“This partial submerging of a queen in the overall royal entourage is one explanation for there being less notice of Anne Boleyn’s active participation in public affairs after 1533. Her influence on Henry could now be exercised in private. She also attracted less attention from observers because marriage had settled the issues in which she had been personally a combatant. There are nevertheless sufficient signs that her influence remained, even though exercised behind the scenes. Indeed, for many, Anne mattered precisely because of her closeness to Henry. A petition to the king in 1535 describes her as having ‘the name to be a mediatrix betwixt your grace and high justice’. Anne’s remarkable achievement in securing the grant to her uncle, the duke of Norfolk, of the wardship and marriage of the king’s own son, the duke of Richmond, free, gratis and for nothing, demonstrates how effective she could be. She saw influence as something to be used with circumspection, as her refusal to seek a customs exemption for Lady Lisle in 1532 had demonstrated, but it was there. The queen was, however, more than a seductive voice on a pillow. As early as 1531 the duke of Milan was advised that he should treat her as a force in her own right, and equip his ambassador with some novel and flashy Italian knick-knacks for her, worth 1200 crowns or so. We have already seen her involvement in diplomatic contacts with France, and it is notable how English envoys seem anxious to keep in with her. Then again, when Lord Leonard Grey returned to Ireland in the autumn of 1535 with considerable forces and substantial rewards from the king, Anne was present at the final briefing session; she gave Grey the chain round her waist, worth 100 marks, and a purse of twenty golden sovereigns. Above all, Anne was very active in religious matters, as will appears.
Following marriage, Anne’s potential as a patron grew too. One of Lord Lisle’s correspondents assured him that, ‘I have moved a friend of mine about the queen concerning Master Howard’s matter, and I mistrust not but that I shall obtain your desire in that behalf.‘ On another occasion she wrote, apparently to Cromwell, asking him to assist the career of a young man deserted by his family and saying that he could not ‘do a better deed for the increase of your eternal reward in the world to come’. She would also act directly. The dean and chapter of Exeter, expecting soon to have a farm to rent out on the expiry of a lease, found themselves invited by Anne to grant a new sixty-year term to a nominee of hers at the existing rent; a letter from Anne was reckoned in 1531 to smooth matters at Calais for her uncle Lord Edmund Howard, the controller there; when she became aware of an excessive delay in one chancery suit, she thought nothing of writing to the chancellor, requesting speedier action.”
