Anne Bassett - royal mistress and an almost wife of Henry VIII
- Sira Barbeito
- 5 hours ago
- 5 min read
Portrait of a Unknown English Lady, Hans Holbein, dated 1535,
has been suggested shows Anne Basset.
The 1530s were a convulsive period in Tudor Court due to its King’s reckless choices. Within the same decade he would divorce his wife, Katherine of Aragon, after twenty years of marriage and one surviving daughter, marry Anne Boleyn with whom he sired another baby girl, become somewhat of a widow after his first wife’s passing, behead his second wife and repudiate both his princess daughters, marry his third wife and have his much desired heir, losing her to complications of said birth, marry once more and divorce rather quickly. All of this while changing the faith of the whole nation, destroying monasteries and deposing favourite after favourite around him. Many names and lives were exchanged, ended, started, and altered permanently during those years, making it difficult to know for sure who did what and where.
In 1532, the King was in Calais with Anne Boleyn in a diplomatic attempt at gathering more support for their soon-to-be wedding. Amongst the ladies attending his lover we can find Honor Grenville, who would end up moving there with her second husband, Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle and newly appointed Lord deputy of Calais, illegitimate son of King Edward IV and half-brother of Queen Elizabeth of York, making him uncle of King Henry VIII.
Her first husband had been Sir John Basset when he had been a man more than 50 years old in need of an heir and she was an orphaned 22-year-old woman. The marriage would endure thirteen years before his death and it would bring them the following children: John, the awaited heir, George, James, Philippa, Katherine, Anne, and Mary.
The girls were rapidly sent to a local abbess after their move to France for their education until 1533, when Anne went to live with the well connected Rouaud family in Pont de Remy in order to learn French and polish her manners so that she could have a good chance at a better life in the future. Her sisters Katherine and Mary joined her soon enough, making it even better for 12-year-old Anne. The three girls were said to be really smart and polite, accomplished and pretty, though it seemed that Anne was always singled out for her astonishing beauty amongst the rest of them.
Once she turned 15 years old her mother, Lady Lisle, pushed extremely hard to have her girls attending Queen Anne Boleyn at Court with no success until Jane Seymour ascended the throne and accepted one of them in, which turned out to be Anne. Anne Bassett wore French styled clothing due to her upbringing, which was really unwelcomed around Jane due to her predecessor having been a champion of that same fashion and Henry wanting to erase any trace of her in England. That is why John Husee, Arthur’s business agent in England, informed Lady Lisle that her daughter was asked to instead wear a "bonnet and frontlet of velvet" more fitting to the English tradition. By that moment in time Jane had taken to her chamber for her lying-in to await the arrival of her child. Prince Edward was born on 12 October 1537 in his mother's room at Hampton Court Palace, in Middlesex, after a long and difficult birthing experience which would claim her life only a few days later.
Henry is said to have truly mourned her and rejected any marriage propositions for a long while, though that does not necessarily mean that he remained lonely nonetheless. It is reported that a couple of days after Anne had sworn in as Queen Jane’s Maid of Honour the King had already set his sights on her. She was present at all the events that quickly followed Edward’s birth, from the baptism ceremony to Jane’s funeral services, being a good comfort source to Henry, who petitioned her to remain at Court even when the late Queen’s household was dissolved. John Husee wrote to Arthur Plantagenet and told him that “the King’s Grace is a good lord to Mistress Anne and hath made her grant to have her place whensoever the time shall come.” And a good Lord he was indeed, as she went on to stay for two years and went as far as to receive a horse from the King, who advised her to travel out of Court with a cousin when she felt sick. Lady Lisle sent Henry homemade marmalade and maybe she had hopes of Anne becoming the fourth Queen seeing how close they were over the last couple of years. Sadly, for Honor and luckily for Anne, the throne was not to be theirs.
On 4th January 1540 Anne of Cleves made her entrance as Queen of England as consequence of a marriage that would not survive for long and that would bring about Thomas Cromwell’s demise as the brains behind the deal.
There is no way to know for sure what Anne and Honor’s feelings must have been but one can only assume that it had to have felt a bit like a deception, a let down, a death of a possibility that seemed much nearer to achieve. After all the time they spent together and the attention and gifts he lavished upon her, she might have dared hope to wear the crown someday. To rub it in, she got a position as lady in waiting for Queen Anne of Cleves. We don’t know if she was aware that the pairing up had been a political ruse to strengthen England’s position as a new born Protestant country against the Catholic alliance headed by Spain and the Pope, but in case she wasn’t, she would discover it when the King had the union annulled and proclaimed he couldn’t even consummate because she was too ugly and completely unlike the pictures he had been shown of her before the contract.
Once more, the dissolution of her mistress' household did not mean she had to take her leave as she stayed put in Court when the divorce happened.
Anne Bassett quietly rekindled their affair, carefully approaching the crown for a second time, but her sister Katherine was heard saying something along the lines of: “how many wives will this man have?” and Henry diverted his love and attention to another woman, Kathryn Howard, who would be made his fifth Queen. Could have she become his wife had Katherine not said anything against him? Would that have changed the outcome? She served under the two last wives of Henry VIII and when he died in 1547, she was granted an annuity for her many years of work at Court by his son, Edward VI. She would not return until Edward died and Katherine of Aragon’s daughter, Mary Tudor, became Queen in her own right. She was made Lady of the Privy Chamber and the two women were really close with the Queen attending Anne’s wedding to Walter Hungerford, at Richmond Palace in 1554 with Mary taking care of all the preparations in what was to be one of the last happy days in Anne Bassett’s life. She would die three years later with no surviving children but having made a path for herself at Court through two decades that saw many lose their heads and livelihoods under five different Queen Consorts and three rulers. She was successful and had a peaceful life with no worries about money and no big regrets.
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