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 Angouleme, 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 Sa 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 (Dona Maria de

Sarmiento), had preceded him by a day and was with her mistress. She had

prayed in vain for license to come before, and even now Katharine's stern

guardian, Bedingfield, asked in vain to see Lady Willoughby's permit,

which she probably had not got. She had come in great agitation and fear,

for, according to her own account, she had fallen from her horse, and had

suffered other adventures on her way, but she braved everything to receive

the last sigh of the Queen, whose girlhood's friend she had been.

Bedingfield looked askance at the arrival of "these folks"; and at

Chapuys' first interview with Katharine he, the chamberlain, and Vaughan

who understood Spanish, were present, and listened to all that was said.

It was a consolation, said the Queen, that if she could not recover she

might die in the presence of her nephew's 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 Sa, gave it as his opinion that she was out of immediate

danger. She even laughed a little at the antics of Chapuys' fool, who was

called in to amuse her; and, 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 Sa unhesitatingly

opined that his mistress had died of poison.[137]

The news, the joyous news, sped quickly to Greenwich; and within

four-and-twenty hours, on 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_]