon marks an important moment in the story of Anne Boleyn, but what I find so interesting about it is the parallel between the sermon and the letter Anne wrote to Henry on 6th May, after her arrest and imprisonment. Anne says, similar to Esther’s plea to King Xerxes, “If ever I found favour in your sight – If ever the name of Anne Bullen has been pleasing in your ears – then let me obtain this request.” She writes, “My last and only request shall be, that myself only bear the burden of your graces displeasure, and that it may not touch the innocent souls of those poor gentlemen [the men accused of adultery with Anne] whom, as I understand, are likewise in strait imprisonment for my sake.”
Anne Boleyn is nearly always an enigma. Almost everything about her is in dispute nearly 500 years later. But, through this sermon and her final letter to Henry, which is indeed one of the most moving letters ever written, Anne Boleyn is bought into sharp focus.