'Wolf Hall' Recap: Episode 5

Wolf Hall airs Sundays at 9:00 pm on WTTW is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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If Thomas Cromwell added a visit to the Seymour home Wolf Hall to the king’s summer progress in order to indulge his own interest in Jane Seymour, his plan has backfired: Jane has now caught the eye of the king. Henry falls asleep at the dinner table and no one is brave enough to wake him, lest they embarrass him. No one except mild Jane, who determinedly taps Henry’s hand. Later, Cromwell looks out his window to see Jane in the garden, and prepares to go meet her – but then he sees Henry fawning over her and decides to stay inside.

So Cromwell assumes a new role as counselor to the Seymour family, advising them on how to take advantage of Henry’s interest in Jane – and how she should behave towards the king.

Of course, Henry is still married to Anne Boleyn, who is pregnant once again. And the wife from whom Cromwell helped part Henry so he could marry Anne is also still alive, although Katherine is ailing. She requests a visit from her daughter, Mary, when Cromwell and his ward Rafe visit her on Henry’s behalf. But Henry fears that Mary will conspire with Katherine and her nephew the Holy Roman Emperor against him, and so is keeping Katherine and Mary apart and under watch.

And yet England is somewhat reliant on the Emperor, who is selling the famine-nearing country grain, as the Emperor’s ambassador Eustache Chapuys points out to Cromwell. Chapuys is desperate to visit Katherine before she dies, but when Cromwell puts the request before the king, Anne refuses for him. Henry says that he will not engage in diplomacy with Chapuys until the ambassador bows publicly before Anne – he has managed to avoid acknowledging “the concubine,” as Anne is secretly called by some who support Katherine, for years.

Anne hates Katherine and her daughter Mary. She asks Cromwell to try to embarrass Mary by having a handsome young man seduce her, but he refuses. She also rechristens her fool, a dwarf, as Mary.

But Anne has her own enemies. Her beloved dog is found dead on the cobblestones one day under an open window. Perhaps he fell; perhaps he was thrown. And she knows that the king has eyes for Jane, and that Cromwell has been talking to the Seymours. Cromwell assures her that Jane is just a distraction for Henry while Anne herself is pregnant.

When Katherine dies, Henry exultantly brings Elizabeth, his daughter with Anne, to court. He orders Katherine to be buried at a less expensive gravesite, and will take the high quality furs she had with her for himself. He hands Cromwell a letter she wrote him – he doesn’t want it. Cromwell peeks at its contents, which ask Henry to be a good father to Mary.

In the middle of the night, Anne wakes to her bed curtains burning. She is fine, if rattled, insisting it was simply an unattended candle. Cromwell wonders, unattended by whom? The lady-in-waiting Jane Rochford suggests to him that unnamed people visit Anne in her chambers at night.

Anne is not the only one to suffer a near-death experience. Cromwell’s son Gregory is participating in a jousting tournament, and Cromwell fears for his safety. So when bad news comes from the tournament, Cromwell is distraught. Yet it is not Gregory who has taken a fall but Henry, not even while jousting. But the king is dead.

Cromwell grabs a knife before going to see the body, and Rafe asks if they should flee immediately – the Howards and Boleyns will now be in charge, and they don’t like Cromwell, whose only protector was the king. The Duke of Norfolk – a Howard and Anne’s uncle – yells that he is the regent, while Anne’s brother George tells Cromwell he’s finished. Cromwell dispatches one of his few allies, William Fitzwilliam, to go save Mary – she is not safe now that her father is dead. Then he thumps Henry’s chest, and the king suddenly breathes again. He’s alive.

Later, Fitzwilliam tells Cromwell that he has more support than he thinks. He should have dinner with the knight Sir Nicholas Carew.

That evening, a pale Anne approaches Henry before the court and asks him to never joust again. The king roars at her in response, in front of everyone. She soon suffers another miscarriage.

The king is now doubting his second marriage, since it also cannot produce a son. Perhaps he was dishonestly led into it, seduced or spellbound. He sends Jane Seymour a purse and a note. She returns both without opening them, kissing the seal of the letter first.

Chapuys wants to meet Jane. Cromwell invites him to court to meet Henry, now that Katherine is dead. Chapuys warns Cromwell that Anne is a powerful enemy – she brought down Cromwell’s mentor Wolsey.

At court, Chapuys is forced into the path of Anne when her family falls in around him, leaving him nowhere to go. He reluctantly bows to her, to the delight of the Boleyns. When he later accosts Cromwell for letting such a thing happen, Cromwell explains that it is beneficial to him. Now that Henry has won and had his second wife acknowledged, he can get rid of her.

But when Chapuys engages in diplomacy with Henry later that day, Henry flies into a rage and grabs the ambassador before storming away and demanding a public apology. As Cromwell and the Lord Chancellor Audley promise a shaken Chapuys that they will cool Henry off, the king returns and yells at Cromwell. You have gone too far, he berates his trusted advisor, making Chapuys promises as if you were the king. Shocked, Cromwell holds his arms before him in an X and excuses himself.

His father Walter, a blacksmith, had told him to cross his hands after burning himself – it confuses the pain, he said.

George Boleyn tells the low-born Cromwell not to meddle in the affairs of those above him. The Boleyns are overjoyed at their triumphs.

But the next day, the king’s council convinces Henry to accept Chapuys’ diplomatic overtures, and he sullenly agrees. But he insists that Mary will not marry a foreigner, thereby strengthening her position and forging allegiances. He then asks Cromwell to walk with him. You are my righthand man, he tells Cromwell. You must free me from Anne.

He suggests that Anne may have married Harry Percy after all, even though Cromwell has convinced Percy to drop such claims. Or Henry occasionally slept with Anne’s sister Mary; perhaps that is grounds to annul the marriage. I trust you to be secret, Henry tells Cromwell.

Cromwell continues to gather evidence against Anne. Rafe, now part of Henry’s privy chamber, hears some of the brash young gentlemen in it joking about stepping in to conceive a son for Henry with Anne. It’s just talk.