I know where is an hind

I'm reading Wolf Hall on my Kindle. Both my siblings have read it, and I realized from their conversation about it that it is about Henry Tudor's advisor Thomas Cromwell. I have read a fair amount about the Tudor monarchs, but not that much about their counsellors as separate people from them. I thought this would be sort of a biographical novel, so I was surprised at how slowly it moved--Are we still on the downfall of Cardinal Wolsey, and how long will the courtship of Anne Boleyn drag on? Poor Anne Boleyn--Henry VIII's passion for her changed England forever, but her role on the stage of history was a short one, especially her term as his queen, not for nothing is she called Anne of the Thousand Days. Later, examining the table of contents, I realized it deals just with a few years, which at first I thought must cover Anne's rise and fall, but on looking up the date of her death I realize must end prior to her downfall. It must be that the main theme of the novel is England's break with Rome.

Well into the story, you discover that Wolf Hall is the residence of the Seymour family, whose member Jane Seymour succeeded Anne Boleyn as Henry's wife. And Henry was involved with her before Anne's death. She was one of Anne's ladies in waiting, as Anne was a lady in waiting to Henry's first wife, Katherine of Aragon. I recall reading that on the day Anne was executed, Henry waited on a hill outside London for the signal she was dead (bells or cannons, I can't remember), and when he heard it he mounted his horse and rode off to marry Jane, who, incidentally, gave him the son he had tried and failed to conceive in his first two marriages (although at the cost of her own life).

Wolf Hall introduces as early, and credible, rumors about Anne that she was promiscuous and that she committed adultery with her brother, accusations that were brought against her when Henry VIII wanted to get rid of her. From the non-fiction I've read, it's hard for biographers to get a grasp of Anne's actual personality. She was the center and cause of so much intrigue and controversy, and all her contemporaries had opinions about her, but there are not many, if any, unbiased sources of information. Catholics viewed her as the whore who seduced King Henry from the true faith. Some Protestants viewed her as the virtuous queen who led England out of the cesspit of papacy. She seems to have been quite unpopular at court; only the king was enamoured of her, and when he turned on her, then she had no friends. Was she an ambitious, power-hungry, calculating shrew, the innocent victim of the king's lust, the powerless tool of her ambitious relatives, or the Protestant heroine? No one knows for sure.

My eye was caught early in the novel by the description of her "hard, impersonal touch-me-not smile." That is an allusion, I presume, to Thomas Wyatt's poem beginning, "Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind" which many believe is about his unfulfilled passion for Anne Boleyn. (A "hind" is a "doe--a deer, a female deer.") He uses the Latin phrase "Noli me tangere," which means "Touch me not." He was one of those later accused of committing adultery with her. His son revolted against "Bloody" Mary Tudor, when she became queen and briefly restored Catholicism, attempting to put Anne Boleyn's daughter Elizabeth on the throne instead. "Wyatt's Rebellion" failed, but despised Anne Boleyn's daughter, Elizabeth I, became arguably the greatest monarch in England's history.

The Lover Despairing to Attain Unto His Lady's Grace Relinquisheth the Pursuit

Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But, as for me: helas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them, that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer; but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I, may spend his time in vain.
And, graven with Diamonds, in letters plain,
There is written, her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold - though I seem tame.