Anne of Cleves and Old Fishbourne
Anne of Cleves, the fourth wife of Henry VIII, held the Manor of Old Fishbourne from 1540 until her death in 1557. The grant to Anne is historically significant for a specific reason: it is the first time Old Fishbourne was described as "the manor," formally constituting its manorial identity in the legal record.
Early Life
Anne was born on 28 June 1515, the second daughter of Johann III, Duke of Cleves, and Maria, Duchess of Julich-Berg. The traditional birth date of 22 September, repeated in many older sources, derives from an eighteenth-century French reference work and has no contemporary support. The scholar Heather Darsie has identified a contemporary German source, the Chronicle of Johann Wassenberch, which records the birth as the day before the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul.
Her birthplace was most likely the Ducal Palace in Dusseldorf. She grew up with her elder sister Sibylla, her younger brother Wilhelm (who would become Duke of Cleves), and her younger sister Amelia. The family's territories, the united duchies of Cleves-Mark and Julich-Berg, lay within the Holy Roman Empire along the lower Rhine.
Her education, supervised by her mother, was traditional and sheltered. She learned household management, needlework, cookery, and reading and writing in High German. She received none of the courtly accomplishments standard in larger European courts: no foreign languages, no music, no dancing, no card games. The Cleves court, though influenced by Burgundian culture, was pious and domestic in character.
Religiously, the household occupied a complex middle ground. Duke Johann, influenced by Erasmus, pursued moderate church reform and aligned himself with the Schmalkaldic League against the Emperor. Anne's mother was a stricter Catholic. Anne grew up in a Catholic household that was sympathetic to reform without being Lutheran.
The Cleves Marriage
After the death of Jane Seymour in October 1537, Henry VIII needed a new wife. His sole male heir, the infant Prince Edward, was fragile insurance for the Tudor succession. By late 1538, England's diplomatic position was precarious. France and the Holy Roman Empire appeared to be moving toward an alliance against Protestant England, and the Treaty of Toledo in January 1539 raised the prospect of a joint Catholic intervention.
Thomas Cromwell, Henry's chief minister, identified Cleves as the ideal match. The duchy was Catholic but reform-minded, mirroring England's own religious position. Anne's brother Wilhelm was allied through marriage to the Schmalkaldic League, the Protestant defensive pact that could counterbalance the Emperor. Cleves was also in territorial dispute with Charles V over the Duchy of Guelders, making Wilhelm a natural opponent of the Empire and a natural ally for England.
Hans Holbein the Younger was dispatched to Duren Castle in the summer of 1539 to paint portraits of both Anne and her sister Amelia. The resulting portrait of Anne, now in the Louvre, was recently restored to reveal its original brilliant blue background. The English ambassador Nicholas Wotton, who saw Anne in person, reported that Holbein had "expressed her image very lively," suggesting a faithful likeness. It was Cromwell, not Holbein, who inflated expectations, telling the king that "every man praiseth the beauty of the same lady."
A marriage treaty was signed on 4 October 1539. Anne departed Cleves in late November, travelling overland through Antwerp, Bruges, and Dunkirk. She reached English-held Calais by 11 December but was delayed sixteen days by bad weather in the Channel. She crossed on 27 December and reached Rochester on New Year's Eve.
The Rochester Meeting
On 1 January 1540, Henry rode to Rochester in disguise, enacting the courtly convention in which a true love would recognise her beloved regardless of appearance. He entered the room where Anne was watching bull-baiting from a window and attempted an embrace. Anne, confronted by a stranger she did not recognise, did not respond.
The romantic illusion collapsed. Henry told Cromwell afterward: "I see nothing in this woman as men report of her, and I marvel that wise men would make such report as they did." He searched for grounds to withdraw, but cancelling the marriage risked driving Anne's brother into the arms of the Emperor. Political necessity prevailed.
The popular epithet "Flanders Mare" has no contemporary basis. It first appears in Bishop Gilbert Burnet's History of the Reformation, published in 1679, roughly 140 years after the events. Anne was not even from Flanders. The chronicler Edward Hall, writing at the time, described her as "so fair a lady of so goodly a stature and so womanly a countenance."
The Marriage and Annulment
The wedding took place on 6 January 1540 at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer officiated. Anne wore a gown of rich cloth of gold set with pearls in the Dutch fashion, with a gold coronet and branches of rosemary. Her wedding ring bore the inscription "GOD SEND ME WEL TO KEPE."
The marriage was never consummated. Henry told Cromwell the next morning: "Surely, as ye know, I liked her before not well, but now I like her much worse."
The annulment was declared by convocation on 9 July 1540, on three grounds: a prior precontract between Anne and Francis, son of Antoine, Duke of Lorraine (a childhood betrothal made in 1527 when Anne was eleven); the king's lack of free consent; and non-consummation. Anne initially resisted but signed her acceptance, styling herself "Anne, the daughter of Cleves" rather than "Anne the Queen."
The Settlement
In return for her compliance, Anne received a remarkably generous settlement. She was given the honorary title "the King's Beloved Sister," with precedence over all women in England except the queen and the king's daughters. She received an annual income and a substantial portfolio of properties, including Richmond Palace, Hever Castle in Kent, Bletchingley in Surrey, and manors across southern England.
Among the properties granted to Anne were former monastic lands recently seized during the Dissolution. Old Fishbourne had been held by Southwick Priory until the priory's surrender in 1538. Two years later, the Crown granted it to Anne as part of her settlement.
The Naming of the Manor
The 1540 grant to Anne of Cleves is significant because it is the first recorded use of the word "manor" in connection with Old Fishbourne. The Victoria County History notes that the grant described it as "the manor" of Old Fishbourne, explicitly confirming its manorial status. Before this, the holding had been simply lands and a messuage belonging to Southwick Priory. The formal designation as a manor was created by the Crown grant instrument.
The VCH editors, characteristically precise, note that the property "seems to have been granted" to Anne, using hedged language that indicates they were working from inference rather than having the specific Letters Patent in hand. This is honest scholarship. Other documented Southwick Priory manors that passed to Anne include Colemore and Stubbington in Hampshire.
There is no evidence that Anne ever visited Old Fishbourne. Her principal residences were Richmond Palace and Hever Castle, and the Sussex manor would have been managed on her behalf by a steward or bailiff. This was entirely normal. Great landholders typically held dozens of manors they never visited, drawing income through local agents.
Life After the Annulment
Anne chose to remain in England rather than return to Cleves, where she would have been subject to her brother's authority and would have forfeited her settlement. In England she enjoyed wealth, status, and a degree of personal freedom almost unprecedented for a woman of her time.
She maintained a warm relationship with Henry, was frequently invited to court, and formed close bonds with his daughters Mary and Elizabeth. She attended Christmas at Hampton Court with Henry and his fifth wife, Catherine Howard. After Henry's death in 1547, her position weakened under Edward VI's regency council, and she resided increasingly at Hever Castle. She attended Mary I's coronation in 1553.
She outlived all five of Henry's other wives and the king himself. Historians sometimes describe her as the luckiest of the six wives. She emerged from the marriage with her head, her freedom, substantial wealth, and social standing.
Cromwell's Fall
Thomas Cromwell was arrested on 10 June 1540, a month before the annulment was finalised. He was charged with treason and heresy and condemned by Act of Attainder without trial. The failed Cleves marriage gave his enemies, led by the Duke of Norfolk and Bishop Gardiner, the opening they needed. Cromwell was kept alive until the annulment was secured, in case his testimony was required.
He was beheaded on Tower Hill on 28 July 1540. On the same day, Henry married Catherine Howard. Henry later told the French ambassador that his Privy Council had made "false accusations which had resulted in him killing the most faithful servant he had ever had."
There is a direct connection between Cromwell's work and the creation of the Manor of Old Fishbourne. It was Cromwell's Dissolution that seized Southwick Priory's lands in 1538. It was Cromwell's diplomacy that arranged the Cleves marriage. And it was the Crown's grant to Anne from those dissolved lands that first designated Old Fishbourne as a manor. The entire sequence, from Dissolution to diplomatic marriage to annulment to property settlement, was the machinery through which a four-hundred-year monastic estate became, for the first time, a legally designated manor.
Death and Burial
Anne of Cleves died on 16 July 1557 at Chelsea Old Manor. She had been ill for several months. She was probably 42 years old.
Queen Mary I ordered a full state funeral conducted according to Catholic rites. On 3 August 1557, her hearse was accompanied by the children of Westminster, priests and clerks in black gowns bearing torches, the Bishop of London Edmund Bonner, and the Abbot of Westminster with thirty monks.
She was interred on the south side of the High Altar at Westminster Abbey. Her tomb is a low stone structure with carved initials "AC" surmounted by a crown, lions' heads, and skulls with crossed bones. It was probably made by Theodore Haveus of Cleves but was never fully completed. Anne of Cleves is the only one of Henry VIII's six wives buried in Westminster Abbey.
After Anne
The subsequent descent of the Manor of Old Fishbourne after Anne's death in 1557 was not traced by the Victoria County History editors in 1953. As with many smaller English manors, the lordship passed through private hands without generating the kind of records that survive in county archives. Manorial lordships are a form of property under English law, and they do not cease to exist simply because historians cannot document every transfer.