The Wives of Henry the Eighth and the Parts They Played in History Part 6

Henry's throne, indeed, was tottering. His country was riddled with disaffection and dislike of his proceedings. The new Pope had forged the final thunderbolt of Rome, enjoining all Christian potentates to execute the sentence of the Church, though as yet the fiat was held back at the instance of the Emperor. The dread of war and the general unrest arising from this state of things had well-nigh destroyed the English oversea trade; the harvest was a bad one, and food was dear. Ecclesiastics throughout the country were whispering to their flocks curses of Nan Bullen, for whose sake the Church of Christ was being split in twain and its ministers persecuted.[131] Anne, it is true, was now quite a secondary personage as a political factor, but upon her unpopular head was heaped the blame for everything. The wretched woman, fully conscious that she was the general scapegoat, could only pray for a son, whose advent might save her at the eleventh hour; for failing him she knew that she was doomed.

In the meanwhile the struggle was breaking Katharine's heart. For seven years she had fought as hard against her fate as an outraged woman could.

She had seen that her rights, her happiness, were only a small stake in the great game of European politics. To her it seemed but righteous that her nephew the Emperor should, at any cost, rise in indignant wrath and avenge the insult put upon his proud line, and upon the Papacy whose earthly champion he was, by crus.h.i.+ng the forces that had wrought the wrong. But Charles was held back by all sorts of considerations arising from his political position. Francis was for ever on the look-out for a weak spot in the imperial armour; the German Protestant princes, although quite out of sympathy with Henry's matrimonial vagaries, would look askance at a crusade to enforce the Pope's executorial decree against England, the French and moderate influence in the College of Cardinals was strong, and Charles could not afford by too aggressive an action against Henry to drive Francis and the cardinals into closer union against imperial aims, especially in the Mediterranean and Italy, where, owing to the vacancy in the duchy of Milan, they now mainly centred. So Katharine clamoured in vain to those whose sacred duty she thought it was to vindicate her honour and the faith. Both she, and her daughter at her instigation, wrote burning letters to the Pope and the imperial agents, urging, beseeching, exhorting the Catholic powers to activity against their oppressor. Henry and Cromwell knew all this, and recognising the dire danger that sooner or later Katharine's prayer to a united Christendom might launch upon England an avalanche of ruin, strove as best they might to avert such a catastrophe. Every courier who went to the Emperor from England carried alarmist rumours that Katharine and Mary were to be put out of the way; and the ladies, in a true spirit of martyrdom, awaited without flinching the hour of their sacrifice. Cromwell himself darkly hinted that the only way out of the maze of difficulty and peril was the death of Katharine; and in this he was apparently right. But at this distance of time it seems evident that much of the threatening talk, both of the King's friends and those of the Catholic Church in England, was intended, on the one hand to drive Katharine and her daughter into submission, and prevent them from continuing their appeals for foreign aid, and on the other to move the Emperor to action against Henry. So, in the welter of political interests, Katharine wept and raged fruitlessly.

The Papal decree directing the execution of the deprivation of Henry, though signed by the Pope, was still held back; for Charles could not afford to invade England himself, and was determined to give no excuse for Francis to do so.

Though there is no known ground for the then prevailing belief that Henry was aiding nature in hastening the death of his first wife, the long unequal combat against invincible circ.u.mstances was doing its work upon a const.i.tution never robust; and by the late autumn of 1535 the stout-hearted daughter of Isabel the Catholic was known to be sick beyond surgery. In December 1535 Chapuys had business with Cromwell, and during the course of their conversation the latter told him that he had just sent a messenger to inform the King of Katharine's serious illness. This was the first that Chapuys had heard of it, and he at once requested leave to go and see her, to which Cromwell replied that he might send a servant to inquire as to her condition, but that the King must be consulted before he (Chapuys) himself could be allowed to see her. As Chapuys was leaving Whitehall a letter was brought to him from Katharine's physician, saying that the Queen's illness was not serious, and would pa.s.s off; so that unless later unfavourable news was sent Chapuys need not press for leave to see her. Two days afterwards a letter reached him from Katharine herself, enclosing one to the Emperor. She wrote in the deepest depression, praying again, and for the hundredth time, in words that, as Chapuys says, "would move a stone to compa.s.sion," that prompt action should be taken on behalf of herself and her daughter before the Parliament could do them to death and consummate the apostasy of England.

It was her last heart-broken cry for help, and like all those that had preceded it during the seven bitter years of Katharine's penance, it was unheard amidst the din of great national interests that was ringing through Europe.

It was during the feast of Christmas 1535, which Henry pa.s.sed at Eltham, that news came to Chapuys from Dr. De la Sa that Katharine had relapsed and was in grave peril. The amba.s.sador was to see the King on other business in a day or two, in any case, but this news caused him to beg Cromwell to obtain for him instant leave to go to the Queen. There would be no difficulty about it, the secretary replied, but Chapuys must see the King first at Greenwich, whither he would go to meet him. The amba.s.sador found Henry in the tiltyard all amiability. With a good deal of overdone cordiality, the King walked up and down the lists arm in arm with Chapuys, the while he reverted to the proposal of a new friends.h.i.+p and alliance with the Emperor.[132] The French, he said, were up to their old pranks, especially since the Duke of Milan had died, but he should at last be forced into an intimate alliance with them, unless the Emperor would let bygones be bygones, and make friends with him. Chapuys was cool and non-committal. He feared, he said, that it was only a device to make the French jealous, and after much word-bandying between them, the amba.s.sador flatly asked Henry what he wanted the Emperor to do. "I want him," replied the King, "not only to cease to support Madam Katharine and my daughter, but also to get the Papal sentence in Madam's favour revoked." To this Chapuys replied that he saw no good reason for doing either, and had no authority to discuss the point raised; and, as a parting shot, Henry told him that Katharine could not live long, and when she died the Emperor would have no need to follow the matter up. When Chapuys had taken his leave, the Duke of Suffolk came after him and brought him back to the King, who told him that news had just reached him that Katharine was dying--Chapuys might go and see her, but he would hardly find her alive; her death, moreover, would do away with all cause for dissension between the Emperor and himself. A request that the Princess Mary might be allowed to see her dying mother was at first met with a flat refusal, and after Chapuys' remonstrance by a temporising evasion which was as bad, so that Mary saw her mother no more in life.

Chapuys instantly took horse and sped to London, and then northward to Kimbolton, anxious to reach the Queen before she breathed her last, for he was told that for days the patient had eaten and drank nothing, and slept hardly at all. It took Chapuys two days of hard travel over the miry roads before he reached Kimbolton on the morning of the 2nd January 1536.[133]

He found that the Queen's dearest friend, Lady Willoughby (Dona Maria de Sarmiento), had preceded him by a day and was with her mistress. She had prayed in vain for license to come before, and even now Katharine's stern guardian, Bedingfield, asked in vain to see Lady Willoughby's permit, which she probably had not got. She had come in great agitation and fear, for, according to her own account, she had fallen from her horse, and had suffered other adventures on her way, but she braved everything to receive the last sigh of the Queen, whose girlhood's friend she had been.

Bedingfield looked askance at the arrival of "these folks"; and at Chapuys' first interview with Katharine he, the chamberlain, and Vaughan who understood Spanish, were present, and listened to all that was said.

It was a consolation, said the Queen, that if she could not recover she might die in the presence of her nephew's amba.s.sador and not unprepared.

He tried to cheer her with encouraging promises that the King would let her be removed to another house, and would accede to other requests made in her favour; but Katharine only smiled sadly, and bade him rest after his long journey. She saw the amba.s.sador again alone later in the day, and spoke at length with him, as she did on each day of the four that he stayed, her princ.i.p.al discourse being of the misfortune that had overtaken England by reason of the long delay of the Emperor in enforcing justice to her.[134]

After four days' stay of Chapuys, Katharine seemed better, and the apothecary, De la Sa, gave it as his opinion that she was out of immediate danger. She even laughed a little at the antics of Chapuys' fool, who was called in to amuse her; and, rea.s.sured by the apparent improvement, the amba.s.sador started on his leisurely return to London.[135] On the second day after his departure, soon after midnight, the Queen asked if it was near day, and repeated the question several times at short intervals afterwards. When at length the watchers asked her the reason for her impatience for the dawn, she replied that it was because she wished to hear Ma.s.s and receive the Holy Sacrament. The aged Dominican Bishop of Llandaff (Jorge de Ateca) volunteered to celebrate at four o'clock in the morning, but Katharine refused, and quoted the Latin authorities to prove that it should not be done before dawn. With the first struggling of the grey light of morning the offices of the Church for the dying were solemnly performed, whilst Katharine prayed fervently for herself, for England, and for the man who had so cruelly wronged her. When all was done but the administration of extreme unction, she bade her physician write a short memorandum of a few gifts she craved for her faithful servants; for she knew, and said, that by the law of England a married woman could make no valid will. The testament is in the form of a supplication to Henry, and is remarkable as the dictation of a woman within a few hours of her death. Each of her servants is remembered: a hundred pounds to her princ.i.p.al Spanish lady, Blanche de Vargas, "twenty pounds to Mistress Darrel for her marriage"; his wages and forty pounds were to be paid to Francisco Felipe, the Groom of the Chambers, twenty pounds to each of the three lackeys, including the Burgundian Bastian, and like bequests, one by one, to each of the little household. Not even the sum she owed for a gown was forgotten. For her daughter she craved her furs and the gold chain and cross she had brought from Spain, all that was left of her treasures after Anne's greed had been satisfied;[136] and for the Convent of Observant Franciscans, where she begged for sepulture, "my gowns which he (the King) holdeth." It is a sad little doc.u.ment, compliance with which was for the most part meanly evaded by Henry; even Francisco Felipe "getting nothing and returning poor to his own country."

Thus, dignified and saintly, at the second hour after midday on the 8th January 1536, Katharine of Aragon died unconquered as she had lived; a great lady to the last, sacrificed in death, as she had been in life, to the opportunism of high politics. "_In ma.n.u.s tuas Domine commendo spiritum meum_," she murmured with her last breath. From man she had received no mercy, and she turned to a gentler Judge with confidence and hope. As usual in such cases as hers, the people about her whispered of poison; and when the body was hastily cered and lapped in lead, "by the candlemaker of the house, a servant and one companion," not even the Queen's physician was allowed to be present. But the despised "candlemaker," who really seems to have been a skilled embalmer, secretly told the Bishop of Llandaff, who waited at the door, that all the body was sound "except the heart, which was black and hideous," with a black excrescence "which clung closely to the outside"; on which report Dr. De la Sa unhesitatingly opined that his mistress had died of poison.[137]

The news, the joyous news, sped quickly to Greenwich; and within four-and-twenty hours, on Sat.u.r.day, 9th January, Henry heard with exultation that the incubus was raised from his shoulders. "G.o.d be praised," was his first exclamation, "we are free from all suspicion of war." Now, he continued, he would be able to manage the French better.

They would be obliged to dance to his tune, for fear he should join the Emperor, which would be easy now that the cause for disagreement had gone.

Thus, heartlessly, and haggling meanly over his wife's little bequests, even that to her daughter, Henry greeted the death of the woman he once had seemed to love. He snivelled a little when he read the affecting letter to him that she had dictated in her last hour;[138] but the word went forth that on the next day, Sunday, the Court should be at its gayest; and Henry and Anne, in gala garb of yellow finery, went to Ma.s.s with their child in full state to the sound of trumpets. After dinner the King could not restrain his joy even within the bounds of decency.

Entering the hall in which the ladies were dancing, he pirouetted about in the exuberance of his heart, and then, calling for his fair little daughter Elizabeth, he proudly carried her in his arms from one courtier to another to be petted and praised. There was only one drop of gall in the cup for the Boleyns, and they made no secret of it, namely, that the Princess Mary had not gone to accompany her mother. If Anne had only known it, her last chance of keeping at the King's side as his wife was the survival of Katharine; and lamentation instead of rejoicing should have been her greeting of the news of her rival's death. Henry, in fact, was tired of Anne already, and the cabal of n.o.bles against her and the religious system she represented was stronger than ever; but the repudiation of his second wife on any excuse during the life of the first would have necessitated the return of Katharine as the King's lawful spouse, with all the consequences that such a change would entail, and this Henry's pride, as well as his inclinations, would never permit. Now that Katharine was dead, Anne was doomed to speedy ruin by one instrumentality or another, and before many weeks the cruel truth came home to her.

Katharine was buried not in such a convent as she had wished, for Henry said there was not one in England, but in Peterborough Cathedral, within fifteen miles of Kimbolton. The honours paid to her corpse were those of a Dowager Princess of Wales, but the country folk who bordered the miry tracks through which the procession ploughed paid to the dead Katharine in her funeral litter the honours they had paid her in her life. Parliament, far away in London, might order them to swear allegiance to Nan Bullen as Queen, and to her daughter as heiress of England; King Harry on his throne might threaten them, as he did, with stake and gibbet if they dared to disobey; but, though they bowed the head and mumbled such oaths as were dictated to them, Katharine to them had always been Queen Consort of England, and Mary her daughter was no b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but true Princess of Wales, whatever King and Parliament might say.

All people and all interests were, as if instinctively, shrinking away from Anne.[139] Her uncle Norfolk had quarrelled with her and retired from Court; the French were now almost as inimical as the imperialists; and even the time-serving courtiers turned from the waning favourite. She was no longer young, and her ill temper and many anxieties had marred her good looks. Her gaiety and lightness of manner had to a great extent fled; and sedate occupations, reading, needlework, charity, and devotion occupied most of her time. "Oh for a son!" was all the unhappy woman could sigh in her misery; for that, she knew, was the only thing that could save her, now that Katharine was dead and Anne might be repudiated by her husband without the need for taking back his first discarded wife.[140] Hope existed again that the prayed-for son might come into the world, and at the first prospect of it Anne made an attempt to utilise the influence it gave her by cajoling or crus.h.i.+ng Mary into submission to the King's will.

The girl was desolate at her mother's death; but she had her mother's proud spirit, and her answers to Anne's approaches were as cold and haughty as before. "The concubine (writes Chapuys, 21st January 1536) has thrown out the first bait to the Princess, telling her by her aunt (Lady Shelton) that if she will discontinue her obstinacy, and obey her father like a good girl, she (Anne) will be the best friend in the world to her, and like another mother will try to obtain for her all she wants. If she will come to Court she shall be exempt from carrying her (Anne's) train and shall always walk by her side." But obedience meant that Mary should recognise Cranmer's sentence against her mother, the repudiation of the Papal authority and her own illegitimacy, and she refused the olive branch held out to her. Then Anne changed her tone, and wrote to her aunt a letter to be put into Mary's way, threatening the Princess. In her former approaches, she said, she had only desired to save Mary out of charity. It was no affair of hers: she did not care; but when she had the son she expected the King would show no mercy to his rebellious daughter. But Mary remained unmoved. She knew that all Catholic Europe looked upon her now as the sole heiress of England, and that the Emperor was busy planning her escape, in order that she might, from the safe refuge of his dominions, be used as the main instrument for the submission of England to the Papacy and the destruction of Henry's rule. For things had turned out somewhat differently in this respect from what the King had expected. The death of Katharine, very far from making the armed intervention of Charles in England more improbable, had brought it sensibly nearer, for the great war-storm that had long been looming between the French and Spaniards in Italy was now about to burst. Francis could no longer afford to alienate the Papacy by even pretending to a friends.h.i.+p with the excommunicated Henry, whilst England might be paralysed, and all chance of a diversion against imperial arms in favour of France averted, by the slight aid and subsidy by the Emperor of a Catholic rising in England against Henry and Anne.

On the 29th January 1536 Anne's last hope was crushed. In the fourth month of her pregnancy she had a miscarriage, which she attributed pa.s.sionately to her love for the King and her pain at seeing him flirting with another woman. Henry showed his rage and disappointment brutally, as was now his wont. He had hardly spoken to Anne for weeks before; and when he visited her at her bedside he said that it was quite evident that G.o.d meant to deny him heirs male by her. "When you get up," he growled in answer to the poor woman's complaints, as he left her, "I will talk to you." The lady of whom Anne was jealous was probably the same that had attracted the King at the ball given to the Admiral of France two months previously, and had made him, as Anne hysterically complained, "forget everything else."

This lady was Mistress Jane Seymour, a daughter of Sir John Seymour of Wolf Hall, Wilts. She was at the time just over twenty-five years of age, and had been at Court for some time as a maid of honour to Katharine, and afterwards to Anne. During the King's progress in the autumn of 1535, he had visited Wolf Hall, where the daughter of the house had attracted his admiring attention, apparently for the first time. Jane is described as possessing no great beauty, being somewhat colourless as to complexion; but her demeanour was sweet and gracious; and the King's admiration for her at once marked her out as a fit instrument for the conservative party of n.o.bles at Court to use against Anne and the political and religious policy which she represented. Apparently Jane had no ability, and none was needed in the circ.u.mstances. Chapuys, moreover, suggests with unnecessary spite that in morals she was no better than she should have been, on the unconvincing grounds that "being an Englishwoman, and having been so long at Court, whether she would not hold it a sin to be still a maid." Her supposed unchast.i.ty, indeed, is represented as being an attraction to Henry: "for he may marry her on condition that she is a maid, and when he wants a divorce there will be plenty of witnesses ready to testify that she was not." This, however, is mere detraction by a man who firmly believed that the cruelly wronged Katharine whose cause he served had just been murdered by Henry's orders. That Jane had no strength of character is plain, and throughout her short reign she was merely an instrument by which politicians sought to turn the King's pa.s.sion for her to their own ends.

The Seymours were a family of good descent, allied with some of the great historic houses, and Jane's two brothers, Edward and Thomas, were already handsome and notable figures at Henry's Court: the elder, Sir Edward Seymour, especially, having accompanied the showy visits of the Duke of Suffolk, Cardinal Wolsey, and the King himself to France. So far as can be ascertained, however, the brothers, prompt as they were to profit by their sister's elevation, were no parties to the political intrigue of which Jane was probably the unconscious tool. She was carefully indoctrinated by Anne's enemies, especially Sir Nicholas Carew, how she was to behave. She must, above all, profess great devotion and friends.h.i.+p to the Princess Mary, to a.s.sume a mien of rigid virtue and high principles which would be likely to pique a sensual man like Henry without gratifying his pa.s.sion except by marriage. Many of the enemies of the French connection, which included the great majority of the nation, looked with hope towards the King's new infatuation as a means of luring back England to the comity of Catholic nations and friends.h.i.+p with the Emperor; though there was still a section, especially in the north of England, which believed that their best interests would be served by an open rebellion in the interests of Mary, supported from Flanders by her cousin the Emperor. All this was, of course, well known to Cromwell. He had been one of the first to counsel defiance of the Pope, but throughout he had been anxious to avoid an open quarrel with the Emperor, or to pledge England too closely to French interests; and now that even the French had turned against Anne, Cromwell saw that, unless he himself was to be dragged down when she fell, he must put the break hard down upon the religious policy that he had initiated, and make common cause with Anne's enemies.

In a secret conference that he held with Chapuys at the Austin Friars, which in future was to be his own mansion, Cromwell proposed a new alliance between England and the Emperor, which would necessarily have to be accompanied by some compromise with the Pope and the recognition of Mary's legitimacy.[141] He a.s.sured the imperial amba.s.sador that Norfolk, Suffolk, and the rest of the n.o.bles formerly attached to France were of the same opinion as himself, and tried earnestly to convince his interlocutor that he had no sympathy with Anne, whom he was ready to throw overboard to save himself. When Charles received this news from his amba.s.sador, he took a somewhat tortuous but characteristic course. He was willing to a great extent to let bygones be bygones, and to forget the sufferings, and perhaps the murder, of his aunt Katharine, if Henry would come to terms with the Papacy and legitimise the Princess Mary; but, curiously enough, he preferred that Anne should remain at Henry's side, instead of being repudiated. Her marriage, he reasoned, was obviously invalid, and any children she might have by Henry would consequently be unable to interfere with Mary's rights to the succession: whereas if Henry were to divorce Anne and contract a legal marriage, any son born to him would disinherit Mary. To this extent was Charles ready to descend if he could obtain English help and money in the coming war; and Cromwell, at all events, was anxious to go quite as far to meet him. He now showed ostentatious respect to the Princess Mary, restoring to her the little gold cross that had been her mother's, and of which she had been cruelly deprived, condemned openly the continued execution of his own policy of spoliation of the monasteries, and quarrelled both with Anne and the only man now in the same boat with her, Archbishop Cranmer, who trembled in his shoes at the ruin he saw impending upon his patroness, ready at any moment to turn his coat, but ignorant of how to do it; for Cranmer, however able a casuist he might be, possessed little statesmans.h.i.+p and less courage.

Lady Exeter was the go-between who brought the imperial amba.s.sador into the conspiracy to oust Anne. The time was seen to be ripening. Henry was already talking in secret about "his having been seduced into the marriage with Anne by sorcery, and consequently that he considered it to be null, which was clearly seen by G.o.d's denying a son. He thought he should be quite justified in taking another wife,"[142] and Jane Seymour's company seemed daily more necessary to his comfort.

Sir Edward Seymour was made a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber early in March; and a fortnight later the Marchioness of Exeter reported to her friend Chapuys that the King, who was at Whitehall, had sent a loving letter, and a purse of gold, to his new lady-love.[143] The latter had been carefully schooled as to the wise course to pursue, and played prudery to perfection. She kissed the royal letter fervently without opening it; and then, throwing herself upon her knees, besought the messenger to pray the King in her name to consider that she was a gentlewoman of fair and honourable lineage and without reproach. "She had nothing in the world but her honour, which for a thousand deaths she would not wound. If the King deigned to make her a present of money she prayed that it might be when she made an honourable marriage."[144] According to Lady Exeter's report, this answer inflamed even more the King's love for Jane. "She had behaved herself in the matter very modestly," he said; "and in order to let it be seen that his intentions and affection were honourable, he intended in future only to speak to her in the presence of some of her relatives." Cromwell, moreover, was turned out of a convenient apartment to which secret access could be obtained from the King's quarters, in order that Sir Edward Seymour, now Viscount Beauchamp, and his wife should be lodged there, and facility thus given for the King's virtuous billing and cooing with Jane, whilst saving the proprieties.

When it was too late, even Anne attempted to desert her own political party and to rally to the side of the Emperor, whether because she understood the indulgent way in which the latter now regarded her union with Henry, or whether from mere desperation at the ruin impending, it is not easy to say. But the conspiracy for her destruction had already gone too far when the Emperor's diplomatic instructions came to his amba.s.sador.[145] It was understood now at Court that the King intended somehow to get rid of his doubtful wife and marry another woman, and Cromwell, with a hypocritical smile behind his hand, whispered to Chapuys that though the King might divorce Anne he would live more virtuously in future. When the imperial amba.s.sador with his master's friendly replies to Henry's advances saw the King at Greenwich on the 18th April 1536 the Court was all smiles for him, and Anne desperately clutched at the chance of making friends with him. Chapuys was cool, and declined to go and salute her, as he was invited to do. He was ready, as he said, to hold a candle to the devil, or a hundred of them, if his master's interests would thereby be served; but he knew that Anne was doomed, and notwithstanding his master's permission he made no attempt to conciliate her. All the courtiers were watching to see how he would treat her on this the first occasion that they had met since Katharine's death. As Anne pa.s.sed into the chapel to high Ma.s.s she looked eagerly around to greet her enemy.

Where was he? In the chapel, she knew, and to sit close by her side; but he was nowhere to be seen. He was, in fact, standing behind the open door by which she entered; but, determined not to be balked, she turned completely round and made him a profound courtesy, which, as he was bound to do, he returned. In Anne's rooms afterwards, where the King and the other amba.s.sadors dined, Chapuys was not present, much to the "concubine's" chagrin; but the Princess Mary and her friends in the conspiracy were suspicious and jealous even of the bow that had been exchanged under such adverse circ.u.mstances in the chapel. Anne at dinner coa.r.s.ely abused the King of France, and strove her utmost to lead people to think that she, too, was hand in glove with the imperialists, as her enemies were, whilst Henry was graciousness itself to Chapuys, until he came to close quarters and heard that the Emperor was determined to drive a hard bargain, and force his English uncle to eat a large piece of humble pie before he could be taken to his bosom again. Then Henry hectored and vaunted like the bully that he was, and upon Cromwell fell his ill humour, for having, as Henry thought, been too pliant with the imperialists; and for the next week Cromwell was ill and in disgrace.

Submission to the Pope to the extent that Charles demanded was almost impossible now, both in consequence of Henry's own vanity, and because the vast revenues and estates of the monasteries had in many cases replenished the King's exchequer, or had endowed his n.o.bles and favourites, Catholics though many of them were. A surrender of these estates and revenues would have been resisted, even if such had been possible, to the death, by those who had profited by the spoliation; and unless the Pope and the Emperor were willing to forget much, the hope of reconciling England with the Church was an impossible dream.[146] The great n.o.bles who had battened upon the spoils, especially Norfolk, themselves took fright at the Emperor's uncompromising demands, and tried to play off France against Charles, during Cromwell's short disgrace. The Secretary saw that if the friends of France once more obtained the control over Henry's fickle mind, the revolutionary section of the Catholic party in favour of Mary and the imperial connection would carry all before them, and that in the flood of change Cromwell and all his works would certainly be swept away. If Anne could be got rid of, and the King married to Mistress Seymour, jointly with the adoption of a moderate policy of compromise with Rome and the Emperor, all might be well, and Cromwell might retain the helm, but either an uncompromising persistence in the open Protestant defiance with probably a French alliance against the Emperor, or, on the other hand, an armed Catholic revolution in England, subsidised from Flanders, would have been inevitable ruin to Cromwell.

Anne, then, must be destroyed at any cost, and the King be won to the side of the man who would devise a means of doing it. But how? A repudiation or formal divorce on the ground of invalidity would, of course, have been easy; but it would have been too scandalous. It would also have convicted the King of levity, and above all have b.a.s.t.a.r.dised his second daughter, leaving him with no child that the law of the realm regarded as legitimate. Henry himself, as we have seen, talked about his having been drawn into the marriage by sorcery, and ardently desired to get rid of his wife. His intercourse with Jane Seymour, who was being cleverly coached by Anne's enemies and Mary's friends, plainly indicated that marriage was intended; but it was the intriguing brain of Cromwell that devised the only satisfactory way in which the King's caprice and his own interests could be served in the treatment of Anne. Appearances must, at any cost, be saved for Henry. He must not appear to blame, whatever happened.

Cromwell must be able, for his own safety, to drag down Anne's family and friends at the same time that she was ruined, and the affair must be so managed that some sort of reconciliation could be patched up with the Emperor, whilst Norfolk and the French adherents were thrust into the background. Cromwell pondered well on the problem as he lay in bed, sick with annoyance at Henry's rough answer to the Emperor's terms, and thus he hit upon the scheme that alone would serve the aims he had in view.[147]

The idea gave him health and boldness again, and just as Henry under Norfolk's influence was smiling upon the French amba.s.sador, Cromwell appeared once more before his master after his five days' absence. What pa.s.sed at their interview can only be guessed by the light of the events that followed. It is quite possible that Cromwell did not tell the King of his designs against Anne, but only that he had discovered a practice of treason against him. But whether the actual words were p.r.o.nounced or not, Henry must have understood, before he signed and gave to Cromwell the secret instrument demanded of him, that evil was intended to the woman of whom he had grown tired. It was a patent dated the 24th April, appointing the Lord Chancellor Audley and a number of n.o.bles, including the Duke of Norfolk and Anne's father, the Earl of Wilts.h.i.+re, together with the judges, a Commission to inquire into any intended treasonable action, no matter by whom committed, and to hold a special Court to try the persons accused. With this instrument in his pocket, Cromwell held at will the lives of those whom he sought to destroy. Anne, as we have seen, had loved and courted the admiration of men, even as her daughter Elizabeth afterwards did to an extent that bordered upon mania. Her manners were free and somewhat hysterical, and her reputation before marriage had been more than doubtful, but the stern Act of Succession, which in 1534 made it treason to question the legitimacy of Anne's daughter, barred all accusation against her except in respect to actions after Elizabeth's birth.

Cromwell was well served by spies, even in Anne's chamber; for her star was visibly paling, and people feared her vengeance little; and not many days pa.s.sed before the Secretary had in his hand testimony enough to strike his first blow. It was little enough according to our present notions of evidence, and at another time would have pa.s.sed unnoticed. A young fellow of humble origin, named Mark Smeaton, had by Anne's influence been appointed one of Henry's grooms of the chamber in consequence of his skill as a lute player. Anne herself, who was a fine musician and composer, delighted in listening to Mark's performances; and doubtless, as was her wont, she challenged his admiration because he was a man. A contemporary who repeated the tattle of the Court[148] says that she had fallen in love with the lute player, and had told him so; and that she had aroused the jealousy of her rival admirers, Norreys, Brereton, and others, by her lavish gifts and open favour to Mark Smeaton. According to this story, she endeavoured to appease the former by renewed flirting with them, and to silence Mark's discontent by large gifts of money. Others of her courtiers, especially Sir Thomas Percy, indignant that an upstart like Mark should be treated better than themselves, insulted and picked quarrels with the musician; and it is evident that Anne, at the very time that Cromwell was spreading his nets for her, was hard put to it to keep the peace between a number of idle, jealous young men whose admiration she had sought for pastime.

On the 29th April, Mark Smeaton was standing sulkily in the deep embrasure of a window in Anne's chamber in the palace of Greenwich. The Queen asked him why he was so out of humour. He replied that it was nothing that mattered. She evidently knew the real reason for his gloom, for she reminded him that he could not expect her to speak to him as if he were a n.o.bleman. "No, no!" said Mark, "a look sufficeth for me, and so fare you well."[149] Sir Thomas Percy seems to have heard this little speech, and have conveyed it, with many hints of Mark's sudden prosperity, to Cromwell. "It is hardly three months since Mark came to Court, and though he has only a hundred pounds a year from the King, and has received no more than a third, he has just bought three horses that have cost him 500 ducats, as well as very rich arms and fine liveries for his servants for the May-day ridings, such as no gentleman at Court has been able to buy, and many are wondering where he gets the money."[150] Mark Smeaton was a safe quarry, for he had no influential friends, and it suited Cromwell's turn to begin with him to build up his case against Anne.

There was to be a May-day jousting in the tilt-yard at Greenwich, at which Anne's brother, Lord Rochford, was the challenger, and Sir Henry Norreys was the princ.i.p.al defender. Early in the morning of the day, Cromwell, who of course took no part in such shows, went to London, and asked Smeaton to accompany him and dine,[151] returning in the afternoon to Greenwich in time for the ridings. Mark accepted the invitation, and was taken ostensibly for dinner to a house at Stepney, that probably being a convenient half-way place between Greenwich and Westminster by water. No sooner had the unsuspecting youth entered the chamber than he saw the trap into which he had fallen. Six armed men closed around him, and Cromwell's face grew grave, as the Secretary warned the terrified lad to confess where he obtained so much money. Smeaton prevaricated, and "then two stout young fellows were called, and the Secretary asked for a rope and a cudgel. The rope, which was filled with knots, was put around Mark's head and twisted with the cudgel until Mark cried, 'Sir Secretary, no more! I will tell the truth. The Queen gave me the money.'"[152] Then, bit by bit, by threats of torture, some sort of confession incriminating Anne was wrung out of the poor wretch: though exactly what he confessed is not on record. Later, when the affair was made public, the quidnuncs of London could tell the most private details of his adultery with the Queen;[153]

for Cromwell took care that such gossip should be well circulated.

Whatever confession was extorted from Smeaton, it implicated not only himself but the various gentlemen who shared with him the Queen's smiles, and was quite sufficient for Cromwell's purpose. Hurrying the unfortunate musician to the Tower in the strictest secrecy, Cromwell sent his nephew Richard post haste to Greenwich with a letter divulging Smeaton's story to the King. Richard Cromwell arrived at the tiltyard as the tournament was in progress, the King and Anne witnessing the bouts from a glazed gallery.

Several versions of what then happened are given; but the most probable is that as soon as Henry had glanced at the contents of the letter and knew that Cromwell had succeeded, he abruptly rose and left the sports; starting almost immediately afterwards for London without the knowledge of Anne. With him went a great favourite of his, Sir Henry Norreys, Keeper of the Privy Purse, who was engaged to be married to Madge Shelton, Anne's cousin, who had at one time been put forward by the Boleyn interest as the King's mistress. Norreys had, no doubt, flirted platonically with the Queen, who had openly bidden for his admiration, but there is not an atom of evidence that their connection was a guilty one.[154] On the way to London the King taxed him with undue familiarity with Anne.

Horror-stricken, Norreys could only protest his innocence, and resist all the temptations held out to him to make a clean breast of the Queen's immorality. One of the party of Anne's enemies, Sir William Fitzwilliam, was also in attendance on the King; and to him was given the order to convey Norreys to the Tower. After the King's departure from Greenwich, Anne learnt that he had gone without a word of farewell, and that Smeaton was absent from the joust, detained in London.

The poor woman's heart must have sunk with fear, for the portents of her doom were all around her. She could not cry for mercy to the flabby coward her husband, who, as usual, slunk from bearing the responsibility of his own acts, and ran away from the danger of personal appeal from those whom he wronged. Late at night the dread news was whispered to her that Smeaton and Norreys were both in the Tower; and early in the morning she herself was summoned to appear before a quorum of the Royal Commissioners, presided over by her uncle and enemy, the Duke of Norfolk. She was rudely told that she was accused of committing adultery with Smeaton and Norreys, both of whom had confessed. She cried and protested in vain that it was untrue. She was told to hold her peace, and was placed under arrest until her barge was ready and the tide served to bear her up stream to the Tower. With her went a large guard of halberdiers and the Duke of Norfolk.

Thinking that she was being carried to her husband at Westminster, she was composed and tranquil on the way; but when she found that the Traitors'

Gate of the Tower was her destination, her presence of mind deserted her.

Sir William Kingston, one of the chief conspirators in Mary's favour, and governor of the fortress, stood upon the steps under the gloomy archway to receive her, and in sign of custody took her by the arm as she ascended.

"I was received with greater ceremony the last time I entered here," she cried indignantly; and as the heavy gates clanged behind her and the portcullis dropped, she fell upon her knees and burst into a storm of hysterical tears. Kingston and his wife did their best to tranquillise her; but her pa.s.sionate protestations of innocence made no impression upon them.

Her brother, Lord Rochford, had, unknown to her, been a few hours before lodged in the same fortress on the hideous and utterly unsupported charge of incest with his sister; and Cromwell's drag-net was cast awide to bring in all those whose names were connected, however loosely, with that of the Queen by her servants, all of whom were tumbling over each other in their haste to denounce their fallen mistress. Sir Thomas Weston and William Brereton, with both of whom Anne had been fond of bandying questionable compliments, were arrested on the 4th May; and on the 5th Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet, and a great friend of the King, was put under guard on similar accusations. With regard to Wyatt there seems to have been no doubt, as has been shown in an earlier chapter, that some love pa.s.sages had pa.s.sed between him and Anne before her marriage; and there is contemporary a.s.sertion to support the belief that their connection had not been an innocent one;[155] but the case against him was finally dropped and he was again taken into Henry's favour; a proof that there was no evidence of any guilt on his part since Anne was Queen. He is a.s.serted to have begged Henry not to contract the marriage, and subsequently to have reminded him that he had done so, confessing after her arrest that Anne had been his mistress before she married the King.

The wretched woman babbled hysterically without cessation in her chamber in the Tower; all her distraught ravings being carefully noted and repeated by the ladies, mostly her personal enemies, who watched her night and day; artful leading questions being put to her to tempt her to talk the more. She was imprudent in her speech at the best of times, but now, in a condition of acute hysteria, she served the interests of her enemies to the full, dragging into her discourse the names of the gentlemen who were accused and repeating their risky conversations with her, which were now twisted to their worst meaning.[156] At one time she would only desire death; then she would make merry with a good dinner or supper, chatting and jesting, only to break down into hysterical laughter and tears in the midst of her merriment. Anon she would affect to believe that her husband was but trying her constancy, and pleaded with all her heart to be allowed to see him again.[157] But he, once having broken the shackles, was gaily amusing himself in gallant guise with Mistress Seymour, who was lodged, for appearance' sake, in the house of her mentor, Sir Nicholas Carew, a few miles from London, but within easy reach of a horseman. Anne in her sober moments must have known that she was doomed. She hoped much from Cranmer, almost the only friend of hers not now in prison; but Cranmer, however strong in counsel, was a weak reed in combat; and hastened to save himself at the cost of the woman upon whose shoulders he had climbed to greatness. The day after Anne's arrest, Cranmer wrote to the King "a letter of consolation; yet wisely making no apology for her, but acknowledging how divers of the lords had told him of certain of her faults, which, he said, he was sorry to hear, and concluded desiring that the King would continue his love to the gospel, lest it should be thought that it was for her sake only that he had favoured it."[158] Before he had time to despatch the letter, the timorous archbishop was summoned across the river to Westminster to answer certain disquieting questions of the Commissioners, who informed him of the evidence against the Queen; and in growing alarm for himself and his cause, he hurried back to Lambeth without uttering a word in favour of the accused, whose guilt he accepted without question.

Thenceforward Anne's enemies worked their way unchecked, even her father being silenced by fear for himself. For Cromwell's safety it was necessary that none of the accused should escape who later might do him injury; and now that he and his imperialistic policy had been b.u.t.tressed by the "discovery" of Anne's infidelity, not even the n.o.bles of the French faction dared to oppose it by seeming to side with the unhappy woman. The Secretary did his work thoroughly. The indictments were laid before the grand juries of Middles.e.x and Kent, as the offences were a.s.serted to have been committed over a long period both at Greenwich and Whitehall or Hampton Court. To the charges against Anne of adultery with Smeaton, who it was a.s.serted had confessed, Norreys, Weston, Brereton, and Lord Rochford, was added that of having conspired with them to kill the King.

There was not an atom of evidence worth the name to support any of the charges except the doubtful confession of Smeaton, wrung from him by torture; and it is certain that at the period in question the death of Henry would have been fatal to the interests of Anne. But a State prosecution in the then condition of the law almost invariably meant a condemnation of the accused; and when Smeaton, Weston, Norreys, and Brereton were arraigned in Westminster Hall on the 12th May, their doom was practically sealed before the trial. Smeaton simply pleaded guilty of adultery only, and prayed for mercy: the rest of the accused strenuously denied their guilt on the whole of the charges; but all were condemned to the terrible death awarded to traitors, though on what detailed evidence, if any, does not now appear.[159] Every effort was made to tempt Norreys to confess, but he replied that he would rather die a thousand deaths than confess a lie, for he verily believed the Queen innocent.[160]

In the meanwhile Anne in the Tower continued her strange behaviour, at times arrogantly claiming all her royal prerogatives, at times reduced to hysterical self-abas.e.m.e.nt and despair. On the 15th May she and her brother were brought to the great hall of the Tower before a large panel of peers under the presidency of the Duke of Norfolk. All that could add ignominy to the accused was done. The lieges were crowded into the s.p.a.ce behind barriers at the end of the hall, the city fathers under the Lord Mayor were bidden to attend, and with bated breath the subjects saw the woman they had always scorned publicly branded as an incestuous adulteress. The charges, as usual at the time, were made in a way and upon grounds that now would not be permitted in any court of justice. Sc.r.a.ps of overheard conversation with Norreys and others were twisted into sinister significance, allegations unsupported, and not included in the indictment, were dragged in to prejudice the accused; and loose statements incapable of proof or disproof were liberally introduced for the same purpose. The charge of incest with Rochford depended entirely upon the a.s.sertion that he once remained in his sister's room a long time; and in his case also loose gossip was alleged as a proof of crime: that Anne had said that the King was impotent,[161] that Rochford had thrown doubts upon the King being the father of Anne's child, and similar hearsay ribaldry. Both Anne and her brother defended themselves, unaided, with ability and dignity.

They pointed out the absence of evidence against them, and the inherent improbability of the charges. But it was of no avail, for her death had already been settled between Henry and Cromwell: and the Duke of Norfolk, with his sinister squint, condemned his niece, Anne Queen of England, to be burnt or beheaded at the King's pleasure; and Viscount Rochford to a similar death. Both denied their guilt after sentence, but acknowledged, as was the custom of the time, that they deserved death, this being the only way in which mercy might be gained, so far as forfeiture of property was concerned.

Anne had been cordially hated by the people. Her rise had meant the destruction of the ancient religious foundations, the shaking of the ecclesiastical bases of English society; but the sense of justice was not dead, and the procedure at the trial shocked the public conscience.

Already men and women murmured that the King's goings on with Mistress Seymour whilst his wife was under trial for adultery were a scandal, and Anne in her death had more friends than in her life. On all sides in London now, from the Lord Mayor downwards, it was said that Anne had been condemned, not because she was guilty, but because the King was tired of her: at all events, wrote Chapuys to Granvelle, there was surely never a man who wore the horns so gaily as he.[162] On the 17th May the five condemned men were led to their death upon Tower Hill, all of them, including Smeaton, being beheaded.[163] As usual in such cases, they acknowledged general guilt, but not one (except perhaps Smeaton) admitted the particular crimes for which they died, for their kin might have suffered in property, if not in person, if the King's justice had been too strongly impugned.

Anne, in alternate hope and despair, still remained in the Tower, but mostly longing for the rapid death she felt in her heart must come. Little knew she, however, why her sacrifice was deferred yet from day to day. In one of her excited, nervous outbursts she had cried that, no matter what they did, no one could prevent her from dying Queen of England. She had reckoned without Henry's meanness, Cromwell's cunning, and Cranmer's suppleness. Her death warrant had been signed by the King on the 16th May, and Cranmer was sent to receive her last confession. The coming of the archbishop--_her_ archbishop, as she called him--gave her fresh hope. She was not to be killed after all, but to be banished, and Cranmer was to bring her the good news. Alas! poor soul, she little knew her Cranmer even yet. He had been primed by Cromwell for a very different purpose, that of worming out of Anne some admission that would give him a pretext for p.r.o.nouncing her marriage with the King invalid from the first. The task was a repulsive one for the Primate, whose act alone had made the marriage possible; but Cranmer was--Cranmer. The position was a complicated one.

Henry, as he invariably did, wished to save his face and seem in the right before the world, consequently he could not confess that he had been mistaken in the divorce from Katharine, and get rid of Anne's marriage in that way, nor did he wish to restore Mary to the position of heiress to the crown. What he needed Cranmer's help for was to render Elizabeth also illegitimate, but still his daughter, in order that any child he might have by Jane Seymour, or failing that, his natural son, the Duke of Richmond, might be acknowledged his successor.

At intervals during Anne's career her alleged betrothal to the Earl of Northumberland before her marriage (see p. 126) had been brought up to her detriment; and the poor hare-brained earl had foresworn himself more than once on the subject. He was dying now, but he was again pressed to say that a regular betrothal had taken place with Anne. But he was past earthly fear, and finally a.s.serted that no contract had been made. Foiled in this attempt, Henry--or rather Cromwell--sent Cranmer to the Tower on the 16th May on his shameful errand: to lure the poor woman by hopes of pardon to confess the existence of an impediment to her marriage with the King. What the impediment was was never made public, but Anne's latest biographer, Mr. Friedmann, adduces excellent reasons for arriving at the conclusions that I have drawn, namely, that Mary Boleyn having been Henry's mistress, he and Anne were within the prohibited degrees of affinity for husband and wife; the fact that no marriage had taken place between Henry and Mary Boleyn being regarded as canonically immaterial.[164] In any case, the admission of a known impediment having been made by Anne, no time was lost. The next day, the 17th May, Cranmer sat, with Cromwell and other members of the Council, in his Primate's court at Lambeth to condemn the marriage that he himself had made. Anne was formally represented, but nothing was said on her behalf; and sentence was hurriedly p.r.o.nounced that the King's marriage with Anne Boleyn had never been a marriage at all. At the same time order was sent to Sir William Kingston that the "concubine" was to suffer the last penalty on the following morning. When the sleepless night for Anne had pa.s.sed, mostly in prayer, she took the sacrament with the utmost devotion, and in that most solemn moment swore before the Host, on her hopes of eternal life, that she had never misused her body to the King's dishonour.[165]

In the meanwhile her execution had been deferred until the next day, and Anne again lost her nerve. It was cruel, she said, to keep her so long in suspense: pray, she pet.i.tioned, put her out of her misery now that she was prepared. The operation would not be painful, Kingston a.s.sured her. "My neck is small enough," she said, spanning it with her fingers, and again burst into hysterics. Soon she became calm once more; and thenceforward only yearned for despatch. "No one ever had a better will for death than she," wrote Chapuys to his master: and Kingston, hardened as he was to the sight of the condemned in their last hours, expressed surprise to Cromwell that instead of sorrow "this lady has much joy and pleasure in death."

Remorse for her ungenerous treatment of the Princess Mary princ.i.p.ally troubled her. She herself, she said, was not going to execution by the divine judgment for what she had been accused of, but for having planned the death of the Princess. And so, in alternate prayer and light chatter, pa.s.sed Anne's last night on earth, and at nine o'clock on the spring morning of the 19th May she was led forth to the courtyard within the Tower, where a group of gentlemen, including Cromwell and the Dukes of Richmond and Suffolk, stood on or close to a low scaffold or staging reached by four steps from the ground. Anne was dressed in grey damask trimmed with fur, over a crimson petticoat, and cut low at the neck, so as to offer no impediment to the executioner's steel; and for the same reason the brown hair was dressed high in a net under the pearl-bordered coif.

Kept back by guards to some little distance from the platform stood a large crowd of spectators, who had flocked in at the heels of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs; though foreigners had been rigidly excluded.[166]

When Anne had ascended the steps she received permission to say a few words; and followed the tradition of not complaining against the King's justice which had condemned her. She had not come thither to preach, she said, but to die, though she was not guilty of the particular crimes for which she had been condemned. When, however, she began to speak of Jane Seymour being the cause of her fall, those on the scaffold stopped her, and she said no more. A headsman of St. Omer had been brought over from Calais, in order that the broadsword instead of the axe might be used; and this man, who was undistinguishable by his garb from the other bystanders, now came forward, and, kneeling, asked the doomed woman's pardon, which granted, Anne herself knelt in a distraught way, as if to pray, but really gazed around her in mute appeal from one pitiless face to another. The headsman, taking compa.s.sion upon her, a.s.sured her that he would not strike until she gave the signal. "You will have to take this coif off," said the poor woman, and one of the ladies who attended her did so, and partially bound her eyes with a handkerchief; but Anne still imagined that her headdress was in the way, and kept her hand upon her hair, straining her eyes and ears towards the steps where from the headsman's words she expected the sword to be handed to him. Whilst she was thus kneeling erect in suspense, the sword which was hidden in the straw behind her was deftly seized by the French executioner, who, swinging the heavy blade around, in an instant cut through the erect, slender neck; and the head of Anne Boleyn jerked from the shoulders and rolled upon the cloth that covered the platform.

Katharine in her neglected tomb at Peterborough was avenged, but the fissure that had been opened up between England and the Papacy for the sake of this woman had widened now past bridging. Politicians might, and did, make up their differences now that the "concubine" was dead, and form alliances regardless of religious affinities; but submission to the Papacy in future might mean that the most powerful people in England would be deprived of the fat spoils of the Church with which Cromwell had bought them, and that the vainest king on earth must humbly confess himself in the wrong. Anne herself was a mere straw upon a whirlpool, though her abilities, as Cromwell confessed, were not to be despised. She did not plan or make the Reformation, though she was forced by her circ.u.mstances to patronise it. The real author of the great schism of England was not Anne or Cranmer, but Luther's enemy, Charles V., the champion of Catholicism. But for the pressure he put upon the Pope to refuse Henry's divorce, in order to prevent a coalition of England and France, Cranmer's defiance of the Papacy would not have been needed, and Henry might have come back to Rome again easily. But with Cranmer to provide him with plausible pretexts for the repeated indulgence of his self-will, and Cromwell to feed his pride and cupidity by the plunder of the Church, Henry had already been drawn too far to go back. Greed and vanity of the ruling powers thus conspired to make permanent in England the influence of evanescent Anne Boleyn.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _JANE SEYMOUR_