Anne of Cleves, annulment, marriage, Catherine, Henrician, brinkmanship, Catholicism, sectarianism, treason

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annulment of his marriage to Anne of Cleves. ²²⁷ As such his office as Catherine’s clerk suggests strongly his affinity with Henrician policy and sentiment at this political juncture.

The unsubstantiated accusations threaten to spiral out into an ad infinitum reciprocation of accusation and rebuttal, since neither protagonist appears willing or able to provide the evidence necessary to bring about closure. Because their rhetoric is bereft of substance so conspicuously it might be suspected that the two adversaries become engaged in a flyting game of brinkmanship in which they compete over who can deliver the most scathing insults without resorting to libellous accusations that would theoretically be prosecutable. In terms of putting their rhetorical efficacy to the trial against one another this is a futile exercise because the rules of the debate ensure that neither party can win.

The ostensible pointlessness of this debating game suggests that there might have existed an ulterior motive for it. The protagonists’ misrepresentations of one another emphasise repeatedly that no known evidence exists by which either party might be suspected of Roman Catholicism, sectarianism or treason, and thus by traducing each other conspicuously they are perhaps manufacturing preemptive affidavits of innocence. This would make the exchange a sort of mock mooting in which the two men make ineffectual legal cases against one another as a deliberately contrived means of demonstrating their adherence to Henry’s religious policy. ²²⁸

²²⁷ Cromwell’s promotion of the match with Anne of Cleves was largely responsible for his political downfall. As such, the lines of division in these invectives are drawn between Smyth, as an intimate of Catherine, and Gray, who is associated with Anne through the policy of his old patron. There is little evidence in the flyting, apart from Smyth’s repeatedly stressing his role as Catherine’s clerk, however, as to whether or not support for these rival queens is actually the ground upon which the dispute is fought. Gray makes a point of referring to Catherine as Henry’s “most Laufull Wyfe” in the envoi of his Returne of M. Smythes Enuoy and, whether or not this is meant sincerely, it is unlikely that he would allow himself to be drawn into open debate over such a sensitive issue.

²²⁸ The legalistic element of these poems is another reason to suspect Sir Thomas who was made Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge early in 1540, Dewar (1964), p.20.

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