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Title: The Wives of Henry the Eighth and the Parts They Played in History
Author: Martin Hume
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Language: English
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THE WIVES OF HENRY THE EIGHTH
[Illustration: _HENRY VIII._
_From a portrait by_ JOST VAN CLEEF _in the Royal Collection at Hampton
Court Palace_]
The Wives
of
Henry the Eighth
AND THE PARTS THEY PLAYED
IN HISTORY
BY
MARTIN HUME
AUTHOR OF "THE COURTSHIPS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH"
"THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS"
ETC. ETC. ETC.
"_These are stars indeed,
And sometimes falling ones._"
--SHAKESPEARE
LONDON
EVELEIGH NASH
1905
PREFACE
Either by chance or by the peculiar working of our constitution, the Queen
Consorts of England have as a rule been nationally important only in
proportion to the influence exerted by the political tendencies which
prompted their respective marriages. England has had no Catharine or Marie
de Medici, no Elizabeth Farnese, no Catharine of Russia, no Caroline of
Naples, no Maria Luisa of Spain, who, either through the minority of their
sons or the weakness of their husbands, dominated the countries of their
adoption; the Consorts of English Kings having been, in the great majority
of cases, simply domestic helpmates of their husbands and children, with
comparatively small political power or ambition for themselves. Only those
whose elevation responded to tendencies of a nationally enduring
character, or who represented temporarily the active forces in a great
national struggle, can claim to be powerful political factors in the
history of our country. The six Consorts of Henry VIII., whose successive
rise and fall synchronised with the beginning and progress of the
Reformation in England, are perhaps those whose fleeting prominence was
most pregnant of good or evil for the nation and for civilisation at
large, because they personified causes infinitely more important than
themselves.
The careers of these unhappy women have almost invariably been considered,
nevertheless, from a purely personal point of view. It is true that the
many historians of the Reformation have dwelt upon the rivalry between
Katharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, and their strenuous efforts to gain
their respective ends; but even in their case their action has usually
been regarded as individual in impulse, instead of being, as I believe it
was, prompted or thwarted by political forces and considerations, of which
the Queens themselves were only partially conscious. The lives of Henry's
Consorts have been related as if each of the six was an isolated
phenomenon that had by chance attracted the desire of a lascivious despot,
and in her turn had been deposed when his eye had fallen, equally
fortuitously, upon another woman who pleased his errant fancy better. This
view I believe to be a superficial and misleading one. I regard Henry
himself not as the far-seeing statesman he is so often depicted for us,
sternly resolved from the first to free his country from the yoke of Rome,
and pressing forward through a lifetime with his eyes firmly fixed upon
the goal of England's religious freedom; but rather as a weak, vain,
boastful man, the plaything of his passions, which were artfully made use
of by rival parties to forward religious and political ends in the
struggle of giants that ended in the Reformation. No influence that could
be exercised over the King was neglected by those who sought to lead him,
and least of all that which appealed to his uxoriousness; and I hope to
show in the text of this book how each of his wives in turn was but an
instrument of politicians, intended to sway the King on one side or the
other. Regarded from this point of view, the lives of these six unhappy
Queens assume an importance in national history which cannot be accorded
to them if they are considered in the usual light as the victims of a
strong, lustful tyrant, each one standing apart, and in her turn simply
the darling solace of his hours of dalliance. Doubtless the latter point
of view provides to the historian a wider scope for the description of
picturesque ceremonial and gorgeous millinery, as well as for pathetic
passages dealing with the personal sufferings of the Queens in their
distress; but I can only hope that the absence of much of this sentimental
and feminine interest from my pages will be compensated by the wider
aspect in which the public and political significance of Henry's wives is
presented; that a clearer understanding than usual may thus be gained of
the tortuous process by which the Reformation in England was effected, and
that the figure of the King in the picture may stand in a juster
proportion to his environment than is often the case.
MARTIN HUME.
LONDON, _October_ 1905.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
1488-1501
INTRODUCTORY--WHY KATHARINE CAME TO ENGLAND--POLITICAL MATRIMONY 1
CHAPTER II
1501-1509
KATHARINE'S WIDOWHOOD AND WHY SHE STAYED IN ENGLAND 25
CHAPTER III
1509-1527
KATHARINE THE QUEEN--A POLITICAL MARRIAGE AND A PERSONAL DIVORCE 72
CHAPTER IV
1527-1530
KATHARINE AND ANNE--THE DIVORCE 124
CHAPTER V
1530-1534
HENRY'S DEFIANCE--THE VICTORY OF ANNE 174
CHAPTER VI
1534-1536
A FLEETING TRIUMPH--POLITICAL INTRIGUE AND THE BETRAYAL OF ANNE 225
CHAPTER VII
1536-1540
PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT--JANE SEYMOUR AND ANNE OF CLEVES 289
CHAPTER VIII
1540-1542
THE KING'S "GOOD SISTER" AND THE KING'S BAD WIFE--THE LUTHERANS
AND ENGLISH CATHOLICS 350
CHAPTER IX
1542-1547
KATHARINE PARR--THE PROTESTANTS WIN THE LAST TRICK 398
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
HENRY VIII _Frontispiece_
_From a portrait by_ JOST VAN CLEEF _in the Royal
Collection at Hampton Court Palace._
KATHARINE OF ARAGON _To face page_ 96
_From a portrait by_ HOLBEIN _in the National
Portrait Gallery._
ANNE BOLEYN " " 192
_From a portrait by_ LUCAS CORNELISZ _in the National
Portrait Gallery._
JANE SEYMOUR " " 288
_From a painting by_ HOLBEIN _in the Imperial
Collection at Vienna._
ANNE OF CLEVES " " 336
_From a portrait by a German artist in St. John's
College, Oxford. Photographed by the Clarendon
Press, and reproduced by the kind permission of
the President of St. John's College._
KATHARINE HOWARD " " 384
_From a portrait by an unknown artist in the National
Portrait Gallery._
KATHARINE PARR " " 400
_From a painting in the collection of the_ EARL OF
ASHBURNHAM. _Reproduced by the kind permission of
the owner._
HENRY VIII " " 432
_From a portrait by_ HOLBEIN _in the possession of
the Earl of Warwick. Reproduced by the kind permission
of the owner._
THE WIVES OF HENRY THE EIGHTH
CHAPTER I
1488-1501
INTRODUCTORY--WHY KATHARINE CAME TO ENGLAND--POLITICAL MATRIMONY
The history of modern Europe takes its start from an event which must have
appeared insignificant to a generation that had witnessed the violent end
of the English dominion in France, had been dinned by the clash of the
Wars of the Roses, and watched with breathless fear the savage hosts of
Islam striking at the heart of Christendom over the still smoking ruins of
the Byzantine Empire.
Late one night, in the beginning of October 1469, a cavalcade of men in
the guise of traders halted beneath the walls of the ancient city of Burgo
de Osma in Old Castile. They had travelled for many days by little-used
paths through the mountains of Soria from the Aragonese frontier town of
Tarrazona; and, impatient to gain the safe shelter of the fortress of
Osma, they banged at the gates demanding admittance. The country was in
anarchy. Leagues of churchmen and nobles warred against each other and
preyed upon society at large. An impotent king, deposed with ignominy by
one faction, had been as ignominiously set up again by another, and royal
pretenders to the succession were the puppets of rival parties whose
object was to monopolise for themselves all the fruits of royalty, whilst
the monarch fed upon the husks. So when the new-comers called peremptorily
for admittance within the gates of Osma, the guards upon the city walls,
taking them for enemies or freebooters, greeted them with a shower of
missiles from the catapults. One murderous stone whizzed within a few
inches of the head of a tall, fair-haired lad of good mien and handsome
visage, who, dressed as a servant, accompanied the cavalcade. If the
projectile had effectively hit instead of missed the stripling, the whole
history of the world from that hour to this would have been changed, for
this youth was Prince Ferdinand, the heir of Aragon, who was being
conveyed secretly by a faction of Castilian nobles to marry the Princess
Isabel, who had been set forward as a pretender to her brother's throne,
to the exclusion of the King's doubtful daughter, the hapless Beltraneja.
A hurried cry of explanation went up from the travellers: a shouted
password; the flashing of torches upon the walls, the joyful recognition
of those within, and the gates swung open, the drawbridge dropped, and
thenceforward Prince Ferdinand was safe, surrounded by the men-at-arms of
Isabel's faction. Within a week the eighteen-years-old bridegroom greeted
his bride, and before the end of the month Ferdinand and Isabel were
married at Valladolid.
To most observers it may have seemed a small thing that a petty prince in
the extreme corner of Europe had married the girl pretender to the
distracted and divided realm of Castile; but there was one cunning, wicked
old man in Barcelona who was fully conscious of the importance of the
match that he had planned; and he, John II. of Aragon, had found an apt
pupil in his son Ferdinand, crafty beyond his years. To some extent Isabel
must have seen it too, for she was already a dreamer of great dreams which
she meant to come true, and the strength of Aragon behind her claim would
insure her the sovereignty that was to be the first step in their
realisation.
This is not the place to tell how the nobles of Castile found to their
dismay that in Ferdinand and Isabel they had raised a King Stork instead
of King Log to the throne, and how the Queen, strong as a man, subtle as a
woman, crushed and chicaned her realms into order and obedience. The aims
of Ferdinand and his father in effecting the union of Aragon and Castile
by marriage went far beyond the Peninsula in which they lived. For ages
Aragon had found its ambitions checked by the consolidation of France. The
vision of a great Romance empire, stretching from Valencia to Genoa, and
governed from Barcelona or Saragossa, had been dissipated when Saint Louis
wrung from James the Conqueror, in the thirteenth century, his recognition
of French suzerainty over Provence.
But Aragonese eyes looked still towards the east, and saw a Frenchman ever
in their way. The Christian outpost in the Mediterranean, Sicily, already
belonged to Aragon; so did the Balearic isles: but an Aragonese dynasty
held Naples only in alternation and constant rivalry with the French house
of Anjou; and as the strength of the French monarchy grew it stretched
forth its hands nearer, and ever nearer, to the weak and divided
principalities of Italy with covetous intent. Unless Aragon could check
the French expansion across the Alps its own power in the Mediterranean
would be dwarfed, its vast hopes must be abandoned, and it must settle
down to the inglorious life of a petty State, hemmed in on all sides by
more powerful neighbours. But although too weak to vanquish France alone,
a King of Aragon who could dispose of the resources of greater Castile
might hope, in spite of French opposition, to dominate a united Italy, and
thence look towards the illimitable east. This was the aspiration that
Ferdinand inherited, and to which the efforts of his long and strenuous
life were all directed. The conquest of Granada, the unification of Spain,
the greed, the cruelty, the lying, the treachery, the political marriages
of all his children, and the fires of the Inquisition, were all means to
the end for which he fought.
But fate was unkind to him. The discovery of America diverted Castilian
energy from Aragonese objects, and death stepped in and made grim sport of
all his marriage jugglery. Before he died, beaten and broken-hearted, he
knew that the little realm of his fathers, instead of using the strength
of others for its aims, would itself be used for objects which concerned
it not. But though he failed his plan was a masterly one. Treaties, he
knew, were rarely binding, for the age was faithless, and he himself never
kept an oath an hour longer than suited him; but mutual interests by
kinship might hold sovereigns together against a common opponent. So, one
after the other, from their earliest youth, the children of Ferdinand and
Isabel were made political counters in their father's great marriage
league. The eldest daughter, Isabel, was married to the heir of Portugal,
and every haven into which French galleys might shelter in their passage
from the Mediterranean to the Bay of Biscay was at Ferdinand's bidding.
The only son, John, was married to the daughter of Maximilian, King of the
Romans, and (from 1493) Emperor, whose interest also it was to check the
French advance towards north Italy and his own dominions. The second
daughter, Juana, was married to the Emperor's son, Philip, sovereign, in
right of his mother, of the rich inheritance of Burgundy, Flanders,
Holland, and the Franche Comté, and heir to Austria and the Empire, who
from Flanders might be trusted to watch the French on their northern and
eastern borders; and the youngest of Ferdinand's daughters, Katharine, was
destined almost from her birth to secure the alliance of England, the
rival of France in the Channel, and the opponent of its aggrandisement
towards the north.
Ferdinand of Aragon and Henry Tudor, Henry VII., were well matched. Both
were clever, unscrupulous, and greedy; each knew that the other would
cheat him if he could, and tried to get the better of every deal, utterly
regardless not only of truth and honesty but of common decency. But,
though Ferdinand usually beat Henry at his shuffling game, fate finally
beat Ferdinand, and a powerful modern England is the clearly traceable
consequence. How the great result was brought about it is one of the
principal objects of this book to tell. That Ferdinand had everything to
gain by thus surrounding France by possible rivals in his own interests is
obvious, for if his plans had not miscarried he could have diverted France
whenever it suited him, and his way towards the east would have been
clear; but at first sight the interest of Henry VII. in placing himself
into a position of antagonism towards France for the benefit of the King
of Spain is not so evident. The explanation must be found in the fact that
he held the throne of England by very uncertain tenure, and sought to
disarm those who would be most able and likely to injure him. The royal
house of Castile had been closely allied to the Plantagenets, and both
Edward IV. and his brother Richard had been suitors for the hand of
Isabel. The Dowager-Duchess of Burgundy, moreover, was Margaret
Plantagenet, their sister, who sheltered and cherished in Flanders the
English adherents of her house; and Henry Tudor, half a Frenchman by birth
and sympathies, was looked at askance by the powerful group of Spain, the
Empire, and Burgundy when first he usurped the English throne. He knew
that he had little or nothing to fear from France, and one of his earliest
acts was in 1487 to bid for the friendship of Ferdinand by means of an
offer of alliance, and the marriage of his son Arthur, Prince of Wales,
then a year old, with the Infanta Katharine, who was a few months older.
Ferdinand at the time was trying to bring about a match between his
eldest daughter, Isabel, and the young King of France, Charles VIII., and
was not very eager for a new English alliance which might alarm the
French. Before the end of the year, however, it was evident that there was
no chance of the Spanish Infanta's marriage with Charles VIII. coming to
anything, and Ferdinand's plan for a great coalition against France was
finally adopted.
In the first days of 1488 Ferdinand's two ambassadors arrived in London to
negotiate the English match, and the long duel of diplomacy between the
Kings of England and Spain began. Of one of the envoys it behoves us to
say something, because of the influence his personal character exercised
upon subsequent events. Rodrigo de Puebla was one of the most
extraordinary diplomatists that can be imagined, and could only have been
possible under such monarchs as Henry and Ferdinand, willing as both of
them were to employ the basest instruments in their underhand policy.
Puebla was a doctor of laws and a provincial mayor when he attracted the
attention of Ferdinand, and his first diplomatic mission of importance was
that to England. He was a poor, vain, greedy man, utterly corrupt, and
Henry VII. was able to dominate him from the first. In the course of time
he became more of an intimate English minister than a foreign ambassador,
though he represented at Henry's court not only Castile and Aragon, but
also the Pope and the Empire. He constantly sat in the English council,
and was almost the only man admitted to Henry's personal confidence. That
such an instrument would be trusted entirely by the wary Ferdinand, was
not to be expected: and though Puebla remained in England as ambassador
to the end of his life, he was, to his bitter jealousy, always associated
with others when important negotiations had to be conducted. Isabel wrote
to him often, sometimes threatening him with punishment if he failed in
carrying out his instructions satisfactorily, sometimes flattering him and
promising him rewards, which he never got. He was recognised by Ferdinand
as an invaluable means of gaining knowledge of Henry's real intentions,
and by Henry as a tool for betraying Ferdinand. It is hardly necessary to
say that he alternately sold both and was never fully paid by either.
Henry offered him an English bishopric which his own sovereigns would not
allow him to accept, and a wealthy wife in England was denied him for a
similar reason; for Ferdinand on principle kept his agents poor. On a
wretched pittance allowed him by Henry, Puebla lived thus in London until
he died almost simultaneously with his royal friend. When not spunging at
the tables of the King or English nobles he lived in a house of ill-fame
in London, paying only twopence a day for his board, and cheating the
other inmates, in the interests of the proprietor, for the balance. He
was, in short, a braggart, a liar, a flatterer, and a spy, who served two
rogues roguishly and was fittingly rewarded by the scorn of honest men.
This was the ambassador who, with a colleague called Juan de Sepulveda,
was occupied through the spring of 1488 in negotiating the marriage of the
two babies--Arthur, Prince of Wales, and the Infanta Katharine. They found
Henry, as Puebla says, singing _Te Deum Laudamus_ about the alliance and
marriage: but when the parties came to close quarters matters went less
smoothly. What Henry had to gain by the alliance was the disarming of
possible enemies of his own unstable throne, whilst Ferdinand needed
England's active or passive support in a war against France, for the
purpose of extorting the restoration to Aragon of the territory of
Roussillon and Cerdagne, and of preventing the threatened absorption of
the Duchy of Brittany into the French monarchy. The contest was keen and
crafty. First the English commissioners demanded with the Infanta a dowry
so large as quite to shock Puebla; it being, as he said, five times as
much as had been mentioned by English agents in Spain. Puebla and
Sepulveda offered a quarter of the sum demanded, and hinted with pretended
jocosity that it was a great condescension on the part of the sovereigns
of Spain to allow their daughter to marry at all into such a parvenu
family as the Tudors. After infinite haggling, both as to the amount and
the form of the dowry, it was agreed by the ambassadors that 200,000 gold
crowns of 4s. 2d. each should be paid in cash with the bride on her
marriage. But the marriage was the least part of Ferdinand's object, if
indeed he then intended, which is doubtful, that it should take place at
all. What he wanted was the assurance of Henry's help against France; and,
of all things, peace was the first need for the English king. When the
demand was made therefore that England should go to war with France
whenever Ferdinand chose to do so, and should not make peace without its
ally, baited though the demand was with the hollow suggestion of
recovering for England the territories of Normandy and Guienne, Henry's
duplicity was brought into play. He dared not consent to such terms, but
he wanted the benevolent regards of Ferdinand's coalition: so his
ministers flattered the Spanish king, and vaguely promised "mounts and
marvels" in the way of warlike aid, as soon as the marriage treaty was
signed and sealed. Even Puebla wanted something more definite than this;
and the English commissioners (the Bishop of Exeter and Giles Daubeney),
"took a missal in their hands and swore in the most solemn way before the
crucifix that it is the will of the King of England first to conclude the
alliance and the marriage, and afterwards to make war upon the King of
France, according to the bidding of the Catholic kings." Nor was this all:
for when Puebla and his colleagues later in the day saw the King himself,
Henry smiled at and flattered the envoys, and flourishing his bonnet and
bowing low each time the names of Ferdinand and Isabel passed his lips,
confirmed the oath of his ministers, "which he said we must accept for
plain truth, unmingled with double dealing or falsehood."[1] Ferdinand's
ambassadors were fairly dazzled. They were taken to see the infant
bridegroom; and Puebla grew quite poetical in describing his bodily
perfections, both dressed and _in puribus naturalibus_, and the beauty and
magnificence of the child's mother were equally extolled. The object of
all Henry's amiability, and, indeed, of Puebla's dithyrambics also, was to
cajole Ferdinand into sending his baby daughter Katharine into England at
once on the marriage treaty alone. With such a hostage in his hands, Henry
knew that he might safely break his oath about going to war with France to
please the Spanish king.
But Ferdinand was not a man easy to cajole, and when hapless, simple
Sepulveda reached Spain with the draft treaty he found himself in the
presence of two very angry sovereigns indeed. Two hundred thousand crowns
dowry, indeed! One hundred was the most they would give, and that must be
in Spanish gold, or the King of England would be sure to cheat them over
the exchange; and they must have three years in which to pay the amount,
for which moreover no security should be given but their own signatures.
The cost of the bride's trousseau and jewels also must be deducted from
the amount of the dowry. On the other hand, the Infanta's dowry and income
from England must be fully guaranteed by land rents; and, above all, the
King of England must bind himself at the same time--secretly if he likes,
but by formal treaty--to go to war with France to recover for Ferdinand
Roussillon and Cerdagne. Though Henry would not go quite so far as this,
he conceded much for the sake of the alliances so necessary to him. The
dowry from Spain was kept at 200,000 crowns, and England was pledged to a
war with France whenever Ferdinand should find himself in the same
position.
With much discussion and sharp practice on both sides the treaties in this
sense were signed in March 1489, and the four-years-old Infanta Katharine
became Princess of Wales. It is quite clear throughout this early
negotiation that the marriage that should give to the powerful coalition
of which Ferdinand was the head a family interest in the maintenance of
the Tudor dynasty was Henry's object, to be gained on terms as easy as
practicable to himself; whereas with Ferdinand the marriage was but the
bait to secure the armed co-operation of England against France; and
probably at the time neither of the kings had any intention of fulfilling
that part of the bargain which did not specially interest him. As will be
seen, however, the force of circumstances and the keenness of the
contracting parties led eventually to a better fulfilment of the treaty
than was probably intended.
For the next two years the political intrigues of Europe centered around
the marriage of the young Duchess of Brittany. Though Roussillon and
Cerdagne mattered nothing to Henry VII., the disposal of the rich duchy
opposite his own shores was of importance to him. France, Spain, England,
and the Empire were all trying to outbid one another for the marriage of
the Duchess; and, as Charles VIII. of France was the most dangerous
suitor, Henry was induced to send his troops across the Channel to
Brittany to join those of Spain and the Empire, though neither of the
latter troops came. From the first all the allies were false to each
other, and hastened to make separate terms with France; Ferdinand and
Maximilian endeavouring above all to leave Henry at war. When, at the end
of 1491, Charles VIII. carried off the matrimonial prize of the Duchess of
Brittany and peace ensued, none of the allies had gained anything by
their tergiversation. Reasons were soon found by Ferdinand for regarding
the marriage treaty between Arthur and Katharine as in abeyance, and once
more pressure was put upon Henry to buy its fulfilment by another warlike
coalition. The King of England stood out for a time, especially against an
alliance with the King of the Romans, who had acted so badly about
Brittany; but at length the English contingent was led against Boulogne by
the King himself, as part of the allied action agreed upon. This time,
however, it was Henry who, to prevent the betrayal he foresaw, scored off
his allies, and without striking a blow he suddenly made a separate peace
with France (November 1492). But yet he was the only party who had not
gained what he had bid for. Roussillon and Cerdagne were restored to
Ferdinand, in consequence of Henry's threat against Boulogne; France had
been kept in check during the time that all the resources of Spain were
strained in the supreme effort to capture the last Moorish foothold in the
Peninsula, the peerless Granada; the King of France had married the
Duchess of Brittany and had thus consolidated and strengthened his realm;
whilst Henry, to his chagrin, found that not only had he not regained
Normandy and Guienne, but that in the new treaty of peace between Spain
and France, "Ferdinand and Isabel engage their loyal word and faith as
Christians, not to conclude or permit any marriage of their children with
any member of the royal family of England; and they bind themselves to
assist the King of France against all his enemies, and _particularly
against the English_." This was Henry's first experience of Ferdinand's
diplomacy, and he found himself outwitted at every point. Katharine, all
unconscious as she conned her childish lessons at Granada, ceased for a
time to be called "Princess of Wales."
With the astute King of England thus cozened by Ferdinand, it is not
wonderful that the vain and foolish young King of France should also have
found himself no match for his new Spanish ally. Trusting upon his
alliance, Charles VIII. determined to strike for the possession of the
kingdom of Naples, which he claimed as representing the house of Anjou.
Naples at the time was ruled by a close kinsman of Ferdinand, and it is
not conceivable that the latter ever intended to allow the French to expel
him for the purpose of ruling there themselves. But he smiled, not
unkindly at first, upon Charles's Italian adventure, for he knew the
French king was rash and incompetent, and that the march of a French army
through Italy would arouse the hatred and fear of the Italian princes and
make them easy tools in his hands. The King of Naples, moreover, was
extremely unpopular and of illegitimate descent: and Ferdinand doubtless
saw that if the French seized Naples he could not only effect a powerful
coalition to expel them, but in the scramble might keep Naples for
himself; and this is exactly what happened. The first cry against the
French was raised by the Pope Alexander VI., a Spanish Borgia. By the time
Charles VIII. of France was crowned King of Naples (May 1495) all Italy
was ablaze against the intruders, and Ferdinand formed the Holy League--of
Rome, Spain, Austria, Venice, and Milan--to crush his enemies.
Then, as usual, he found it desirable to secure the benevolence of Henry
VII. of England. Again Henry was delighted, for Perkin Warbeck had been
received by Maximilian and his Flemish kinsmen as the rightful King of
England, and the Yorkist nobles still found aid and sympathy in the
dominions of Burgundy. But Henry had already been tricked once by the
allies, and was far more difficult to deal with than before. He found
himself, indeed, for the first time in the position which under his
successors enabled England to rise to the world power she attained;
namely, that of the balancing factor between France and Spain. This was
the first result of Ferdinand's coalition against France for the purpose
of forwarding Aragonese aims, and it remained the central point of
European politics for the next hundred years. Henry was not the man to
overlook his new advantage, with both of the great European powers bidding
for his alliance; and this time he drove a hard bargain with Ferdinand.
There was still much haggling about the Spanish dowry for Katharine, but
Henry stood firm at the 200,000 gold crowns, though a quarter of the
amount was to take the form of jewels belonging the bride. One stipulation
was that the new marriage was to be kept a profound secret, in order that
the King of Scots might not be alarmed; for Ferdinand was trying to draw
even him away from France by hints of marriage with an Infanta. By the new
treaty, which was signed in October 1497, the formal marriage of Arthur
and Katharine _per verba de presenti_ was to be celebrated when Arthur
had completed his fourteenth year; and the bride's dowry in England was to
consist of a third of the revenues of Wales, Cornwall, and Chester, with
an increase of the income when she became Queen.
But it was not all plain sailing yet. Ferdinand considered that Henry had
tricked him about the amount and form of the dowry, but the fear that the
King of France might induce the English to enter into a new alliance with
him kept Ferdinand ostensibly friendly. In the summer of 1598 two special
Spanish ambassadors arrived in London, and saw the King for the purpose of
confirming him in the alliance with their sovereigns, and, if we are to
believe Puebla's account of the interview, both Henry and his Queen
carried their expressions of veneration for Ferdinand and Isabel almost to
a blasphemous extent. Henry, indeed, is said to have had a quarrel with
his wife because she would not give him one of the letters from the
Spanish sovereigns always to carry about with him, Elizabeth saying that
she wished to send her letter to the Prince of Wales.
But for all Henry's blandishments and friendliness, his constant requests
that Katharine should be sent to England met with never-failing excuses
and procrastination. It is evident, indeed, throughout that, although the
Infanta was used as the attraction that was to keep Henry and England in
the Spanish, instead of the French, interest, there was much reluctance on
the part of her parents, and particularly of Queen Isabel, to trust her
child, to whom she was much attached, to the keeping of a stranger, whose
only object in desiring her presence was, she knew, a political one. Some
anxiety was shown by Henry and his wife, on the other hand, that the young
Princess should be trained in a way that would fit her for her future
position in England. The Princess Margaret of Austria, daughter of
Maximilian, who had just married Ferdinand's heir, Prince John, was in
Spain, and Puebla reports that the King and Queen of England were anxious
that Katharine should take the opportunity of speaking French with her, in
order to learn the language. "This is necessary, because the English
ladies do not understand Latin, and much less Spanish. The King and Queen
also wish that the Princess should accustom herself to drink wine. The
water of England is not drinkable, and even if it were, the climate would
not allow the drinking of it." The necessary Papal Bulls for the marriage
of the Prince and Princess arrived in 1498, and Henry pressed continually
for the coming of the bride, but Ferdinand and Isabel were in no hurry.
"The manner in which the marriage is to be performed, and the Princess
sent to England, must all be settled first." "You must negotiate these
points," they wrote to Puebla, "_but make no haste_."[2] Spanish envoys of
better character and greater impartiality than Puebla urged that
Katharine should be sent "before she had become too much attached to
Spanish life and institutions"; though the writer of this admits the grave
inconvenience of subjecting so young a girl to the disadvantages of life
in Henry's court.
Young Arthur himself, even, was prompted to use his influence to persuade
his new wife to join him, writing to his "most entirely beloved spouse"
from Ludlow in October 1499, dwelling upon his earnest desire to see her,
as the delay in her coming is very grievous to him, and he begs it may be
hastened. The final disappearance of Perkin Warbeck in 1499 greatly
changed the position of Henry and made him a more desirable connection:
and the death without issue of Ferdinand's only son and heir about the
same time, also made it necessary for the Spanish king to draw his
alliances closer, in view of the nearness to the succession of his second
daughter, Juana, who had married Maximilian's son, the Archduke Philip,
sovereign of Flanders, who, as well as his Spanish wife, were deeply
distrusted by both Ferdinand and Isabel. In 1500, therefore, the Spanish
sovereigns became more acquiescent about their daughter's coming to
England. By Don Juan Manuel, their most skilful diplomatist, they sent a
message to Henry in January 1500, saying that they had determined to send
Katharine in the following spring without waiting until Arthur had
completed his fourteenth year. The sums, they were told, that had already
been spent in preparations for her reception in England were enormous, and
when in March there was still no sign of the bride's coming, Henry VII.
began to get restive. He and his country, he said, would suffer great
loss if the arrival of the Princess were delayed. But just then Ferdinand
found that the treaty was not so favourable for him as he had expected,
and the whole of the conditions, particularly as to the payment of the
dowry, and the valuation of the bride's jewels, had once more to be
laboriously discussed; another Spanish ambassador being sent, to request
fresh concessions. In vain Puebla told his master that when once the
Princess arrived all England would be at his bidding, assured him of
Henry's good faith, and his own ability as a diplomatist. Ferdinand always
found some fresh subject to be wrangled over: the style to be given to the
King of England, the number of servants to come in the train of Katharine,
Henry desiring that they should be few and Ferdinand many, and one of the
demands of the English king was, "that the ladies who came from Spain with
the Princess should all be beautiful, or at least none of them should be
ugly."
In the summer of 1500 there was a sudden panic in Ferdinand's court that
Henry had broken off the match. He had gone to Calais to meet for the
first time the young Archduke Philip, Ferdinand's son-in-law, and it was
rumoured that the distrusted Fleming had persuaded Henry to marry the
Prince of Wales to his sister the Arch duchess Margaret, the recently
widowed daughter in-law of Ferdinand. It was not true, though it made
Ferdinand very cordial for a time, and soon the relations between England
and Spain resumed their usual course of smooth-tongued distrust and
tergiversation. Still another ambassador was sent to England, and
reported that people were saying they believed the Princess would never
come, though great preparations for her reception continued to be made,
and the English nobles were already arranging jousts and tournaments for
her entertainment. Ferdinand, on the other hand, continued to send
reassuring messages. He was, he said, probably with truth now, more
desirous than ever that the marriage should take place when the bridegroom
had completed his fourteenth year; but it was necessary that the marriage
should be performed again by proxy in Spain before the bride embarked.
Then there was a delay in obtaining the ships necessary for the passage,
and the Spanish sovereigns changed their minds again, and preferred that
the second marriage, after Arthur had attained his fifteenth year, should
be performed in England. The stormy weather of August was then an excuse
for another delay on the voyage, and a fresh quibble was raised about the
value of the Princess's jewels being considered as part of the _first_
instalment of the dowry. In December 1500 the marriage was once more
performed at Ludlow, Arthur being again present and pledging himself as
before to Puebla.
Whilst delaying the voyage of Katharine as much as possible, now probably
in consequence of her youth, her parents took the greatest of care to
convince Henry of the indissoluble character of the marriage as it stood.
Knowing the King of England's weakness, Isabel wrote in March 1501
deprecating the great expense he was incurring in the preparations. She
did not wish, she said, for her daughter to cause a loss to England,
either in money or any other way; but to be a source of happiness to
every one. When all was ready for the embarkation at Corunna in April
1501, an excuse for further delay was found in a rebellion of the Moors of
Ronda, which prevented Ferdinand from escorting his daughter to the port;
then both Isabel and Katharine had a fit of ague, which delayed the
departure for another week or two. But at last the parting could be
postponed no longer, and for the last time on earth Isabel the Catholic
embraced her favourite daughter Katharine in the fairy palace of the
Alhambra which for ever will be linked with the memories of her heroism.
The Queen was still weak with fever, and could not accompany her daughter
on the way, but she stood stately in her sternly suppressed grief,
sustained by the exalted religious mysticism, which in her descendants
degenerated to neurotic mania. Grief unutterable had stricken the Queen.
Her only son was dead, and her eldest daughter and her infant heir had
also gone to untimely graves. The hopes founded upon the marriages of
their children had all turned to ashes, and the King and Queen saw with
gloomy foreboding that their daughter Juana and her foreign husband would
rule in Spain as well as in Flanders and the Empire, to Spain's
irreparable disaster; and, worst of all, Juana had dared to dally with the
hated thing heresy. In the contest of divided interest which they foresaw,
it was of the utmost importance now to the Catholic kings that England at
least should be firmly attached to them; and they dared no longer delay
the sacrifice of Katharine to the political needs of their country.
Katharine, young as she was, understood that she was being sent to a far
country amongst strangers as much an ambassador as a bride, but she from
her birth had been brought up in the atmosphere of ecstatic devotion that
surrounded her heroic mother, and the din of battle against the enemies of
the Christian God had rarely been silent in her childish ears. So, with
shining eyes and a look of proud martyrdom, Katharine bade the Queen a
last farewell, turned her back upon lovely Granada, and through the torrid
summer of 1501 slowly traversed the desolate bridle-roads of La Mancha and
arid Castile to the green valleys of Galicia, where, in the harbour of
Corunna, her little fleet lay at anchor awaiting her.
From the 21st of May, when she last looked upon the Alhambra, it took her
nearly two months of hard travel to reach Corunna, and it was almost a
month more before all was ready for the embarkation with the great train
of courtiers and servants that accompanied her. On the 17th August 1501
the flotilla sailed from Corunna, only to be stricken the next day by a
furious north-easterly gale and scattered; the Princess's ship, in dire
danger, being driven into the little port of Laredo in the north of Spain.
There Katharine was seriously ill, and another long delay occurred, the
apprehension that some untoward accident had happened to the Princess at
sea causing great anxiety to the King of England, who sent his best seamen
to seek tidings of the bride. The season was late, and when, on the 26th
September 1501, Katharine again left Laredo for England, even her stout
heart failed at the prospect before her. A dangerous hurricane from the
south accompanied her across the Channel and drove the ships finally into
the safety of Plymouth harbour on Saturday the 2nd October 1501.
The Princess was but little expected at Plymouth, as Southampton or
Bristol had been recommended as the best ports for her arrival; and great
preparations had been made for her reception at both those ports. But the
Plymouth folk were nothing backward in their loyal welcome of the new
Princess of Wales; for one of the courtiers who accompanied her wrote to
Queen Isabel that "she could not have been received with greater
rejoicings if she had been the saviour of the world." As she went in
solemn procession through the streets to the church of Plymouth to give
thanks for her safety from the perils past, with foreign speech sounding
in her ears and surrounded by a curious crowd of fair folk so different
from the swarthy subjects of her mother that she had left behind at
Granada, the girl of sixteen might well be appalled at the magnitude of
the task before her. She knew that henceforward she had, by diplomacy and
woman's wit, to keep the might and wealth of England and its king on the
side of her father against France; to prevent any coalition between her
new father-in-law and her brother-in-law Philip in Flanders in which Spain
was not included; and, finally, to give an heir to the English throne,
who, in time to come, should be Aragonese in blood and sympathy.
Thenceforward Katharine must belong to England in appearance if her
mission was to succeed; and though Spain was always in her heart as the
exotic pomegranate of Granada was on her shield, England in future was the
name she conjured by, and all England loved her, from the hour she first
set foot on English soil to the day of the final consummation of her
martyrdom.
CHAPTER II
1501-1509
KATHARINE'S WIDOWHOOD AND WHY SHE STAYED IN ENGLAND
The arrival of Katharine in England as his son's affianced wife meant very
much for Henry VII. and his house. He had already, by a master-stroke of
diplomacy, betrothed his eldest daughter to the King of Scots, and was
thus safe from French intrigue on his vulnerable northern border, whilst
the new King of France was far too apprehensive of Ferdinand's coalition
to arouse the active enmity of England. The presence of Ferdinand's
daughter on English soil completed the security against attack upon Henry
from abroad. It is true that the Yorkists and their friends were still
plotting: "Solicited, allured and provoked, by that old venomous serpent,
the Duchess of Burgundy, ever the sower of sedition and beginner of
rebellion against the King of England;"[3] but Henry knew well that with
Katharine at his Court he could strike a death-blow, as he soon did, at
his domestic enemies, without fear of reprisals from her brother-in-law
Philip, the present sovereign of Burgundy and Flanders.
Messengers were sent galloping to London to carry to the King the great
news of Katharine's arrival at Plymouth; but the roads were bad, and it
was not Henry's way to spoil his market by a show of over-eagerness, and
though he sent forward the Duchess of Norfolk and the Earl of Surrey to
attend upon the Princess on her way towards London, the royal party did
not set out from Shene Palace to meet her until the 4th November.
Travelling through a drenching rain by short stages from one seat to
another, Henry VII. and his daughter-in-law gradually approached each
other with their splendid troops of followers, all muffled up, we are
told, in heavy rain cloaks to shield their finery from the inclemency of
an English winter. Young Arthur, coming from the seat of his government in
Wales, met his father near Chertsey, and together they continued their
journey towards the west. On the third day, as they rode over the
Hampshire downs, they saw approaching them a group of horsemen, the leader
of which dismounted and saluted the King in Latin with a message from
Ferdinand and Isabel. Ladies in Spain were kept in strict seclusion until
their marriage, and the messenger, who was the Protonotary Cañazares, sent
with Katharine to England to see that Spanish etiquette was not violated,
prayed in the name of his sovereigns that the Infanta should not be seen
by the King, and especially by the bridegroom, until the public marriage
was performed. This was a part of the bargain that the cautious Puebla had
not mentioned, and Henry was puzzled at such a request in his own realm,
where no such oriental regard for women was known. Hastily taking counsel
of the nobles on horseback about him, he decided that, as the Infanta was
in England, she must abide by English customs. Indeed the demand for
seclusion seems to have aroused the King's curiosity, for, putting spurs
to his horse, with but a small following, and leaving the boy bridegroom
behind, he galloped on to Dogmersfield, at no great distance away, where
the Infanta was awaiting his arrival. When he came to the house in which
she lodged, he found a little group of horrified Spanish prelates and
nobles, the Archbishop of Santiago, the Bishop of Majorca, and Count
Cabra, at the door of the Infanta's apartments, barring entrance. The
Princess had, they said, retired to her chamber and ought not to be
disturbed. There was no restraining a king in his own realm, however, and
Henry brushed the group aside. "Even if she were in bed," he said, "he
meant to see and speak with her, for that was the whole intent of his
coming."
Finding that Spanish etiquette would not be observed in England, Katharine
made the best of matters and received Henry graciously, though evidently
her Latin and French were different from his; for they were hardly
intelligible to one another. Then, after the King had changed his
travelling garb, he sent word that he had a present for the Princess; and
led in the blushing Prince Arthur to the presence of his bride. The
conversation now was more easily conducted, for the Latin-speaking bishops
were close by to interpret. Once more, and for the fourth time, the young
couple formally pledged their troth; and then after supper the Spanish
minstrels played, and the ladies and gentlemen of Katharine's suite
danced: young Arthur, though unable to dance in the Spanish way, trod an
English measure with Lady Guildford to show that he was not unversed in
courtly graces.[4]
Arthur appears to have been a slight, fair, delicate lad, amiable and
gentle, and not so tall as his bride, who was within a month of sixteen
years, Arthur being just over fifteen. Katharine must have had at this
time at least the grace of girlhood, though she never can have been a
great beauty. Like most of her mother's house she had pale, rather hard,
statuesque features and ruddy hair. As we trace her history we shall see
that most of her mistakes in England, and she made many, were the natural
result of the uncompromising rigidity of principle arising from the
conviction of divine appointment which formed her mother's system. She had
been brought up in the midst of a crusading war, in which the victors drew
their inspiration, and ascribed their triumph, to the special intervention
of the Almighty in their favour; and already Katharine's house had assumed
as a basis of its family faith that the cause of God was indissolubly
linked with that of the sovereigns of Castile and Leon. It was impossible
that a woman brought up in such a school could be opportunist, or would
bend to the petty subterfuges and small complaisances by which men are
successfully managed; and Katharine suffered through life from the
inflexibility born of self-conscious rectitude.
Slowly through the rain the united cavalcades travelled back by Chertsey;
and the Spanish half then rode to Kingston, where the Duke of Buckingham,
with four hundred retainers in black and scarlet, met the bride, and so
to the palace at Kennington hard by Lambeth, where Katharine was lodged
until the sumptuous preparations for the public marriage at St. Paul's
were completed. To give a list of all the splendours that preceded the
wedding would be as tedious as it is unnecessary; but a general impression
of the festivities as they struck a contemporary will give us a far better
idea than a close catalogue of the wonderful things the Princess saw as
she rode her white palfrey on the 12th November through Southwark, over
London Bridge, and by Cheapside to the Bishop of London's house adjoining
St. Paul's. "And, because I will not be tedious to you, I pass over the
wise devices, the prudent speeches, the costly works, the cunning
portraitures, practised and set forth in seven beautiful pageants erected
and set up in divers places of the city. I leave also the goodaly ballds,
the sweet harmony, the musical instruments, which sounded with heavenly
noise in every side of the street. I omit the costly apparel, both of
goldsmith's work and embroidery, the rich jewels, the massy chains, the
stirring horses, the beautiful bards, and the glittering trappers, both
with bells and spangles of gold. I pretermit also the rich apparel of the
Princess, the strange fashion of the Spanish nation, the beauty of the
English ladies, the goodly demeanour of the young damosels, the amorous
countenance of the lusty bachelors. I pass over the fine engrained
clothes, the costly furs of the citizens, standing upon scaffolds, railed
from Gracechurch to St. Paul's. What should I speak of the odoriferous
scarlets, and fine velvet and pleasant furs, and rich chains, which the
Mayor of London with the Senate, sitting on horseback at the little
conduit in Chepe, ware upon their bodies and about their necks. I will not
molest you with rehearsing the rich arras, the costly tapestry, the fine
cloths of silver and of gold, the curious velvets and satins, the pleasant
silks, which did hang in every street where she passed; the wine that ran
out of the conduits, the gravelling and railing of the streets, and all
else that needeth not remembring."[5] In short, we may conclude that
Katharine's passage through London before her wedding was as triumphal as
the citizens could make it. Even the common people knew that her presence
in England made for security and peace, and her Lancastrian descent from
John of Gaunt seemed to add promise of legitimacy to future heirs to the
crown.
A long raised gangway of timber handsomely draped ran from the great west
door of St. Paul's to the entrance to the choir. Near the end of the
gangway there was erected upon it a high platform, reached by steps on
each side, with room on the top for eight persons to stand. On the north
side of the platform sat the King and Queen incognito in a tribune
supposed to be private; whilst the corporation of London were ranged on
the opposite side. The day of the ceremony was the 14th November 1501,
Sunday and the day of St. Erkenwald, and all London was agog to see the
show. Nobles and knights from every corner of the realm, glittering and
flashing in their new finery, had come to do honour to the heir of
England and his bride. Both bride and bridegroom were dressed in white
satin, and they stood together, a comely young pair, upon the high scarlet
stage to be married for the fifth time, on this occasion by the Archbishop
of Canterbury. Then, after mass had been celebrated at the high altar with
Archbishops, and mitred prelates by the dozen, a procession was formed to
lead the newly married couple to the Bishop of London's palace across the
churchyard. The stately bride, looking older than her years, came first,
followed by a hundred ladies; and whilst on her left hand there hobbled
the disreputable, crippled old ambassador, Dr. Puebla, the greatest day of
whose life this was, on the other side the Princess was led by the most
engaging figure in all that vast assembly. It was that of a graceful
little boy of ten years in white velvet and gold; his bearing so gallant
and sturdy, his skin so dazzlingly fair, his golden hair so shining, his
smile so frank, that a rain of blessings showered upon him as he passed.
This was the bridegroom's brother, Henry, Duke of York, who in gay
unconsciousness was leading his own fate by the hand.
Again the details of crowds of lords and ladies in their sumptuous
garments, of banquets and dancing, of chivalric jousts and puerile
maskings, may be left to the imagination of the reader. When magnificence
at last grew palling, the young bride and bridegroom were escorted to
their chamber in the Bishop of London's palace, with the broad
suggestiveness then considered proper in all well-conducted weddings, and
duly recorded in this case by the courtly chroniclers of the times. In
the morning Arthur called at the door of the nuptial chamber to his
attendants for a draught of liquor. To the bantering question of the
chamberlain as to the cause of his unaccustomed thirst, it was not
unnatural, considering the free manners of the day, that the Prince should
reply in a vein of boyish boastfulness, with a suggestion which was
probably untrue regarding the aridity of the Spanish climate and his own
prowess as being the causes of his droughtiness. In any case this
indelicate bit of youthful swagger of Arthur's was made, nearly thirty
years afterwards, one of the principal pieces of evidence gravely brought
forward to prove the illegality of Katharine's marriage with Henry.
On the day following the marriage the King and Queen came in full state to
congratulate the newly married pair, and led them to the abode that had
been elaborately prepared for them at Baynard's Castle, whose ancient keep
frowned over the Thames, below Blackfriars. On the Thursday following the
feast was continued at Westminster with greater magnificence than ever. In
a splendid tribune extending from Westminster Hall right across what is
now Parliament Square sat Katharine with all the royal family and the
Court, whilst the citizens crowded the stands on the other side of the
great space reserved for the tilters. Invention was exhausted by the
greater nobles in the contrivances by which they sought to make their
respective entries effective. One had borne over him a green erection
representing a wooded mount, crowded with allegorical animals; another
rode under a tent of cloth of gold, and yet another pranced into the lists
mounted upon a stage dragon led by a fearsome giant; and so the pageantry
that seems to us so trite, and was then considered so exquisite, unrolled
itself before the enraptured eyes of the lieges who paid for it all. How
gold plate beyond valuation was piled upon the sideboards at the great
banquet after the tilt in Westminster Hall, how Katharine and one of her
ladies danced Spanish dances and Arthur led out his aunt Cicely, how
masques and devices innumerable were paraded before the hosts and guests,
and, above all, how the debonair little Duke of York charmed all hearts by
his dancing with his elder sister; and, warming to his work, cast off his
coat and footed it in his doublet, cannot be told here, nor the ceremony
in which Katharine distributed rich prizes a few days afterwards to the
successful tilters. There was more feasting and mumming at Shene to
follow, but at last the celebration wore itself out, and Arthur and his
wife settled down for a time to married life in their palace at Baynard's
Castle.
King Henry in his letter to the bride's parents, expresses himself as
delighted with her "beauty and agreeable and dignified manners," and
promises to be to her "a second father, who will ever watch over her, and
never allow her to lack anything that he can procure for her." How he kept
his promise we shall see later; but there is no doubt that her marriage
with his son was a great relief to him, and enabled him, first to cast his
net awide and sweep into its meshes all the gentry of England who might be
presumed to wish him ill, and secondly to send Empson and Dudley abroad to
wring from the well-to-do classes the last ducat that could be squeezed
in order that he might buttress his throne with wealth. Probably Arthur's
letter to Ferdinand and Isabel written at the same time (November 30,
1501) was drafted by other hands than his own, but the terms in which he
expresses his satisfaction with his wife are so warm that they doubtless
reflect the fact that he really found her pleasant. "He had never," he
assured them, "felt so much joy in his life as when he beheld the sweet
face of his bride, and no woman in the world could be more agreeable to
him."[6] The honeymoon was a short, and could hardly have been a merry,
one; for Arthur was obviously a weakling, consumptive some chroniclers
aver; and the grim old castle by the river was not a lively abode.
Before the marriage feast were well over, Henry's avarice began to make
things unpleasant for Katharine. We have seen how persistent he had been
in his demands that the dowry should be paid to him in gold, and how the
bride's parents had pressed that the jewels and plate she took with her
should be considered as part of the dowry. On Katharine's wedding the
first instalment of 100,000 crowns had been handed to Henry by the
Archbishop of Santiago, and there is no doubt that in the negotiations
Puebla had, as usual with him, thought to smooth matters by concealing
from both sovereigns the inconvenient conditions insisted by each of them.
Henry therefore imagined--he said that he was led to believe it by
Puebla--that the jewels and plate were to be surrendered to him on a
valuation as part of the second instalment; whereas the bride's parents
were allowed to suppose that Katharine would still have the enjoyment of
them. In the middle of December, therefore, Henry sent for Juan de Cuero,
Katharine's chamberlain, and demanded the valuables as an instalment of
the remaining 100,000 crowns of the dowry. Cuero, astounded at such a
request, replied that it would be his duty to have them weighed and valued
and a list given to the King in exchange for a receipt for their value,
but that he had not to give them up. The King, highly irate at what he
considered an evasion of his due, pressed his demand, but without avail,
and afterwards saw Katharine herself at Baynard's Castle in the presence
of Doña Elvira Manuel, her principal lady in waiting.
What was the meaning of it, he asked, as he told her of Cuero's refusal to
surrender her valuables in fulfilment of the promise, and further exposed
Puebla's double-dealing. Puebla, it appears, had gone to the King, and had
suggested that if his advice was followed the jewels would remain in
England, whilst their value would be paid to Henry in money as well. He
had, he assured the King, already gained over Katharine to the plan, which
briefly was to allow the Princess to use the jewels and plate for the
present, so that when the time came for demanding their surrender her
father and mother would be ashamed of her being deprived of them, and
would pay their value in money. Henry explained to Katharine that he was
quite shocked at such a dishonest suggestion, which he refused, he said,
to entertain. He had therefore asked for the valuables at once as he saw
that there was craft at work, and he would be no party to it. He
acknowledged, however, that the jewels were not due to be delivered until
the last payment on account of the dowry had to be made. It was all
Puebla's fault, he assured his daughter-in-law, which was probably true,
though it will be observed that the course pursued allowed Henry to assert
his eventual claim to the surrender of the jewels, and his many
professions of disinterestedness cloaked the crudeness of his demand.
The next day Henry sent for Bishop Ayala, who was Puebla's colleague and
bitter enemy, and told him that Prince Arthur must be sent to Wales soon,
and that much difference of opinion existed as to whether Katharine should
accompany him. What did Ayala advise? The Spaniard thought that the
Princess should remain with the King and Queen in London for the present,
rather than go to Wales where the Prince must necessarily be absent from
her a good deal, and she would be lonely. When Katharine herself was
consulted by Henry she would express no decided opinion; and Arthur was
worked upon by his father to persuade her to say that she wished to go to
Wales. Finding that Katharine still avoided the expression of an opinion,
Henry, with a great show of sorrow, decided that she should accompany
Arthur. Then came the question of the maintenance of the Princess's
household. Puebla had again tried to please every one by saying that Henry
would provide a handsome dotation for the purpose, but when Doña Elvira
Manuel, on the eve of the journey to Wales, asked the King what provision
he was going to make, he feigned the utmost surprise at the question. He
knew nothing about it, he said. The Prince would of course maintain his
wife and her necessary servants, but no special separate grant could be
made to the Princess. When Puebla was brought to book he threw the blame
upon the members of Katharine's household, and was publicly rebuked by
Henry for his shiftiness. But the Spaniards believed, probably with
reason, that the whole comedy was agreed upon between the King and Puebla
to obtain possession of the plate and jewels or their value: the sending
of the Princess to Wales being for the purpose of making it necessary that
she should use the objects, and so give good grounds for a demand for
their value in money on the part of Henry. In any case Katharine found
herself, only five weeks after her marriage, with an unpaid and
inharmonious household, dependent entirely upon her husband for her needs,
and conscious that an artful trick was in full execution with the object
of either depriving her of her personal jewels, and everything of value,
with which she had furnished her husband's table as well as her own, or
else of extorting a large sum of money from her parents. Embittered
already with such knowledge as this, Katharine rode by her husband's side
out of Baynard's Castle on the 21st December 1501 to continue on the long
journey to Wales,[7] after passing their Christmas at Oxford.
The plague was rife throughout England, and on the 2nd April 1502 Arthur,
Prince of Wales, fell a victim to it at Ludlow. Here was an unforeseen
blow that threatened to deprive both Henry and Ferdinand of the result of
their diplomacy. For Ferdinand the matter was of the utmost importance;
for an approachment of England and Scotland to France would upset the
balance of power he had so laboriously constructed, already threatened, as
it was, by the prospect that his Flemish son-in-law Philip and his wife
would wear the crowns of the Empire, Flanders, and Burgundy, as well as
those of Spain and its possessions; in which case, he thought, Spanish
interests would be the last considered. The news of the unexpected
catastrophe was greeted in London with real sorrow, for Arthur was
promising and popular, and both Henry and his queen were naturally
attached to their elder son, just approaching manhood, upon whose training
they had lavished so much care. Though Henry's grief at his loss may have
been as sincere as that of Elizabeth of York certainly was, his natural
inclinations soon asserted themselves. Ludlow was unhealthy, and after the
pompous funeral of Arthur at Worcester, Katharine and her household prayed
earnestly to be allowed to approach London, but for some weeks without
success, and by the time she arrived at her new abode at Croydon, the
political intrigues of which she was the tool were in full swing again.
When Ferdinand and Isabel first heard the news of their daughter's
bereavement at the beginning of May they were at Toledo, and lost no time
in sending off post haste to England a fresh ambassador with special
instructions from themselves. The man they chose was the Duke de Estrada,
whose only recommendation seems to have been his rank, for Puebla was soon
able to twist him round his finger. His mission, as we now know, was an
extraordinary and delicate one. Ostensibly he was to demand the immediate
return of the 100,000 crowns paid to Henry on account of dowry, and the
firm settlement upon Katharine of the manors and rents, securing to her
the revenue assigned to her in England, and at the same time he was to
urge Henry to send Katharine back to Spain at once. But these things were
really the last that Ferdinand desired. He knew full well that Henry would
go to any length to avoid disgorging the dowry, and secret instructions
were given to Estrada to effect a betrothal between the ten-years-old
Henry, Duke of York, and his brother's widow of sixteen. Strict orders
also were sent to Puebla of a character to forward the secret design,
although he was not fully informed of the latter. He was to press amongst
other things that Katharine might receive her English revenue
punctually--Katharine, it appears, had written to her parents, saying that
she had been advised to borrow money for the support of her household; and
the King and Queen of Spain were indignant at such an idea. Not a
farthing, they said, must she be allowed to borrow, and none of her jewels
sold: the King of England must provide for her promptly and handsomely,
in accordance with his obligations. This course, as the writers well
knew, would soon bring Henry VII. himself to propose the marriage for
which Ferdinand was so anxious. Henry professed himself very ready to make
the settlement of the English income as requested, but in such case, he
claimed that the whole of the Spanish dowry in gold must be paid to him.
Ferdinand could not see it in this light at all, and insisted that the
death of Arthur had dissolved the marriage. This fencing went on for some
time, neither party wishing to be the first to propose the indecorous
marriage with Henry that both desired.[8] It is evident that Puebla and
the chaplain Alexander opposed the match secretly, and endeavoured to
thwart it, either from an idea of its illegality or, more probably, with a
view of afterwards bringing it about themselves. In the midst of this
intrigue the King of France suddenly attacked Ferdinand both in Italy and
on the Catalonian frontier, and made approaches to Henry for the marriage
of his son with a French princess. This hurried the pace in Spain, and
Queen Isabel ordered Estrada to carry through the betrothal of Katharine
and her brother-in-law without loss of time, "for any delay would be
dangerous." So anxious were the Spanish sovereigns that nothing should
stand in the way, that they were willing to let the old arrangement about
the dowry stand, Henry retaining the 100,000 crowns already paid, and
receiving, when the marriage was consummated, the remaining 100,000; on
condition that in the meanwhile Katharine was properly maintained in
England. Even the incestuous nature of the union was to be no bar to its
being effected, though no Papal dispensation had been yet obtained. Isabel
sought salve for her conscience in this respect by repeating Doña Elvira
Manuel's assurance that Katharine still remained intact; her marriage with
Arthur not having been consummated. To lure Henry into an armed alliance
against France once more, the old bait of the recovery of Normandy and
Guienne was dangled before him. But the King of England played with a
firmer hand now. He knew his worth as a balancing factor, his accumulated
treasure made him powerful, and he held all the cards in his hand; for the
King of Scots was his son-in-law, and the French were as anxious for his
smiles as were the Spanish sovereigns. So he stood off and refused to
pledge himself to a hostile alliance.
In view of this Ferdinand and Isabel's tone changed, and they developed a
greater desire than ever to have their daughter--and above all her
dowry--returned to them. "We cannot endure," wrote Isabel to Estrada on
the 10th August 1502, "that a daughter whom we love should be so far away
from us in her trouble.... You shall ... tell the King of England that you
have our orders to freight vessels for her voyage. To this end you must
make such a show of giving directions and preparing for the voyage that
the members of the Princess's household may believe that it is true. Send
also some of her household on board with the captain I am now sending you
... and show all signs of departure." If in consequence the English spoke
of the betrothal with young Henry, the ambassador was to show no desire
for it; but was to listen keenly to all that was proposed, and if the
terms were acceptable he might clinch the matter at once without further
reference. And then the saintly Queen concludes thus: "The one object of
this business is to bring the betrothal to a conclusion as soon as
possible in conformity with your instructions. For then all our anxiety
will cease and we shall be able to seek the aid of England against France,
for this is the most efficient aid we can have." Henry was not for the
moment to be frightened by fresh demands for his armed alliance against
France. The betrothal was to be forwarded first, and then the rest would
follow. Puebla, who was quite confident that he alone could carry on the
marriage negotiation successfully, was also urged by mingled flattery and
threats by his sovereign to do his utmost with that end.
Whilst this diplomatic haggling was going on in London for the disposal of
the widowed Katharine to the best advantage, a blow fell that for a moment
changed the aspect of affairs. Elizabeth of York, the wife of Henry VII.,
died on the 11th February 1503, in the Tower of London, a week after
giving birth to her seventh child. She had been a good and submissive wife
to the King, whose claim to the throne she had fortified by her own
greater right; and we are told that the bereaved husband was "heavy and
dolorous" with his loss when he retired to a solitary place to pass his
sorrow; but before many weeks were over he and his crony Puebla put their
crafty heads together, and agreed that the King might marry his widowed
daughter-in-law himself. The idea was cynically repulsive but it gives us
the measure of Henry's unscrupulousness. Puebla conveyed the hint to
Isabel and Ferdinand, who, to do them justice, appeared to be really
shocked at the suggestion. This time (April 1503) the Spanish sovereigns
spoke with more sincerity than before. They were, they told their
ambassador, tired of Henry's shiftiness, and of their daughter's equivocal
and undignified position in England, now that the Queen was dead and the
betrothal still hung fire. The Princess was really to come to Spain in a
fleet that should be sent for her, unless the marriage with the young
Prince of Wales was agreed to at once. As for a wife for King Henry there
was the widowed Queen of Naples, Ferdinand's niece, who lived in Valencia,
and he might have her with the blessing of the Spanish sovereigns.[9] The
suggestion was a tempting one to Henry, for the Queen of Naples was well
dowered, and the vigour of Isabel's refusal to listen to his marriage with
her daughter, made it evident that that was out of the question. So Henry
at last made up his mind at least to execute the treaty which was to
betroth his surviving son to Katharine. In the treaty, which was signed on
the 23rd June 1503, it is set forth that, inasmuch as the bride and
bridegroom were related in the first degree of affinity, a Papal
dispensation would be necessary for the marriage; and it is distinctly
stated that the marriage with Arthur had been consummated. This may have
been a diplomatic form considered at the time unimportant in view of the
ease with which a dispensation could be obtained, but it is at direct
variance with Doña Elvira Manuel's assurance to Isabel at the time of
Arthur's death, and with Katharine's assertion, uncontradicted by Henry,
to the end of her life.
Henry, Prince of Wales, was at this time twelve years old; and, if we are
to believe Erasmus, a prodigy of precocious scholarship. Though his
learning was superficial and carefully made the most of, he was, in
effect, an apt and diligent student. From the first his mother and father
had determined that their children should enjoy better educational
advantages than had fallen to them, and as Henry had been until Arthur's
death intended for the Church, his learning was far in advance of that of
most princes and nobles of his age. The bride, who thus became unwillingly
affianced to a boy more than five years her junior, was now a young woman
in her prime, experienced already in the chicane and falsity of the
atmosphere in which she lived. She knew, none better, that in the juggle
for her marriage she had been regarded as a mere chattel, and her own
inclinations hardly taken into account, and she faced her responsibilities
bravely in her mother's exalted spirit of duty and sacrifice when she
found herself once more Princess of Wales.
When Ferdinand, in accordance with his pledge in the treaty, instructed
his ambassador in Rome to ask for the Pope's dispensation, he took care to
correct the statement embodied in the document to the effect that the
marriage of Arthur and Katharine had been consummated; though the question
might pertinently be asked, why, if it had not been, a dispensation was
needed at all? The King himself answered the question by saying that "as
the English are so much inclined to cavil, it appeared prudent to provide
for the case as if the previous marriage had been completed; and the
dispensation must be worded in accordance with the treaty, since the
succession to the Crown depends on the undoubted legitimacy of the
marriage."[10] No sooner was the ratification of the betrothal conveyed to
Ferdinand than he demanded the aid of Henry against France, and Estrada
was instructed to "make use of" Katharine to obtain the favour demanded.
If Henry hesitated to provide the money for raising the 2000 English
troops required, Katharine herself was to be asked by her kind father to
pawn her plate and jewels for the purpose. Henry, however, had no
intention to be hurried now that the betrothal had been signed. There were
several things he wanted on his side first. The Earl of Suffolk and his
brother Richard Pole were still in Flanders; and the greatest wish of
Henry's life was that they should be handed over to his tender mercies.
So the armed coalition against France still hung fire, whilst a French
ambassador was as busy courting the King of England as Ferdinand himself.
In the meanwhile Katharine for a time lived in apparent amity with Henry
and his family, especially with the young Princess Mary, who was her
constant companion. In the autumn of 1504 she passed a fortnight with them
at Windsor and Richmond, hunting every day; but just as the King was
leaving Greenwich for a progress through Kent the Princess fell seriously
ill, and the letters written by Henry during his absence to his
daughter-in-law are worded as if he were the most affectionate of fathers.
On this progress the Prince of Wales accompanied his father for the first
time, as the King had previously been loath to disturb his studies. "It is
quite wonderful," wrote an observer, "how much the King loves the Prince.
He has good reason to do so, for he deserves all his love." Already the
crafty and politic King was indoctrinating his son in the system he had
made his own: that the command of ready money, gained no matter how, meant
power, and that to hold the balance between two greater rivals was to have
them both at his bidding. And young Henry, though of different nature from
his father, made good use of his lesson.
Katharine's greatest trouble at this time (the autumn of 1504) was the
bickering, and worse, of her Spanish household. We have already seen how
Puebla had set them by the ears with his jealousy of his colleagues and
his dodging diplomacy. Katharine appealed to Henry to bring her servants
to order, but he refused to interfere, as they were not his subjects.
Doña Elvira Manuel, the governess, was a great lady, and resented any
interference with her domain.[11] There is no doubt that her rule, so far
as regarded the Princess herself, was a wise one; but, as we shall see
directly, she, Castilian that she was and sister of the famous diplomatist
Juan Manuel, took up a position inimical to Ferdinand after Isabel's
death, and innocently led Katharine into grave political trouble.
In November 1504 the death of Isabel, Queen of Castile, long threatened
after her strenuous life, changed the whole aspect for Ferdinand. The
heiress of the principal crown of Spain was now Katharine's sister Juana,
who had lived for years in the latitudinarian court of Brussels with her
consort Philip. The last time she had gone to Spain, her freedom towards
the strict religious observances considered necessary in her mother's
court had led to violent scenes between Isabel and Juana. Even then the
scandalised Spanish churchmen who flocked around Isabel whispered that the
heiress of Castile must be mad: and her foreign husband, the heir of the
empire, was hated and distrusted by the "Catholic kings." Isabel by her
will had left her husband guardian of her realms for Juana; and from the
moment the Queen breathed her last the struggle between Ferdinand and his
son-in-law never ceased, until Philip the Handsome, who thought he had
beaten wily old Ferdinand, himself was beaten by poison. The death of her
mother not only threw Katharine into natural grief for her loss, which
truly was a great one; for, at least, Isabel deeply loved her youngest
child, whilst Ferdinand loved nothing but himself and Aragon; but it
greatly altered for the worse her position in England. Philip of Austria
and his father the Emperor had begun to play false to Ferdinand long
before the Queen's death; and now that the crown of Castile had fallen to
poor weak Juana, and a struggle was seen to be impending for the regency,
Henry VII. found himself as usual courted by both sides in the dispute.
The widowed Archduchess Margaret, who had married as a first husband
Ferdinand's heir, was offered to Henry as a bride by Philip and Maximilian
and a close alliance between them proposed; and Ferdinand, whilst
denouncing his son-in-law's ingratitude, also bade high for the King of
England's countenance. Henry listened to both parties, but it was clear to
him that he had now more to hope for from Philip and Maximilian, who were
friendly with France, than from Ferdinand; and the unfortunate Katharine
was again reduced to the utmost neglect and penury, unable to buy food for
her own table, except by pawning her jewels.
In the ensuing intrigues Doña Elvira Manuel was on the side of the Queen
of Castile, as against her father; and Katharine lost the impartial advice
of her best counsellor, and involved herself in a very net of trouble. In
the summer of 1505 it was already understood that Philip and Juana on
their way to Spain by sea might possibly trust themselves in an English
port; and Henry, in order to be ready for any matrimonial combinations
that might be suggested, caused young Henry to make solemn protest before
the Bishop of Winchester at Richmond against his marriage with
Katharine.[12] Of this, at the time, of course the Spanish agents were
ignorant; and so completely was even Puebla hoodwinked, that almost to the
arrival of Philip and his wife in England he believed that Henry was in
favour of Ferdinand against Philip and Maximilian. Early in August 1505,
Puebla went to Richmond to see Katharine, and as he entered one of the
household told him that an ambassador from the Archduke Philip, King of
Castile, had just arrived and was waiting to see her. Puebla at once
himself conveyed the news to Katharine; and to his glee served as
interpreter between the ambassador and the Princess. On his knees before
her the Fleming related that he had come to propose a marriage between the
Duchess of Savoy (_i.e._ the widowed Archduchess Margaret) and Henry VII.,
and showed the Princess two portraits of the Archduchess. Furthermore, he
said that Philip and his wife were going by overland through France to
Spain, and he was to ask Henry what he thought of the plan. Puebla's eyes
were thus partially opened: and when a few days later he found that Doña
Elvira had not only contrived frequent private meetings between Katharine
and the Flemish ambassador, but had persuaded the Princess to propose a
meeting between Philip, Juana, and the King of England, he at once sounded
a note of alarm. Katharine, it must be recollected, was yet young; and
probably did not fully understand the deadly antagonism that existed
between her father and her brother-in-law. She was much under the
influence of Doña Elvira, and doubtless yearned to see her unhappy sister
Juana. So she was induced to write a letter to Philip, and to propose a
meeting with Henry at Calais. When a prompt affirmative reply came, the
Princess innocently showed it to Puebla at Durham House before sending it
to Henry VII. The ambassador was aghast, and soundly rated Katharine for
going against the interests of her father. He would take the letter to the
King, he said. But this Katharine would not allow, and Doña Elvira was
appealed to. She promised to retain the letter for the present, but just
as Puebla was sitting down to dinner an hour afterwards, he learnt that
she had broken her word and sent Philip's letter to Henry VII. Starting
up, he rushed to Katharine's apartments, and with tears streaming down his
face at his failure, told the Princess, under pledge of secrecy, that the
proposed interview was a plot of the Manuels to injure both her father and
sister. She must at once write a letter to Henry which he, Puebla, would
dictate; and, whilst still feigning a desire for the meeting, she must try
to prevent it with all her might, and beware of Doña Elvira in future.
Poor Katharine, alarmed at his vehemence, did as she was told; and the
letter was sent flying to Henry, apologising for the proposal of the
interview. Henry must have smiled when he saw how eager they all were to
court him. Nothing would please him better than the close alliance with
Philip, which was already being secretly negotiated, though he was
effusively assuring Ferdinand at the same time of the inviolability of
their friendship; promising that the marriage--which he had secretly
denounced--between his son and Katharine, should be celebrated on the very
day provided by the treaty, and approving of some secret plot of Ferdinand
against Philip which had been communicated to him.
Amidst such falsity as this it is most difficult to pick one's way, though
it is evident through it all that Henry had now gained the upper hand, and
was fully a match for Ferdinand in his altered circumstances. But as
things improved for Henry they became worse for Katharine. In December
1505 she wrote bitterly to her father from Richmond, complaining of her
fate, the unhappiness of which, she said, was all Puebla's fault. "Every
day," she wrote, "my troubles increase. Since my arrival in England I have
not received a farthing except for food, and I and my household have not
even garments to wear." She had asked Puebla to pray the King to appoint
an English dueña for her whilst Doña Elvira was in Flanders, but instead
of doing so he had arranged with Henry that her household should be
dismissed altogether, and that she should reside at Court. Her letter
throughout shows that at the time she was in deep despondency and anger at
her treatment; and especially resentful of Puebla, whom she disliked and
distrusted profoundly, as did Doña Elvira Manuel. The very elements seemed
to fight on the side of the King of England. Ferdinand was, in sheer
desperation, struggling to prevent his paternal realms from being merged
in Castile and the empire, and with that end was negotiating his marriage
with the French king's niece, Germaine de Foix, and a close alliance with
France, in which England should be included, when Philip of Austria and
his wife, Juana of Aragon, Queen of Castile, sailed from Flanders to claim
their kingdom at Ferdinand's hands. They too had made friends with France
some time before, but the marriage of Ferdinand with a French princess had
now drawn them strongly to the side of England; and as we have seen, they
were already in full negotiation with Henry for his marriage with the
doubly widowed and heavily dowered Archduchess Margaret.
The King and Queen of Castile were overtaken by a furious south-west gale
in the Channel and their fine fleet dispersed. The ship that carried
Philip and Juana was driven by the storm into Melcombe Regis, on the
Dorset coast, on the 17th January 1506, and lay there weather-bound for
some time. Philip the Handsome was a poor sailor, and was, we are told by
an eye-witness, "fatigate and unquyeted in mynde and bodie." He doubtless
yearned to tread dry land again, and, against the advice of his Council,
had himself rowed ashore. Only in the previous year he had as unguardedly
put himself into the power of the King of France; and his boldness had
succeeded well, as it had resulted in the treaty with the French king that
had so much alarmed and shocked Ferdinand, but it is unlikely that Philip
on this occasion intended to make any stay in England or to go beyond
Weymouth. The news of his coming brought together all the neighbouring
gentry to oppose or welcome him, according to his demeanour, and, finding
him friendly, Sir John Trenchard prevailed upon him to take up his
residence in his manor-house hard by until the weather mended. In the
meanwhile formidable English forces mustered in the country around, and
Philip began to grow uneasy; but Trenchard's hospitality was pressing, and
to all hints from the visitor that he wanted to be gone the reply was
given that he really must wait until the King of England could bid him
welcome. When at last Philip was given to understand that he was
practically a prisoner, he made the best of the position, and with seeming
cordiality awaited King Henry's message. No wonder, as a chronicler says,
that Henry when he heard the news "was replenyshed with an exceeding
gladnes ... for that he trusted his landing in England should turn to his
profit and commoditie." This it certainly did. Philip and Juana were
brought to Windsor in great state, and met by Henry and his son and a
splendid train of nobles. Then the visitors were led through London in
state to Richmond, and Philip, amidst all the festivity, was soon
convinced that he would not be allowed to leave England until the rebel
Plantagenet Earl of Suffolk was handed to Henry. And so the pact was made
that bound England to Philip and Flanders against Ferdinand; the
Archduchess Margaret with her vast fortune being promised, with unheard-of
guarantees, to the widowed Henry.[13] When the treaty had been solemnly
ratified on oath, taken upon a fragment of the true Cross in St. George's
Chapel, Windsor, Philip was allowed to go his way on the 2nd March to join
his ship at Falmouth, whither Juana had preceded him a fortnight before.
This new treaty made poor Katharine of little value as a political asset
in England; since it was clear now that Ferdinand's hold over anything but
his paternal heritage in the Mediterranean was powerless. Flanders and
Castile were a far more advantageous ally to England than the King of
Aragon, and Katharine was promptly made to feel the fact. Dr. Puebla was
certainly either kept quite out of the way or his compliance bought, or he
would have been able to devise means for Katharine to inform her sister
Juana of the real object of Henry's treaty with Philip; for Ferdinand
always insisted that Juana was a dutiful daughter, and was not personally
opposed to him. As it was, Katharine was allowed to see her sister but for
an hour just before Juana's departure, and then in the presence of
witnesses in the interests of Philip. Only a few weeks after the visitors
had departed Katharine wrote to her father, in fear lest her letter should
be intercepted, begging him to have pity upon her. She is deep in debt,
not for extravagant things but for food. "The King of England refuses to
pay anything, though she implores him with tears to do so. He says he has
been cheated about the marriage portion. In the meanwhile she is in the
deepest anguish, her servants almost begging for alms, and she herself
nearly naked. She has been at death's door for months, and prays
earnestly for a Spanish confessor, as she cannot speak English."[14]
How false Ferdinand met his "dear children," and made with his daughter's
husband that hellish secret compact in the church of Villafafila, that
seemed to renounce everything to Philip whilst Ferdinand went humbly to
his realm of Naples, and his ill-used daughter Juana to life-long
confinement, cannot be told here, nor the sudden death of Philip the
Handsome, which brought back Ferdinand triumphant. If Juana was sane
before, she certainly became more or less mad after her husband's death,
and moreover was morbidly devoted to his memory. But what mattered madness
or a widow's devotion to Henry VII. when he had political objects to
serve? All through the summer and autumn of 1506 Katharine had been ill
with fever and ague, unhappy at the neglect and poverty she suffered.
Ferdinand threw upon Castile the duty of paying the rest of her dowry; the
Castilians retorted that Ferdinand ought to pay it himself: and Katharine,
in the depth of despondency, in October 1506 learnt of her brother-in-law
Philip's death. Like magic Henry VII. became amiable again to his
daughter-in-law. He deplored her illness now, and cordially granted her
the change of residence from Eltham to Fulham that she had so long prayed
for in vain. The reason was soon evident; for before Juana had completed
her dreary pilgrimage through Spain to Granada with her husband's dead
body, Henry had cajoled Katharine to ask her father for the distraught
widow for his wife. Katharine must have fulfilled the task with
repulsion, though she seems to have advocated the match warmly; and
Ferdinand, though he knew, or rather said, that Juana was mad, was quite
ready to take advantage of such an opportunity for again getting into
touch with Henry. The letter in which Ferdinand gently dallied with
Henry's offer was written in Naples, after months of shifty excuses for
not sending the rest of Katharine's dowry to England,[15] and doubtless
the time he gained by postponing the answer about Juana's marriage until
he returned to Spain was of value to him; for he was determined, now that
a special providence carefully prepared had removed Philip from his path,
that once more all Spain should bear his sway whilst he lived, and then
should be divided, rather than his dear Aragon should be rendered
subordinate to other interests.
The encouraging talk of Henry's marriage with Juana, with which both
Katharine and Puebla were instructed to beguile him, was all very well in
its way, and the King of England became quite joyously sentimental at the
prospect of the new tie of relationship between the houses of Tudor and
Aragon; but, really, business was business: if that long overdue dowry for
Katharine was not sent soon, young Henry would listen to some of the many
other eligible princesses, better dowered than Katharine, who were offered
to him. With much demur Henry at length consented to wait for five months
longer for the dowry; that is to say, until Michaelmas 1507, and in the
meanwhile drove a bargain as hard as that of a Jew huckster in the
valuation of Katharine's jewels and plate, which were to be brought into
the account.[16] It is easy to see that this concession of five months'
delay was granted by Henry in the hope that his marriage with Juana would
take place. The plan was hideously wicked, and Puebla made no secret of it
in writing to Ferdinand. "No king in the world would make so good a
husband to the Queen of Castile, whether she be sane or insane. She might
recover her reason when wedded to such a husband, but even in that case
King Ferdinand would at all events be sure to retain the regency of
Castile. On the other hand, if the insanity of the Queen should prove
incurable it would perhaps be not inconvenient that she should live in
England. The English do not seem to mind her insanity much; especially
since it is asserted that her mental malady would not prevent her from
childbearing."[17] Could anything be more repulsive than this pretty
arrangement, which had been concocted by Henry and Puebla at Richmond
during a time when the former was seriously ill with quinsy and
inaccessible to any one but the Spanish ambassador?
In the meanwhile Katharine felt keenly the wretched position in which she
found herself. The plate, about which so much haggling was taking place,
was being pawned or sold by her bit by bit to provide the most necessary
things for her own use; her servants were in rags, and she herself was
contemned and neglected; forbidden even to see her betrothed husband for
months together, though living in the same palace with him. The more
confident Henry grew of his own marriage with the Archduchess Margaret, or
with Queen Juana, the less inclined he was to wed his son to Katharine. A
French princess for the Prince of Wales, and the Queen of Castile for
Henry, would indeed have served England on all sides. On one occasion, in
April 1507, Henry frankly told Katharine that he considered himself no
longer bound by her marriage treaty, since her dowry was overdue, and all
the poor Princess could do was to weep and pray her father to fulfil his
part of the compact by paying the rest of her portion, whilst she, serving
as Ferdinand's ambassador, tried to retain Henry's good graces by her
hopeful assurances about the marriage of the latter with Juana.
In all Katharine's lamentations of her own sufferings and privation, she
never forgot to bewail the misery of her servants. Whilst she herself, she
said, had been worse treated than any woman in England, her five women
servants, all she had retained, had never received a farthing since their
arrival in England six years before, and had spent everything they
possessed. Katharine at this time of trial (August 1507) was living alone
at Ewelme, whilst Henry was hunting at various seats in the midlands. At
length the King made some stay at Woodstock, where Katharine saw him. With
suspicious alacrity he consented to a further postponement of the overdue
dowry; and showed himself more eager than ever to marry Juana, no matter
how mad she might be. Katharine was quite acute enough to understand his
motives, and wrote to her father that so long as the money due of her
dowry remained unpaid the King considered himself free, so far as regarded
her marriage with the Prince of Wales. "Mine is always the worst part,"
she wrote. "The King of England prides himself upon his magnanimity in
waiting so long for the payment.... His words are kind but his deeds are
as bad as ever." She bitterly complained that Puebla himself was doing his
utmost to frustrate her marriage in the interests of the King of England;
and it is clear to see in her passionate letter to her father (4th October
1507) that she half distrusted even him, as she had been told that he was
listening to overtures from the King of France for a marriage between
Juana and a French prince. She failed in this to understand the political
position fully. If Juana had married a Frenchman it is certain that Henry
would have been only too eager to complete the marriage of his son with
Katharine. But she was evidently in fear that, unless Henry was allowed to
marry her sister, evil might befall her. Speaking of the marriage she
says: "I bait him with this ... and his words and professions have changed
for the better, although his acts remain the same.... They fancy that I
have no more in me than what outwardly appears, or that I shall not be
able to fathom his (Puebla's) design." Under stress of her circumstances
Katharine was developing rapidly. She was no longer a girl dependent upon
others. Doña Elvira had gone for good; Puebla she hated and distrusted as
much as she did Henry; and there was no one by her to whom she could look
for help. Her position was a terribly difficult one, pitted alone, as she
was, against the most unscrupulous politicians in Europe, in whose hands
she knew she was only one of the pieces in a game. Juana was still
carrying about with her the unburied corpse of her husband, and falling
into paroxysms of fury when a second marriage was suggested to her; and
yet Katharine considered it necessary to keep up the pretence to Henry
that his suit was prospering. She knew that though the Archduchess
Margaret had firmly refused to tempt providence again by a third marriage
with the King of England, the boy sovereign of Castile and Flanders, the
Archduke Charles, had been securely betrothed to golden-haired little Mary
Tudor, Henry's younger daughter; and that the close alliance thus sealed
was as dangerous to her father King Ferdinand's interests as to her own.
And yet she was either forced, or forced herself, to paint Henry, who was
still treating her vilely, in the brightest colours as a chivalrous,
virtuous gentleman, really and desperately in love with poor crazy Juana.
Katharine's letters to her sister on behalf of Henry's suit are nauseous,
in view of the circumstances as we know them; and show that the Princess
of Wales was already prepared to sacrifice every human feeling to
political expediency.
This miserable position could not continue indefinitely, for the
extension of time for the payment of the dowry was fast running out. Juana
was more intractable than ever. Katharine, in rage and despair at the
contumely with which she was treated, insisted at length that her father
should send an ambassador to England, who could speak as the mouthpiece of
a great sovereign rather than like a fawning menial of Henry as Puebla
was. The new ambassador was Gomez de Fuensalida, Knight Commander of Haro
and Membrilla, a man as haughty as Puebla had been servile, and he went
far beyond even Katharine's desires in his plain speaking to Henry and his
ministers. Ferdinand, indeed, by this time had once more gained the upper
hand in Europe, and could afford to speak his mind. Henry was no longer so
vigorous or so bold as he had been, and his desire to grasp everything
whilst risking nothing had enabled his rivals to form a great coalition
from which he was excluded--the League of Cambrai. Fuensalida offended
Henry almost as soon as he arrived, and was roughly refused permission to
enter the English Court. He could only storm, as he did, to Henry's
ministers that unless the Princess of Wales was at once sent home to Spain
with her dowry, King Ferdinand and his allies would wreak vengeance upon
England. But Henry knew that with such a hostage as Katharine in his hands
he was safe from attack, and held the Princess in defiance of it all. But
he was already a waning force. Whilst Fuensalida had no good word for the
King, he, like all other Spanish agents, turned to the rising sun and sang
persistently the praises of the Prince of Wales. His gigantic stature and
sturdy limbs, his fair skin and golden hair, his manliness, his prudence,
and his wisdom were their constant theme: and even Katharine, unhappy as
she was, with her marriage still in the balance, seems to have liked and
admired the gallant youth whom she was allowed to see so seldom.
It has become so much the fashion to speak of Katharine not only as an
unfortunate woman, but as a blameless saint in all her relations, that an
historian who regards her as a fallible and even in many respects a
blameworthy woman, who was to a large extent the cause of her own
troubles, must be content to differ from the majority of his predecessors.
We have already seen, by the earnest attempts she made to drag her
afflicted sister into marriage with a man whom she herself considered
false, cruel, and unscrupulous, that Katharine was no better than those
around her in moral principle: the passion and animosity shown in her
letters to her father about Puebla, Fuensalida, and others whom she
distrusted, show her to have been anything but a meek martyr. She was,
indeed, at this time (1508-9) a self-willed, ambitious girl of strong
passion, impatient of control, domineering and proud. Her position in
England had been a humiliating and a hateful one for years. She was the
sport of the selfish ambitions of others, which she herself was unable to
control; surrounded by people whom she disliked and suspected, lonely and
unhappy; it is not wonderful that when Henry VII. was gradually sinking to
his grave, and her marriage with his son was still in doubt, this ardent
Southern young woman in her prime should be tempted to cast to the wind
considerations of dignity and prudence for the sake of her love for a man.
She was friendless in a foreign land; and when her father was in Naples in
1506, she wrote to him praying him to send her a Spanish confessor to
solace her. Before he could do so she informed him (April 1507) that she
had obtained a very good Spanish confessor for herself. This was a young,
lusty, dissolute Franciscan monk called Diego Fernandez, who then became a
member of Katharine's household. When the new outspoken ambassador,
Fuensalida, arrived in England in the autumn of 1508, he, of course, had
frequent conference with the Princess, and could not for long shut his
eyes to the state of affairs in her establishment. He first sounded the
alarm cautiously to Ferdinand in a letter of 4th March 1509. He had hoped
against hope, he said, that the marriage of Katharine and Prince Henry
might be effected soon; and the scandal might remedy itself without his
worrying Ferdinand about it. But he must speak out now, for he has been
silent too long. It is high time, he says, that some person of sufficient
authority in the confidence of Ferdinand should be put in charge of
Katharine's household and command respect: "for at present the Princess's
house is governed by a young friar, whom her Highness has taken for her
confessor, though he is, in my opinion, and that of others, utterly
unworthy of such a position. He makes the Princess commit many errors; and
as she is so good and conscientious, this confessor makes a mortal sin of
everything that does not please him, and so causes her to commit many
faults." The ambassador continues that he dare not write all he would
because the bearer (a servant of Katharine's) is being sent by those who
wish to injure him; but he begs the King to interrogate the man who takes
the letter as to what had been going on in the Princess's house in the
last two months. "The root of all the trouble is this young friar, who is
flighty, and vain, and extremely scandalous. He has spoken to the Princess
very roughly about the King of England; and because I told the Princess
something of what I thought of this friar, and he learnt it, he has
disgraced me with her worse than if I had been a traitor.... That your
Highness may judge what sort of person he is, I will repeat exactly
without exaggeration the very words he used to me. 'I know,' he said,
'that they have been telling you evil tales of me.' 'I can assure you,
father,' I replied, 'that no one has said anything about you to me.' 'I
know,' he replied; 'the same person who told you told me himself.' 'Well,'
I said, 'any one can bear false witness, and I swear by the Holy Body
that, so far as I can recollect, nothing has been said to me about you.'
'Ah,' he said, 'there are scandal-mongers in this house who have defamed
me, and not with the lowest either, but with the highest, and that is no
disgrace to me. If it were not for contradicting them I should be gone
already.'" Proud Fuensalida tells the King that it was only with the
greatest difficulty he kept his hands off the insolent priest at this.
"His constant presence with the Princess and amongst her women is shocking
the King of England and his Court dreadfully;" and then the ambassador
hints strongly that Henry is only allowing the scandal to go on, so as to
furnish him with a good excuse for still keeping Katharine's marriage in
abeyance.
With this letter to Spain went another from Katharine to her father,
railing bitterly against the ambassador. She can no longer endure her
troubles, and a settlement of some sort must be arrived at. The King of
England treats her worse than ever since his daughter Mary was betrothed
to the young Archduke Charles, sovereign of Castile and Flanders. She had
sold everything she possessed for food and raiment; and only a few days
before she wrote, Henry had again told her that he was not bound to feed
her servants. Her own people, she says, are insolent and turn against her;
but what afflicts her most is that she is too poor to maintain fittingly
her confessor, "the best that ever woman had." It is plain to see that the
whole household was in rebellion against the confessor who had captured
Katharine's heart, and that the ambassador was on the side of the
household. The Princess and Fuensalida had quarrelled about it, and she
wished that the ambassador should be reproved. With vehement passion she
begged her father that the confessor might not be taken away from her. "I
implore your Highness to prevent him from leaving me; and to write to the
King of England that you have ordered this Father to stay with me; and beg
him for your sake to have him well treated and humoured. Tell the prelates
also that you wish him to stay here. The greatest comfort in my trouble is
the consolation he gives me. Almost in despair I send this servant to
implore you not to forget that I am still your daughter, and how much I
have suffered for your sake.... Do not let me perish like this, but write
at once deciding what is to be done. Otherwise in my present state I am
afraid I may do something that neither the King of England nor your
Highness could prevent, unless you send for me and let me pass the few
remaining days of my life in God's service."
That the Princess's household and the ambassador were shocked at the
insolent familiarity of the licentious young priest with their mistress,
and that she herself perfectly understood that the suspicions and rumours
were against her honour, is clear. On one occasion Henry VII. had asked
Katharine and his daughter Mary to go to Richmond, to meet him. When the
two princesses were dressed and ready to set out on their journey from
Hampton Court to Richmond, the confessor entered the room and told
Katharine she was not to go that day as she had been unwell. The Princess
protested that she was then quite well and able to bear the short journey.
"I tell you," replied Father Diego, "that, on pain of mortal sin, you
shall not go to-day;" and so Princess Mary set out alone, leaving
Katharine with the young priest of notorious evil life and a few inferior
servants. When the next day she was allowed to go to Richmond, accompanied
amongst others by the priest, King Henry took not the slightest notice of
her, and for the next few weeks refused to speak to her. The ambassador
even confessed to Ferdinand that, since he had witnessed what was going
on in the Princess's household, he acquitted Henry of most of the blame
for his treatment of his Spanish daughter-in-law. Whilst the Princess was
in the direst distress, her household in want of food, and she obliged to
sell her gowns to send messengers to her father, she went to the length of
pawning the plate that formed part of her dowry to "satisfy the follies of
the friar."
Deaf to all remonstrances both from King Henry and her own old servants,
Katharine obstinately had her way, and the chances of her marriage in
England grew smaller and smaller. It is not to be supposed that the
ambassador would have dared to say so much as he did to the lady's own
father if he had not taken the gravest view of Katharine's conduct and its
probable political result. But his hints to Ferdinand's ministers were
much stronger still. "The Princess," he said, "was guilty of things a
thousand times worse" than those he had mentioned; and the "parables" that
he had written to the King might be made clear by the examination of
Katharine's own servant, who carried her letters. "The devil take me," he
continues, "if I can see anything in this friar for her to be so fond of
him; for he has neither learning, nor good looks, nor breeding, nor
capacity, nor authority; but if he takes it into his head to preach a new
gospel, they have to believe it."[18] By two letters still extant, written
by Friar Diego himself, we see that the ambassador in no wise exaggerated
his coarseness and indelicacy, and it is almost incredible that
Katharine, an experienced and disillusioned woman of nearly twenty-four,
can have been ready to jeopardise everything political and personal, and
face the opposition of the world, for the sake alone of the spiritual
comfort to be derived from the ministrations of such a man. How far, if at
all, the connection was actually immoral we shall probably never know, but
the case as it stands shows Katharine to have been passionate,
self-willed, and utterly tactless. Even after her marriage with young
Henry Friar Diego retained his ascendency over her for several years, and
ruled her with a rod of iron until he was publicly convicted of
fornication, and deprived of his office as Chancellor of the Queen. We
shall have later to consider the question of his relationship with
Katharine after her marriage; but it is almost certain that the
ostentatious intimacy of the pair during the last months of Henry VII. had
reduced Katharine's chance of marriage with the Prince of Wales almost to
vanishing point, when the death of the King suddenly changed the political
position and rendered it necessary that the powerful coalition of which
Ferdinand was the head should be conciliated by England.
Henry VII. died at Richmond on the 22nd April 1509, making a better and
more generous end than could have been expected from his life. He, like
his rival Ferdinand, had been avaricious by deliberate policy; and his
avarice was largely instrumental in founding England's coming greatness,
for the overflowing coffers he left to his son lent force to the new
position assumed by England as the balancing power, courted by both the
great continental rivals. Ferdinand's ambition had o'erleaped itself, and
the possession of Flanders by the King of Castile had made England's
friendship more than ever necessary thenceforward, for France was opposed
to Spain now, not in Italy alone, but on long conterminous frontiers in
the north, south, and east as well.
Henry VIII. at the age of eighteen was well fitting to succeed his father.
All contemporary observers agree that his grace and personal beauty as a
youth were as remarkable as his quickness of intellect and his true Tudor
desire to stand well in the eyes of his people. Fully aware of the power
his father's wealth gave him politically, he was determined to share no
part of the onus for the oppression with which the wealth had been
collected; and on the day following his father's death, before himself
retiring to mourning reclusion in the Tower of London, the unpopular
financial instruments of Henry VII., Empson and Dudley and others, were
laid by the heels to sate the vengeance of the people. The Spanish match
for the young king was by far more popular in England than any other; and
the alacrity of Henry himself and his ministers to carry it into effect
without further delay, now that his father with his personal ambitions and
enmities was dead, was also indicative of his desire to begin his reign by
pleasing his subjects.
The death of Henry VII. had indeed cleared away many obstacles. Ferdinand
had profoundly distrusted him. His evident desire to obtain control of
Castile, either by his marriage with Juana or by that of his daughter Mary
with the nine-year-old Archduke Charles, had finally hardened Ferdinand's
heart against him, whilst Henry's fear and suspicion of Ferdinand had, as
we have seen, effectually stood in the way of the completion of
Katharine's marriage. With young Henry as king affairs stood differently.
Even before his father's death Ferdinand had taken pains to assure him of
his love, and had treated him as a sovereign over the dying old king's
head. Before the breath was out of Henry VII., Ferdinand's letters were
speeding to London to make all things smooth. There would be no opposition
now to Ferdinand's ratification of his Flemish grandson's marriage with
Henry's sister Mary. The clever old Aragonese knew there was still plenty
of time to stop that later; and certainly young Henry could not interfere
in Castile, as his father might have done, on the strength of Mary Tudor's
betrothal. So all went merry as a marriage bell. Ferdinand, for once in
his life, was liberal with his money. He implored his daughter to make no
unpleasantness or complaint, and to raise no question that might obstruct
her marriage. The ambassador, Fuensalida, was warned that if the bickering
between himself and the Princess, or between the confessor and the
household, was allowed to interfere with the match, disgrace and ruin
should be his lot, and Katharine was admonished that she must be civil to
Fuensalida, and to the Italian banker who was to pay the balance of her
dowry. The King of Aragon need have had no anxiety. Young Henry and his
councillors were as eager for the popular marriage as he was, and dreaded
the idea of disgorging the 100,000 crowns dowry already paid and the
English settlements upon Katharine. On the 6th May, accordingly, three
days before the body of Henry VII. was borne in gloomy pomp to its last
resting-place at Westminster, Katharine wrote to her delighted father that
her marriage with Henry was finally settled.
CHAPTER III
1509-1527
KATHARINE THE QUEEN--A POLITICAL MARRIAGE AND A PERSONAL DIVORCE
"Long live King Henry VIII.!" cried Garter King of Arms in French as the
great officers of state broke their staves of office and cast them into
the open grave of the first Tudor king. Through England, like the blast of
a trumpet, the cry was echoed from the hearts of a whole people, full of
hope that the niggardliness and suspicion which for years had stood
between the sovereign and his people were at last banished. The young
king, expansive and hearty in manner, handsome and strong as a pagan god
in person, was well calculated to captivate the love of the crowd. His
prodigious personal vanity, which led him to delight in sumptuous raiment
and gorgeous shows; the state and ceremony with which he surrounded
himself and his skill in manly exercises, were all points in his favour
with a pleasure-yearning populace which had been squeezed of its substance
without seeing any return for it: whilst his ardent admiration for the
learning which had during his lifetime become the fashion made grave
scholars lose their judgment and write like flattering slaves about the
youth of eighteen who now became unquestioned King of England and master
of his father's hoarded treasures.
As we shall see in the course of this history, Henry was but a whited
sepulchre. Young, light-hearted, with every one about him praising him as
a paragon, and his smallest whim indulged as a divine command, there was
no incitement for the exhibition of the baser qualities that underlay the
big, popular manner, the flamboyant patriotism, and, it must be added, the
real ability which appealed alike to the gentle and simple over whom he
was called to rule. Like many men of his peculiar physique, he was never a
strong man morally, and his will grew weaker as his body increased in
gross flabbiness. The obstinate self-assertion and violence that impressed
most observers as strength, hid behind them a spirit that forever needed
direction and support from a stronger soul. So long as he was allowed in
appearance to have his own way and his policy was showy, he was, as one of
his wisest ministers said in his last days, the easiest man in the world
to manage. His sensuality, which was all his own, and his personal vanity,
were the qualities by means of which one able councillor after another
used him for the ends they had in view, until the bridle chafed him, and
his temporary master was made to feel the vengeance of a weak despot who
discovers that he has been ruled instead of ruling. In Henry's personal
character as sketched above we shall be able to find the key of the
tremendous political events that made his reign the most important in our
annals; and we shall see that his successive marriages were the outcome of
subtle intrigues in which representatives of various parties took
advantage of the King's vanity and lasciviousness to promote their own
political or religious views. That the emancipation of England from Rome
was the ultimate result cannot fairly be placed to Henry's personal
credit. If he could have had his own way without breaking with the Papacy
he would have preferred to maintain the connection; but the Reformation
was in the air, and craftier brains than Henry's led the King step by step
by his ruling passions until he had gone too far to retreat. To what
extent his various matrimonial adventures served these intrigues we shall
see in the course of this book.
That Henry's marriage with Katharine soon after his accession was
politically expedient has been shown in the aforegoing pages; and the
King's Council were strongly in favour of it, with the exception of the
Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor Warham, who was more purely
ecclesiastical than his colleagues, and appears to have had doubts as to
the canonical validity of the union. As we have seen, the Pope had given a
dispensation for the marriage years before, in terms that covered the case
of the union with Arthur having been duly consummated, though Katharine
strenuously denied that it had been, or that she knew how the dispensation
was worded. The Spanish confessor also appears to have suggested to
Fuensalida some doubts as to the propriety of the marriage, but King
Ferdinand promptly put his veto upon any such scruples. Had not the Pope
given his dispensation? he asked; and did not the peace of England and
Spain depend upon the marriage? The sin would be not the marriage, but the
failure to effect it after the pledges that had been given. So the few
doubters were silenced; young Henry himself, all eager for his marriage,
was not one of them, nor was Katharine, for to her the match was a triumph
for which she had worked and suffered for years: and on the 11th June 1509
the pair were married privately by Warham at Henry's palace of Greenwich.
Rarely in its long history has London seen so brave a pageant as the bride
and bridegroom's triumphal passage through the city on Saturday the 21st
June from the Tower to Westminster for their coronation. Rich tapestries,
and hangings of cloth of gold, decked the streets through which they
passed. The city companies lined the way from Gracechurch Street to Bread
Street, where the Lord Mayor and the senior guild stood in bright array,
whilst the goldsmiths' shops in Chepe had each to adorn it a figure of the
Holy Virgin in white with many wax tapers around it. The Queen rode in a
litter of white and gold tissue drawn by two snowy palfreys, she herself
being garbed in white satin and gold, with a dazzling coronet of precious
stones upon her head, from which fell almost to her feet her dark russet
hair. She was twenty-four years of age, and in the full flush of
womanhood; her regular classical features and fair skin bore yet the
curves of gracious youth; and there need be no doubt of the sincerity of
the ardent affection for her borne by the pink and white young giant who
rode before her, a dazzling vision of crimson velvet, cloth of gold, and
flashing precious stones. "God save your Grace," was the cry that rattled
like platoon firing along the crowded ways, as the splendid cavalcade
passed on.
The next day, Sunday, 24th June, the pair were crowned in the Abbey with
all the tedious pomp of the times. Then the Gargantuan feast in
Westminster Hall, of which the chronicler spares us no detail, and the
endless jousts and devices, in which roses and pomegranates, castles and
leopards jostled each other in endless magnificence, until a mere
catalogue of the splendour grows meaningless. The death of the King's wise
old grandmother, the Countess of Richmond, interrupted for a time the
round of festivities; but Henry was too new to the unchecked indulgence of
his taste for splendour and pleasure to abandon them easily, and his
English councillors, as well as the watchful Spanish agents, began before
many weeks were over to hint gravely that the young king was neglecting
his business. Katharine appears to have entered fully into the life of
pleasure led by her husband. Writing to her father on the 29th July, she
is enthusiastic in her praise. "We are all so happy," she says; "our time
passes in continual feasting." But in her case, at least, we see that
mixed with the frivolous pleasure there was the personal triumph of the
politician who had succeeded. "One of the principal reasons why I love my
husband the King, is because he is so true a son to your Majesty. I have
obeyed your orders and have acted as your ambassador. My husband places
himself entirely in your hands. This country of England is truly your own
now, and is tranquil and deeply loyal to the King and to me." What more
could wife or stateswoman ask? Katharine had her reward. Henry was hers
and England was at the bidding of Ferdinand, and her sufferings had not
been in vain. Henry, for his part, was, if we are to believe his letters
to his father-in-law, as much enamoured of his wife as she was satisfied
with him.[19]
And so, amidst magnificent shows, and what seems to our taste puerile
trifling, the pair began their married life highly contented with each
other and the world. The inevitable black shadows were to come later. In
reality they were an entirely ill-matched couple, even apart from the six
years' disparity in their ages. Henry, a bluff bully, a coward morally,
and also perhaps physically,[20] a liar, who deceived himself as well as
others, in order to keep up appearances in his favour, he was just the man
that a clever, tactful woman could have managed perfectly, beginning early
in his life as Katharine did. Katharine, for all her goodness of heart and
exalted piety, was, as we have seen, none too scrupulous herself; and if
her ability and dexterity had been equal to her opportunities she might
have kept Henry in bondage for life. But, even before her growing age and
fading charms had made her distasteful to her husband, her lack of
prudence and management towards him had caused him to turn to others for
the guidance that she might still have exercised.
The first rift of which we hear came less than a year after the marriage.
Friar Diego, who was now Katharine's chancellor, wrote an extraordinary
letter to King Ferdinand in May 1510, telling him of a miscarriage that
Katharine had had at the end of January; the affair he says having been so
secret that no one knew it but the King, two Spanish women, the physician,
and himself; and the details he furnishes show him to have been as
ignorant as he was impudent. Incidentally, however, he says: "Her Highness
is very healthy and the most beautiful creature in the world, with the
greatest gaiety and contentment that ever was. The King adores her, and
her Highness him." But with this letter to the King went another to his
secretary, Almazan, from the new Spanish ambassador, Carroz, who complains
bitterly that the friar monopolises the Queen entirely, and prevents his
access to her. He then proceeds to tell of Henry and Katharine's first
matrimonial tiff. The two married sisters of the Duke of Buckingham were
at Court, one being a close friend of Katharine whilst the other was said
to be carrying on an intrigue with the King through his favourite, Sir
William Compton. This lady's family, and especially her brother the Duke,
who had a violent altercation with Compton, and her sister the Queen's
friend, shocked at the scandal, carried her away to a convent in the
country. In revenge for this the King sent the Queen's favourite away, and
quarrelled with Katharine. Carroz was all for counselling prudence and
diplomacy to the Queen; but he complains that Friar Diego was advising her
badly and putting her on bad terms with her husband.
Many false alarms, mostly, it would seem, set afloat by the meddling
friar, and dwelt upon by him in his letters with quite unbecoming
minuteness, kept the Court agog as to the possibility of an heir to the
crown being born. Henry himself, who was always fond of children, was
desperately anxious for a son; and when, on New Year's Day 1511, the
looked-for heir was born at Richmond, the King's unrestrained rejoicing
again took his favourite form of sumptuous entertainments, after he had
ridden to the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham in Norfolk to give thanks
for the favour vouchsafed to him. Once again Westminster glittered with
cloth of gold and gems and velvet. Once again courtiers came to the lists
disguised as hermits, to kneel before Katharine, and then to cast off
their gowns and stand in full panoply before her, craving for leave to
tilt in her honour. Once again fairy bowers of gold and artificial flowers
sheltered sylvan beauties richly bedizened, the King and his favourites
standing by in purple satin garments with the solid gold initials of
himself and his wife sewn upon them. Whilst the dazzling company was
dancing the "scenery" was rolled back. It came too near the crowd of
lieges at the end of the hall, and pilfering fingers began to pluck the
golden ornaments from the bowers. Emboldened by their immunity for this,
people broke the bounds, swarmed into the central space, and in the
twinkling of an eye all the lords and ladies, even the King himself, found
themselves stripped of their finery to their very shirts, the golden
letters and precious tissues intended as presents for fine ladies being
plunder now in grimy hands that turned them doubtless to better account.
Henry in his bluff fashion made the best of it, and called the booty
largesse. Little recked he, if the tiny heir whose existence fed his
vanity throve. But the babe died soon after this costly celebration of his
birth.
During the ascendency that the anticipated coming of a son gave to
Katharine, Ferdinand was able to beguile Henry into an offensive league
against France, by using the same bait that had so often served a similar
purpose with Henry VII.; namely, the reconquest for England of Guienne and
Normandy. Spain, the Empire, the Papacy, and England formed a coalition
that boded ill for the French cause in Italy. As usual the showy but
barren part fell to Henry. Ferdinand promised him soldiers to conquer
Normandy, but they never came. All Ferdinand wanted was to keep as many
Frenchmen as possible from his own battle-grounds, and he found plenty of
opportunities for evading all his pledges. Henry was flattered to the top
of his bent. The Pope sent him the blessed golden rose, and saluted him as
head of the Italian league; and the young king, fired with martial ardour,
allowed himself to be dragged into war by his wife's connections, in
opposition to the opinion of the wiser heads in his Council. A war with
France involved hostilities with Scotland, but Henry was, in the autumn of
1512, cajoled into depleting his realm of troops and sending an army to
Spain to attack France over the Pyrenees, whilst another force under
Poynings went to help the allies against the Duke of Gueldres. The former
host under the Marquis of Dorset was kept idle by its commander because it
was found that Ferdinand really required them to reduce the Spanish
kingdom of Navarre, and after months of inactivity and much mortality from
sickness, they returned ingloriously home to England. This was Henry's
first experience of armed alliances, but he learned nothing by experience,
and to the end of his life the results of such coalitions to him were
always the same.
But his ambition was still unappeased, and in June 1513 he in person led
his army across the Channel to conquer France. His conduct in the campaign
was puerile in its vanity and folly, and ended lamely with the capture of
two (to him) unimportant fortresses in the north, Therouenne and Tournai,
and the panic flight of the French at the Battle of the Spurs or Guingate.
Our business with this foolish and fruitless campaign, in which Henry was
every one's tool, is confined to the part that Katharine played at the
time. On the King's ostentatious departure from Dover he left Katharine
regent of the realm, with the Earl of Surrey--afterwards Duke of
Norfolk--to command the army in the north. Katharine, we are told, rode
back from Dover to London full of dolour for her lord's departure; but we
see her in her element during the subsequent months of her regency. Bold
and spirited, and it must be added utterly tactless, she revelled in the
independent domination which she enjoyed. James IV. of Scotland had
threatened that an English invasion of France would be followed by his own
invasion of England. "Let him do it in God's name," shouted Henry; and
Katharine when the threat was made good delivered a splendid oration in
English to the officers who were going north to fight the Scots.
"Remember," she said, "that the Lord smiled upon those who stood in
defence of their own. Remember that the English courage excels that of all
other nations upon earth."[21] Her letters to Wolsey, who accompanied
Henry as almoner, or rather secretary, are full of courage, and as full of
womanly anxiety for her husband. "She was troubled," she wrote, "to learn
that the King was so near the siege of Therouenne," until Wolsey's letter
assured her of the heed he takes to avoid all manner of dangers. "With his
life and health nothing can come amiss with him, without them I see no
manner of good thing that shall fall after it." But her tactlessness even
in this letter shows clearly when she boasts that the King in France is
not so busy with war as she is in England against the Scots. "My heart is
very good of it, and I am horribly busy making standards, banners, and
badges."[22] After congratulating Henry effusively upon the capture of
Therouenne and his meeting with the Emperor, Katharine herself set forth
with reinforcements towards Scotland, but before she had travelled a
hundred miles (to Woburn) she met the couriers galloping south to bring
her the great news of Surrey's victory at Flodden Field. Turning aside to
thank Our Lady of Walsingham for the destruction of the Scottish power,
Katharine on the way sent the jubilant news to Henry. James IV. in his
defeat had been left dead upon the field, clad in his check surcoat, and
a fragment of this coat soaked with blood the Queen sent to her husband in
France, with a heartless gibe at his dead brother-in-law. We are told that
in another of her letters first giving the news of Flodden, and referring
to Henry's capture of the Duke of Longueville at Therouenne, she
vaingloriously compared her victory with his.[23] "It was no great thing
for one armed man to take another, but she was sending three captured by a
woman; if he (Henry) sent her a captive Duke she would send him a prisoner
king." For a wife and _locum tenens_ to write thus in such circumstances
to a supremely vain man like Henry, whose martial ambition was still
unassuaged, was to invite his jealousy and dislike. His people saw, as he
with all his boastfulness cannot fail to have done, that Flodden was the
real English victory, not Therouenne, and that Katharine and Surrey, not
Henry, were the heroes. Such knowledge was gall and wormwood to the King;
and especially when the smoke of battle had blown away, and he saw how he
had been "sold" by his wife's relations, who kept the fruit of victory
whilst he was put off with the shell.
From that time Katharine's influence over her husband weakened, though
with occasional intermission, and he looked for guidance to a subtler mind
than hers. With Henry to France had gone Thomas Wolsey, one of the clergy
of the royal chapel, recently appointed almoner by the patronage of Fox,
Bishop of Winchester, Henry's leading councillor in foreign affairs. The
English nobles, strong as they still were territorially, could not be
trusted with the guidance of affairs by a comparatively new dynasty
depending upon parliament and the towns for its power; and an official
class, raised at the will of the sovereign, had been created by Henry
VII., to be used as ministers and administrators. Such a class, dependent
entirely upon the crown, were certain to be distasteful to the noble
families, and the rivalry between these two governing elements provided
the germ of party divisions which subsequently hardened into the English
constitutional tradition: the officials usually being favourable to the
strengthening of the royal prerogative, and the nobles desiring to
maintain the check which the armed power of feudalism had formerly
exercised. For reasons which will be obvious, the choice of both Henry
VII. and his son of their diplomatists and ministers fell to a great
extent upon clergymen; and Wolsey's brilliant talents and facile
adaptiveness during his close attendance upon Henry in France captivated
his master, who needed for a minister and guide one that could never
become a rival either in the field or the ladies' chamber, where the King
most desired distinction.
Henry came home in October 1513, bitterly enraged against Katharine's kin,
and ripe for the close alliance with France which the prisoner Duke of
Longueville soon managed to bring about. What mattered it that lovely
young Mary Tudor was sacrificed in marriage to the decrepit old King Louis
XII., notwithstanding her previous solemn betrothal to Katharine's nephew,
young Charles of Austria, and her secret love for Henry's bosom friend,
Sir Charles Brandon? Princesses were but pieces in the great political
game, and must perforce take the rough with the smooth. Henry, in any
case, could thus show to the Spaniard that he could defy him by a French
connection. It must have been with a sad heart that Katharine took part in
the triumphal doings that celebrated the peace directed against her
father. The French agents, then in London, in describing her say that she
was lively and gracious, quite the opposite of her gloomy sister: and
doubtless she did her best to appear so, for she was proud and schooled to
disappointment; but with the exception of the fact that she was again with
child, all around her looked black. Her husband openly taunted her with
her father's ill faith; Henry was carrying on now an open intrigue with
Lady Tailebois, whom he had brought from Calais with him; Ferdinand the
Catholic at last was slowly dying, all his dreams and hopes frustrated;
and on the 13th August 1514, in the palace of Greenwich, Katharine's dear
friend and sister-in-law, Mary Tudor, was married by proxy to Louis XII.
Katharine, led by the Duke of Longueville, attended the festivity. She was
dressed in ash-coloured satin, covered with raised gold embroidery, costly
chains and necklaces of gems covered her neck and bust, and a coif trimmed
with precious stones was on her head.[24] The King at the ball in the
evening charmed every one by his graceful dancing, and the scene was so
gay that the grave Venetian ambassador says that had it not been for his
age and office he would have cast off his gown and have footed it with the
rest.
But already sinister whispers were rife, and we may be sure they were not
unknown to Katharine. She had been married five years, and no child of
hers had lived; and, though she was again pregnant, it was said that the
Pope would be asked to authorise Henry to put her aside, and to marry a
French bride. Had not his new French brother-in-law done the like years
ago?[25] To what extent this idea had really entered Henry's head at the
time it is difficult to say; but courtiers and diplomatists have keen
eyes, and they must have known which way the wind was blowing before they
talked thus. In October 1514 Katharine was borne slowly in a litter to
Dover, with the great concourse that went to speed Mary Tudor on her
loveless two months' marriage; and a few weeks afterwards Katharine gave
birth prematurely to a dead child. Once more the hopes of Henry were
dashed, and though Peter Martyr ascribed the misfortune to Henry's
unkindness, the superstitious time-servers of the King, and those in
favour of the French alliance, began to hint that Katharine's offspring
was accursed, and that to get an heir the King must take another wife. The
doings at Court were still as brilliant and as frivolous as ever; the
King's great delight being in adopting some magnificent, and, of course,
perfectly transparent disguise in masque or ball, and then to disclose
himself when every one, the Queen included, was supposed to be lost in
wonder at the grace and agility of the pretended unknown. Those who take
pleasure in the details of such puerility may be referred to Hall's
_Chronicle_ for them: we here have more to do with the hearts beneath the
finery, than with the trappings themselves.
That Katharine was striving desperately at this time to retain her
influence over her husband, and her popularity in England, is certain from
the letter of Ferdinand's ambassador (6th December 1514). He complains
that on the recommendation of Friar Diego Katharine had thrown over her
father's interests in order to keep the love of Henry and his people. The
Castilian interest and the Manuels have captured her, wrote the
ambassador, and if Ferdinand did not promptly "put a bridle on this colt"
(_i.e._ Henry) and bring Katharine to her bearings as her father's
daughter, England would be for ever lost to Aragon.[26] There is no doubt
that at this time Katharine felt that her only chance of keeping her
footing was to please Henry, and "forget Spain," as Friar Diego advised
her to do.
When the King of France died on New Year's Day, 1515, and his young
widow--Katharine's friend, Mary Tudor--clandestinely married her lover,
Charles Brandon, Katharine's efforts to reconcile her husband to the
peccant pair are evidence, if no other existed, that Henry's anger was
more assumed than real, and that his vanity was pleased by the submissive
prayers for his forgiveness. As no doubt the Queen, and Wolsey, who had
joined his efforts with hers, foresaw, not only were Mary and Brandon
pardoned, but taken into high favour. At the public marriage of Mary and
Brandon at Greenwich at Easter 1515 more tournaments, masques and balls,
enabled the King to show off his gallantry and agility in competition with
his new brother-in-law; and on the subsequent May Day at Shooter's Hill,
Katharine and Mary, who were inseparable, took part in elaborate and
costly _al fresco_ entertainments in which Robin Hood, several pagan
deities, and the various attributes of spring, were paraded for their
delectation. It all sounds very gay, though somewhat silly, as we read the
endless catalogues of bedizenment, of tilts and races, feasting, dancing,
and music that delighted Henry and his friends; but before Katharine there
ever hovered the spectre of her childlessness, and Henry, after the
ceremonial gaiety and overdone gallantry to his wife, would too frequently
put spurs to his courser and gallop off to New Hall in Essex, where Lady
Tailebois lived.
A gleam of hope and happiness came to her late in 1515 when she was again
expecting to become a mother. By liberal gifts--"the greatest presents
ever brought to England," said Henry himself--and by flattery unlimited,
Ferdinand, almost on his death-bed, managed to "bridle" his son-in-law, to
borrow a large sum of money from him and draw him anew into a coalition
against France. But the hope was soon dashed; King Ferdinand died almost
simultaneously with the birth of a girl-child to his daughter Katharine.
It is true the babe was like to live, but a son, not a daughter, was what
Henry wanted. Yet he put the best face on the matter publicly. The
Venetian ambassador purposely delayed his congratulations, because the
child was of the wrong sex; and when finally he coldly offered them, he
pointedly told the King that they would have been much more hearty if the
child had been a son. "We are both young," replied Henry. "If it is a
daughter this time, by the grace of God sons will follow." The desire of
the King for a male heir was perfectly natural. No Queen had reigned
independently over England; and for the perpetuation of a new dynasty like
the Tudors the succession in the male line was of the highest importance.
In addition to this, Henry was above all things proud of his manliness,
and he looked upon the absence of a son as in some sort reflecting a
humiliation upon him.
Katharine's health had never been robust; and at the age of thirty-three,
after four confinements, she had lost her bloom. Disappointment and
suffering, added to her constitutional weakness, was telling upon her, and
her influence grew daily smaller. The gorgeous shows and frivolous
amusements in which her husband so much delighted palled upon her, and she
now took little pains to feign enjoyment in them, giving up much of her
time to religious exercises, fasting rigidly twice a week and saints' days
throughout the year, in addition to the Lenten observances, and wearing
beneath her silks and satins a rough Franciscan nun's gown of serge. As in
the case of so many of her kindred, mystical devotion was weaving its grey
web about her, and saintliness of the peculiar Spanish type was covering
her as with a garment. Henry, on the contrary, was a full-blooded young
man of twenty-eight, with a physique like that of a butcher, held by no
earthly control or check upon his appetites, overflowing with vitality and
the joy of life; and it is not to be wondered at that he found his
disillusioned and consciously saintly wife a somewhat uncomfortable
companion.
The death of Louis XII., Maximilian, and Ferdinand, and the peaceful
accession of young Charles to the throne of Spain and the prospective
imperial crown, entirely altered the political aspect of Europe. Francis
I. needed peace in the first years of his reign; and to Charles it was
also desirable, in order that his rule over turbulent Spain could be
firmly established and his imperial succession secured. All the English
ministers and councillors were heavily bribed by France, Wolsey himself
was strongly in favour of the French connection, and everybody entered
into a conspiracy to flatter Henry. The natural result was a league first
of England and France, and subsequently a general peace to which all the
principal Christian potentates subscribed, and men thought that the
millennium had come. Katharine's international importance had disappeared
with the death of her father and the accession of Charles to the throne of
Aragon as well as to that of Castile. Wolsey was now Henry's sole adviser
in matters of state and managed his master dexterously, whilst
endeavouring not entirely to offend the Queen. Glimpses of his harmonious
relations with Katharine at this time (1516-1520) are numerous. At the
splendid christening of the Princess Mary, Wolsey was one of the sponsors,
and he was "gossip" with Katharine at the baptism of Mary Tudor Duchess of
Suffolk's son.
Nor can the Queen's famous action after the evil May Day (1517) have been
opposed or discountenanced by the Cardinal. The universal peace had
brought to London hosts of foreigners, especially Frenchmen, and the alien
question was acute. Wolsey, whose sudden rise and insolence had deeply
angered the nobles, had, as principal promoter of the unpopular peace with
France, to bear a full share of the detestation in which his friends the
aliens were held. Late in April there were rumours that a general attack
upon foreigners by the younger citizens would be made, and at Wolsey's
instance the civic authorities ordered that all the Londoners should keep
indoors. Some lads in Chepe disregarded the command, and the Alderman of
the Ward attempted to arrest one of them. Then rose the cry of "'Prentices
and Clubs! Death to the Cardinal!" and forth there poured from lane and
alley riotous youngsters by the hundred, to wreak vengeance on the
insolent foreigners who took the bread out of worthy Englishmen's mouths.
Sack and pillage reigned for a few hours, but the guard quelled the boys
with blood, the King rode hastily from Richmond, the Lieutenant of the
Tower dropped a few casual cannon-balls into the city, and before sunset
all was quiet. The gibbets rose at the street corners and a bloody
vengeance fell upon the rioters. Dozens were hanged, drawn, and quartered
with atrocious cruelty; and under the ruthless Duke of Norfolk four
hundred more were condemned to death for treason to the King, who, it was
bitterly said in London, loved outlanders better than his own folk. It is
unlikely that Henry really meant to plunge all his capital in mourning by
hanging the flower of its youth, but he loved, for vanity's sake, that
his clemency should be publicly sought, and to act the part of a deity in
restoring to life those legally dead. In any case, Katharine's spontaneous
and determined intercession for the 'prentice lads would take no denial,
and she pleaded with effect. Her intercession, nevertheless, could hardly
have been so successful as it was if Wolsey had been opposed to it; and
the subsequent comedy in the great Hall at Westminster on the 22nd May was
doubtless planned to afford Henry an opportunity of appearing in his
favourite character. Seated upon a canopied throne high upon a daïs of
brocade, surrounded by his prelates and nobles and with Wolsey by his
side, Henry frowned in crimson velvet whilst the "poore younglings and
olde false knaves" trooped in, a sorry procession, stripped to their
shirts, with halters around their necks. Wolsey in stern words rebuked
their crime, and scolded the Lord Mayor and Aldermen for their laxity;
ending by saying they all deserved to hang. "Mercy! gracious lord, mercy!"
cried the terrified boys and their distracted mothers behind; and the
Cardinal and the peers knelt before the throne to beg the life of the
offenders, which the King granted, and with a great shout of joy halters
were stripped from many a callow neck, and cast into the rafters of the
Hall for very joy. But all men knew, and the mothers too, that Wolsey's
intercession was only make-believe, and that what they saw was but the
ceremonial act of grace. The Queen they thanked in their hearts and not
the haughty Cardinal, for the King had pardoned the 'prentices privately
days before, when Katharine and her two sisters-in-law, the widowed Queens
of France and Scotland, had knelt before the King in unfeigned tears, and
had clamoured for the lives of the Londoners. To the day of the Queen's
unhappy death this debt was never forgotten by the citizens, who loved her
faithfully to the end far better than any of her successors.
The sweating sickness in the autumn of 1517 sent Henry and his wife as far
away from contagion as possible, for sickness always frightened the big
bully into a panic. During his absence from London, Wolsey was busy
negotiating a still closer alliance with France, by the marriage of the
baby Princess Mary to the newly born Dauphin. It can hardly have been the
match that Katharine would have chosen for her cherished only child, but
she was a cypher by the side of Wolsey now, and made no open move against
it at the time. Early in the spring of 1518 the plague broke out again,
and Henry in dire fear started upon a progress in the midlands. Richard
Pace, who accompanied him, wrote to Wolsey on the 12th April telling him
as a secret that the Queen was again pregnant. "I pray God heartily," he
continued, "that it may be a prince to the surety and universal comfort of
the realm;" and he begs the Cardinal to write a kind letter to the Queen.
In June the glad tidings were further confirmed, as likely to result in
"an event most earnestly desired by the whole kingdom." Still dodging the
contagion, the King almost fled from one place to another, and when at
Woodstock in July Henry himself wrote a letter to Wolsey which tells in
every line how anxious he was that the coming event should be the
fulfilment of his ardent hope. Katharine had awaited him at Woodstock,
and he had been rejoiced at the confident hope she gave him. He tells
Wolsey the news formally, and says that he will remove the Queen as little
and as quietly as may be to avoid risk. Soon all the diplomatists were
speculating at the great things that would happen when the looked-for
prince was born; and it was probably the confident hope that this time
Henry would not be disappointed, that made possible the success of
Wolsey's policy and the marriage of the Princess Mary with the infant
Dauphin. Of Wolsey's magnificent feasts that accompanied the ratification
of peace and the betrothal on the 5th October, feasts more splendid, says
the Venetian ambassador, than ever were given by Caligula or Cleopatra, no
account can be given here. It was Wolsey's great triumph, and he surpassed
all the records of luxury in England in its celebration. The sweet little
bride dressed in cloth of gold stood before the thrones upon which her
father and mother sat in the great Hall of Greenwich, and then, carried in
the arms of a prelate, was held up whilst the Cardinal slipped the diamond
wedding-ring upon her finger and blessed her nuptials with the baby
bridegroom. That the heir of France should marry the heiress of England
was a danger to the balance of Europe, and especially a blow to Spain. It
was, moreover, not a match which England could regard with equanimity; for
a French King Consort would have been repugnant to the whole nation, and
Henry could never have meant to conclude the marriage finally, unless the
expected heir was born. But alas! for human hopes. On the night of 10th
November 1518, Katharine was delivered of a daughter, "to the vexation of
as many as knew it," and King and nation mourned together, now that, after
all, a Frenchman might reign over England.
To Katharine this last disappointment was bitter indeed. Her husband,
wounded and irritated, first in his pride, and now in his national
interests, avoided her; her own country and kin had lost the English tie
that meant so much to them, and she herself, in poor health and waning
attractions, could only mourn her misfortunes, and cling more closely than
ever to her one darling child, Mary, for the new undesired infant girl had
died as soon as it was born. The ceaseless round of masking, mummery, and
dancing, which so much captivated Henry, went on without abatement, and
Katharine perforce had to take her part in it; but all the King's
tenderness was now shown not to his wife but to his little daughter, whom
he carried about in his arms and praised inordinately.[27] So frivolous
and familiar indeed had Henry's behaviour grown that his Council took
fright, and, under the thin veil of complaints against the behaviour of
his boon companions, Carew, Peachy, Wingfield, and Brian, who were
banished from Court, they took Henry himself seriously to task. The four
French hostages, held for the payment of the war indemnity, were also
feasted and entertained so familiarly by Henry, under Wolsey's influence,
as to cause deep discontent to the lieges, who had always looked upon
France as an enemy, and knew that the unpopular Cardinal's overwhelming
display was paid for by French bribes. At one such entertainment
Katharine was made to act as hostess at her dower-house of Havering in
Essex, where, in the summer of 1519, we are told that, "for their
welcomyng she purveyed all thynges in the most liberalist manner; and
especially she made to the Kyng suche a sumpteous banket that he thanked
her hartely, and the strangers gave it great praise." Later in the same
year Katharine was present at a grand series of entertainments given by
the King in the splendid new manor-house which he had built for Lady
Tailebois, who had just rejoiced him by giving birth to a son. We have no
record of Katharine's thoughts as she took part here in the tedious
foolery so minutely described by Hall. She plucked off the masks, we are
told, of eight disguised dancers in long dominos of blue satin and gold,
"who danced with the ladies sadly, and communed not with them after the
fashion of maskers." Of course the masqueraders were the Duke of Suffolk
(Brandon) and other great nobles, as the poor Queen must well have known;
but when she thought that all this mummery was to entertain Frenchmen, and
the house in which it passed was devoted to the use of Henry's mistress,
she must have covered her own heart with a more impenetrable mask than
those of Suffolk and his companions, if her face was attuned to the gay
sights and sounds around her.
[Illustration: _KATHARINE OF ARAGON_
_From a portrait by_ HOLBEIN _in the National Portrait Gallery_]
Katharine had now almost ceased to strive for the objects to which her
life had been sacrificed, namely, the binding together of England and
Spain to the detriment of France. Wolsey had believed that his own
interests would be better served by a close French alliance, and he
had had his way. Henry himself was but the vainglorious figure in the
international pageant; the motive power was the Cardinal. But a greater
than Wolsey, Charles of Austria and Spain, though he was as yet only a lad
of nineteen, had appeared upon the scene, and soon was to make his power
felt throughout the world. Wolsey's close union with France and the
marriage of the Princess Mary with the Dauphin had been meant as a blow to
Spain, to lead if possible to the election of Henry to the imperial crown,
in succession to Maximilian, instead of the latter's grandson Charles. If
the King of England were made Emperor, the way of the Cardinal of York to
the throne of St. Peter was clear. Henry was flattered at the idea, and
was ready to follow his minister anywhere to gain such a showy prize. But
quite early in the struggle it was seen that the unpopular French alliance
which had already cost England the surrender of the King's conquests in
the war was powerless to bring about the result desired. Francis I., as
vain and turbulent as Henry, and perhaps more able, was bidding high for
the Empire himself. His success in the election would have been disastrous
both to Spain and England, and yet the French alliance was too dear to
Wolsey to be easily relinquished, and Francis was assured that all the
interest of his dear brother of England should be cast in his favour,
whilst, with much more truth, the Spanish candidate was plied with good
wishes for his success, and underhand attempts were made at the same time
to gain the electors for the King of England.[28] Wolsey hoped thus to
win in any case; and up to a certain point he did so; for he gave to
Charles the encouragement he needed for the masterly move which soon after
revolutionised political relations.
Charles at this time (1519), young as he was, had already developed his
marvellous mental and physical powers. Patient and self-centred, with all
his Aragonese grandfather's subtlety, he possessed infinitely greater
boldness and width of view. He knew well that the seven prince electors
who chose the Emperor might, like other men, be bought, if enough money
could be found. To provide it and give to him the dominant power of the
world, he was ready to crush the ancient liberties of Castile, to squeeze
his Italian and Flemish dominions of their last obtainable ducat, for he
knew that his success in the election would dazzle his subjects until they
forgot what they had paid for it. And so it happened. Where Francis bribed
in hundreds Charles bribed in thousands, and England in the conflict of
money-bags and great territorial interests hardly counted at all. When
Charles was elected Emperor in June 1519, Henry professed himself
delighted; but it meant that the universal peace that had been proclaimed
with such a flourish of trumpets only three years before was already
tottering, and that England must soon make a choice as to which of the two
great rivals should be her friend, and which her enemy.
Francis nursed his wrath to keep it warm, and did his best to retain
Henry and Wolsey on his side. Bribes and pensions flowed freely from
France upon English councillors, the inviolable love of Henry and Francis,
alike in gallantry and age, was insisted upon again and again; the
three-year-old Princess Mary was referred to always as Dauphiness and
future Queen of France, though when the little Dauphin was spoken of as
future King of England, Henry's subjects pulled a wry face and cursed all
Frenchmen. A meeting between the two allies, which for its splendour
should surpass all other regal displays, was constantly urged by the
French hostages in England by order of Francis, as a means of showing to
the world that he could count upon Henry. To the latter the meeting was
agreeable as a tribute to his power, and as a satisfaction to his love of
show, and to Wolsey it was useful as enhancing his sale value in the eyes
of two lavish bidders. To Charles, who shared none of the frivolous tastes
of his rival sovereigns, it only appealed as a design against him to be
forestalled and defeated. When, therefore, the preparations for the Field
of the Cloth of Gold were in full swing early in the year 1520, Charles,
by a brilliant though risky move such as his father Philip would have
loved, took the first step to win England to his side in the now
inevitable struggle for supremacy between the Empire and France. Whilst he
was still wrangling with his indignant Castilian parliament in March,
Charles sent envoys to England to propose a friendly meeting with Henry
whilst on his way by sea from Spain to Flanders. It was Katharine's
chance and she made the most of it. She had suffered long and patiently
whilst the French friendship was paramount; but if God would vouchsafe her
the boon of seeing her nephew in England it would, she said to his envoys,
be the measure of her desires. Wolsey, too, smiled upon the suggestion,
for failing Francis the new Emperor in time might help him to the Papacy.
So, with all secrecy, a solemn treaty was signed on the 11th April 1520,
settling, down to the smallest details, the reception of Charles by Henry
and Katharine at Sandwich and Canterbury, on his voyage or else at a
subsequent meeting of the monarchs between Calais and Gravelines.
It was late in May when news came from the west that the Spanish fleet was
sailing up the Channel;[29] and Henry was riding towards the sea from
London ostensibly to embark for France when he learnt that the Emperor's
ships were becalmed off Dover. Wolsey was despatched post-haste to greet
the imperial visitor and invite him to land; and Charles, surrounded by a
gorgeous suite of lords and ladies, with the black eagle of Austria on
cloth of gold fluttering over and around him, was conducted to Dover
Castle, where before dawn next morning, the 27th May, Henry arrived and
welcomed his nephew. There was no mistaking the cordiality of the English
cheers that rang in peals from Dover to Canterbury and through the ancient
city, as the two monarchs rode side by side in gorgeous array. They meant,
as clearly as tone could speak, that the enemy of France and Queen
Katharine's nephew was the friend for the English people, whatever the
Cardinal of York might think. To Katharine it was a period of rejoicing,
and her thoughts were high as she welcomed her sister's son; the sallow
young man with yellow hair, already in title the greatest monarch in the
world, though beset with difficulties. By her stood beautiful Mary Tudor,
Duchess of Suffolk, twice married since she had, as a child, been
betrothed under such heavy guarantees to Charles himself; and, holding her
mother's hand, was the other Mary Tudor, a prim, quaint little maid of
four, with big brown eyes. Already great plans for her filled her mother's
brain. True, she was betrothed to the Dauphin; but what if the hateful
French match fell through, and the Emperor, he of her own kin, were to
seal a national alliance by marrying the daughter of England? Charles
feasted for four days at Canterbury, and then went on his way amidst
loving plaudits to his ships at Sandwich; but before he sailed he
whispered that to Wolsey which made the Cardinal his servant; for the
Emperor, suzerain of Italy and King of Naples, Sicily, and Spain, might do
more than a King of France in future towards making a Pope.
By the time that Henry and Francis met early in June on the ever-memorable
field between Ardres and Guisnes, the riot of splendour which surrounded
the sovereigns and Wolsey, though it dazzled the crowd and left its mark
upon history as a pageant, was known to the principal actors of the scene
to be but hollow mockery. The glittering baubles that the two kings
loved, the courtly dallying, the pompous ceremony, the masques and devices
to symbolise eternal amity, were not more evanescent than the love they
were supposed to perpetuate. Katharine went through her ceremonial part of
the show as a duty, and graciously received the visit of Francis in the
wonderful flimsy palace of wood, drapery, and glass at Guisnes; but her
heart was across the Flemish frontier a few miles away, where her nephew
awaited the coming of the King of England to greet him as his kinsman and
future ally. Gravelines was a poor place, but Charles had other ways of
influencing people than by piling up gewgaws before them. A single day of
rough, hearty feasting was an agreeable relief to Henry after the
glittering insincerity of Guisnes; and the four days following, in which
Charles was entertained at Calais as the guest of Henry and Katharine,
made up in prodigality for the coarseness of the Flemish fare;[30] whilst
Wolsey, who was already posing as the arbitrator between all Christian
potentates, was secured to the side of the Emperor in future by a grant of
the bulk of the income from two Spanish bishoprics, Badajoz and Palencia.
Already the two great rivals were bidding against each other for allies,
and Charles, though his resources were less concentrated than those of
Francis, could promise most. Leo X. for his own territorial ambition, and
in fear of Luther, rallied to the side of the Emperor, the German princes
seconded their suzerain, and the great struggle for the supremacy of
Christendom began in March 1521. England by treaty was bound to assist
France, but this did not suit Wolsey or Henry in their new mood, and the
Cardinal pressed his arbitration on the combatants. Francis reluctantly
consented to negotiate; but minds were aflame with a subject that added
fierceness to the political rivalry between Charles and Francis. The young
Emperor, when he had met the German princes at Worms (April 1521), had
thrown down the gage to Luther, and thenceforward it was war to the knife
between the old faith and the new spirit. Henry, we may be certain to the
delight of Katharine, violently attacked Luther in his famous book, and
was flattered by the fulsome praises of the Pope and the Emperor. In the
circumstances Wolsey's voyage to Calais for the furtherance of arbitration
was turned into one to conclude an armed alliance with Charles and the
Pope. The Cardinal, who had bent all others to his will, was himself bent
by the Emperor; and the arbitrator between two monarchs became the servant
of one. By the treaty signed at Bruges by Wolsey for Henry, Charles
contracted an engagement to marry his little cousin, Princess Mary, and to
visit England for a formal betrothal in the following year.
How completely Wolsey had at this time surrendered himself to the Emperor,
is evident from Katharine's new attitude towards him. During his period of
French sympathy she had been, as we have seen, practically alienated from
state affairs, but now in Henry's letters to Wolsey her name is
frequently mentioned and her advice was evidently welcome.[31] During his
absence in Flanders, for instance, Wolsey received a letter from Henry, in
which the King says: "The Queen, my wife, hath desired me to make her most
hearty recommendation unto you, as to him that she loveth very well; and
both she and I would fain know when you would repair unto us." Great news
came that the Emperor and his allies were brilliantly successful in the
war, but in the midst of victory the great Medici, Pope Leo X., though
still a man in his prime, died. There is no doubt that a secret promise
had been made by Charles to Wolsey of his support in case a vacancy in the
Papacy arose, but no one had dreamed of its occurring so quickly,[32] and
Charles found his hand forced. He needed for his purpose a far more
pliable instrument in the pontifical chair than the haughty Cardinal of
York. So, whilst pretending to work strenuously to promote Wolsey's
elevation, and thus to gain the goodwill of Henry and his minister, he
took care secretly that some humbler candidate, such as the one
ultimately chosen by the Conclave, his old schoolmaster, Cardinal Adrian,
should be the new Pope. Wolsey was somewhat sulky at the result of the
election, and thenceforward looked with more distrust on the imperial
connection; but, withal, he put as good a face on the matter as possible;
and when, at the end of May 1522, he again welcomed the Emperor in Henry's
name as he set foot on English soil at Dover, the Cardinal, though
watchful, was still favourable to the alliance. This visit of the young
Emperor was the most splendid royal sojourn ever made in England; and
Henry revelled in the ceremonies wherein he was the host of the greatest
monarch upon earth.
Charles came with a train of a thousand horse and two thousand courtiers;
and to feed and house such a multitude, the guilds of London, and even the
principal citizens, were obliged to make return of all their spare beds
and stocks of provisions in order to provide for the strangers. The
journey of the monarchs was a triumphal progress from Dover through
Canterbury, Sittingbourne, and Rochester to Gravesend. On the downs
between Dover and Canterbury, Henry and a great train of nobles was to
have met his nephew; but the more to do him honour the King rode into
Dover itself, and with pride showed his visitor his new great ship the
_Harry Grace à Dieu_, and the rest of the English fleet; whereupon, "the
Emperor and his lords much praised the making of the ships, and especially
the artillery: they said they had never seen ships so armed." From
Gravesend the gallant company rowed in the royal barges amidst salvoes of
guns to Greenwich. There at the hall door of the palace stood Katharine
surrounded by her ladies, and holding her tiny daughter by the hand.
Sinking upon one knee the Emperor craved his aunt's blessing, which was
given, and thenceforward for five weeks the feasting and glorious shows
went on without intermission.
On the second day after the arrival at Greenwich, whilst Henry was arming
for a joust, a courier, all travel-stained and weary, demanded prompt
audience, to hand the King a letter from his ambassador in France. The
King read the despatch with knitted brows, and, turning to his friend Sir
William Compton, said: "Go and tell the Emperor I have news for him." When
Charles came the letter was handed to him, and it must have rejoiced his
heart as he read it. Francis bade defiance to the King of England, and
thenceforward Henry and the Emperor were allies in arms against a common
enemy. Glittering pageants followed in London and Windsor, where Charles
sat as Knight of the Garter under triumphant Henry's presidency; masques
and dances, banquets and hunting, delighted the host and surprised the
guests with the unrestrained lavishness of the welcome;[33] but we may be
certain that what chiefly interested Katharine and her nephew was not this
costly trifling, but the eternal friendship between England and Spain
solemnly sworn upon the sacrament in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, by the
Emperor and Henry, and the binding alliance between them in peace and war,
cemented by the pledge that Charles should marry his cousin Mary Tudor and
no one else in the world. It was Katharine's final and greatest triumph,
and the shadows fell thick and fast thereafter.
Henry promptly took his usual showy and unprofitable part in the war. Only
a few weeks after the Emperor bade his new ally farewell, an English force
invaded Picardy, and the Earl of Surrey's fleet threatened all French
shipping in the Channel. Coerced by the King of England too, Venice
deserted France and joined forces with the allies; the new Pope and the
Italian princes did the same, and the Emperor's arms carried all before
them in Italy. Henry was kept faithful to his ally by the vain hope of a
dismemberment of France, in which he should be the principal gainer; the
Pope Clement VII., the ambitious Medici, who succeeded Adrian in September
1523, hungered for fresh territory which Charles alone could give him; the
rebel De Bourbon, the greatest soldier of France, was fighting against his
own king; and in February 1525 the crushing blow of Pavia fell, and
Francis, "all lost except honour," was a prisoner in the hands of his
enemy, who looking over Christendom saw none to say him nay but the bold
monk at Wittemberg.
Three years of costly war for interests not primarily their own had
already disillusioned the English people. By methods more violent and
tyrannical than ever had been adopted by any previous king, Henry had
wrung from parliament supplies so oppressive and extortionate for the
purposes of the war as to disgust and incense the whole country. Wolsey,
too, had been for the second time beguiled about the Papacy he coveted,
and knew now that he could not trust the Emperor to serve any interests
but his own. The French collapse at Pavia, moreover, and pity for the
captive Francis languishing at Madrid, had caused in England and elsewhere
a reaction in his favour. Henry himself was, as was his wont, violently
angry at the cynical way in which his own hopes in France were shelved by
Charles; and the Pope, alarmed now at the Emperor's unchecked dominion in
Italy, and the insufficient share of the spoil offered to him, also began
to look askance at his ally. So, notwithstanding the official rejoicings
in England when the news of Pavia came, and the revived plan of Henry and
Wolsey to join Bourbon in his intention to dismember France, with or
without the aid of Charles, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Warham,
correctly interpreted the prevailing opinion in England in his letter to
Wolsey (quoted by Hallam), saying that the people had "more cause to weep
than to rejoice" at the French defeat. The renewed extortionate demands
for money aroused in England discontent so dangerous as to reach rebellion
against the King's officers.[34] Risings in Kent and the eastern counties,
and the outspoken remonstrances of the leaders of the middle and working
classes at length convinced Wolsey, and through him the King, that a
change of policy was inevitable. England once more had been made the
cat's-paw of Spain; and now, with an empty exchequer and a profoundly
discontented people, was obliged again to shift its balance to the side
which promised the best hopes for peace, and to redress the equilibrium in
Europe upon which the English power depended. France was still rich in
resources, and was made to pay or rather promise the vast sum of two
million crowns in instalments, and an annuity of a hundred thousand a year
to the King for England's friendship, whilst Francis was forced to abandon
all his claims on Italy and Burgundy (January 1526), and marry the
Emperor's sister Leonora, before he was permitted to return to France, at
peace once more. It is true that every party to the treaties endeavoured
to evade the fulfilment of his pledges; but that was the custom of the
times. The point that interests us here is that the new policy now
actively pursued by Wolsey of close friendship with France, necessarily
meant the ruin of Katharine, unless she was dexterous and adaptable enough
either to reverse the policy or openly espouse it. Unfortunately she did
neither. She was now forty-one years of age, and had ceased for nearly two
years to cohabit with her husband. Her health was bad; she had grown
stout, and her comeliness had departed; all hopes of her giving to the
King the son and heir for whom he so ardently craved had quite vanished,
and with them much of her personal hold upon her husband. To her alarm and
chagrin, Henry, as if in despair of being succeeded by a legitimate heir,
in 1525, before signing the new alliance with France, had created his
dearly loved natural son, Henry Fitzroy, a duke under the royal title of
Duke of Richmond, which had been borne by his father; and Katharine, not
without reason, feared the King's intention to depose her daughter, the
betrothed of the Emperor, in favour of an English bastard. We have in
previous pages noticed the peculiar absence of tact and flexibility in
Katharine's character; and Wolsey's ostentatious French leanings after
1525 were met by the Queen with open opposition and acrimonious reproach,
instead of by temporising wiliness. The Emperor's off-hand treatment of
his betrothed bride, Mary Tudor, further embittered Katharine, who was
thus surrounded on every side by disillusionment and disappointment.
Charles sent commissioners to England just before the battle of Pavia to
demand, amongst other unamiable requirements, the prompt sending of Mary,
who was only nine years old, to Flanders with an increased dowry. This was
no part of the agreement, and was, as no doubt Charles foresaw and
desired, certain to be refused. The envoys received from Henry and
Katharine, and more emphatically from Wolsey, a negative answer to the
request,[35] Mary being, as they said, the greatest treasure they had, for
whom no hostages would be sufficient.[36] Katharine would not let her
nephew slip out of his engagement without a struggle. Mary herself was
made soon after to send a fine emerald to her betrothed with a grand
message to the effect that when they came together she would be able to
know (_i.e._ by the clearness or otherwise of the gem) "whether his
Majesty do keep himself as continent and chaste as, with God's grace, she
will." As at this time the Emperor was a man of twenty-five, whilst his
bride had not reached ten years, the cases were hardly parallel; and
within three months (in July 1525) Charles had betrothed himself to his
cousin of Portugal. The treaty that had been so solemnly sworn to on the
high altar at Windsor only three years before, had thus become so much
waste-paper, and Katharine's best hopes for her child and herself were
finally defeated. A still greater trial for her followed; for whilst
Wolsey was drawing nearer and nearer to France, and the King himself was
becoming more distant from his wife every day, the little Princess was
taken from the loving care of her mother, and sent to reside in her
principality of Wales.[37] Thenceforward the life of Katharine was a
painful martyrdom without one break in the monotony of misfortune.
Katharine appears never to have been unduly jealous of Henry's various
mistresses. She, one of the proudest princesses in Christendom, probably
considered them quite beneath her notice, and as usual adjuncts to a
sovereign's establishment. Henry, moreover, was far from being a generous
or complaisant lover; and allowed his lady favourites no great social and
political power, such as that wielded by the mistresses of Francis I. Lady
Tailebois (Eleanor Blount) made no figure at Court, and Mary Boleyn, the
wife of William Carey, a quite undistinguished courtier, who had been
Henry's mistress from about 1521,[38] was always impecunious and sometimes
disreputable, though her greedy father reaped a rich harvest from his
daughter's attractions. Katharine evidently troubled herself very little
about such infidelity on the part of her husband, and certainly Wolsey had
no objection. The real anxiety of the Queen arose from Henry's ardent
desire for a legitimate son, which she could not hope to give him; and
Wolsey, with his eyes constantly fixed on the Papacy, decided to make
political capital and influence for himself by binding France and England
so close together both dynastically and politically as to have both kings
at his bidding before the next Pope was elected. The first idea was the
betrothal of the jilted Princess Mary of ten to the middle-aged widower
who sat upon the throne of France. An embassy came to London from the
Queen Regent of France, whilst Francis was still a prisoner in Madrid in
1525, to smooth the way for a closer intimacy. Special instructions were
given to the ambassador to dwell upon the complete recovery of Francis
from his illness, and to make the most of the Emperor's unfaithfulness to
his English betrothed for the purpose of marrying the richly dowered
Portuguese. Francis eventually regained his liberty on hard conditions
that included his marriage with Charles's widowed sister Leonora, Queen
Dowager of Portugal; and his sons were to remain in Spain as hostages for
his fulfilment of the terms. But from the first Francis intended to
violate the treaty of Madrid, wherever possible; and early in 1527 a
stately train of French nobles, headed by De Grammont, Bishop of Tarbes,
came with a formal demand for the hand of young Mary Tudor for the already
much-married Francis. Again the palace of Greenwich was a blaze of
splendour for the third nuptials of the little princess; and the elaborate
mummery that Henry loved was re-enacted.[39] On the journeys to and from
their lodgings in Merchant Taylors' Hall, the Bishop of Tarbes and
Viscount de Turenne heard nothing but muttered curses, saw nothing but
frowning faces of the London people; for Mary was in the eyes of Henry's
subjects the heiress of England, and they would have, said they, no
Frenchman to reign over them when their own king should die.[40] Katharine
took little part in the betrothal festivities, for she was a mere shadow
now. Her little daughter was made to show off her accomplishments to the
Frenchmen, speaking to them in French and Latin, playing on the
harpsichord, and dancing with the Viscount de Turenne, whilst the poor
Queen looked sadly on. Stiff with gems and cloth of gold, the girl,
appearing, we are told, "like an angel," gravely played her part to her
proud father's delight, and the Bishop of Tarbes took back with him to his
master enthusiastic praises of this "pearl of the world," the backward
little girl of eleven, who was destined, as Francis said, to be the
"cornerstone of the new covenant" between France and England, either by
her marriage with himself, or, failing that, with his second son, the Duke
of Orleans, which in every respect would have been a most suitable match.
No sooner had the treaty of betrothal been signed than there came (2nd
June 1527) the tremendous news that the Emperor's troops under Bourbon had
entered and sacked Rome with ruthless fury, and that Pope Clement was a
prisoner in the castle of St. Angelo, clamouring for aid from all
Christian princes against his impious assailants. All those kings who
looked with distrust upon the rapidly growing power of Charles drew closer
together. When the news came, Wolsey was in France on his embassy of
surpassing magnificence, whilst public discontent in England at what was
considered his warlike policy was already swelling into fierce
denunciations against him, his pride, his greed, and his French
proclivities. English people cared little for the troubles of the Italian
Pope; or indeed for anything else, so long as they were allowed to live
and trade in peace; and they knew full well that war with the Emperor
would mean the closing of the rich Flemish and Spanish markets to them, as
well as the seizure of their ships and goods. But to Wolsey's ambition the
imprisonment of Clement VII. seemed to open a prospect of unlimited power.
If Francis and Henry were closely allied, with the support of the Papacy
behind them, Wolsey might be commissioned to exercise the Papal authority
until he relieved the Pontiff from duress, and in due course might succeed
to the chair of St. Peter. So, deaf to the murmuring of the English
people, he pressed on; his goal being to bind France and England closely
together that he might use them both.
The marriage treaty of Mary with the Duke of Orleans, instead of with his
father, was agreed upon by Francis and the Cardinal at Amiens in August
1527. But Wolsey knew that the marriage of the children could not be
completed for some years yet, and he was impatient to forge an immediately
effective bond. Francis had a sister and a sister-in-law of full age,
either of whom might marry Henry. But Katharine stood in the way, and she
was the personification of the imperial connection. Wolsey had no
scruples: he knew how earnestly his master wished for a son to inherit his
realm, and how weak of will that master was if only he kept up the
appearance of omnipotence. He knew that Katharine, disappointed, glum, and
austere, had lost the charm by which women rule men, and the plan, that
for many months he had been slowly and stealthily devising, was boldly
brought out to light of day. Divorce was easy, and it would finally
isolate the Emperor if Katharine were set aside. The Pope would do
anything for his liberators: why not dissolve the unfruitful marriage, and
give to England a new French consort in the person of either the widowed
Margaret Duchess of Alençon, or of Princess Renée? It is true that the
former indignantly refused the suggestion, and dynastic reasons prevented
Francis from favouring that of a marriage of Renée of France and Brittany
with the King of England; but women, and indeed men, were for Wolsey but
puppets to be moved, not creatures to be consulted, and the Cardinal went
back to England exultant, and hopeful that, at last, he would compass his
aspiration, and make himself ruler of the princes of Christendom. Never
was hope more fallacious or fortune's irony more bitter. With a strong
master Wolsey would have won; with a flabby sensualist as his
stalking-horse he was bound to lose, unless he remained always at his
side. The Cardinal's absence in France was the turning-point of his
fortunes; whilst he was glorying abroad, his enemies at home dealt him a
death-blow through a woman.
At exactly what period, or by whom, the idea of divorcing Katharine at
this time had been broached to Henry, it is difficult to say; but it was
no unpardonable or uncommon thing for monarchs, for reasons of dynastic
expediency, to put aside their wedded wives. Popes, usually in a hurry to
enrich their families, could be bribed or coerced; and the interests of
the individual, even of a queen-consort, were as nothing in comparison of
those of the State, as represented by the sovereign. If the question of
religious reform had not complicated the situation and Henry had married a
Catholic princess of one of the great royal houses, as Wolsey intended,
instead of a mere upstart like Anne Boleyn, there would probably have been
little difficulty about the divorce from Katharine: and the first hint of
the repudiation of a wife who could give the King no heir, for the sake of
his marrying another princess who might do so, and at the same time
consolidate a new international combination, would doubtless be considered
by those who made it as quite an ordinary political move.
It is probable that the Bishop of Tarbes, when he was in England in the
spring of 1527 for the betrothal of Mary, conferred with Wolsey as to the
possibility of Henry's marriage to a French princess, which of course
would involve the repudiation of Katharine. In any case the King and
Wolsey--whether truly or not--asserted that the Bishop had first started
the question of the validity of Henry's marriage with his wife, with
special reference to the legitimacy of the Princess Mary, who was to be
betrothed to Francis I. or his son. It may be accepted as certain,
however, that the matter had been secretly fermenting ever since Wolsey
began to shift the centre of gravity from the Emperor towards France.
Katharine may have suspected it, though as yet no word reached her. But
she was angry at the intimate hobnobbing with France, at her daughter's
betrothal to the enemy of her house, and at the elevation of Henry's
bastard son to a royal dukedom. She was deeply incensed, too, at her
alienation from State affairs, and had formed around her a cabal of
Wolsey's enemies, for the most part members of the older nobility
traditionally in favour of the Spanish alliance and against France, in
order, if possible, to obstruct the Cardinal's policy.[41]
The King, no doubt fully aware of Wolsey's plan, was as usual willing to
wound, but yet afraid to strike; not caring how much wrong he did if he
could only gloze it over to appear right and save his own responsibility
before the world. The first formal step, which was taken in April 1527,
was carefully devised with this end. Henry, representing that his
conscience was assailed by doubts, secretly consulted certain of his
councillors as to the legality of his union with his deceased brother's
widow. It is true that he had lived with her for eighteen years, and that
any impediment to the marriage on the ground of affinity had been
dispensed with to the satisfaction of all parties at the time by the
Pope's bull. But trifles such as these could never stand in the way of so
tender a conscience as that of Henry Tudor, or so overpowering an ambition
as that of his minister. The councillors--most of those chosen were of
course French partisans--thought the case was very doubtful, and were
favourable to an inquiry.
On the 17th May 1527, Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, who, it will be
recollected, had always been against the marriage; with Wolsey, Stephen
Gardiner, and certain doctors-of-law, held a private sitting at the York
House, Westminster, at which the King had been cited to appear and answer
the charge of having lived in incest with his sister-in-law. The Court was
adjourned twice, to the 20th and 31st May, during which time the sham
pleadings for and against the King were carefully directed to the desired
end. But before the first sitting was well over the plot got wind and
reached Katharine. The Queen and the imperial connection were popular,
Wolsey and the French were feared and detested. The old nobility and the
populace were on the Queen's side; the mere rumour of what was intended by
the prelates at York House set people growling ominously, and the friends
of the Spanish-Flemish alliance became threateningly active. The King and
Wolsey saw that for a decree of nullity to be pronounced by Warham and
Wolsey alone, after a secret inquiry at which the Queen was not
represented, would be too scandalous and dangerous in the state of public
feeling, and an attempt was made to get the bishops generally to decide,
in answer to a leading question, that such a marriage as that of the King
and Katharine was incestuous. But the bishops were faithful sons of the
Papacy, and most of them shied at the idea of ignoring the Pope's bull
allowing the marriage. Henry had also learnt during the proceedings of
the sacking of Rome and the imprisonment of Clement, which was another
obstacle to his desires, for though the Pope would doubtless have been
quite ready to oblige his English and French friends to the detriment of
the Emperor when he was free, it was out of the question that he should do
so now that he and his dominions were at the mercy of the imperial troops.
The King seems to have had an idea that he might by his personal
persuasion bring his unaccommodating wife to a more reasonable frame of
mind. He and Wolsey had been intensely annoyed that she had learnt so
promptly of the plot against her, but since some spy had told her, it was
as well, thought Henry, that she should see things in their proper light.
With a sanctimonious face he saw her on the 22nd June 1527, and told her
how deeply his conscience was touched at the idea that they had been
living in mortal sin for so many years. In future, he said, he must
abstain from her company, and requested that she would remove far away
from Court. She was a haughty princess--no angel in temper,
notwithstanding her devout piety; and she gave Henry the vigorous answer
that might have been expected. They were man and wife, as they had always
been, she said, with the full sanction of the Church and the world, and
she would stay where she was, strong in her rights as an honest woman and
a queen. It was not Henry's way to face a strong opponent, unless he had
some one else to support him and bear the brunt of the fight, and, in
accordance with his character, he whined that he never meant any harm: he
only wished to discover the truth, to set at rest the scruples raised by
the Bishop of Tarbes. All would be for the best, he assured his angry
wife; but pray keep the matter secret.[42]
Henry did not love to be thwarted, and Wolsey, busy making ready for his
ostentatious voyage to France, had to bear as best he might his master's
ill-humour. The famous ecclesiastical lawyer, Sampson, had told the
Cardinal that the marriage with Arthur had never been consummated; and
consequently that, even apart from the Pope's dispensation, the present
union was unimpeachable. The Queen would fight the matter to the end, he
said; and though Wolsey did his best to answer Sampson's arguments, he was
obliged to transmit them to the King, and recommend him to handle his wife
gently; "until it was shown what the Pope and Francis would do." Henry
acted on the advice, as we have seen, but Wolsey was scolded by the King
as if he himself had advanced Sampson's arguments instead of answering
them. Katharine did not content herself with sitting down and weeping. She
despatched her faithful Spanish chamberlain, Francisco Felipe, on a
pretended voyage to a sick mother in Spain, in order that he might beg the
aid of the Emperor to prevent the injustice intended against the Queen;
and Wolsey's spies made every effort to catch the man, and lay him by the
heels.[43] She sent to her confessor, Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, begging
for his counsel, he being one of the bishops who held that her marriage
was valid; she "desired," said Wolsey to the King, "counsel, as well of
strangers as of English," and generally showed a spirit the very opposite
of that of the patient Griselda in similar circumstances. How entirely
upset were the King and Wolsey by the unexpected force of the opposition
is seen in the Cardinal's letter to his master a day or two after he had
left London at the beginning of July to proceed on his French embassy.
Writing from Faversham, he relates how he had met Archbishop Warham, and
had told him in dismay that the Queen had discovered their plan, and how
irritated she was; and how the King, as arranged with Wolsey, had tried to
pacify and reassure her. To Wolsey's delight, Warham persisted that,
whether the Queen liked it or not, "truth and law must prevail." On his
way through Rochester, Wolsey tackled Fisher, who was known to favour the
Queen. He admitted under Wolsey's pressure that she had sent to him,
though he pretended not to know why, and "greatly blamed the Queen, and
thought that if he might speak to her he might bring her to submission."
But Wolsey considered this would be dangerous, and bade the bishop stay
where he was. And so, with the iniquitous plot temporarily shelved by the
unforeseen opposition, personal and political, Wolsey and his great train,
more splendid than that of any king, went on his way to Dover, and to
Amiens, whilst in his absence that happened in England which in due time
brought all his dignity and pride to dust and ashes.
CHAPTER IV
1527-1530
KATHARINE AND ANNE--THE DIVORCE
Enough has been said in the aforegoing pages to show that Henry was no
more a model of marital fidelity than other contemporary monarchs. It was
not to be expected that he should be. The marriages of such men were
usually prompted by political reasons alone; and for the indulgence of
affairs of the heart kings were forced to look elsewhere than towards the
princesses they had taken in fulfilment of treaties. Mary, the younger
daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn and wife of William Carey, was the King's
mistress for some years after her marriage in 1521, with the result that
her father had received many rich grants from the crown; and in 1525 was
created Lord Rochford. As treasurer of the household Lord Rochford was
much at Court, and his relationship with the Howards, St. Legers, and
other great families through his marriage with Lady Elizabeth, daughter of
the Duke of Norfolk, naturally allied him with the party of nobles whose
traditions ran counter to those of the bureaucrats in Henry's Council. His
elder daughter Anne, who was born early in 1503, probably at Hever Castle
in Kent,[44] had been carefully educated in the learning and
accomplishments considered necessary for a lady of birth at Court, and she
accompanied Mary Tudor to France in 1514 for her fleeting marriage with
the valetudinarian Louis XII., related in an earlier chapter.[45] On Queen
Mary's return to England a few months afterwards with her second husband,
Charles Brandon, the youthful Anne Boleyn remained to complete her courtly
education in France, under the care of the new Queen of France, Claude,
first wife of Francis I.
When the alliance of the Emperor and England was negotiated in 1521, and
war with France threatened, Anne was recalled home; and in 1522 began her
life in the English Court and with her family in their various residences.
Her six years in the gay Court of Francis I. during her most
impressionable age, had made her in manner more French than English. She
can never have been beautiful. Her face was long and thin, her chin
pointed, and her mouth hypocritically prim; but her eyes were dark and
very fine, her brows arched and high, and her complexion dazzling. Above
all, she was supremely vain and fond of admiration. Similar qualities to
these might have been, and doubtless were, possessed by a dozen other
high-born ladies at Henry's Court; but circumstances, partly political
and partly personal, gave to them in Anne's case a national importance
that produced enduring consequences upon the world. We have already
glanced at the mixture of tedious masquerading, hunting, and amorous
intrigue which formed the principal occupations of the ladies and
gentlemen who surrounded Henry and Katharine in their daily life; and from
her arrival in England, Anne appears to have entered to the full into the
enjoyment of such pastimes. There was some negotiation for her marriage,
even before she arrived in England, with Sir Piers Butler, an Irish cousin
of hers, but it fell through on the question of settlements, and in 1526,
when she was already about twenty-three, she took matters in her own
hands, and captivated an extremely eligible suitor, in the person of a
silly, flighty young noble, Henry Percy, eldest son and heir to the Earl
of Northumberland.
Percy was one of the Court butterflies who attached themselves to Wolsey's
household, and when angrily taken to task by the Cardinal for flirting
with Anne, notwithstanding his previous formal betrothal to another lady,
the daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, the young man said that, as he
loved Anne best, he would rather marry her. The Cardinal did not mince
words with his follower, but Percy stood stoutly to his choice, and the
Earl of Northumberland was hastily summoned to London to exercise his
authority over his recalcitrant son. Cavendish[46] gives an amusing
account of the interview between them, at which he was present. The Earl
seems to have screwed up his courage by a generous draught of wine when he
left Wolsey's presence to await his son in the hall of York House. When
the youth did come in, the scolding he got was vituperative in its
violence, with the result that Percy was reluctantly forced to abandon the
sweetheart to whom he had plighted his troth. Wolsey's interference in
their love affair deeply angered both Anne and her sweetheart. Percy was a
poor creature, and could do Wolsey little harm; but Anne did not forget,
swearing "that if ever it lay in her power she would do the Cardinal some
displeasure, which indeed she afterwards did."[47]
The reason for Wolsey's strong opposition to a match which appeared a
perfectly fitting one for both the lovers, is not far to seek. Cavendish
himself gives us the clue when he says that when the King first heard that
Anne had become engaged to Percy, "he was much moved thereat, for he had a
private affection for her himself which was not yet discovered to any":
and the faithful usher in telling the story excuses Wolsey by saying that
"he did nothing but what the King commanded." This affair marks the
beginning of Henry's infatuation for Anne. There was no reason for Wolsey
to object to a flirtation between the girl and her royal admirer; indeed
the devotion of the King to a new mistress would doubtless make him the
more ready to consent to contract another entirely political marriage, if
he could get rid of Katharine; and the Cardinal smiled complaisantly at
the prospect that all was going well for his plans. Anne, for the look of
the thing, was sent away from Court for a short time after the Percy
affair had been broken off; but before many weeks were over she was back
again as one of Katharine's maids of honour, and the King's admiration for
her was evident to all observers.[48]
It is more than questionable whether up to this time (1526) Anne ever
dreamed of becoming Henry's wife; but in any case she was too clever to
let herself go cheaply. She knew well the difference in the positions held
by the King's mistresses in the French Court and that which had been
occupied by her sister and Lady Tailebois in England, and she coyly held
her royal lover at arm's length, with the idea of enhancing her value at
last. Henry, as we have seen, was utterly tired of, and estranged from,
Katharine; and his new flame, with her natural ability and acquired French
arts, flattered and pleased his vanity better than any woman had done
before. It is quite probable that she began to aim secretly at the higher
prize in the spring of 1527, when the idea of the divorce from Katharine
had taken shape in the King's mind under the sedulous prompting of Wolsey
for his personal and political ends; but if such was the case she was
careful not to show her hand prematurely. Her only hope of winning such a
game was to keep imperious Henry in a fever of love, whilst declining all
his illicit advances. It was a difficult and a dangerous thing to do, for
her quarry might break away at any moment, whereas if such a word as
marriage between the King and her reached the ears of the cardinal, she
and her family would inevitably be destroyed.
Such was the condition of affairs when Wolsey started for France in July
1527. He went, determined to leave no stone unturned to set Henry free
from Katharine. He knew that there was no time to be lost, for the letters
from Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in London, and Katharine's messenger
Felipe, were on their way to tell the story to the Emperor in Spain; and
Clement VII., a prisoner in the hands of the imperialists, would not dare
to dissolve the marriage after Charles had had time to command him not to
do so. It was a stiff race who should get to the Pope first. Wolsey's
alternative plan in the circumstances was a clever one. It was to send to
Rome the Bishop of Worcester (the Italian Ghinucci), Henry's ambassador in
Spain, then on his way home, to obtain, with the support of the cardinals
of French sympathies, a "general faculty" from Clement VII. for Wolsey to
exercise all the Papal functions during the Pope's captivity: "by which,
without informing the Pope of your (_i.e._ Henry's) purpose, I may
delegate such judges as the Queen will not refuse; and if she does the
cognisance of the cause shall be devolved upon me, and by a clause to be
inserted in the general commission no appeal be allowed from my decision
to the Pope."[49]
How unscrupulous Wolsey and Henry were in the matter is seen in a letter
dated shortly before the above was written, in which Wolsey says to
Ghinucci (Bishop of Worcester) and Dr. Lee, Henry's ambassador with the
Emperor, that "a rumour has, somehow or other, sprung up in England that
proceedings are being taken for a divorce between the King and the Queen,
which is entirely without foundation, yet not altogether causeless, for
there has been some discussion about the Papal dispensation; not with any
view to a divorce, but to satisfy the French, who raised the objection on
proposing a marriage between the Princess (Mary Tudor) and their
sovereign. The proceedings which took place on this dispute gave rise to
the rumour, and reached the ears of the Queen, who expressed some
resentment but was satisfied after explanation; and no suspicion exists,
except, perchance, the Queen may have communicated with the Emperor."[50]
Charles had, indeed, heard the whole story, as far as Katharine knew it,
from the lips of Felipe before this was written, and was not to be put off
with such smooth lies. He wrote indignantly to his ambassador Mendoza in
London, directing him to see Henry and point out to him, in diplomatic
language veiling many a threat, the danger, as well as the turpitude, of
repudiating his lawful wife with no valid excuse; and more vigorously
still he let the Pope know that there must be no underhand work to his
detriment or that of his family. Whilst the arrogant Cardinal of York was
thus playing for his own hand first, and for Henry secondly, in France,
his jealous enemies in England might put their heads together and plot
against him undeterred by the paralysing fear of his frown. His pride and
insolence, as well as his French political leanings, had caused the
populace to hate him; the commercial classes, who suffered most by the
wars with their best customers, the Flemings and Spaniards, were strongly
opposed to him; whilst the territorial and noble party, which had usually
been friendly with Katharine, and were traditionally against bureaucratic
or ecclesiastical ministers of the crown, suffered with impatience the
galling yoke of the Ipswich butcher's son, who drove them as he listed.
Anne was in the circumstances a more powerful ally for them than
Katharine. She was the niece of the Duke of Norfolk, the leader of the
party of nobles, and her ambition would make her an apt and eager
instrument. The infatuation of the King for her grew more violent as she
repelled his advances,[51] and, doubtless at the prompting of Wolsey's
foes, it soon began to be whispered that if Henry could get rid of his
wife he might marry his English favourite. Before the Cardinal had been in
France a month, Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, first sounded the new
note of alarm to the Emperor, by telling him that Anne might become the
King's wife. It is hardly possible that no hint of the danger can have
reached Wolsey, but if it did he was confident of his power over his
master when he should return to England. Unfortunately for him his ideas
for the King's divorce were hampered by the plans for his own advancement;
and the proposals he wrote to Henry were all founded on the idea of
exerting international pressure, either for the liberation of the Pope, or
to obtain from the Pontiff the decree of divorce. It was evident that this
process must be a slow one, and Anne as well as Henry was in a hurry.
Unlike Charles, who, though he was falsity itself to his rivals, never
deceived his own ministers, Henry constantly showed the moral cowardice of
his character by misleading those who were supposed to direct his policy,
and at this juncture he conceived a plan of his own which promised more
rapidity than that of Wolsey.[52] Without informing Wolsey of the real
object of his mission, old Dr. Knight, the King's confidential secretary,
was sent to endeavour to see the Pope in St. Angelo, and by personal
appeal from the King persuade him to grant a dispensation for Henry's
marriage either before his marriage with Katharine was dissolved formally
(_constante matrimonio_), or else, if that was refused, a dispensation to
marry after the declaration had been made nullifying the previous union
(_soluto matrimonio_); but in either case the strange demand was to be
made that the dispensation was to cover the case of the bride and
bridegroom being connected within the prohibited degrees of affinity.[53]
Knight saw Wolsey on his way through France and hoodwinked him as to his
true mission by means of a bogus set of instructions, though the Cardinal
was evidently suspicious and ill at ease. This was on the 12th September
1527, and less than a fortnight later Wolsey hurried homeward. When he had
set forth from England three months before he seemed to hold the King in
the hollow of his hand. Private audience for him was always ready, and all
doors flew open at his bidding. But when he appeared on the 30th September
at the palace of Richmond, and sent one of his gentlemen to inquire of the
King where he would receive him, Anne sat in the great hall by Henry's
side, as was usual now. Before the King could answer the question of
Wolsey's messenger, the favourite, with a petulance that Katharine would
have considered undignified, snapped, "Where else should the Cardinal come
but where the King is?" For the King to receive his ministers at private
audience in a hall full of people was quite opposed to the usual etiquette
of Henry's Court, and Wolsey's man still stood awaiting the King's reply.
But it only came in the form of a nod that confirmed the favourite's
decision. This must have struck the proud Cardinal to the heart, and when
he entered the hall and bowed before his sovereign, who was toying now
with his lady-love, and joking with his favourites, the minister must have
known that his empire over Henry had for the time vanished. He was clever
and crafty: he had often conquered difficulties before, and was not
dismayed now that a young woman had supplanted him, for he still held
confidence in himself. So he made no sign of annoyance, but he promptly
tried to checkmate Knight's mission when he heard of it, whilst pretending
approval of the King's attachment to Anne. The latter was deceived. She
could not help seeing that with Wolsey's help she would attain her object
infinitely more easily than without it, and she in her turn smiled upon
the Cardinal, though her final success would have boded ill for him, as he
well knew.
His plan, doubtless, was to let the divorce question drag on as long as
possible, in the hope that Henry would tire of his new flame. First he
persuaded the King to send fresh instructions to Knight, on the ground
that the Pope would certainly not give him a dispensation to commit bigamy
in order that he might marry Anne, and that it would be easier to obtain
from the Pontiff a decree leaving the validity of the marriage with
Katharine to the decision of the Legates in England, Wolsey and another
Cardinal. Henry having once loosened the bridle, did not entirely return
to his submission to Wolsey. Like most weak men, he found it easier to
rebel against the absent than against those who faced him; but he was not,
if he and Anne could prevent it, again going to put his neck under the
Cardinal's yoke completely, and in a secret letter to Knight he ordered
him to ask Clement for a dispensation couched in the curious terms already
referred to, allowing him to marry again, even within the degrees of
affinity, as soon as the union with Katharine was dissolved. Knight had
found it impossible to get near the Pope in Rome, for the imperialists had
been fully forewarned by this time; but at length Clement was partially
released and went to Orvieto in December, whither Knight followed him
before the new instructions came from England. Knight was no match for the
subtle churchmen. Clement dared not, moreover, mortally offend the
Emperor, whose men-at-arms still held Rome; and the dispensation that
Knight sent so triumphantly to England giving the Legate's Court in London
power to decide the validity of the King's marriage, had a clause slipped
into it which destroyed its efficacy, because it left the final decision
to the Pontiff after all.
It may be asked, if Henry believed, as he now pretended, that his first
marriage had never been legal in consequence of Katharine being his
brother's widow, why he needed a Papal dispensation to break it. The Papal
brief that had been previously given allowing the marriage, was asserted
by Henry's ecclesiastical friends to be _ultra vires_ in England, because
marriage with a brother's widow was prohibited under the common law of the
land, with which the Pope could not dispense. But the matter was
complicated with all manner of side issues: the legitimacy of the Princess
Mary, the susceptibilities of the powerful confederation that obeyed the
Emperor, the sentiment of the English people, and, above all, the
invariable desire of Henry to appear a saint whilst he acted like a sinner
and to avoid personal responsibility; and so Henry still strove with the
ostensible, but none too hearty, aid of Wolsey, to gain from the Pope the
nullification of a marriage which he said was no marriage at all. Wolsey's
position had become a most delicate and dangerous one. As soon as the
Emperor learned of Anne's rise, he had written to Mendoza (30th September
1527), saying that the Cardinal must be bought at any price. All his
arrears of pension (45,000 ducats) were to be paid, 6000 ducats a year
more from a Spanish bishopric were to be granted, and a Milanese
marquisate was to be conferred upon him with a revenue of 15,000 ducats a
year, if he would only serve the Emperor's interests. But he dared not do
it quickly or openly, dearly as he loved money, for Anne was watchful and
Henry suspicious of him. His only hope was that the King's infatuation for
this long-faced woman with the prude's mouth and the blazing eyes might
pall. Then his chance would come again.
Far from growing weaker, however, Henry's passion grew as Anne's virtue
became more rigid. She had not always been so austere, for gossip had
already been busy with her good name. Percy and Sir Thomas Wyatt had both
been her lovers, and with either or both of them she had in some way
compromised herself.[54] But she played her game cleverly, for the stake
was a big one, and her fascination must have been great. She was often
away from Court, feigning to prefer the rural delights of Hever to the
splendours of Greenwich or Richmond, or offended at the significant
tittle-tattle about herself and the King. She was thus absent when in July
1527 Wolsey had gone to France, but took care to keep herself in Henry's
memory by sending him a splendid jewel of gold and diamonds representing a
damsel in a boat on a troubled sea. The lovesick King replied in the first
of those extraordinary love-letters of his which have so often been
printed. "Henceforward," he says, "my heart shall be devoted to you only.
I wish my body also could be. God can do it if He pleases, to whom I pray
once a day that it may be, and hope at length to be heard:" and he signs
_Escripte de la main du secretaire, que en coeur, corps, et volonté, est
vostre loiall et plus assuré serviteure, H. (autre coeur ne cherche) R._
Soon afterwards, when Wolsey was well on his way, the King writes to his
lady-love again. "The time seems so long since I heard of your good health
and of you that I send the bearer to be better ascertained of your health
and your purpose: for since my last parting from you I have been told you
have quite abandoned the intention of coming to Court, either with your
mother or otherwise. If so I cannot wonder sufficiently; for I have
committed no offence against you, and it is very little return for the
great love I bear you to deny me the presence of the woman I esteem most
of all the world. If you love me, as I hope you do, our separation should
be painful to you. I trust your absence is not wilful; for if so I can but
lament my ill fortune and by degrees abate my great folly."[55] This was
the tone to bring Anne to her lover again, and before many days were over
they were together, and in Wolsey's absence the marriage rumours spread
apace.
The fiasco of Knight's mission had convinced Henry and Anne that they must
proceed through the ordinary diplomatic channels and with the aid of
Wolsey in their future approaches to the Pope; and early in 1528 Stephen
Gardiner and Edward Fox, two ecclesiastics attached to the Cardinal, were
despatched on a fresh mission to Orvieto to urge Clement to grant to
Wolsey and another Legate power to pronounce finally on the validity of
Henry's marriage. The Pope was to be plied with sanctimonious assurances
that no carnal love for Anne prompted Henry's desire to marry her, as the
Pope had been informed, but solely her "approved excellent, virtuous
qualities--the purity of her life, her constant virginity, her maidenly
and womanly pudicity, her soberness, her chasteness, meekness, humility,
wisdom, descent right noble and high through royal blood,[56] education in
all good and laudable qualities and manners, apparent aptness to
procreation of children, with her other infinite good qualities." Gardiner
and Fox on their way to Dover called at Hever, and showed to Anne this
panegyric penned by Wolsey[57] upon her, and thenceforward for a time all
went trippingly.
Gardiner was a far different negotiator from Knight, and was able, though
with infinite difficulty, to induce Clement to grant the new bull
demanded, relegating the cause finally to the Legatine Court in London.
The Pope would have preferred that Wolsey should have sat alone as Legate,
but Wolsey was so unpopular in England, and the war into which he had
again dragged the country against the Emperor was so detested,[58] whilst
Queen Katharine had so many sympathisers, that it was considered necessary
that a foreign Legate should add his authority to that of Wolsey to do the
evil deed. Campeggio, who had been in England before, and was a pensioner
of Henry as Bishop of Hereford, was the Cardinal selected by Wolsey; and
at last Clement consented to send him. Every one concerned appears to have
endeavoured to avoid responsibility for what they knew was a shabby
business. The Pope, crafty and shifty, was in a most difficult position,
and blew hot and cold. The first commission given to Gardiner and Fox,
which was received with such delight by Anne and Henry when Fox brought
it to London in April 1528, was found on examination still to leave the
question open to Papal veto. It is true that it gave permission to the
Legates to pronounce for the King, but the responsibility for the ruling
was left to them, and their decision might be impugned. When, at the
urgent demand of Gardiner, the Pope with many tears gave a decretal laying
down that the King's marriage with Katharine was bad by canon law if the
facts were as represented, he gave secret orders to the Legate Campeggio
that the decretal was to be burnt and not to be acted upon.
Whilst the Pope was thus between the devil and the deep sea, trying to
please the Emperor on the one hand and the Kings of France and England on
the other, and deceiving both, the influence of Anne over her royal lover
grew stronger every day. Wolsey was in the toils and he knew it. When
Charles had answered the English declaration of war (January 1528), it was
the Cardinal's rapacity, pride, and ambition against which he thundered as
the cause of the strife and of the insult offered to the imperial house.
To the Emperor the Cardinal could not again turn. Henry, moreover, was no
longer the obedient tool he had been before Anne was by his side to
stiffen his courage; and Wolsey knew that, notwithstanding the favourite's
feline civilities and feigned dependence upon him, it would be the turn of
his enemies to rule when once she became the King's wedded wife. He was,
indeed, hoist with his own petard. The divorce had been mainly promoted,
if not originated, by him, and the divorce in the present circumstances
would crush him. But he had pledged himself too deeply to draw back
openly; and he still had to smile upon those who were planning his ruin,
and himself urge forward the policy by which it was to be effected.
In the meanwhile Katharine stood firm, living under the same roof as her
husband, sitting at the same table with him with a serene countenance in
public, and to all appearance unchanged in her relations to him. But
though her pride stood her in good stead she was perplexed and lonely.
Henry's intention to divorce her, and his infatuation for Anne, were of
course public property, and the courtiers turned to the coming
constellation, whatever the common people might do. Mendoza, the Spanish
ambassador, withdrew from Court in the spring after the declaration of
war, and the Queen's isolation was then complete. To the Spanish Latinist
in Flanders, J. Luis Vives, and to Erasmus, she wrote asking for counsel
in her perplexity, but decorous epistles in stilted Latin advising
resignation and Christian fortitude was all she got from either.[59] Her
nephew the Emperor had urged her, in any case, to refuse to recognise the
authority of any tribunal in England to judge her case, and had done what
he could to frighten the Pope against acceding to Henry's wishes. But even
he was not implacable, if his political ends were served in any
arrangement that might be made; and at this time he evidently hoped, as
did the Pope most fervently, that as a last resource Katharine would help
everybody out of the trouble by giving up the struggle and taking the
veil. Her personal desire would doubtless have been to adopt this course,
for the world had lost its savour, but she was a daughter of Isabel the
Catholic, and tame surrender was not in her line. Her married life with
Henry she knew was at an end;[60] but her daughter was now growing into
girlhood, and her legitimacy and heirship to the English crown she would
only surrender with her own life. So to all smooth suggestions that she
should make things pleasant all round by acquiescing in the King's view of
their marriage, she was scornfully irresponsive.
Through the plague-scourged summer of 1528 Henry and Anne waited
impatiently for the coming of the Legate Campeggio. He was old and gouty,
hampered with a mission which he dreaded; for he could not hope to
reconcile the irreconcilable, and the Pope had quietly given him the hint
that he need not hurry. Clement was, indeed, in a greater fix than ever.
He had been made to promise by the Emperor that the case should not be
decided in England, and yet he had been forced into giving the
dispensation and decretal not only allowing it to be decided there in
favour of Henry, but had despatched Campeggio to pronounce judgment. He
had, however, at the same time assured the Emperor that means should be
found to prevent the finality of any decision in England until the Emperor
had approved of it, and Campeggio was instructed accordingly. The
Spaniards thought that the English Cardinal would do his best to second
the efforts of the Pope without appearing to do so, and there is no doubt
that they were right, for Wolsey was now (the summer of 1528) really
alarmed at the engine he had set in motion and could not stop. Katharine
knew that the Legate was on his way, and that the Pope had, in appearance,
granted all of Henry's demands; but she did not know, or could not
understand, the political forces that were operating in her favour, which
made the Pope defraud the King of England, and turned her erstwhile mortal
enemy Wolsey into her secret friend. Tact and ready adaptability might
still have helped Katharine. The party of nobles under Norfolk, it is
true, had deserted her; but Wolsey and the bureaucrats were still a power
to be reckoned with, and the middle classes and the populace were all in
favour of the Queen and the imperial alliance. If these elements had been
cleverly combined they might have conquered, for Henry was always a coward
and would have bent to the stronger force. But Katharine was a bad hand at
changing sides, and Wolsey dared not openly do so.
For a few days in the summer of 1528, whilst Campeggio was still lingering
on the Continent, it looked as if a mightier power than any of them might
settle the question for once and all. Henry and Anne were at Greenwich
when the plague broke out in London. In June one of Anne's attendants
fell ill of the malady, and Henry in a panic sent his favourite to Hever,
whilst he hurried from place to place in Hertfordshire. The plague
followed him. Sir Francis Poyns, Sir William Compton, William Carey, and
other members of his Court died in the course of the epidemic, and the
dread news soon reached Henry that Anne and her father were both stricken
at Hever Castle. Henry had written daily to her whilst they had been
separated. "Since your last letter, mine own darling," he wrote a few days
after she left, "Walter Welsh, Master Brown, Thomas Care, Grion of
Brereton, and John Coke the apothecary have fallen of the sweat in this
house.... By the mercy of God the rest of us be yet well, and I trust
shall pass it, either not to have it, or at least as easily as the rest
have done." Later he wrote: "The uneasiness my doubts about your health
gave me, disturbed and alarmed me exceedingly; and I should not have had
any quiet without hearing certain tidings. But now, since you have felt as
yet nothing, I hope, and am assured, that it will spare you, as I hope it
is doing with us. For when we were at Waltham two ushers, two valets, and
your brother, master-treasurer, fell ill, but are now quite well; and
since we have returned to our house at Hunsdon we have been perfectly
well, and have not now one sick person, God be praised. I think if you
would retire from Surrey, as we did, you would escape all danger. There is
another thing may comfort you, which is, in truth, that in this distemper
few or no women have been taken ill, and no person of our Court has
died.[61] For which reason I beg you, my entirely beloved, not to frighten
yourself, nor be too uneasy at our absence, for wherever I am, I am yours:
and yet we must sometimes submit to our misfortunes; for whoever will
struggle against fate is generally but so much the further from gaining
his end. Wherefore, comfort yourself and take courage, and avoid the
pestilence as much as you can; for I hope shortly to make you sing _la
renvoyé_. No more at present from lack of time, but that I wish you in my
arms that I might a little dispel your unreasonable thoughts. Written by
the hand of him who is, and always will be, yours."
When the news of Anne's illness reached him he despatched one of his
physicians post haste with the following letter to his favourite: "There
came to me suddenly in the night the most afflicting news that could have
arrived. The first, to hear the sickness of my mistress, whom I esteem
more than all the world, and whose health I desire as I do my own, so that
I would gladly bear half your illness to make you well; the second, the
fear that I have of being still longer harassed by my enemy--your
absence--much longer ... who is, so far as I can judge, determined to
spite me more, because I pray God to rid me of this troublesome tormentor;
the third, because the physician in whom I have most confidence is absent
at the very time when he might be of the most service to me, for I should
hope by his means to obtain one of my chiefest joys on earth--that is, the
care of my mistress. Yet, for want of him, I send you my second, and hope
that he will soon make you well. I shall then love him more than ever. I
beseech you to be guided by his advice, and I hope soon to see you again,
which will be to me a greater comfort than all the precious jewels in the
world." In a few days Anne was out of danger, and the hopes and fears
aroused by her illness gave place to the old intrigues again.
A few weeks later Anne was with her lover at Ampthill, hoping and praying
daily for the coming of the gouty Legate, who was slowly being carried
through France to the coast. Wolsey had to be very humble now, for Anne
had shown her ability to make Henry brave him, and the King rebuked him
publicly at her bidding,[62] but until Campeggio came and the fateful
decision was given that would make Anne a Queen, both she and Henry
diplomatically alternated cajolery with the humbling process towards the
Cardinal. Anne's well-known letter with Henry's postscript, so earnestly
asking Wolsey for news of Campeggio, is written in most affectionate
terms, Anne saying, amongst other pretty things, that she "loves him next
unto the King's grace, above all creatures living." But the object of her
wheedling was only to gain news of the speedy coming of the Legate. The
King's postscript to this letter is characteristic of him. "The writer of
this letter would not cease till she had caused me likewise to set my
hand, desiring you, though it be short, to take it in good part. I assure
you that there is neither of us but greatly desireth to see you, and are
joyous to hear that you have escaped the plague so well; trusting the fury
thereof to be passed, especially with them that keepeth good diet, as I
trust you do. The not hearing of the Legate's arrival in France causeth us
somewhat to muse: notwithstanding, we trust, by your diligence and
vigilance, with the assistance of Almighty God, shortly to be eased out of
that trouble."[63]
Campeggio was nearly four months on his way, urged forward everywhere by
English agents and letters, held back everywhere by the Pope's fears and
his own ailments; but at last, one joyful day in the middle of September,
Henry could write to his lady-love at Hever: "The Legate which we most
desire arrived at Paris on Sunday last past, so that I trust next Monday
to hear of his arrival at Calais: and then I trust within a while after to
enjoy that which I have so long longed for, to God's pleasure and both our
comfort. No more to you at present, mine own darling, for lack of time,
but that I would you were in mine arms, or I in yours, for I think it long
since I kissed you." Henry had to wait longer than in his lover-like
eagerness he had expected; it was fully a fortnight before he had news of
Campeggio's arrival at Dover. Great preparations had been made to
entertain the Papal Legate splendidly in London, and on his way thither;
but he was suffering and sorry, and begged to be saved the fatigue of a
public reception. So ill was he that, rather than face the streets of
London on the day he was expected, he lodged for the night at the Duke of
Suffolk's house on the Surrey side of London bridge, and the next day, 8th
October, was quietly carried in the Duke's barge across the river to the
Bishop of Bath's palace beyond Temple Bar, where he was to lodge. There he
remained ill in bed, until the King's impatience would brook no further
delay; and on the 12th he was carried, sick as he was, and sorely against
his will, in a crimson velvet chair for his first audience.
In the great hall of the palace of Bridewell, hard by Blackfriars, Henry
sat in a chair of state, with Wolsey and Campeggio on his right hand,
whilst one of the Legate's train delivered a fulsome Latin oration,
setting forth the iniquitous outrages perpetrated by the imperialists upon
the Vicar of Christ, and the love and gratitude of the Pontiff for his
dearest son Henry for his aid and sympathy. The one thing apparently that
the Pope desired was to please his benefactor, the King of England. When
the public ceremony was over, Henry took Campeggio and Wolsey into a
private room; and the day following the King came secretly to Campeggio's
lodging, and for four long hours plied the suffering churchman with
arguments and authorities which would justify the divorce. Up to this time
Campeggio had fondly imagined that he might, with the Papal authority,
persuade Henry to abandon his object. But this interview undeceived him.
He found the King, as he says, better versed in the matter "than a great
theologian or jurist"; and Campeggio opined at last that "if an angel
descended from heaven he would be unable to persuade him" that the
marriage was valid. When, however, Campeggio suggested that the Queen
might be induced to enter a convent, Henry was delighted. If they would
only prevail upon her to do that she should have everything she demanded:
the title of Queen and all her dowry, revenue, and belongings; the
Princess Mary should be acknowledged heiress to the crown, failing
legitimate male issue to the King, and all should be done to Katharine's
liking. Accordingly, the next day, 14th October, Campeggio and Wolsey took
boat and went to try their luck with the Queen, after seeing the King for
the third time. Beginning with a long sanctimonious rigmarole, Campeggio
pressed her to take a "course which would give general satisfaction and
greatly benefit herself"; and Wolsey, on his knees, and in English,
seconded his colleague's advice. Katharine was cold and collected. She
was, she said, a foreigner in England without skilled advice, and she
declined at present to say anything. She had asked the King to assign
councillors to aid her, and when she had consulted them she would see the
Legates again.
As day broke across the Thames on the 25th October, Campeggio lay awake in
bed at Bath House, suffering the tortures of gout, and perturbed at the
difficult position in which he was placed, when Wolsey was announced,
having come from York Place in his barge. When the Cardinal entered the
room he told his Italian colleague that the King had appointed Archbishop
Warham, Bishop Fisher, and others, to be councillors for the Queen, and
that the Queen had obtained her husband's permission to come to Campeggio
and confess that morning. At nine o'clock Katharine came unobserved to
Bath House by water, and was closeted for long with the Italian Cardinal.
What she told him was under the sacred seal of the confessional, but she
prayed that the Pope might in strict secrecy be informed of certain of the
particulars arising out of her statements. She reviewed the whole of her
life from the day of her arrival in England, and solemnly swore on her
conscience that she had only slept with young Arthur seven nights, _é che
da lui restó intacta é incorrupta_;[64] and this assertion, _as far as it
goes_, we may accept as the truth, seeing the solemn circumstances under
which it was made. But when Campeggio again urged Katharine to get them
all out of their difficulty by retiring to a convent and letting the King
have his way, she almost vehemently declared that "she would die as she
had lived, a wife, as God had made her." "Let a sentence be given," she
said, "and if it be against me I shall be free to do as I like, even as my
husband will." "But neither the whole realm, nor, on the other hand, the
greatest punishment, even being torn limb from limb, shall alter me in
this, and if after death I were to return to life, I would die again, and
yet again, rather than I would give way." Against such firmness as this
the poor, flaccid old churchman could do nothing but hold up his hands
and sigh at the idea of any one being so obstinate.
A day or two afterwards Wolsey and Campeggio saw the Queen again formally.
She was on this occasion attended by her advisers, and once more heard,
coldly and irresponsively, the appeals to her prudence, her worldly
wisdom, her love for her daughter, and every other feeling that could lead
her to cut the gordian knot that baffled them all. "She would do nothing
to her soul's damnation or against God's law," she said, as she dismissed
them. Whether it was at this interview, or, as it seems to me more likely,
the previous one that she broke out in violent invective against Wolsey
for his enmity towards the Emperor, we know not, but the storm of bitter
words she poured upon him for his pride, his falsity, his ambition, and
his greed; her taunts at his intrigues to get the Papacy, and her burning
scorn that her marriage, unquestioned for twenty years, should be doubted
now,[65] must have finally convinced both Wolsey and Campeggio that if
Henry was firm Katharine was firmer still. Campeggio was in a pitiable
state of mind, imploring the Pope by every post to tell him what to do. He
and Wolsey at one time conceived the horrible idea of marrying the
Princess Mary to her half brother, the Duke of Richmond, as a solution of
the succession difficulty, and the Pope appears to have been inclined to
allow it;[66] but it was soon admitted that the course proposed would not
forward, but rather retard, the King's second marriage, and that was the
main object sought.
At length Wolsey ruefully understood that conciliation was impossible;
and, pressed as he was by the King, was forced to insist with Campeggio
that the cause must be judicially decided without further delay. Illness,
prayerful attempts to bring one side or the other to reason, and many
other excuses for procrastination were tried, but at length Campeggio had
to confess to his colleague that the Pope's decretal, laying down the law
in the case in Henry's favour, was only a show document not to be used, or
to leave his possession for a moment; and, moreover, that no final
judgment could be given by him that was not submitted to the Pope's
confirmation. Wolsey was aghast, and wrote in rage and indignation to the
English agent with the Pope denouncing this bad faith.[67] "I see ruin,
infamy, and subversion of the whole dignity and estimation of the
Apostolic See if this course be persisted in. You see in what dangerous
times we are. If the Pope will consider the gravity of this cause, and how
much the safety of the nation depends upon it, he will see that the course
he now pursues will drive the King to adopt those remedies that are so
injurious to the Pope, and are frequently instilled into the King's mind.
Without the Pope's compliance I cannot bear up against the storm; and when
I reflect upon the conduct of his Holiness I cannot but fear lest the
common enemy of souls, seeing the King's determination, inspires the Pope
with his present fears and reluctance, which will alienate all the faith
and devotion from the Apostolic See.... It is useless for Campeggio to
think of reviving the marriage. If he did it would lead to worse
consequences. Let him therefore proceed to sentence. Prostrate at the feet
of his Holiness I most urgently beg of him to set aside all delays."
This cry, wrung evidently from Wolsey's heart at the knowledge of his own
danger, is the first articulate expression of the tremendous religious
issue that might depend upon the conduct of the various parties in the
divorce proceedings. The fire lit by Luther a few years previously had
spread apace in Germany, and had reached England. All Christendom would
soon have to range itself in two divisions, cutting athwart old national
affinities and alliances. Charles had defied Luther at the outset; and the
traditions of his Spanish house made him, the most powerful monarch in
Europe, the champion of orthodoxy. But his relations with the Papacy, as
we have seen, had not been uniformly cordial. To him the Pope was a little
Italian prince whilst he was a great one, and he was jealous of the
slightest interference of Rome with the Spanish Church. His position in
Germany, moreover, as suzerain of the princes of the Empire, some of whom
already leant to Lutheranism, complicated the situation: so that it was
not yet absolutely certain that Charles would finally stake everything
upon the unification of the Christian Church by force, on the lines of
strict Papal authority.
On the other hand, both Francis and Henry had for political reasons
strongly supported the Pope in his greatest distress, and their religion
was certainly no less faithful than that of the Emperor. It was inevitable
that, whichever side Charles took in the coming religious struggle, would
not for political reasons commend itself to Francis, and _vice versa_; and
everything depended upon the weight which Henry might cast into one scale
or the other. His national traditions and personal inclination would lead
him to side with Charles, but at the crucial moment, when the first grain
had to be dropped into the balance, he found himself bound by Wolsey's
policy to Francis, and at issue with the Emperor, owing to the
relationship of the latter to Katharine. Wolsey felt, in the letter quoted
above, that the Pope's shilly-shally, in order not to offend the Emperor,
would drive the impatient King of England to flout, and perhaps break
with, the Papacy, and events proved that the Cardinal was right in his
fears. We shall see later how the rift widened, but here the first fine
crevice is visible.
Henry, prompted by Anne and his vanity, intended to have his way at
whatever cost. Katharine could give him no son: he would marry a woman who
could do so, and one that he loved far better than he ever loved his wife.
In ordinary circumstances there need have been no great difficulty about
the divorce, nor would there have been in this case, but for the peculiar
political and religious situation of Europe at the time, and but for
Katharine's unbending rigidity of character. She might have made her own
terms if she had consented to the conciliatory suggestions of the
churchmen. The legality of her marriage would have been declared, her
daughter recognised as heiress presumptive, her own great revenues would
have been left to her, and her title of Queen respected.[68] She was not
even to be asked to immure herself in a convent, or to take any conventual
vow but that of chastity, if she would only consent to a divorce on the
ground of her desire to devote herself to religion.[69] As Campeggio
repeated a dozen times, the only thing she would be asked to surrender was
conjugal relations with the King, that had ceased for years, and in no
case would be renewed. Much as we may admire her firmness, it is
impossible to avoid seeing that the course recommended to her was that
which would have best served, not only her own interest and happiness, but
also those of her daughter, of her religion, and of the good relations
between Henry and the Emperor that she had so much at heart.
Henry, on his side, was determined to allow nothing to stand in his way,
whilst keeping up his appearance of impeccability. Legal and
ecclesiastical authorities in England and France were besought to give
their sanction to his view that no Pope had the power of dispensation for
a marriage with a deceased brother's widow; and the English clergy were
assured that the King only sought an impartial authoritative decision for
the relief of his own conscience. The attitude of the English people gave
him some uneasiness; for, like all his house, he loved popularity. "The
common people, being ignorant," we are told, "and others that favoured the
Queen, talked largely, and said that for his own pleasure the King would
have another wife, and had sent for this Legate to be divorced from the
Queen, with many foolish words; inasmuch as, whosoever spake against the
marriage was of the common people abhorred and reproved."[70] The feeling
indeed in favour of Katharine was so outspoken and general that the King
took the unusual course of assembling the nobles, judges, and so many of
the people as could enter, in the great hall of Bridewell, on Sunday
afternoon, the 8th November, to endeavour personally to justify himself in
the eyes of his subjects.
As usual with him, his great aim was by sanctimonious protestations to
make himself appear a pure-souled altruist, and to throw upon others the
responsibility for his actions. He painted in dismal colours the dangers
to his subjects of a disputed succession on his death. "And, although it
hath pleased Almighty God to send us a fair daughter by a noble woman and
me begotten, to our great joy and comfort, yet it hath been told us by
divers great clerks that neither she is our lawful daughter, nor her
mother our lawful wife, and that we live together abominably and
detestably in open adultery." He swore, almost blasphemously, that for
the relief of his conscience he only sought authoritatively to know the
truth as to the validity of his marriage, and that Campeggio had come as
an impartial judge to decide it. If Katharine was adjudged to be his wife
nothing would be more pleasant or acceptable to him, and he praised her to
the skies, as a noble lady against whom no words could be spoken.[71] The
measure of his sincerity is seen when we compare this hypocritical
harangue with the letters now before us to and from his envoys in Rome, by
which it is evident that the last thing he desired was an impartial
judgment, or indeed any judgment, but one that would set him free to marry
again. One of the most extraordinary means employed to influence Katharine
soon after this appears to have been another visit to her of Wolsey and
Campeggio. They were to say that the King had intelligence of a conspiracy
against him and Wolsey by her friends and the Emperor's English partisans;
and they warned her that if anything of the sort occurred she would be to
blame. They were then to complain of her bearing towards the King, "who
was now persuaded by her behaviour that she did not love him." "She
encouraged ladies and gentlemen to dance and make merry," for instance,
whereas "she had better tell them to pray for a good end of the matter at
issue." "She shows no pensiveness of countenance, nor in her apparel nor
behaviour. She shows herself too much to the people, rejoicing greatly in
their exclamations and ill obloquy; and, by beckoning with her head and
smiling, which she has not been accustomed to do in times past, rather
encouraged them in doing so." For all this and many other things the King
does not consider it fitting to be in her company, or to let the Princess
be with her. The acme of hypocrisy was reached in the assurance the
Legates were then to give the Queen, that if she would behave well and go
into a convent, the King neither could, nor would, marry another wife in
her lifetime; and she could come out to the world again if the sentence
were in her favour. Let her go, they said, and submit to the King on her
knees, and he would be good to her, but otherwise he would be more angry
than ever.[72] Scornful silence was the Queen's reply.
After this Katharine lived lonely and depressed at Greenwich, frequently
closeted with Bishop Fisher and others of her councillors, whilst Henry
was strengthening his case with the opinions of jurists, and by attempts
to influence Campeggio. To Greenwich he went, accompanied by Anne and a
brilliant Court, to show the Italian Cardinal how bounteously a Christmas
could be spent in England. Campeggio's son was knighted and regaled with
costly presents, and all that bribes (the Bishopric of Durham, &c.) and
flattery might do was done to influence the Legate favourably; but
throughout the gay doings, jousts and tourneys, banquets and maskings,
"the Queen showed to them no manner of countenance, and made no great joy
of nothing, her mind was so troubled."[73] Well might it be, poor soul,
for Anne was by the King's side, pert and insolent, surrounded by a
growing party of Wolsey's enemies, who cared little for Pope or Emperor,
and who waited impatiently for the time when Anne should rule the King
alone, and they, through her, should rule England. Katharine, in good
truth, was in everybody's way, for even her nephew could not afford to
quarrel with England for her sake, and her death or disappearance would
have made a reconciliation easy, especially if Wolsey, the friend of
France, fell also.
"Anne," we are told by the French ambassador, "was lodged in a fine
apartment close to that of the King, and greater court was now paid to her
every day than has been paid to the Queen for a long time. I see that they
mean to accustom the people by degrees to endure her, so that when the
great blow comes it may not be, thought strange. But the people remain
quite hardened (against her), and I think they would do more if they had
more power."
Thus the months passed, the Pope being plied by alternate threats and
hopes, both by English and Spanish agents, until he was nearly beside
himself, Wolsey almost frantically professing his desire to forward the
King's object, and Campeggio temporising and trying to find a means of
conciliation which would leave the King free. Katharine herself remained
immovable. She had asked for and obtained from the Emperor a copy of the
Papal brief authorising her marriage with Henry, but the King's advocates
questioned its authenticity,[74] and even her own advisers urged her to
obey her husband's request that she should demand of the Emperor the
original document. Constrained by her sworn pledge to write nothing to the
Emperor without the King's knowledge, she sent the letter dictated to her,
urgently praying her nephew to send the original brief to England. The
letter was carried to Spain by her young English confessor, Thomas Abel,
whom she did not entirely trust, and sent with him her Spanish usher,
Montoya; but they had verbal instructions from their mistress to pray the
Emperor to disregard her written request, and refuse to part with the
brief, and to exert all his influence to have the case decided in
Rome.[75] By this it will be seen that Katharine was fully a match in
duplicity for those against whom she was pitted. She never wavered from
first to last in her determination to refuse to acknowledge the sentence
of any court sitting in England on her case, and to resist all attempts to
induce her to withdraw voluntarily from her conjugal position and enter a
nunnery. Henry, and especially Anne, in the meanwhile, were growing
impatient at all this calculated delay, and began to throw the blame upon
Wolsey. "The young lady used very rude words to him," wrote Du Bellay on
the 25th January, and "the Duke of Norfolk and his party already began to
talk big."[76] A few days afterwards Mendoza, in a letter to the Emperor,
spoke even more strongly. "The young lady that is the cause of all this
disorder, finding her marriage delayed, that she thought herself so sure
of, entertains great suspicion that Wolsey puts impediments in her way,
from a belief that if she were Queen his power would decline. In this
suspicion she is joined by her father and the Dukes of Norfolk and
Suffolk, who have combined to overthrow the Cardinal." "The King is so hot
upon it (the divorce) that there is nothing he does not promise to gain
his end.... Campeggio has done nothing for the Queen as yet but to press
her to enter religion."[77]
Henry at length determined that he would wait no longer. His four agents
in Rome had almost driven the Pope to distraction with their
importunities. Gardiner had gone to the length of threatening Clement with
the secession of England from the Papacy, and Anne's cousin, Henry's boon
companion Brian, deploring the Pope's obstinacy in a letter from Rome to
the King, was bold enough to say: "I hope I shall not die until your
Grace has been able to requite the Pope, and Popes, and not be fed with
their flattering words." But in spite of it all, Clement would only
palliate and temporise, and finally refused to give any fresh instructions
to the Legates or help the King's cause by any new act. To Campeggio he
wrote angrily, telling him, for God's sake, to procrastinate the matter in
England somehow, and not throw upon his shoulders in Rome the
responsibility of giving judgment; whilst Campeggio, though professing a
desire to please Henry in everything--in the hope of getting the promised
rich See of Durham, his enemies said--was equally determined not to go an
inch beyond the Pope's written instructions, or to assume responsibility
for the final decision. The churchmen indeed were shuffling and lying all
round, for the position was threatening, with Lutheranism daily becoming
bolder and the Emperor growing ever more peremptory, now that he had
become reconciled to the Pope.
By the end of May Henry had had enough of dallying, especially as rumours
came from Rome that the Pope might revoke the commission of the Legates;
and the great hall of the Monastery of Blackfriars was made ready for the
sittings of the Legatine Court. On a raised daïs were two chairs of state,
covered with cloth of gold, and on the right side of the daïs a throne and
canopy for the King, confronted by another for the Queen. The first
sittings of the Legates were formal, and the King and Queen were summoned
to appear before the tribunal on the 18th June 1529. Early in the morning
of the day appointed the hall was full to overflowing with bishops,
clerics, and councillors, and upon the crowd there fell the hush of those
who consciously look upon a great drama of real life. After the Bishops of
Bath and Lincoln had testified that citations to the King and Queen had
been delivered, and other formal statements had been taken, an usher stood
forth and cried: "Henry, King of England, appear." But Henry was at
Greenwich, five miles away, and in his stead there answered the
ecclesiastical lawyer, Dr. Sampson. Then "Katharine, Queen of England"
rang out, and into the hall there swept the procession of the Queen,
herself rustling in stiff black garments, with four bishops, amongst them
Fisher of Rochester, and a great train of ladies. Standing before the
throne erected for her, she made a low obeisance to the Legates; and then,
in formal terms, protested against the competence of the tribunal to judge
her case, consisting, as it did, of those dependent upon one of the
parties, and unable to give an impartial judgment. She appealed from the
Legates to the Sovereign Pontiff, who, without fear or favour of man,
would decide according to divine and human law. Then with another low
obeisance Katharine turned her back upon the Court, and returned to the
adjoining palace of Bridewell.
On the following Monday, the 21st, the Court again sat to give judgment
upon her protest, which Campeggio would have liked to accept and so to
relieve him of his difficulty but for the pressure put upon him by Wolsey
and the Court. To the call of his name Henry on this occasion answered in
person from his throne, "Here," whilst the Queen contented herself by an
inclination of the head. When the Legates had rejected her protest, the
King rose, and in one of his sanctimonious speeches once more averred his
admiration and affection for his wife, and swore that his fear of living
sinfully was the sole cause of his having raised the question of the
validity of his marriage. When his speech had ended Katharine rose.
Between them the clerks and assessors sat at a large table, so that she
had to make the whole circuit of the hall to approach the King. As she
came to the foot of his throne she knelt before him for a last appeal to
his better feelings. In broken English, and with tears coursing down her
cheeks, she spoke of their long married life together, of the little
daughter they both loved so well, of her obedience and devotion to him,
and finally called him and God to witness that her marriage with his
brother had been one in name only. Then, rising, she bowed low to the man
who was still her husband, and swept from the room. When she reached the
door, Henry, realising that all Christendom would cry out against him if
she was judged in her absence, bade the usher summon her back, but she
turned to the Welsh courtier, Griffin Richards, upon whose arm she leaned,
saying: "Go on, it is no matter; this is no impartial Court to me," and
thus, by an act of defiance, bade Henry do his worst. Like other things
she did, it was brave, even heroic in the circumstances, but it was unwise
from every point of view.
It would be profitless to follow step by step the further proceedings,
which Campeggio and Wolsey, at least, must have known were hollow. The
Court sat from week to week, and Henry grew more angry as each sitting
ended fruitlessly, the main question at issue now being the consummation
or non-consummation of the first marriage; until, at the end of July,
Campeggio demanded a vacation till October, in accordance with the rule in
Roman Courts.[78] Whilst this new delay was being impatiently borne, the
revocation of the powers of the Legates, so long desired by Campeggio,
came from Rome, and Henry saw that the churchmen had cheated him after
all. His rage knew no bounds; and the Cardinal's enemies, led by Anne and
her kinsmen, cleverly served now by the new man Stephen Gardiner, fanned
the flame against Wolsey. He might still, however, be of some use; and
though in deadly fear he was not openly disgraced yet. One day the King
sent for him to Bridewell during the recess, and was closeted with him for
an hour. In his barge afterwards on his way home Wolsey sat perturbed and
unhappy with the Bishop of Carlisle. "It is a very hot day," said the
latter. "Yes," replied the unhappy man, "if you had been as well chafed as
I have been in the last hour you would say it was hot." Wolsey in his
distress went straight to bed when he arrived at York Place, but before he
had lain two hours Anne's father came to his bedside to order him in the
name of the King to accompany Campeggio to Bridewell, to make another
attempt to move the Queen. He had to obey, and, calling at Bath House for
Campeggio on his way, they sought audience of Katharine. They found her
cool and serene--indeed she seems rather to have overplayed the part. She
came to meet them with a skein of silk around her neck. "I am sorry to
keep you waiting," she said; "I was working with my ladies." To Wolsey's
request for a private audience she replied that he might speak before her
people, she had no secrets with him; and when he began to speak in Latin
she bade him use English. Throughout she was cool and stately, and, as may
be supposed, the visit was as fruitless as others had been.
Wolsey was not quite done with even yet. He might still act as Legate
alone, if the Pope's decretal deciding the law of the case in favour of
Henry could be obtained from Campeggio, who had held it so tightly by the
Pope's command. So when Campeggio was painfully carried into
Northamptonshire in September to take leave of the King, Wolsey was
ordered to accompany him. Henry thought it politic to receive them without
open sign of displeasure, and sent the Italian Cardinal on his way with
presents and smooth words. Wolsey escorted him a few miles on his road
from Grafton, where the King was staying, to Towcester; but when next day
the Cardinal returned to Grafton alone he found the King's door shut
against him, and Norreys brought him an order that he was to return to
London. It was a blow that struck at his heart, and he went sadly with
the shadow of impending ruin upon him, never to set eyes on his master
more. Before his final fall there was still one thing he might do, and he
was given a few days' reprieve that he might do it. The Pope had pledged
himself in writing not to withdraw the Legates' commission, and although
he had done so the original commission might still be alleged as authority
for Wolsey to act alone, if only the Papal decretal could be found.
Campeggio's privileged character was consequently ignored, and all his
baggage ransacked in the hope of finding the document before he left
English soil. Alas! as an eye-witness tells us, all that the packs
contained were "old hosen, old coates, and such vile stuff as no honest
man would carry," for the decretal had been committed to the flames months
before by the Pope's orders; and the outraged old Italian Legate, with his
undignified belongings, crossed the Channel and so passes out of our
history.
Anne had so far triumphed by the coalition of Wolsey's enemies. Her own
hatred of him was more jealous and personal than political; for she and
her paternal family were decidedly French in their sympathies, and Wolsey,
at all events in the latest stages, had striven his utmost to help forward
her marriage with the King. The older nobility, led by Norfolk, who had
deserted Katharine their former ally, in order to use Anne for their
rival's ruin, had deeper and longer-standing motives for their hate of the
Cardinal. Although most of them now were heavily bribed and pensioned by
France, their traditions were always towards the Imperial and Spanish
alliance, and against bureaucratic ministers. There was yet another
element that had joined Anne's party in order to overthrow Wolsey. It
consisted of those who from patriotic sentiment resented the galling
supremacy of a foreign prince over the English Church, and cast their eyes
towards Germany, where the process of emancipation from the Papacy was in
full swing. The party in England was not a large one, and hardly concerned
itself yet with fine points of doctrine. It was more an expression of the
new-born English pride and independence than the religious revolt it was
to become later; and the fit mouthpiece of the feeling was bluff Charles
Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, who had publicly insulted the Legates in the
hall at Blackfriars.
It is obvious that a party consisting of so many factions would lose its
cohesion when its main object was attained with the fall of Wolsey. The
latter had bent before the storm, and at once surrendered all his plunder
to the King and to Anne's relatives, which secured his personal immunity
for a time, whilst he watched for the divisions amongst his opponents that
might give him his chance again. Anne's uncle, Norfolk, aristocratic and
conservative, took the lead in the new government, to the annoyance of the
Duke of Suffolk, who occupied a secondary place, for which his lack of
political ability alone qualified him. Sir Thomas More became Chancellor,
and between him and Anne there was no great love lost, whilst Anne's
father, now Earl of Wiltshire, became Lord Privy Seal, and her brother,
Lord Rochford, was sent as English ambassador to France. With such a
government as this--of which Anne was the real head[79]--no very distinct
line of policy could be expected. The Parliament, which was summoned on
Wolsey's fall, was kept busy legalising the enrichment of Anne at the
expense of the Cardinal, and in clamorous complaints of the abuses
committed by the clergy, but when foreign affairs had to be dealt with the
voice of the government was a divided one. Anne and her paternal family
were still in favour of France; but the Emperor and the Pope were close
friends now, and it was felt necessary by the King and Norfolk to attempt
to reconcile them to the divorce, if possible, by a new political
arrangement. For this purpose Anne's father travelled to Bologna, where
Charles and Clement were staying together, and urged the case of his
master. The only result was a contemptuous refusal from the Emperor to
consider any proposal for facilitating his aunt's repudiation; and the
serving of Wiltshire, as Henry's representative, with a formal citation of
the King of England to appear in person or by proxy before the Papal Court
in Rome entrusted with the decision of the divorce case. This latter
result drove Henry and Anne into a fury, and strengthened their discontent
against the churchmen, whilst it considerably decreased the King's
confidence in Wiltshire's ability. It was too late now to recall Wolsey,
although the French government did what was possible to soften the King's
rigour against him; but Henry longed to be able again to command the
consummate ability and experience of his greatest minister, and early in
the year 1530 Henry himself became a party to an intrigue for the
Cardinal's partial rehabilitation. Anne, when she thought Wolsey was
dying, was persuaded to send him a token and a kind message; but when,
later, she learnt that an interview between the King and him was in
contemplation, she took fright; and Norfolk, who at least was at one with
her in her jealousy of the fallen minister, ordered the latter to go to
his diocese of York, and not to approach within five miles of the King.
Anne's position in the King's household was now a most extraordinary one.
She had visited the fine palace, York Place, which Wolsey had conveyed to
the King at Westminster; and with the glee of a child enjoying a new toy,
had inspected and appraised the splendours it contained. In future it was
to be the royal residence, and she was its mistress. She sat at table in
Katharine's place, and even took precedence of the Duchess of Norfolk and
ladies of the highest rank. This was all very well in its way, but it did
not satisfy Anne. To be Queen in name as well as in fact was the object
for which she was striving, and anything less galled her. The Pope was now
hand in glove with the Emperor, and could not afford to waver on Henry's
side, whilst Charles was more determined than ever to prevent the close
alliance between England and France that the marriage and a Boleyn
predominance seemed to forebode. The natural effect of this was, of
course, to drive Henry more than ever into the arms of France, and though
Wolsey had owed his unpopularity largely to his French sympathies, he had
never truckled so slavishly to Francis as Henry was now obliged to do, in
order to obtain his support for the divorce, which he despaired of
obtaining from the Pope without French pressure. The Papal Court was
divided, then and always, into French and Spanish factions, and in North
Italy French and Spanish agents perpetually tried to outwit each other.
Throughout the Continent, wherever the influence of France extended,
pressure was exerted to obtain legal opinions favourable to Henry's
contention. Bribes, as lavish as they were barefaced, were offered to
jurists for decisions confirming the view that marriage with a deceased
brother's widow was invalid in fact, and incapable of dispensation. The
French Universities were influenced until some sort of irregular dictum,
afterwards formally repudiated, was obtained in favour of Henry, and in
Italy French and Spanish intrigue were busy at work, the one extorting
from lawyers support to the English view, the other by threats and bribes
preventing its being given. This, however, was a slow process, and of
doubtful efficacy after all; because, whilst the final decision on the
divorce lay with the Pope, the opinions of jurists and Universities, even
if they had been generally favourable to Henry, instead of the reverse,
could have had ultimately no authoritative effect.
Henry began to grow restive by the end of 1530. All his life he had seemed
to have his own way in everything, and here he found himself and his most
ardent wishes unceremoniously set aside, as if of no account. Other kings
had obtained divorces easily enough from Rome: why not he? The answer that
would naturally occur to him was that his affairs were being ineptly
managed by his ministers, and he again yearned for Wolsey. The Cardinal
had in the meanwhile plucked up some of his old spirit at York, and was
still in close communication with the French, and even with the Emperor's
ambassador. Again Norfolk became alarmed, and a disclosure of the intrigue
gave an excuse for Wolsey's arrest. It was the last blow, and the heart of
the proud Cardinal broke on his way south to prison, leaving Henry with no
strong councillor but the fair-faced woman with the tight mouth who sat in
his wife's place. She was brave; "as fierce as a lioness," the Emperor's
ambassador wrote, and would "rather see the Queen hanged than recognise
her as her mistress"; but the party behind her was a divided one, and the
greatest powers in Europe were united against her. There was only one way
in which she might win, and that was by linking her cause with that of
successful opposition to the Papacy. The Pope was a small Italian prince
now slavishly subservient to the Emperor: Luther had defied a greater
Sovereign Pontiff than he; why should Clement, a degenerate scion of the
mercantile Medicis, dare to dictate to England and her King?
CHAPTER V
1530-1534
HENRY'S DEFIANCE--THE VICTORY OF ANNE
The deadlock with regard to the validity of the marriage could not
continue indefinitely, for the legitimacy of the Princess Mary having been
called into question, the matter now vitally touched the succession to the
English crown. Katharine was immovable. She would neither retire to a
convent nor accept a decision from an English tribunal, and, through her
proctor in Rome, she passionately pressed for a decision there in her
favour. Norfolk, at the end of his not very extensive mental resources,
could only wish that both Katharine and Anne were dead and the King
married to some one else. The Pope was ready to do anything that did not
offend the Emperor to bring about peace; and when, under pressure from
Henry and Norfolk, the English prelates and peers, including Wolsey and
Warham, signed a petition to the Pope saying that Henry's marriage should
be dissolved, or they must seek a remedy for themselves in the English
Parliament, Clement was almost inclined to give way; for schism in England
he dreaded before all things. But Charles's troops were in Rome and his
agents for ever bullying the wretched Pope, and the latter was obliged to
reply finally to the English peers with a rebuke. There were those both
in England and abroad who urged Henry to marry Anne at once, and depend
upon the recognition of the _fait accompli_ by means of negotiation
afterwards, but this did not satisfy either the King or the favourite.
Every interview between the King and the Nuncio grew more bitter than the
previous one. No English cause, swore Henry, should be tried outside his
realm where he was master; and if the Pope insisted in giving judgment for
the Queen, as he had promised the Emperor to do, the English Parliament
should deal with the matter in spite of Rome.
The first ecclesiastical thunderclap came in October 1530, when Henry
published a proclamation reminding the lieges of the old law of England
that forbade the Pope from exercising direct jurisdiction in the realm by
Bull or Brief. No one could understand at the time what was meant, but
when the Nuncio in perturbation went and asked Norfolk and Suffolk the
reason of so strange a proclamation at such a time, they replied roughly,
that they "cared nothing for Popes in England ... the King was Emperor and
Pope too in his own realm." Later, Henry told the Nuncio that the Pope had
outraged convention by summoning him before a foreign tribunal, and should
now be taught that no usurpation of power would be allowed in England. The
Parliament was called, said Henry, to restrain the encroachment of the
clergy generally, and unless the Pope met his wishes promptly a blow would
be struck at all clerical pretensions. The reply of the Pope was another
brief forbidding Henry's second marriage, and threatening Parliaments and
Bishops in England if they dared to meddle in the matter. The question
was thus rapidly drifting into an international one on religious lines,
which involved either the submission of Henry or schism from the Church.
The position of the English clergy was an especially difficult one. They
naturally resented any curtailment of the privileges of their order,
though they dared not speak too loudly, for they owed the enjoyment of
their temporalities to the King. But they were all sons of the Church,
looking to Rome for spiritual authority, and were in mortal dread of the
advance of the new spirit of religious freedom aroused in Germany. The
method of bridling them adopted by Henry was as clever as it was
unscrupulous. The Bull giving to Wolsey independent power to judge the
matrimonial cause in England as Legate, had been, as will be recollected,
demanded by the King and recognised by him, as it had been, of course, by
the clergy; but in January 1531, when Parliament and Convocation met, the
English clergy found themselves laid under Premunire by the King for
having recognised the Legatine Bull; and were told that as subjects of the
crown, and not of the Pope, they had thus rendered themselves liable to
the punishment for treason. The unfortunate clergy were panic-stricken at
this new move, and looked in vain to Rome for support against their own
King; but Rome, as usual, was trying to run with the hare and hunt with
the hounds, and could only wail at the obstinacy both of Henry and
Katharine.
In the previous sitting of Parliament in 1529, severe laws had been passed
against the laxity and extortion of the English ecclesiastics,
notwithstanding the violent indignation of Fisher of Rochester; but what
was now demanded of them as a condition of their pardon for recognising
the Bull was practically to repudiate the authority of the Pope over them,
and to recognise the King of England as supreme head of the Church, in
addition to paying the tremendous fine of a hundred thousand pounds. They
were in utter consternation, and they struggled hard; but the alternative
to submission was ruin, and the majority gave way. The die was cast: Henry
was Pope and King in one, and could settle his own cause in his own way.
When the English clergy had thus been brought to heel, Henry's opponents
saw that they had driven him too far, and were aghast at his unexpected
exhibition of strength, a strength, be it noted, not his own, as will be
explained later; and somewhat moderated their tone. But the King of
England snapped his fingers now at threats of excommunication, and cared
nothing, he said, for any decision from Rome. The Emperor dared not go to
war with England about Katharine, for the French were busily drawing
towards the Pope, whose niece, Katharine de Medici, was to be betrothed to
the son of Francis; and the imperial agents in Rome ceased to insist so
pertinaciously upon a decision of the matrimonial suit.
Katharine alone clamoured unceasingly that her "hell upon earth" should be
ended by a decision in her favour from the Sovereign Pontiff. Her friends
in England were many, for the old party of nobles were rallying again to
her side, even Norfolk was secretly in her favour, or at least against
the King's marriage with his niece Anne, and Henry's new bold step against
the Papacy, taken under bureaucratic influence, had aroused much fear and
jealousy amongst prelates like Fisher and jurists like More, as well as
amongst the aristocratic party in the country. Desperate efforts were made
to prevent the need for further action in defiance of the Papacy by the
decision of the matrimonial suit by the English Parliament; and early in
June 1531 Henry and his Council decided to put fresh pressure upon
Katharine to get her to consent to a suspension of the proceedings in
Rome, and to the relegation of the case to a tribunal in some neutral
territory. Katharine at Greenwich had secret knowledge of the intention,
and she can hardly have been so surprised as she pretended to be when, as
she was about to retire to rest, at nine o'clock at night, to learn that
the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk, and some thirty other nobles and
prelates, sought audience of her. Norfolk spoke first, and in the King's
name complained bitterly of the slight put upon him by the Pope's
citation. He urged the Queen, for the sake of England, for the memory of
the political services of Henry to her kin, and his past kindness to her,
to meet his wishes and consent to a neutral tribunal judging between them.
Katharine was, as usual, cool and contemptuous. No one was more sorry than
she for the King's annoyance, though she had not been the cause of it; but
there was only one judge in the world competent to deal with the case.
"His Holiness, who keeps the place, and has the power, of God upon earth,
and is the image of eternal truth." As for recognising her husband as
supreme head of the Church, that she would never do. When Dr. Lee spoke
harshly, telling her that she knew that, her first marriage having been
consummated, her second was never legal, she vehemently denied the fact,
and told him angrily to go to Rome and argue. He would find there others
than a lone woman to answer him. Dr. Sampson then took up the parable and
reproached her for her determination to have the case settled so quickly;
and she replied to him that if he had passed such bitter days as she had,
he would be in a hurry too. Dr. Stokesley was dealt with similarly by the
Queen; and she then proudly protested at being thus baited late at night
by a crowd of men; she, "a poor woman without friends or counsel." Norfolk
reminded her that the King had appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury, the
Bishop of Durham, and the Bishop of Rochester to advise her. "Pretty
councillors they are," she replied. "If I ask for Canterbury's advice he
tells me he will have nothing to do with it, and for ever repeats _ira
principis mors est_. The Bishop of Durham dares to say nothing because he
is the King's subject, and Rochester only tells me to keep a good heart
and hope for the best."
Katharine knew it not, but many of those before her were really her
friends. Gardiner, now first Secretary, looked with fear upon the Lutheran
innovations, Guilford the Controller, Lord Talbot, and even Norfolk wished
her well, and feared the advent of Anne; and Guilford, less prudent than
the rest, spoke so frankly that the favourite heard of his words. She
broke out in furious invective against him before his face. "When I am
Queen of England," she cried, "you will soon lose your office." "You need
not wait so long," he replied, as he went straightway to deliver his seals
to the King. Henry told him he ought not to mind an angry woman's talk,
and was loath to accept his resignation; but the Controller insisted, and
another rankling enemy was raised up to Anne. The favour she enjoyed had
fairly turned her head, and her insolence, even to those who in any case
had a right to her respect, had made her thoroughly detested. The Duke of
Suffolk, enemy of the Papacy as he was, and the King's brother-in-law, was
as anxious now as Talbot, Guilford, and Fitzwilliam to avert the marriage
with Anne, who was setting all the Court by the ears. Katharine's attitude
made matters worse. She still lived under the same roof as the King,
though he rarely saw her except on public occasions, and her haughty
replies to all his emissaries, and her constant threats of what the
Emperor might do, irritated Henry beyond endurance under the taunts of
Anne. The latter was bitterly jealous also of the young Princess Mary, of
whom Henry was fond; and by many spiteful, petty acts of persecution, the
girl's life was made unhappy. Once when Henry praised his daughter in
Anne's presence, the latter broke out into violent abuse of her, and on
another occasion, when Katharine begged to be allowed to visit the
Princess, Henry told her roughly that she could go away as soon as she
liked, and stop away. But Katharine stood her ground. She would not leave
her husband, she said, even for her daughter, until she was forced to do
so. Henry's patience was nearly tired out between Anne's constant
importunities and Katharine's dignified immobility; and leaving his wife
and daughter at Windsor, he went off on a hunting progress with Anne, in
the hope that he might soon be relieved of the presence of Katharine
altogether. Public feeling was indignantly in favour of the Queen; and it
was no uncommon thing for people to waylay the King, whilst he was
hunting, with entreaties that he would live with his wife again; and
wherever Anne went the women loudly cried shame upon her.
In his distraction Henry was at a loss what to do. He always wanted to
appear in the right, and he dared not imprison or openly ill-treat
Katharine, for his own people favoured her, and all Europe would have
joined in condemning him; yet it was clear that even Windsor Castle was
not, in future, big enough for both Queen and favourite at the same time,
and positive orders at length were sent to Katharine, in the autumn of
1531, to take up her residence at More in Hertfordshire, in a house
formerly belonging to Wolsey.[80] She obeyed with a heavy heart, for it
meant parting--and for ever--with her daughter, who was sent to live at
Richmond, and was strictly forbidden to communicate with her mother.
Katharine said she would have preferred to have been sent to the Tower, to
being consigned to a place so unfit for her as More, with its foul ways
and ruinous surroundings, but nothing broke her spirit or humbled her
pride. Her household was still regal in its extent, for we are told by an
Italian visitor to her that "thirty maids of honour stood around her table
when she dined, and there were fifty who performed its service: her
household consisting of about two hundred persons in all." But her state
was a mockery now; for Lady Anne, she knew, was with her husband, loudly
boasting that within three or four months she would be a queen, and
already playing the part insolently. The Privy Purse expenses of the
period show how openly Anne was acknowledged as being Henry's actual
consort. Not only did she accompany the King everywhere on his excursions
and progresses, and partake of the receptions offered to him by local
authorities and nobles,[81] but large sums of money were paid out of the
King's treasury for the gorgeous garb in which she loved to appear. Purple
velvet at half a guinea a yard, costly furs and linen, bows and arrows,
liveries for her servants, and all sorts of fine gear were bought for
Anne. The Lord Mayor of London, in June 1530, sent her a present of
cherries, and the bearer got a reward of 6s. 8d. Soon after Anne's
greyhounds killed a cow, and the Privy Purse had to pay the damage, 10s.
In November, 19-3/4 yards of crimson satin at 15s. a yard had to be paid
for to make Lady Anne a robe, and £8, 8s. for budge skins was paid soon
afterwards. When Christmas came and card-playing was in season, my Lady
Anne must have playing money, £20 all in groats; and when she lost, as she
did pretty heavily, her losings had to be paid by the treasurer, though
her winnings she kept for herself. No less than a hundred pounds was given
to her as a New Year's gift in 1531. A few weeks afterwards, a farm at
Greenwich was bought for her for £66; and her writing-desk had to be
adorned with latten and gold at a great cost. As the year 1531 advanced
and Katharine's cause became more desperate, the extravagance of her rival
grew; and when in the autumn of that year the Queen was finally banished
from Court, Anne's bills for dressmaker's finery amounted to extravagant
proportions.
The position was rendered the more bitter for Katharine when she
recognised that the Pope, in a fright now at Henry's defiance, was trying
to meet him half way, and was listening to the suggestion of referring the
question to a tribunal at Cambray or elsewhere; whilst the Emperor himself
was only anxious to get the cause settled somehow without an open affront
to his house or necessary cause for quarrel with Henry.[82] And yet,
withal, the divorce did not seem to make headway in England itself. As we
have seen, the common people were strongly against it: the clergy,
trembling, as well they might, for their privileges between the Pope and
the King, were naturally as a body in favour of the ecclesiastical view;
and many of Henry and Anne's clerical instruments, such as Dr. Bennet in
Rome and Dr. Sampson at Vienna, were secretly working against the cause
they were supposed to be aiding: even some of the new prelates, such as
Gardiner of Winchester and Stokesley of London, grew less active advocates
when they understood that upon them and their order would fall ultimately
the responsibility of declaring invalid a marriage which the Church and
the Pope had sanctioned. Much stronger still even was the dislike to the
King's marriage on the part of the older nobility, whose enmity to Wolsey
had first made the marriage appear practicable. They had sided with Anne
to overthrow Wolsey; but the obstinate determination of the King to rid
himself of his wife and marry his favourite, had brought forward new
clerical and bureaucratic ministers whose proceedings and advice alarmed
the aristocracy much more than anything Wolsey had done. If Katharine had
been tactful, or even an able politician, she had the materials at hand to
form a combination in favour of herself and her daughter, before which
Henry, coward as he was, would have quailed. But she lacked the qualities
necessary for a leader: she irritated the King without frightening him,
and instead of conciliating the nobles who really sympathised with her,
though they were forced to do the King's bidding, she snubbed them
haughtily and drove them from her.
Anne flattered and pleased the King, but it was hardly her mind that moved
him to defy the powerful Papacy, or sustained him in his fight with his
own clergy. From the first we have seen him leaning upon some adviser who
would relieve him from responsibility whilst giving him all the honour for
success. He desired the divorce above all things; but, as usual, he wanted
to shelter himself behind other authority than his own. When in 1529 he
had been seeking learned opinions to influence the Pope, chance had thrown
the two ecclesiastics who were his instruments, Fox and Gardiner, into
contact with a learned theologian and Reader in Divinity at Cambridge
University. Thomas Cranmer had studied and lived much. He was a widower,
and Fellow of Magdalene, Cambridge, of forty years of age; and although in
orders and a Doctor of Divinity, his tastes were rather those of a learned
country gentleman than of an ecclesiastic in monkish times. In
conversation with Fox and Gardiner, this high authority on theology
expressed the opinion that instead of enduring the delays of the
ecclesiastical courts, the question of the legality of the King's marriage
should be decided by divines from the words of the Scriptures themselves.
The idea seemed a good one, and Henry jumped at it. In an interview soon
afterwards he ordered Cranmer to put his arguments into a book, and placed
him in the household of Anne's father, the Earl of Wiltshire, to
facilitate the writing of it. The religious movement in Germany had found
many echoes in England, and doubtless Cranmer conscientiously objected to
Papal control. Certain it is that, fortified as he was by the
encouragement of Anne and her father, his book was a persuasive one, and
greatly pleased the King, who sent it to the Pope and others. Nor did
Cranmer's activity stay there. He entered into disputation everywhere,
with the object of gaining theological recruits for the King's side, and
wrote a powerful refutation of Reginald Pole's book in favour of
Katharine. The King thought so highly of Cranmer's controversial ability
that he sent him with Lee, Stokesley, and other theologians to Rome,
Paris, and elsewhere on the Continent, to forward the divorce, and from
Rome he was commissioned as English Ambassador with the Emperor.
Whilst Cranmer was thus fighting the King's battle abroad, another
instrument came to Henry's hand for use in England. On the disgrace of
Wolsey, his secretary, Thomas Cromwell, was recommended to Henry by
friends. The King disliked him, and at first refused to see him; but
consented to do so when it was hinted that Cromwell was the sort of man
who would serve him well in what he had at heart. The hint was a
well-founded one; for Thomas Cromwell was as ambitious and unscrupulous as
his master had been; strong, bold, and fortunately unhampered by
ecclesiastical orders. When Henry received him in the gardens at
Whitehall, Cromwell spoke as no priest, and few laymen, would have dared
to do: for, apart from the divorce question, there was to be no dallying
with heresy if Henry could help it, and the fires of Smithfield burning
doubters were already beginning to blaze under the influence of Sir Thomas
More. "Sire," said Cromwell to the King, "the Pope refuses you a divorce
... why wait for his consent? Every Englishman is master in his own house,
and why should not you be so in England? Ought a foreign prelate to share
your power with you? It is true the bishops make oath to your Majesty; but
they make another to the Pope immediately afterwards which absolves them
from it. Sire, you are but half a king, and we are but half your subjects.
Your kingdom is a two-headed monster: will you bear such an anomaly any
longer? Frederick and other German princes have cast off the yoke of Rome.
Do likewise; become once more king, govern your kingdom in concert with
your lords and commons."[83]
With much more of such talk Cromwell flattered the King, who probably
hardly knew whether to punish or reward such unheard-of boldness; but when
Cromwell, prepared for the emergency, took from his pocket a copy of the
prelates' oath to the Pope, Henry's indignation bore all before it, and
Cromwell's fortune was made. He at once obtained a seat in Parliament
(1529), and took the lead in the anti-clerical measures which culminated
in the emancipation of the English clergy from the Papacy, and their
submission to the King. Gardiner, ambitious and able as he was, was yet an
ecclesiastic, and looked grimly upon such a religious policy as that into
which Henry was being towed by his infatuation for Anne; but Cromwell was
always ready with authorities and flattery to stiffen the King's resolve,
and thenceforward, until his fall before a combination of nobles, his was
the strong spirit to which Henry clung.
It will be seen that the influences against the King's marriage with Anne
were very powerful, since it had become evident that the object could only
be attained by the separation of England from the Papal communion; a step
too bold and too much smacking of Lutheranism to commend itself to any but
the few who might benefit by the change. The greatest danger seemed that
by her isolation England might enable the two great Catholic powers to
combine against her, in which case Henry's ruin was certain; and, eager as
he was to divorce Katharine in England and marry Anne, the King dared not
do so until he had secured at least the neutrality of France. As usual, he
had to pay heavily for it. Dr. Fox, Henry's most able and zealous foreign
minister, was again sent to France, and an alliance was negotiated in the
spring of 1532, by which Henry bound himself to join Francis against the
Emperor in case of attack, and Francis undertook to support Henry if any
attempt was made by Charles to avenge his aunt. Anne was once more
jubilant and hopeful; for her cause was now linked with a national
alliance which had a certain party of adherents in the English Court, and
an imperial attack upon England in the interests of Katharine was rendered
unlikely. But, withal, the opposition in England itself had to be
overcome, for Henry was ever a stickler for correctness in form, and
wanted the divorce to have an appearance of defensible legality. The
bishops in Parliament were sounded, but it was soon evident that they as a
body would not fly in the face of the Papacy and the Catholic interests,
even to please the King. Timid, tired old Warham, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, was approached with a suggestion that he, as Primate, might
convene a quorum of prelates favourable to Henry, who would approve of the
entire repudiation of the Papal authority in England, and themselves
pronounce the King's divorce. But Warham was already hastening to the
grave, and flatly refused to stain his last hours by spiritual revolt.
Despairing of the English churchman, Henry then turned to the lay peers
and commons, and, through Norfolk, asked them to decide that the
matrimonial cause was one that should be dealt with by a lay tribunal; but
Norfolk's advocacy was but half-hearted, and the peers refused to make the
declaration demanded.[84]
The fact is clear that England was not yet prepared to defy spiritual
authority to satisfy the King's caprice; and Anne was nearly beside
herself with rage. She, indeed, was for braving everybody and getting
married at once, divorce or no divorce. Why lose so much time? the French
ambassador asked. If the King wanted to marry again let him do as King
Louis did, and marry of his own motion.[85] The advice pleased both Henry
and his lady-love, but Norfolk and Anne's father were strongly opposed to
so dangerous and irregular a step, and incurred the furious displeasure of
Anne for daring to thwart her. Every one, she said, even her own kinsmen,
were against her,[86] and she was not far wrong, for with the exception of
Cranmer in Germany and Cromwell, no one cared to risk the popular anger by
promoting the match. Above all, Warham stood firm. The continued attacks
of the King at Cromwell's suggestion against the privileges of the clergy
hardened the old Archbishop's heart, and it was evident that he as Primate
would never now annul the King's marriage and defy the authority of Rome.
The opposition of Lord Chancellor More and of the new Bishop of
Winchester, Gardiner, to Cromwell's anti-clerical proposals in Parliament
angered the King, and convinced him that with his present instruments it
would be as difficult for him to obtain a divorce in legal form in England
as in Rome itself. More was made to feel that his position was an
impossible one, and retired when Parliament was prorogued in May; and
Gardiner had a convenient attack of gout, which kept him away from Court
until the King found he could not conduct foreign affairs without him and
brought him back.
In the meanwhile Katharine neglected the opportunities offered to her of
combining all these powerful elements in her favour. Nobles, clergy, and
people were almost universally on her side: Anne was cordially hated, and
had no friends but the few religious reformers who hoped by her means to
force the King ever further away from the Papacy; and yet the Queen
continued to appeal to Rome and the Emperor, against whom English
patriotic feeling might be raised by Anne's few friends. The unwisdom of
thus linking Katharine's cause with threats of foreign aggression, whilst
England itself was favourable to her, was seen when the Nuncio presented
to Henry a half-hearted exhortation to take his lawful wife back. Henry
fulminated against the foreigner who dared to interfere between him and
his wife; and, very far from alarming him, the Pope's timid action only
proved the impotence of Rome to harm him. But the results fell upon the
misguided Katharine, who had instigated the step. She was sent from the
More to Ampthill, a house belonging to one of her few episcopal enemies.
All through the summer of 1532 the coming and going of French agents to
England puzzled the Queen and her foreign friends; but suddenly, late in
July, the truth came out. Henry and Anne had gone with a great train on a
hunting tour through the midlands in July; but only a few days after
starting they suddenly returned to London. The quidnuncs whispered that
the people on the way had clamoured so loudly that the Queen might be
recalled to Court, and had so grossly insulted Anne, that the royal party
had been driven back in disgust; and though there was no doubt some ground
for the assertion, the real reason for the return was that the interview
between Henry and the French king, so long secretly in negotiation, had at
last been settled. To enlist Francis personally on the side of the
divorce, and against the clerical influence, was good policy; for the
Emperor could not afford to quarrel both with France and England for his
aunt, and especially as the meeting arranged between Francis and the Pope
at Nice for the betrothal of the Duke of Orleans with Katharine de Medici
was already in contemplation, and threatened the Emperor with a
combination of France, England, and perhaps the Papacy, which would be
powerful enough to defy him. The policy was Cromwell's, who had inherited
from his master, Wolsey, a leaning for the French alliance; but Norfolk
and the rest of Henry's advisers were heavily bribed by France, and were
on this occasion not inimical. The people at large, as usual, looked
askance at the French connection. They dreaded, above all things, a war
with Spain and Flanders, and recollected with apprehension the fruitless
and foolish waste in splendour on the last occasion of the monarchs of
France and England meeting. An attempt was made to provide that the
preparations should be less costly and elaborate than those for the Field
of the Cloth of Gold, but Henry could not forego the splendour that he
loved, and a suite of 3000 or 4000 people were warned to accompany the
King across the Channel to Boulogne and Calais.
[Illustration: _ANNE BOLEYN_
_From a portrait by_ LUCAS CORNELISZ _in the National Portrait Gallery_]
For the interview to have its full value in the eyes of Henry and his
mistress, the latter must be present at the festival, and be recognised by
the French royal family as being of their own caste. Francis was not
scrupulous, but this was difficult to arrange. His own second wife was the
Emperor's sister, and she, of course, would not consent to meet "the
concubine"; nor would any other of the French princesses, if they could
avoid it; but, although the French at first gave out that no ladies would
be present, Anne began to get her fine clothes ready and enlist her train
of ladies as soon as the interview between the kings was arranged. So
confident was she now of success that she foretold to one of her friends
that she would be married whilst in France. To add to her elation, in the
midst of the preparations Archbishop Warham died, and the chief
ecclesiastical obstacle to the divorce in England disappeared. Some
obedient churchman as Primate would soon manage to enlist a sufficient
number of his fellows to give to his court an appearance of authority, and
the Church of England would ratify the King's release.
The effects of Warham's death (23rd August 1532) were seen immediately.
There is every probability that up to that time Anne had successfully
held her royal lover at arm's length; but with Cranmer, or another such as
he, at Lambeth her triumph was only a matter of the few weeks necessary to
carry out the formalities; and by the end of the month of August 1532 she
probably became the King's mistress. This alone would explain the
extraordinary proceedings when, on the 1st September, she was created
Marchioness of Pembroke in her own right. It was Sunday morning before
Mass at Windsor, where the new French alliance was to be ratified, that
the King and his nobles and the French ambassador met in the great
presence chamber and Anne knelt to receive the coronet and robe of her
rank, the first peeress ever created in her own right in England:
precedence being given to her before the two other English marchionesses,
both ladies of the blood royal. Everything that could add prestige to the
ceremony was done. Anne herself was dressed in regal crimson velvet and
ermine; splendid presents were made to her by the enamoured King, fit more
for a sovereign's consort than his mistress; a thousand pounds a year and
lands were settled upon her, and her rank and property were to descend to
the issue male of her body. But the cloven hoof is shown by the omission
from the patent of the usual legitimacy clause. Even if, after all, the
cup of queendom was dashed from her lips untasted, she had made not a bad
bargain for herself. Her short triumph, indeed, was rapidly coming. She
had fought strenuously for it for many years; and now most of the legal
bars against her had fallen. But, withal, there was bitterness still in
her chalice. The people scowled upon her no less now that she was a
marchioness than before, and the great ladies who were ordered to attend
the King's "cousin" into France did their service but sourly: whilst
Francis had to be conciliated with all sorts of important concessions
before he could be got to welcome "the lady" into his realm. When, at
last, he consented, "because she would have gone in any case; for the King
cannot be an hour without her," Francis did it gallantly, and with good
grace, for, after all, Anne was just then the strongest prop in England of
the French alliance.
Katharine, from afar off, watched these proceedings with scornful
resentment. Henry had no chivalry, no generosity, and saved his repudiated
wife no humiliation that he could deal her in reward for her obstinacy. He
had piled rich gifts upon Anne, but her greed for costly gewgaws was
insatiable; and when the preparations for her visit to France were afoot
she coveted the Queen's jewels. Henry's sister, the Duchess of Suffolk,
Queen Dowager of France, had been made to surrender her valuables to the
King's favourite; but when Henry sent a message to his wife bidding her
give up her jewels, the proud princess blazed out in indignant anger at
the insult. "Tell the King," she said, "that I cannot send them to him;
for when lately, according to the custom of this realm, I presented him
with a New Year's gift, he warned me to send him no such presents for the
future. Besides, it is offensive and insulting to me, and would weigh upon
my conscience, if I were led to give up my jewels for such a base purpose
as that of decking out a person who is a reproach to Christendom, and is
bringing scandal and disgrace upon the King, through his taking her to
such a meeting as this in France. But still, if the King commands me and
sends specially for them himself, I will give him my jewels." Such an
answer as this proves clearly the lack of practical wisdom in the poor
woman. She might have resisted, or she might have surrendered with a good
grace; but to irritate and annoy the weak bully, without gaining her
point, was worse than useless. Anne's talk about marrying the King in
France angered Katharine beyond measure; but the favourite's ambition grew
as her prospect brightened, and when it was settled that Cranmer was to be
recalled from Germany and made Primate, Anne said that she had changed her
mind. "Even if the King wished to marry her there (in France) she would
not consent to it. She will have it take place here in England, where
other queens have usually been married and crowned."[87]
Through Kent, avoiding as they might the plague-stricken towns, the King
and his lady-love, with a great royal train, rode to Dover early in
October 1532. At Calais, Henry's own town, Anne was received almost with
regal honours; but when Henry went forth to greet Francis upon French soil
near Boulogne, and to be sumptuously entertained, it was seen that, though
the French armed men were threateningly numerous, there were no ladies to
keep in countenance the English "concubine" and the proud dames who did
her service. Blazing in gems, the two kings met with much courtly ceremony
and hollow professions of affection. Banqueting, speech-making, and
posturing in splendid raiment occupied five days at Boulogne, the while
the "Lady Marquis" ate her heart out at Calais in petulant disappointment;
though she made as brave a show as she could to the Frenchmen when they
came to return Henry's visit. The chronicler excels himself in the
description of the lavish magnificence of the welcome of Francis at
Calais,[88] and tells us that, after a bounteous supper on the night of
Sunday 27th October, at which the two kings and their retinues sat down,
"The Marchioness of Pembroke with seven other ladies in masking apparel of
strange fashion, made of cloth of gold compassed with crimson tinsel
satin, covered with cloth of silver, lying loose and knit with gold
laces," tripped in, and each masked lady chose a partner, Anne, of course,
taking the French king. In the course of the dance Henry plucked the masks
from the ladies' faces, and debonair Francis, in courtly fashion,
conversed with his fair partner. One of the worst storms in the memory of
man delayed the English king's return from Calais till the 13th November;
but when at length the _Te Deum_ for his safe home-coming was sung at St.
Paul's, Anne knew that the King of France had undertaken to frighten the
Pope into inactivity by talk of the danger of schism in England, and that
Cranmer was hurrying across Europe on his way from Italy to London, to
become Primate of the Church of England.
The plot projected was a clever one, but it was still needful to handle it
very delicately. Cranmer during his residence in Germany and Italy had
been zealous in winning favourable opinions for Henry's contention, and
his foregathering with Lutheran divines had strengthened his reforming
opinions. He had, indeed, proceeded to the dangerous length of going
through a form of marriage secretly with a young lady belonging to a
Lutheran family. His leanings cannot have been quite unknown to the
ever-watchful spies of the Pope and the Emperor, though Cranmer had done
his best to hoodwink them, and to some extent had succeeded. But to ask
the Pope to issue the Bulls confirming such a man in the Primacy of
England was at least a risky proceeding, and Henry had to dissemble. In
January, Katharine fondly thought that her husband was softening towards
her, for he released her chaplain Abell, who had been imprisoned for
publicly speaking in her favour. She fancied, poor soul, that "perhaps God
had touched his heart, and that he was about to acknowledge his error."
Chapuys attributed Henry's new gentleness to his begrudging the cost of
two queenly establishments. But seen from this distance of time, it was
clearly caused by a desire to disarm the suspicion of the Pope and the
Emperor, who were again to meet at Bologna, until the Bulls confirming
Cranmer's appointment to the Archbishopric had been issued. Henry went out
of his way to be amiable to the imperial ambassador Chapuys, whilst he
beguiled the Nuncio with the pretended proposal for reconciliation by
means of a decision on the divorce to be given by two Cardinal Legates,
appointed by the Pope, and sitting in neutral territory. In vain Chapuys
warned the Emperor that Cranmer could not be trusted; but Henry's
diplomatic signs of grace prevailed, and the Pope, dreading to drive
England further into schism, confirmed Cranmer's election as Archbishop of
Canterbury (March 1533).
It was high time; for under a suave exterior both Henry and Anne were in a
fever of impatience. At the very time that Queen Katharine thought that
her husband had repented, Anne conveyed to him the news that she was with
child. It was necessary for their plans that the offspring should be born
in wedlock, and yet no public marriage was possible, or the eyes of the
Papal party would be opened before the Bulls confirming Cranmer's
elevation were issued. Sometime late in January 1533, therefore, a secret
marriage was performed at Greenwich, probably by the reforming Franciscan
Friar, George Brown,[89] and Anne became Henry's second wife, whilst
Katharine was still undivorced. The secret was well kept for a time, and
the Nuncio, Baron di Burgo, was fooled to the top of his bent by
flatteries and hopes of bribes. He even sat in state on Henry's right
hand, the French ambassador being on the left, at the opening of
Parliament, probably with the idea of convincing the trembling English
clergy that the King and the Pope were working together. In any case, the
close association of the Nuncio with Henry and his ministers aroused the
fears of Katharine anew, and she broke out in denunciations of the Pope's
supineness in thus leaving her without aid for three and a half years, and
now entertaining, as she said, a suggestion that would cause her to be
declared the King's concubine, and her daughter a bastard.[90] In vain
Chapuys, the only man of his party who saw through the device, prayed that
Cranmer's Bulls should not be sent from Rome, that the sentence in
Katharine's favour should no longer be delayed. It was already too late.
The pride of Anne and her father at the secret marriage could not much
longer be kept under. In the middle of February, whilst dining in her own
apartment, she said that "she was now as sure that she should be married
to the King, as she was of her own death"; and the Earl of Wiltshire told
the aged kinsman of Henry, the Earl of Rutland, a staunch adherent of
Katharine, that "the King was determined not to be so considerate as he
had been, but would marry the Marchioness of Pembroke at once, by the
authority of Parliament."[91] Anne's condition, indeed, could not continue
to be concealed, and whispers of it reached the Queen at Ampthill. By
March the rumour was rife at Court that the marriage had taken place--a
rumour which it is plain that Anne's friends took no pains to deny, and
Cranmer positively encouraged.[92]
Cromwell, in the meanwhile, grew in power and boldness with the success
of his machinations. The Chancellorship, vacant by More's resignation, was
filled by Cromwell's friend Audley, and every post that fell vacant or
could be vacated was occupied by known opponents of the clergy. The
country and Parliament were even yet not ready to go so far as Cromwell in
his policy of emancipation from Rome in spiritual affairs; and only by the
most illegal pressure both in the two Houses and in Convocation was the
declaration condemning the validity of the King's marriage with Katharine
at last obtained. Armed with these declarations and the Bulls from Rome
confirming Cranmer's appointment, Henry was ready in April to cast away
the mask, and the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk were sent to tell Katharine
at Ampthill "that she need not trouble any more about the King, for he had
taken another wife, and that in future she must abandon the title of
Queen, and be called Duchess; though she should be left in possession of
her property."[93] Chapuys was indignant, and urged the Emperor to make
war upon England in revenge for the insult to his house. "The moment this
accursed Anne gets her foot firmly in the stirrup she will do the Queen
all the harm she can, and the Princess also, which is what the Queen fears
most.... She (Anne) has lately boasted that she will make the Princess
one of her maids, which will not give her too much to eat; or will marry
her to some varlet." But the Emperor had cares and dangers that his
ambassador in England knew not of, and he dared not avenge his aunt by the
invasion of England.
A long and fruitless war of words was waged between Henry and Chapuys when
the news of the secret marriage became known; the talk turning upon the
eternal question of the consummation of Katharine's first marriage.
Chapuys reminded the King that on several occasions he (Henry) had
confessed that his wife had been intact by Arthur. "Ah!" replied Henry, "I
only said that in fun. A man when he is frolicking and dining says a good
many things that are not true. Now, I think I have satisfied you.... What
else do you want to know?"[94] A day or two after this, on Easter Eve,
Anne went to Mass in truly royal state, loaded with diamonds and other
precious stones, and dressed in a gorgeous suit of tissue; the train being
borne by her cousin, the daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, betrothed to the
King's illegitimate son, the Duke of Richmond. She was followed by a
greater suite and treated with more ceremony than had formerly attended
Katharine, and, to the astonishment of the people, was prayed for
thenceforward in the Church services at Court as Queen.[95] In London the
attitude of the people grew threatening, and the Lord Mayor was taken to
task by the King, who ordered that proclamation should be made forbidding
any unfavourable reference to the King's second marriage. But the fire of
indignation glowed fiercely beneath the surface, for everywhere the cause
of Katharine was bound up, as it seemed, with the old faith in which all
had been born, with the security of commerce with England's best
customers, and with the rights of anointed royalty, as against low-born
insolence.
No humiliation was spared to Katharine. Her daughter was forbidden to hold
any communication with her, her household was reduced to the meagre
proportions of a private establishment, her scutcheon was taken down from
Westminster Hall, and her cognisance from her barge, and, as a crowning
indignity, she was summoned to appear before the Primate's court at
Dunstable, a summons which, at the prompting of Chapuys, she entirely
disregarded. Up to this time she had stood firm in her determination to
maintain an attitude of loyalty to the King and to her adopted country;
but, as she grew more bitter at her rival's triumph, and the flowing tide
of religious change rose at her feet, she listened to plans for bringing a
remedy for her ills by a subversion of Henry's regime. But she was a poor
conspirator, and considerations of safety for her daughter, and her want
of tact in uniting the English elements in her favour, always paralysed
her.[96]
In the meanwhile the preparations for the public recognition and
coronation of Anne went on. The new Queen tried her best to captivate the
Londoners, but without success; and only with difficulty could the
contributions be obtained for the coming festivities when the new Queen
passed through the city. On the 10th May Katharine was declared
contumacious by the Primate's court, and on the 23rd May Cranmer
pronounced the King's first marriage to have been void from the first.[97]
This was followed by a pronouncement to the effect that the second
marriage, that with Anne, was legal, and nothing now stood in the way of
the final fruition of so much labour and intrigue, pregnant with such
tremendous results to England. On the 29th May 1533 the first scene of the
pageant was enacted with the State progress by water from Greenwich to the
Tower.[98] No effort had been spared by Henry to make the occasion a
brilliant one. We are told that the whole river from the point of
departure to that of arrival was covered with beautifully bedizened boats;
guns roared forth their salutations at Greenwich, and from the crowd of
ships that lay in the stream. Flags and _feux de joie_ could be bought;
courtiers', guilds', and nobles' barges could be commanded, but the hearty
cheers of the lieges could not be got for all King Harry's power, as the
new Queen, in the old Queen's barge, was borne to the frowning fortress
which so soon was to be her own place of martyrdom.[99]
On Sunday, 31st May 1533, the procession through the crowded city sallied
from the Tower betimes in the morning. Englishmen and foreigners, except
Spaniards only, had been forced to pay heavily for the splendour of the
day; and the trade guilds and aldermen, brave in furred gowns and gold
chains, stood from one device to another in the streets, as the glittering
show went by. The French element did its best to add gaiety to the
occasion, and the merchants of France established in London rode at the
head of the procession in purple velvet embroidered with Anne's device.
Then came the nobles and courtiers and all the squires and gentlemen whom
the King had brought from their granges and manor-houses to do honour to
their new Queen. Anne herself was seated in an open litter of white satin
covered by a golden canopy. She was dressed in a surcoat and mantle of
white tissue trimmed with ermine, and wore a robe of crimson brocade stiff
with gems. Her hair, which was very fine, hung over her shoulders
surmounted by a coif and a coronet of diamonds, whilst around her neck was
hung a necklace of great pearls, and upon her breast reposed a splendid
jewel of precious stones. "And as she passed through the city she kept
turning her face from one side to the other to greet the people, but,
strange to see it was, that there were hardly ten persons who greeted her
with 'God save your Grace,' as they used to do when the sainted Queen
Katharine went by."[100]
Lowering brows, and whispered curses of "Nan Bullen" from the citizens'
wives followed the new Queen on her way; for to them she stood for war
against the Emperor in the behoof of France, for harassed trade and lean
larders, and, above all, for defiance of the religious principles that
most of them held sacred; and they hated the long fair face with which, or
with love philtres, she had bewitched the King. The very pageants
ostensibly raised in her honour contrived in several cases to embody a
subtle insult. At the Gracechurch corner of Fenchurch Street, where the
Hanse merchants had erected a "merveilous connyng pageaunt," representing
Mount Parnassus, with the fountain of Helicon spouting racked Rhenish wine
all day, the Queen's litter was stayed a space to listen to the Muses
playing "swete instrumentes," and to read the "epigrams" in her praise
that were hung around the mount. But Anne looked aloft to where Apollo
sat, and saw that the imperial eagle was blazoned in the place of honour,
whilst the much-derided bogus arms of the Boleyns lurked in humble guise
below;[101] and for many a day thenceforward she was claiming vengeance
against the Easterlings for the slight put upon her. As each triumphal
device was passed, children dressed as angels, or muses, were made to sing
or recite conceited phrases of dithyrambic flattery to the heroine of the
hour. There was no grace or virtue of which she was not the true exemplar.
Through Leadenhall and Cornhill and so to Chepe, between lines of liveried
citizens, Anne's show progressed. At the cross on Cheapside the Mayor and
corporation awaited the Queen; and the Recorder, "Master Baker," with many
courtly compliments, handed her the city's gift of a thousand marks in a
purse of gold, "which she thankfully received." That she did so was noted
with sneering contempt by Katharine's friends. "As soon as she received
the purse of money she placed it by her side in the litter: and thus she
showed that she was a person of low descent. For there stood by her at the
time the captain of the King's guard, with his men and twelve lacqueys;
and when the sainted Queen had passed by for _her_ coronation, she handed
the money to the captain of the guard to be divided amongst the
halberdiers and lacqueys. Anne did not do so, but kept them for
herself."[102] St. Paul's and Ludgate, Fleet Street and Temple Bar, all
offered their official adulation, whilst the staring people stood by dumb.
Westminster Hall, into which Anne's litter was borne for the feast, was
richly hung with arras and "newly glazed." A regal throne with a canopy
was set on high for Anne, and a great sideboard of gold plate testified to
the King's generosity to his new wife. But after she had changed her
garments and was welcomed with open arms by Henry at his new palace of
Westminster, her disappointment broke out. "How like you the look of the
city, sweetheart?" asked the King. "Sir," she replied, "the city itself
was well enow; but I saw many caps on heads and heard but few
tongues."[103]
The next day, Sunday, Anne was crowned by Cranmer with full ceremony in
Westminster Abbey, and for days thereafter banqueting, tilting, and the
usual roystering went on; and the great-granddaughter of Alderman Boleyn
felt that at last she was Queen indeed. Henry, too, had had his way, and
again could hope that a son born in wedlock might perpetuate the name of
Tudor on the throne of England. But he was in deadly fear, for the
prospect was black all around him. Public indignation in England grew
apace[104] at the religious changes and at the prospect of war; but what
most aroused Henry's alarm was the sudden coldness of France, and the
probability of a great Catholic coalition against him. Norfolk and Lord
Rochford with a stately train had gone to join in the interview between
Francis and the Pope, in the hope that the joint presence of France and
England might force Clement to recognise accomplished facts in order to
avoid the secession of England from the Church. Although it suited Francis
to promote the antagonism between Henry and the Emperor by keeping the
divorce proceedings dragging on in Rome, it did not suit him for England
to defy the Papacy by means of Cranmer's sentence, and so to change the
balance of power in Europe by driving Henry into permanent union with
German Protestants whilst Francis was forced to side with the Emperor on
religious grounds. So long as Henry remained undivorced and unmarried
anything might happen. He might sate of his mistress and tire of the
struggle against Rome, or be driven by fear of war to take a conciliatory
course, and in any of these cases he must needs pay for France's aid; but
now that his divorce and remarriage were as valid as a duly authorised
Archbishop could make them, the utility of Anne as an aid to French
foreign policy disappeared. The actual marriage therefore deprived her of
the sympathies of the French party in the English Court, which had
hitherto sided with her, and the effects were immediately seen in the
attitude of Francis.
Before Norfolk could reach the south of France news came to him that the
Pope, coerced by the Emperor, had issued a brief declaring all of Henry's
proceedings in England to be nullified and he and his abettors
excommunicated, unless of his own accord he restored things to their
former condition before September.[105] It was plain, therefore, that any
attempt at the coming interview to reconcile Clement with Henry's action
would be fruitless. Norfolk found Francis also much cooler than before,
and sent back his nephew Rochford post haste to England to beg the King's
instructions. He arrived at Court in early August, at a time when Henry's
perplexity was at its height. He had learnt of the determination of
Francis to greet the Pope and carry through the marriage between the Duke
of Orleans and Katharine de Medici, whether the King of England's demands
were satisfied by Clement or not. He now knew that the dreaded sentence of
excommunication pended over him and his instruments. If he had been left
to his own weakness he would probably have given way, or at least have
sought compromise. If Norfolk had been at his elbow, the old aristocratic
English party might also have stayed the King's hand. But Cromwell, bold
and astute, and Anne, with the powerful lever of her unborn child, which
might be a son, knew well that they had gone too far to return, and that
defiance of the Papacy was the only road open to them. Already at the end
of June Henry had gone as far as to threaten an appeal from the Pope to
the General Council of the Church, the meeting of which was then being
discussed; but now that he knew that Francis was failing him, and the Pope
had finally cast down the gage, he took the next great step which led to
England's separation from Rome. Norfolk was recalled, and Gardiner
accredited to Francis only with a watching brief during the Papal
interview at Nice, whilst Henry's ambassadors in Rome were recalled, and
English agents were sent to Germany to seek alliances with the German
Protestant princes. When, therefore, Norfolk arrived in England, he found
that in his two months' absence Cromwell had steered the ship of state
further away than ever from the traditional policy of the English
conservatives; namely, one of balance between the two great Catholic
powers; and that England was isolated, but for the doubtful friendship of
those vassal princes of the Empire who professed the dreaded new heresy.
Thenceforward the ruin of Anne and Cromwell was one of the main objects of
Norfolk and the noble party.
The treatment meted out to Katharine during the same time followed a
similar impulse. Chapuys had been informed that, the King having now taken
a legal wife, Katharine could no longer be called Queen, but Princess
Dowager of Wales, and that her regal household could not be kept up; and
on the 3rd July Katharine's principal officers were ordered to convey a
similar message to her personally. The message was roughly worded. It
could only be arrogance and vainglory, she was told, that made her retain
or usurp the title of Queen. She was much mistaken if she imagined that
her husband would ever live with her again, and by her obstinate contumacy
she would cause wars and bloodshed, as well as danger to herself and her
daughter, as both would be made to feel the King's displeasure. The
Queen's answer, as might have been expected, was as firm as usual. She was
the King's legitimate wife, and no reward or fear in the world would ever
make her abandon her right to the title she bore. It was not vainglory
that moved her, for to be the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabel was a
greater honour than to be a Queen. Henry might punish her, she said, or
even her daughter, "Yet neither for that, nor a thousand deaths, would she
consent to damn her soul or that of her husband the King."[106] The King,
beside himself with rage, could do no more than warn Katharine's household
that they must all treat their mistress as Princess of Wales, or suffer
the penalty. As for Katharine, no punishment short of death could move
her; and Cromwell himself, in admiration at her answer, said that "nature
had injured her in not making her a man, for she would have surpassed in
fame all the heroes of history."[107]
When a few days after this Katharine was removed to Buckden, crowds
followed her with tears and blessings along the road, even as they had
followed the Princess Mary shortly before, "as if she were God Almighty,"
as Anne said. In defiance of Henry's threats, "God save the Queen" rang
high and clear wherever she went, and the people, "wishing her joy,
comfort, and all manner of prosperity, and mishap to her enemies, begged
her with tears to let them serve her; for they were all ready to die for
her sake."[108] Anne's spite at such demonstrations was characteristic.
Katharine possessed a very rich and gorgeous length of stuff, which she
had brought from Spain to serve as a christening robe if she should have a
son and heir. Anne's time was drawing near, and she would not be content
until the King had demanded of his wife the Spanish material to serve as a
robe for the Prince of Wales, which he was confident would be born to
Anne. "God forbid," replied Katharine, "that I should ever give help or
countenance in a case so horrible and abominable as this!" and the
indignity of forcible searching of her chests for the stuff at least was
not insisted upon then.
Anne's own position was hardly a happy one; her one hope being that the
coming child would be a son, as the King was assured by astrologers that
it would be. For amorous Henry was already tiring somewhat of her, and
even Cromwell's tone was less confident than before. Early in August,
Henry left her at Greenwich to go to Windsor alone, for the first time
since they had been together. Sometime in July she had insisted upon a
very sumptuous bed, which had formed part of a French royal ransom, being
taken out of the treasure-room for the birth of the expected heir. It is
well, sneered Chapuys, in the first days of September, that she got it
betimes, "otherwise she would not have it now, for she has been for some
time past very jealous of the King; and, with good cause, spoke about it
in words that he did not like. He told her that she must wink at such
things, and put up with them, as her betters had done before her. He could
at any time cast her down as easily as he had raised her." Frequent
bickerings of this sort went on during the last weeks of Anne's pregnancy;
but on Sunday, 7th September, the day that was to heal all differences
came. Henry had defied the greatest power in the world, had acted basely
and brutally to his legal wife, and had incurred the reprobation of his
own people for the sake of having a son, and on the fateful day mentioned
a fair girl baby was born to Anne at Greenwich.
The official rejoicings were held, but beneath the surface every one knew
that a tragedy lurked,[109] for unless a son was born to Anne her doom was
sealed. Henry had asserted his mastership in his own realm and had defied
Christendom. He had found that his subjects, however sulkily, had accepted
his action without open revolt; and that Charles, notwithstanding the
insult to his house, was still speaking softly through his ambassadors. If
a great princess like Katharine could thus be repudiated without disaster
to his realm, it would indeed be easy for him to cast away "that noughty
pake, Nan Bullen," if she failed to satisfy his desire for a son. But in
the meanwhile it was necessary for him to secure, so far as he could, the
succession of his new daughter, since Cranmer's decision had rendered
Mary, Princess of Wales, of whom her father had been so proud,
illegitimate. Accordingly, immediately after the child Elizabeth was
christened, heralds proclaimed in the King's name that Princess Mary was
thenceforward to lose her title and pre-eminence, the badge upon her
servants' coats being replaced by the arms of the King, and the baby Lady
Elizabeth was to be recognised as the King's only legitimate heir and
Princess of Wales. In vain the imperial ambassador protested and talked to
Cromwell of possible war, in which England might be ruined, which Cromwell
admitted but reminded him that the Emperor would not benefit thereby; in
vain Katharine from her retirement at Buckden urged Chapuys and the
Emperor to patronise Reginald Pole as a possible threat to Henry; in vain
Princess Mary herself, in diplomatic language, told her father that he
might give her what title he liked, but that she herself would never admit
her illegitimacy or her mother's repudiation; in vain Bishop Fisher and
Chapuys counselled the invasion of England and the overturn of Henry:
Cromwell knew that there was no drawing back for him, and that the
struggle must go on now to the bitter end.
Anne with the birth of her daughter became more insolent and exacting than
ever. Nothing would satisfy her but the open degradation of Katharine and
her daughter, and Henry in this respect seems to have had no spark of
generous or gentlemanly feeling. Irritated by what he considered the
disobedience of his wife and child, and doubtless also by their constant
recourse for support and advice to the Emperor's ambassador against him,
he dismissed Mary's household and ordered her to go to Hatfield and serve
as maid the Princess Elizabeth. Mary was ready with her written protest,
which Chapuys had drafted for her, but, having made it, decided to submit;
and was borne to Hatfield in scornful dudgeon, to serve "the bastard" of
three months old. When she arrived the Duke of Suffolk asked her if she
would go and pay her respects to "the Princess." "I know of no other
princess but myself," replied Mary. "The daughter of Lady Pembroke has no
right to such a title. But," added she, "as the King acknowledges her I
may call her sister, as I call the Duke of Richmond brother." Mary was the
true daughter of her proud mother, and bluff Charles Brandon got many a
tart answer from her before he gave her up in despair to perform a similar
mission to her mother at Buckden.
Katharine had never changed her tone. Knowing Henry's weakness, she had
always pressed for the final Papal decision in her favour, which she
insisted would bring her husband to his knees, as it doubtless would have
done if he had stood alone. For a time the Pope and the King of France
endeavoured to find a _via media_ which should save appearances, for
Charles would not bind himself to carry out by force the Papal deposition
of Henry, which Clement wanted. But Katharine would have no compromise,
nor did it suit Cromwell or Anne, though the former was apparently anxious
to avoid offending the Emperor. Parliament, moreover, was summoned for the
15th January 1534, to give the sanction of the nation to Henry's final
defiance of Rome; and persistence in the path to which the King's desire
for a son and his love for Anne had dragged England, was now the only
course open to him. Suffolk and a deputation of councillors were
consequently sent once more with an ultimatum to Katharine. Accompanied by
a large armed force to intimidate the Queen and the people who surrounded
her, the deputation saw her on the 18th December; and Suffolk demanded
that she should recognise Cranmer's decision and abandon her appeal to
Rome; whilst her household and herself were to take the oath of allegiance
to the King in the new form provided. The alternative was that she should
be deprived of her servants and be removed to Fotheringay or Somersame,
seated in the midst of pestilential marshes.[110] Suffolk was rough in his
manner, and made short work of the English household, nearly all of whom
were dismissed and replaced by others; but he found Katharine the same
hard woman as ever. Considering all the King had done for her and hers, he
said, it was disgraceful that she should worry him as she had done for
years, putting him to vast expense in embassies to Rome and elsewhere, and
keeping him in turmoil with his neighbours. Surely she had grown tired of
her obstinacy by this time, and would abandon her appeal to Rome. If she
did so the King would do anything for her; but if not he would clip her
wings and effectually punish her. As a beginning, he said, they were going
to remove her to Fotheringay. Katharine had heard such talk many times
before, though less rudely worded; and she replied in the usual tone. She
looked to the Pope alone, and cared nothing for the Archbishop of
Canterbury. As for going to Fotheringay, that she would not do. The King
might work his will; but unless she was dragged thither by main force she
would not go, or she would be guilty of suicide, so unhealthy was the
place. Some of the members of the household were recalcitrant, and the two
priests, Abell and Barker, were sent to the Tower. The aged Spanish Bishop
of Llandaff, Jorge de Ateca, the Queen's confessor, was also warned that
he must go, and De la Sá, her apothecary, and a physician, both Spaniards;
but at her earnest prayers they were allowed to remain pending an
appeal.[111] The Queen's women attendants were also told they must
depart, but upon Katharine saying that she would not undress or go to bed
unless she had proper help, two of them were allowed to stay. For a whole
week the struggle went on, every device and threat being employed to break
down the Queen's resistance. She was as hard as adamant. All the servants
who remained but the Spaniards, who spoke no English, had to swear not to
treat her as Queen, and she said she would treat them as gaolers. On the
sixth day of Suffolk's stay at Buckden, pack animals were got ready, and
preparations made for removing the establishment to Fotheringay. But they
still had to reckon with Katharine. Locking herself in her chamber, she
carried on a colloquy with her oppressors through a chink in the wall. "If
you wish to take me," she declared, "you must break down my door;" but,
though the country gentlemen around had been summoned to the aid of the
King's commissioners, and the latter were well armed, such was the ferment
and indignation in the neighbourhood--and indeed throughout the
country--that violence was felt to be unwise, and Katharine was left in
such peace as she might enjoy.[112] Well might Suffolk write, as he did,
to Norfolk: "We find here the most obstinate woman that may be; inasmuch
as we think surely there is no other remedy than to convey her by force to
Somersame. Concerning this we have nothing in our instructions; we pray
your good lordship that we may have knowledge of the King's pleasure." All
this petty persecution was, of course, laid at the door of Anne by
Katharine's friends and the Catholic majority; for Cromwell was clever in
avoiding his share of the responsibility. "The lady," they said, "would
never be satisfied until both the Queen and her daughter had been done to
death, either by poison or otherwise; and Katharine was warned to take
care to fasten securely the door of her chamber at night, and to have the
room searched before she retired.[113]
In the meantime England and France were drifting further apart. If Henry
finally decided to brave the Papal excommunication, Francis dared not make
common cause with him. The Bishop of Paris (Du Bellay) once more came
over, and endeavoured to find a way out of the maze. Anne, whom he had
befriended before, received him effusively, kissing him on the cheek and
exerting all her witchery upon him; but it was soon found that he brought
an ultimatum from his King; and when Henry began to bully him and abuse
Francis for deserting him, the bishop cowed him with a threat of immediate
war. The compromise finally arrived at was that if the Pope before the
following Easter (1534) would withdraw his sentence against Henry, England
would remain within the pale of the Church. Otherwise the measure drafted
for presentation to Parliament entirely throwing off the Papal supremacy
would be proceeded with. This was the parting of the ways, and the
decision was left to Clement VII.
Parliament opened on the 15th January, perhaps the most fateful assembly
that ever met at Westminster. The country, as we have seen, was indignant
at the treatment of Katharine and her daughter, but the instinct of
loyalty to the King was strong, and there was no powerful centre around
which revolt might crystallise. The clergy especially--even those who,
like Stokesley, Fox, and Gardiner, were Henry's instruments--dreaded the
great changes that portended; and an attempt to influence Parliament by a
declaration of the clergy in Convocation against the King's first
marriage, failed, notwithstanding the flagrant violence with which
signatures were sought. With difficulty, even though the nobles known to
favour Katharine were not summoned, a bill granting a dowry to the Queen
as Dowager Princess of Wales was passed; but the House of Commons,
trembling for the English property in the imperial dominions, threw it
out. The prospect for a time looked black for the great ecclesiastical
changes that were contemplated, and the hopes of Katharine's friends rose
again.
The Bishop of Paris in the meanwhile had contrived to frighten Clement and
his Cardinals, by his threatening talk of English schism and the universal
spread of dissent, into an insincere and half-hearted acquiescence in a
compromise that would submit the question of a divorce to a tribunal of
two Cardinals sitting at Cambray to save appearances, and deciding in
favour of Henry. When the French ambassador Castillon came to Henry with
this news (early in March 1534) the King had experienced the difficulty of
bringing Parliament and Convocation to his views; and, again, if left to
himself, he would probably have yielded. But Anne and Cromwell, and indeed
Cranmer, were now in the same boat; and any wavering on the part of the
King would have meant ruin to them all. They did their best to stiffen
Henry, but he was nearly inclined to give way behind their backs; and
after the French ambassador had left the Council unsuccessful, Henry had a
long secret talk with him in the garden, in which he assured him that he
would not have anything done hastily against the Holy See.
But whilst the rash and turbulent Bishop of Paris was hectoring Clement at
Rome and sending unjustifiably encouraging messages to England,
circumstances on both sides were working against the compromise which the
French desired so much. Cromwell and Anne were panic-stricken at the idea
of reopening the question of the marriage before any Papal tribunal, and
kept up Henry's resentment against the Pope. Henry's pride also was
wounded by a suggestion of the French that, as a return for Clement's
pliability, Alexander de Medici, Duke of Florence, might marry the
Princess Mary. Cromwell's diplomatic management of the Parliamentary
opposition and the consequent passage of the bill abolishing the
remittance of Peter's pence to Rome, also encouraged Henry to think that
he might have his own way after all; and the chances of his making further
concessions to the Pope again diminished. A similar process was going on
in Rome. Whilst Clement was smilingly listening to talk of reconciliation
for the sake of keeping England under his authority, he well knew that
Henry could only be moved by fear; and all the thunderbolts of the Church
were being secretly forged to launch upon the King of England.
On the 23rd March 1534 the consistory of Cardinals sat, the French
Cardinals being absent; and the final judgment on the validity of Henry's
marriage with Katharine was given by the head of the Church. The cause
which had stirred Europe for five years was settled beyond appeal so far
as the Roman Church could settle it. Katharine was Henry's lawful wife,
and Anne Boleyn was proclaimed by the Church to be his concubine. Almost
on the very day that the gage was thus thrown down by the Pope, Henry had
taken similar action on his own account. In the previous sitting of
Parliament the King had been practically acknowledged as head of the
Church in his own dominions; and now all appeals and payments to the Pope
were forbidden, and the bishops of England were entirely exempt from his
spiritual jurisdiction and control. To complete the emancipation of the
country from the Papacy, on the 23rd March 1534 a bill (the Act of
Succession) was read for the third time, confirming the legality of the
marriage of Henry and Anne, and settling the succession to the crown upon
their issue to the exclusion of the Princess Mary. Cranmer's divorce
decision was thus ratified by statute; and any person questioning in word
or print the legitimacy of Elizabeth's birth was adjudged guilty of high
treason. Every subject of the King, moreover, was to take oath to
maintain this statute on pain of death. The consummation was reached: for
good or for evil England was free from Rome, and the fair woman for whose
sake the momentous change had been wrought, sat planning schemes of
vengeance against the two proud princesses, mother and daughter, who still
refused to bow the neck to her whom they proclaimed the usurper of their
rights.
CHAPTER VI
1534-1536
A FLEETING TRIUMPH--POLITICAL INTRIGUE AND THE BETRAYAL OF ANNE
In the previous pages we have witnessed the process by which a vain,
arrogant man, naturally lustful and held by no moral or material
restraint, had been drawn into a position which, when he took the first
step that led to it, he could not have contemplated. In ordinary
circumstances there would have been no insuperable difficulty in his
obtaining a divorce, and he probably expected little. The divorce,
however, in this case involved the question of a change in the national
alliance and a shifting of the weight of England to the side of France;
and the Emperor by his power over the Pope had been able to frustrate the
design, not entirely on account of his family connection with Katharine,
but rather as a question of international policy. The dependent position
of the Pope had effectually stood in the way of the compromise always
sought by France, and the resistance to his will had made Henry the more
determined to assert himself, with the natural result that the dispute had
developed into religious schism. There is a school of historians which
credits Henry personally with the far-reaching design of shaking off the
ecclesiastical control of Rome in order to augment the national
greatness; but there seems to me little evidence to support the view. When
once the King had bearded the Papacy, rather than retrace the steps he had
taken and confess himself wrong, it was natural that many of his subjects
who conscientiously leant towards greater freedom in religion than Rome
would allow, were prepared to carry the lesson further, as the German
Lutherans had done, but I can find no reason to believe that Henry desired
to initiate any change of system in the direction of freedom: his aim
being, as he himself said, simply to make himself Pope as well as King
within his own realm. Even that position, as we have seen in the
aforegoing chapters, was only reached gradually under the incentive of
opposition, and by the aid of stouter hearts and clearer brains than his
own: and if Henry could have had his way about the marriage, as he
conceivably might have done on many occasions during the struggle by a
very slight change in the circumstances, there would have been, so far as
he personally was concerned, no Reformation in England at the time.
One of the most curious phases in the process here described is the
deterioration notable in Henry's character as the ecclesiastical and moral
restraints that influenced him were gradually cast aside. We have seen him
as a kind and courteous husband, not more immoral than other men of his
age and station; a father whose love for his children was intense; and a
cultured gentleman of a headstrong but not unlovable character. Resistance
to his will had touched his pride and hardened his heart, until at the
period which we have now reached (1534) we see him capable of brutal and
insulting treatment of his wife and elder daughter, of which any gentleman
would be ashamed. On the other hand, the attitude of Katharine and Mary
was exactly that best calculated to drive to fury a conceited, overbearing
man, loving his supreme power as Henry did. It was, of course, heroic and
noble of the two ladies to stand upon their undoubted rights as they did;
but if Katharine by adopting a religious life had consented to a divorce,
the decree of nullity would not have been pronounced; her own position
would have been recognised, her daughter's legitimacy saved, and the
separation from Rome at least deferred, if not prevented. There was no
such deterioration in Anne's character as in that of Henry; for it was bad
from the first, and consistently remained so. Her ambition was the noblest
trait in her nature; and she served it with a petty personal malignity
against those who seemed to stand in her way that goes far to deprive her
of the pity that otherwise would go out to her in her own martyrdom at the
hands of the fleshly tyrant whose evil nature she had been so greatly
instrumental in developing.
It was undoubtedly to Anne's prompting that the ungenerous treatment of
the Princess Mary was due, a treatment that aroused the indignation even
of those to whom its execution was entrusted. Henry was deeply attached to
his daughter, but it touched his pride for her to refuse to submit without
protest to his behest. When Norfolk told him of the attitude of the
Princess on her being taken to Hatfield to attend upon Elizabeth, he
decided to bring his parental authority to bear upon her personally, and
decided to see her. But Anne, "considering the easiness or rather levity
of the King, and that the great beauty and goodness of the Princess might
overcome his displeasure with her, and, moved by her virtues and his
fatherly pity for her, be induced to treat her better and restore her
title to her, sent Cromwell and other messengers posting after the King to
prevent him, at any cost, from seeing or speaking to the Princess."[114]
When Henry arrived at Hatfield and saw his baby daughter Elizabeth, the
elder Princess begged to be allowed to salute him. The request was not
granted; but when the King mounted his horse in the courtyard Mary stood
upon a terrace above to see him. The King was informed of her presence, or
saw her by chance; and, as she caught his eye, she threw herself upon her
knees in an attitude of prayer, whereupon the father touched his bonnet,
and bowed low and kindly to the daughter he was wronging so bitterly. He
explained afterwards that he avoided speaking to her as she was so
obstinate with him, "thanks to her Spanish blood." When the French
ambassador mentioned her kindly, during the conversation, he noted that
Henry's eyes filled with tears, and that he could not refrain from
praising her.[115] But for Anne's jealousy for her own offspring, it is
probable that Mary's legitimacy would have been established by Act of
Parliament; as Cromwell at this time was certainly in favour of it: but
Anne was ever on the watch, especially to arouse Henry's anger by hinting
that Mary was looking to foreigners for counsel, as indeed she was. It was
this latter element in which danger principally lurked. Katharine
naturally appealed to her kin for support; and all through her trouble it
was this fact, joined with her firm refusal to acknowledge Henry's supreme
power, that steeled her husband's heart. But for the King's own daughter
and undoubted born subject to act in the same way made her, what her
mother never had been, a dangerous centre around which the disaffected
elements might gather. The old nobility, as we have seen, were against
Anne: and Henry quite understood the peril of having in his own family a
person who commanded the sympathies of the strongest foreign powers in
Europe, as well as the most influential elements in England. He angrily
told the Marquis of Exeter that it was only confidence in the Emperor
that made Mary so obstinate; but that he was not afraid of the Emperor,
and would bring the girl to her senses: and he then went on to threaten
Exeter himself if he dared to communicate with her. The same course was
soon afterwards taken with Norfolk, who as well as his wife was forbidden
to see the Princess, although he certainly had shown no desire to extend
much leniency to her.
The treatment of Katharine was even more atrocious, though in her case it
was probably more the King's irritated pride than his fears that was the
incentive. When the wretched Elizabeth Barton, the Nun of Kent, was
prosecuted for her crazy prophecies against the King every possible effort
was made to connect the unfortunate Queen with her, though unsuccessfully,
and the attempt to force Katharine to take the oath prescribed by the new
Act of Succession against herself and her daughter was obviously a piece
of persecution and insult.[116] The Commission sent to Buckden to extort
the new oath of allegiance to Henry, and to Anne as Queen, consisted of
Dr. Lee, the Archbishop of York, Dr. Tunstall, Bishop of Durham; and the
Bishop of Chester; and the scene as described by one of the Spanish
servants is most curious. When the demand was made that she should take
the oath of allegiance to Anne as Queen, Katharine with fine scorn
replied, "Hold thy peace, bishop: speak to me no more. These are the wiles
of the devil. I am Queen, and Queen will I die: by right the King can have
no other wife, and let this be your answer."[117] Assembling her
household, she addressed them, and told them they could not without sin
swear allegiance to the King and Anne in a form that would deny the
supreme spiritual authority of the Pope: and taking counsel with her
Spanish chamberlain, Francisco Felipe, they settled between them that the
Spaniards should answer interrogatories in Spanish in such a way that by a
slight mispronunciation their answer could be interpreted, "I acknowledge
that the King has made himself head of the Church" (_se ha hecho cabeza de
la iglesia_), whereas the Commissioners would take it as meaning "that the
King be created head of the Church" (_sea hecho cabeza de la iglesia_);
and on the following morning the wily chamberlain and his countrymen saved
appearances and their consciences at the same time by a pun. But when the
formal oath of allegiance to Anne was demanded, Felipe, speaking for the
rest, replied, "I have taken one oath of allegiance to my lady Queen
Katharine. She still lives, and during her life I know no other Queen in
this realm." Lee then threatened them with punishment for refusal, and a
bold Burgundian lackey, Bastian,[118] burst out with, "Let the King banish
us, but let him not order us to be perjurers." The bishop in a rage told
him to begone at once; and, nothing loath, Bastian knelt at his mistress's
feet and bade her farewell; taking horse at once to ride to the coast.
Katharine in tears remonstrated with Lee for dismissing her servant
without reference to her; and the bishop, now that his anger was calmed,
sent messengers to fetch Bastian back; which they did not do until he had
reached London.[119]
This fresh indignity aroused Katharine's friends both in England and
abroad. The Emperor had already remonstrated with the English ambassador
on the reported cruel treatment of the Queen and her daughter, and Henry
now endeavoured to justify himself in a long letter (June 1534). As for
the Queen, he said, she was being treated "in everything to the best that
can be devised, whom we do order and entertain as we think most expedient,
and as to us seemeth prudent. And the like also of our daughter the Lady
Mary: for we think it not meet that any person should prescribe unto us
how we should order our own daughter, we being her natural father." He
expressed himself greatly hurt that the Emperor should think him capable
of acting unkindly, notwithstanding that the Lady Katharine "hath very
disobediently behaved herself towards us, as well in contemning and
setting at naught our laws and statutes, as in many other ways." Just
lately, he continues, he had sent three bishops to exhort her, "in most
loving fashion," to obey the law; and "she hath in most ungodly,
obstinate, and inobedient wise, wilfully resisted, set at naught and
contemned our laws and ordinances: so if we would administer to her any
rigour or extremity she were undoubtedly within the extreme danger of our
laws."
The blast of persecution swept over the land. The oaths demanded by the
new statutes were stubbornly resisted by many. Fisher and More, as learned
and noble as any men in the land, were sent to the Tower (April 1534) to
be entrapped and done to death a year later. Throughout the country the
Commissioners with plenary powers were sent to administer the new oaths,
and those citizens who cavilled at taking them were treated as traitors to
the King. But all this did not satisfy Anne whilst Katharine and Mary
remained recalcitrant and unpunished for the same offence. Henry was in
dire fear, however, of some action of the Emperor in enforcement of the
Papal excommunication against him and his kingdom, which according to the
Catholic law he had forfeited by the Pope's ban. Francis, willing as he
was to oppose the Emperor, dared not expose his own kingdom to
excommunication by siding with Henry, and the latter was statesman enough
to see, as indeed was Cromwell, that extreme measures against Mary would
turn all Christendom against him, and probably prove the last unbearable
infliction that would drive his own people to aid a foreign invasion. So,
although Anne sneered at the King's weakness, as she called it, and
eagerly anticipated his projected visit to Francis, during which she would
remain Regent in England, and be able to wreak her wicked will on the
young Princess, the King, held by political fear, and probably, too, by
some fatherly regard, refused to be nagged by his wife into the murder of
his daughter, and even relinquished the meeting with Francis rather than
leave England with Anne in power.
In the meanwhile Katharine's health grew worse. Henry told the French
ambassador in January, soon after Suffolk's attempt to administer the
first oath to her, that "she was dropsical and could not live long": and
his enemies were ready with the suggestion--which was probably
unfounded--that she was being poisoned. She shut herself up in her own
chamber, and refused to eat the food prepared by the new servants; what
little food she took being cooked in her own room by her one maid. Early
in the summer (May) she was removed from Buckden to Kimbolton Castle,
within the miasmic influence of the fens, and there was no attempt to
conceal the desire on the part of the King and those who had brought him
to this pass that Katharine should die, for by that means alone, it
seemed, could foreign intervention and civil war be averted. Katharine
herself was, as we have seen, full of suspicion. In March Chapuys reported
that she had sent a man to London to procure some old wine for her, as she
refused to drink the wine provided for her use. "They were trying," he
said, "to give her artificial dropsy." Two months later, just after the
stormy scene when Lee and Tunstall had endeavoured to extort from the
Queen the oath to the new Act of Succession, Chapuys in hot indignation
suddenly appeared at Richmond, where the King was, to protest against such
treatment. Henry was intensely annoyed and offended, and refused to see
the ambassador. He was master, he said, in his own realm; and it was no
good coming to him with such remonstrances. No wonder that Chapuys
concluded, "Everybody fears some ill turn will be done to the Queen,
seeing the rudeness to which she is daily subjected, both in deeds and
words; especially as the concubine has said that she will not cease till
she has got rid of her; and as the prophecies say that one Queen of
England is to be burnt, she hopes it will be Katharine."[120]
Early in June Katharine urged strongly that Chapuys should travel to
Kimbolton to see her, alleging the bad condition of her health as a
reason. The King and Cromwell believed that her true object in desiring an
interview was to devise plans with her nephew's ambassador for obtaining
the enforcement of the papal censure,[121] which would have meant the
subversion of Henry's power; and for weeks Chapuys begged for permission
to see her in vain. "Ladies were not to be trusted," Cromwell told him;
whilst fresh Commissioners were sent, one after the other, to extort, by
force if necessary, the oath of Katharine's lady attendants to the Act of
Succession, much to the Queen's distress.[122] At length, tired of
waiting, the ambassador told Cromwell that he was determined to start at
once; which he did two days later, on the 16th July. With a train of sixty
horsemen, his own household and Spaniards resident in England, he rode
through London towards the eastern counties, ostensibly on a religious
pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham. Riding through the leafy lanes of
Hertfordshire in the full summer tide, solaced by music, minstrelsy, and
the quaint antics of Chapuys' fool, the party were surprised on the second
day of their journey to see gallop past them on the road Stephen Vaughan,
one of the King's officers who spoke Spanish; and later, when they had
arrived within a few miles of Kimbolton, they were met by the same man,
accompanied this time by a humble servitor of Katharine, bringing to the
pilgrims wine and provisions in abundance, but also the ill news that the
King had ordered that Chapuys was to be forbidden access to the Queen. The
ambassador was exceedingly indignant. He did not wish to offend the King,
he said, but, having come so far and being now in the immediate
neighbourhood, he would not return unsuccessful without an effort to
obtain a more authoritative decision. Early the next morning one of
Katharine's old officers came to Chapuys and repeated the prohibition,
begging him not even to pass through the village, lest the King should
take it ill. Other messages passed, but all to the same effect. Poor
Katharine herself sent secret word that she was as thankful for Chapuys'
journey as if it had been successful, and hinted that it would be a
consolation to her if some of her countrymen could at least approach the
castle. Needless to say that the Spaniards gathered beneath the walls of
the castle and chatted gallantly across the moat to the ladies upon the
terraces, and some indeed, including the jester, are asserted to have
found their way inside the castle, where they were regaled heartily, and
the fool played some of the usual tricks of his motley.[123] Chapuys, in
high dudgeon, returned by another road to London without attempting to
complete his pilgrimage to Walsingham, secretly spied upon as he was, the
whole way, by the King's envoy, Vaughan. "Tell Cromwell," he said to the
latter, as he discovered himself on the outskirts of London, "that I
should have judged it more honourable if the King and he had informed me
of his intention before I left London, so that all the world should not
have been acquainted with a proceeding which I refrain from
characterising. But the Queen," he continued, "nevertheless had cause to
thank him (Cromwell) since the rudeness shown to her would now be so
patent that it could not well be denied."
Henry and Cromwell had good reason to fear foreign machinations to their
detriment. The Emperor and Francis were in ominous negotiations; for the
King of France could not afford to break with the Papacy, the rising of
Kildare in Ireland was known to have the sympathy, if not the aid, of
Spain, and it was felt throughout Christendom that the Emperor must,
sooner or later, give force to the Papal sentence against England to avoid
the utter loss of prestige which would follow if the ban of Rome was after
all seen to be utterly innocuous. A sympathetic English lord told Chapuys
secretly that Cromwell had ridiculed the idea of the Emperor's attacking
England; for his subjects would not put up with the consequent loss of
trade. But if he did, continued Cromwell, "the death of Katharine and Mary
would put an end to all the trouble." Chapuys told his informant, for
Cromwell's behoof, that if any harm was done to either of the ladies the
Emperor would have the greater cause for quarrel.
In the autumn Mary fell seriously ill. She had been obliged to follow "the
bastard," Elizabeth, against her will, for ever intriguing cleverly to
avoid humiliation to herself. But the long struggle against such odds
broke down her health, and Henry, who, in his heart of hearts, could
hardly condemn his daughter's stubbornness, so like his own, softened to
the extent of his sending his favourite physician, Dr. Butts, to visit
her. A greater concession was to allow Katharine's two medical men to
attend the Princess; and permission was given to Katharine herself to see
her, but under conditions which rendered the concession nugatory. The
Queen wrote a pathetic letter in Spanish to Cromwell, praying that Mary
might be permitted to come and stay with her. "It will half cure her," she
urged. As a small boon, Henry had consented that the sick girl should be
sent to a house at no great distance from Kimbolton. "Alas!" urged
Katharine, "if it be only a mile away, I cannot visit her. I beseech that
she be allowed to come to where I am. I will answer for her security with
my life." But Cromwell or his master was full of suspicion of imperial
plots for the escape of Mary to foreign soil, and Katharine's maternal
prayer remained unheard.
The unhappy mother tried again soon afterwards to obtain access to her
sick daughter by means of Chapuys. She besought for charity's sake that
the King would allow her to tend Mary with her own hands. "You shall also
tell his Highness that there is no need for any other person but myself to
nurse her: I will put her in my own bed where I sleep, and will watch her
when needful." When Chapuys saw the King with this pathetic message Henry
was less arrogant than usual. "He wished to do his best for his daughter's
health; but he must be careful of his own honour and interests, which
would be jeopardised if Mary were conveyed abroad, or if she escaped, as
she easily might do if she were with her mother; for he had some suspicion
that the Emperor had a design to get her away." Henry threw all the blame
for Mary's obstinacy upon Katharine, who he knew was in close and constant
touch with his opponents: and the fear he expressed that the Emperor and
his friends in England would try to spirit Mary across the sea to
Flanders, where, indeed, she might have been made a thorn in her father's
side, were perfectly well founded, and these plans were at the time the
gravest peril that threatened Henry and England.[124]
Cruel, therefore, as his action towards his daughter may seem, it was
really prompted by pressing considerations of his own safety. Apart from
this desire to keep Mary away from foreign influence working against him
through her mother, Henry exhibited frequent signs of tenderness towards
his elder daughter, much to Anne's dismay. In May 1534, for instance, he
sent her a gentle message to the effect that he hoped she would obey him,
and that in such case her position would be preserved. But the girl was
proud and, not unnaturally, resentful, and sent back a haughty answer to
what she thought was an attempt to entrap her. To her foreign friends she
said that she believed her father meant to poison her, but that she cared
little. She was sure of going to heaven, and was only sorry for her
mother.
In the meanwhile Anne's influence over the King was weakening. She saw the
gathering clouds from all parts of Christendom ready to launch their
lightning upon her head, and ruin upon England for her sake; and her
temper, never good, became intolerable. Henry, having had his way, was now
face to face with the threatening consequences, and could ill brook
snappish petulance from the woman for whom he had brought himself to
brave the world. As usual with weak men, he pitied himself sincerely, and
looked around for comfort, finding none from Anne. Francis, eldest son of
the Church and most Christian King, was far from being the genial ally he
once had been, now that Henry was excommunicate; the German Protestant
princes even stood apart and rejected Henry's approaches for an alliance
to the detriment of their own suzerain;[125] and, worst of all, the
English lords of the North, Hussey, Dacre, and the rest of them, were in
close conspiracy with the imperialists for an armed rising aided from
abroad; which, if successful, would make short work of Henry and his
anti-Papal policy.[126] In return for all this danger, the King could only
look at the cross, discontented woman by his side, who apparently was as
incapable of bearing him a son as Katharine had been. For some months in
the spring of 1534 Anne had endeavoured to retain her hold upon him by
saying that she was again with child, and during the royal progress in the
midland counties in the summer Henry was more attentive than he had been
to the woman he still hoped might bear him a son, although her shrewish
temper sorely tried him and all around her. At length, however, the truth
had to be told, and Henry's hopes fled, and his eyes again turned
elsewhere for solace.
Anne knew that her position was unstable, and her husband's open
flirtation with a lady of the Court drove her to fury. Presuming upon her
former influence, she imperiously attempted to have her new rival removed
from the proximity of the King. Henry flared up at this, and let Anne
know, as brutally as language could put it, that the days of his
complaisance with her were over, and that he regretted having done so much
for her sake. Who the King's new lady-love was is not certain. Chapuys
calls her "a very beautiful and adroit young lady, for whom his love is
daily increasing, whilst the credit and insolence of the concubine (_i.e._
Anne) decreases." That the new favourite was supported by the aristocratic
party that opposed Anne and the religious changes is evident from Chapuys'
remark that "there is some good hope that if this love of the King's
continues the affairs of the Queen (Katharine) and the Princess will
prosper, for the young lady is greatly attached to them." Anne and her
family struggled to keep their footing, but when Henry had once plucked up
courage to shake off the trammels, he had all a weak man's violence and
obstinacy in following his new course. One of Princess Mary's household
came to tell Chapuys in October that "the King had turned Lady Rochford
(Anne's sister-in-law) out of the Court because she had conspired with the
concubine by hook or by crook to get rid of the young lady." The rise of
the new favourite immediately changed the attitude of the courtiers
towards Mary. "On Wednesday before leaving the More she (Mary) was visited
by all the ladies and gentlemen, regardless of the annoyance of Anne. The
day before yesterday (October 22nd) the Princess was at Richmond with the
brat (_garse, i.e._ Elizabeth), and the lady (Anne) came to see her
daughter accompanied by the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk and others, all
of whom went and saluted the Princess (Mary) with some of the ladies;
which was quite a new thing."
The death of Pope Clement and the advent of Cardinal Farnese as Paul III.,
known to be not too well affected towards the Emperor, seemed at this time
to offer a chance of the reconciliation of England with the Papacy: and
the aristocratic party in Henry's counsels hoped, now that the King had
grown tired of his second wife, that they might influence him by a fresh
appeal to his sensuality. France also took a hand in the game in its new
aspect, the aim being to obtain the hand of Mary for the Dauphin, to whom,
it will be recollected, she had been betrothed as a child, with the
legitimisation of the Princess and the return of Henry to the fold of the
Church with a French alliance. This would, of course, have involved the
repudiation of Anne, with the probable final result of a French domination
of England after the King's death. The Admiral of France, Chabot de Brion,
came to England late in the autumn to forward some such arrangement as
that described, and incidentally to keep alive Henry's distrust of the
Emperor, whilst threatening him that the Dauphin would marry a Spanish
princess if the King of England held aloof. But, though Anne's influence
over her husband was gone, Cromwell, the strong spirit, was still by his
side; and reconciliation with the Papacy in any form would have meant ruin
to him and the growing interests that he represented.
Even if Henry had now been inclined to yield to the Papacy, of which there
is no evidence, Cromwell had gone too far to recede; and when Parliament
met in November the Act of Supremacy was passed, giving the force of
statute law to the independence of the Church of England. Chabot de
Brion's mission was therefore doomed to failure from the first, and the
envoy took no pains to conceal his resentment towards Anne, the origin of
all the trouble that dislocated the European balance of power. There was
much hollow feasting and insincere professions of friendship between the
two kings, but it was clear now to the Frenchmen that, with Anne or
without her, Henry would bow his neck no more to the Papacy; and it was to
the Princess Mary that the Catholic elements looked for a future
restoration of the old state of things. A grand ball was given at Court in
Chabot's honour the day before he left London, and the dignified French
envoy sat in a seat of state by the side of Anne, looking at the dancing.
Suddenly, without apparent reason, she burst into a violent fit of
laughter. The Admiral of France, already in no very amiable mood, frowned
angrily, and, turning to her, said, "Are you laughing at me, madam, or
what?" After she had laughed to her heart's content, she excused herself
to him by saying that she was laughing because the King had told her that
he was going to fetch the Admiral's secretary to be introduced to her, and
on the way the King had met a lady who had made him forget everything
else.
Though Henry would not submit to the Papacy at the charming of Francis, he
was loath to forego the French alliance, and proposed a marriage between
the younger French prince, the Duke of Angoulême, and Elizabeth; and this
was under discussion during the early months of 1535. But it is clear
that, although the daughter of the second marriage was to be held
legitimate, Anne was to gain no accession of strength by the new alliance,
for the French flouted her almost openly, and Henry was already
contemplating a divorce from her. We are told by Chapuys that he only
desisted from the idea when a councillor told him that "if he separated
from 'the concubine' he would have to recognise the validity of his first
marriage, and, worst of all, submit to the Pope."[127] Who the councillor
was that gave this advice is not stated; but we may fairly assume that it
was Cromwell, who soon found a shorter, and, for him, a safer way of
ridding his master of a wife who had tired him and could bear him no son.
A French alliance, with a possible reconciliation with Rome in some form,
would not have suited Cromwell; for it would have meant a triumph for the
aristocratic party at Henry's Court, and the overthrow of the men who had
led Henry to defy the Papacy.
If the aristocratic party could influence Henry by means of the nameless
"new young lady," the Boleyns and reformers could fight with the same
weapons, and early in February 1535 we find Chapuys writing, "The young
lady formerly in this King's good graces is so no longer, and has been
succeeded by a cousin-german of the concubine, the daughter of the present
governess of the Princess."[128] This new mistress, whilst her little
reign lasted, worked well for Anne and Cromwell, but in the meantime the
conspiracy amongst the nobles grew and strengthened. Throughout the upper
classes in the country a feeling of deep resentment was felt at the
treatment of Mary, and there was hardly a nobleman, except Anne's father
and brother, who was not pledged to take up arms in her cause and against
the religious changes.[129] Cromwell's answer to the disaffection, of
which he was quite cognisant, was the closer keeping than ever of the
royal ladies, with threats of their death if they were the cause of a
revolt, and the stern enforcement of the oath prescribed by the Act of
Supremacy. The martyrdom of the London Carthusians for refusing to take
the oath of supremacy, and shortly afterwards the sacrifice of the
venerable Bishop Fisher, Sir Thomas More and Katharine's priest Abel, and
the renewed severity towards her favourite confessor, Friar Forest,[130]
soon also to be martyred with atrocious cruelty, shocked and horrified
England, and aroused the strongest reprobation in France and Rome, as well
as in the dominions of the Emperor; destroying for a time all hope of a
French alliance, and any lingering chance of a reconciliation with Rome
during Henry's life. All Catholic aspirations both at home and abroad
centred for the next year or so in the Princess Mary, and her father's
friendship was shunned even by Francis, except upon impossible conditions.
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 crushing 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 circumstances was doing its work upon a
constitution 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 pass 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 compassion," 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 passed at Eltham,
that news came to Chapuys from Dr. De la Sá that Katharine had relapsed
and was in grave peril. The ambassador 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 ambassador
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 friendship 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 ambassador
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 (Doña 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 ambassador 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 ambassador 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 principal 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 Sá, 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, reassured by the apparent improvement, the
ambassador 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 Mass 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
principal 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 document, 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 manus 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 Sá 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 Saturday, 9th January, Henry heard with
exultation that the incubus was raised from his shoulders. "God 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 Mass
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 nobles 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 bastard, 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 crushing 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 friendship 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 passionately
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 God 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 nobles 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 circumstances. 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 unchastity, 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 passion 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 friendship to the Princess
Mary, to assume a mien of rigid virtue and high principles which would be
likely to pique a sensual man like Henry without gratifying his passion
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 friendship 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 assured the imperial ambassador that Norfolk,
Suffolk, and the rest of the nobles 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
ambassador, 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 statesmanship and less courage.
Lady Exeter was the go-between who brought the imperial ambassador 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 God'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
ambassador.[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 ambassador 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 passed into
the chapel to high Mass 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 ambassadors 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 circumstances in the chapel. Anne at dinner
coarsely 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 nobles 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 nobles 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 bastardised 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 ambassador, Cromwell
appeared once more before his master after his five days' absence. What
passed 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 pronounced 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 nobles, including the Duke of
Norfolk and Anne's father, the Earl of Wiltshire, 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 passed 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 passed 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
nobleman. "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 principal 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 passionate 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 passages
had passed between him and Anne before her marriage; and there is
contemporary assertion 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 asserted 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 buttressed by the
"discovery" of Anne's infidelity, not even the nobles 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 Middlesex and Kent, as the offences were asserted 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 asserted 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-abasement 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 space 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. Scraps 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 assertion 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
pronouncing 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 asserted 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 pronounced 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 passed,
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 petitioned, put her out of her misery now that she was
prepared. The operation would not be painful, Kingston assured 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 principally
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,
passed 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 compassion upon her, assured 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 circumstances
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.
[Illustration: _JANE SEYMOUR_
_From a painting by_ HOLBEIN _in the Imperial Collection at Vienna_]
CHAPTER VII
1536-1540
PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT--JANE SEYMOUR AND ANNE OF CLEVES
From the moment that Henry abruptly left the lists at May-day on the
receipt of Cromwell's letter detailing the admissions of Smeaton, he saw
Anne no more. No pang of remorse, no wave of compassion passed over him.
He easily believed what he wished to believe, and Anne was left to the
tender mercies of Cromwell, to be done to death. Again Henry was a prey to
profound self-pity for ever having fallen under the enchantment of such a
wicked woman. He, of course, was not to blame for anything. He never was.
He was always the clement, just man whose unsuspecting goodness of heart
had been abused by others, and who tried to find distraction and to forget
the evil done him. On the very night of the day that Anne was arrested the
Duke of Richmond, Henry's son, now a grown youth, went, as was his custom,
into his father's room at Whitehall to bid him good night and ask his
blessing. The King, we are told,[167] fell a-weeping as he blessed his
son, "saying that he and his sister (Mary) might well be grateful to God
for saving them from the hands of that accursed and venomous harlot who
had intended to poison them." That Anne may have planned the assassination
of Mary is quite probable, even if she had no hand in the shortening of
Katharine's days, and this may have been the real hidden pretext of her
death acting upon Henry's fears for himself.[168] But if such were the
case, Henry, at least, was deserving of no pity, for when it was only
Katharine's life that was in danger he was, as we have seen, brutally
callous, and only awoke to the enormity of the "venomous harlot" when
Cromwell made him believe that his own safety was jeopardised. Then no
fate was too cruel for the woman he once had loved.
On the day preceding Anne's trial, Jane Seymour was brought from Sir
Nicholas Carew's house to another residence on the river bank, only a mile
from Whitehall Stairs, to be ready for her intended elevation as soon as
the Queen was disposed of. Here Jane was served for the few days she
stayed "very splendidly by the cooks and certain officers of the King, and
very richly adorned."[169] So certain was Henry that nothing would now
stand in the way of his new marriage that Jane was informed beforehand
that on the 15th, by three in the afternoon, she would hear of her
predecessor's condemnation; and Anne's cousin and enemy, Sir Francis
Brian, eagerly brought the news to the expectant lady at the hour
anticipated. The next day, when the sword of the French headsman had made
Henry indeed a widower, the King only awaited receipt of the intelligence
to enter his barge and seek the consolation of Jane Seymour. At six
o'clock in the morning of the 20th May, when the headless body of Anne,
barely cold, still awaited sepulture huddled in an old arrow-box in the
Church of St. Peter within the Tower, Jane was secretly carried by water
from her residence to Hampton Court; and before nine o'clock she had been
privately married to the King,[170] by virtue of a dispensation issued the
day previously by the accommodating Cranmer.[171] It would seem probable
that the day after the private espousals Jane travelled to her home in
Wiltshire, where she stayed for several days whilst preparations were
being made in the King's abodes for her reception as Queen: for all the
A's had to be changed to J's in the royal ciphers, and traces of Anne's
former presence abolished wherever possible. Whether Henry accompanied his
new wife to Wiltshire on this occasion is not quite certain, though from
Sir John Russell's account it is probable that he did. In any case the
King and his new wife visited Mercer's Hall, in Cheapside, on the 29th
May, St. Peter's Eve, to witness from the windows the civic ceremony of
the annual setting of the watch; and on the following day, 30th May, the
pair were formally married in the Queen's closet at Whitehall.
The people at large looked somewhat askance at this furious haste to marry
the new wife before the shed blood of the previous one was dry;[172] but
the Court, and those who still recollected the wronged Princess Mary and
her dead mother, were enthusiastic in their welcome to Jane.[173] The
Emperor's friends, too, were in joyous mood; and Princess Mary at Hunsdon
was full of hope, and eager to be allowed to greet her father and his wife
now that "that woman" was dead. Chapuys, we may be sure, did not stand
behind the door now when he went to Court. On the contrary, when he first
visited Whitehall a few days after the wedding, Henry led him by the hand
to Jane's apartments, and allowed the diplomatist to kiss the
Queen--"congratulating her upon her marriage and wishing her prosperity. I
told her that, although the device of the lady who had preceded her on the
throne was 'The happiest of women,' I had no doubt that she herself would
realise that motto. I was sure that the Emperor would be equally rejoiced
as the King himself had been at meeting such a virtuous and amiable Queen,
the more so that her brother (_i.e._ Sir E. Seymour, afterwards the Duke
of Somerset) had been in the Emperor's service. I added that it was almost
impossible to believe the joy and pleasure which Englishmen generally had
felt at the marriage; especially as it was said that she was continually
trying to persuade the King to restore the Princess to his favour, as
formerly." Most of Chapuys' courtly talk with Jane, indeed, was directed
to this point of the restoration of Mary; but the new Queen, though
inexperienced, had been well coached, and did not unduly commit herself;
only promising to favour the Princess, and to endeavour to deserve the
title that Chapuys had given her of "peacemaker." Henry strolled up to the
pair at this point, and excused his new wife for any want of expertness:
"as I was the first ambassador she had received, and she was not used yet
to such receptions. He (Henry) felt sure, however, that she would do her
utmost to obtain the title of 'peacemaker,' with which I (Chapuys) had
greeted her, as, besides being naturally of a kind and amiable disposition
and much inclined to peace, she would strive to prevent his (Henry's)
taking part in a foreign war, if only out of the fear of being separated
from him."[174]
But all these fine hopes were rapidly banished. Jane never possessed or
attempted to exercise any political influence on her husband. She smiled
sweetly and in a non-committal way upon the Princess Mary, and upon the
imperialist and moderate Catholic party that had hoped to make the new
Queen their instrument; but Cromwell's was still the strong mind that
swayed the King. He had obtained renewed control over his master by
ridding him of Anne; and had, at all events, prevented England from being
drawn into a coalition with France against the Emperor; but he had no
intention, even if it had been possible, of going to the other extreme and
binding his country to go to war against France to please the Emperor.
Henry's self-will and vanity, as well as his greed, also stood in the way
of a complete submission to the Papacy, and those who had brought Jane
Seymour in, hoping that her advent would mean a return to the same
position as that previous to Anne's rise, now found that they had been
over sanguine. Charles and Francis were left to fight out their great duel
alone in Italy and Provence, to the general discomfiture of the imperial
cause; and, instead of hastening to humble himself at the feet of Paul
III., as the pontiff had fondly expected, Henry summoned Parliament, and
gave stronger statutory sanction than ever to his ecclesiastical
independence of Rome.[175] Anne's condemnation and Elizabeth's bastardy
were obediently confirmed by the Legislature, and the entire freedom of
the English Church from Rome reasserted.
But the question of the succession was that which aroused the strongest
feeling, and its settlement the keenest disappointment. Now that Anne's
offspring was disinherited, Princess Mary and her friends naturally
expected that she, with the help of the new Queen, would once more enter
into the enjoyment of her birthright. Eagerly Mary wrote to Cromwell
bespeaking his aid, which she had been led to expect that he would give;
and by his intercession she was allowed to send her humble petition to her
father, praying for leave to see him. Her letters are all couched in terms
of cringing humility, praying forgiveness for past offences, and promising
to be a truly dutiful daughter in future. But this did not satisfy Henry.
Cromwell, desirous, in pursuance of his policy of keeping friendly with
the Emperor without going to war with France, or kneeling to Rome, hoped
to bring about peace between Mary and her father. But the strongest
passions of Henry's nature were now at stake, and he would only accept his
daughter's submission on terms that made her a self-confessed bastard, and
against this the girl, as obstinate as her father and as righteously proud
as her mother, still rebelled. Henry's son, the Duke of Richmond, was now
a straight stripling of eighteen, already married to Norfolk's daughter,
and, failing issue by Jane, here was an heir to the Crown that might carry
the Tudor line onward in the male blood, if Parliament could be chicaned
or threatened into acknowledging him. So Mary was plied with letters from
Cromwell, each more pressing and cruel than the previous one, driving the
girl to distraction by the King's insistence upon his terms.[176] Threats,
cajolery, and artful casuistry were all tried. Again Mary turned to her
foreign advisers and the King's rebellious subjects for support, and again
her father's heart hardened when he knew it. Norfolk, who with others was
sent to persuade her, was so incensed with her firmness that he said if
she had been his daughter he would have knocked her head against the wall
until it was as soft as a codlin. But Norfolk's daughter was the Duchess
of Richmond, and might be Queen Consort after Henry's death if Mary were
disinherited, so that there was some excuse for his violence. Those who
were in favour of Mary were dismissed from the Council--even Cromwell was
in fear--and Jane Seymour was rudely snubbed by the King for daring to
intercede for the Princess. At length, with death threatening her, Mary
could stand out no longer. Without even reading it, she signed with a
mental reservation, and confident of obtaining the Papal absolution for
which she secretly asked, the shameful declaration forced upon her,
repudiating the Papal authority, and specifically acknowledging herself a
bastard.
Then Henry was all amiability with his wronged daughter. He and Jane went
to visit her at Richmond, whither she had been brought, giving her
handsome presents of money and jewels; liberty was given to her to come to
Court, and stately service surrounded her. But it was all embittered by
the knowledge that Parliament had been induced to acknowledge that all the
King's children were illegitimate, and to grant to Henry himself the right
of appointing his own successor by letters patent or by will. Alas! the
youth in whose immediate interest the injustice was done was fast sinking
to his grave; and on the 22nd July 1536 the Duke of Richmond breathed his
last, to Henry's bitter grief, Mary's prospects again became brighter, and
all those who resented the religious policy and Henry's recalcitrancy now
looked to the girl as their only hope of a return to the old order of
things. Chapuys, too, was ceaseless in his intrigues to bring England once
more into a condition of obedience to the Pope, that should make her a fit
instrument for the imperial policy, and soon the disappointment that
followed on the elevation of Jane Seymour found vent in the outbreak of
rebellion in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.
The priests and the great mass of the people had bent the neck patiently
to the King's violent innovations in the observances that they had been
taught to hold sacred. They had seen the religious houses, to which they
looked for help and succour in distress, destroyed and alienated. The
abuses of the clergy had doubtless been great, and the first measures
against them had been welcomed; but the complete confiscation of vast
properties, in the main administered for the benefit of the lowly, the
continued enclosure of common lands by the gentry newly enriched by
ecclesiastical plunder, and the rankling sense of the scandalous injustice
that had been suffered by Katharine and Mary, for the sake, as the people
said, of the King's lustful caprice, at last provided the extreme militant
Catholic party with the impetus needed for revolt against the Crown.
Imperious Henry was beside himself with rage; and for a time it looked as
if he and his system might be swept away in favour of his daughter, or one
of the Poles, who were being put forward by the Pope. The Bull of
excommunication against Henry and England, so long held back, was now
launched, making rebellion righteous; and the imperial interest in
England, which was still strong, did its best to aid the rising of Henry's
lieges against him. But the rebels were weakly led: the greater nobles had
for the most part been bought by grants of ecclesiastical lands; and
Norfolk, for all his moral baseness, was an experienced and able soldier.
So the Pilgrimage of Grace, threatening as it looked for a time, flickered
out; and the yoke was riveted tighter than ever upon the neck of rural
England. To the party that had hoped to make use of her, Jane Seymour was
thus, to some extent, a disappointment;[177] but her placid
submissiveness, which made her a bad political instrument, exactly suited
a husband so imperious as Henry; and from a domestic point of view the
union was successful. During the summer Jane shared in her husband's
progresses and recreations, but as the months rolled on and no hope came
of offspring, ominous rumours ran that Jane's coronation would be deferred
until it was proved that she might bear children to the King; and some
said that if she proved barren a pretext would be found for displacing her
in favour of another. Indeed, only a few days after the public marriage,
Henry noticed two very beautiful girls at Court, and showed his annoyance
that he had not seen them before taking Jane.
After six months of marriage without sign of issue, Henry began to take
fright. The Duke of Richmond was dead, and both the King's daughters were
acknowledged by the law of England to be illegitimate. He was already
forty-six years of age, and had lately grown very obese; and his death
without further issue or a resettlement of the succession would inevitably
lead to a dynastic dispute, with the probable result of the return of the
House of York to the throne in the person of one of the Poles under the
ægis of Rome. Whenever possible, Jane had said a good word for the
Princess Mary, and Henry began to listen more kindly than before to his
wife's well-meant attempts to soften him in favour of his daughter. The
Catholic party was all alert with new hopes that the King, convinced that
he could father no more sons, would cause his elder daughter to be
acknowledged his heir;[178] but the reformers, who had grown up
numerously, especially in and about London, during Henry's defiance of
Rome, looked askance at a policy which in time they feared might bring
back the old order of things. The mainstay of this party at Court, apart
from the professed Lutherans and the new bishops, were those who, having
received grants of ecclesiastical property, despaired of any return to the
Roman communion and the imperial alliance without the restoration of the
Church property. Amongst these courtiers was Jane's brother, Edward
Seymour, Viscount Beauchamp, who had received large grants of
ecclesiastical lands at intervals since 1528. He was a personal friend of
the King, and had taken no active part in the intrigue that accompanied
his sister's elevation, though after the marriage he naturally rose higher
than before in the favour of the King. He was a clever and superficially
brilliant, but ostentatious and greedy man, of no great strength of
purpose, whose new relationship to the King marked him out as a dominating
influence in the future. The Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, upon whom Henry
had depended as generals, were now very old and ailing, and there was no
other peer but Cromwell of any ability in the Councils.
Even thus early it was clear that Seymour's weight would, notwithstanding
the circumstances of his sister's rise, be thrown on to the anti-Papal
side when the crucial struggle came. He was, moreover, a new man; and as
such not welcomed by the older nobility, who, though desirous of retaining
their Church plunder, were yet bound by their traditions against
bureaucrats such as Cromwell, and the policy of defiance of the Papacy
that he and his like had suggested and carried out. Cromwell's own
position at this time (1536-37) was a paradoxical one. It was he who had
led Henry on, step by step, to entire schism and the plunder of the
Church; it was he who not only had shown how to get rid of Katharine, but
how to destroy her successor; and it was he whom the Catholic party hated
with a whole-hearted detestation, for the King's acts as well as his own.
On the other hand, he was hardly less distrusted by the reforming party;
for his efforts were known to be directed to a reconciliation with the
Emperor, which could only be effected conjointly with some sort of
arrangement with the Papacy. His efforts to please the imperialists by
siding with the Princess Mary during her dispute with her father led him
to the very verge of destruction. Whilst the young Princess was being
badgered into making her shameful and insincere renunciation of her faith
and birthright, Cromwell, the very man who was the instrument for
extorting her submission, sat, as he says, for a week in the Council
considering himself "a dead man," because the King believed that he was
encouraging Mary to resist. Cromwell, therefore, like most men who
endeavour to hold a middle course, was distrusted and hated by every one;
and it must have been obvious to him that if he could ensure the adhesion
of the rising Seymour interest his chance of weathering the storm would be
infinitely improved. His son had recently married Jane Seymour's sister,
and this brought him into close relationship with the family, and, as will
be seen, led in the next year to a compact political union between the
Seymour brothers, Cromwell, and the reforming party, as against the
nobles and traditional conservatives.
For the time, however, Cromwell held on his way, endeavouring to keep in
with the imperialists and Mary; and it was doubtless to his prompting that
Jane used her influence, when at its highest point, to reconcile the
Princess personally to her father. To the great joy of the King, in March
1537, Jane was declared to be with child. The Emperor had already opened a
negotiation for the marriage of Mary with his brother-in-law, the Infante
Luiz of Portugal, and Henry was playing a waiting game till he saw if Jane
would bear him a child. If so, Mary might go; although he still refused to
legitimise her; but if no more issue was to be born to him, he could
hardly allow his elder daughter to leave England and fall into the hands
of the Emperor. Charles, on the other hand, was extremely anxious to
obtain possession of so valuable a pledge for the future as Mary; and was
willing to go to almost any lengths to get her, either by fair means or
foul, fearing, as he did, that the girl might be married discreditably in
England--he thought even to Cromwell himself--in order to destroy her
international value to Henry's rivals.
As soon, however, as Jane's pregnancy was announced Mary's position
changed. If a child was born in wedlock to the King, especially if it were
a son, there would be no need to degrade Mary by joining her to a lowly
husband; she might, on the contrary, become a good international marriage
asset in the hands of her father, who might bargain with Charles or
Francis for her. The fresh move of Jane Seymour, therefore, in her
favour, in the spring of 1537, when the Queen's pregnancy had given her
greater power over her husband, was probably welcome both to the King and
Cromwell, as enhancing Mary's importance at a time when she might be used
as an international political pawn without danger. Jane was sad one day in
the early period of her pregnancy. "Why, darling," said the King, "how
happeneth it you are not merrier?"[179] "It hath pleased your Grace,"
replied the Queen, "to make me your wife, and there are none but my
inferiors with whom to make merry, withal, your Grace excepted; unless it
would please you that we might enjoy the company of the Lady Mary at
Court. I could be merry with her." "We will have her here, darling, if
that will make thee merry," said the King. And before many days had gone,
Mary, with a full train of ladies, was brought from Hunsdon, magnificently
dressed, to Whitehall, where, in the great presence chamber, Henry and his
wife stood before the fire. The poor girl was almost overcome at the
tenderness of her reception, and fell upon her knees before her father and
his wife. Henry, as usual anxious to throw upon others the responsibility
of his ill-treatment of his daughter, turned to his Councillors, who stood
around, and said, "Some of you were desirous that I should put this jewel
to death." "That were a pity," quoth the Queen, "to have lost your
chiefest jewel of England."[180] The hint was too much for Mary, who
changed colour and fell into a swoon, greatly to her father's concern.
At length the day long yearned and prayed for by Henry came. Jane had for
some months lived in the strictest quietude, and prayers and masses for
her safe delivery were offered in the churches for weeks before. In
September she had travelled slowly to Hampton Court, and on the 12th
October 1537 a healthy son was born to her and Henry. The joy of the King
was great beyond words. The gross sensualist, old beyond his years, had in
vain hoped through all his sturdy youth for a boy, who, beyond reproach,
might bear his regal name. He had flouted Christendom and defied the
greatest powers on earth in order to marry a woman who might bear him a
man child. When she failed to do so, he had coldly stood aside whilst his
instruments defamed her and did her to death; and now, at last, in his
declining years, his prayer was answered, and the House of Tudor was
secure upon the future throne of England. Bonfires blazed and joy bells
rang throughout the land; feasts of unexampled bounteousness coarsely
brought home to the lieges the blessing that had come to save the country
from the calamity of a disputed succession. The Seymour brothers at once
became, next the King and his son, the most important personages in
England, the elder, Edward, being created Earl of Hertford, and both
receiving great additional grants of monastic lands. In the general
jubilation at the birth, the interests of the mother were forgotten. No
attempt appears to have been made to save her from the excitement that
surrounded her; and on the very day of her delivery she signed an
official letter "Jane the Quene" to Cromwell, directing him to communicate
to the Privy Council the joyful news.
The most sumptuous royal christening ever seen was in bustling preparation
in and about her sick-chamber; and that no circumstance of state should be
lacking, the mother herself, only four days after the birth, was forced to
take part in the exhausting ceremony. In the chapel at Hampton Court,
newly decorated like the splendid banqueting-hall adjoining, where the
initials of Jane carved in stone with those of the King, and her arms and
device on glowing glass and gilded scutcheon still perpetuate her fleeting
presence, the christening ceremony was held by torchlight late in the
chill autumn evening. Through the long draughty corridors, preceded by
braying trumpets and followed by rustling crowds of elated courtiers, the
sick woman was carried on her stately pallet covered with heavy robes of
crimson velvet and ermine. Under a golden canopy, supported by the four
greatest nobles in the land, next to Norfolk, who was one of the
godfathers, the Marchioness of Exeter bore the infant in her arms to the
scene of the ceremony; and the Princess Mary, fiercely avid of love as she
ever was, held the prince at the font. Suffolk, Arundel, and doomed
Exeter, with a host of other magnates, stood around; whilst one towering
handsome figure, with a long brown beard, carried aloft in his arms the
tiny fair girl-child of Anne, the Lady Elizabeth, holding in her dainty
hands the holy chrisom. It was Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, looked
at askance by the rest as a new man, but already overlapping them all as
the uncle of the infant prince. During the _Te Deum_ and the long, pompous
ceremony of the baptism the mother lay flushed and excited upon her couch;
whilst the proud father, his broad face beaming with pride, sat by her
side, holding her hand.
It was hard upon midnight when the Queen gave her blessing to her child
and was carried back to her chamber, with more trumpet blasts and noisy
gratulation. The next day, as was to be expected, she was in a high fever,
so ill that she was confessed and received extreme unction. But she
rallied, and seemed somewhat amended for the next few days, though ominous
rumours were rife in London that her life had purposely been jeopardised
in order to save that of the child at birth.[181] They were not true, but
they give the measure of the public estimate of Henry's character, and
have been made the most of by Sanders, Rivadeneyra, and the other Jesuit
historians. On the 23rd October the Queen fell gravely ill again, and in
the night was thought to be dying. Henry had intended to ride to Esher
that day, but "could not find it in his heart" to go; and the next night,
the 24th October, Jane Seymour died, a sacrifice to improper treatment and
heartlessly exacted ceremonial. Henry had not been married long enough to
her to have become tired of her, and her somewhat lethargic placidity had
suited him. She had, moreover, borne him the long-looked-for son; and his
grief for her loss was profound, and no doubt sincere. Much as he hated
signs of mortality, he wore black mourning for her for three months, and
shut himself up at Windsor away from the world, and above all away from
the corpse of his dead wife, for a fortnight. Jane's body, embalmed, lay
in the presence chamber at Hampton Court for a week. Blazing tapers
surrounded the great hearse, and masses went on from dawn to midday in the
chamber. All night long the Queen's ladies, with Princess Mary, watched
before the bier, until the end of the month, when the catafalque had been
erected in the chapel for the formal lying in state. On the 12th November,
with the greatest possible pomp, the funeral procession bore the dead
Queen to Windsor for burial in a grave in St. George's Chapel, destined to
receive the remains of Henry as well as that of his third wife, the mother
of his son.[182] The writers of the time, following the lead of Henry and
his courtiers, never mentioned their grief for the Queen without promptly
suggesting that it was more than counterbalanced by their joy at the birth
of her son, who from his first appearance in the world was hailed as a
paragon of beauty and perfection. Thanksgivings for the boon of a male
heir to the King blended their sounds of jubilation with the droning of
the masses for the mother's soul, and the flare of the bonfires died down
into the flickering tapers that dimly lit the funerals. Even Henry
himself, in writing to give the news of his son's birth, confessed that
his joy at the event had far exceeded his grief for Jane's death.
So far as the Catholic party that had promoted it was concerned, the
marriage with Jane had been a failure. The Pilgrimage of Grace had been
drowned in the blood of ruthless slaughter: and partly because of Mary's
scruples and fears, partly because they themselves had been gorged with
the plunder of the Church, nearly all the great nobles stood aside and
raised no voice whilst Cromwell and his master still worked havoc on the
religious houses, regardless of Jane's timid intercession. Boxley,
Walsingham, and even the sacred shrine of Canterbury, yielded their relics
and images, venerated for centuries, to be scorned and destroyed; whilst
the vast accumulated treasures of gold and gems that enriched them went to
fill the coffers of the King, and their lands to bribe his favourites.
Throughout England the work of confiscation was carried on now with a zeal
which only greed for the resultant profit can explain.[183] The attacks
upon superstition in the Church by those in authority naturally aroused a
feeling of greater freedom of thought amongst the mass of the people. The
establishment of an open Bible in English in every church for the perusal
of the parishioners, due, as indeed most of the doctrinal changes were,
to Cranmer, encouraged men to think to some extent for themselves. But
though, for purposes to which reference will be made presently, Henry
willingly concurred in Cranmer's reforming tendencies and Cromwell's
anti-ecclesiastical plans for providing him with abundant money, he would
allow no departure from orthodoxy as he understood it. His love for
theological controversy, and his undoubted ability and learning in that
direction, enabled him to enforce his views with apparently unanswerable
arguments, especially as he was able, and quite ready, to close the
dispute with an obstinate antagonist by prescribing the stake and the
gibbet either to those who repudiated his spiritual supremacy or to those
who, like the Anabaptists, questioned the efficacy of a sacrament which he
had adopted. For Henry it was to a great extent a matter of pride and
self-esteem now to show to his own subjects and the world that he was
absolutely supreme and infallible, and this feeling unquestionably had
greatly influenced the progress effected by the reformation and
emancipation from Rome made after the disappointing marriage with Jane
Seymour.
But there was also policy in Henry's present action. Throughout the years
1536 and 1537 Francis and the Emperor had continued at war; but by the
close of the latter year it was evident that both combatants were
exhausted, and would shortly make up their differences. The Papal
excommunication of Henry and his realm was now in full force, making
rebellion against the King a laudable act for all good Catholics; and any
agreement between the two great Continental sovereigns in union with Rome
boded ill for England and for its King. There were others, too, to whom
such a combination boded ill. The alliance between France and the infidel
Turk to attack the Christian Emperor had aroused intense indignation
amongst Catholics throughout the world against Francis; and the Pope,
utilising this feeling, strove hard to persuade both Christian sovereigns
to cease their fratricidal struggle and to recognise that the real enemy
to be feared and destroyed was Lutheranism or heresy in their midst.
During the Emperor's absence, and the war, Protestantism in Germany had
advanced with giant strides. The Princes had boldly refused to recognise
any conciliatory Council of the Church under the control of the Pope; and
the pressure used by the Emperor to compel them to do so aroused the
suspicion that the day was fast approaching when Lutheranism would have to
fight for its life against the imperial suzerain of Germany.
Already the forces were gathering. George of Saxony, the enemy of Luther,
was hurrying to the grave, and Henry his brother and heir was a strong
Protestant. Philip of Hesse had two years before thrown down the gage, and
had taken by force from the Emperor the territory of Würtemburg, and had
restored the Protestant Duke Ulrich. Charles' brother Ferdinand, who ruled
the empire, clamoured as loudly as did Mary of Hungary in Flanders and
Eleanor of Austria in France, for a peace between the two champions of
Christendom, the repudiation by France of the Turkish alliance, and a
concentration of the Catholic forces in the world before it was too late
to crush the hydra of heresy which threatened them all. It was natural in
the circumstances that the enemies of the Papacy should be drawn together.
A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind, and a common danger drew Henry of
England and Philip of Hesse together. Henry was no Lutheran, and did not
pretend to be. He had been drawn into the Reformation by the process that
we have followed, in which interested advisers had worked upon his
passions and self-esteem; but he had gone too far in defiance of Rome now
to turn back, and was forced to look to his own safety by such policy as
was possible to him. For several months after Jane Seymour's death the
envoys of the German Protestants were in England in close negotiation with
Henry and Cromwell. In order that a close league should be made, it was
necessary that some common doctrinal standpoint should be agreed upon, and
infinite theological discussions took place to bring this about. Henry
would not give way on any principal point, and the Protestant ambassadors
went home again without a formal understanding. But though Henry remained,
as he intended to do, thus unpledged, it was good policy for him to
impress upon the Germans by his ruthless suppression of the monasteries,
and his prohibition of the ancient superstitions, that he was the enemy of
their enemy; and that if he was attacked for heresy, it would be incumbent
upon the Lutherans to be on his side even against their own suzerain.
This was not, however, the only move made by Henry against the
threatening danger of a joint attack of the Catholic powers. He had hardly
thrown off his mourning for Jane before he turned his hand to the old game
of dividing his rivals. His bluff was as audacious and brilliant as usual.
To the imperial and French ambassadors in turn he boasted that either of
their masters would prefer his friendship and alliance to that of the
other; and, rightly convinced that he would really be more likely to gain
latitudinarian Francis than Charles, he proposed in the spring of 1538
that he should marry a French princess. As the two great Catholic
sovereigns drew closer together, though still nominally at war in Italy,
Henry became, indeed, quite an eager wooer. His friend, Sir Francis Brian,
was sent to Paris, secretly to forward his suit, and obtained a portrait
of the Duke of Guise's second daughter, the sister of the King of
Scotland's bride, Mary of Lorraine; with which Henry confessed himself
quite smitten. He had, before this, only three months after Jane's death,
made a desperate attempt to prevail upon Francis to let him have Mary of
Lorraine herself; though she was already betrothed to the King of Scots,
his nephew; but this had been positively and even indignantly refused.
Even the younger daughter of Guise, beautiful as she was, did not quite
satisfy his vanity. Both he and his agent Brian, who was a fit
representative for him, disgusted Francis by suggesting that three other
French princesses should be taken to Calais by the Queen of
Navarre--Francis' sister--in order that they might be paraded before the
King of England for his selection, "like hackneys," as was said at the
time.[184] He thought that the angry repudiation of such an insulting
proposal was most unreasonable. "How can I choose a wife by deputy?" he
asked. "I must depend upon my own eyes"; besides, he added, he must hear
them sing, and see how they comported themselves. Perhaps, suggested the
French ambassador sarcastically, he would like to go further and test the
ladies in other ways, as the knights of King Arthur used to do. Henry
coloured at this; but vauntingly replied that he could, if he pleased,
marry into the imperial house; but he would not marry at all unless he was
quite sure that his new relation would prefer his alliance to all others.
When, at length, in June, the truce of Nice was signed, and soon
afterwards the fraternal meeting and close community between Francis and
Charles was effected at Aigues Mortes, Henry began to get seriously
alarmed. His matrimonial offers, to his surprise, were treated very
coolly; all his attempts to breed dissension between the imperial and
French ambassadors, who were now hand and glove, were laughed at;[185] and
the intimate confidence and friendship between his two Catholic rivals
seemed at last to bring disaster to Henry's very doors; for it was not
concealed that the first blow to be struck by the Catholic confederacy was
to be upon the schismatic heretic who ruled England.
With Francis there was no more to be done; for Henry and Brian, by their
want of delicacy, had between them deeply wounded all the possible French
brides and their families. But, at least, Henry hoped that sufficient show
of friendship with Charles might be simulated to arouse Francis' jealousy
of his new ally. Henry therefore began to sneer at the patched-up
friendship, as he called it.[186] "And how about Milan?" he asked the
French ambassador, knowing that that was the still rankling sore; and soon
he began to boast more openly that he himself might have Milan by the
cession of it as a dower to Dom Luiz of Portugal, on his marriage with the
Princess Mary; whilst Henry himself married the young widowed Duchess of
Milan, Charles' niece, Christina of Denmark, that clever, quick-witted
woman, whose humorous face lives for ever on the canvas of Holbein in the
English National Gallery.[187] There had been a Spanish ambassador, Diego
Hurtado de Mendoza, in England since the spring of 1537, to negotiate the
Portuguese marriage of the Princess Mary; but the eternal questions of
dowry, security, and the legitimacy of the Princess had made all
negotiations so far abortive. Now they were taken up more strongly, by
means of Wyatt at Madrid, and by special envoys to Mary of Hungary in
Flanders. But it was all "buckler play," as the imperial agents and
Charles himself soon found out. Henry and Cromwell knew perfectly well
that no stable alliance with the Emperor was possible then unless their
religious policy was changed; and they had gone too far to change it
without humiliation, if not destruction, to Henry; the real object of the
negotiations being simply to obtain some sort of promise about the cession
of Milan, by which Francis might be detached from the imperial alliance.
But it was unsuccessful; and, for once, the two great antagonists held
together for a time against all Lutheranism and heresy.
Then Henry and Cromwell had to look anxiously for support and alliances
elsewhere. To the King it was a repugnant and humiliating necessity. He
had puffed himself into the belief that he was the most potent and
infallible of sovereigns, and he found himself, for the first time,
scorned by all those he had reason to fear. He, the embodiment of the idea
of regal omnipotence, would be forced to make common cause with those who,
like the German Protestants, stood for resistance to supreme authority;
with usurpers like Christian III. of Denmark, and trading democracies like
Lübeck. With much hesitation and dislike, therefore, he listened, whilst
Cromwell urged the inevitable policy upon him, which led him farther and
farther away from the inner circle of potentates to which he and his
father had gained entrance in the course of the events related in the
first chapters of this book.
Cromwell's arguments would probably have been unavailing but for the
opportune "discovery," in the usual fortuitous Cromwell fashion, of a
dangerous aristocratic conspiracy against Henry himself. Cardinal Pole had
been entrusted with the Papal excommunication, and everywhere impressed
upon English Catholics the duty of obeying their spiritual father by
deposing the King.[188] Whether anything in the form of a regular
conspiracy to do this existed in England is extremely doubtful; but the
Cardinal had naturally written to his relatives in England, especially to
his brother Geoffrey, and perhaps to his mother, the Countess of
Salisbury, a princess of the blood royal of York. First Geoffrey was
seized and carried to the Tower, and some sort of incriminating admission
drawn from him by threats of torture, though, so far as can be gathered,
nothing but the repetition of disaffected conversations. It was enough,
however, for Cromwell's purpose when he needed it; and the fatal net was
cast over Pole's elder brother, Lord Montague, the Marquis of Exeter,
allied to the royal house, the Master of the Horse, Sir Nicholas Carew,
Sir Edward Neville, and half a score of other high gentlemen, known to be
faithful to the old cause--all to be unjustly sacrificed on the scaffold
to the fears of Henry and the political exigencies of Cromwell. Even the
women and children of the supposed sympathisers with the Papacy were not
spared; and the aged Countess of Salisbury, with her grandson, and the
Marchioness of Exeter, with her son, were imprisoned with many humbler
ones.
The defences of the kingdom on the coast and towards Scotland were rapidly
made ready to resist attack from abroad, which indeed looked imminent; and
when the noble and conservative party had been sufficiently cowed by the
sight of the blood of the highest of its members, when the reign of terror
over the land had made all men so dumb and fearsome that none dared say
him nay, Cromwell felt himself strong enough to endeavour to draw England
into the league of Protestant princes and defy the Catholic world. The
position for Henry personally was an extraordinary one. He had gradually
drifted into a position of independence from Rome; but he still professed
to be a strict Catholic in other respects. His primate, Cranmer, and
several other of his bishops whose ecclesiastical status was unrecognised
by the Pope, were unquestionably, and not unnaturally, Protestant in their
sympathies; whilst Cromwell was simply a politician who cared nothing for
creeds and faiths, except as ancillary to State policy. Francis, and even
on occasion Charles himself, made little of taking Church property for lay
purposes when he needed it: he had more than once been the ally of the
infidel against Catholic princes, and his religious belief was notoriously
lax; and yet he remained "the eldest son of the Church." Charles had
struggled successfully against the Papal pretensions to control the
temporalities of the Spanish Church, his troops had sacked Rome and
imprisoned the Pope, and his ministers for years had bullied pontiffs and
scolded them as if they were erring schoolboys. Excommunication had fallen
upon him and his, and as hard things had been said of him in Rome as of
Henry; and yet he was the champion of Catholic Christendom. The conclusion
is obvious that Henry's sin towards the Papacy was not primarily the
spoliation of the Church, the repudiation of Katharine, or even the
assumption of control over the temporalities, but that he had arrogated to
himself the spiritual headship in his realm. In most other respects he was
as good a Catholic as Charles, and a much better one than Francis; and yet
under stress of circumstances he was forced into common cause with the
growing party of reform in Europe, whose separation from the Church was
profoundly doctrinal, and arose from entirely different motives from those
of Henry.
The danger that threatened England at the time (early in 1539) was not
really quite so serious as it seemed; for, close as the alliance between
Charles and Francis was, old jealousies were not dead, and a joint war
against England would have revived them; whilst the Papal plan of treating
England commercially as outside the pale of civilisation would have ruined
Charles' subject and was impracticable. But, in any case, the peril was
real to Henry and Cromwell; and under the stress of it they were driven
into the attempted policy of a Protestant confederacy. At the end of
January 1539, Christopher Mont was sent to Germany with the first
overtures. He carried letters of credence to Philip of Hesse, and Hans
Frederick of Saxony, with the ostensible object of asking whether they had
come to any conclusion respecting the theological disputations held in the
previous year between their envoys and the English bishops to establish a
common doctrinal basis. This, of course, was a mere pretext, the real
object of the mission being to discover to what extent Henry could depend
upon the German Protestant princes if he were attacked by their suzerain
the Emperor. A private instruction was given to Mont by Cromwell, to
remind one of the Saxon ministers who had come to England of a former
conversation about a possible marriage between the young Duke of Cleves
and the Princess Mary; and he was to take the opportunity of finding out
all he could about the "beauty and qualities, shape, stature, and
complexion" of the elder of the two unmarried daughters of the old Duke of
Cleves, whose eldest daughter, Sybilla, had married Hans Frederick of
Saxony himself, and was as bold a Protestant as he was. At the same time
approaches were made to Christian III. of Denmark, who had joined the
Evangelical league; and gradually the forces against the Papacy were to be
knitted together. An excuse also was found to send English envoys to
Cleves itself to offer an alliance in the matter of the Duchy of Gueldres,
which the Duke of Cleves had just seized without the Emperor's connivance
or consent. Carne and Wotton, the envoys, were also to offer the hand of
the Princess Mary to the young Duke, and cautiously to hint at a marriage
between his sister Anne and Henry, if conditions were favourable; and,
like Mont in Saxony, were to close the ranks of Protestantism around the
threatened Henry, from whose Court both the imperial and French
ambassadors had now been withdrawn.
Whilst these intrigues for Protestant support on the Continent were being
carried on, and the defences of England on all sides were being
strengthened, Henry, apparently for the purpose of disarming the Catholic
elements, and proving that, apart from the Papal submission, he was as
good a Catholic as any, forced through Parliament (May 1539) the
extraordinary statute called the Six Articles, or the Bloody Statute,
which threw all English Protestants into a panic. The Act was drafted on
Henry's instructions by Bishop Gardiner, and was called an "Act to abolish
diversity of opinions." The articles of faith dictated by the King to his
subjects under ferocious penalties included the main Catholic doctrine;
the real presence in the Sacrament in its fullest sense; the celibacy of
the clergy; that the administration of the Sacrament in two kinds is not
necessary; that auricular confession is compulsory, that private masses
may be said, and that vows of chastity must be kept for ever. Cranmer, who
was married and had children, dared to argue against the Bill when the
Duke of Norfolk introduced it in the House of Lords, and others of the new
bishops timidly did likewise; but they were overborne by the old bishops
and the great majority of the lay peers, influenced by their traditions
and by the peremptory arguments of the King himself. Even more important
was an Act passed in the same servile Parliament giving to the King's
proclamations the force of law; and an Act of attainder against every one,
living or dead, in England or abroad, who had opposed the King, completed
the terror under which thenceforward the country lay. Henry was now,
indeed, master of the bodies and souls of his subjects, and had reduced
them all, Protestants and Catholics alike, to a condition of abject
subjection to his mere will. The passage of these Acts, especially the Six
Articles, marks a temporarily successful attempt of the conservative
party, represented by the old bishops and the nobles under Norfolk, to
overcome the influence of Cromwell, who was forwarding the Protestant
league;[189] but to Henry the policy must in any case have seemed a good
one, as it tended to increase his personal power and prestige, and to keep
both parties dependent upon him.
Before the summer of 1539 had passed it was evident to Henry that the new
combination against him would not stand the strain of a joint attack upon
England. Charles was full of cares of his own. The Lutherans were
increasingly threatening; even his own city of Ghent had revolted, and it
was plain from his reception of Pole at Toledo that he could not proceed
to extremes against Henry. It certainly was not the intention of Francis
to do so; and the panic in England--never fully justified--passed away.
The French ambassador came back, and once more Henry's intrigues to sow
dissension between the Catholic powers went ceaselessly on. In the
circumstances it was natural that, after the passage of the Six Articles
and the resumption of diplomatic relations with France, the negotiations
with the German Protestants slackened. But the proposed marriage of Henry
with the Princess of Cleves offered too good an opportunity, as Cromwell
pointed out to him, of troubling the Emperor when he liked, to be dropped,
even though no general political league was effected with the German
Lutherans. Her brother-in-law, Hans Frederick of Saxony, was cool about
it. He said that some sort of engagement had been made by her father and
the Duke of Lorraine to marry her to the heir of the latter, but finally
in August Wotton reported from Duren that Hans Frederick would send
envoys to Cleves to propose the match, and they would then proceed to
England to close the matter. Wotton had been somewhat distrustful about
the previous engagement of Anne with the Duke of Lorraine's son, but was
assured by the Council of Cleves that it was not binding upon the
Princess, "who was free to marry as she pleased." "She has been brought
up," he writes, "with the Lady Duchess, her mother ... and in a manner
never from her elbow; the Lady Duchess being a wise lady, and one that
very straitly looketh to her children. All report her (Anne) to be of very
lowly and gentle conditions, by the which she hath so much won her
mother's favour that she is loth to suffer her to depart from her. She
occupieth her time mostly with her needle, wherewithal ... she can read
and write (Dutch); but as to French, Latin, or any other language, she
hath none. Nor yet she cannot sing nor play any instrument, for they take
it here in Germany for a rebuke, and an occasion of lightness that great
ladies should be learned or have any knowledge of music. Her wit is good,
and she will no doubt learn English soon when she puts her mind to it. I
could never hear that she is inclined to the good cheer of this country;
and marvel it were if she should, seeing that her brother ... doth so well
abstain from it. Your Grace's servant Hans Holbein hath taken the effigies
of my Lady Anne and the Lady Amelia, and hath expressed their images very
lively."[190]
Holbein was not usually a flattering painter to his sitters, and the
portrait he sent of Anne was that of a somewhat masculine and
large-featured, but handsome and intellectual young woman, with fine,
soft, contemplative brown eyes, thick lashes, and strong eyebrows. The
general appearance is dignified, though handicapped by the very unbecoming
Dutch dress of the period; and though there is nothing of the _petite_
sprightliness and soft rotundity that would be likely to attract a man of
Henry's characteristics, the Princess cannot have been ill-favoured.
Cromwell some months earlier had reported to Henry that Mont informed him
that "everybody praises the lady's beauty, both of face and body. One said
she excelled the Duchess (of Milan ?) as the golden sun did the silver
moon."[191] If the latter statement be near the truth, Anne, in her own
way, must have been quite good-looking. There was no delay or difficulty
in carrying through the arrangements for the marriage. The envoys from
Cleves and Saxony arrived in London in September, and saw Henry at
Windsor. They could offer no great dowry, for Cleves was poor; but they
would not be exacting about the appanage to be settled upon the Queen by
her husband, to whom they left the decision of the sum; and the other
covenants as to the eventual succession to her brother's duchy, in case of
his death without heirs, were to be the same as those under which her
elder sister married Hans Frederick.
This was the sort of spirit that pleased Henry in negotiators, and with
such he was always disposed to be liberal. He practically waived the
dowry, and only urged that the lady should come at once, before the winter
was too far advanced. When he suggested that she should come from her home
down the Rhine through Holland, and thence by sea to England, the envoys
prayed that she might go through Germany and Flanders by land to Calais,
and so across. For, said they, by sea there will be great peril of capture
and insult by some too zealous subjects of the Emperor. "Besides, they
fear lest, the time of year being now cold and tempestuous, she might
there, though she never were so well ordered, take such cold or other
disease, considering she never was before upon the seas, as should be to
her great peril.... She is, moreover, young and beautiful; and if she
should be transported by sea they fear much how it might alter her
complexion."[192] No sooner was the marriage treaty signed than splendid
preparations were made for the reception of the King's coming bride. The
Lord Admiral (Fitzwilliam) was ordered to prepare a fleet of ten vessels
to escort her from Calais; repairs and redecorations of the royal
residences went on apace; and especially in the Queen's apartments, where
again the initials of poor Jane had to be altered to those of her
successor, and the "principal lords have bought much cloth of gold and
silk, a thing unusual for them except for some great solemnity."[193]
The conclusion of the treaty was a triumph for Cromwell and the
Protestant party in Henry's Council; and the Commissioners who signed it
reflect the fact. Cranmer, Cromwell, the Duke of Suffolk, Lord Chancellor
Audley, and Lord Admiral Fitzwilliam, were all of them inclined to the
reforming side, whilst Bishop Tunstal, though on the Catholic side, was a
personal friend of the King; and the new man, Hertford, Jane Seymour's
brother, though not one of the Commissioners, gave emphatic approval of
the match. "I am as glad," he wrote to Cromwell, "of the good resolution
(of the marriage) as ever I was of a thing since the birth of the Prince;
for I think the King's Highness could not in Christendom marry in any
place meet for his Grace's honour that should be less prejudicial to his
Majesty's succession."[194] Henry himself was in his usual vaunting mood
about the alliance. He had long desired, he said, to cement a union with
the German confederation, and could now disregard both France and the
Emperor; besides, his influence would suffice to prevent the Lutherans
from going too far in their religious innovations. As for the lady, he had
only one male child, and he was convinced that his desire for more issue
could not be better fulfilled "than with the said lady, who is of
convenient age, healthy temperament, elegant stature, and endowed with
other graces."
The news of the engagement was ill received by Francis and Charles. They
became more ostentatiously friendly than ever; and their ambassadors in
London were inseparable. When Marillac and the Emperor's temporary envoy
went together to tell Cromwell that the Emperor was so confident of the
friendship of Francis that he was riding through France from Spain to
Flanders, the English minister quite lost his composure. He was informed,
he told the ambassadors, that this meeting of the monarchs was "merely
with the view to making war on this poor King (Henry), who aimed at
nothing but peace and friendship." Ominous mutterings came, too, from
Flanders at the scant courtesy Henry had shown in throwing over the match
with the Duchess of Milan in the midst of the negotiation. Cromwell was
therefore full of anxiety, whilst the elaborate preparations were being
made in Calais and in England for the new Queen's reception. Not only was
a fresh household to be appointed, the nobility and gentry and their
retinues summoned, fine clothes galore ordered or enjoined for others, the
towns on the way from Dover to be warned of the welcome expected from
them, and the hundred details dependent upon the arrival and installation
of the King's fourth wife, but Henry himself had to be carefully handled,
to prevent the fears engendered by the attitude of his rivals causing him
to turn to the party opposed to Cromwell before the Protestant marriage
was effected.
In the meanwhile, Anne with a great train of guards and courtiers, three
hundred horsemen strong, rode from Dusseldorf towards Calais through
Cleves, Antwerp, Bruges, and Dunkirk. It was ordered that Lord Lisle, Lord
Deputy of Calais, should meet the Queen on the English frontier, near
Gravelines, and that at St. Pierre, Lord Admiral Fitzwilliam, who had a
fleet of fifty sail in the harbour, should greet her in the name of his
King, gorgeously dressed in blue velvet, smothered with gold embroidery,
and faced with crimson satin, royal blue and crimson, the King's colours,
in velvet, damask, and silk, being the universal wear, even of the sailors
and men-at-arms. The aged Duke of Suffolk and the Lord Warden were to
receive her on her landing at Dover; and at Canterbury she was to be
welcomed and entertained by Archbishop Cranmer. Norfolk and a great
company of armed nobles were to greet the new Queen on the downs beyond
Rochester; whilst the Queen's household, with Lady Margaret Douglas, the
King's niece, and the Duchess of Richmond, his daughter-in-law, were to
join her at Deptford, and the whole vast and glittering multitude were to
convey her thence to where the King's pavilions were erected for her
reception at Blackheath.[195]
In the midwinter twilight of early morning, on the 11th December 1539,
Anne's cavalcade entered the English town of Calais, and during the long
time she remained weather-bound there she was entertained as sumptuously
as the nobles and townsmen could entertain her. The day she had passed
through Dunkirk in the Emperor's dominions, just before coming to Calais,
a sermon was preached against her and all Lutherans; but with that
exception no molestation was offered to her. The ship that was to carry
her over, dressed fore and aft with silken flags, streamers, and banners,
was exhibited to her admiration by Fitzwilliam, royal salutes thundered
welcome to her, bands of martial music clashed in her honour, and banquets
and jousts were held to delight her.[196] Good sense and modesty were
shown by her in many ways at this somewhat trying time. Her principal
mentor, Chancellor Olsiliger, begged Fitzwilliam to advise her as to her
behaviour; and she herself asked him to teach her some game of cards that
the King of England usually played. He taught her a game which he calls
"Sent, which she did learn with good grace and countenance"; and she then
begged him to come to sup with her, and bring some noble folk with him to
sit with her in the German way. He told her that this was not the fashion
in England, but he accepted her invitation.
Thus Anne began betimes to prepare for what she hoped--greatly
daring--would be a happy married life in England; whilst the wind and the
waves thundering outside the harbour forbade all attempt to convey the
bride to her now expectant bridegroom. Henry had intended to keep
Christmas with unusual state at Greenwich in the company of his new wife;
but week after week slipped by, with the wind still contrary, and it was
the 27th December before a happy change of weather enabled Anne to set
sail for her new home. She had a stout heart, for the passage was a rough
though rapid one. When she landed at Deal, and thence, after a short rest,
was conducted in state to Dover Castle, the wind blew blusterously, and
the hail and winter sleet drove "continually in her Grace's face"; but she
would hear of no delay in her journey forward, "so desirous was her Grace
of reaching the King's presence." At Canterbury the citizens received her
with a great torchlight procession and peals of guns. "In her chamber were
forty or fifty gentlewomen waiting to receive her in velvet bonnets; all
of which she took very joyously, and was so glad to see the King's
subjects resorting to her so lovingly, that she forgot all the foul
weather and was very merry at supper."[197]
And so, with an evident determination to make the best of everything, Anne
rode onward, accompanied by an ever-growing cavalcade of sumptuously
bedizened folk, through Sittingbourne, and so to Rochester, where she was
lodged at the bishop's palace, and passed New Year's Day 1540. News daily
reached the King of his bride's approach, whilst he remained consumed with
impatience at Greenwich. At each successive stage of her journey forward
supple courtiers had written to Henry glowing accounts of the beauty and
elegance of the bride. Fitzwilliam from Calais had been especially
emphatic, and the King's curiosity was piqued to see the paragon he was to
marry. At length, when he knew that Anne was on the way from Sittingbourne
to Rochester, and would arrive there on New Year's Eve, he told Cromwell
that he himself, with an escort of eight gentlemen clad in grey, would
ride to Rochester incognito to get early sight of his bride, "whom he
sorely desired to see." He went, he said, "to nourish love"; and full of
hopeful anticipation, Henry on a great courser ambled over Gad's Hill from
Gravesend to Rochester soon after dawn on New Year's Day 1540, with Sir
Anthony Browne, his Master of the Horse, on one side, and Sir John Russell
on the other. It was in accordance with the chivalrous tradition that this
should be done, and that the lady should pretend to be extremely surprised
when she was informed who her visitor was; so that Anne must have made a
fair guess as to what was coming when Sir Anthony Browne, riding a few
hundred yards ahead of his master, entered her presence, and, kneeling,
told her that he had brought a New Year's gift for her. When the courtier
raised his eyes and looked critically upon the lady before him,
experienced as he was in Henry's tastes, "he was never more dismayed in
his life to see her so far unlike that which was reported."[198]
Anne was about twenty-four years of age, but looked older, and her frame
was large, bony, and masculine, which in the facial portraits that had
been sent to Henry was not indicated, and her large, low-German features,
deeply pitted with the ravages of smallpox, were, as Browne knew, the very
opposite of the type of beauty which would be likely to stimulate a gross,
unwholesome voluptuary of nearly fifty. So, with a sinking heart, he went
back to his master, not daring to prepare him for what was before him by
any hint of disparagement of the bride. As soon as Henry entered with
Russell and Browne and saw for himself, his countenance fell, and he made
a wry face, which those who knew him understood too well; and they
trembled in their shoes at what was to come of it. He nevertheless greeted
the lady politely, raising her from the kneeling position she had assumed,
and kissed her upon the cheek, passing a few minutes in conversation with
her about her long journey. He had brought with him some rich presents of
sables and other furs; but he was "so marvellously astonished and abashed"
that he had not the heart to give them to her, but sent them the next
morning with a cold message by Sir Anthony Browne.
In the night the royal barge had been brought round from Gravesend to
Rochester, and the King returned to Greenwich in the morning by water. He
had hardly passed another word with Anne since the first meeting, though
they had supped together, and it was with a sulky, frowning face that he
took his place in the shelter of his galley. Turning to Russell, he asked,
"Do you think this woman so fair or of such beauty as report has made
her?" Russell, courtier-like, fenced with the question by feigning to
misunderstand it. "I should hardly take her to be fair," he replied, "but
of brown complexion." "Alas!" continued the King, "whom should men trust?
I promise you I see no such thing in her as hath been showed unto me of
her, and am ashamed that men have so praised her as they have done. I like
her not."[199] To Browne he was quite as outspoken. "I see nothing in
this woman as men report of her," he said angrily, "and I am surprised
that wise men should make such reports as they have done." Whereat Browne,
who knew that his brother-in-law, Fitzwilliam, was one of the "wise men"
referred to, scented danger and was silent. The English ladies, too, who
had accompanied Anne on the road began to whisper in confidence to their
spouses that Anne's manners were coarse, and that she would never suit the
King's fastidious taste.
But he who had most to lose and most to fear was Cromwell. It was he who
had drawn and driven his master into the Protestant friendship against the
Emperor and the Pope, of which the marriage was to be the pledge, and he
had repeated eagerly for months the inflated praises of Anne's beauty sent
by his agents and friends in order to pique Henry to the union. He knew
that vigilant enemies of himself and his policy were around him, watching
for their opportunity, Norfolk and the older nobles, the Pope's bishops,
and, above all, able, ambitious Stephen Gardiner, now sulking at
Winchester, determined to supplant him if he could. When, on Friday the
2nd January, Henry entered his working closet at Greenwich after his water
journey from Rochester, Cromwell asked him "how he liked the Lady Anne."
The King answered gloomily, "Nothing so well as she was spoken of," adding
that if he had known before as much as he knew then, she should never have
come within his realm. In the grievous self-pity usual with him in his
perplexity, he turned to Cromwell, the man hitherto so fertile in
expedients, and wailed, "What is the remedy?"[200] Cromwell, for once at
a loss, could only express his grief, and say he knew of none. In very
truth it was too late now to stop the state reception; for preparations
had been ordered for such a pageant as had rarely been seen in England.
Cromwell had intended it for his own triumph, and as marking the
completeness of his victory over his opponents. Once more ambition
o'erleaped itself, and the day that was to establish Cromwell's supremacy
sealed his doom.
What Anne thought of the situation is not on record. She had seen little
of the world, outside the coarse boorishness of a petty low-German court;
she was neither educated nor naturally refined, and she probably looked
upon the lumpishness of her lover as an ordinary thing. In any case, she
bated none of her state and apparent contentment, as she rode gorgeously
bedight with her great train towards Greenwich. At the foot of Shooter's
Hill there had been erected an imposing pavilion of cloth of gold, and
divers other tents warmed with fires of perfumed wood; and here a company
of ladies awaited the coming of the Queen on Saturday, 3rd January 1540. A
broad way was cleared from the pavilion, across Woolwich Common and
Blackheath, for over two miles, to the gates of Greenwich Park; and the
merchants and Corporation of London joined with the King's retinue in
lining each side of this long lane. Cromwell had recently gained the
goodwill of foreigners settled in London by granting them exemption from
special taxation for a term of years, and he had claimed, as some return,
that they should make the most of this day of triumph. Accordingly, the
German merchants of the Steelyard, the Venetians, the Spaniards, the
French, and the rest of them, donned new velvet coats and jaunty crimson
caps with white feathers, each master with a smartly clad servant behind
him, and so stood each side of the way to do honour to the bride at the
Greenwich end of the route. Then came the English merchants, the
Corporation of London, the knights and gentlemen who had been bidden from
the country to do honour to their new Queen, the gentlemen pensioners, the
halberdiers, and, around the tent, the nobler courtiers and Queen's
household, all brave in velvet and gold chains.[201] Behind the ranks of
gentlemen and servitors there was ample room and verge enough upon the
wide heath for the multitudes who came to gape and cheer King Harry's new
wife; more than a little perplexed in many cases as to the minimum amount
of enthusiasm which would be accepted as seemly. Cromwell himself
marshalled the ranks on either side, "running up and down with a staff in
his hand, for all the world as if he had been a running postman," as an
eye-witness tells us.
It was midday before the Queen's procession rode down Shooter's Hill to
the tents, where she was met by her official household and greeted with a
long Latin oration which she did not understand, whilst she sat in her
chariot. Then heartily kissing the great ladies sent to welcome her, she
alighted and entered the tent to rest and warm herself over the perfumed
fires, and to don even more magnificent raiment than that she wore. When
she was ready for her bridegroom's coming she must have been a blaze of
magnificence. She wore a wide skirt of cloth of gold with a raised pattern
in bullion and no train, and her head was covered first with a close cap
and then a round cap covered with pearls and fronted with black velvet;
whilst her bodice was one glittering mass of precious stones. When swift
messengers brought news that the King was coming, Anne mounted at the door
of the tent a beautiful white palfrey; and surrounded by her servitors,
each bearing upon his golden coat the black lion of Cleves, and followed
by her train, she set forth to meet her husband.
Henry, unwieldy and lame as he was with a running ulcer in the leg, was as
vain and fond of pomp as ever, and outdid his bride in splendour. His coat
was of purple velvet cut like a frock, embroidered all over with a flat
gold pattern interlined with narrow gold braid, and with gold lace laid
crosswise over it all. A velvet overcoat surmounted the gorgeous garment,
lined also with gold tissue, the sleeves and breast held together with
great buttons of diamonds, rubies, and pearls. His sword and belt were
covered with emeralds, and his bonnet and under-cap were "so rich in
jewels that few men could value them"; whilst across his shoulders he wore
a baldrick, composed of precious stones and pearls, that was the wonder of
all beholders. The fat giant thus bedizened bestrode a great war-horse
to match, and almost equally magnificent; and, preceded by heralds and
trumpeters, followed by the great officers, the royal household and the
bishops, and accompanied by the Duke Philip of Bavaria, just betrothed to
the Princess Mary, Henry rode through the long lane of his velvet-clad
admirers to meet Anne, hard by the cross upon Blackheath. When she
approached him, he doffed his jewelled bonnet and bowed low; and then
embraced her, whilst she, with every appearance of delight and duty,
expressed her pleasure at meeting him. Thus, together, with their great
cavalcades united, over five thousand horsemen strong, they rode in the
waning light of a midwinter afternoon to Greenwich; and, as one who saw it
but knew not the tragedy that lurked behind the splendour, exclaimed, "Oh!
what a sight was this to see, so goodly a Prince and so noble a King to
ride with so fair a lady of so goodly a stature, and so womanly a
countenance, and especial of so good qualities. I think that no creature
could see them but his heart rejoiced."[202]
[Illustration: _ANNE OF CLEVES_
_From a portrait by a German artist in St. John's College, Oxford_]
There was one heart, at all events, that did not rejoice, and that was
Henry's. He went heavily through the ceremony of welcoming home his bride
in the great hall at Greenwich, and then led her to her chamber; but no
sooner had he got quit of her, than retiring to his own room he summoned
Cromwell. "Well!" he said, "is it not as I told you? Say what they will,
she is nothing like so fair as she was reported to be. She is well and
seemly, but nothing else." Cromwell, confused, could only mumble something
about her having a queenly manner. But Henry wanted a way out of his
bargain rather than reconciliation to it; and he ordered Cromwell to
summon the Council at once--Norfolk, Suffolk, Cromwell, Cranmer,
Fitzwilliam, and Tunstal--to consider the prior engagement made between
Anne and the Duke of Lorraine's son.[203] The question had already been
discussed and disposed of, and the revival of it thus at the eleventh hour
shows how desperate Henry was. The Council assembled immediately, and
summoned the German envoys who had negotiated the marriage and were now in
attendance on Anne. The poor men were thunderstruck at the point of an
impediment to the marriage being raised then, and begged to be allowed to
think the matter over till the next morning, Sunday. When they met the
Council again in the morning, they could only protest that the prior
covenant had only been a betrothal, which had never taken effect, and had
been formally annulled. If there was any question about it, however, they
offered to remain as prisoners in England until the original deed of
revocation was sent from Cleves.
When this answer was carried to Henry he broke out angrily that he was not
being well treated, and upbraided Cromwell for not finding a loophole for
escape. He did not wish to marry the woman, he said. "If she had not come
so far, and such great preparations made, and for fear of making a ruffle
in the world--of driving her brother into the hands of the Emperor and
the French King--he never would marry her." Cromwell was apparently afraid
to encourage him in the idea of repudiation, and said nothing; and after
dinner the King again summoned the Council to his presence. To them he
bitterly complained of having been deceived. Would the lady, he asked,
make a formal protestation before notaries that she was free from all
contracts? Of course she would, and did, as soon as she was asked; but
Henry's idea in demanding this is evident. If she had refused it would
give a pretext for delay, but if she did as desired, and by any quibble
the prior engagement was found to be valid, her protestation to the
contrary would be good grounds for a divorce. But still Henry would much
rather not have married her at all. "Oh! is there no other remedy?" he
asked despairingly on Monday, after Anne had made her protestation. "Must
I needs against my will put my neck into the yoke?" Cromwell could give
him no comfort, and left him gloomy at the prospect of going through the
ceremony on the morrow. On Tuesday morning, when he was apparelled for the
wedding, as usual in a blaze of magnificence of crimson satin and cloth of
gold, Cromwell entered his chamber on business. "My lord," said Henry, "if
it were not to satisfy the world and my realm, I would not do what I must
do this day for any earthly thing." But withal he went through it as best
he might, though with heavy heart and gloomy countenance, and the
unfortunate bride, we are told, was remarked to be "demure and sad," as
well she might be, when her husband and Cranmer placed upon her finger the
wedding-ring with the ominous inscription, "God send me well to keep."
Early the next morning Cromwell entered the King's chamber between hope
and fear, and found Henry frowning and sulky. "How does your Grace like
the Queen?" he asked. Henry grumblingly, and not quite relevantly, replied
that he, Cromwell, was not everybody; and then he broke out, "Surely, my
lord, as you know, I liked her not well before, but now I like her much
worse." With an incredible grossness, and want of common decency, he then
went into certain details of his wife's physical qualities that had
disgusted him and turned him against her. He did not believe, from certain
peculiarities that he described, that she was a maid, he said; but so far
as he was concerned, he was so "struck to the heart" that he had left her
as good a maid as he had found her.[204] Nor was the King more reticent
with others. He was free with his details to the gentlemen of his chamber,
Denny, Heneage, and others, as to the signs which it pleased him to
consider suspicious as touching his wife's previous virtue, and protested
that he never could, or would, consummate the marriage; though he
professed later that for months after the wedding he did his best to
overcome his repugnance, and lived constantly in contact with his wife.
But he never lost sight of the hope of getting free. If he did not find
means soon to do so, he said, he should have no more issue. His conscience
told him--that tender conscience of his--that Anne was not his legal wife;
and he turned to Cromwell for a remedy, and found none: for Cromwell knew
that the breaking up of the Protestant union, upon which he had staked his
future, would inevitably mean now the rise of his rivals and his own ruin.
He fought stoutly for his position, though Norfolk and Gardiner were often
now at the King's ear. His henchman, Dr. Barnes, who had gone to Germany
as envoy during the marriage negotiations, was a Protestant, and in a
sermon on justification by faith he violently attacked Gardiner. The
latter, in spite of Cromwell and Cranmer, secured from the King an order
that Barnes should humbly and publicly recant. He did so at Easter at the
Spital, but at once repeated the offence, and he and two other clergymen
who thought like him were burnt for heresy. Men began to shake their heads
and look grave now as they spoke of Cromwell and Cranmer; but the
Secretary stood sturdily, and in May seemed as if he would turn the tables
upon his enemies. Once, indeed, he threatened the Duke of Norfolk roughly
with the King's displeasure, and at the opening of Parliament he took the
lead as usual, expressing the King's sorrow at the religious bitterness in
the country, and demanding large supplies for the purposes of national
defence.
But, though still apparently as powerful as ever, and more than ever
overbearing, he dared not yet propose to the King a way out of the
matrimonial tangle. Going home to Austin Friars from the sitting of
Parliament on the 7th June, he told his new colleague, Wriothesley, that
the thing that principally troubled him was that the King did not like
the Queen, and that his marriage had never been consummated. Wriothesley,
whose sympathies were then Catholic, suggested that "some way might be
devised for the relief of the King." "Ah!" sighed Cromwell, who knew what
such a remedy would mean to him, "but it is a great matter." The next day
Wriothesley returned to the subject, and begged Cromwell to devise some
means of relief for the King: "for if he remained in this grief and
trouble they should all smart for it some day." "Yes," replied Cromwell,
"it is true; but it is a great matter." "Marry!" exclaimed Wriothesley,
out of patience, "I grant that, but let a remedy be searched for." But
Cromwell had no remedy yet but one that would ruin himself, and that he
dared not propose, so he shook his head sadly and changed the
subject.[205]
The repudiation of Anne was, as Cromwell said, a far greater matter than
at first sight appeared. The plan to draw into one confederation for the
objects of England the German Protestants, the King of Denmark, and the
Duke of Cleves, whose seizure of Guelderland had brought him in opposition
to the Emperor, was the most threatening that had faced Charles for years.
His own city of Ghent was in open revolt, and Francis after all was but a
fickle ally. If once more the French King turned from him and made friends
with the Turk and the Lutherans, then indeed would the imperial power have
cause to tremble and Henry to rejoice. Cromwell had striven hard to cement
the Protestant combination; but again and again he had been thwarted by
his rivals. The passage of the Six Articles against his wish, although the
execution of the Act was suspended at Cromwell's instance, had caused the
gravest distrust on the part of Hans Frederick and the Landgrave of Hesse;
and if Henry were encouraged to repudiate his German wife, not only would
her brother--already in negotiation with the imperial agents for the
investiture of Gueldres, and his marriage with the Emperor's niece, the
Duchess of Milan--be at once driven into opposition to England, but Hans
Frederick and Hesse would also abandon Henry to the tender mercies of his
enemies.
The only way to avoid such a disaster following upon the repudiation of
Anne was first to drive a wedge of distrust between Charles and Francis,
now in close confederacy. In January the Emperor had surprised the world
by his boldness in traversing France to his Flemish dominions. He was
feasted splendidly by Francis, and escaped unbetrayed; but during his stay
in France desperate attempts were made by Wyatt, Henry's ambassador with
Charles, Bonner, the ambassador in France, and by the Duke of Norfolk, who
went in February on a special mission, to sow discord between the allied
sovereigns, and not without some degree of success. Charles during his
stay in France was badgered by Wyatt into saying some hasty words, which
were deliberately twisted by Norfolk into a menace to France and England
alike. Francis was reminded with irritating iteration that Charles had
plenty of smiles and soft words for his French friends, but avoided
keeping his promises about the cession of Milan or anything else. So in
France those who were in favour of the imperial alliance, the
Montmorencies and the Queen, declined in their hold over Francis, and
their opponents, the Birons, the Queen of Navarre, Francis' sister, and
the Duchess of Etampes, his mistress, planned with Henry's agents for an
understanding with England. This, as may be supposed, was not primarily
Cromwell's policy, but that of Norfolk and his friends, because its
success would inevitably mean the conciliation of the German princes and
Cleves by the Emperor, and the break-up of the Protestant confederacy and
England, by which Cromwell must now stand or fall.
As early as April, Marillac, the French ambassador in England, foretold
the great change that was coming. The arrest of Barnes, Garrard, and
Jerome, for anti-Catholic teaching, and the persecutions everywhere for
those who offended ever so slightly in the same way, presaged Cromwell's
fall. "Cranmer and Cromwell," writes Marillac, "do not know where they
are. Within a few days there will be seen in this country a great change
in many things, which this King begins to make in his ministers, recalling
those he had disgraced, and degrading those he had raised. Cromwell is
tottering: for all those now recalled were dismissed at his request, and
bear him no little grudge--amongst others, the Bishops of Winchester
(_i.e._ Gardiner), Durham, and Bath, men of great learning and experience,
who are now summoned to the Privy Council. It is said that Tunstal (_i.e._
Durham) will be Vicar-General, and Bath Privy Seal, which are Cromwell's
principal offices.... If he holds his own (_i.e._ Cromwell), it will only
be because of his close assiduity in business, though he is very rude in
his demeanour. He does nothing without consulting the King, and is
desirous of doing justice, especially to foreigners."
This was somewhat premature, but it gives a good idea of the process that
was going on. There is no doubt that Cromwell believed in his ability to
keep his footing politically; for he was anything but rigid in his
principles, and if the friendship with France initiated by his rivals had,
as it showed signs of doing, developed into an alliance that would enable
Henry both to dismiss his fears of the Emperor and throw over the
Protestants, he would probably have accepted the situation, and have
proposed a means for Henry to get rid of his distasteful wife. But this
opportunism did not suit his opponents in Henry's Council. They wanted to
get rid of the man quite as much as they did his policy; for his insolence
had stung them to the quick, great nobles as most of them were, and he the
son of a blacksmith. Some other means, therefore, than a mere change of
policy was necessary to dislodge the strong man who guided the King.
Parliament had met on the 12th April, and it was managed with Cromwell's
usual boldness and success.[206] As if to mark that his great ability was
still paramount, he was made Earl of Essex and Great Chamberlain of
England in the following week.
But the struggle in the Council, and around the King, continued unabated.
Henry was warned by Cromwell's enemies of the danger of allowing religious
freedom to be carried too far, and of thus giving the Catholic powers an
excuse for executing the Pope's decree of deprivation against him. He was
reminded that the Emperor and Francis were still friends, that the latter
was suspiciously preparing for war, and that Henry's brother-in-law the
Duke of Cleves' quarrel with the Emperor might drag England into war for
the sake of a beggarly German dukedom of no importance or value to her. On
the other hand, Cromwell would point out to Henry the disobedience and
insolence of the Catholics who questioned his spiritual supremacy, and
cause Churchmen who advocated a reconciliation with Rome to be imprisoned.
Clearly such a position could not continue indefinitely, and Norfolk
anticipated Cromwell by playing the final trump card--that of arousing
Henry's personal fears. The word treason and a hint that anything could be
intended against his person always brought Henry to heel. What the exact
accusation against Cromwell was no one knows, though it was whispered at
the time that the nobles had told Henry that Cromwell had amassed great
stores of money and arms, and maintained a vast number of dependants (1500
men, it was asserted, wore his livery), with a sinister object; some said
to marry the Princess Mary and make himself King; and that he had received
a great bribe from the Duke of Cleves and the Protestants to bring about
the marriage of Anne. Others said that he had boasted that he was to
receive a crown abroad from a foreign potentate (_i.e._, the Emperor), and
that he had talked of defending the new doctrines at the sword's
point.[207] No such accusations, however, are on official record; and
there is no doubt that the real reason for his arrest was the animosity of
the aristocratic and Catholic party against him, acting upon the King's
fears and his desire to get rid of Anne of Cleves.
On the 9th June Parliament was still sitting, discussing the religious
question with a view to the settlement of some uniform doctrine. The Lords
of the Council left the Chamber to go across to Whitehall to dinner before
midday; and as they wended their way across the great courtyard of
Westminster a high wind carried away Cromwell's flat cap from his head. It
was the custom when one gentleman was even accidentally uncovered for
those who were with him also to doff their bonnets. But, as an attendant
ran and recovered Cromwell's flying headgear on that occasion, the haughty
minister looked grimly round and saw all his colleagues, once so humble,
holding their own caps upon their heads. "A high wind indeed must this
be," sneered Cromwell, "to blow my cap off, and for you to need hold yours
on." He must have known that ill foreboded; for during dinner no one spoke
to him. The meal finished, Cromwell went to the Council Chamber with the
rest, and, as was his custom, stood at a window apart to hear appeals and
applications to him, and when these were disposed of he turned to the
table to take his usual seat with the rest. On this occasion Norfolk
stopped him, and told him that it was not meet that traitors should sit
amongst loyal gentlemen. "I am no traitor!" shouted Cromwell, dashing his
cap upon the ground; but the captain of the guard was at the door, and
still protesting the wretched man was hurried to the Water Gate and rowed
swiftly to the Tower, surrounded by halberdiers, Norfolk as he left the
Council Chamber tearing off the fallen minister's badge of the Garter as a
last stroke of ignominy.
Cromwell knew he was doomed, for by the iniquitous Act that he himself had
forged for the ruin of others, he might be attainted and condemned legally
without his presence or defence. "Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!" he wrote to the
King in his agony; but for him there was as little mercy as he had shown
to others. His death was a foregone conclusion, for Henry's fears had been
aroused: but Cromwell had to be kept alive long enough for him to furnish
such information as would provide a plausible pretext for the repudiation
of Anne. He was ready to do all that was asked of him--to swear to
anything the King wished. He testified that he knew the marriage had never
been consummated, and never would be; that the King was dissatisfied from
the first, and had complained that the evidence of the nullification of
the prior contract with the heir of Lorraine was insufficient; that the
King had never given full consent to the marriage, but had gone through
the ceremony under compulsion of circumstances, and with mental
reservation. When all this was sworn to, Cromwell's hold upon the world
was done. Upon evidence now unknown he was condemned for treason and
heresy without being heard in his own defence, and on the 28th July 1540
he stood, a sorry figure, upon the scaffold in the Tower. He had been a
sinner, he confessed, and had travailed after the things of this world;
but he fervently avowed that he was a good Catholic and no heretic, and
had harboured no thought of evil towards his sovereign. But protestations
availed not; and his head, the cleverest head in England, was pitiably
hacked off by a bungling headsman. Before that happened, the repudiation
of Anne of Cleves was complete, and a revival of the aristocratic and
Catholic influence in England was an accomplished fact.
CHAPTER VIII
1540-1542
THE KING'S "GOOD SISTER" AND THE KING'S BAD WIFE--THE LUTHERANS AND
ENGLISH CATHOLICS
During her few months of incomplete wedlock with the King, Anne had felt
uneasily the strange anomaly of her position. She accompanied Henry in his
daily life at bed and board, and shared with him the various festivities
held in celebration of the marriage; the last of which was a splendid
tournament given by the bachelor courtiers at Durham House on May-day. She
had studied English diligently, and tried to please her husband in a
hundred well-meant but ungainly ways. She had by her jovial manner and
real kindness of heart become very popular with those around her; but yet
she got no nearer to the glum, bloated man by her side. In truth she was
no fit companion for him, either physically or mentally. Her lack of the
softer feminine charms, her homely manners, her lack of learning and of
musical talent, on which Henry set so much store, were not counterbalanced
by strong will or commanding ability which might have enabled her to
dominate him, or by feminine craft by which he might have been captivated.
She was a woman, however, and could not fail to know that her repudiation
in some form was in the air. It was one of the accusations against
Cromwell that he had divulged to her what the King had said about the
marriage; but, so far from doing so, he had steadily avoided compliance
with her oft-repeated requests for an interview with him. Shortly before
Cromwell's fall, Henry had complained to him that Anne's temper was
becoming tart; and then Cromwell thought well to warn her through her
Chamberlain that she should try to please the King more. The poor woman,
desirous of doing right, tactlessly flew to the other extreme, and her
cloying fondness aroused Henry's suspicion that Cromwell had informed her
of his intention to get rid of her. Anne's Lutheranism, moreover, had
begun to grate upon the tender conscience of her husband under the
prompting of the Catholic party; although she scrupulously followed the
English ritual, and later became a professed Catholic; and to all these
reasons which now made Henry doubly anxious for prompt release, was added
another more powerful than any. One of Anne's maids of honour was a very
beautiful girl of about eighteen, Katharine, the orphan daughter of Lord
Edmund Howard, brother of the Duke of Norfolk, and consequently first
cousin of Anne Boleyn. During the first months of his unsatisfying union
with Anne, Henry's eyes must have been cast covetously upon Katharine; for
in April 1540 she received a grant from him of a certain felon's property,
and in the following month twenty-three quilts of quilted sarsnet were
given to her out of the royal wardrobe. When Cromwell was still awaiting
his fate in the Tower, and whispers were rife of what was intended against
the Queen, Marillac the observant French ambassador wrote in cipher to
his master, telling him that there was another lady in the case; and a
week afterwards (6th July) he amplified his hints by saying that, either
for that reason or some other, Anne had been sent to Richmond, on the
false pretence that plague had appeared in London, and that Henry, very
far from joining her there, as he had promised, had not left London, and
was about to make a progress in another direction. Marillac rightly says
that "if there had been any suspicion of plague, the King would not stay
for any affair, however great, as he is the most timid person that could
be in such a case."
The true reason why Anne was sent away was Henry's invariable cowardice,
that made him afraid to face a person whom he was wronging. Gardiner had
promptly done what Cromwell had been ruined for not doing, and had
submitted to the King within a few days of the arrest of his rival a
complete plan by which Anne might be repudiated.[208] First certain
ecclesiastics, under oath of secrecy, were to be asked for their opinion
as to the best way to proceed, and the Council was thereupon to discuss
and settle the procedure in accordance: the question of the previous
contract and its repudiation was to be examined; the manner in which the
Queen herself was to be approached was to be arranged, and evidence from
every one to whom the King had spoken at the time as to his lack of
consent and consummation was to be collected. All this had been done by
the 7th July, when the clergy met at Westminster, summoned by writ under
the great seal, dated the 6th, to decide whether the King's marriage was
valid or not in the circumstances detailed. The obedient Parliament,
sitting with closed doors, a few days previously had, by Norfolk's orders,
petitioned the King to solve certain doubts that had been raised about the
marriage, and Henry, ever desirous of pleasing his faithful lieges, and to
set at rest conscientious scruples, referred the question to his prelates
in Synod for decision.
Anne, two days before this, summoned to Richmond the ambassador of her
brother, who came to her at four o'clock in the morning; and she then sent
for the Earl of Rutland, the chief of her household, to be present at the
interview. The King, she said, had sent her a message and asked for a
reply. The effect of the message was to express doubts as to the validity
of their marriage, and to ask her if she was content to leave the decision
of it to the English clergy. The poor woman, much perturbed, had refused
to send an answer without consideration, and she had then desired that her
brother's envoy should give, or at all events carry, the answer to the
King, but this he refused to do; and she in her trouble could only appeal
to Rutland for advice. He prated about the "graciousness and virtue" of
the King, and assured her that he would "do nothing but that should stand
by the law of God, and for the discharge of his conscience and hers, and
the quietness of the realm, and at the suit of all his lords and commons."
The King was content to refer the question to the learned and virtuous
bishops, so that she had cause to be glad rather than sorry. Anne was
confused and doubtful; for she did not know what was intended towards her.
But, considering the helplessness of her position and the danger of
resistance, she met the deputation of the Council that came to her next
day (6th July) in a spirit of complete surrender. She was, she said in
German, always content to obey the King, and would abide by the decision
of the prelates; and with this answer Gardiner posted back to London that
night, to appear at the Synod the next morning.
Neither Anne, nor any one for her, appeared. The whole evidence, which was
that already mentioned, was to show the existence of a prior contract, of
the annulling of which no sufficient proofs had been produced, the avowals
of the King and the Queen to their confidants that the marriage had never
been consummated, and never would be; and, lastly, the absence of "inner
consent" on the part of the King from the first. Under the pressure of
Gardiner--for Cranmer, overshadowed by a cloud and in hourly fear of
Cromwell's fate, was ready to sign anything--the union was declared to be
invalid, and both parties were pronounced capable of remarriage. A Bill
was then hurriedly rushed through Parliament confirming the decision of
Convocation, and Cranmer, for the third time, as Primate, annulled his
master's marriage. Anne was still profoundly disturbed at the fate that
might be in store for her; and when Suffolk, Southampton, and Wriothesley
went to Richmond on the 10th July to obtain her acceptance of the
decision, she fainted at the sight of them. They did their best to
reassure her, giving her from the King a large present of money and a
specially affectionate letter. She was assured that if she would acquiesce
and remain in the realm she should be the King's adopted sister, with
precedence before all other ladies but the King's wife and daughters; a
large appanage should be secured to her, and jewels, furniture, and the
household of a royal princess provided for her. She was still doubtful;
and some persuasion had to be used before she would consent to sign the
letter dictated to her as the King's "sister"; but at last she did so, and
was made to say that "though the case was hard and sorrowful, for the
great love she bears to his noble person, yet, having more regard for God
and His truth than for any worldly affection, she accepts the judgment,
praying that the King will take her as one of his most humble servants,
and so determine of her that she may sometimes enjoy his presence."
This seemed almost too good to be true when Henry read it, and he insisted
upon its being written and signed again in German, that Anne might not
subsequently profess ignorance of its wording. When Anne, however, was
asked to write to her brother, saying that she was fully satisfied, she at
first refused. Why should she write to him before he wrote to her? she
asked. If he sent a complaint, she would answer it as the King wished; but
after a few days she gave way on this point when further pressed.[209] So
delighted was Henry at so much submission to his will, that he was
kindness and generosity itself. On the 14th July he sent the Councillors
again to Richmond, with another handsome present and a letter to his
"Right dear, and right entirely beloved sister," thanking her gratefully
for her "wise and honourable proceedings." "As it is done in respect of
God and His truth; and, continuing your conformity, you shall find us a
perfect friend content to repute you as our dearest sister." He promised
her £4000 a year, with the two royal residences of Richmond and
Bletchingly, and a welcome at Court when she pleased to come. In return
she sent him another amiable letter, and the wedding-ring; expressing
herself fully satisfied. She certainly carried out her part of the
arrangement to perfection, whether from fear or complaisance; assuring the
envoys of her brother the Duke that she was well treated, as in a material
sense indeed she was, and thenceforward made the best of her life in
England.
Her brother and the German Protestants were of course furiously
indignant; but, as the injured lady expressed herself not only satisfied
but delighted with her position, no ground could be found for open
quarrel. She was probably a person of little refinement of feeling, and
highly appreciated the luxury and abundance with which she thenceforward
was surrounded, enjoying, as she always did, recreation and fine dress, in
which she was distinguished above any of Henry's wives. On the day after
the Synod had met in Westminster to decide the invalidity of the marriage
(7th July), Pate, the English ambassador, saw the Emperor at Bruges, with
a message from Henry which foreshadowed an entire change in the foreign
policy of England. Charles received Pate at midnight, and was agreeably
surprised to learn that conscientious scruples had made Henry doubt the
validity of his union with Anne. The Emperor's stiff demeanour changed at
once, and, as the news came day by day of the progress of the separation
of Henry from his Protestant wife, the cordiality of the Emperor grew
towards him,[210] whilst England itself was in full Catholic reaction.
The fall of Cromwell had, as it was intended to do, provided Henry with a
scapegoat. The spoliation and destruction of the religious houses, by
which the King and many of the Catholic nobles had profited enormously,
was laid to the dead man's door; the policy of plundering the Church, of
union with Lutherans, and the favouring of heresy, had been the work of
the wicked minister, and not of the good King--that ill-served and
ungratefully-used King, who was always innocent, and never in the wrong,
who simply differed from other good Catholics in his independence of the
Bishop of Rome: merely a domestic disagreement. With such suave hypocrisy
as this difficulties were soon smoothed over; and to prove the perfect
sincerity with which Henry proceeded, Protestants like Barnes, Garrard,
and Jerome were burnt impartially side by side with Catholics who did not
accept the spiritual supremacy of Henry over the Church in England, such
as Abell, Powell, Fetherstone, and Cook. The Catholic and aristocratic
party in England had thus triumphed all along the line, by the aid of
anti-Protestant Churchmen like Gardiner and Tunstal. Their heavy-handed
enemy, Cromwell, had gone, bearing the whole responsibility for the past;
the King had been flattered by exoneration from blame, and pleased by the
release from his wife, so deftly and pleasantly effected. No one but
Cromwell was to blame for anything: they were all good Catholics, whom the
other Catholic powers surely could not attack for a paltry quarrel with
the Pope; and, best of all, the ecclesiastical spoil was secured to them
and their heirs for ever, for they all maintained the supremacy of the
King in England, good Catholics though they were.
But, withal, they knew that Henry must have some one close to him to keep
him in the straight way.[211] The nobles were not afraid of Cranmer, for
he kept in the background, and was a man of poor spirit; and, moreover,
for the moment the danger was hardly from the reformers. The nobles had
triumphed by the aid of Gardiner, and Gardiner was now the strong spirit
near the King; but the aims of the nobles were somewhat different from
those of Churchmen; and a Catholic bishop as the sole director of the
national policy might carry them farther than they wished to go. Henry's
concupiscence must therefore once more be utilised, and the woman upon
whom he cast his eyes, if possible, made into a political instrument to
forward the faction that favoured her. Gardiner was nothing loath, for he
was sure of himself; but how eager Norfolk and his party were to take
advantage of Henry's fancy for Katharine Howard, to effect her lodgment by
his side as Queen, is seen by the almost indecent haste with which they
began to spread the news of her rise, even before the final decision was
given as to the validity of the marriage with Anne. On the 12th July a
humble dependant of the Howards, Mistress Joan Bulmer (of whom more will
be heard), wrote to Katharine, congratulating her upon her coming
greatness, and begging for an office about her person: "for I trost the
Quyne of Bretane wyll not forget her secretary."
Less than a fortnight later (21st July) the French ambassador gives as a
piece of gossip that Katharine Howard was already pregnant by the King,
and that the marriage was therefore being hurried on. Exactly when or
where the wedding took place is not known, but it was a private one, and
by the 11th August Katharine was called Queen, and acknowledged as such by
all the Court. On the 15th Marillac wrote that her name had been added to
the prayers in the Church service, and that the King had gone on a hunting
expedition, presumably accompanied by his new wife; whilst "Madame de
Cleves, so far from claiming to be married, is more joyous than ever, and
wears new dresses every day." Everybody thus was well satisfied except the
Protestants.[212] Henry, indeed, was delighted with his tiny, sparkling
girl-wife, and did his best to be a gallant bridegroom to her, though
there was none of the pomp and splendour that accompanied his previous
nuptials.[213] The autumn of 1540 was passed in a leisurely progress
through the shires to Grafton, where most of the honeymoon was spent. The
rose crowned was chosen by Henry as his bride's personal cognisance, and
the most was made of her royal descent and connections by the enamoured
King. "The King is so amorous of her," wrote Marillac in September, "that
he cannot treat her well enough, and caresses her more than he did the
others." Even thus early, however, whispers were heard of the King's
fickleness. Once it was said that Anne of Cleves was pregnant by him, and
he would cast aside Katharine in her favour, and shortly afterwards he
refrained from seeing his new wife for ten days together, because of
something she had done to offend him.
The moral deterioration of Henry's character, which had progressed in
proportion with the growing conviction of his own infallibility and
immunity, had now reached its lowest depth. He was rapidly becoming more
and more bulky; and his temper, never angelic, was now irascible in the
extreme. His health was bad, and increasing age had made him more than
ever impatient of contradiction or restraint, and no consideration but
that of his own interest and safety influenced him. The policy which he
adopted under the guidance of Gardiner and Norfolk was one of rigorous
enforcement of the Six Articles, and, at the same time, of his own
spiritual supremacy in England. All chance of a coalition of Henry with
the Lutherans was now out of the question ("Squire Harry means to be God,
and to do as pleases himself," said Luther at the time); and the Emperor,
freed from that danger, and faced with the greater peril of a coalition of
the French and Turks, industriously endeavoured to come to some _modus
vivendi_ with his German electors. The rift between Charles and Francis
was daily widening; and Henry himself was aiding the process to his full
ability; for he knew that whilst they were disunited he was safe. But for
the first time in his reign, except when he defied the Pope, he adopted a
policy--probably his own and not that of his ministers--calculated to
offend both the Catholic powers, whilst he was alienated from the
reforming element on the Continent.
By an Act of Parliament the ancient penal laws against foreign denizens
were re-enacted, and all foreigners but established merchants were to be
expelled the country; whilst alien merchants resident were to pay double
taxation. The taxation of Englishmen, enormous under Cromwell, was now
recklessly increased, with the set purpose of keeping the lieges poor,
just as the atrocious religious executions were mainly to keep them
submissive, and incapable of questioning the despot's will. But, though
Englishmen might be stricken dumb by persecution, the expulsion or
oppression of foreigners led to much acrimony and reprisals on the part
both of the Emperor and Francis. An entirely gratuitous policy of
irritation towards France on the frontier of Calais and elsewhere was also
adopted, apparently to impress the Emperor, and for the satisfaction of
Henry's arrogance, when he thought it might be safe to exercise it. The
general drift of English policy at the time was undoubtedly to draw closer
to the Emperor, not entirely to the satisfaction of the Duke of Norfolk,
who was usually pro-French; but even here the oppressive Act against
foreigners by which Henry hoped to show Charles that his friendship was
worth buying made cordiality in the interim extremely difficult. When
Chapuys in the Emperor's name remonstrated with the Council about the new
decree forbidding the export of goods from England except in English
bottoms, the English ministers rudely said that the King could pass what
laws he liked in his own country, just as the Emperor could in his.
Charles and his sister, the Regent of the Netherlands, took the hint, and
utterly astounded Henry by forbidding goods being shipped in the
Netherlands in English vessels.
The danger was understood at once. Not only did this strike a heavy blow
at English trade, but it upset the laboriously constructed pretence of
close communion with the Emperor which had been used to hoodwink the
French. Henry himself bullied and hectored, as if he was the first injured
party; and then took Chapuys aside in a window-bay and hinted at an
alliance. He said that the French were plotting against the Emperor, and
trying to gain his (Henry's) support, which, however, he would prefer to
give to the Emperor if he wished for it. Henry saw, indeed, that he had
drawn the bow too tight, and was ready to shuffle out of the position into
which his own arrogance had led him. So Gardiner was sent in the winter
to see the Emperor with the King's friend Knyvett, who was to be the new
resident ambassador; the object of the visit being partly to impress the
French, and partly to persuade Charles of Henry's strict Catholicism, and
so to render more difficult any such agreement being made as that aimed at
by the meeting at Worms between the Lutheran princes and their suzerain.
Gardiner's mission was not very successful, for Charles understood the
move perfectly; but it was not his policy then to alienate Henry, for he
was slowly maturing his plans for crushing France utterly, and hoped
whilst Catholic influence was paramount in England to obtain the help or
at least the neutrality of Henry.
The fall of Cromwell had been hailed by Catholics in England as the
salvation of their faith, and high hopes had attended the elevation of
Gardiner. But the crushing taxation, the arbitrary measures, and, above
all, the cruel persecution of those who, however slightly, questioned the
King's spiritual supremacy, caused renewed discontent amongst the extreme
Catholics, who still looked yearningly towards Cardinal Pole and his
house. It is not probable that any Yorkist conspiracy existed in England
at the time; the people were too much terrified for that; but Henry's
ambassadors and agents in Catholic countries had been forced sometimes to
dally with the foreign view of the King's supremacy, and Gardiner, whose
methods were even more unscrupulous than those of Cromwell, suddenly
pounced upon those of Henry's ministers who might be supposed to have come
into contact with the friends of the House of York. Pate, the English
ambassador with the Emperor, was suspicious, and escaped to Rome; but Sir
Thomas Wyatt, who had been the ambassador in Spain, was led to the Tower
handcuffed with ignominy; Dr. Mason, another ambassador, was also lodged
in the fortress, at the suggestion of Bonner. Even Sir Ralph Sadler, one
of the Secretaries of State, was imprisoned for a short time, whilst Sir
John Wallop, the ambassador in France, was recalled and consigned to a
dungeon, as was Sir Thomas Palmer, Knight Porter of Calais, and others;
though most of them were soon afterwards pardoned at the instance of
Katharine Howard. In the early spring of 1541 an unsuccessful attempt was
made at a Catholic rising in Yorkshire, where the feeling was very bitter;
and though the revolt was quickly suppressed, it was considered a good
opportunity for striking terror into those who still doubted the spiritual
supremacy of Henry, and resented the plunder of the monasteries. The
atrocious crime was perpetrated of bringing out the mother of Pole, the
aged Countess of Salisbury, last of the Plantagenets, from her prison in
the Tower to the headsman's block. Lord Leonard Gray was a another
blameless victim, whilst Lord Dacre of the South was, on a trumped-up
charge of murder, hanged like a common malefactor at Tyburn. Lord Lisle,
Henry's illegitimate uncle, was also kept in the Tower till his death.
When the reign of terror had humbled all men to the dust, the King could
venture to travel northward with the purpose of provoking and subjecting
his nephew, the King of Scots, the ally of France. All this seems to
point to the probability that at this time (1541) Henry had decided to
take a share on the side of the Emperor in the war which was evidently
looming between Charles and Francis. He was broken and fretful, but his
vanity and ambition were still boundless; and Gardiner, whose policy, and
not Norfolk's, it undoubtedly was, would easily persuade him that an
alliance in war with Charles could not fail to secure for him increased
consideration and readmission into the circle of Catholic nations, whilst
retaining his own supremacy unimpaired. Henry's pompous progress in the
North, accompanied by Katharine, occupied nearly five months, till the end
of October. How far the young wife was influential in keeping Henry to the
policy just described it is impossible to say, but beyond acquiescence in
an occasional petition or hint, it is difficult to believe that the
elderly, self-willed man would be moved by the thoughtless, giddy girl
whom he had married. If the opposite had been the case, Norfolk's
traditions and leanings would have been more conspicuous than they are in
Henry's actions at the time. It is true that, during the whole period, a
pretence of cordial negotiation was made for a marriage between Princess
Mary and a French prince, but it is certain now, whatever Norfolk may have
thought at the time, that the negotiation was solely in order to stimulate
Charles to nearer approach, and to mislead Francis whilst the English
preparations for war and the strengthening of the garrisons towards France
and Scotland went steadily on.
An alliance with the Emperor in a war with France was evidently the policy
upon which Henry, instigated by his new adviser, now depended to bring
him back with flying colours into the comity of Catholic sovereigns,
whilst bating no jot of his claims to do as he chose in his own realm.
Such a policy was one after Henry's own heart. It was showy and tricky,
and might, if successful, cover him with glory, as well as redound greatly
to his profit in the case of the dismemberment of France. But it would
have been impossible whilst the union symbolised by the Cleves marriage
existed; and, seen by this light, the eagerness of Gardiner to find a way
for the King to dismiss the wife who had personally repelled him is easily
understood, as well as Cromwell's disinclination to do so. The
encouragement of the marriage with Katharine Howard, part of the same
intrigue, was still further to attach the King to its promoters, and the
match was doubtless intended at the same time to conciliate Norfolk and
the nobles whilst Gardiner carried through his policy. We shall see that,
either by strange chance or deep design, those who were opposed to this
policy were the men who were instrumental in shattering the marriage that
was its concomitant.
Henry and his consort arrived at Hampton Court from the North on the 30th
October 1541, and to his distress he found his only son, Edward, seriously
ill of quartan fever. All the physicians within reach were summoned, and
reported to the anxious father that the child was so fat and unhealthy as
to be unlikely to live long. The King had now been married to Katharine
for fifteen months, and there were no signs of probable issue. Strange
whispers were going about on back stairs and ante-chambers with regard to
the Queen's proceedings. She was known to have been a giddy, neglected
girl before her marriage, having been brought up by her grandmother, the
Dowager-Duchess of Norfolk, without the slightest regard for her welfare
or the high rank of her family; and her confidants in a particularly
dissolute Court were many and untrustworthy. The King, naturally, was the
last person to hear the malicious tittle-tattle of jealous waiting-maids
and idle pages about the Queen; and though his wife's want of reserve and
dignity often displeased him, he lived usually upon affectionate terms
with her. There was other loose talk, also, going on to the effect that on
one of the visits of Anne of Cleves to Hampton Court after Henry's
marriage with Katharine, the King and his repudiated wife had made up
their differences, with the consequence that Anne was pregnant by him. It
was not true; though later it gave much trouble both to Henry and Anne,
but it lent further support to the suggestions that were already being
made that the King would dismiss Katharine and take Anne back again. The
air was full of such rumours, some prompted, as we shall see, by personal
malice, others evidently by the opponents of Gardiner's policy, which was
leading England to a war with France and a close alliance with the
imperial champion of Catholicism.
On the 2nd November, Henry, still in distress about the health of his son,
attended Mass, as usual, in the chapel at Hampton Court,[214] and as he
came out Cranmer prayed for a private interview with him. The archbishop
had for many months been in the background, for Gardiner would brook no
competition; but Cranmer was personally a favourite with the
King,--Cromwell said once that Henry would forgive him anything,--and when
they were alone Cranmer put him in possession of a shameful story that a
few days before had been told to him, which he had carefully put into
writing; and, after grave discussion with the Earl of Hertford (Seymour)
and the Lord Chancellor (Audley), had determined to hand to the King. The
conjunction of Cranmer, Seymour, and Audley, as the trio that thought it
their duty to open Henry's eyes to the suspicions cast upon his wife, is
significant. They were all of them in sympathy with the reformed religion,
and against the Norfolk and Gardiner policy; and it is difficult to escape
from the conclusion that, however true may have been the statements as to
Katharine's behaviour, and there is no doubt that she was guilty of much
that was laid to her charge, the enlightenment of Henry as to her life
before and after marriage was intended to serve the political and
religious ends of those who were instrumental in it.
The story as set forth by Cranmer was a dreadful one. It appears that a
man named John Lascelles, who was a strong Protestant, and had already
foretold the overthrow of Norfolk and Gardiner,[215] went to Cranmer and
said that he had been visiting in Sussex a sister of his, whose married
name was Hall. She had formerly been in the service of the Howard family
and of the Dowager-Duchess of Norfolk, in whose houses Katharine Howard
had passed her neglected childhood; and Lascelles, recalling the fact,
had, he said, recommended his sister to apply to the young Queen, whom she
had known so intimately as a girl, for a place in the household. "No,"
replied the sister, "I will not do that; but I am very sorry for her."
"Why are you sorry for her?" asked Lascelles. "Marry," quoth she, "because
she is light, both in living and conditions" (_i.e._ behaviour). The
brother asked for further particulars, and, thus pressed, Mary Hall
related that "one Francis Derham had lain in bed with her, and between the
sheets in his doublet and hose, a hundred nights; and a maid in the house
had said that she would lie no longer with her (Katharine) because she
knew not what matrimony was. Moreover, one Mannock, a servant of the
Dowager-Duchess, knew and spoke of a private mark upon the Queen's body."
This was the document which Cranmer handed to the King, "not having the
heart to say it by word of mouth": and it must be admitted that as it was
only a bit of second-hand scandal, without corroboration, and could not
refer to any period subsequent to Katharine's marriage, it did not amount
to much. Henry is represented as having been inclined to make light of it,
which was natural, but he nevertheless summoned Fitzwilliam (Southampton),
Lord Russell (Lord Admiral), Sir Anthony Browne, and Wriothesley, and
deputed to them the inquiry into the whole matter. Fitzwilliam hurried to
London and then to Sussex to examine Lascelles and his sister, whilst the
others were sent to take the depositions of Derham, who was now in
Katharine's service, and was ordered to be apprehended on a charge of
piracy in Ireland sometime previously, and Mannock, who was a musician in
the household of the Duchess.
On the 5th November the ministers came to Hampton Court with the shocking
admissions which they had extracted from the persons examined. Up to that
time Henry had been gay, and had thought little of the affair, but now,
when he heard the statements presented to him, he was overcome with grief:
"his heart was pierced with pensiveness," we are told, "so that it was
long before he could utter his sorrow, and finally with copious tears,
which was strange in his courage, opened the same." The next day, Sunday,
he met Norfolk and the Lord Chancellor secretly in the fields, and then
with the closest privacy took boat to London without bidding farewell to
Katharine, leaving in the hands of his Council the unravelling of the
disgraceful business.
The story, pieced together from the many different depositions,[216] and
divested of its repetitions and grossness of phraseology, may be
summarised as follows. Katharine, whose mother had died early, had grown
up uncared for in the house of her grandmother at Horsham in Norfolk, and
later at Lambeth; apparently living her life in common with the
women-servants. Whilst she was yet quite a child, certainly not more than
thirteen, probably younger, Henry Mannock, one of the Duchess's musicians,
had taught her to play the virginals; and, as he himself professed, had
fallen in love with her. The age was a licentious one; and the maids,
probably to disguise their own amours, appear to have taken a sport in
promoting immoral liberties between the orphan girl and the musician,
carrying backwards and forwards between the ill-matched pair tokens and
messages, and facilitating secret meetings at untimely hours: and Mannock
deposed unblushingly to have corrupted the girl systematically and
shamefully, though not criminally. On one occasion the old Duchess found
this scamp hugging her granddaughter, and in great anger she beat the
girl, upbraided the musician, and forbade such meetings for the future.
Mary Hall, who first gave the information, represents herself as having
remonstrated indignantly with Mannock for his presumption in pledging his
troth, as one of the other women told her he had, with Katharine. He
replied impudently that all he wanted of the girl was to seduce her, and
he had no doubt he should succeed in doing so, seeing the liberties she
had already permitted him to take with her. Mary Hall said that she had
warned him that the Howards would kill or ruin him if he did not take
care. Katharine, according to Mary Hall's tale, when told of Mannock's
impudent speech, had angrily said that she cared nothing for him; but he
managed the next time he saw her, by her own contrivance, to persuade her
that he was so much in love as not to know what he said.
Before long, however, a more dangerous lover, because one of better rank,
appeared in the field, and spoilt Mannock's game. This was Francis Derham,
a young gentleman of some means in the household of the Duke of Norfolk,
of whom he seems to have been a distant connection. In his own confession
he boldly admitted that he was in love with Katharine, and had promised
her marriage. The old Duchess always had the keys of the maids' dormitory,
where Katharine also slept, brought to her chamber after the doors were
locked; but means were found by the women to laugh at locksmiths, and the
most unbridled licence prevailed amongst them. Derham, with the lovers of
two of the women, used to obtain access almost nightly to the dormitory,
where they remained feasting and rioting until two or three in the
morning: and there can remain little doubt that, on the promise of
marriage, Derham practically lived with Katharine as his wife thus
clandestinely, for a considerable period, whilst she was yet very young.
Mannock, who found himself supplanted, thereupon wrote an anonymous letter
to the Duchess and left it in her pew at chapel, saying that if her Grace
would rise again an hour after she had retired and visit the gentlewomen's
chamber she would see something that would surprise her. The old lady, who
was not free from reproach in the matter herself, railed and stormed at
the women; and Katharine, who was deeply in love with Derham, stole the
anonymous letter from her grandmother's room and showed it to him,
charging Mannock with having written it. The result, of course, was a
quarrel, and the further enlightenment of the Duchess with regard to her
granddaughter's connection with Derham. The old lady herself was
afterwards accused of having introduced Derham into her own household for
the purpose of forwarding a match between him and Katharine; and finally
got into great trouble and danger by seizing and destroying Derham's
papers before the King's Council could impound them: but when she learnt
the lengths to which the immoral connection had been carried, and the
shameful licentiousness that had accompanied it, she made a clean sweep of
the servants inculpated, and brought her granddaughter to live in Lambeth
amongst a fresh set of people.
There is no doubt that Katharine and Derham were secretly engaged to be
married, and, apart from the immoral features of the engagement, no very
great objection could have been taken to it. She was a member of a very
large family, an orphan with no dower or prospects, and her marriage with
Derham, who was a sort of relative, would have been not a glaringly
unequal one. With lover-like alacrity he provided her with the feminine
treasures which she coveted, but which her lack of means prevented her
from buying. Artificial flowers, articles of dress, or materials for them,
trinkets and adornments, not to speak of the delicacies which he brought
to furnish forth the tables during the nightly orgy. He had made no great
secret of his engagement to, and intention of marrying Katharine, and had
shown various little tokens of her troth that she had given him. On one
of his piratical raids, moreover, he had handed to her the whole of his
money, as to his affianced wife, and told her she might keep it if he came
not back, whilst on other occasions he had exercised his authority, as her
betrothed, to chide her for her attentions to others. When at last the old
Duchess learnt fully of the immoral proceedings that had been going on,
Katharine got another severe beating, and Derham fled from the vengeance
of the Howards. After the matter had blown over, and Katharine was living
usually at Lambeth, Derham found his way back, and attempted clandestinely
to renew the connection. But Katharine by this time was older and more
experienced, as beseemed a lady at Court. It was said that she was
affianced to her cousin, Thomas Culpeper; but in any case she indignantly
refused to have anything to do with Derham, and hotly resented his claim
to interfere in her affairs.
So far the disclosures referred solely to misconduct previous to
Katharine's marriage with the King, and, however reprehensible this may
have been, it only constructively became treason _post facto_, by reason
of the concealment from the King of his wife's previous immoral life;
whereby the royal blood was "tainted," and he himself injured. Cranmer was
therefore sent to visit Katharine with orders to set before her the
iniquity of her conduct and the penalty prescribed by the law; and then to
promise her the King's mercy on certain conditions. The poor girl was
frantic with grief and fear when the Primate entered; and he in compassion
spared her the first parts of his mission, and began by telling her of
her husband's pity and clemency. The reaction from her deadly fear sent
her into greater paroxysms than ever of remorse and regret. "This sudden
mercy made her offences seem the more heinous." "This was about the hour"
(6 o'clock), she sobbed, "that Master Heneage was wont to bring me
knowledge of his Grace." The promise of mercy may or may not have been
sincere; but it is evident that the real object of Cranmer's visit was to
learn from Katharine whether the betrothal with Derham was a binding
contract. If that were alleged in her defence the marriage with the King
was voidable, as that of Anne of Cleves was for a similar cause; and if,
by reason of such prior contract, Katharine had never legally been Henry's
wife, her guilt was much attenuated, and she and her accomplices could
only be punished for concealment of fact to the King's detriment, a
sufficiently grave crime, it is true, in those days, but much less grave
if Katharine was never legally Henry's wife. It may therefore have seemed
good policy to offer her clemency on such conditions as would have
relieved him of her presence for ever, with as little obloquy as possible,
but other counsels eventually prevailed. Orders were given that she was to
be sent to Sion House, with a small suite and no canopy of state, pending
further inquiry; whilst the Lord Chancellor, Councillors, peers, bishops,
and judges were convened on the 12th November, and the evidence touching
the Queen laid before them. It was decided, however, that Derham should
not be called, and that all reference to a previous contract of marriage
should be suppressed. On the following Sunday the whole of the Queen's
household was to be similarly informed of the offences and their gravity,
and to them also no reference to a prior engagement that might serve to
lighten the accusations or their own responsibility was to be made.
Katharine Howard's fate if the matter had ended here would probably have
been divorce on the ground of her previous immorality "tainting the royal
blood," and lifelong seclusion; but in their confessions the men and women
involved had mentioned other names; and on the 13th November, the day
before Katharine was to be taken to Sion, the scope of the inquiry
widened. Mannock in his first examination on the 5th November had said
that Mistress Katharine Tylney, the Queen's chamberwoman, a relative of
the old Duchess, could speak as to Katharine's early immoral life; and
when this lady found herself in the hands of Wriothesley she told some
startling tales. "Did the Queen leave her chamber any night at Lincoln or
elsewhere during her recent progress with the King?" "Yes, her Majesty had
gone on two occasions to Lady Rochford's[217] room, which could be reached
by a little pair of back stairs near the Queen's apartment." Mrs. Tylney
and the Queen's other attendant, Margery Morton, had attempted to
accompany their mistress, but had been sent back. Mrs. Tylney had obeyed,
and had gone to bed; but Margery had crept back up the stairs again to
Lady Rochford's room. About two o'clock in the morning Margery came to bed
in the same dormitory as the other maids. "Jesu! is not the Queen abed
yet?" asked the surprised Tylney, as she awoke. "Yes," in effect, replied
Margery, "she has just retired." On the second occasion Katharine sent the
rest of her attendants to bed and took Tylney with her to Lady Rochford's
room, but the maid, with Lady Rochford's servant, were shut up in a small
closet, and not allowed to see who came into the principal apartments.
But, nevertheless, her suspicions were aroused by the strange messages
with which she was sent by Katharine to Lady Rochford: "so strange that
she knew not how to utter them." Even at Hampton Court lately, as well as
at Grimsthorpe during the progress, she had been bidden by the Queen to
ask Lady Rochford "when she should have the thing she promised her," the
answer being that she (Lady Rochford) was sitting up for it, and would
bring the Queen word herself.
Then Margery Morton was tackled by Sir Anthony Browne. She had never
mistrusted the Queen until the other day, at Hatfield, "when she saw her
Majesty look out of the window to Mr. Culpeper in such sort that she
thought there was love between them." Whilst at Hatfield the Queen had
given orders that none of her attendants were to enter her bedroom unless
they were summoned. Margery, too, had been sent on mysterious secret
errands to Lady Rochford, which she could not understand, and, with others
of the maids, had considered herself slighted by the Queen's preference
for Katharine Tylney and for those who owed their position to Lady
Rochford; which lady, she said, she considered the principal cause of the
Queen's folly. Thus far there was nothing beyond the suspicions of jealous
women, but Lady Rochford was frightened into telling a much more damning
story, though she tried to make her own share in it as light as possible.
The Queen, she confessed, had had many interviews in her rooms with
Culpeper--at Greenwich, Lincoln, Pontefract, York, and elsewhere--for many
months past; but as Culpeper stood at the farther end of the room with his
foot upon the top of the back stairs, so as to be ready to slip down in
case of alarm, and the Queen talked to him at the door, Lady Rochford
professed to be ignorant of what passed between them. One night, she
recalled, the Queen and herself were standing at the back door at eleven
at night, when a watchman came with a lantern and locked the door. Shortly
afterwards, however, Culpeper entered the room, saying that he and his
servant had picked the lock. Since the first suspicion had been cast upon
the Queen by Lascelles, Katharine, according to Lady Rochford, had
continually asked after Culpeper. "If that matter came not out she feared
nothing," and finally, Lady Rochford, although professing to have been
asleep during some of Culpeper's compromising visits, declared her belief
that criminal relations had existed between him and the Queen:
Culpeper, according to the depositions,[218] made quite a clean breast of
it, though what means were adopted for making him so frank is not clear.
Probably torture, or the threat of it, was resorted to, since Hertford,
Riche, and Audley had much to do with the examinations;[219] whilst even
the Duke of Norfolk and Wriothesley, not to appear backward in the King's
service, were as anxious as their rivals to make the case complete.
Culpeper was a gentleman of great estate in Kent and elsewhere, holding
many houses and offices; a gentleman of the chamber, clerk of the armoury,
steward and keeper of several royal manors; and he had received many
favours from the King, with whom he ordinarily slept. He deposed to and
described many stolen interviews with Katharine, all apparently after the
previous Passion Week (1541), when the Queen, he said, had sent for him
and given him a velvet cap. Lady Rochford, according to his statement, was
the go-between, and arranged all the assignations in her apartments,
whilst the Queen, whenever she reached a house during the progress, would
make herself acquainted with the back doors and back stairs, in order to
facilitate the meetings. At Pontefract she thought the back door was being
watched by the King's orders, and Lady Rochford caused her servant to
keep a counter watch. On one occasion, he said, the Queen had hinted that
she could favour him as a certain lady of the Court had favoured Lord
Parr; and when Culpeper said he did not think that the Queen was such a
lady as the one mentioned, she had replied, "Well, if I had tarried still
in the maidens' chamber I would have tried you;" and on another occasion
she had warned him that if he confessed, even when he was shriven, what
had passed between them, the King would be sure to know, as he was the
head of the Church. Culpeper's animus against Lady Rochford is evident.
She had provoked him much, he said, to love the Queen, and he intended to
do ill with her. Evidence began to grow, too, that not only was Derham
admittedly guilty with the Queen before marriage, but that suspicious
familiarity had been resumed afterwards. He himself confessed that he had
been more than once in the Queen's private apartment, and she had given
him various sums of money, warning him to heed what he said; which, truth
to tell, he had not done, according to other deponents.
Everybody implicated in the scandals was imprisoned, mostly in the Tower,
several members of the house of Howard being put under guard; and Norfolk,
trembling for his own position, showed as much zeal as any one to condemn
his unfortunate niece. He knew, indeed, at this time that he had been used
simply as a catspaw in the advances towards France, and complained
bitterly that the match he had secretly suggested between the Princess
Mary and the Duke of Orleans was now common talk, which gave ground for
his enemies who were jealous of him to denounce him to the King as
wishing to embrace all great affairs of State. It is clear that at this
period it was not only the Protestants who were against Norfolk, but his
own colleagues who were planning the alliance with the Emperor; which to
some extent explains why such men as Wriothesley, Fitzwilliam, and Browne
were so anxious to make the case of Katharine and her family look as black
as possible, and why Norfolk aided them so as not to be left behind. When,
on the 15th December, the old Dowager-Duchess of Norfolk, his stepmother,
his half-brother, Lord William Howard and his wife, and his sister, Lady
Bridgewater, were imprisoned on the charge of having been privy to
Katharine's doings before marriage, the Duke wrote as follows to the King:
"I learnt yesterday that mine ungracious mother-in-law, mine unhappy
brother and his wife, and my lewd sister of Bridgewater were committed to
the Tower; and am sure it was not done but for some false proceeding
against your Majesty. Weighing this with the abominable deeds done by my
two nieces (_i.e._ Katharine Howard and Anne Boleyn), and the repeated
treasons of many of my kin, I fear your Majesty will abhor to hear speak
of me or my kin again. Prostrate at your Majesty's feet, I remind your
Majesty that much of this has come to light through my own report of my
mother-in-law's words to me, when I was sent to Lambeth to search Derham's
coffers. My own truth, and the small love my mother-in-law and nieces bear
me, make me hope; and I pray your Majesty for some comfortable assurance
of your royal favour, without which I will never desire to live.
Kenninghall Lodge, 15th December 1541."[220]
On the 1st December, Culpeper and Derham had been arraigned before a
special Commission in Guildhall, accused of treason.[221] The indictment
set forth that before her marriage Katharine had "led an abominable, base,
carnal, voluptuous, and vicious life, like a common harlot ... whilst, at
other times, maintaining an appearance of chastity and honesty. That she
led the King to love her, believing her to be pure, and arrogantly coupled
with him in marriage." That upon her and Derham being charged with their
former vicious life, they had excused themselves by saying that they were
betrothed before the marriage with the King; which betrothal they falsely
and traitorously concealed from the King when he married her. After the
marriage they attempted to renew their former vicious courses at
Pontefract and elsewhere, the Queen having procured Derham's admission
into her service, and entrusted secret affairs to him. Against Culpeper
it was alleged that he had held secret and illicit meetings with the
Queen, who had "incited him to have intercourse with her, and insinuated
to him that she loved him better than the King and all others. Similarly
Culpeper incited the Queen, and they had retained Lady Rochford as their
go-between, she having traitorously aided and abetted them."
It will be noticed that actual adultery is not alleged, and the indictment
follows very closely the deposition of the witnesses. The _liaison_ with
Derham before the marriage was not denied; nor were the meetings with
Culpeper after the marriage. This and the concealment were sufficient for
the King's purpose, without adding to his ignominy by labouring to prove
the charge of adultery.[222] After pleading not guilty, the two men,
in face of the evidence and their own admissions, changed their plea to
guilty, and were promptly condemned to be drawn through London to Tyburn,
"and there hanged, cut down alive, disembowelled, and, they still living,
their bowels burnt, the bodies then to be beheaded and quartered:" a
brutal sentence that was carried out to the letter in Derham's case only,
on the 10th December, Culpeper being beheaded.
[Illustration: _KATHARINE HOWARD_
_From a portrait by an unknown artist in the National Portrait Gallery_]
Although the procedure had saved the King as much humiliation as possible,
the affair was a terrible blow to his self-esteem as well as to his
affections; for he seems to have been really fond of his young wife.
Chapuys, writing on the 3rd December, says that he shows greater sorrow at
her loss than at any of his previous matrimonial misfortunes. "It is like
the case of the woman who cried more bitterly at the loss of her tenth
husband than for all the rest put together, though they had all been good
men; but it was because she had never buried one before without being sure
of the next. As yet, it does not seem that he has any one else in
view."[223] The French ambassador, a few days later, wrote that "the grief
of the King was so great that it was believed that it had sent him mad;
for he had called suddenly for a sword with which to kill the Queen whom
he had loved so much. Sometimes sitting in Council he suddenly calls for
horses, without saying whither he would go. Sometimes he will say
irrelevantly that that wicked woman had never had such delight in her
incontinency as she should have torture in her death; and then, finally,
he bursts into tears, bewailing his misfortune in meeting such
ill-conditioned wives, and blaming his Council for this last
mischief."[224]
In the meanwhile Henry sought such distraction as he might at Oatlands and
other country places, solaced by music and mummers, whilst Norfolk, in
grief and apprehension, lurked on his own lands, and Gardiner kept a firm
hand upon affairs. The discomfiture of the Howards, who had brought about
the Catholic reaction, gave new hope to the Protestants that the wheel of
fate was turning in their favour. Anne of Cleves, they began to whisper,
had been confined of a "fair boy"; "and whose should it be but the King's
Majesty's, begotten when she was at Hampton Court?" This rumour, which the
King, apparently, was inclined to believe, gave great offence and
annoyance to him and his Council, as did the severely repressed but
frequent statements that he intended to take back his repudiated wife. It
was not irresponsible gossip alone that took this turn, for on the 12th
December the ambassador from the Duke of Cleves brought letters to Cranmer
at Lambeth from Chancellor Olsiliger, who had negotiated the marriage,
commending to him the reconciliation of Henry with Anne. Cranmer, who
understood perfectly well that with Gardiner as the King's factotum such a
thing was impossible, was frightened out of his wits by such a suggestion,
and promptly assured Henry that he had declined to discuss it without the
Sovereign's orders.
But the envoy of Cleves was not lightly shaken off, and at once sought
audience of Henry himself to press the cause of "Madam Anne." He was
assured that the King's grief at his present troubles would prevent his
giving audience; and the Protestant envoy then tackled the Council on the
subject. As may be supposed, he met with a rebuff. The lady would be
better treated than ever, he was told, but the separation was just and
final, and the Duke of Cleves must never again request that his sister
should be restored to the position of the King's wife. The envoy begged
that the answer might be repeated formally to him, whereupon Gardiner flew
into a rage, and said that the King would never take Anne back, whatever
happened. The envoy was afraid to retort for fear of evil consequences to
Anne, but the Duke of Cleves, who was now in close league with the French,
endeavoured to obtain the aid of his new allies to forward his sister's
cause in England. Francis, however, saw, like every one else, that war
between him and the Emperor was now inevitable, and was anxious not to
drive Henry into alliance with Charles against him. Cleves by himself was
powerless, and the trend of politics in England under Gardiner, and with
Henry in his present mood, was entirely unfavourable to a union with the
Lutherans on the Continent; so Anne of Cleves continued her placid and
jovial existence as "the King's good sister," rather than his wife, whilst
the Protestants of England soon found that they had misjudged the
situation produced by Katharine Howard's fall. All that the latter really
had done was to place Norfolk and the French sympathisers under a cloud,
and make Gardiner entirely master of the situation whilst he carried out
the King's own policy.
Henry returned to Greenwich for Christmas 1541, and at once began his
bargaining to sell his alliance with the Emperor at as high a price as
possible. He had already in hand the stoppage of trade with Flanders,
which his ministers were still laboriously and stiffly discussing with the
Emperor's representatives. Any concession in that respect would have to be
paid for. The French, too, were very anxious, according to his showing,
for his friendship, and were offering him all manner of tempting
matrimonial alliances, and when Henry, on the day after Christmas Day,
received Chapuys at Greenwich, he was all smiles, but determined to make
the best of his opportunities. The Emperor had just met with a terrible
disaster at sea during his operations against Algiers, and had returned to
Spain depressed at his losses, and the more ready to make terms with Henry
if possible. Chapuys was a hard bargainer, and it was a fair game of brag
that ensued between him and Henry. Chapuys began by flattering the King:
"and got him into very high spirits by such words, which the Lord Privy
Seal (_i.e._ Fitzwilliam) says are never thrown away upon him," and then
told him that he would give him in strict confidence some important
information about French intrigues.
After dinner the ball opened in earnest, Chapuys and Henry being alone and
seated, with Fitzwilliam, Russell, and Browne at some distance away. The
imperial ambassador began by saying that the King of France had made a
determined bid to marry his second son, Orleans, with the Infanta of
Portugal. This was a shock to Henry, and he changed colour; for one of his
own trump cards was the sham negotiation in which Norfolk had been the
tool, to marry the Princess Mary to Orleans. For a time he could only
sputter and exclaim; but when he had collected his senses he countered by
saying that Francis only wished to get the Infanta into his power, not for
marriage, "but for objects of greater consequence than people imagined."
Besides, the French wanted the Princess Mary for Orleans, and were anxious
to send an embassy to him about it: indeed, the French ambassador was
coming to see him about it with fresh powers next day. Chapuys protested
that he spoke as one devoted to Henry's service; but he was sure the
French did not mean business. They would never let Orleans marry a
Princess of illegitimate birth. "Ah!" replied Henry, "but though she may
be a bastard, I have power from Parliament to appoint her my successor if
I like;" but Chapuys gave several other reasons why the match with Mary
would never suit the French. "Why," cried Henry, "Francis is even now
soliciting an interview with me with a view to alliances." "Yes, I know
they say that," replied the ambassador, "but at the same time Francis has
sent an ambassador to Scotland, with orders not to touch at an English
port." This was a sore point with Henry, and he again winced at the blow.
Then he began to boast. He was prepared to face any one, and James of
Scotland was in mortal fear of him. Chapuys then mentioned that France
had made a secret treaty with Sweden and Denmark to obtain control of the
North Sea, and divert all the Anglo-German trade to France, which Henry
parried, by saying that Francis was in league with the German Protestants,
and, notwithstanding the new decree of the Diet of Ratisbon, could draw as
many mercenary soldiers as he liked from the Emperor's vassals. He felt
sure that Francis would invade Flanders next spring; and if he, Henry, had
cared to marry a daughter of France, as her father wished him to do, he
might have had a share of his conquests. This made Chapuys angry, and he
said that perhaps Holstein and Cleves had also been offered shares. Henry
then went on another tack, and said that he knew quite well that Francis
and Charles together intended, if they could, to make war on England.
Considering, however, the Emperor's disaster at Algiers, and the state of
Europe, he was astonished that Charles had not tried to make a close
friendship with him. Chapuys jumped at the hint, and begged Henry to state
his intentions, that they might be conveyed to the Emperor. But the King
was not to be drawn too rapidly, and would not say whether he was willing
to form an alliance with the Emperor until some one with full and special
powers was sent to him. He had been cheated too often and left in the
lurch before, he said. "He was quite independent. If people wanted him
they might come forward with offers." This sparring went on for hours on
that day and the next, interspersed with little wrangles about the
commercial question, and innuendoes as to the French intrigues. But
Chapuys, who knew his man, quite understood that Henry was for sale; and,
as usual, might, if dexterously handled, be bought by flattery and feigned
submission to his will, hurriedly wrote to his master that: "If the
Emperor wishes to gain the King, he must send hither at once an able
person, with full powers, to take charge of the negotiation:" since he,
Chapuys, was in ill health and unequal to it.
Thus the English Catholic reaction that had been symbolised by the
repudiation of Anne of Cleves, and the marriage with Katharine Howard, was
triumphantly producing the results which Henry and Gardiner had intended.
The excommunicated King, the man who had flung aside his proud Spanish
wife and bade defiance to the vicegerent of Christ, was to be flattered
and sought in alliance by the head of the house of Aragon and the
appointed champion of Roman orthodoxy. He was to come back into the fold
unrepentant, with no submission or reparation made, a good Catholic, but
his own Pope. It was a prospect that appealed strongly to a man of Henry's
vain and ostentatious character, for it gave apparent sanction to his
favourite pose that everything he did was warranted by the strictest right
and justice; it promised the possibility of an extension of his
Continental territory, and the establishment of his own fame as a warrior
and a king. We shall see how his pompous self-conceit enabled his ally to
trick him out of his reward, and how the consequent reaction against those
who had beguiled him drew his country farther along the road of the
Reformation than Henry ever meant to go. But at present all looked
rose-coloured, for the imperial connection and the miserable scandal of
Katharine Howard rather benefited than injured the chances of its
successful negotiation. Cranmer, Hertford, and Audley had shot their bolt
in vain so far as political or religious aims were attained.
In the meanwhile the evidence against Katharine and her abettors was being
laboriously wrung out of all those who had come into contact with her. The
poor old Duchess of Norfolk and her son and daughters and several
underlings were condemned for misprison of treason to perpetual
imprisonment and confiscation,[225] and in Parliament on the 21st January
a Bill of Attainder against Katharine and three lady accomplices was
presented to the Lords. The evidence presented against Katharine was
adjudged to be insufficient in the absence of direct allegations of
adultery after her marriage, or of specific admissions from herself.[226]
This and other objections seem to have delayed the passage of the Bill
until the 11th of February, when it received the royal assent by
commission, condemning Katharine and Lady Rochford to death for treason.
During the passage of the Bill, as soon, indeed, as the procedure of
Katharine's condemnation had been settled, Henry plucked up spirits again,
and with characteristic heartlessness once more began to play the gallant.
"The King," writes Chapuys, "had never been merry since first hearing of
the Queen's misconduct, but he has been so since (the attainder was
arranged), especially on the 29th, when he gave a supper and banquet with
twenty-six ladies at the table, besides gentlemen, and thirty-five at
another table adjoining. The lady for whom he showed the greatest regard
was a sister of Lord Cobham, whom Wyatt, some time ago, divorced for
adultery. She is a pretty young creature, with wit enough to do as badly
as the others if she were to try. The King is also said to fancy a
daughter of Mistress Albart(?) and niece of Sir Anthony Browne; and also
for a daughter, by her first marriage, of the wife of Lord Lisle, late
Deputy of Calais."[227]
Up to this time Katharine had remained at Sion House, as Chapuys reported,
"making good cheer, fatter and more beautiful than ever; taking great care
to be well apparelled, and more imperious and exacting to serve than even
when she was with the King, although she believes she will be put to
death, and admits that she deserves it. Perhaps if the King does not wish
to marry again he may show her some compassion."[228] No sooner, however,
had the Act of Attainder passed its third reading in the Commons (10th
January) than Fitzwilliam was sent to Isleworth to convey her to the
Tower. She resisted at first, but was of course overpowered, and the sad
procession swept along the wintry river Londonward. First came
Fitzwilliam's barge with himself and several Privy Councillors, then, in a
small covered barge, followed the doomed woman, and the rear was guarded
by a great barge full of soldiers under the aged Duke of Suffolk, whose
matrimonial adventures had been almost as numerous as those of his royal
brother-in-law. Under the frowning portcullis of the Traitors' Gate in the
gathering twilight of the afternoon, the beautiful girl in black velvet
landed amidst a crowd of Councillors, who treated her with as much
ceremony as if she still sat by the King's side. She proudly and calmly
gloried in her love for her betrothed Culpeper, whom she knew she soon
would join in death. There was no hysterical babbling like that of her
cousin, Anne Boleyn; no regret in her mien or her words now. Even as he,
with his last breath, had confessed his love for her, and mourned that the
King's passion for her had stood in the way of their honest union, so did
she, with flashing eyes and blazing cheeks, proclaim that love was
victorious over death; and that since there had been no mercy for the man
she loved she asked no mercy for herself from the King whose plaything of
a year she had been.
On Sunday evening, 12th February, she was told that she must be prepared
for death on the morrow, and she asked that the block should be brought
to her room, that she might learn how to dispose her head upon it. This
was done, and she calmly and smilingly rehearsed her part in the tragedy
of the morrow. Early in the morning, before it was fully light, she was
led out across the green, upon which the hoar-frost glistened, to the
scaffold erected on the same spot that had seen the sacrifice of Anne
Boleyn. Around it stood all the Councillors except Norfolk and Suffolk:
even her first cousin, the poet Surrey, with his own doom not far off,
witnessed the scene. Upon the scaffold, half crazy with fear, stood the
wretched Lady Rochford, the ministress of the Queen's amours, who was to
share her fate. Katharine spoke shortly. She died, she said, in full
confidence in God's goodness. She had grievously sinned and deserved
death, though she had not wronged the King in the particular way that she
had been accused of. If she had married the man she loved, instead of
being dazzled by ambition, all would have been well; and when the headsman
knelt to ask her forgiveness, she pardoned him, but exclaimed, "I die a
Queen, but I would rather have died the wife of Culpeper;" and then,
kneeling in prayer, her head was struck off whilst she was unaware.[229]
Lady Rochford followed her to the block as soon as the head and trunk of
the Queen had been piteously gathered up in black cloth by the ladies who
attended her at last, and conveyed to the adjoining chapel for sepulture
close to the grave of Anne Boleyn.
Katharine Howard had erred much for love, and had erred more for ambition,
but taking a human view of the whole circumstances of her life, and of the
personality of the man she married, she is surely more worthy of pity than
condemnation. Only a few days after her death we learn from Chapuys (25th
February) that "the King has been in better spirits since the execution,
and during the last three days before Lent there has been much feasting.
Sunday was devoted to the lords of his Council and courtiers, Monday to
the men of the law, Tuesday to the ladies, who all slept at the Court. The
King himself did nothing but go from room to room ordering and arranging
the lodgings to be prepared for these ladies, and he made them great and
hearty cheer, without showing special affection for any particular one.
Indeed, unless Parliament prays him to take another wife, he will not be
in a hurry to do so, I think. Besides, there are few, if any, ladies now
at Court who would aspire to such an honour; for by a new Act just passed,
any lady that the King may marry, if she be a subject, is bound, on pain
of death, to declare any charge of misconduct that can be brought against
her; and all who know or suspect anything against her must declare it
within twenty days, on pain of perpetual imprisonment and confiscation."
Henry, with five unsuccessful matrimonial adventures to his account, might
well pause before taking another plunge; though, from the extract printed
above, it was evident that he had no desire to put himself out of the way
of temptation. The only course upon which he seemed quite determined was
to resist all the blandishments of the Protestants, the German Lutherans,
and the French to take back Anne of Cleves, who, we are told, had waxed
half as beautiful again as she was since she had begun her jolly life of
liberty and beneficence, away from so difficult a husband as Henry.
CHAPTER IX
1542-1547
KATHARINE PARR--THE PROTESTANTS WIN THE LAST TRICK
The disappearance of Katharine Howard and the temporary eclipse of Norfolk
caused no check to the progress of the Catholic cause in England. When
Gardiner was with the Emperor in the summer of 1541 he had been able to
make in Henry's name an agreement by which neither monarch should treat
anything to the other's disadvantage for the next ten months; and as war
loomed nearer between Charles and Francis, the chances of a more durable
and binding treaty being made between the former and Henry improved. When
Gardiner had hinted at it in Germany, both Charles and Granvelle had
suggested that the submission of Henry to the Pope would be a necessary
preliminary. But the Emperor's brother, Ferdinand, was in close grips with
the Turk in Hungary, and getting the worst of it; Francis was again in
negotiation with the infidel, and French intrigue in Italy was busy. Henry
therefore found that the Emperor's tone softened considerably on the
report of Chapuys' conversation at Windsor in February, whilst the English
terms became stiffer, as Francis endeavoured to turn his feigned
negotiations with Henry into real ones. The whole policy of Henry at the
period was really to effect an armed league with the Emperor, by means of
which France might be humiliated, perhaps dismembered, whilst Henry was
welcomed back with open arms by the great Catholic power, in spite of his
contumacy, and the hegemony of England established over Scotland. In order
the better to incline Charles to essential concessions, it was good policy
for Henry to give several more turns of the screw upon his own subjects,
to prove to his future ally how devout a Catholic he was, and how entirely
Cromwell's later action was being reversed.
The great Bibles were withdrawn from the churches, the dissemination of
the Scriptures restricted, and the Six Articles were enforced more
severely than ever;[230] but yet when, after some months of fencing and
waiting, Chapuys came to somewhat closer quarters with the English
Council, he still talked, though with bated breath now, about Henry's
submission to the Pope and the legitimation of the Princess Mary. But the
Emperor's growing need for support gradually broke down the wall of
reserve that Henry's defection from Rome had raised, and Gardiner and
Chapuys, during the spring of 1542, were in almost daily confabulation in
a quiet house in the fields at Stepney.[231] In June the imperial
ambassador made a hasty visit to Flanders to submit the English terms for
an alliance to the Queen Regent. Henry's conditions in appearance were
hard, for by going to war with France he would, he said, lose the great
yearly tribute he received from that country; but Charles and his sister
knew how to manage him, and were not troubled with scruples as to keeping
promises. So, to begin with, the commercial question that had so long been
rankling, was now rapidly settled, and the relations daily grew more
cordial. Henry had agents in Germany and Flanders ordering munitions of
war and making secret compacts with mercenary captains; he was actively
reinforcing his own garrisons and castles, organising a fine fleet,
collecting vast fresh sums of money from his groaning subjects, and in
every way preparing himself to be an ally worth purchase by the Emperor at
a high price.
In July 1542 the French simultaneously attacked the imperial territory in
four distinct directions; and Henry summoned the ambassadors of Charles
and Francis to Windsor to tell them that, as war was so near him, he must
raise men for his defence, especially towards Scotland, but meant no
menace to either of the Continental powers. Chapuys had already been
assured that the comedy was only to blind the French, and cheerfully
acquiesced, but the Frenchmen took a more gloomy view and knew it meant
war. With Scotland and Henry it was a case of the lamb and the wolf. Henry
knew that he dared not send his army across the Channel to attack France
without first crushing his northern neighbour. The pretended negotiations
with, and allegations against, the unfortunate Stuart were never sincere.
James was surrounded by traitors: for English money and religious rancour
had profoundly divided the Scottish gentry; Cardinal Beaton, the Scots
King's principal minister, was hated; the powerful Douglas family were
disaffected and in English pay; and the forces with which James V. rashly
attempted to raid the English marches in reprisal for Henry's unprovoked
attacks upon him were wild and undisciplined. The battle of Solway Moss
(November 1542) was a disgraceful rout for the Scots, and James,
heart-broken, fled from the ruin of his cause to Tantallon and Edinburgh,
and thence to Falkland to die. Then, with Scotland rent in twain, with a
new-born baby for a Queen, and a foreign woman as regent, Henry could face
a war with France by the side of the Emperor, with assurance of safety on
his northern border, especially if he could force upon the rulers of
Scotland a marriage between his only son and the infant Mary Stuart, as he
intended to do.
[Illustration: _KATHARINE PARR_
_From a painting in the collection of the_ EARL OF ASHBURNHAM]
There was infinite haggling with Chapuys with regard to the style to be
given to Henry in the secret treaty, even after the heads of the treaty
itself had been agreed upon. He must be called sovereign head of the
English Church, said Gardiner, or there would be no alliance with the
Emperor at all, and the difficulty was only overcome by varying the style
in the two copies of the document, that signed by Chapuys bearing the
style of; "King of England, France, and Ireland, etc.," and that signed by
the English ministers adding the King's ecclesiastical claims. If the
territories of either monarch were invaded the other was bound to come to
his aid. The French King was to be summoned to forbear intelligence with
the Turk, to satisfy the demands of the Emperor and the King of England in
the many old claims they had against him, and no peace was to be made with
France by either ally, unless the other's claims were satisfied. The
claims of Henry included the town and county of Boulogne, with Montreuil
and Therouenne, his arrears of pension, and assurance of future payment:
and the two allies agreed within two years to invade France together, each
with 20,000 foot and 5000 horse.[232] This secret compact was signed on
the 11th February 1543; and the diplomatic relations with France were at
once broken off. At last the repudiation of Katharine of Aragon was
condoned, and Henry was once more the Emperor's "good brother";--a fit
ally for the Catholic king, the champion of orthodox Christianity. As if
to put the finishing touch upon Henry's victory, Charles held an interview
with the Pope in June 1543 on his way through Italy, and succeeded in
persuading him that the inclusion of the King who defied the Church in the
league of militant Catholics was a fit complement to the alliance of
France and enemies of all Christianity; and would secure the triumph of
the Papacy and the return of England into the fold.
Whilst the preparations for war thus went busily forward on all sides,
with Chantonnay in England and Thomas Seymour in Germany and Flanders
arranging military details of arms, levies, and stores, and the Emperor
already clamouring constantly for prompt English subsidies and contingents
against his enemies, Henry, full of importance and self-satisfaction at
his position, contracted the only one of his marriages which was not
promoted by a political intrigue, although at the time it was effected it
was doubtless looked upon as favouring the Catholic party. Certainly no
lady of the Court enjoyed a more blameless reputation than Katharine Lady
Latimer, upon whom the King now cast his eyes. A daughter of the great and
wealthy house of Parr of Kendal, allied to the royal blood in no very
distant degree, and related to most of the higher nobility of England, she
was, so far as descent was concerned, quite as worthy to be the wife of a
king as the unfortunate daughters of the house of Howard. Her brother,
Lord Parr, soon to be created Earl of Essex and Marquis of Northampton, a
favourite courtier of the King and a very splendid magnate,[233] had been
one of the chief enemies of Cromwell; who had in his last days usurped the
ancient earldom which Parr had claimed in right of his Bourchier wife,
whilst Katharine's second husband, Neville Lord Latimer, had been so
strong a Catholic as to have risked his great possessions, as well as his
head, by joining the rising in the North that had assumed the name of the
Pilgrimage of Grace and had been mainly directed against Cromwell's
measures. She was, moreover, closely related to the Throckmortons, the
stoutly Catholic family whose chief, Sir George, Cromwell had despoiled
and imprisoned until the intrigue already related drove the minister from
power in June 1540, with the mysterious support, so it is asserted, of
Katharine Lady Latimer herself, though the evidence of it is not very
convincing.[234]
Katharine had been brought up mostly in the north country with extreme
care and wisdom by a hard-headed mother, and had been married almost as a
child to an elderly widower, Lord Borough, who had died soon afterwards,
leaving her a large jointure. Her second husband, Lord Latimer, had also
been many years older than herself; and accompanying him, as she did, in
his periodical visits to London, where they had a house in the precincts
of the Charterhouse, she had for several years been remarkable in Henry's
Court, not only for her wide culture and love of learning, but also for
her friendship with the Princess Mary, whose tastes were exactly similar
to her own. Lord Latimer died in London at the beginning of 1543, leaving
to Katharine considerable property; and certainly not many weeks can have
passed before the King began to pay his court to the wealthy and dignified
widow of thirty-two. His attentions were probably not very welcome to her,
for he was a terribly dangerous husband, and any unrevealed peccadillo in
the previous life of a woman he married might mean the loss of her head.
There was another reason than this, however, that made the King's
addresses especially embarrassing to Katharine. The younger of the two
magnificent Seymour brothers, Sir Thomas, had thus early also approached
her with offers of love. He was one of the handsomest men at Court, and of
similar age to Katharine. He was already very rich with the church
plunder, and was the King's brother-in-law; so that he was in all respects
a good match for her. He must have arrived from his mission to Germany
immediately after Lord Latimer's death, and remained at Court until early
in May, about three months; during which time, from the evidence of
Katharine's subsequent letters, she seems to have made up her mind to
marry him. It may be that the King noticed signs of their courtship, for
Sir Thomas Seymour was promptly sent on an embassy to Flanders in company
with Dr. Wotton, and subsequently with the English contingent to the
Emperor's army to France, where he remained until long after Henry's sixth
marriage.
That Henry himself lost no time in approaching the widow after her
husband's death is seen by a tailor's bill for dresses for Lady Latimer
being paid out of the Exchequer by the King's orders as early as the 16th
February 1543, when it would seem that her husband cannot have been dead
much more than a month. This bill includes linen and buckram, the making
of Italian gowns, "pleats and sleeves," a slope hood and tippet, kirtles,
French, Dutch, and Venetian gowns, Venetian sleeves, French hoods, and
other feminine fripperies; the amount of the total being £8, 9s. 5d.; and,
as showing that even before the marriage considerable intimacy existed
between Katharine and the Princess Mary, it is curious to note that some
of the garments appear to have been destined for the use of the
latter.[235] By the middle of June the King's attentions to Lady Latimer
were public; and already the lot of the sickly, disinherited Princess Mary
was rendered happier by the prospective elevation of her friend. Mary came
to Court at Greenwich, as did her sister Elizabeth; and Katharine is
specially mentioned as being with them in a letter from Dudley, the new
Lord Lisle, to Katharine's brother, Lord Parr, the Warden of the Scottish
Marches. The King had then (20th June) just returned from a tour of
inspection of his coast defences, and three weeks later Cranmer as Primate
issued a licence for his marriage with Katharine Lady Latimer, without the
publication of banns.
On the 12th July 1543 the marriage took place in the upper oratory "called
the Quynes Preyevey Closet" at Hampton Court. When Gardiner the celebrant
put the canonical question to the bridegroom, his Majesty answered "with a
smiling face," yea, and, taking his bride's hand, firmly recited the usual
pledge. Katharine, whatever her inner feelings may have been, made a
bright and buxom bride, and from the first endeavoured, as none of the
other wives had done, to bring together into some semblance of family life
with her the three children of her husband. Her reward was that she was
beloved and respected by all of them; and Princess Mary, who was nearly
her own age, continued her constant companion and friend.[236]
As she began so she remained; amiable, tactful, and clever. Throughout her
life with Henry her influence was exerted wherever possible in favour of
concord, and I have not met with a single disparaging remark with regard
to her, even from those who in the last days of the King's life became her
political opponents. Her character must have been an exceedingly lovable
one, and she evidently knew to perfection how to manage men by humouring
their weak points. She could be firm, too, on occasions where an injustice
had to be remedied. A story is told of her in connection with her brother
Parr, Earl of Essex, in the _Chronicle of Henry VIII._, which, so far as I
know, has not been related by any other historian of the reign.
Parr fell in love with Lord Cobham's daughter, a very beautiful girl,
who, as told in our text, was mentioned as one of the King's flames after
Katharine Howard's fall. Parr had married the great Bourchier heiress, but
had grown tired of her, and by suborned evidence charged her with
adultery, and she was found guilty and sentenced to death. "The good
Queen, his sister, threw herself at the feet of the King and would not
rise until he had promised to grant her the boon she craved, which was the
life of the Countess (of Essex). When the King heard what it was, he said,
But, Madam, you know that the law enacts that a woman of rank who so
forgets herself shall die unless her husband pardon her. To this the Queen
answered, Your Majesty is above the law, and I will try to get my brother
to pardon. Well, said the King, if your brother be content I will pardon
her." The Queen then sends for her brother and upbraids him for bringing
perjured witnesses against his wife, which he denies and says he has only
acted in accordance with the legal evidence. "I can promise you, brother,
that it shall not be as you expect: I will have the witnesses put to the
torture, and then by God's help we shall know the truth." Before this
could be done Parr sent his witnesses to Cornwall, out of the way: and
again Katharine insisted upon the Countess' pardon, by virtue of the
promise that the King had given her. This somewhat alarmed Parr, and
Katharine managed to effect a mutual renunciation, after which Parr
married Lord Cobham's daughter.[237]
Gardiner had been not only the prelate who performed the ceremony but had
himself given the bride away; so that it may fairly be concluded that he,
at least, was not discontented with the match. Wriothesley, his obedient
creature, moreover, must have been voicing the general feeling of
Catholics when he wrote to the Duke of Suffolk in the North his eulogy of
the bride a few days after the wedding. "The King's Majesty was mareid
onne Thursdaye last to my ladye Latimor, a woman, in my judgment, for
vertewe, wisdomme and gentilnesse, most meite for his Highnesse: and sure
I am his Mat{e} had never a wife more agreable to his harte than she is.
Our Lorde sende them long lyf and moche joy togethir."[238] Both the
King's daughters had been at the wedding, Mary receiving from Katharine a
handsome present as bride's-maid; but Henry had the decency not to bid the
presence of Anne of Cleves. She is represented as being somewhat disgusted
at the turn of events. Her friends, and perhaps she herself, had never
lost the hope that if the Protestant influence became paramount, Henry
might take her back. But the imperial alliance had made England an enemy
of her brother of Cleves, whose territory the Emperor's troops were
harrying with fire and sword; and her position in England was a most
difficult one. "She would," says Chapuys, "prefer to be with her mother,
if with nothing but the clothes on her back, rather than be here now,
having specially taken great grief and despair at the King's espousal of
his new wife, who is not nearly so good-looking as she is, besides that
there is no hope of her (Katharine) having issue, seeing that she had none
by her two former husbands."[239]
As we have seen, Katharine had all her life belonged to the Catholic
party, of which the northern nobles were the leaders, and doubtless this
fact had secured for her marriage the ready acquiescence of Gardiner and
his friends, especially when coupled with the attachment known to exist
between the bride and the Princess Mary. But Katharine had studied hard,
and was devoted to the "new learning," which had suddenly become
fashionable for high-born ladies. The Latin classics, the writings of
Erasmus, of Juan Luis Vives, and others were the daily solace of the few
ladies in England who had at this time been seized with the new craze of
culture, Katharine, the King's daughters, his grand-nieces the Greys, and
the daughters of Sir Anthony Cook, being especially versed in classics,
languages, philosophy, and theology. The "new learning" had been, and was
still to be, for the most part promoted by those who sympathised with the
reformed doctrines, and Katharine's devotion to it brought her into
intimate contact with the learned men at Court whose zeal for the spread
of classical and controversial knowledge was coupled with the spirit of
inquiry which frequently went with religious heterodoxy.
Not many days after the marriage, Gardiner scented danger in this
foregathering of the Queen with such men as Cranmer and Latimer, and at
the encouragement and help given by her to the young princesses in the
translation of portions of the Scriptures, and of the writings of Erasmus.
There is no reason to conclude that Katharine, as yet, had definitely
attached herself to the reform party, but it is certain that very soon
after her marriage her love of learning, or her distrust of Gardiner's
policy and methods, caused her to look sympathetically towards those at
Court who went beyond the King in his opposition to Rome. Gardiner dared
not as yet directly attack either Katharine or Cranmer, for the King was
personally much attached to both of them, whilst Gardiner himself was
never a favourite with him. But indirectly these two persons in privileged
places might be ruined by attacking others first; and the plan was
patiently and cunningly laid to do it, before a new party of reformers led
by Cranmer, reinforced by Katharine, could gain the King's ear and reverse
the policy of his present adviser. At the instance of Gardiner's creature
Dr. London, a canon of Windsor, a prosecution under the Six Articles was
commenced against a priest and some choristers of the royal chapel, and
one other person, who were known to meet together for religious
discussion. For weeks London's spies had been listening to the talk of
those in the castle and town who might be suspected of reformed ideas; and
with the evidence so accumulated in his hand, Gardiner moved the King in
Council to issue a warrant authorising a search for unauthorised books and
papers in the town and castle of Windsor. Henry, whilst allowing the
imprisonment of the accused persons with the addition of Sir Philip Hoby
and Dr. Haines, both resident in the castle, declined to allow his own
residence to be searched for heretical books. This was a set back for
Gardiner's plan; but it succeeded to the extent of securing the conviction
and execution at the stake of three of the accused. This was merely a
beginning; and already those at Court were saying that the Bishop of
Winchester "aimed at higher deer" than those that had already fallen to
his bow.[240]
Hardly had the ashes of the three martyrs cooled, than a mass of fresh
accusations was formulated by London against several members of the royal
household. The reports of spies and informers were sent to Gardiner by the
hand of Ockham, the clerk of the court that had condemned the martyrs, but
one of the persons accused, a member of Katharine's household, received
secret notice of what was intended and waylaid Ockham. Perusal of the
documents he bore showed that much of the information had been suborned by
Dr. London and his assistant Simons, and Katharine was appealed to for her
aid. She exerted her influence with her husband to have them both
arrested and examined. Unaware that their papers had been taken from
Ockham, they foreswore themselves and broke down when confronted with the
written proofs that the case against the accused had been trumped up on
false evidence with ulterior objects. Disgrace and imprisonment for the
two instruments, London and Simons, followed,[241] but the prelate who had
inspired their activity was too indispensable to the King to be attacked,
and he, firm in his political predominance, bided his time for yet another
blow at his enemies, amongst whom he now included the Queen, whose union
with the King he and other Catholics had so recently blessed.
Cranmer, secure as he thought in the King's regard and in his great
position as Primate, had certainly laid himself open to the attacks of his
enemies, by his almost ostentatious favour to the clergy of his province
who were known to be evading or violating the Six Articles. The chapter of
his own cathedral was profoundly divided, and the majority of its members
were opposed to what they considered the injustice of their Archbishop.
Cranmer's commissary, his nephew Nevinson, whilst going out of his way to
favour those who were accused before the chapter of false doctrine,
offended deeply the majority of the clergy by his zeal--which really only
reflected that of the Archbishop himself--in the displacing and
destruction of images in the churches, even when the figures did not
offend against the law by being made the objects of superstitious
pilgrimages and offerings. For several years past the cathedral church of
Canterbury had been a hotbed of discord, in consequence of Cranmer's
having appointed, apparently on principle, men of extreme opinions on both
sides as canons, prebendaries, and preachers; and so great had grown the
opposition in his own chapter to the Primate's known views in the spring
of 1543, that it was evident that a crisis could not be long delayed,
especially as the clergy opposed to the prelate had the letter of the law
on their side, and the countenance of Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, all
powerful as he was in the lay counsels of the King.
Some of the Kentish clergy who resented the Archbishop's action had laid
their heads together in March 1543, and formulated a set of accusations
against him. This the two most active movers in the protest had carried to
the metropolis for submission to Gardiner. They first, however, approached
the Dr. London already referred to, who rewrote the accusations with
additions of his own, in order to bring the accused within the penal law.
The two first movers, Willoughby and Searl, took fright at this, for it
was a dangerous thing to attack the Archbishop, and hastily returned home;
but Dr. London had enough for his present purpose, and handed his enlarged
version of their depositions to Gardiner. London's disgrace, already
related, stayed the matter for a time, but a few months afterwards a fresh
set of articles, alleging illegal acts on the part of the Archbishop, was
forwarded by the discontented clergy to Gardiner, and the accusers were
then summoned before the Privy Council, where they were encouraged to make
their testimony as strong as possible. When the depositions were complete
they were sent to the King by Gardiner, in the hope that now the great
stumblingblock of the Catholic party might be cleared from the path, and
that the new Queen's ruin might promptly follow that of the Primate.
But they reckoned without Henry's love for Cranmer. Rowing on the Thames
one evening in the late autumn soon after the depositions had been handed
to him, the King called at the pier by Lambeth Palace and took Cranmer
into his barge. "Ah, my chaplain," he said jocosely, as the Archbishop
took his seat in the boat, "I have news for you. I know now who is the
greatest heretic in Kent;" and with this he drew from his sleeve and
handed to Cranmer the depositions of those who had sought to ruin him. The
Archbishop insisted upon a regular Commission being issued to test the
truth of the accusations; but Henry could be generous when it suited him,
and he never knew how soon he might need Cranmer's pliable ingenuity
again. So, although he issued the Commission, he made Cranmer its head,
and gave to him the appointment of its members; with the natural result
that the accusers and all their abettors were imprisoned and forced to beg
the Primate's forgiveness for their action.[242] But the man who gave life
to the whole plot, Bishop Gardiner of Winchester, still led the King's
political counsels, much as Henry disliked him personally; for the armed
alliance with the Emperor could only bring its full harvest of profit and
glory to the King of England if the Catholic powers on the Continent were
convinced of Henry's essential orthodoxy, notwithstanding his quarrel with
the Pope.[243] So, though Cranmer might be favoured privately and
Katharine's coquetting with the new learning and its professors winked at,
Gardiner, whose Catholicism was stronger than that of his master, had to
be the figure-head to impress foreigners.
In July 1543 the English contingent to aid the imperial troops to protect
Flanders was sent from Guisnes and Calais under Sir John Wallop. By the
strict terms of the treaty they were only to be employed for a limited
period for the defence of territory invaded by the enemy; but soon after
Wallop's arrival he was asked to take part in the regular siege of
Landrecy in Hainault, that had been occupied by the French. Henry allowed
him to do so under protest. It was waste of time, he said, and would
divert the forces from what was to be their main object; but if he allowed
it, he must have the same right when the war in France commenced to call
upon the imperial contingent with him also to besiege a town if he wished
to do so. Both the allies, even before the war really began, were playing
for their own hands with the deliberate intention of making use of each
other; and in the dismal comedy of chicanery that followed and lasted
almost to Henry's death, this siege of Landrecy and that of St. Disier
were made the peg upon which countless reclamations and recriminations
were hung. The Emperor was ill, in dire need of money, and overwhelmed
with anxiety as to the attitude of the Lutheran princes during the coming
struggle. His eyes were turned towards Italy, and he depended much upon
the diversion that Henry's forces might effect by land and sea; and
conscious that the campaign must be prompt and rapid if he was to profit
by it, he sent one of his most trusted lieutenants, Ferrante Gonzaga,
Viceroy of Sicily, to England at the end of the year 1543 to settle with
Henry the plan of the campaign to be undertaken in the spring.
His task was a difficult one; for Henry was as determined to use Charles
for his advantage as Charles was to use him. After much dispute it was
agreed that Henry, as early in the summer as possible, should lead his
army of 35,000 foot and 7000 horse to invade France from Calais, whilst
the imperial troops were to invade by Lorraine, form a junction with the
English on the Somme, and push on towards Paris. Rapidity was the very
essence of such a plan; but Henry would not promise celerity. He could
not, he said, transport all his men across the sea before the end of June:
the fact being that his own secret intention all along was to conquer the
Boulognais country for himself, gain a free hand in Scotland, and leave
the Emperor to shift as he might. Utter bad faith on both sides pervaded
the affair from first to last. The engaging and payment of mercenaries by
England, the purchase of horses, arms, and stores, the hire of transport,
the interference with commerce--everything in which sharp dealing could be
employed by one ally to get the better of the other was taken advantage of
to the utmost. Henry, enfeebled as he was by disease and obesity, was
determined to turn to his personal glory the victory he anticipated for
his arms. His own courtiers dared not remonstrate with him; and, although
Katharine prayed him to have regard for his safety, he brushed aside her
remonstrances as becoming womanly fears for a dearly loved husband.
Charles knew that if the King himself crossed the Channel the English army
would not be at the imperial bidding. Envoys were consequently sent from
Flanders to pray Henry, for his health's sake, not to risk the hardships
of a sea voyage and a campaign. The subject was a sore one with him; and
when the envoy began to dwell too emphatically upon his infirmities, he
flew into a passion and said that the Emperor was suffering from gout,
which was much worse than any malady he (Henry) had, and it would be more
dangerous for the Emperor to go to the war.
Henry's decision to accompany his army at once increased the importance of
Katharine; who, in accordance with precedent, would become regent in her
husband's absence. A glimpse of her growing influence at this time is seen
in a letter of hers, dated 3rd June 1544, to the Countess of Hertford,
that termagant Ann Stanhope who afterwards was her jealous enemy.
Hertford had been sent in March to the Scottish Border to invade again,
and this time utterly crush Scotland, where Henry's pensioners had played
him false, and betrothed their infant Queen to the heir of France. The
Countess, anxious that her husband should be at home during the King's
absence--probably in order that if anything happened to Henry, Hertford
might take prompt measures on behalf of the new King, his nephew, and
safeguard his own influence--wrote to Katharine praying for her aid.[244]
The Queen's answer is written on the same sheet of paper as one from
Princess Mary to the Countess, whose letters to Katharine had been sent
through the Princess. "My lord your husband's comyng hyther is not
altered, for he schall come home before the Kynge's Majesty take hys
journey over the sees, as it pleaseth his Majesty to declare to me of
late. You may be ryght assured I wold not have forgotten my promise to you
in a matter of lesse effect than thys, and so I pray you most hartely to
think....--KATERYN THE QUENE."[245]
Since Henry insisted upon going to the war himself the next best thing,
according to the Emperor's point of view, to keeping him away was to cause
some Spanish officer of high rank and great experience to be constantly
close to him during the campaign. Except the little skirmishes on the
borders of Scotland, Englishmen had seen no active military service for
many years, and it was urged upon Henry that a general well acquainted
with modern Continental warfare would be useful to him. The Emperor's
Spanish and Italian commanders were the best in the world, as were his
men-at-arms; and a grandee, the Duke of Najera, who was on his way from
Flanders to Spain by sea, was looked upon as being a suitable man for the
purpose of advising the King of England. Henry was determined to impress
him and entertained him splendidly, delaying him as long as possible, in
order that he might be persuaded to accompany the English forces. The
accounts of Najera's stay in England show that Katharine had now, the
spring of 1544, quite settled down in her position as Queen and coming
Regent. Chapuys mentions that when he first took Najera to Court he
"visited the Queen and Princess (Mary), who asked very minutely for news
of the Emperor ... and, although the Queen was a little indisposed, she
wished to dance for the honour of the company. The Queen favours the
Princess all she can; and since the Treaty with the Emperor was made, she
has constantly urged the Princess' cause, insomuch as in this sitting of
Parliament she (Mary) has been declared capable of succeeding in default
of the Prince."[246]
A Spaniard who attended Najera tells the story of the Duke's interview
with Katharine somewhat more fully. "The Duke kissed the Queen's hand and
was then conducted to another chamber, to which the Queen and ladies
followed, and there was music and much beautiful dancing. The Queen danced
first with her brother very gracefully, and then Princess Mary and the
Princess of Scotland (_i.e._ Lady Margaret Douglas) danced with other
gentlemen, and many other ladies also danced, a Venetian of the King's
household dancing some gaillards with such extraordinary activity that he
seemed to have wings upon his feet; surely never was a man seen so agile.
After the dancing had lasted several hours the Queen returned to her
chamber, first causing one of the noblemen who spoke Spanish to offer some
presents to the Duke, who kissed her hand. He would likewise have kissed
that of the Princess Mary, but she offered her lips; and so he saluted her
and all the other ladies.[247] The King is regarded as a very powerful and
handsome man. The Queen is graceful and of cheerful countenance; and is
praised for her virtue. She wore an underskirt, showing in front, of cloth
of gold, and a sleeved over-dress of brocade lined with crimson satin, the
sleeves themselves being lined with crimson velvet, and the train was two
yards long. She wore hanging from the neck two crosses and a jewel of very
magnificent diamonds, and she wore a great number of splendid diamonds in
her headdress." The author of this curious contemporary document excels
himself in praise of the Princess Mary, whose dress on the occasion
described was even more splendid than that of the Queen, consisting as it
did entirely of cloth of gold and purple velvet. The house and gardens of
Whitehall also moved the witness to wonder and admiration. The green
alleys with high hedges of the garden and the sculpture with which the
walks were adorned especially attracted the attention of the visitors, and
the greatness of London and the stately river Thames are declared to be
incomparable.[248]
The Duke of Najera, unwilling to stay, and, apparently, not impressing
Henry very favourably, went on his way; and was immediately followed by
another Spanish commander of equal rank and much greater experience in
warfare, the Duke of Alburquerque, and he, too, was received with the
splendour and ostentation that Henry loved, ultimately accompanying the
King to the siege of Boulogne as military adviser; both the King and
Queen, we are told, treating him with extraordinary favour.[249]
By the time that Henry was ready to cross the Channel early in July to
join his army, which several weeks before had preceded him under the
command of Norfolk and Suffolk, the short-lived and insincere alliance
with the Emperor, from which Henry and Gardiner had expected so much, was
already strained almost to breaking point. The great imperialist defeat
at Ceresole in Savoy earlier in the year had made Henry more disinclined
than ever to sacrifice English men and treasure to fight indirectly the
Emperor's battle in Italy. Even before that Henry had begun to show signs
of an intention to break away from the plan of campaign agreed upon. How
dangerous it would be, he said, for the Emperor to push forward into
France without securing the ground behind him. "Far better to lay siege to
two or three large towns on the road to Paris than to go to the capital
and burn it down." Charles was indignant, and continued to send reminders
and remonstrances that the plan agreed upon must be adhered to. Henry
retorted that Charles himself had departed from it by laying siege to
Landecy. The question of supplies from Flanders, the payment and passage
of mercenaries through the Emperor's territories, the free concession of
trading licences by the Queen Regent of the Netherlands, and a dozen other
questions, kept the relations between the allies in a state of irritation
and acrimony, even before the campaign well began, and it is clear thus
early that Henry started with the fixed intention of conquering the
territory of Boulogne, and then perhaps making friends with Francis,
leaving the Emperor at war. With both the great rivals exhausted, he would
be more sought after than ever. He at once laid siege to Montreuil and
Boulogne, and personally took command, deaf to the prayers and
remonstrances of Charles and his sister, that he would not go beyond
Calais, "for his health's sake"; but would send the bulk of his forces to
join the Emperor's army before St. Disier. The Emperor had himself broken
the compact by besieging Landrecy and St. Disier; and so the bulk of
Henry's army sat down before Boulogne, whilst the Emperor, short of
provisions, far in an enemy's country, with weak lines of communication,
unfriendly Lorraine on his flank and two French armies approaching him,
could only curse almost in despair the hour that he trusted the word of
"his good brother," the King of England.
Katharine bade farewell to her husband at Dover when he went on his
pompous voyage,[250] and returned forthwith to London, fully empowered to
rule England as Regent during his absence. She was directed to use the
advice and counsel of Cranmer, Wriothesley, the Earl of Hertford, who was
to replace her if she became incapacitated, Thirlby, and Petre; Gardiner
accompanying the King as minister. The letters written by Katharine to her
husband during his short campaign show no such instances of want of tact
as did those of the first Katharine, quoted in the earlier pages of this
book. It is plain to read in them the clever, discreet woman, determined
to please a vain man; content to take a subordinate place and to shine by
a reflected light alone. "She thanks God for a prosperous beginning of his
affairs;" "she rejoices at the joyful news of his good health," and in a
business-like way shows that she and her council are actively forwarding
the interests of the King with a single-hearted view to his honour and
glory alone.
During this time the young Prince Edward and his sister Mary were at
Hampton Court with the Queen; but the other daughter, Elizabeth, lived
apart at St. James's. Though it is evident that the girl was generally
regarded and treated as inferior to her sister, she appears to have felt a
real regard for her stepmother, almost the only person who, since her
infancy, had been kind to her. Elizabeth wrote to the Queen on the 31st
July a curious letter in Italian. "Envious fortune," she writes, "for a
whole year deprived me of your Highness's presence, and, not content
therewith, has again despoiled me of that boon. I know, nevertheless, that
I have your love; and that you have not forgotten me in writing to the
King. I pray you in writing to his Majesty deign to recommend me to him;
praying him for his ever-welcome blessing; praying at the same time to
Almighty God to send him good fortune and victory over his enemies; so
that your Highness and I together may the sooner rejoice at his happy
return. I humbly pray to God to have your Highness in His keeping; and
respectfully kissing your Highness' hand.--ELIZABETH."[251]
Katharine indeed, in this trying time of responsibility, comes well out of
her ordeal. The prayer[252] composed by her for peace at this period is
really a beautiful composition; and the letter from her to her husband,
printed by Strype, breathes sentiment likely to please such a man as
Henry, but in language at once womanly and dignified. "Although the
distance of time and account of days," she writes, "neither is long nor
many, of your Majesty's absence, yet the want of your presence, so much
beloved and desired by me, maketh me that I cannot quietly pleasure in
anything until I hear from your Majesty. The time therefore seemeth to me
very long, with a great desire to know how your Highness hath done since
your departing hence; whose prosperity and health I prefer and desire more
than mine own. And, whereas I know your Majesty's absence is never without
great need, yet love and affection compel me to desire your presence.
Again the same zeal and affection forceth me to be best content with that
which is your will and pleasure. Thus, love maketh me in all things set
apart mine own convenience and pleasure, and to embrace most joyfully his
will and pleasure whom I love. God, the knower of secrets, can judge these
words to be not only written with ink but most truly impressed upon the
heart. Much more I omit, less it be thought I go about to praise myself or
crave a thank. Which thing to do I mind nothing less, but a plain simple
relation of the love and zeal I bear your Majesty, proceeding from the
abundance of the heart.... I make like account with your Majesty, as I do
with God, for His benefits and gifts heaped upon me daily; acknowledging
myself to be a great debtor to Him, not being able to recompense the least
of His benefit. In which state I am certain and sure to die, yet I hope
for His gracious acceptance of my goodwill. Even such confidence have I in
your Majesty's gentleness, knowing myself never to have done my duty as
were requisite and meet for such a noble Prince, at whose hands I have
received so much love and goodness that with words I cannot express
it."[253]
It will be seen by this, and nearly every other letter that Katharine
wrote to her husband, that she had taken the measure of his prodigious
vanity, and indulged him to the top of his bent. In a letter written to
him on the 9th August, referring to the success of the Earl of Lennox, who
had just married Henry's niece, Margaret Douglas, and had gone to Scotland
to seize the government in English interest, Katharine says: "The good
speed which Lennox has had, is to be imputed to his serving a master whom
God aids. He might have served the French king, his old master, many years
without attaining such a victory." This is the attitude in which Henry
loved to be approached, and with such letters from his wife in England
confirming the Jove-like qualities attributed to him in consequence of his
presence with his army in France, Henry's short campaign before Boulogne
was doubtless one of the pleasantest experiences in his life.
To add to his satisfaction, he had not been at Calais a week before
Francis began to make secret overtures for peace. It was too early for
that, however, just yet, for Henry coveted Boulogne, and the sole use made
of the French approaches to him was to impress the imperial agents with
his supreme importance. The warning was not lost upon Charles and his
sister the Queen Regent of the Netherlands, who themselves began to
listen to the unofficial suggestions for peace made by the agents of the
Duchess d'Etampes, the mistress of Francis, in order, if possible, to
benefit herself and the Duke of Orleans in the conditions, to the
detriment of the Dauphin Henry. Thenceforward it was a close game of
diplomatic finesse between Henry and Charles as to which should make terms
first and arbitrate on the claims of the other.
St. Disier capitulated to the Emperor on the 8th August; and Charles at
once sent another envoy to Henry at Boulogne, praying him urgently to
fulfil the plan of campaign decided with Gonzaga, or the whole French army
would be concentrated upon the imperial forces and crush them. But Henry
would not budge from before Boulogne, and Charles, whilst rapidly pushing
forward into France, and in serious danger of being cut off by the
Dauphin, listened intently for sounds of peace. They soon came, through
the Duke of Lorraine; and before the end of August the Emperor was in
close negotiation with the French, determined, come what might, that the
final settlement of terms should not be left in the hands of the King of
England. Henry's action at this juncture was pompous, inflated, and
stupid, whilst that of Charles was statesmanlike, though unscrupulous.
Even during the negotiations Charles pushed forward and captured Epernay
and Château Thierry, where the Dauphin's stores were. This was on the 7th
September, and then having struck his blow he knew that he must make peace
at once. He therefore sent the young Bishop of Arras, Granvelle, with a
message to Henry which he knew would have the effect desired. The King of
England was again to be urged formally but insincerely to advance and join
the Emperor, but if he would not the Emperor must make peace, always
providing that the English claims were satisfactorily settled.
Arras arrived in the English camp on the 11th September. He found Henry in
his most vaunting mood; for only three days before the ancient tower on
the harbour side opposite Boulogne had been captured by his men.[254] He
could not move forward, he said; it was too late in the season to begin a
new campaign, and he was only bound by the treaty to keep the field four
months in a year. If the Emperor was in a fix, that was his look-out. The
terms, moreover, suggested for the peace between his ally and France were
out of the question, especially the clause about English claims. The
French had already offered him much better conditions than those. Arras
pushed his point. The Emperor must know definitely, he urged, whether the
King of England would make peace or not, as affairs could not be left
pending. Then Henry lost his temper, as the clever imperial ministers knew
he would do, and blurted out in a rage: "Let the Emperor make peace for
himself if he likes, but nothing must be done to prejudice my claims." It
was enough for the purpose desired, for in good truth the Emperor had
already agreed with the French, and Arras posted back to his master with
Henry's hasty words giving permission for him to make a separate peace. In
vain for the next two years Henry strove to unsay, to palliate, to
disclaim these words. Quarrels, bursts of violent passion, incoherent
rage, indignant denials, were all of no avail; the words were said, and
vouched for by those who heard them; and Charles hurriedly ratified the
peace already practically made with France on terms that surprised the
world, and made Henry wild with indignation.
The Emperor, victor though he was, in appearance gave away everything. His
daughter or niece was to marry Orleans, with Milan or Flanders as a dowry;
Savoy was to be restored to the Duke, and the French were to join the
Emperor in alliance against the Turk. None knew yet--though Henry may have
suspected it--that behind the public treaty there was a secret compact by
which the two Catholic sovereigns agreed to concentrate their joint powers
and extirpate a greater enemy than the Turk, namely, the rising power of
Protestantism in Europe. Henry was thus betrayed and was at war alone with
France, all of whose forces were now directed against him. Boulogne fell
to the English on the 14th September, three days after Arras arrived in
Henry's camp, and the King hurried back to England in blazing wrath with
the Emperor and inflated with the glorification of his own victory, eager
for the applause of his subjects before his laurels faded and the French
beleagured the captured town. Gardiner and Paget, soon to be joined
temporarily by Hertford, remained in Calais in order to continue, if
possible, the abortive peace negotiations with France. But it was a
hopeless task now; for Francis, free from fear on his north-east frontier,
was determined to win back Boulogne at any cost. The Dauphin swore that he
would have no peace whilst Boulogne remained in English hands, and Henry
boastfully declared that he would hold it for ever now that he had won it.
Thenceforward the relations between Henry and the Emperor became daily
more unamiable. Henry claimed under the treaty that Charles should still
help him in the war, but that was out of the question. When in 1546 the
French made a descent upon the Isle of Wight, once more the treaty was
invoked violently by the King of England: almost daily claims, complaints,
and denunciations were made on both sides with regard to the vexed
question of contraband of war for the French, mostly Dutch herrings; and
the right of capture by the English. The Emperor was seriously intent upon
keeping Henry on fairly good terms, and certainly did not wish to go to
war with him; but he had submitted to the hard terms of the peace of
Crespy with a distinct object, and dared not jeopardise it by renewing his
quarrel with France for the sake of Henry.
Slowly it had forced itself upon the mind of Charles that his own
Protestant vassals, the Princes of the Schmalkaldic league, must be
crushed into obedience, or his own power would become a shadow; and his
aim was to keep all Christendom friendly until he had choked Lutheranism
at its fountain-head. From the period of Henry's return to England in
these circumstances, growing sympathy for those whom a Papal and imperial
coalition were attacking caused the influence of the Catholic party in his
Councils gradually but spasmodically to decline. Chapuys, who himself was
hastening to the grave, accompanied his successor Van Der Delft as
ambassador to England at Christmas (1544), and describes Henry as looking
very old and broken, but more boastful of his victory over the French than
ever. He professed, no doubt sincerely, a desire to remain friendly with
the Emperor; and after their interview with him the ambassadors, without
any desire being expressed on their part, were conducted to the Queen's
oratory during divine service. In reply to their greetings and thanks for
her good offices for the preservation of friendship and her kindness to
Princess Mary, Katharine "replied, very graciously, that she did not
deserve so much courtesy from your Majesty (the Emperor). What she did for
Lady Mary was less than she would like to do, and was only her duty in
every respect. With regard to the maintenance of friendship, she said she
had done, and would do, nothing to prevent its growing still firmer, and
she hoped that God would avert the slightest dissension; as the friendship
was so necessary, and both sovereigns were so good."[255]
[Illustration: _HENRY VIII._
_From a portrait by_ HOLBEIN _in the possession of the Earl of Warwick_]
Katharine was equally amiable, though evidently now playing a political
part, when four months later the aged and crippled Chapuys bade his
last farewell to England. He was being carried in a chair to take leave of
Henry at Whitehall one morning in May at nine o'clock. He was an hour
earlier than the time fixed for his audience, and was passing through the
green alleys of the garden towards the King's apartments, when notice was
brought to him that the Queen and Princess Mary were hastening after him.
He stopped at once, and had just time to hobble out of his chair before
the two ladies reached him. "It seemed from the small suite she had with
her, and the haste with which she came, as if her purpose in coming was
specially to speak to me. She was attended only by four or five ladies of
the chamber, and opened the conversation by saying that the King had told
her the previous evening that I was coming that morning to say good-bye.
She was very sorry, on the one hand, for my departure, as she had been
told that I had always performed my duties well, and the King trusted me;
but on the other hand she doubted not that my health would be better on
the other side of the sea. I could, however, she said, do as much on the
other side as here, for the maintenance of the friendship, of which I had
been one of the chief promoters. For this reason she was glad I was going;
although she had no doubt that so wise and good a sovereign as your
Majesty (_i.e._ the Emperor) would see the need and importance of
upholding the friendship, of which the King, on his side, had given so
many proofs in the past. Yet it seemed to her that your Majesty had not
been so thoroughly informed hitherto, either by my letters or otherwise,
of the King's sincere affection and goodwill, as I should be able to
report verbally. She therefore begged me earnestly, after I had presented
to your Majesty her humble service, to express explicitly to you, all that
I had learned here of the good wishes of the King."[256]
There was much more high-flown compliment both from Katharine and her
step-daughter before the gouty ambassador went on his way; but it is
evident that Katharine, like her husband, was at this time (May 1545)
apprehensive as to the intentions of Charles and his French allies towards
England, and was still desirous to obtain some aid in the war under the
treaty, in order, if possible, to weaken the new friendship with France
and the Catholic alliance. In the meanwhile the failure of Gardiner's
policy, and the irritation felt at the Emperor's abandonment of England,
placed the minister somewhat under a cloud. He had failed, too, to
persuade the Emperor personally to fulfil the treaty, as well as in his
negotiations for peace with the French; and, as his sun gradually sank
before the King's annoyance, that of Secretary Paget, of Hertford, of
Dudley, and of Wriothesley, now Lord Chancellor, a mere time-serving
courtier, rose. The Protestant element around Katharine, too, became
bolder, and her own participation in politics was now frankly on the
anti-Catholic side. The alliance--insincere and temporary though it
was--between the Emperor and France, once more produced its inevitable
effect of drawing together England and the German Lutherans. It is true
that Charles' great plan for crushing dissent by the aid of the Pope was
not yet publicly known; but the Council of Trent was slowly gathering, and
it was clear to the German princes of the Schmalkaldic league that great
events touching religion and their independence were in the air; for
Cardinal Farnese and the Papal agents were running backward and forward to
the Emperor on secret missions, and all the Catholic world rang with
denunciation of heresy.
In June the new imperial ambassador, Van Der Delft, sounded the first note
of alarm from England. Katharine Parr's secretary, Buckler, he said, had
been in Germany for weeks, trying to arrange a league between the
Protestant princes and England. This was a matter of the highest
importance, and Charles when he heard of it was doubly desirous of keeping
his English brother from quite breaking away; whilst in September there
arrived in England from France a regular embassy from the Duke of Saxony,
the Landgrave of Hesse, the Duke of Würtemburg, and the King of Denmark,
ostensibly to promote peace between England and France, but really bent
upon effecting a Protestant alliance. Henry, indeed, was seriously
alarmed. He was exhausted by his long war in France, harassed in the
victualling of Boulogne and even of Calais, and fully alive to the fact
that he was practically defenceless against an armed coalition of the
Emperor and France. In the circumstances it was natural that the influence
over him of his wife, and of his brother-in-law Hertford, both inclined to
a reconciliation with France and an understanding with the German
Protestants, should increase.
Katharine, now undisguisedly in favour of such a policy, was full of tact;
during the King's frequent attacks of illness she was tender and useful to
him, and the attachment to her of the young Prince Edward, testified by
many charming little letters of the boy, too well known to need quotation
here, seemed to promise a growth of her State importance. The tendency was
one to be strenuously opposed by Gardiner and his friends in the Council,
and once more attempts were made to strike at the Queen through Cranmer,
almost simultaneously with a movement, flattering to Henry and hopeful for
the Catholic party, to negotiate a meeting at Calais or in Flanders
between him and the Emperor, to settle all questions and make France
distrustful. For any such approach to be productive of the full effects
desired by Gardiner, it was necessary to couple with it severe measures
against the Protestants. Henry was reminded that the coming attack upon
the German Lutherans by the Emperor, with the acquiescence of France,
would certainly portend an attack upon himself later; and he was told by
the Catholic majority of his Council that any tenderness on his part
towards heresy now would be specially perilous. The first blow was struck
at Cranmer, and was struck in vain. The story in full is told by Strype
from Morice and Foxe, and has been repeated by every historian of the
reign. Gardiner and his colleagues represented to Henry that, although the
Archbishop was spreading heresy, no one dared to give evidence against a
Privy Councillor whilst he was free. The King promised that they might
send Cranmer to the Tower, if on examination of him they found reason to
do so. Late that night Henry sent across the river to Lambeth to summon
the Archbishop from his bed to see him, told him of the accusation, and
his consent that the accused should be judged and, if advisable, committed
to the Tower by his own colleagues on the Council. Cranmer humbly thanked
the King, sure, as he said, that no injustice would be permitted. Henry,
however, knew better, and indignantly said so; giving to his favourite
prelate his ring for a token that summoned the Council to the royal
presence.
The next morning early Cranmer was summoned to the Council, and was kept
long waiting in an ante-room amongst suitors and serving-men. Dr. Butts,
Henry's privileged physician, saw this and told the King that the
Archbishop of Canterbury had turned lackey; for he had stood humbly
waiting outside the Council door for an hour. Henry, in a towering rage,
growled, "I shall talk to them by-and-by." When Cranmer was charged with
encouraging heresy he demanded of his colleagues that he should be
confronted with his accusers. They refused him rudely, and told him he
should be sent to the Tower. Then Cranmer's turn came, and he produced the
King's ring, to the dismay of the Council, who, when they tremblingly
faced their irate sovereign, were taken to task with a violence that
promised them ill, if ever they dared to touch again the King's friend.
But though Cranmer was unassailable, the preachers who followed his creed
were not. In the spring of 1546 the persecutions under the Six Articles
commenced afresh, and for a short time the Catholic party in the Council
had much their own way, having frightened Henry into abandoning the
Lutheran connection, in order that the vengeance of the Catholic league
might not fall upon him, when the Emperor had crushed the Schmalkaldic
princes.[257]
Henry's health was visibly failing, and the two factions in his Court knew
that time was short in which to establish the predominance of either at
the critical moment. On the Protestant side were Hertford, Dudley,
Cranmer, and the Queen, and on the other Gardiner, Paget, Paulet, and
Wriothesley; and as Katharine's influence grew with her husband's
increasing infirmity, it became necessary for the opposite party if
possible to get rid of her before the King died. In February 1546 the
imperial ambassador reported: "I am confused and apprehensive to have to
inform your Majesty that there are rumours here of a new Queen, although I
do not know why or how true they may be. Some people attribute them to the
sterility of the Queen, whilst others say that there will be no change
whilst the present war lasts. The Duchess of Suffolk is much talked about,
and is in great favour; but the King shows no alteration in his behaviour
towards the Queen, though she is, I am informed, annoyed at the
rumours."[258] Hints of this sort continued for some time, and evidently
took their rise from a deliberate attack upon Katharine by the Catholic
councillors. She herself, for once, failed in her tact, and laid herself
open to the designs of her enemies. She was betrayed into a religious
discussion with Henry during one of his attacks of illness, in the
presence of Gardiner, much to the King's annoyance. When she had retired
the Bishop flattered Henry by saying that he wondered how any one could
have the temerity to differ from him on theology, and carried his
suggestions further by saying that such a person might well oppose him in
other things than opinions. Moved by the hints at his danger, always a
safe card to play with him, the King allowed an indictment to be drawn up
against Katharine, and certain ladies of her family, under the Six
Articles. Everything was arranged for the Queen's arrest and examination,
when Wriothesley, the Lord Chancellor, a servile creature who always clung
to the strongest side, seems to have taken fright and divulged the plot to
one of her friends. Katharine was at once informed and fell ill with
fright, which for a short time deferred the arrest. Being partially
recovered she sought the King, and when he began to talk about religion,
she by her submission and refusal to contradict his views, as those of one
far too learned for her to controvert, easily flattered him back into a
good humour with her. The next day was fixed for carrying her to the
Tower, and again Henry determined to play a trick upon his ministers.
Sending for his wife in the garden, he kept her in conversation until the
hour appointed for her arrest. When Wriothesley and the guard approached,
the King turned upon him in a fury, calling him knave, fool, beast, and
other opprobrious names, to the Lord Chancellor's utter surprise and
confusion.
The failure of the attack upon Katharine in the summer of 1546 marks the
decline of the Catholic party in the Council. Peace was made with France
in the autumn; and Katharine did her part in the splendid reception of the
Admiral of France and the great rejoicings over the new peace treaty
(September 1546). Almost simultaneously came the news of fresh dissensions
between the Emperor and Francis; for the terms of the peace of Crespy were
flagrantly evaded, and it began to be seen now that the treaty had for its
sole object the keeping of France quiet and England at war whilst the
German Protestants were crushed. Not in France alone, but in England too,
the revulsion of feeling against the Emperor's aims was great. The
treacherous attack upon his own vassals in order to force orthodoxy upon
them at the sword's point had been successful, and it was seen to
constitute a menace to all the world. Again Protestant envoys came to
England and obtained a loan from Henry: again the Duke Philip of Bavaria,
who said that he had never heard mass in his life until he arrived in
England, came to claim the hand of the Princess Mary;[259] and the
Catholics in the King's Council, forced to stand upon the defensive,
became, not the conspirators but those conspired against. Hertford and
Dudley, now Lord Admiral, were the King's principal companions, both in
his pastimes and his business; and the imperial ambassador expressed his
fears for the future to a caucus of the Council consisting of Gardiner,
Wriothesley, and Paulet, deploring, as he said, that "not only had the
Protestants their openly declared champions ... but I had even heard that
some of them had gained great favour with the King, though I wished they
were as far away from Court as they were last year. I did not mention
names, but the persons I referred to were the Earl of Hertford and the
Lord Admiral. The councillors made no reply, but they clearly showed that
they understood me, and continued in their great devotion to your
Majesty."[260]
Late in September the King fell seriously ill, and his life for a time was
despaired of. Dr. Butts had died some months before, and the Queen was
indefatigable in her attendance; and the Seymours, as uncles of the heir,
rose in importance as the danger to the King increased. The only strong
men on the Council on the Catholic side were Gardiner, who was extremely
unpopular and already beaten, and Norfolk. Paulet was as obedient to the
prevailing wind as a weathercock; Wriothesley was an obsequious, greedy
sycophant; Paget a humble official with little influence, and the rest
were nonentities. The enmity of the Seymours against the Howards was of
long standing, and was as much personal as political; especially between
the younger brother, Sir Thomas Seymour, and the Earl of Surrey, the heir
of Norfolk, whose quarrels and affrays had several times caused scandal at
Court. There was much ill-will also between Surrey and his sister, the
widowed Duchess of Richmond, who after the death of her young husband had
been almost betrothed to Sir Thomas Seymour.[261] With these elements of
enmity a story was trumped up which frightened the sick King into the
absurd idea that Surrey aimed at succeeding to the crown, to the exclusion
of Henry's children. It was sufficient to send him to the Tower, and
afterwards to the block as one of Henry's most popular victims. His
father, the aged Duke of Norfolk, was got rid of by charges of complicity
with him. Stripped of his garter, the first of English nobles was carried
to the Tower by water, whilst his brilliant poet son was led through the
streets of London like a pickpurse, cheered to the echo by the crowd that
loved him. The story hatched to explain the arrests to the public, besides
the silly gossip about Surrey's coat-of-arms and claims to the crown, was,
that whilst the King was thought to be dying in November at Windsor, the
Duke and his son had plotted to obtain possession of the Prince for their
own ends on the death of his father. Having regard for the plots and
counterplots that we know divided the Council at the time, this is very
probable, and was exactly what Hertford and Dudley were doing, the Prince,
indeed, being then in his uncle's keeping at Hertford Castle.
At the end of December the King suffered from a fresh attack, which
promised to be fatal. He was at Whitehall at the time, whilst Katharine
was at Greenwich, an unusual thing which attracted much comment; but
whether she was purposely excluded by Hertford from access to him or not,
it is certain that the Protestant party of which she, the Duchess of
Suffolk, and the Countess of Hertford were the principal lady members, and
the Earl of Hertford and Lord Admiral Dudley the active leaders, alone had
control of affairs. Gardiner had been threatened with the Tower months
before, and had then only been saved by Norfolk's bold protest. Now
Norfolk was safe under bolts and bars, whilst Wriothesley and Paulet were
openly insulted by Hertford and Dudley, and, like their chief Gardiner,
lay low in fear of what was to come when the King died.[262] They were
soon to learn. The King had been growing worse daily during January. His
legs, covered with running ulcers, were useless to him and in terrible
torture. His bulk was so unwieldy that mechanical means had to be employed
to lift him. Surrey had been done to death in the Tower for high treason,
whilst yet the King's stiffened hand could sign the death-warrant; but
when the time came for killing Norfolk, Henry was too far gone to place
his signature to the fatal paper. Wriothesley, always ready to oblige the
strong, produced a commission, stated to be authorised by the King,
empowering him as Chancellor to sign for him, which he did upon the
warrant ordering the death of Norfolk, whose head was to fall on the
following morning. But it was too late, for on the morrow before the hour
fixed for the execution the soul of King Henry had gone to its account,
and none dared carry out the vicarious command to sacrifice the proudest
noble in the realm for the convenience of the political party for the
moment predominant.
On the afternoon of 26th January 1547 the end of the King was seen to be
approaching. The events of Henry's deathbed have been told with so much
religious passion on both sides that it is somewhat difficult to arrive at
the truth. Between the soul in despair and mortal anguish, as described by
Rivadeneyra, and the devout Protestant deathbed portrayed by some of the
ardent religious reformers, there is a world of difference. The accepted
English version says that, fearing the dying man's anger, none of the
courtiers dared to tell him of his coming dissolution, until his old
friend Sir Anthony Denny, leaning over him, gently broke the news. Henry
was calm and resigned, and when asked if he wished to see a priest, he
answered: "Only Cranmer, and him not yet." It was to be never, for Henry
was speechless and sightless when the Primate came, and the King could
answer only by a pressure of his numbed fingers the question if he died in
the faith of Christ. Another contemporary, whom I have several times
quoted, though always with some reservation, says that Henry, some days
before he died, took a tender farewell of the Princess Mary, to whose
motherly care he commended her young brother; and that he then sent for
the Queen and said to her, "'It is God's will that we should part, and I
order all these gentlemen to honour and treat you as if I were living
still; and, if it should be your pleasure to marry again, I order that you
shall have seven thousand pounds for your service as long as you live, and
all your jewels and ornaments.' The good Queen could not answer for
weeping, and he ordered her to leave him. The next day he confessed, took
the sacrament, and commended his soul to God."[263]
Henry died, in fact, as he had lived, a Catholic. The Reformation in
England, of which we have traced the beginnings in this book, did not
spring mature from the mind and will of the King, but was gradually thrust
upon him by the force of circumstances, arising out of the steps he took
to satisfy his passion and gratify his imperious vanity. Freedom of
thought in religion was the last thing to commend itself to such a mind as
his, and his treatment of those who disobeyed either the Act of Supremacy
or the Bloody Statute (the Six Articles) shows that neither on the one
side or the other would he tolerate dissent from his own views, which he
characteristically caused to be embodied in the law of the land, either in
politics or religion. The concession to subjects of the right of private
judgment in matters of conscience seemed to the potentates of the
sixteenth century to strike at the very base of all authority, and the
very last to concede such a revolutionary claim was Henry Tudor. His
separation from the Papal obedience, whilst retaining what, in his view,
were the essentials of the Papal creed, was directed rather to the
increase than to the diminution of his own authority over his subjects,
and it was this fact that doubtless made it more than ever attractive to
him. To ascribe to him a complete plan for the aggrandisement of England
and her emancipation from foreign control, by means of religious schism,
has always appeared to me to endow him with a political sagacity and
prescience which, in my opinion, he did not possess, and to estimate
imperfectly the forces by which he was impelled.
We have seen how, entirely in consequence of the unexpected difficulties
raised by the Papacy to the first divorce, he adopted the bold advice of
Cranmer and Cromwell to defy the Pope on that particular point. The
opposition of the Pope was a purely political one, forced upon him by the
Emperor for reasons of State, in order to prevent a coalition between
England and France; and there were several occasions when, if the Pope had
been left to himself, he would have found a solution that would have kept
England in the orthodox fold. But for the persistence of the opposition
Henry would never have taken the first step that led to the Reformation.
Having taken it, each other step onward was the almost inevitable
consequence of the first, having regard to the peculiar character of the
King. It has been the main business of this book to trace in what respect
the policy that ended in the great religious schism was reflected or
influenced by the matrimonial adventures of the King, who has gone down to
history as the most married monarch of modern times. We have seen that,
although, with the exception of Katharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, each
for a short time, the direct influence of Henry's wives upon events was
small, each one represented, and coincided in point of time with, a
change in the ruling forces around the King. We have seen that the
libidinous tendency of the monarch was utilised by the rival parties, as
were all other elements that might help them, to forward the opportunity
by which a person to some extent dependent upon them might be placed at
the side of the King as his wife; and when for the purpose it was
necessary to remove the wife in possession first, we have witnessed the
process by which it was effected.
The story from this point of view has not been told before in its
entirety, and as the whole panorama unrolls before us, we mark curiously
the regular degeneration of Henry's character, as the only checks upon his
action were removed, and he progressively defied traditional authority and
established standards of conduct without disaster to himself. The power of
the Church to censure or punish him, and the fear of personal reprobation
by the world, were the influences that, had they retained their force over
him to the end, would probably have kept Henry to all appearance a good
man. But when he found, probably to his own surprise, that the jealous
divisions of the Catholic powers on the Continent made defiance of the
Church in his case unpunishable, and that crafty advisers and servile
Parliaments could give to his deeds, however violent and cruel, the
sanction of Holy Writ and the law of the land, there was no power on earth
to hold in check the devil in the breast of Henry Tudor; and the man who
began a vain, brilliant sensualist, with the feelings of a gentleman,
ended a repulsive, bloodstained monster, the more dangerous because his
evil was always held to be good by himself and those around him.
In his own eyes he was a deeply wronged and ill-used man when Katharine of
Aragon refused to surrender her position as his wife after twenty years of
wedlock, and appealed to forces outside England to aid her in supporting
her claim. It was a rebellious, a cruel, and a wicked thing for her and
her friends to stand in the way of his tender conscience, and of his
laudable and natural desire to be succeeded on the throne by a son of his
own. Similarly, it seemed very hard upon him that all Europe, and most of
his own country, should be threateningly against him for the sake of Anne
Boleyn, for whom he had already sacrificed and suffered so much, and
particularly as she was shrewish and had brought him no son. He really was
a most ill-used man, and it was a providential instance of divine justice
that Cromwell, in the nick of time, when the situation had become
unendurable and Jane Seymour's prudish charms were most elusive, should
fortunately discover that Anne was unworthy to be Henry's wife, and
Cranmer should decide that she never _had_ been his wife. It was not his
fault, moreover, that Anne of Cleves' physical qualities had repelled him.
A wicked and ungenerous trick had been played upon him. His trustful
ingenuousness had been betrayed by flatterers at the instance of a knavish
minister, who, not content with bringing him a large unsympathetic Dutch
vrow for a wife, had pledged him to an alliance with a lot of
insignificant vassal princes in rebellion against the greater sovereigns
who were his own peers. It was a just decree of heaven that the righteous
wisdom of Gardiner and Norfolk should enable it to be demonstrated clearly
that the good King had once more been deceived, and that Anne, and the
policy she stood for, could be repudiated at the same time without
opprobrium or wrongdoing. Again, how relentless was the persecution of the
powers of evil against the obese invalid of fifty who married in ignorance
of her immoral past a light-lived beauty of seventeen, and was undeceived
when her frivolity began to pall upon him by those whose political and
religious views might benefit by the disgrace of the party that had placed
Katharine Howard by the King's side as his wife. That the girl Queen
should lose her head for lack of virtue before her marriage and lack of
prudence after it, was, of course, quite just, and in accordance with the
law of the land--for all that Henry did was strictly legal--but it was a
heartrending thing that the good husband should suffer the distress of
having once believed in so unworthy a wife. Still Katharine Howard was not
sacrificed in vain, for, although the Catholic policy she represented
suffered no check, for reasons set forth in earlier pages, the King's sad
bereavement left him in the matrimonial market and enhanced his price as
an ally, for much of the future depended upon the wife and the party that
should be in possession when the King died. As we have seen, the
Protestants, or rather the anti-Catholics, won the last trick; and
Somerset's predominance meant that the Reformation in England should not
be one of form alone but of substance.
The life of Katharine Parr after Henry's death hardly enters into the plan
of this book; but a few lines may be devoted to it, and to her pitiable
end. The instant rise of the Protector Somerset on the death of Henry
brought with it a corresponding increase in the importance of his brother
Sir Thomas, then Lord Seymour of Sudeley, who was certainly no less
ambitious than his brother, and probably of much stronger character. For a
time all went well between the brothers, Thomas being created Lord
Admiral, to the annoyance of Dudley--now Earl of Warwick--who had held the
office, and receiving great grants of forfeited estates and other wealth.
But soon the evident attempts of Lord Seymour to rival his elder brother,
and perhaps to supplant him, aroused the jealousy of Somerset, or more
likely of his quarrelsome and haughty wife.
Some love passages, we have seen, took place between Seymour and Katharine
Parr before her marriage with the King, so that it need not be ascribed to
ambition that the lover should once more cast his eyes upon the royal
widow before the weeds for the King had been cast aside.[264] Katharine,
with a large dower that has already been mentioned, lived alternately in
her two mansion-houses at Chelsea and Hanworth; and to her care was
consigned the Lady Elizabeth, then a girl of fourteen. As early as the
beginning of May 1547, Seymour had visited the widowed Queen at Chelsea
with his tale of love. Katharine was now thirty-four years of age, and
having married in succession three old men, might fairly be entitled to
contract a fourth marriage to please herself. There was no more manly or
handsome figure in England than that of Seymour, with his stately stature,
his sonorous voice, and his fine brown beard; and in his quiet meetings
with the Queen in her pretty riverside garden at Chelsea, he appears to
have found no difficulty in persuading Katharine of the sincerity of his
love.
For a time the engagement was kept secret; but watchful eyes were around
the Queen, especially those of her own kin, and the following letter,
written by Seymour to her on the 17th May, shows that her sister, Lady
Herbert, at least, had wind from Katharine of what was going on: "After my
humble commendations of your Highness. Yester night I supped at my brother
Herbert's, of whom, for your sake besydes my nown, I receved good cheyre.
And after the same I received from your Highness by my sister Herbert[265]
your commendations, which were more welcome than they were sent. And after
the same she (Lady Herbert) waded further with me touching my being with
your Highness at Chelsey, which I denied; but that, indeed, I went by the
garden as I went to the Bishop of London's howse; and at this point I
stood with her for a time, till at last she told me further tokens that
made me change colour; and she, like a false wench, took me with the
maner. Then, remembering what she was, and knowing how well ye trusted
her, I examined her whether these things came from your Highness and by
that knew it to be true; for the which I render unto your Highness my most
umbell and harty thanks: for by her company (in default of yours) I shall
shorten the weeks in these parts, which heretofore were three days longer
in every of them than they were under the planets at Chelsey. Besydes this
commoditye I may ascertain (_i.e._ inform) your Highness by her how I do
proceed in my matter...." Seymour goes on to say that he has not yet dared
to try his strength until he is fully in favour, this having reference
apparently to his intention of begging his brother to permit the marriage,
and then he proceeds: "If I knew by what means I might gratify your
Highness for your goodness to me at our last being together, I should not
be slack to declare mine to you again, and the intent that I will be more
bound to your Highness, I do make my request that, yf it be nott painfull
to your Highness, that once in three days I may receve three lynes in a
letter from you; and as many lynes and letters more as shall seem good to
your Highness. Also I shall ombeley desyr your Highness to geve me one of
your small pictures yf ye hav one left, who with his silence shall give me
occasion to think on the friendly cheere I shall have when my sawght
(suit?) shall be at an end. 12 o'clock in the night this Tewsday the 17th
May 1547. From him whom ye have bound to honour, love, and in all lawful
thynges obbey.--T. SEYMOUR."
The Queen had evidently pledged her troth to her lover at the previous
meeting; and it would appear that when Katharine had promised to write to
him but once a fortnight her impatience, as much as his, could ill suffer
so long a silence. Either in answer to the above letter, or another
similar one, Katharine wrote: "My Lord, I send you my most humble and
hearty commendations, being desirous to know how ye have done since I saw
you. I pray ye be not offended with me in that I send sooner to you than I
said I would, for my promise was but once a fortnight. Howbeit, the time
is well abbreviated, by what means I know not, except weeks be shorter at
Chelsey than in other places. My Lord, your brother hath deferred
answering such requests as I made to him till his coming hither, which he
sayeth shall be immediately after the term. This is not the first promise
I have received of his coming, and yet unperformed. I think my lady
(_i.e._ the Duchess of Somerset) hath taught him that lesson, for it is
her custom to promise many comings to her friends and to perform none. I
trust in greater matters she is more circumspect."[266] Then follows a
curious loving postscript, which shows that Katharine's fancy for Seymour
was no new passion. "I would not have you think that this, mine honest
good will toward you, proceeds from any sudden motion of passion; for, as
truly as God is God, my mind was fully bent the other time I was at
liberty to marry you before any man I know. Howbeit, God withstood my will
therein most vehemently for a time, and through His grace and goodness
made that possible which seemed to me most impossible: that was, made me
renounce utterly mine own will, and follow His most willingly. It were
long to write all the process of this matter. If I live I shall declare it
to you myself. I can say nothing; but as my lady of Suffolk saith: 'God is
a marvellous man.'--KATHERYN THE QUENE."[267]
The course of true love did not run smoothly. Somerset, and especially his
wife, did not like the idea of his younger brother's elevation to higher
influence by his marrying the Queen-Dowager; and the Protector proved
unwilling to grant his consent to the marriage. Katharine evidently
resented this, and was inclined to use her great influence with the young
King himself over his elder uncle's head. When Seymour was in doubt how to
approach his brother about it, Katharine wrote spiritedly: "The denial of
your request shall make his folly more manifest to the world, which will
more grieve me than the want of his speaking. I would not wish you to
importune for his goodwill if it come not frankly at first. It shall be
sufficient once to require it, and then to cease. I would desire you might
obtain the King's letters in your favour, and also the aid and furtherance
of the most notable of the Council, such as ye shall think convenient,
which thing being obtained shall be no small shame to your brother and
sister in case they do not the like." In the same letter Katharine rather
playfully dallies with her lover's request that she will abridge the
period of waiting from two years to two months, and then she concludes in
a way which proves if nothing else did how deeply she was in love with
Seymour. "When it shall pleasure you to repair hither (Chelsea) ye must
take some pains to come early in the morning, so that ye may be gone again
by seven o'clock; and thus I suppose ye may come without being suspect. I
pray ye let me have knowledge overnight at what hour ye will come, that
your portress (_i.e._ Katharine herself) may wait at the gate to the
fields for you."
It was not two years, or even two months, that the impatient lovers
waited: for they must have been married before the last day in May 1547,
four months after Henry's death. Katharine's suggestion that the boy King
himself should be enlisted on their side, was adopted; and he was induced
to press Seymour's suit to his father's widow, as if he were the promoter
of it. When the secret marriage was known to Somerset, he expressed the
greatest indignation and anger at it; and a system of petty persecution of
Katharine began. Her jewels, of which the King had left her the use during
her life, were withheld from her; her jointure estates were dealt with by
Somerset regardless of her wishes and protests; and her every appearance
at Court led to a squabble with the Protector's wife as to the precedence
to be accorded to her. On one occasion it is stated that this question of
precedence led in the Chapel Royal to a personal encounter between
Katharine and proud Ann Stanhope.
Nor was Katharine's life at home with her gallant, empty-headed, turbulent
husband, cloudless. The Princess Elizabeth lived with them; and though she
was but a girl, Seymour began before many months of married life to act
suspiciously with her. The manners of the time were free; and Seymour
might perhaps innocently romp suggestively, as he did, sometimes alone and
sometimes in his wife's presence, with the young Princess as she lay in
bed; but when Katharine, entering a chamber suddenly once, found young
Elizabeth embraced in her husband's arms, there was a domestic explosion
which led to the departure of the girl from the Chelsea household.[268]
Katharine was pregnant at the time; and Elizabeth's letter to her on her
leaving Chelsea shows that although, for the sake of prudence, the girl
was sent away, there was no great unkindness between her and her
stepmother in consequence. She says that she was chary of her thanks when
leaving, because "I was replete with sorrow to depart from your Highness,
especially leaving you undoubtful of health, and, albeit I answered
little, I weighed more deeper when you said you would warn me of all the
evils that you should hear of me."
When the poor lady's time drew near, she wrote a hopeful yet pathetic
letter to her husband, who was already involving himself in the ambitious
schemes that brought his head to the block. Both she and her husband in
their letters anticipated the birth of their child with a frankness of
detail which make the documents unfitted for reproduction here; and it is
evident that, though they were now often separated, this looked-for son
was to be a new pledge to bind them together for the future. In June 1548
Seymour took his wife to Sudeley Castle for her confinement; and from
there carried on, through his agents with the King, his secret plots to
supersede his brother Somerset as Protector of the realm. He and his wife
were surrounded by a retinue so large, as of itself to constitute a menace
to the Protector; but Katharine's royal title gave a pretext for so large
a household, and this and her personal influence secured whilst she lived
her husband's safety from attack by his brother.
At length, on the 30th August, Katharine's child was born, a daughter, and
at first all went well. Even Somerset, angry and distrustful as he was,
was infected by his brother's joy, and sent congratulations. But on the
fourth day the mother became excited, and wandered somewhat; saying that
she thought she would die, and that she was not being well treated. "Those
who are about me do not care for me, but stand laughing at my grief," she
complained to her friend Lady Tyrwhitt. This was evidently directed
against Seymour, who stood by. "Why, sweetheart," he said, "I would you no
hurt." "No, my Lord," replied Katharine, "I think so; but," she whispered,
"you have given me many shrewd taunts." This seems to have troubled
Seymour, and he suggested to Lady Tyrwhitt that he should lie on the bed
by the Queen's side and try to calm her; but his efforts were without
effect, for she continued excitedly to say that she had not been properly
dealt with. These facts, related and magnified by attendants, and coupled
with Seymour's desire to marry Elizabeth as soon as his wife died, gave
rise to a pretty general opinion that Katharine was either poisoned or
otherwise ill treated. But there are many circumstances that point in the
contrary direction, and there can be no reasonable doubt now, that
although in her inmost mind she had begun to distrust her husband, and the
anxiety so caused may have contributed to her illness, she died (on the
5th September) of ordinary puerperal fever.
She was buried in great state in the chapel at Sudeley Castle, and her
remains, which have been examined and described several times, add their
testimony to the belief that the unfortunate Queen died a natural death.
The death of Katharine Parr, the last, and least politically important, of
Henry's six wives, took place, so far as English history is concerned, on
the day that heralded the death of her royal husband. From the moment that
Somerset and his wife sat in the seats of the mighty there was no room for
the exercise of political influence by the Queen-Dowager; and these latter
pages telling of her fourth marriage, this time for love, form but a human
postscript to a political history.
Footnotes:
[1] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 1.
[2] The second marriage, by proxy, of Arthur and Katharine eventually took
place at the chapel of the royal manor of Bewdley on the 19th May 1499,
and the young Prince appears to have performed his part of the ceremony
with much decorum: "Saying in a loud, clear voice to Dr. Puebla, who
represented the bride, that he was much rejoiced to contract an
indissoluble marriage with Katharine, Princess of Wales, not only in
obedience to the Pope and King Henry, but also from his deep and sincere
love for the said Princess, his wife."--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. 1.
[3] Hall's _Chronicle_.
[4] Leland's _Collectanea_.
[5] Hall's _Chronicle_.
[6] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 1.
[7] The Spanish agent believed that Henry would have preferred that
Katharine had not accompanied Arthur to Wales, but for his desire to force
her to use her valuables, so that he might obtain their equivalent in
money. Both Doña Elvira and Bishop Ayala told Henry that they considered
that it would be well that the young couple should be separated and not
live together for a time, as Arthur was so young. But Puebla and the
Princess's chaplain, Alexander (Fitzgerald), had apparently said to the
King that the bride's parents did not wish the Princess to be separated
from her husband on any account. Doña Elvira's opinion on the matter
assumes importance from her subsequent declaration soon after Arthur's
death that she knew the marriage had not been consummated.
[8] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 1, 271.
[9] There is in the Biblioteca Nacional at Madrid (I. 325) a Spanish
document, apparently a contemporary translation of the report sent to
Henry from Valencia by the three agents he sent thither in 1505 to report
upon the appearance of the two widowed Queens of Naples resident there.
James Braybrooke, John Stile, and Francis Marsin express an extremely
free, but favourable, opinion of the charms of the younger queen, aged
twenty-seven. Katharine appears to have given letters of recommendation to
the envoys. The Spanish version of the document varies but little from the
printed English copy in the Calendar. The date of it is not given, but it
must have been written in the late autumn of 1505. Henry was evidently
anxious for the match, though he said that he would not marry the lady for
all the treasures in the world if she turned out to be ugly. The Queen of
Naples, however, would not allow a portrait to be taken of her, and
decidedly objected to the match. The various phases of Henry's own
matrimonial intrigues cannot be dealt with in this book, but it appears
certain that if he could have allied himself to Spain by marrying the
Queen of Naples, he would have broken his son's betrothal with Katharine,
and have married him to one of the young princesses of France, a
master-stroke which would have bound him to all the principal political
factors in Europe.
[10] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 1, p. 309.
[11] She insisted--in accord with Ferdinand and Isabel--that Katharine
should live in great seclusion as a widow until the second marriage
actually took place, and Katharine appears to have done so at this time,
though not very willingly. Some of her friends seem to have incited her to
enjoy more freedom, but a tight hand was kept upon her, until events made
her her own mistress, when, as will be seen in a subsequent page, she
quite lost her head for a time, and committed what at least were the
gravest indiscretions. (See _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 1 and Supplement.)
[12] The protest is dated 24th June 1505, when Henry was fourteen.
[13] Margaret absolutely refused to marry Henry, and a substitute was
found in the betrothal of young Charles, the eldest son of Philip, to
Henry's younger daughter, Mary Tudor, afterwards Queen of France and
Duchess of Suffolk.
[14] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 1, 386.
[15] This letter is dated in March 1507, and is a most characteristic
epistle. Ferdinand in it professes the deepest love for his daughter and
sympathy for her unhappiness. He had had the money all ready to send, he
assures her, but King Philip had stopped it; and she must keep friendly
with King Henry, never allowing any question to be raised as to the
binding nature of her marriage with his son. As to the King's marriage
with Juana, the proposal must be kept very secret or Juana will do
something to prevent it; but if she ever marry again it shall be with no
one else but Henry. Whether Ferdinand ever meant in any case to sell his
distraught daughter to Henry may be doubted; but the proposal offered a
good opportunity of gaining a fresh hold upon the King of England.
[16] Puebla says that Henry had bought very cheaply the jewels of the
deposed Kings of Naples and had great stores of them. He would only take
Katharine's at a very low price.
[17] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 1, 409, 15th April 1507.
[18] The letters relating to this curious affair were for some years kept
secret by the authorities at Simancas; but were eventually printed in the
Supplement to vols. 2 and 3 of the _Spanish Calendar_.
[19] _Calendar Henry VIII._, 26th July 1509.
[20] It is doubtful if he was ever present at an engagement, and he
hurried home from Boulogne as soon as hard fighting seemed to the fore.
His fear of contagion and sickness was exhibited in most undignified
fashion on several occasions.
[21] _Calendar Henry VIII._, 23rd September 1513.
[22] Katharine to Wolsey, 13th August 1513. _Calendar Henry VIII._
[23] _Venetian Calendar_, vol. 2, 7th October 1513.
[24] _Venetian Calendar_, vol. 2.
[25] Lippomano from Rome, 1st September. _Venetian Calendar_, vol. 2.
[26] _Calendar Henry VIII._, 31st December 1514.
[27] See Giustiani's letters in the _Venetian Calendars_ of the date.
[28] See the letters of Henry's secretary, Richard Pace, in the _Calendar
of Henry VIII._, vol. 2.
[29] The Emperor's fleet was sighted off Plymouth on the 23rd May 1520.
[30] In the _Rutland Papers_ (Camden Society), Hall's _Chronicle_, and
Camden's _Annales_ full and interesting details will be found.
[31] The ambassador Martin de Salinas, who arrived in England during the
Emperor's stay, from the Archduke Ferdinand who acted as _locum tenens_ in
Germany for his brother, reports (_Spanish Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 2)
that he delivered separate credentials to Queen Katharine, who promised to
read them and give him her answer later. He continues: "I went to see her
again this morning. She said that one of the letters had contained my
credentials and the other spoke of the business of the Turks. The time for
a war with the Turks, she declared, was ill chosen; as the war with France
absorbed all the English resources. I told her that the Infante (_i.e._
Ferdinand) regarded her as his true mother, and prayed her not to forsake
him, but to see that the King of England sent him succour against the
Turk. She answered that it will be impossible for the King to do so." It
will be seen by this and other references to the same matter that
Katharine at this time, during the imperial alliance, was again taking a
powerful part in political affairs.
[32] See the series of letters in Bradford's "Charles V." and Pace's
correspondence in the _Henry VIII. Calendar_.
[33] A good idea of the magnitude and splendour of the preparations may be
gained by the official lists of personages and "diets," in the _Rutland
Papers_, Camden Society. The pageants themselves are fully described in
Hall.
[34] Amongst others the 10 per cent. tax on all property in 1523. See
Roper's "Life of More," Hall's _Chronicle_, Herbert's "Henry VIII.," &c.
[35] Henry's answer, which was very emphatic, testified that although he
had lost affection for his wife he respected her still; indeed his
attitude to her throughout all his subsequent cruelty was consistently
respectful to her character as a woman and a queen. "If," he said on this
occasion, "he should seek a mistress for her (the Princess Mary), to frame
her after the manner of Spain, and of whom she might take example of
virtue, he should not find in all Christendom a more mete than she now
hath, that is the Queen's grace, her mother."--_Venetian Calendar._
[36] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 3, p. 1.
[37] Late in 1525. A sad little letter written by Katharine in her quaint
English to her daughter at this time is well known, but will bear
repeating. Mary had written asking how she was; and the reply assures the
Princess that it had not been forgetfulness of her that had caused her
mother to delay the answer. "I am in that case that the long absence of
the King and you troubleth me. My health is metely good; and I trust in
God, he that sent me the last (illness?) doth it to the best and will
shortly turn it (_i.e._ like?) to the fyrst to come to good effect. And in
the meantime, I am veray glad to hear from you, specially when they shew
me that ye be well amended. As for your writing in Latin, I am glad ye
shall change from me to Master Federston; for that shall do you much good
to learn by him to write right. But yet sometimes I would be glad when ye
do write to Master Federston of your own enditing, when he hath read it
that I may see it. For it shall be a great comfort to me to see you keep
your Latin and fair writing and all." (Ellis' "Original Letters," B.M.
Cotton Vesp. F. xiii.)
[38] Mr. Froude denied that there is any foundation for the assertion that
Mary Boleyn was the King's mistress. It seems to me, on the contrary, to
be as fully supported by evidence as any such fact can be.
[39] As usual, Hall is very diffuse in his descriptions of these
festivities, especially in their sartorial aspects, and those readers who
desire such details may be referred to his _Chronicle_.
[40] Cavendish, "Life of Wolsey."
[41] Letters of Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza early in 1527. _Spanish Calendar_,
vol. 3, part 2.
[42] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 3, part 2, Mendoza's letters, and _Henry
VIII. Calendar_, vol. 4, part 2, Wolsey to the King, 5th July 1527.
[43] How false were all the parties to each other at this time may be seen
in a curious letter from Knight, the King's secretary, to Wolsey (when in
France) about this man's going (Ellis' "Original Letters"). "So yt is that
Francisco Philip Spaniard hath instantly laboured for license to go into
Spain pretendyng cawse and colour of his goyng to be forasmuch as he
saiyth he wolde visite his modre which is veari sore syk. The Queen hath
both refused to assent unto his going and allso laboured unto the King's
Highnesse to empesh the same. The King's Highnesse, knowing grete colusion
and dissymulation betwene theym, doth allso dissymule faynyng that
Philip's desyre is made upon good grownde and consideration, and hath
easyli persuaded the Quene to be content with his goyng." The writer
continues that the King had even promised to ransom Felipe if he was
captured on his way through France, and desires Wolsey, notwithstanding
the man's passport, to have him secretly captured, taking care that the
King's share in the plot should never be known. Wolsey in reply says that
it shall be done, unless Felipe went to Spain by sea. Probably Katharine
guessed her husband's trick, for Felipe must have gone by sea, as he duly
arrived at Valladolid and told the Emperor his message.
[44] Blickling Hall, Norfolk, is frequently claimed as her birthplace, and
even Ireland has put in its claim for the doubtful honour. The evidence in
favour of Hever is, however, the strongest.
[45] Mr. Brewer was strongly of opinion that Anne did not go to France
until some years afterwards, and that it was Mary Boleyn who accompanied
the Princess in 1514. He also believed that Anne was the younger of the
two sisters. There was, of course, some ground for both of these
contentions, but the evidence marshalled against them by Mr. Friedmann in
an appendix to his "Anne Boleyn" appears to me unanswerable.
[46] "Life of Wolsey." Cavendish was the Cardinal's gentleman usher.
[47] "Life of Wolsey." It was afterwards stated, with much probability of
truth, that Anne's _liaison_ with Percy had gone much further than a mere
engagement to marry.
[48] Cavendish, Wolsey's usher, tells a story which shows how Katharine
regarded the King's flirtation with Anne at this time. Playing at cards
with her rival, the Queen noticed that Anne held the King several times.
"My lady Anne," she said, "you have good hap ever to stop at a King; but
you are like the others, you will have all or none." Contemptuous
tolerance by a proud royal lady of a light jade who was scheming to be her
husband's mistress, was evidently Katharine's sentiment.
[49] Wolsey to Henry from Compiegne, 5th September 1527. _Calendar Henry
VIII._, vol. 4, part 2.
[50] Wolsey to Ghinucci and Lee, 5th August 1527. _Calendar Henry VIII._,
vol. 4, part 2.
[51] Several long speeches stated to have been uttered by her to Henry
when he sought her illicit love are given in the Sloane MSS., 2495, in the
British Museum, but they are stilted expressions of exalted virtue quite
foreign to Anne's character and manner.
[52] Although it was said to have been suggested by Dr. Barlow, Lord
Rochford's chaplain.
[53] The dispensation asked for was to permit Henry to marry a woman, even
if she stood in the first degree of affinity, "either by reason of licit
or illicit connection," provided she was not the widow of his deceased
brother. This could only refer to the fact that Mary Boleyn, Anne's
sister, had been his mistress, and that Henry desired to provide against
all risk of a disputed succession arising out of the invalidity of the
proposed marriage. By the canon law previous to 1533 no difference had
been made between legitimate and illegitimate intercourse so far as
concerned the forbidden degrees of affinity between husband and wife. In
that year (1533) when Henry's marriage with Anne had just been celebrated,
an Act of Parliament was passed setting forth a list of forbidden degrees
for husband and wife, and in this the affinities by reason of illicit
intercourse were omitted. In 1536, when Anne was doomed, another Act was
passed ordering every man who had married the sister of a former mistress
to separate from her and forbidding such marriages in future. Before
Henry's marriage with Anne, Sir George Throgmorton mentioned to him the
common belief that Henry had carried on a _liaison_ with both the
stepmother and the sister of Anne. "_Never with the mother_," replied the
King; "nor with the sister either," added Cromwell. But most people will
conclude that the King's remark was an admission that Mary Boleyn was his
mistress. (Friedmann's "Anne Boleyn," Appendix B.)
[54] It would not be fair to accept as gospel the unsupported assertions
of the enemies of Anne with regard to her light behaviour before marriage,
though they are numerous and circumstantial, but Wyatt's own story of his
snatching a locket from her and wearing it under his doublet, by which
Henry's jealousy was aroused, gives us the clue to the meaning of another
contemporary statement (_Chronicle of Henry VIII._, edited by the writer),
to the effect that Wyatt, who was a great friend of the King, and was one
of those accused at the time of Anne's fall, when confronted with
Cromwell, privately told him to remind the King of the warning he gave him
about Anne before the marriage. Chapuys, also, writing at the time when
Anne was in the highest favour (1530), told the Emperor that she had been
accused by the Duke of Suffolk of undue familiarity with "a gentleman who
on a former occasion had been banished on suspicion." This might apply
either to Percy or Wyatt. All authorities agree that her demeanour was not
usually modest or decorous.
[55] _Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 2.
[56] Not content with her Howard descent through her mother, Anne, or
rather her father, had caused a bogus pedigree to be drawn up by which the
city mercer who had been his grandfather was represented as being of noble
Norman blood. The Duchess of Norfolk was scornful and indignant, and gave
to Anne "a piece of her mind" on the subject, greatly to Henry's
annoyance. (_Spanish Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 2.)
[57] They took with them a love-letter from the King to Anne which is
still extant (_Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 2). He tells her that
"they were despatched with as many things to compass our matter as wit
could imagine," and he trusts that he and his sweetheart will shortly have
their desired end. "This would be more to my heart's ease and quietness of
mind than anything in the world.... Keep him (_i.e._ Gardiner) not too
long with you, but desire him for your sake to make the more speed; for
the sooner we have word of him the sooner shall our matter come to pass.
And thus upon trust of your short repair to London I make end of my
letter, mine own sweetheart. Written with the hand of him which desireth
as much to be yours as you do to have him." Gardiner also took with him
Henry's book justifying his view of the invalidity of his marriage. A good
description of the Pope's cautious attitude whilst he read this production
is contained in Gardiner's letter from Orvieto, 31st March 1528. (_Henry
VIII. Calendar_, vol. 4, part 2.)
[58] Hall tells a curious and circumstantial story that the declaration of
war, which led to the confiscation of great quantities of English property
in the imperial dominions, was brought about purely by a trick of Wolsey,
his intention being to sacrifice Clarencieux Herald, who was sent to Spain
with the defiance. Clarencieux, however, learnt of the intention as he
passed through Bayonne on his way home, and found means through Nicholas
Carew to see the King at Hampton Court before Wolsey knew of his return.
When he had shown Henry by the Cardinal's own letters that the grounds for
the declaration of war had been invented by the latter, the King burst out
angrily: "O Lorde Jesu! he that I trusted moste told me all these things
contrary. Well, Clarencieux, I will be no more of so light credence
hereafter, for now I see perfectly that I am made to believe the thing
that never was done." Hall continues that the King was closeted with
Wolsey, from which audience the Cardinal came "not very mery, and after
that time the Kyng mistrusted hym ever after." This must have been in
April 1528.
[59] For Erasmus' letter see _Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 2, and
for Vives' letter see "Vives Opera," vol. 7.
[60] The Pope was told that there were certain secret reasons which could
not be committed to writing why the marriage should be dissolved, the
Queen "suffering from certain diseases defying all remedy, for which, as
well as other reasons, the King would never again live with her as his
wife."
[61] This was written before the death of the courtiers already mentioned.
[62] See the letters on the question of the appointment of the Abbess of
Wilton in Fiddes' "Life of Wolsey," and the _Calendar Henry VIII._, vol.
4, part 2, &c.
[63] This letter was stated by Sir H. Ellis in his "Original Letters" to
be from Katharine and Henry; and many false presumptions with regard to
their relations at this time have been founded on the error.
[64] It will be remarked that her statement was limited to the fact that
she had remained intact _da lui_, "by him." This might well be true, and
yet there might be grounds for Henry's silence in non-confirmation of her
public and repeated reiteration of the statement in the course of the
proceedings, and for the stress laid by his advocates upon the boyish
boast of Arthur related in an earlier chapter. The episode of the young
cleric, Diego Fernandez, must not be forgotten in this connection.
[65] The words, often quoted, are given by Hall.
[66] _Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 2.
[67] Wolsey to Sir Gregory Casale, 1st November 1528. _Calendar Henry
VIII._, vol. 4, part 2.
[68] Or as Henry himself puts it in his letters to his envoys in Rome,
"for him to have two legal wives instead of one," Katharine in a convent
and the other by his side.
[69] So desirous was the Papal interest to persuade Katharine to this
course that one of the Cardinals in Rome (Salviati) told the Emperor's
envoy Mai that she would be very unwise to resist further or she might be
poisoned, as the English ambassadors had hinted she would be. Mai's reply
was that "the Queen was ready to incur that danger rather than be a bad
wife and prejudice her daughter." (_Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part
3.)
[70] Hall's _Chronicle_.
[71] This is Hall's version. Du Bellay, the French ambassador (_Calendar
Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 2), adds that Henry began to hector at the end
of the speech, saying that if any one dared in future to speak of the
matter in a way disrespectful to him he would let him know who was master.
"There was no head so fine," he said, "that he would not make it fly."
[72] _Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 2. "Intended Address of the
Legates to the Queen."
[73] This is not surprising, as only a month before she had been reproved
and threatened for not being sad enough.
[74] There seems to be no doubt, from a letter written in January 1529 by
the Pope to Campeggio, that the copy sent to Katharine from Spain was a
forgery, or contained clauses which operated in her favour, but which were
not in the original document. It was said that there was no entry of such
a brief in the Papal archives, and Katharine herself asserted that the
wording of it--alleging the consummation of Arthur's marriage--was unknown
to her. The Spaniards explained the absence of any record of the document
in the Papal Registry by saying that at the urgent prayer of Isabel the
Catholic on her deathbed, the original brief had been sent to her as soon
as it was granted. (_Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 3, p. 2278.)
[75] _Ibid._
[76] _Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 3.
[77] _Ibid._ The suspicion against Wolsey at this time arose doubtless
from his renewed attempts to obtain the Papacy on Clement's death. These
led him to oppose a decision of the divorce except by the ecclesiastical
authority.
[78] It was on this occasion that Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk,
Henry's old friend and brother-in-law, lost patience. "Banging the table
before him violently, he shouted: 'By the Mass! now I see that the old saw
is true, that there never was Legate or Cardinal that did good in
England;' and with that all the temporal lords departed to the King,
leaving the Legates sitting looking at each other, sore
astonished."--Hall's _Chronicle_, and Cavendish's "Wolsey."
[79] Du Bellay to Montmorency, 22nd October 1529. _Henry VIII. Calendar_,
vol. 4, part 3.
[80] This peremptory order seems to have been precipitated by a peculiarly
acrimonious correspondence between Henry and his wife at the end of July.
She had been in the habit of sending him private messages under token; and
when he and Anne had left Windsor on their hunting tour, Katharine sent to
him, as usual, to inquire after his health and to say that, though she had
been forbidden to accompany him, she had hoped, at least, that she might
have been allowed to bid him good-bye. The King burst into a violent rage.
"Tell the Queen," he said to the messenger, "that he did not want any of
her good-byes, and had no wish to afford her consolation. He did not care
whether she asked after his health or not. She had caused him no end of
trouble, and had obstinately refused the reasonable request of his Privy
Council. She depended, he knew, upon the Emperor; but she would find that
God Almighty was more powerful still. In any case, he wanted no more of
her messages." To this angry outburst the Queen must needs write a long,
cold, dignified, and utterly tactless letter, which irritated the King
still more, and his reply was that of a vulgar bully without a spark of
good feeling. "It would be a great deal better," he wrote, "if she spent
her time in seeking witnesses to prove her pretended virginity at the time
of her marriage with him, than in talking about it to whoever would listen
to her, as she was doing. As for sending messages to him, let her stop it,
and mind her own business. (Chapuys to the Emperor, 21st July 1531.
_Spanish Calendar Henry VIII._)
[81] _Spanish Calendar Henry VIII._, 1531.
[82] Katharine to the Emperor, _Spanish Calendar Henry VIII._, 28th July
1531.
[83] Foxe.
[84] Chapuys relates in May 1532 that when Henry asked the House of
Commons for a grant to fortify the Scottish Border, two members spoke
strongly against it. The best guarantee of peace, they said, was to keep
friendly with the Emperor. They urged the House to beg the King to return
to his lawful wife, and treat her properly, or the whole kingdom would be
ruined; since the Emperor was more capable of harming England than any
other potentate, and would not fail to avenge his aunt. The House, it is
represented, was in favour of this view with the exception of two or three
members, and the question of the grant demanded was held in abeyance.
Henry, of course, was extremely angry, and sent for the majority, whom he
harangued in a long speech, saying that the matter of the divorce was not
then before them, but that he was determined to protect them against
ecclesiastical encroachment. The leaders of the protest, however, were
made to understand they were treading on dangerous ground, and hastened to
submit before Henry's threats.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. 4, 2nd May 1532.
[85] Chapuys to the Emperor, 16th April 1532.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. 4,
2nd May 1532.
[86] In May 1532 the Nuncio complained to Norfolk of a preacher who in the
pulpit had dared to call the Pope a heretic. The Duke replied that he was
not surprised, for the man was a Lutheran. If it had not been for the Earl
of Wiltshire _and another person_ (evidently Anne) he, Norfolk, would have
burnt the man alive, with another like him. It is clear from this that
Norfolk was now gravely alarmed at the religious situation created by
Anne.
[87] _Spanish Calendar Henry VIII._, 1st October 1532.
[88] Hall's _Chronicle_, and _The Chronicle of Calais_, Camden Society.
[89] It is often stated to have been celebrated by Dr. Lee, and sometimes
even by Cranmer, who appears to have been present.
[90] _Spanish Calendar Henry VIII._, Chapuys to the Emperor, 9th February
1533.
[91] _Ibid._, 15th February.
[92] Chapuys, writing to Granville on the 23rd February, relates that
Anne, "without rhyme or reason, amidst a great company as she came out her
chamber, began to say to one whom she loves well, and who was formerly
sent away from Court by the King out of jealousy (probably Wyatt), that
three days before she had had a furious hankering to eat apples, such as
she had never had in her life before; and the King had told her that it
was a sign she was pregnant, but she had said that it was nothing of the
sort. Then she burst out laughing loudly and returned to her room. Almost
all the Court heard what she said and did; and most of those present were
much surprised and shocked." (_Spanish Calendar Henry VIII._)
[93] Mountjoy, Katharine's chamberlain, or rather gaoler, immediately
afterwards gave the Queen a still harsher message, to the effect that not
only was she to be deprived of the regal title, but that the King would
not continue to provide for her household. "He would retire her to some
private house of her own, there to live on a small allowance, which, I am
told, will scarcely be sufficient to cover the expenses of her household
for the first quarter of next year." Katharine replied that, so long as
she lived, she should call herself Queen. As to beginning housekeeping on
her own account, she could not begin so late in life. If her expenses were
too heavy the King might take her personal property, and place her where
he chose, with a confessor, a physician, an apothecary, and two
chamber-maids. If that was too much to ask, and there was nothing for her
and her servants to live upon, she would willingly go out into the world
and beg for alms for the sake of God. (_Spanish Calendar Henry VIII._,
15th April 1533.)
[94] _Spanish Calendar Henry VIII._, Chapuys to the Emperor, 15th April
1533.
[95] It was shortly after this that Friar George Brown first publicly
prayed for the new Queen at Austin Friars.
[96] Chapuys to the Emperor, 27th April and 18th May 1533.
[97] An interesting letter from Cranmer on the subject is in the Harleian
MSS., British Museum (Ellis's Letters, vol. 2, series 1).
[98] The Duke of Norfolk was apparently delighted to be absent from his
niece's triumph, though the Duchess followed Anne in a carriage. He
started the day before to be present at the interview between Francis and
the Pope at Nice. He had two extraordinary secret conferences with Chapuys
just before he left London, in which he displayed without attempt at
concealment his and the King's vivid apprehension that the Emperor would
make war upon England. Norfolk went from humble cringing and flattery to
desperate threats, praying that Chapuys would do his best to reconcile
Katharine to Cranmer's sentence and to prevent war. He praised Katharine
to the skies "for her great modesty, prudence, and forbearance during the
divorce proceedings, as well as on former occasions, the King having been
at all times inclined to amours." Most significant of all was Norfolk's
declaration "that he had not been either the originator or promoter of
this second marriage, but on the contrary had always been opposed to it,
and had tried to dissuade the King therefrom." (_Spanish Calendar Henry
VIII._, vol. 6, part 2, 29th May 1533.)
[99] Norfolk, on the morning of the water pageant, told Chapuys that the
King had been very angry to learn that Katharine's barge had been
appropriated by Anne, and the arms ignominiously torn off and hacked; and
the new Queen's chamberlain had been reprimanded for it, as there were
plenty of barges on the river as fit for the purpose as that one. But Anne
would bate no jot of her spiteful triumph over her rival; and, as is told
in the text, she used Katharine's barge for her progress, in spite of all.
[100] _Spanish Chronicle of Henry VIII._, edited by the present writer,
1889.
[101] _Spanish Calendar Henry VIII._, Chapuys to the Emperor, 11th and
30th July 1533.
[102] _Chronicle of Henry VIII._, edited by the present writer.
[103] _Chronicle of Henry VIII._ Cranmer, in his letter to Hawkins giving
an account of the festivities on this occasion (Harl. MSS., Ellis's
Original Letters, vol. 2, series 1), says that after the banquet in the
hall of the old palace, "She was conveyed owte of the bake syde of the
palice into a barge and, soe unto Yorke Place, where the King's Grace was
before her comyng; for this you must ever presuppose that his Grace came
allwayes before her secretlye in a barge as well frome Grenewyche to the
Tower, as from the Tower to Yorke Place."
[104] Stow gives some curious glimpses of the public detestation of the
marriage, and of the boldness of Friar Peto in preaching before the King
at Greenwich in condemnation of it; and the letter of the Earl of Derby
and Sir Henry Faryngton to Henry (Ellis's Original Letters, vol. 2, series
1) recounts several instances of bold talk in Lancashire on the subject,
the most insulting and opprobrious words being used to describe "Nan
Bullen the hoore."
[105] Lord Herbert of Cherbury.
[106] _Spanish Calendar Henry VIII._, 11th July 1533.
[107] Katharine was even more indignant shortly afterwards, when she was
informed that of the sum apportioned to her sustenance, only 12,000 crowns
a year was to be at her own disposal, the rest, 18,000 crowns, being
administered by an agent of the King, who would pay the bills and
servants. She was for open rebellion on this point--she would rather beg
her bread in the streets, she said, than consent to it--but Chapuys knew
that his master did not wish to drive affairs to an extremity just then,
and counselled submission and patience. (_Ibid._, 23rd August.)
[108] Chapuys to the Emperor, 30th July 1533.
[109] Chapuys writes a day or two afterwards: "The baptism ceremony was
sad and unpleasant as the mother's coronation had been. Neither at Court
nor in the city have there been the bonfires, illuminations, and
rejoicings usual on such occasions."
[110] Katharine had shortly before complained of the insalubrity of
Buckden and its distance from London.
[111] Katharine's appeal that she might not be deprived of the service of
her own countrymen is very pathetic. She wrote to the Council: "As to my
physician and apothecary, they be my countrymen: the King knoweth them as
well as I do. They have continued many years with me and (I thank them)
have taken great pains with me, for I am often sickly, as the King's grace
doth know right well, and I require their attendance for the preservation
of my poor body, that I may live as long as it pleaseth God. They have
been faithful and diligent in my service, and also daily do pray that the
King's royal estate may long endure. But if they take any other oath to
the King and to me (to serve me) than that which they have taken, I shall
never trust them again, for in so doing I should live continually in fear
of my life with them. Wherefore I trust the King, in his high honour and
goodness, and for the great love that hath been between us (which love in
me is as faithful to him as ever it was, I take God to record) will not
use extremity with me, my request being so reasonable."--_Privy Council
Papers_, December 1533.
[112] _Spanish Calendar Henry VIII._, 27th December 1533.
[113] _Spanish Calendar Henry VIII._, 27th December 1533.
[114] Chapuys to the Emperor, 17th January 1534.
[115] Many instances are given by Chapuys of Anne's bitter spite against
Mary about this time. In February 1534 he mentions that Northumberland
(Anne's old flame, who had more than once got into trouble about her) had
said that she was determined to poison Mary. Some one else had told him
that Anne had sent to her aunt, Lady Clare, who was Mary's governess,
telling her if the Princess used her title "to give her a good banging
like the cursed bastard that she was." Soon afterwards the girl is
reported to be nearly destitute of clothes and other necessaries. When
Anne visited her daughter at Hatfield in March, she sent for Mary to come
and pay her respects to her as Queen. "I know no Queen in England but my
mother," was Mary's proud answer: and a few days afterwards Norfolk took
away all the girl's jewels, and told her brutally that she was no princess
and it was time her pride was abated: and Lady Clare assured her that the
King did not care whether she renounced her title or not. Parliament by
statute had declared her a bastard, and if she (Lady Clare) were in the
King's place she would kick her out of the house. It was said also that
the King himself had threatened that Mary should lose her head. There was,
no doubt, some truth in all this, but it must not be forgotten that
Chapuys, who reports most of it, was Anne's deadly enemy.
[116] Lee's instructions are said to have been "not to press the Queen
very hard." It must have been evident that no pressure would suffice.
[117] The Queen wrote to Chapuys soon afterwards saying that the bishops
had threatened her with the gibbet. She asked which of them was going to
be the hangman, and said that she must ask them to hang her in public, not
secretly. Lee's and Tunstall's own account of their proceedings is in the
_Calendar of Henry VIII._, 29th May 1534.
[118] This lackey's name is given Bastian Hennyocke in the English State
Papers. To him Katharine left £20 in her will. The other Spanish servants
with Katharine at the time, besides Francisco Felipe, the Groom of the
Chambers, and the Bishop of Llandaff (Fray Jorge de Ateca), were Dr.
Miguel de la Sá, Juan Soto, Felipe de Granada, and Antonio Roca.
[119] This narrative is taken from the _Spanish Chronicle of Henry VIII._,
edited by the present writer. The author of the Chronicle was a Spanish
merchant resident in London, and he was evidently indebted for this
description of the scene to his friend and countryman, Francisco Felipe,
Katharine's Groom of the Chambers. The account supplements but does not
materially contradict the official report of Lee and Tunstall, and
Chapuys' account to the Emperor gained from the Queen and her Spanish
attendants.
[120] Chapuys to the Emperor, 29th May 1534.
[121] She had written more than one fiery letter to Charles during the
previous few months, fervently urging him to strike for the authority of
the Church. All considerations of her safety and that of her daughter, she
said, were to be put aside. It was the duty of the Emperor to his faith
that the march of heresy and iniquity in England should be stayed at any
cost, and she exhorted him not to fail. (_Calendar Henry VIII._, February
and May 1534.)
[122] Bedingfield and Tyrell were instructed in May 1534 to inform
Katharine that the appeal she had made that her Spanish servants should
not be penalised for refusing to take the oath to the new Act of
Succession had been rejected, but licenses for the Spaniards to stay with
their mistress on the old footing were soon afterwards given. (_Calendar
Henry VIII._, May 1534.)
[123] The account here given, that of Chapuys himself, is quaintly and
minutely confirmed by that of one of the Spanish merchants who accompanied
him, Antonio de Guaras, the author of the _Spanish Chronicle of Henry
VIII._
[124] See Chapuys' many letters on the subject.
[125] Letters of Stephen Vaughan, Henry's envoy to Germany. (_Calendar
Henry VIII._, vol. 7, etc.)
[126] Letters of Chapuys in the autumn of 1534. (_Spanish Calendar._)
[127] Chapuys to the Emperor, 2nd May 1536.
[128] Lady Shelton.
[129] The plans for Mary's flight from Eltham and her deportation to the
Continent were nearly successful at this time.
[130] Katharine had first met the saintly Friar Forest when she had gone
on the famous pilgrimage to Walsingham after the victory of Flodden
(October 1513), and on his first imprisonment she and her maid, Elizabeth
Hammon, wrote heart-broken letters to him urging him to escape. (_Calendar
Henry VIII._)
[131] A vivid picture of the general discontent in England at this time,
and the steadfast fidelity of the people to the cause of Katharine and
Mary, is given by the French envoy, the Bishop of Tarbes. (_Calendar Henry
VIII._, October 1535.)
[132] The suggestion had been tentatively put forward by the English
Minister in Flanders three months before.
[133] This is according to Bedingfield's statement, although from Chapuys'
letters, in which the chronology is a little confusing, it might possibly
be inferred that he arrived at Kimbolton on the 1st January and that Lady
Willoughby arrived soon after him. I am inclined to think that the day I
have mentioned, however, is the correct one.
[134] In the previous month of November she had written what she called
her final appeal to the Emperor through Chapuys. In the most solemn and
exalted manner she exhorted her nephew to strike and save her before she
and her daughter were done to death by the forthcoming Parliament. This
supreme heart-cry having been met as all similar appeals had been by
smooth evasions on the part of Charles, Katharine thenceforward lost hope,
and resigned herself to her fate.
[135] Before Chapuys left Kimbolton he asked De la Sá if he had any
suspicion that the Queen was being poisoned. The Spanish doctor replied
that he feared that such was the case, though some slow and cunningly
contrived poison must be that employed, as he could not see any signs or
appearance of a simple poison. The Queen, he said, had never been well
since she had partaken of some Welsh beer. The matter is still greatly in
doubt, and there are many suspicious circumstances--the exclusion of De la
Sá and the Bishop of Llandaff from the room when the body was opened, and
the strenuous efforts to retain both of them in England after Katharine's
death; and, above all, the urgent political reasons that Henry had for
wishing Katharine to die, since he dared not carry out his threat of
having her attainted and taken to the Tower. Such a proceeding would have
provoked a rising which would almost certainly have swept him from the
throne.
[136] Even this small gold cross with a sacred relic enclosed in it--the
jewel itself not being worth, as Chapuys says, more than ten crowns--was
demanded of Mary by Cromwell soon afterwards.
[137] This account of Katharine's death is compiled from Chapuys' letters,
Bedingfield's letters, and others in the _Spanish_ and _Henry VIII.
Calendars_, and from the _Chronicle of Henry VIII._
[138] The letter tells Henry that death draws near to her, and she must
remind him for her love's sake to safeguard his soul before the desires of
his body, "for which you have cast me into many miseries and yourself into
many cares. For my part I do pardon you all, yea I do wish and devoutly
pray God that He will also pardon you." She commends her daughter and her
maids to him, and concludes, "Lastly, I do vow that mine eyes desire you
above all things." Katharine, Queen of England. (Cotton MSS., British
Museum, Otho C. x.)
[139] The death of Sir Thomas More greatly increased Anne's unpopularity.
It is recorded (More's _Life of More_) that when the news came of the
execution the King and Anne sat at play, and Henry ungenerously told her
she was the cause of it, and abruptly left the table in anger.
[140] Even the King's fool dared (July 1535) to call her a bawd and her
child a bastard.
[141] Chapuys to the Emperor, 24th February 1536.
[142] Chapuys to the Emperor, 29th January 1536.
[143] Probably the following letter, which has been frequently
printed:--"My dear friend and mistress. The bearer of these few lines from
thy entirely devoted servant will deliver into thy fair hands a token of
my true affection for thee, hoping you will keep it for ever in your
sincere love for me. Advertising you that there is a ballad made lately of
great derision against us, which if it go much abroad and is seen by you I
pray you pay no manner of regard to it. I am not at present informed who
is the setter forth of this malignant writing, but if he is found he shall
be straitly punished for it. For the things ye lacked I have minded my
lord to supply them to you as soon as he can buy them. Thus hoping shortly
to receive you in these arms I end for the present your own loving servant
and Sovereign. H. R."
[144] Chapuys to the Emperor, 1st April 1536.
[145] See p. 264.
[146] It will be recollected that this question of the return of the
alienated ecclesiastical property was the principal difficulty when Mary
brought England back again into the fold of the Church. Pole and the
Churchmen at Rome were for unconditional restitution, which would have
made Mary's task an impossible one; the political view which recommended
conciliation and a recognition of facts being that urged by Charles and
his son Philip, and subsequently adopted. Charles had never shown undue
respect for ecclesiastical property in Spain, and had on more than one
occasion spoliated the Church for his own purposes.
[147] Chapuys to the Emperor, 6th June 1536. (_Spanish Calendar._)
[148] _Spanish Chronicle of Henry VIII._, ed. Martin Hume. The author was
Antonio de Guaras, a Spanish merchant in London, and afterwards Chargé
d'Affaires. His evidence is to a great extent hearsay, but it truly
represented the belief current at the time.
[149] British Museum, Cotton, Otho C. x., and Singer's addition to
Cavendish's _Wolsey_.
[150] _Spanish Chronicle of Henry VIII._
[151] It must not be forgotten that the dinner hour was before noon.
[152] _Spanish Chronicle of Henry VIII._
[153] _Spanish Chronicle of Henry VIII._
[154] See letter from Sir W. Kingston, Governor of the Tower, to Cromwell,
3rd May 1536, Cotton MSS., Otho C. x.
[155] _Spanish Chronicle of Henry VIII._
[156] Full account of her behaviour from day to day in the Tower will be
found in Kingston's letters to Cromwell, Cotton MSS., Otho C. x., which
have been printed in several places, and especially in the _Calendars
Henry VIII._
[157] The beautiful letter signed Ann Bullen and addressed to the King
with the date of 6th May, in which the writer in dignified language
protests innocence and begs for an impartial trial, is well known, having
been printed many times. It is, however, of extremely doubtful
authenticity; the writing and signature being certainly not that of Anne,
and the composition unconvincing, though the letter is said to have been
found amongst Cromwell's papers after his arrest. The genuineness of the
document being so questionable, I have not thought well to reproduce it
here.
[158] Strype's _Cranmer_. Cranmer was at Croydon when Cromwell sent him
news of Anne's arrest, with the King's command that he should go to
Lambeth and stay there till further orders reached him. This letter was
written as soon as he arrived there.
[159] Much appears to have been made of a certain alleged death-bed
deposition of Lady Wingfield recently dead, who had been one of Anne's
attendants, and as it was asserted, the conniver of her amours. Exactly
what Lady Wingfield had confessed is not now known, nor the amount of
credence to be given to her declarations. They appear, however, to have
principally incriminated Anne with Smeaton, and, on the whole, the balance
of probability is that if Anne was guilty at all, which certainly was not
proved, as she had no fair trial or defence, it was with Smeaton. The
charge that she and Norreys had "imagined" the death of the King is
fantastically improbable.
[160] Godwin.
[161] "Je ne veux pas omettre qu'entre autres choses luy fust objecté pour
crime que sa soeur la putain avait dit a sa femme (_i.e._ Lady Rochford)
que le Roy n'estait habile en cas de soy copuler avec femme, et qu'il
navait ni vertu ni puissance." This accusation was handed to Rochford in
writing to answer, but to the dismay of the Court he read it out before
denying it. (Chapuys to the Emperor, 19th May. _Spanish Calendar._)
[162] Chapuys to Granvelle, 18th May 1536. See also Camden.
[163] Froude says Smeaton was hanged; but the evidence that he was
beheaded like the rest is the stronger.
[164] The whole question is exhaustively discussed by Mr. Friedmann in his
_Anne Boleyn_, to which I am indebted for several references on the
subject.
[165] Lady Kingston, who was present, hastened to send this news secretly
to Chapuys, who, bitter enemy as he was to Anne, to do him justice seems
to have been shocked at the disregard of legality in the procedure against
her.
[166] The curious gossip, Antonio de Guaras, a Spaniard, says that he got
into the fortress overnight. Constantine gives also a good account of the
execution, varying little from that of Guaras. The Portuguese account used
by Lingard and Froude confirms them.
[167] Chapuys to the Emperor, 19th May 1536. (_Spanish Calendar._)
[168] This was Cromwell's version as sent to the English agents in foreign
Courts. He speaks of a conspiracy to kill the King which "made them all
quake at the danger he was in."
[169] Chapuys to the Emperor, 19th May. (_Spanish Calendar._)
[170] Chapuys to Granvelle, 20th May. (_Spanish Calendar._)
[171] The local story that the marriage took place at Wolf Hall, the seat
of the Seymours in Wiltshire, and that a barn now standing on the estate
was the scene of the wedding feast, may be dismissed. That festivities
would take place there in celebration of the wedding is certain; and on
more than one occasion Henry was entertained at Wolf Hall, and probably
feasted in the barn itself; but the royal couple were not there on the
occasion of their marriage. The romantic account given by Nott in his
_Life of Surrey_, of Henry's waiting with straining ears, either in Epping
Forest or elsewhere in hunting garb, to hear the signal gun announcing
Anne's death before galloping off to be married at Tottenham Church, near
Wolf Hall, is equally unsupported, and, indeed, impossible. Henry's
private marriage undoubtedly took place, as related in the text, at
Hampton Court, and the public ceremony on the 30th May at Whitehall.
[172] Henry's apologists have found decent explanations for his hurry to
marry Jane. Mr. Froude pointed to the urgent petition of the Privy Council
and the peers that the King would marry at once, and opined that it could
hardly be disregarded; and another writer reminds us that if Henry had not
married Jane privately on the day he did, 20th May, the ceremony would
have had to be postponed--as, in fact, the full ceremony was--until after
the Rogation days preceding Whitsuntide. But nothing but callous
concupiscence can really explain the unwillingness of Henry to wait even a
week before his remarriage.
[173] The Catholics were saying that before Anne's head fell the wax
tapers on Katharine's shrine at Peterborough kindled themselves. (John de
Ponte's letter to Cromwell, Cotton MSS., Titus B 1, printed by Ellis.)
[174] _Spanish Calendar_, 6th June 1536.
[175] The Parliament of 1536 enacted that all Bulls, Briefs, and
Dispensations from Rome should be held void; that every officer, lay or
clerical, should take an oath to renounce and resist all authority of the
Pope on pain of high treason. In Convocation, Cromwell for the King at the
same time introduced a new ecclesiastical constitution, establishing the
Scriptures as the basis of faith, as interpreted by the four first
Councils of the Church. Three sacraments only were acknowledged--Baptism,
Penance, and the Eucharist. The use of images and invocation of the saints
were regulated and modified, all idolatrous or material worship of them
being forbidden. Cromwell at the same period was raised to the peerage
under the title of Baron Cromwell, and made Vicar-General of the Church.
(Lord Herbert's _Henry VIII._)
[176] They are all in Cotton MSS., Otho x., and have been printed in
Hearne's _Sylloge_.
[177] She did her best for her backers during the Pilgrimage of Grace,
throwing herself upon her knees before the King and beseeching him to
restore the dissolved abbeys. Henry's reply was to bid her get up and not
meddle in his affairs--she should bear in mind what happened to her
predecessor through having done so. The hint was enough for Jane, who
appears to have had no strength of character, and thenceforward, though
interesting herself personally for the Princess Mary, she let politics
alone. (_Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 12.)
[178] Chapuys to the Emperor. (_Calendar Henry VIII._)
[179] _Hist. MSS. Commission_, Report XII., Appendix iv. vol. 1, Duke of
Rutland's Papers.
[180] _Ibid._
[181] The assertion almost invariably made that Bishop Nicholas Sanders,
the Jesuit writer, "invented" the story that the Cesarian operation was
performed at birth is not true. The facts of this time are to a great
extent copied textually by Sanders from the MS. _Cronica de Enrico Otavo_,
by Guaras, and the statement is there made as an unsupported rumour only.
[182] Henry's elaborate testamentary directions for the erection and
adornment with precious stones of a sumptuous monument to himself and Jane
were never carried out.
[183] An account of these confiscations will be found in the _Henry VIII.
Calendar_, vol. 13.
[184] Chastillon Correspondence in _Henry VIII. Calendar_, vol. 13.
[185] The extraordinary attentions showered upon the elderly French lady,
Mme de Montreuil, and her daughter, Mme de Brun, and their large train of
attendant ladies, in the autumn of 1538, is an amusing instance of Henry's
diplomacy. It has usually been concluded by historians that it was a
question of amour or gallantry on Henry's part; but this was not the case.
The lady had been the governess of the late Queen Madeleine of Scotland,
and was passing through England on her way home. The most elaborate comedy
was played by Henry and Cromwell on the occasion. The ladies were treated
like princesses. The Lord Mayor and all the authorities on their way to
the coast had to banquet them; they were taken sight-seeing and feasting
everywhere, and loaded with gifts; and the most ostentatious appearance
made of a close intimacy with them, in order to hoodwink the imperial
agent into the idea that a French match was under discussion. Henry
himself went to Dover to see them, and gave them all presents. But the
French and imperial ambassadors were in close touch one with the other,
and themselves dined with the ladies at Chelsea; having a good laugh with
them at the farce that was being played, which they quite understood.
(_Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 13, part 2.)
[186] The terms of the arrangement were the maintenance of the _status quo
ante_, but were generally in favour of France, which retained Savoy and
some of the Lombard fortresses threatening Milan, that State, the
principal bone of contention, being still held by the Emperor's troops;
but with a vague understanding that it might be given as a dowry to a
princess of the Emperor's house, if she married a French prince. The
latter clause was hollow, and never intended to be carried out, as Henry
knew.
[187] Her own well-known comment on Henry's proposal was, that if she had
two heads one should be at the disposal of his Majesty of England.
[188] Pole had been sent to Spain by the Pope for the purpose of urging
the Emperor to execute the decree against England, at least to the extent
of stopping commerce with his dominions. Charles saw Pole in Toledo early
in March 1539. The Cardinal found the Emperor professedly sympathetic, but
evidently not willing to adopt extreme measures of force against Henry.
Pole, disappointed, thereupon returned to Papal Avignon instead of going
on to France with a similar errand. Nothing is clearer in the
correspondence on the subject (_Henry VIII. Calendar_, vol. 14) than
Charles' determination--which was invariable throughout his life--not to
allow Churchmen or ecclesiastical polity to guide his state action. Whilst
Pole was thus seeking in vain to urge the Catholic powers to overthrow
Henry, Wyatt the English ambassador in Spain, poet and gentle wit though
he was, was busily plotting the murder of the Cardinal, together with some
secret device to raise trouble in Italy and set Charles and Francis by the
ears. This was probably the treacherous surrender of Parma and Piacenza to
England for France, to the detriment of the Emperor and the Pope--who
claimed them.
[189] The influence of this party led by Norfolk and Gardiner, though it
sufficed to secure the passage of the Six Articles, did not last long
enough to carry them into rigid execution. Cromwell, by arousing Henry's
fears that the German confederation would abandon him to his enemies, soon
gained the upper hand; and the Saxon envoy Burchardus, writing to
Melancthon in the autumn, expressed hopes that the coming of Anne would
coincide with the repeal of the Act. (_Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 14,
part 2.) The English Protestants blamed Cranmer for what they considered
his timid opposition, soon silenced, to the passage of the Bill, and
approved of the action of Latimer, who fled rather than assent to it, as
did the Bishop of Salisbury. Before the Bill had been passed three months,
of its principal promoters Stokesley of London was dead, Gardiner sent
away from Court, and Norfolk entirely in the background.
[190] Wotton to the King, 11th August 1539. (_Henry VIII. Calendar_, vol.
14, p. 2.)
[191] It has been suggested that the Duchess with whom this comparison was
instituted was Anne's sister, the Duchess of Saxony, who was quite as
beautiful as the Duchess of Milan.
[192] Memorandum in _Henry VIII. Calendar_, vol. 14, part 2, p. 96.
[193] Marillac to Francis I., 3rd October 1539.
[194] The last passage meant that a union with France or the empire might
have led to the putting of the Princess Mary forward as heir after the
King's death, as against Prince Edward. The letter with Hertford's truly
dreadful spelling is printed by Ellis.
[195] A list of the personages appointed to attend will be found in the
_Calendar of Henry VIII._, vol. 14.
[196] As usual, tedious lists of the finery worn on the occasion are given
by Hall, and copied by Miss Strickland.
[197] The Duke of Suffolk to Cromwell. (_Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 14).
[198] Deposition of Sir A. Browne. (_Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 14, 2.)
[199] Russell's deposition. (_Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 14, 2.)
[200] Cromwell (after his disgrace) to the King. (Hatfield MSS.)
[201] For descriptions of the pageant see Hall, also _Calendar Henry
VIII._, vol. 15, and _Chronicle of Henry VIII._, edited by the present
writer.
[202] Hall.
[203] Cromwell to Henry. (_Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 14.)
[204] Cromwell's statement. (_Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 15, p. 391.)
[205] Wriothesley's deposition. (_Henry VIII. Calendar_, vol. 15.)
[206] The King got a double grant of four fifteenths and tenths, payable
by instalments in four years; a shilling in the pound on all lands, and
sixpence in the pound on personal property; aliens paying double; besides
the confiscation of the great revenues of the Order of St. John. Such
taxation was almost without precedent in England, and certainly added to
Cromwell's unpopularity, already very great, owing to the oppressiveness
of his religious policy with regard to the religious houses and his
personal harshness.
[207] _The Spanish Chronicle Of Henry VIII._, edited by the present
writer. In this record, Seymour, Earl of Hertford, is made to take a
leading part in the fall of Cromwell in the interests of his nephew the
Prince of Wales (Edward VI.), but I can find no official confirmation of
this.
[208] Memo. in Gardiner's handwriting, Record Office. (_Henry VIII.
Calendar_, vol. 15.)
[209] She does not appear to have done so, however, until the King had
received a letter from the Duke of Cleves, dated 13th July, couched in
somewhat indignant terms. She then wrote to her brother that she "had
consented to the examination and determination, wherein I had more
respect, as beseemed me, to truth than to any worldly affection that might
move me to the contrary, and did the rather condescend thereto for that my
body remaineth in the integrity which I brought into this realm." She
continues that the King has adopted her as a sister and has treated her
very liberally, more than she or her brother could well wish. She is well
satisfied. The King's friendship for her brother, she says, will not be
impaired for this matter unless the fault should be in himself (_i.e._
Cleves). She thinks it necessary to write this, and to say that she
intends to live in England, lest for want of true knowledge her brother
should take the matter otherwise than he ought. The letter is signed "Anna
Duchess, born, of Cleves, Gulik, Geldre and Berg; your loving sister." The
English and German drafts are in the Record Office, the former abstracted
in _Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 15. The King instructed Wotton and Clerk,
his envoys at Cleves, to deal with the Duke in the same spirit, holding
out hopes of reward if he took the matter quietly, and to assume a haughty
tone if he seemed threatening.
[210] Within a week of this--to show how rapid was the change of
feeling--Pate wrote to the King and to the Duke of Norfolk saying how that
"while Thomas Cromwell ruled, slanders and obloquies of England were
common," but that now all was changed. The brother of the Duke of Ferrara
had sent to him to say that he was going to visit the King of England, for
"the Emperor these years and days past often praised the King's gifts of
body and mind, which made him the very image of his Creator." This praise
had "engendered such love in the stomach" of Don Francesco d'Este that he
could no longer defer his wish to see such a paragon of excellence as
Henry, and he rejoices "that so many gentlemen belonging to the Emperor"
are doing likewise. This was even before the marriage with Anne was
declared invalid. (12th July, _Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 15.) Chapuys,
the Emperor's ambassador, was again sent to England immediately, and
cordial relations were promptly resumed. (_Spanish Calendar_, vol. 6, part
1.)
[211] Richard Hilles, the Protestant merchant, writing to Bullinger in
Latin (Zurich Letters, Parker Society), says that for some weeks before
the divorce from Anne of Cleves, Henry was captivated by Katharine Howard,
whom he calls "a very little girl"; and that he frequently used to cross
the Thames from Westminster to Lambeth to visit, both by night and day,
the Bishop of Winchester (Gardiner) providing feasts for them in his
palace. But at that time Katharine was, Hilles tells us, looked upon
simply as Henry's mistress--as indeed she probably was--rather than his
future wife.
[212] Hilles to Bullinger (Parker Society, Zurich Letters) gives voice to
bitter complaints, and Melancthon wrote (17th August, etc.) praying that
God might destroy "this British Nero." (_Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 15.)
[213] There is in the British Museum (Stowe MS. 559) a list of the jewels
and other things given by Henry to Katharine at the marriage and
subsequently. The inventory was made at the time of her attainder, when
she was deprived of everything. The jewels appear to have been very
numerous and rich: one square or stomacher, given on New Year's Day 1540,
containing 33 diamonds, 60 rubies, and a border of pearls. Another gift at
Christmas the same year was "two laces containing 26 fair table diamonds
and 158 fair pearls, with a rope of fair large pearls, 200 pearls."
Magnificent jewels of all sorts are to be counted by the dozen in this
list, comparing strangely with the meagre list of Katharine of Aragon's
treasures. One curious item in Katharine's list is "a book of gold
enamelled, wherein is a clock, upon every side of which book is three
diamonds, a little man standing upon one of them, four turquoises and
three rubies with a little chain of gold enamelled blue hanging to it."
This book, together with "a purse of gold enamelled red containing eight
diamonds set in goldsmith's work," was taken by the King himself when poor
Katharine fell, and another splendid jewelled pomander containing a clock
was taken by him for Princess Mary.
[214] He had on the same morning taken the Sacrament, it being All Souls'
Day, and had directed his confessor, the Bishop of Lincoln, to offer up a
prayer of thanks with him "for the good life he (Henry) led, and hoped to
lead with his wife." (_Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 16, p. 615.)
[215] _Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 16, p. 48, September 1540. This was a
year before he made his statement to Cranmer. The hatred expressed to the
King's new Catholic policy by Lascelles proves him to have been a fit
instrument for the delation and ruin of Katharine.
[216] They are all in the Record Office, and are summarised in the _Henry
VIII. Calendar_, vol. 16.
[217] Lady Rochford, who seems to have been a most abandoned woman, was
the widow of Anne Boleyn's brother, who had been beheaded at the time of
his sister's fall.
[218] In the Record Office, abstracted (much condensed) in _Henry VIII.
Calendar_, vol. 16. For the purposes of this book I have used the original
manuscripts.
[219] In the curious and detailed but in many respects unveracious account
of the affair given in the _Spanish Chronicle of Henry VIII._, edited by
the present writer, it is distinctly stated that Culpeper made his
confession on the threat of the rack in the Tower. He is made in this
account to say that he was deeply in love with Katharine before her
marriage, and had fallen ill with grief when she became Henry's wife. She
had taken pity upon him, and had arranged a meeting at Richmond, which had
been betrayed to Hertford by one of Katharine's servants. The writer of
the _Chronicle_ (Guaras), who had good sources of information and was a
close observer, did not believe that any guilty act had been committed by
Katharine after her marriage.
[220] Record Office, State Papers, 1, 721. The Duke had gone to demand of
his stepmother Derham's box of papers. He found that she had already
overhauled them and destroyed many of them. In his conversation with her,
she admitted that she knew Katharine was immoral before marriage.
[221] The Commissioners included Michael Dormer, Lord Mayor, Lord
Chancellor Audley, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, with the Lords of the
Council and judges. Norfolk, in order to show his zeal and freedom from
complicity, jeered and laughed as the examination of the prisoners
proceeded. For a similar reason he brought his son, the Earl of Surrey, to
the trial: and it was noted that both the Queen's brothers and those of
Culpeper rode about the city unconcernedly, in order to prove that they
had no sympathy with the accused. As soon as the trial was over, however,
Norfolk retired to Kenninghall, some said by the King's orders, and
rumours were rife that not only was he in disgrace, but that danger to him
portended. We shall see that his fate was deferred for a time, as Henry
needed his military aid in the coming wars with Scotland and France, and
he was the only soldier of experience and authority in England.
[222] One of Katharine's love letters to Culpeper, written during the
progress in the North, is in the Record Office; and although it does not
offer direct corroboration of guilt, it would have offered good
presumptive evidence, and is, to say the least of it, an extremely
indiscreet letter for a married woman and a queen to write to a man who
had been her lover before her marriage. The letter is all in Katharine's
writing except the first line. "Master Culpeper," it runs, "I heartily
recommend me unto you, praying you to send me word how that you do. I did
hear that ye were sick and I never longed so much for anything as to see
you. It maketh my heart to die when I do think that I cannot always be in
your company. Come to me when my Lady Rochford be here, for then I shall
be best at leisure to be at your commandment. I do thank you that you have
promised to be good to that poor fellow my man; for when he is gone there
be none I dare trust to send to you. I pray you to give me a horse for my
man, for I have much ado to get one, and therefore I pray you send me one
by him, and in so doing I am as I said before: and thus I take my leave of
you trusting to see you shortly again; and I would you were with me now
that you might see what pain I take in writing to you. Yours as long as
life endures, Katheryn. One thing I had forgotten, and that is to speak to
my man. Entreat him to tarry here with me still, for he says whatsoever
you order he will do it." The letter is extremely illiterate in style and
spelling. (_Henry VIII. Calendar_, vol. 16.)
[223] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 6, part 1.
[224] Marillac Correspondence, ed. Kaulec. There is a transcript in the
Record Office and abstracts in the _Henry VIII. Calendar_, vol. 16.
[225] They were soon afterwards pardoned.
[226] This difficulty seems to have been met by sending to the unhappy
girl a committee of the Council to invite her to appear in person and
defend herself if she pleased; but she threw herself entirely upon the
King's mercy, and admitted that she deserved death. This facilitated her
condemnation, and there was no more difficulty. The Duke of Suffolk in the
House of Lords and Wriothesley stated that she had "confessed her great
crime" to the deputation of the Council, but exactly what or how much she
confessed is not known. She most solemnly assured the Bishop of Lincoln
(White) in her last hours that she had not offended criminally after her
marriage; and as has been pointed out in the text, she is not specifically
charged with having done so in the indictment. This might be, of course,
to save the King's honour as much as possible; but taking all things into
consideration, the probability is that no guilty act had been committed
since the marriage, though it is clear that Katharine was fluttering
perilously close to the flame.
[227] This was Anne Bassett. Lord Lisle, the illegitimate son of Edward
IV., was at this time released from his unjust imprisonment in the Tower,
but died immediately.
[228] Chapuys to the Emperor, 29th January 1542.
[229] The accounts of Chapuys, Hall, and Ottewell Johnson say simply that
she confessed her faults and made a Christian end. The _Spanish Chronicle
of Henry VIII._ gives an account of her speech of which the above is a
summary.
[230] The book which, although it was largely Gardiner's work, was called
"The King's Book," or "The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of any
Christian Man," laid down afresh the doctrines to be accepted. It was
authorised by Parliament in May 1543, and greatly straitened the creed
prescribed in 1537. Just previously a large number of persecutions were
begun against those who questioned Transubstantiation (see Foxe), and
printers were newly harried for daring to print books not in accordance
with the King's proclamation. Strict inquests were also held through
London for any householders who ate meat in Lent, the young, turbulent
Earl of Surrey being one of the offenders. (_Henry VIII. Calendar_, vol.
17, part 1.) It is to be noted, however, that, side by side with these
anti-Protestant measures, greater efforts than ever were made to emphasise
the King's supremacy; the Mass Books being carefully revised in order to
eliminate all reference even indirectly to the Pope, and to saints not
mentioned in the Bible.
[231] In his account of these and similar interviews Chapuys dwells much
upon Gardiner's anxiety to adopt the best course to induce Henry to enter
into the agreement. He begged the imperial ambassador not to rub the King
the wrong way by dwelling upon the advantage to accrue to England from the
alliance. (_Spanish Calendar_, vol. 6, part 2.)
[232] The treaty is in the Record Office. Printed in full in Rymer.
[233] At the time of Katharine's marriage, her brother, Lord Parr, was on
the Scottish border as Warden of the Marches; and a few days after the
wedding the new Queen-Consort wrote to him from Oatlands saying that "it
having pleased God to incline the King to take her as his wife, which is
the greatest joy and comfort that could happen to her, she desires to
inform her brother of it, as the person who has most cause to rejoice
thereat. She requires him to let her hear sometimes of his health as
friendly as if she had not been called to this honour." (_Henry VIII.
Calendar_, vol. 18, part 1.)
[234] It depends upon a metrical family history written by Katharine's
cousin, Sir Thomas Throckmorton.
[235] The document is in the Record Office. About half way down the margin
is written, "For your daughter." At the top is written, "Lady Latimer."
[236] The author of the _Chronicle of Henry VIII._ thus portrays
Katharine's character: "She was quieter than any of the young wives the
King had, and as she knew more of the world she always got on pleasantly
with the King and had no caprices. She had much honour to Lady Mary and
the wives of the nobles, but she kept her ladies very strictly.... The
King was very well satisfied with her."
[237] Many years afterwards when Parr, then Marquis of Northampton and a
leading anti-Catholic, was with other nobles urging Queen Elizabeth to
drop shilly-shally and get married in earnest, the Queen, who was of
course playing a deep game which they did not understand, turned upon Parr
in a rage and told him that he was a nice fellow to talk about marriage,
considering how he had managed his own matrimonial affairs. (Hume,
"Courtships of Queen Elizabeth.")
[238] Record Office. _Henry VIII. Calendar_, vol. 18, part 1.
[239] _Spanish State Papers, Calendar_, vol. 6, part 2. The author of the
_Chronicle of Henry VIII._ (Guaras) says that the King ordered Anne to
come to the wedding, but if that be the case there is no record of her
presence; though all the other guests and witnesses are enumerated in the
notarial deed attesting the marriage. The Spanish chronicler puts into
Anne's mouth, as a sign of her indifference, a somewhat ill-natured gibe
at the "burden that Madam Katharine hath taken upon herself," explaining
that she referred to the King's immense bulk. "The King was so fat that
such a man had never been seen. Three of the biggest men that could be
found could get inside his doublet." Anne's trouble with regard to her
brother was soon at an end. The Emperor's troops crushed him completely,
and in September he begged for mercy on his knees, receiving the disputed
duchies from Charles as an imperial fief. Anne's mother, who had stoutly
resisted the Emperor's claims upon her duchies, died of grief during the
campaign.
[240] Strype's "Memorials of Cranmer."
[241] Strype's "Memorials," Foxe's "Acts and Monuments," and Burnet; all
of whom followed the account given by Cranmer's secretary Morice as to
Cranmer's part.
[242] Morice's anecdotes in "Narratives of the Reformation," Camden
Society. See also Strype's "Memorials" and Foxe. The MS. record of the
whole investigation is in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. I am indebted
for this fact to my friend Dr. James Gairdner, C.B.
[243] How necessary this was is seen by the strenuous efforts, even thus
late, of the Pope to effect a reconciliation between Charles and Francis
rather than acquiesce in a combination between the former and the
excommunicated King of England. Paul III. sent his grandson, Cardinal
Farnese, in November 1543 to Flanders and to the Emperor with this object;
but Charles was determined, and told the Cardinal in no gentle terms that
the Pope's dallying with the infidel Turks, and Francis' intrigues with
the Lutherans, were a hundred times worse than his own alliance with the
schismatic King of England. (_Spanish Calendar_, vol. 7.)
[244] Hertford had sacked Edinburgh and Leith and completely cowed the
Scots before the letter was written. His presence in London at a crisis
was therefore more necessary than on the Border.
[245] _Hatfield Papers_, Hist. MSS. Commission, part 1.
[246] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 7. This reparation to Mary had been urged
very strongly by the Emperor, ever since the negotiations began. Mary,
however, was not legitimated, and not only came after Edward, but also
after any children Katharine might bear. The Queen undoubtedly urged
Mary's cause.
[247] It was constantly noted by foreign visitors that English ladies were
kissed on the lips by men. It appears to have been quite an English
custom, and greatly surprised Spaniards, who kept their women in almost
oriental seclusion.
[248] MSS. British Museum, Add. 8219, fol. 114.
[249] A full account of his visit and service will be found in my
_Chronicle of Henry VIII._ In the _Spanish Calendar_ and in the
_Chronicle_ it is asserted that the Duke stayed with Henry very
unwillingly and at the Emperor's request.
[250] We are told that even the sails of his ship were of cloth of silver,
and probably no King of England ever took the field under such splendid
conditions before or since.
[251] Hearne's _Sylloge_.
[252] "Prayers and Meditations," London, 1545. The prayer is printed at
length by Miss Strickland, as well as several extracts from Katharine's
"Lamentations of a Sinner," which show that she had studied Vives and
Guevara.
[253] Although this letter is always assigned to the period when Henry was
at Boulogne, I have very considerable doubt as to its having been written
then. I should be inclined to ascribe it to the following year.
[254] The following is his letter to Katharine informing her of this: "At
the closing up of these our letters this day the castle aforesaid with the
dyke is at our commandment, and not like to be recovered by the Frenchmen
again, as we trust, not doubting with God's grace but that the castle and
town shall shortly follow the same trade, for as this day, which is the
8th September, we began three batteries and have three mines going,
besides one which hath done its execution, shaking and tearing off one of
their greatest bulwarks. No more to you at this time, sweetheart, but for
lack of time and great occupations of business, saving we pray you to give
in our name our hearty blessings to all our children, and recommendations
to our cousin Margaret, and the rest of the ladies and gentlewomen, and to
our Council also. Written with the hand of your loving husband--HENRY
R."--"Royal Letters."
[255] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 8. Hume.
[256] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 8. Hume.
[257] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 8. Hume.
[258] _Ibid._ The Duchess of Suffolk, a great friend of Katharine Parr's,
and widow of Charles Brandon, who had recently died, was the daughter of a
Spanish lady and of Lord Willoughby D'Eresby, which title she inherited.
She soon after married one of her esquires, Francis Bertie, and became a
strong Protestant.
[259] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 8. Hume. September 1546.
[260] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 8. Hume. September 1546.
[261] Surrey prompted his sister on this occasion to appeal to the King
for permission to marry Seymour, and to act in such a way that the King
might fall in love with her, and make her his mistress, "so that she might
have as much power as the Duchess d'Etampes in France." The suggestion was
specially atrocious, as she was the widow of Henry's son.
[262] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 8. Hume.
[263] _Chronicle of Henry VIII._ Hume.
[264] The author of the _Chronicle of Henry VIII._ makes Paget and his
wife the first promoters of the match between Seymour and Katharine,
though I can find no confirmation of his story. He says that the Queen
being in the great hall with her ladies and Princess Mary, Lord Seymour
came in as had been arranged, looking very handsome. Lady Paget whispered
to the Queen an inquiry as to what she thought of the Lord Admiral's
looks, to which Katharine replied that she liked his looks very much. "All
the ill I wish you, Madam," whispered Lady Paget, "is that he should
become your husband." "I could wish that it had been my fate to have him
for a husband," replied Katharine; "but God hath so placed me that any
lowering of my condition would be a reproach to me." The arguments used to
both lovers by Lady Paget are then detailed, and the final consent of
Katharine to accept Seymour. There may have been a small germ of truth in
this account, but it can hardly have happened as described, in view of the
correspondence of the lovers now before us.
[265] This use of the words brother and sister as referring to the
Herberts, who were no relations of Seymour's, indicates that the latter
and the Queen were already betrothed.
[266] _State Papers, Domestic_, vol. 1.
[267] Hearne's _Sylloge_, &c.
[268] The deposition of Katharine Ashley. (_Hatfield Papers_, part 1.)
INDEX
A
Abell, martyred, 358
Adrian, Pope, 105, 107
Alburquerque, Duke of, accompanies Henry to the war, 422
Alençon, Duchess of, proposed marriage of Henry VIII., 116
Alexander VI. (Pope), Borgia, 14
Amelia of Cleves, 322
Angoulême, Duke of, 245
Anne Boleyn, early life, 124-128;
the divorce, 129-162;
courtship of Henry, 137, 139-147;
her party, 168-170;
her life with Henry, 171, 180, 181, 182, 183, 190, 192;
in France, 193-197;
married, 199, 202;
her procession through London, 204-208;
her unpopularity, 209;
birth of her child, 214-216, 217, 222, 227, 233;
her influence declines, 240-243, 244, 257, 260-261;
her fall inevitable, 269-270, 271;
her betrayal, 271-274;
her arrest, 275;
in the Tower, 276-280;
her trial, 281;
condemnation and death, 282-288, 291
Anne of Cleves, 320, 322;
her voyage to England, 324-330;
her arrival and interview with Henry, 331-334;
her marriage, 334-339, 340, 341, 342, 349, 350-352;
her repudiation, 353-356, 360, 368;
talk of her rehabilitation, 386, 387, 397, 409
Aragon, ambition of, 3-5
Arras. _See_ Granvelle
Arthur, Prince of Wales, his first betrothal to Katharine, 6, 8-12, 15,
16, 17, 18;
his first meeting with Katharine, 27;
description of him, 28;
his marriage, 29-33, 34, 36, 37;
his death, 38
Arundel, Earl of, 305
Audrey, Sir Thomas, Lord Chancellor, 201, 270, 326, 369, 371, 376, 380
Ayala, Bishop, Spanish envoy, 36
B
Bar, Duke of, betrothal of Anne of Cleves to, 322, 323, 338, 348
Barnes, Dr., prosecution of, 341, 344, 358
Bassett, Anne, 393
Bastian, Katharine's Burgundian lackey, 231, 255
Bedingfield, 252, 256
Bennet, Dr., 184
Boleyn, Anne. _See_ Anne
Boleyn, Mary, 112, 124, 284
Boleyn, Thomas (Earl of Wiltshire), 124, 169, 170, 190, 200, 270
Bonner, Dr., 343, 365
Boulogne, siege of, &c., 423-427, 435
Brandon, Charles, Duke of Suffolk, 85, 87, 96, 162, 169, 175, 178, 181,
201, 216, 217, 219, 234, 243, 251, 263, 286, 300, 326, 328, 338, 392,
394, 409, 422
Brereton, William, 272, 276, 280;
executed, 282
Brian, Sir Francis, 93, 290, 312, 314
Bridewell, the divorce tribunal there, 157, 163-166
Bridgewater, Lady, 382
Brittany, Duchess of, 12, 13
Brown, Friar George, 199
Browne, Sir Anthony, 331, 332, 370, 382, 393
Buckingham, Duke of, 28
Buckler, Katharine Parr's secretary, 435
Bulmer, Mrs. Joan, 359
Burgo, Baron di, the Papal envoy, 199
C
Campeggio, Cardinal, 140, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153,
154, 157-159, 162, 163-166, 167, 168
Cañazares, Protonotary, 26
Carew, Sir Nicholas, 262, 287, 290, 317
Carey, William, 112, 124
Carne, Dr., 320
Carroz, Spanish ambassador, 78
Carthusians, martyrdom of, 246
Castillon, French ambassador, 221
Chabot de Brion, Admiral of France, in England, 243, 244
Chantonnay (Perennot), 402
Chapuys, imperial ambassador, 198, 200, 201, 202, 203, 211, 214, 215,
228, 234;
his journey to Kimbolton, 235-239, 240, 242, 245;
last interviews with Katharine, 250-256, 259, 265, 266;
his coldness towards Anne, 267, 282, 285;
his reception by Jane Seymour, 293, 385, 388-399, 393, 398, 401, 409,
432, 433, 434
Charles V., Emperor, 60, 65, 69, 70, 85, 90, 97, 98;
visits to England, 99-106;
his attitude towards the divorce, 129-130, 154, 155, 160, 170, 173,
174, 177, 181, 188, 192, 209, 232, 238, 243, 248, 263;
his attitude after Katharine's death, 263-4, 288, 300-302, 312, 313,
319, 322, 326, 343, 357;
renewed friendship with Henry, 357-366, 388-390, 398;
his alliance with Henry, 402, 416, 417, 418, 427-431;
makes peace, 428-431;
attacks the Lutherans, 435, 438
Charles VIII. of France, 7, 12, 13-15, 40
Christian III. of Denmark, 316, 319, 324
Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan, 314-15, 324, 343
Clare, Lady, 228
Clement VII., Pope, 107, 115, 129, 141, 153, 160, 170, 173, 174-177,
183, 198, 199, 210, 216, 220, 221, 222;
gives sentence in the divorce case, 223;
death of, 243
Clergy, English, and the divorce, 176, 177, 221, 247
Cleves, Anne, Princess of. _See_ Anne
Cleves, Duke of, 319, 320, 323, 342, 346, 386, 387, 409
Cleves, Duchess of, 323
Compton, Sir William, 78, 106
Cook martyred, 358
Cranmer, Archbishop, 185-187, 190, 194, 196, 197;
appointed to Canterbury, 198, 199, 201;
pronounces the divorce from Katharine of Aragon, 203-204, 208, 209,
215, 217, 222, 223, 264, 283, 288, 317, 321, 326, 328, 338, 339,
341, 344, 354, 369, 370, 375, 386, 410, 411;
plots of Gardiner against him, 411-415, 436-437, 438, 444, 446, 448
Cromwell, Richard, 274
Cromwell, Thomas, 186, 187, 190, 192, 200, 212, 215, 217, 222, 233, 235,
237, 238, 239, 245, 246, 248, 263, 266, 268, 269, 270, 271-281,
288, 295, 296, 301, 311, 315, 319, 322, 324, 326, 333, 338, 339;
decline of his influence, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345;
created Earl of Essex, 345, 346;
his arrest, 347;
execution, 348, 349, 351, 352, 357, 358, 359
Culpeper, Thomas, the lover of Katharine Howard, accused, 375, 378
_et seq._;
trial and execution, 383-385, 395
Cuero, Juan de, chamberlain of Katharine of Aragon, 35
D
Dacre, Lord, 365
Darrel, Mistress, 255
Daubeney, Giles, 10
Dauphin of France, betrothed to Princess Mary, 94, 95, 97, 99
De la Sá, Katharine's apothecary, 218, 231, 250, 253, 256
Denny, Sir Anthony, 340, 444
Derham, Francis, accused of immorality with Katharine Howard, 373
_et seq._;
trial and execution, 383-385
Divorce proceedings between Henry and Katharine of Aragon, 117-123,
129-162, 170, 184-192, 198-204
Dogmersfield, Hants, Katharine meets Arthur there, 27
Dorset, Marquis of, commands English contingent in Navarre, 81
Douglas, Lady Margaret, 328, 421, 427
Dowry of Katharine of Aragon, 9, 11, 15, 34-37, 39, 40, 55, 57, 58, 61, 70
Du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, 220, 221, 222
Dudley, John (Lord Lisle, afterwards Earl of Warwick, and Duke of
Northumberland), 434, 438, 440, 441, 443, 450
E
Edward, Prince of Wales, 304;
his baptism, 305-6, 326, 367, 425, 442, 455
Elizabeth of York, Queen, 10, 30, 38;
death of, 42
Elizabeth, Princess, 214, 215, 216, 223, 228, 238, 243, 245, 257, 284,
295, 305, 425, 456
Empson and Dudley, 33, 69
Erasmus, 44, 410
Estrada, Duke of, 39
Etampes, Duchess of, 344, 428
Europe, condition of, at the end of the fifteenth century, 4
Evil May Day, 91, 92
Exeter, Bishop of, 10
Exeter, Marquis of, 229, 305, 317
Exeter, the Marchioness of, 264, 265, 305, 317
F
Felipe, Francisco, Katharine's groom of the chambers, 121, 122, 129,
231, 255
Ferdinand, King of Aragon, 1-24, 34, 39, 43, 44, 45, 51, 52, 55-60, 70,
71, 78, 80, 87, 90
Fernandez, Diego, Katharine's confessor, 63-68, 78
Fetherston martyred, 358
Field of the Cloth of Gold, 101
Fisher, Dr., Bishop of Rochester, 122, 150, 159, 164, 177, 179, 215, 233
Fitzwilliam, Sir William, 275, 325, 326, 328, 329, 330, 338, 370, 382,
394
Flodden, battle of, 82, 83
Fox, Bishop of Winchester, 83, 138, 139, 188, 221
Francis I., 97, 98, 99;
on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, 101;
at war with England, 103, 108, 109, 113, 117;
receives Wolsey, 129, 154, 155;
his attitude towards the divorce, 190-192;
meets Henry, 193-197;
renewed coolness, 209-211, 220, 233, 310, 312, 313, 319, 322, 326,
343, 362, 389, 390;
at war with Charles, 400, 423, 427
G
Gardiner, Stephen, Bishop of Winchester, 119, 138, 139, 166, 179, 184,
190, 211, 221, 320, 321, 333, 341, 344, 352, 354, 359, 361, 364,
366, 368, 369, 386, 387, 391, 398, 400, 410, 411;
his plots against Cranmer and Katharine Parr, 411-415, 422;
with Henry in France, 424, 434, 436, 438, 439, 441
Garrard, Dr., 344, 358
German Protestants and England, 209, 211, 241, 248, 310, 311, 315,
316-320, 322-325, 338, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 358, 364, 387, 390,
397, 431, 435, 436, 440
Germaine de Foix, second wife of Ferdinand, 52
Ghinucci, Henry's envoy to Spain and Rome, 129, 130
Gomez de Fuensalida, Spanish envoy, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 70, 74
Granvelle, Bishop of Arras, 429, 430
Grey, Lord Leonard, 365
Guildford, Sir J., Controller, 179, 180, 181
Guildford, Lady, 28
H
Haines, Dr., 412
Hall, Mary, 370 _et seq._
Heneage, Sir Thomas, 340, 376
Henry VII., his political aims, 6;
his relations with Puebla, 7-8;
his negotiations for the Spanish marriage, 9-20;
his first meeting with Katharine, 26, 27;
at Arthur's marriage, 30, 33, 34;
his treatment of Katharine, 35-42;
proposes to marry Katharine, 43;
his negotiations with Ferdinand after Henry's betrothal, 45;
his treatment of Katharine, 48;
receives Philip and Juana, 49-54;
proposes marriage to Juana, 55-60, 62, 66, 68;
his death, 68, 69, 70
Henry VIII., at Arthur's wedding, 31;
first betrothal to Katharine of Aragon, 39-43, 44, 46;
secret denunciation of his betrothal, 49;
his accession, 69;
marriage, 71-77;
his character, 72, 73;
his first tiff with Katharine, 78;
birth of his first child, rejoicings, 79-80;
war with France, 80-83;
French alliance, 84, 85;
his relations with Katharine, 83-89;
his pretensions to the imperial crown, 97-99;
meets Charles and Francis, 101-106;
war with France, 107, 108;
proposed alliance with France, 116;
proposals for divorcing Katharine and marrying a French princess, 117;
the divorce, 119-123;
in love with Anne Boleyn, 127, 128;
his attempts to obtain a divorce, 129-173;
his courtship of Anne Boleyn, 141-147;
appears at Bridewell, 157, 163-166;
defies the Pope, 174-177, 180-183;
second meeting with Francis, 192-197;
the divorce, 199;
marries Anne, 200-208;
change of policy, 210-211, 220-223;
further emancipation, 223-226, 238-241, 243;
estrangement from Anne, 245;
approaches the Emperor, 251;
his behaviour on Katharine's death, 257;
he tires of Anne, 260, 261;
in love with Jane Seymour, 265;
approaches the Emperor, 266-269;
his sacrifice of Anne, 271-287;
marries Jane Seymour, 291;
his religious measures, 294;
his treatment of Mary, 295, 296, 302-303;
religious persecutions, 308-310;
proposes a matrimonial alliance with France, 312-313, 315;
approaches the German Protestants, 315-320;
religious measures, 320-322;
betrothed to Anne of Cleves, 323-330;
his reception of his bride, 331;
his discontent, 332-334;
his marriage, 334-340;
his attempts to get rid of Anne, 340-352, 353-356;
his approaches to the Emperor, 357-359;
marries Katharine Howard, 360;
change of policy, 361-367;
Katharine Howard accused, 369-372;
plans for her repudiation, 375;
great grief at Katharine Howard's conduct, 385, 386;
preparations for an alliance with the Emperor, 388, 398, 401;
the alliance signed, 402;
at war with France, 402;
enamoured of Katharine Parr, 405;
marries her, 409;
his invasion of France, 417, 418, 419, 420;
at the siege of Boulogne, 424, 427;
left in the lurch by Charles, 428-431;
approaches of the German Protestants, 435, 436;
his last illness, 441;
death, 444;
his character and career, 445-449
Herbert, Lady, 451
Hertford, Countess of, 418, 453, 455
Hesse, Philip of, 310, 311, 319, 343, 435
Hoby, Sir Philip, 412
Howard, Lord William, 382, 392
I
Isabel, Princess of (Castile), 7
Isabel, the Catholic, of Castile, 1-5, 13-16, 17, 20, 21, 34, 39, 41,
42, 43;
death of, 47, 48
J
James IV. of Scotland, 15, 25, 41, 81;
death at Flodden, 82
James V. of Scotland, 312, 366, 389;
death of, 401
Jerome, Dr., 358
John, Prince of Asturias, 5, 17, 21
John II. of Aragon, 3
Juana, Queen of Castile, 5, 18, 21, 47, 48;
visit to England, 49-54;
widowed, 55;
negotiations for her marriage with Henry VII., 55-60, 69
K
Katharine of Aragon, first betrothal to Arthur, Prince of Wales, 6,
8-12, 15, 16, 17;
her coming to England, 18, 19, 20, 21;
her voyage, 21-24;
her arrival, 25-26;
her character, 28;
her reception in London and marriage, 29-33;
her journey to Wales, 36, 37;
widowed, 38, 39;
betrothed to Henry, 39-43, 44-49;
her betrothal denounced, 49;
her position in England, 49, 50, 54-60;
her relations with her confessor, 63-68;
marriage with Henry, 70, 71-77;
birth of her first child, 79;
Regent of England, 81-85;
her life with Henry, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95, 96, 102-106,
109, 110, 111, 112;
her separation from Henry, 112, 116;
the divorce, 117-123, 129-173;
her statement to Campeggio, 151;
her firmness, 155, 156, 159;
appears at Bridewell, 164, 165;
her appeals to the Pope, 177-179;
sent away from court, 181, 191, 195;
renewed hopes, 198, 199;
again undeceived, 200;
persecution, 201, 211-213, 216-224, 227, 229-232;
illness of, 234-238, 247, 248;
death of, 249-256
Katharine Howard, her origin, 351-359;
married to Henry, 360, 365, 367, 368;
denunciation of her by Cranmer and his friends, 369-372;
the story of her accusers, 372-384;
her attainder, 392, 393;
her execution, 394, 395, 396, 397, 398
Katharine Parr, 403-408;
married to Henry, 409, 410;
her religious leanings, 411;
Gardiner's plots to ruin her, 412-415, 419;
described, 421;
Regent in Henry's absence, 424, 425, 426, 427;
Chapuys' interviews with her, 432, 433;
sides with the Protestants, 435;
her danger, 438, 439, 443;
her widowhood, 450;
marries Thomas Seymour, 450-456;
her death, 457-458
Kingston, Sir W., Governor of the Tower, 275, 276, 285
Knight, Dr., sent to the Pope, 133, 138
L
Lascelles, John, denounces Katharine Howard, 369 _et seq._
Latimer, Bishop, 411
Latimer, Lord, 404
Lee, Dr., Henry's ambassador to the Emperor, 130;
interview with Katharine, 179, 186, 199, 230
Lennox, Earl of, 427
Leo X., Pope, 102, 104
Lisle, Lord, 365, 393
Llandaff, Bishop of, Jorge de Ateca, Katharine's confessor, 218, 231,
254, 256
London, reception in, of Katharine of Aragon, 29-32, 75
London, Anne Boleyn's reception in, 205-208
London, Dr., 411, 412, 414
Longueville, Duke of, 83, 84, 85
Lorraine, Duke of, 428
Lorraine, Duke of. _See also_ Bar
Louis XII. of France, 84, 85, 86
Ludlow, Arthur at, 18, 20, 38
Luiz, Dom, of Portugal, 314
Luther, 102, 103, 154, 173, 362
M
Mannoch accused of immorality with Katharine Howard, 370 _et seq._
Manuel, Doña Elvira, 35, 41, 44, 48, 49, 50, 60
Manuel, Don Juan, 18, 50
Margaret of Austria, 17, 48, 49, 52, 53, 58, 60
Margaret Plantagenet, Duchess of Burgundy, 6, 25
Marillac, French ambassador, 344, 351, 361
Mary of Hungary, governess of Flanders, 315, 400, 423, 427
Mary of Lorraine, 312
Mary Queen of Scots, 401
Mary Tudor (daughter of Henry VII.), 46, 60, 65, 66, 69, 70, 84, 85, 86,
87, 88, 90, 101, 125, 195
Mary Tudor (daughter of Henry VIII.), 88, 94, 95, 97, 99, 101;
betrothed to Charles, 103-107, 110;
betrothed to the Duke of Orleans, 113-115, 117, 130, 174, 181, 202,
213, 215, 216, 222, 227, 228, 233, 238, 239, 242, 243-245,
246-247, 249, 258-260, 264, 266-267, 269, 289;
her submission, 296, 299, 301-303, 305, 307, 315, 319, 326, 337, 381,
389, 399, 404, 409, 410, 421, 425, 432
Mason, Dr., 365
Maximilian, Emperor, 5, 13, 15, 17, 18, 48, 90
Medici, Alexander de, Duke of Florence, 222
Medici, Katharine de, 192, 210
Mendoza, Diego Hurtado de, Spanish ambassador, 315
Mendoza, Iñigo Lopez de, Spanish ambassador, 118, 129, 130, 132
Mont, Christopher, 319, 320, 324
Montague, Lord, 317
Montreuil, Mme. de, 313
More, Sir Thomas, 169, 187, 190, 201, 233, 258
Morton, Margery, 377, 378
Mountjoy, Katharine of Aragon's chamberlain at Ampthill, 201
N
Najera, Duke of, his visit to the English court, 420, 421, 422
Naples, Queen of, 43
Neville, Sir Edward, 317
Nevinson, Cranmer's nephew, 413
Norfolk, Duke of, 26, 81, 83, 131, 162, 169, 171, 173, 174, 175, 178,
179, 190, 192, 201, 202, 205;
mission to France, 205, 209-210, 219, 227, 243, 258, 263, 268, 270,
275, 276, 280, 281, 296, 297, 298, 300, 321, 338, 341, 346, 347,
348, 351, 359, 361, 366, 369, 371, 380, 381, 382, 383, 386, 389,
395, 398, 422, 441, 442, 443
Norfolk, Duchess of, 26, 370-377, 382, 392
Norreys, Sir Henry, 167, 272, 273-275, 280;
executed, 282
O
Ockham, 412, 413
Olsiliger, Chancellor, 329, 386
Orleans, Henry, Duke of, second son of Francis I., and afterwards
Dauphin, 114, 192, 210, 381, 389, 428
P
Pace, Richard, 93
Paget, Secretary, 434, 438, 450
Palmer, Sir Thomas, 365
Parr, Lord, 381, 403, 404, 405, 407, 408
Pate, Henry's envoy to the Emperor, 357, 365
Paul III. (Farnese), Pope, 242, 249, 294, 416
Paulet (Lord St. John), 438, 441, 443
Pavia, battle of, 107, 108
Peachy, 95
Pembroke, Marchioness. _See_ Boleyn, Anne
Percy, Henry (Earl of Northumberland), 126, 127
Percy, Thomas, 272
Perkin Warbeck, 15, 18
Peto, Friar, 209
Petre, Dr., 424
Philip, Duke of Bavaria, 337, 440
Philip the Handsome, 5, 18, 19, 21, 23, 47, 48;
visit to England, 49-54;
death of, 55
Pilgrimage of Grace, 298, 308
Plymouth, arrival of Katharine of Aragon at, 23
Pole, Cardinal Reginald, 186, 215, 316, 317, 322, 364
Pole, Geoffrey, 316
Pole, Richard, 45
Poles, the, 45, 299
Powell martyred, 358
Poynings commands English contingent in Flanders, 80
Puebla, Dr., Spanish ambassador, 7-8, 10, 16, 17, 19, 31, 34, 36, 37,
39, 42, 49, 50, 51, 54, 56, 57, 60, 61, 62
R
Renée of France, Princess, proposed marriage with Henry VIII., 116
Richards, Griffin, 165
Richmond, Duchess of, 202, 295, 296, 328, 442
Richmond, Duke of, Henry's son, 96, 110, 202, 284, 286, 289, 295, 296
Rochford, Lord, 169, 209, 273, 280;
his trial, 281;
executed, 282
Rochford, Lady, 242, 280, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 384;
her execution, 395
Rome sacked by the Imperial forces under Bourbon, 114
Russell, Sir John, 291, 331, 332, 370
Rutland, Earl of, 200, 353
S
Sadler, Sir Ralph, 365
Salisbury, Countess of, 316, 317;
beheaded, 365
Saxony, Hans Frederick of, 319, 322, 323, 324, 343, 435
Saxony, George, Duke of, 310
Sampson, Dr., 121, 164, 179, 184
Sepulveda, Juan de, Spanish ambassador, 8, 10
Seymour, Sir Edward (Lord Beauchamp, Earl of Hertford, and afterwards
Duke of Somerset), 262, 265, 266, 293, 300, 304, 305, 306, 326, 346,
369, 380, 419, 424, 434, 435, 438, 440, 441, 443, 450, 454, 455, 456
Seymour, Jane, her first appearance, 261;
her family, 262, 265, 269, 282, 284, 286, 290;
married to Henry, 291;
her small political influence, 293, 296-299;
gives birth to a son, 304;
her death, 307, 308, 309
Seymour, Sir Thomas (Lord Seymour of Sudeley), 262, 402, 405, 441;
marries Katharine Parr, 450-458
Shelton, Lady, 259
Six Articles, the Act so called, 320, 321, 362, 399, 411, 413, 437, 445
Smeaton, Mark, 271, 272;
arrested, by Cromwell, 273;
his admissions, 273-274, 280;
executed, 282
Solway Moss, 401
Spurs, Battle of, 81
Stokesley, Bishop of London, 179, 184, 186, 221
Succession, Act of, 223, 230-232, 233
Suffolk, Duke of. _See_ Brandon
Suffolk, Duchess of (Katharine, Lady Willoughby), 438, 443
Suffolk, Earl of (Pole), 45, 53
Supremacy, Act of, 246, 445
Surrey, Earl of, 395, 441, 443
Sybilla of Cleves, Duchess of Saxony, 319, 324
T
Tarbes, Bishop of (Grammont), 113, 114, 117
Tailebois, Lady (Eleanor Blunt), 85, 88, 96, 112, 128
Talbot, Lord, 179, 180
Therouenne, Henry at the siege of, 82, 83
Thirlby, Dr., 424
Throckmorton, Sir George, 404
Trenchard, Sir John, 53
Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, 179, 230, 326, 338, 344
Turenne, Vicomte de, 113, 114
Tylney, Katharine, 377, 378
Tyrwhitt, Lady, 457
V
Van der Delft, Imperial ambassador in England, 432, 435, 441
Vargas, Blanche de, 255
Vaughan, Stephen, 236, 237, 253
Vives, J. Luis, 410
W
Wallop, Sir J., commands the English contingent in Flanders, 416
Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, 74, 75, 108, 119, 150, 174, 189;
death of, 193
Weston, Sir Thomas, 276, 280;
executed, 282
Wingfield, 95
Wingfield, Lady, 280
Willoughby, Lady, 252
Wolf Hall, the home of the Seymours, 261, 262, 291
Wolsey, Cardinal, 82, 83, 87, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95;
his French leanings, 96, 97, 99;
won to the side of the Emperor, 101-106;
renewed approaches to France, 107-109, 110, 111, 114;
proposes Katharine's divorce, 116-123, 126;
his attitude towards Anne Boleyn, 127;
embassy in France, 129-134;
decline of influence, 134-135;
acts as Legate, 140, 149-154, 160-167;
his disgrace, 167-169;
his death, 173
Wotton, Dr., 320, 322, 405
Wriothesley, Thomas, 341, 342, 370, 377, 380, 392, 408, 424, 434, 438,
439, 441, 443
Würtemburg, Duke of, 435
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 137, 276, 315, 343, 365, 393
Wyatt, Lady (daughter of Lord Cobham), 393, 408
THE END
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
Edinburgh & London
Transcriber's Notes:
Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.
Superscripted letters are shown in {brackets}.
The following misprints have been corrected:
"FitzWilliam" corrected to "Fitzwilliam" (page 180)
"been been" corrected to "been" (page 204)
"Francisans" corrected to "Franciscans" (page 255)
"Cramner" corrected to "Cranmer" (page 369)
"wth" corrected to "with" (page 389)
"appproaching" corrected to "approaching" (page 424)
"wore" corrected to "were" (footnote 118)
"ininstructed" corrected to "instructed" (footnote 209)
"Dona" standardized to "Doña" (index)
"Inigo" standardized to "Iñigo" (index)
"Nagera" corrected to "Najera" (Index)
Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in
spelling and hyphenation usage have been retained.
Some quotes are opened with marks but are not closed. Obvious errors
have been silently closed, while those requiring interpretation have
been left open. Other punctuation has been corrected without note.
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Parts They Played in History, by Martin Hume
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