CHAPTER VII

1536-1540

PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT--JANE SEYMOUR AND ANNE OF CLEVES

From the moment that Henry abruptly left the lists at May-day on the

receipt of Cromwell's letter detailing the admissions of Smeaton, he saw

Anne no more. No pang of remorse, no wave of compassion passed over him.

He easily believed what he wished to believe, and Anne was left to the

tender mercies of Cromwell, to be done to death. Again Henry was a prey to

profound self-pity for ever having fallen under the enchantment of such a

wicked woman. He, of course, was not to blame for anything. He never was.

He was always the clement, just man whose unsuspecting goodness of heart

had been abused by others, and who tried to find distraction and to forget

the evil done him. On the very night of the day that Anne was arrested the

Duke of Richmond, Henry's son, now a grown youth, went, as was his custom,

into his father's room at Whitehall to bid him good night and ask his

blessing. The King, we are told,[167] fell a-weeping as he blessed his

son, "saying that he and his sister (Mary) might well be grateful to God

for saving them from the hands of that accursed and venomous harlot who

had intended to poison them." That Anne may have planned the assassination

of Mary is quite probable, even if she had no hand in the shortening of

Katharine's days, and this may have been the real hidden pretext of her

death acting upon Henry's fears for himself.[168] But if such were the

case, Henry, at least, was deserving of no pity, for when it was only

Katharine's life that was in danger he was, as we have seen, brutally

callous, and only awoke to the enormity of the "venomous harlot" when

Cromwell made him believe that his own safety was jeopardised. Then no

fate was too cruel for the woman he once had loved.

On the day preceding Anne's trial, Jane Seymour was brought from Sir

Nicholas Carew's house to another residence on the river bank, only a mile

from Whitehall Stairs, to be ready for her intended elevation as soon as

the Queen was disposed of. Here Jane was served for the few days she

stayed "very splendidly by the cooks and certain officers of the King, and

very richly adorned."[169] So certain was Henry that nothing would now

stand in the way of his new marriage that Jane was informed beforehand

that on the 15th, by three in the afternoon, she would hear of her

predecessor's condemnation; and Anne's cousin and enemy, Sir Francis

Brian, eagerly brought the news to the expectant lady at the hour

anticipated. The next day, when the sword of the French headsman had made

Henry indeed a widower, the King only awaited receipt of the intelligence

to enter his barge and seek the consolation of Jane Seymour. At six

o'clock in the morning of the 20th May, when the headless body of Anne,

barely cold, still awaited sepulture huddled in an old arrow-box in the

Church of St. Peter within the Tower, Jane was secretly carried by water

from her residence to Hampton Court; and before nine o'clock she had been

privately married to the King,[170] by virtue of a dispensation issued the

day previously by the accommodating Cranmer.[171] It would seem probable

that the day after the private espousals Jane travelled to her home in

Wiltshire, where she stayed for several days whilst preparations were

being made in the King's abodes for her reception as Queen: for all the

A's had to be changed to J's in the royal ciphers, and traces of Anne's

former presence abolished wherever possible. Whether Henry accompanied his

new wife to Wiltshire on this occasion is not quite certain, though from

Sir John Russell's account it is probable that he did. In any case the

King and his new wife visited Mercer's Hall, in Cheapside, on the 29th

May, St. Peter's Eve, to witness from the windows the civic ceremony of

the annual setting of the watch; and on the following day, 30th May, the

pair were formally married in the Queen's closet at Whitehall.

The people at large looked somewhat askance at this furious haste to marry

the new wife before the shed blood of the previous one was dry;[172] but

the Court, and those who still recollected the wronged Princess Mary and

her dead mother, were enthusiastic in their welcome to Jane.[173] The

Emperor's friends, too, were in joyous mood; and Princess Mary at Hunsdon

was full of hope, and eager to be allowed to greet her father and his wife

now that "that woman" was dead. Chapuys, we may be sure, did not stand

behind the door now when he went to Court. On the contrary, when he first

visited Whitehall a few days after the wedding, Henry led him by the hand

to Jane's apartments, and allowed the diplomatist to kiss the

Queen--"congratulating her upon her marriage and wishing her prosperity. I

told her that, although the device of the lady who had preceded her on the

throne was 'The happiest of women,' I had no doubt that she herself would

realise that motto. I was sure that the Emperor would be equally rejoiced

as the King himself had been at meeting such a virtuous and amiable Queen,

the more so that her brother (_i.e._ Sir E. Seymour, afterwards the Duke

of Somerset) had been in the Emperor's service. I added that it was almost

impossible to believe the joy and pleasure which Englishmen generally had

felt at the marriage; especially as it was said that she was continually

trying to persuade the King to restore the Princess to his favour, as

formerly." Most of Chapuys' courtly talk with Jane, indeed, was directed

to this point of the restoration of Mary; but the new Queen, though

inexperienced, had been well coached, and did not unduly commit herself;

only promising to favour the Princess, and to endeavour to deserve the

title that Chapuys had given her of "peacemaker." Henry strolled up to the

pair at this point, and excused his new wife for any want of expertness:

"as I was the first ambassador she had received, and she was not used yet

to such receptions. He (Henry) felt sure, however, that she would do her

utmost to obtain the title of 'peacemaker,' with which I (Chapuys) had

greeted her, as, besides being naturally of a kind and amiable disposition

and much inclined to peace, she would strive to prevent his (Henry's)

taking part in a foreign war, if only out of the fear of being separated

from him."[174]

But all these fine hopes were rapidly banished. Jane never possessed or

attempted to exercise any political influence on her husband. She smiled

sweetly and in a non-committal way upon the Princess Mary, and upon the

imperialist and moderate Catholic party that had hoped to make the new

Queen their instrument; but Cromwell's was still the strong mind that

swayed the King. He had obtained renewed control over his master by

ridding him of Anne; and had, at all events, prevented England from being

drawn into a coalition with France against the Emperor; but he had no

intention, even if it had been possible, of going to the other extreme and

binding his country to go to war against France to please the Emperor.

Henry's self-will and vanity, as well as his greed, also stood in the way

of a complete submission to the Papacy, and those who had brought Jane

Seymour in, hoping that her advent would mean a return to the same

position as that previous to Anne's rise, now found that they had been

over sanguine. Charles and Francis were left to fight out their great duel

alone in Italy and Provence, to the general discomfiture of the imperial

cause; and, instead of hastening to humble himself at the feet of Paul

III., as the pontiff had fondly expected, Henry summoned Parliament, and

gave stronger statutory sanction than ever to his ecclesiastical

independence of Rome.[175] Anne's condemnation and Elizabeth's bastardy

were obediently confirmed by the Legislature, and the entire freedom of

the English Church from Rome reasserted.

But the question of the succession was that which aroused the strongest

feeling, and its settlement the keenest disappointment. Now that Anne's

offspring was disinherited, Princess Mary and her friends naturally

expected that she, with the help of the new Queen, would once more enter

into the enjoyment of her birthright. Eagerly Mary wrote to Cromwell

bespeaking his aid, which she had been led to expect that he would give;

and by his intercession she was allowed to send her humble petition to her

father, praying for leave to see him. Her letters are all couched in terms

of cringing humility, praying forgiveness for past offences, and promising

to be a truly dutiful daughter in future. But this did not satisfy Henry.

Cromwell, desirous, in pursuance of his policy of keeping friendly with

the Emperor without going to war with France, or kneeling to Rome, hoped

to bring about peace between Mary and her father. But the strongest

passions of Henry's nature were now at stake, and he would only accept his

daughter's submission on terms that made her a self-confessed bastard, and

against this the girl, as obstinate as her father and as righteously proud

as her mother, still rebelled. Henry's son, the Duke of Richmond, was now

a straight stripling of eighteen, already married to Norfolk's daughter,

and, failing issue by Jane, here was an heir to the Crown that might carry

the Tudor line onward in the male blood, if Parliament could be chicaned

or threatened into acknowledging him. So Mary was plied with letters from

Cromwell, each more pressing and cruel than the previous one, driving the

girl to distraction by the King's insistence upon his terms.[176] Threats,

cajolery, and artful casuistry were all tried. Again Mary turned to her

foreign advisers and the King's rebellious subjects for support, and again

her father's heart hardened when he knew it. Norfolk, who with others was

sent to persuade her, was so incensed with her firmness that he said if

she had been his daughter he would have knocked her head against the wall

until it was as soft as a codlin. But Norfolk's daughter was the Duchess

of Richmond, and might be Queen Consort after Henry's death if Mary were

disinherited, so that there was some excuse for his violence. Those who

were in favour of Mary were dismissed from the Council--even Cromwell was

in fear--and Jane Seymour was rudely snubbed by the King for daring to

intercede for the Princess. At length, with death threatening her, Mary

could stand out no longer. Without even reading it, she signed with a

mental reservation, and confident of obtaining the Papal absolution for

which she secretly asked, the shameful declaration forced upon her,

repudiating the Papal authority, and specifically acknowledging herself a

bastard.

Then Henry was all amiability with his wronged daughter. He and Jane went

to visit her at Richmond, whither she had been brought, giving her

handsome presents of money and jewels; liberty was given to her to come to

Court, and stately service surrounded her. But it was all embittered by

the knowledge that Parliament had been induced to acknowledge that all the

King's children were illegitimate, and to grant to Henry himself the right

of appointing his own successor by letters patent or by will. Alas! the

youth in whose immediate interest the injustice was done was fast sinking

to his grave; and on the 22nd July 1536 the Duke of Richmond breathed his

last, to Henry's bitter grief, Mary's prospects again became brighter, and

all those who resented the religious policy and Henry's recalcitrancy now

looked to the girl as their only hope of a return to the old order of

things. Chapuys, too, was ceaseless in his intrigues to bring England once

more into a condition of obedience to the Pope, that should make her a fit

instrument for the imperial policy, and soon the disappointment that

followed on the elevation of Jane Seymour found vent in the outbreak of

rebellion in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.

The priests and the great mass of the people had bent the neck patiently

to the King's violent innovations in the observances that they had been

taught to hold sacred. They had seen the religious houses, to which they

looked for help and succour in distress, destroyed and alienated. The

abuses of the clergy had doubtless been great, and the first measures

against them had been welcomed; but the complete confiscation of vast

properties, in the main administered for the benefit of the lowly, the

continued enclosure of common lands by the gentry newly enriched by

ecclesiastical plunder, and the rankling sense of the scandalous injustice

that had been suffered by Katharine and Mary, for the sake, as the people

said, of the King's lustful caprice, at last provided the extreme militant

Catholic party with the impetus needed for revolt against the Crown.

Imperious Henry was beside himself with rage; and for a time it looked as

if he and his system might be swept away in favour of his daughter, or one

of the Poles, who were being put forward by the Pope. The Bull of

excommunication against Henry and England, so long held back, was now

launched, making rebellion righteous; and the imperial interest in

England, which was still strong, did its best to aid the rising of Henry's

lieges against him. But the rebels were weakly led: the greater nobles had

for the most part been bought by grants of ecclesiastical lands; and

Norfolk, for all his moral baseness, was an experienced and able soldier.

So the Pilgrimage of Grace, threatening as it looked for a time, flickered

out; and the yoke was riveted tighter than ever upon the neck of rural

England. To the party that had hoped to make use of her, Jane Seymour was

thus, to some extent, a disappointment;[177] but her placid

submissiveness, which made her a bad political instrument, exactly suited

a husband so imperious as Henry; and from a domestic point of view the

union was successful. During the summer Jane shared in her husband's

progresses and recreations, but as the months rolled on and no hope came

of offspring, ominous rumours ran that Jane's coronation would be deferred

until it was proved that she might bear children to the King; and some

said that if she proved barren a pretext would be found for displacing her

in favour of another. Indeed, only a few days after the public marriage,

Henry noticed two very beautiful girls at Court, and showed his annoyance

that he had not seen them before taking Jane.

After six months of marriage without sign of issue, Henry began to take

fright. The Duke of Richmond was dead, and both the King's daughters were

acknowledged by the law of England to be illegitimate. He was already

forty-six years of age, and had lately grown very obese; and his death

without further issue or a resettlement of the succession would inevitably

lead to a dynastic dispute, with the probable result of the return of the

House of York to the throne in the person of one of the Poles under the

aegis of Rome. Whenever possible, Jane had said a good word for the

Princess Mary, and Henry began to listen more kindly than before to his

wife's well-meant attempts to soften him in favour of his daughter. The

Catholic party was all alert with new hopes that the King, convinced that

he could father no more sons, would cause his elder daughter to be

acknowledged his heir;[178] but the reformers, who had grown up

numerously, especially in and about London, during Henry's defiance of

Rome, looked askance at a policy which in time they feared might bring

back the old order of things. The mainstay of this party at Court, apart

from the professed Lutherans and the new bishops, were those who, having

received grants of ecclesiastical property, despaired of any return to the

Roman communion and the imperial alliance without the restoration of the

Church property. Amongst these courtiers was Jane's brother, Edward

Seymour, Viscount Beauchamp, who had received large grants of

ecclesiastical lands at intervals since 1528. He was a personal friend of

the King, and had taken no active part in the intrigue that accompanied

his sister's elevation, though after the marriage he naturally rose higher

than before in the favour of the King. He was a clever and superficially

brilliant, but ostentatious and greedy man, of no great strength of

purpose, whose new relationship to the King marked him out as a dominating

influence in the future. The Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, upon whom Henry

had depended as generals, were now very old and ailing, and there was no

other peer but Cromwell of any ability in the Councils.

Even thus early it was clear that Seymour's weight would, notwithstanding

the circumstances of his sister's rise, be thrown on to the anti-Papal

side when the crucial struggle came. He was, moreover, a new man; and as

such not welcomed by the older nobility, who, though desirous of retaining

their Church plunder, were yet bound by their traditions against

bureaucrats such as Cromwell, and the policy of defiance of the Papacy

that he and his like had suggested and carried out. Cromwell's own

position at this time (1536-37) was a paradoxical one. It was he who had

led Henry on, step by step, to entire schism and the plunder of the

Church; it was he who not only had shown how to get rid of Katharine, but

how to destroy her successor; and it was he whom the Catholic party hated

with a whole-hearted detestation, for the King's acts as well as his own.

On the other hand, he was hardly less distrusted by the reforming party;

for his efforts were known to be directed to a reconciliation with the

Emperor, which could only be effected conjointly with some sort of

arrangement with the Papacy. His efforts to please the imperialists by

siding with the Princess Mary during her dispute with her father led him

to the very verge of destruction. Whilst the young Princess was being

badgered into making her shameful and insincere renunciation of her faith

and birthright, Cromwell, the very man who was the instrument for

extorting her submission, sat, as he says, for a week in the Council

considering himself "a dead man," because the King believed that he was

encouraging Mary to resist. Cromwell, therefore, like most men who

endeavour to hold a middle course, was distrusted and hated by every one;

and it must have been obvious to him that if he could ensure the adhesion

of the rising Seymour interest his chance of weathering the storm would be

infinitely improved. His son had recently married Jane Seymour's sister,

and this brought him into close relationship with the family, and, as will

be seen, led in the next year to a compact political union between the

Seymour brothers, Cromwell, and the reforming party, as against the

nobles and traditional conservatives.

For the time, however, Cromwell held on his way, endeavouring to keep in

with the imperialists and Mary; and it was doubtless to his prompting that

Jane used her influence, when at its highest point, to reconcile the

Princess personally to her father. To the great joy of the King, in March

1537, Jane was declared to be with child. The Emperor had already opened a

negotiation for the marriage of Mary with his brother-in-law, the Infante

Luiz of Portugal, and Henry was playing a waiting game till he saw if Jane

would bear him a child. If so, Mary might go; although he still refused to

legitimise her; but if no more issue was to be born to him, he could

hardly allow his elder daughter to leave England and fall into the hands

of the Emperor. Charles, on the other hand, was extremely anxious to

obtain possession of so valuable a pledge for the future as Mary; and was

willing to go to almost any lengths to get her, either by fair means or

foul, fearing, as he did, that the girl might be married discreditably in

England--he thought even to Cromwell himself--in order to destroy her

international value to Henry's rivals.

As soon, however, as Jane's pregnancy was announced Mary's position

changed. If a child was born in wedlock to the King, especially if it were

a son, there would be no need to degrade Mary by joining her to a lowly

husband; she might, on the contrary, become a good international marriage

asset in the hands of her father, who might bargain with Charles or

Francis for her. The fresh move of Jane Seymour, therefore, in her

favour, in the spring of 1537, when the Queen's pregnancy had given her

greater power over her husband, was probably welcome both to the King and

Cromwell, as enhancing Mary's importance at a time when she might be used

as an international political pawn without danger. Jane was sad one day in

the early period of her pregnancy. "Why, darling," said the King, "how

happeneth it you are not merrier?"[179] "It hath pleased your Grace,"

replied the Queen, "to make me your wife, and there are none but my

inferiors with whom to make merry, withal, your Grace excepted; unless it

would please you that we might enjoy the company of the Lady Mary at

Court. I could be merry with her." "We will have her here, darling, if

that will make thee merry," said the King. And before many days had gone,

Mary, with a full train of ladies, was brought from Hunsdon, magnificently

dressed, to Whitehall, where, in the great presence chamber, Henry and his

wife stood before the fire. The poor girl was almost overcome at the

tenderness of her reception, and fell upon her knees before her father and

his wife. Henry, as usual anxious to throw upon others the responsibility

of his ill-treatment of his daughter, turned to his Councillors, who stood

around, and said, "Some of you were desirous that I should put this jewel

to death." "That were a pity," quoth the Queen, "to have lost your

chiefest jewel of England."[180] The hint was too much for Mary, who

changed colour and fell into a swoon, greatly to her father's concern.

At length the day long yearned and prayed for by Henry came. Jane had for

some months lived in the strictest quietude, and prayers and masses for

her safe delivery were offered in the churches for weeks before. In

September she had travelled slowly to Hampton Court, and on the 12th

October 1537 a healthy son was born to her and Henry. The joy of the King

was great beyond words. The gross sensualist, old beyond his years, had in

vain hoped through all his sturdy youth for a boy, who, beyond reproach,

might bear his regal name. He had flouted Christendom and defied the

greatest powers on earth in order to marry a woman who might bear him a

man child. When she failed to do so, he had coldly stood aside whilst his

instruments defamed her and did her to death; and now, at last, in his

declining years, his prayer was answered, and the House of Tudor was

secure upon the future throne of England. Bonfires blazed and joy bells

rang throughout the land; feasts of unexampled bounteousness coarsely

brought home to the lieges the blessing that had come to save the country

from the calamity of a disputed succession. The Seymour brothers at once

became, next the King and his son, the most important personages in

England, the elder, Edward, being created Earl of Hertford, and both

receiving great additional grants of monastic lands. In the general

jubilation at the birth, the interests of the mother were forgotten. No

attempt appears to have been made to save her from the excitement that

surrounded her; and on the very day of her delivery she signed an

official letter "Jane the Quene" to Cromwell, directing him to communicate

to the Privy Council the joyful news.

The most sumptuous royal christening ever seen was in bustling preparation

in and about her sick-chamber; and that no circumstance of state should be

lacking, the mother herself, only four days after the birth, was forced to

take part in the exhausting ceremony. In the chapel at Hampton Court,

newly decorated like the splendid banqueting-hall adjoining, where the

initials of Jane carved in stone with those of the King, and her arms and

device on glowing glass and gilded scutcheon still perpetuate her fleeting

presence, the christening ceremony was held by torchlight late in the

chill autumn evening. Through the long draughty corridors, preceded by

braying trumpets and followed by rustling crowds of elated courtiers, the

sick woman was carried on her stately pallet covered with heavy robes of

crimson velvet and ermine. Under a golden canopy, supported by the four

greatest nobles in the land, next to Norfolk, who was one of the

godfathers, the Marchioness of Exeter bore the infant in her arms to the

scene of the ceremony; and the Princess Mary, fiercely avid of love as she

ever was, held the prince at the font. Suffolk, Arundel, and doomed

Exeter, with a host of other magnates, stood around; whilst one towering

handsome figure, with a long brown beard, carried aloft in his arms the

tiny fair girl-child of Anne, the Lady Elizabeth, holding in her dainty

hands the holy chrisom. It was Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, looked

at askance by the rest as a new man, but already overlapping them all as

the uncle of the infant prince. During the _Te Deum_ and the long, pompous

ceremony of the baptism the mother lay flushed and excited upon her couch;

whilst the proud father, his broad face beaming with pride, sat by her

side, holding her hand.

It was hard upon midnight when the Queen gave her blessing to her child

and was carried back to her chamber, with more trumpet blasts and noisy

gratulation. The next day, as was to be expected, she was in a high fever,

so ill that she was confessed and received extreme unction. But she

rallied, and seemed somewhat amended for the next few days, though ominous

rumours were rife in London that her life had purposely been jeopardised

in order to save that of the child at birth.[181] They were not true, but

they give the measure of the public estimate of Henry's character, and

have been made the most of by Sanders, Rivadeneyra, and the other Jesuit

historians. On the 23rd October the Queen fell gravely ill again, and in

the night was thought to be dying. Henry had intended to ride to Esher

that day, but "could not find it in his heart" to go; and the next night,

the 24th October, Jane Seymour died, a sacrifice to improper treatment and

heartlessly exacted ceremonial. Henry had not been married long enough to

her to have become tired of her, and her somewhat lethargic placidity had

suited him. She had, moreover, borne him the long-looked-for son; and his

grief for her loss was profound, and no doubt sincere. Much as he hated

signs of mortality, he wore black mourning for her for three months, and

shut himself up at Windsor away from the world, and above all away from

the corpse of his dead wife, for a fortnight. Jane's body, embalmed, lay

in the presence chamber at Hampton Court for a week. Blazing tapers

surrounded the great hearse, and masses went on from dawn to midday in the

chamber. All night long the Queen's ladies, with Princess Mary, watched

before the bier, until the end of the month, when the catafalque had been

erected in the chapel for the formal lying in state. On the 12th November,

with the greatest possible pomp, the funeral procession bore the dead

Queen to Windsor for burial in a grave in St. George's Chapel, destined to

receive the remains of Henry as well as that of his third wife, the mother

of his son.[182] The writers of the time, following the lead of Henry and

his courtiers, never mentioned their grief for the Queen without promptly

suggesting that it was more than counterbalanced by their joy at the birth

of her son, who from his first appearance in the world was hailed as a

paragon of beauty and perfection. Thanksgivings for the boon of a male

heir to the King blended their sounds of jubilation with the droning of

the masses for the mother's soul, and the flare of the bonfires died down

into the flickering tapers that dimly lit the funerals. Even Henry

himself, in writing to give the news of his son's birth, confessed that

his joy at the event had far exceeded his grief for Jane's death.

So far as the Catholic party that had promoted it was concerned, the

marriage with Jane had been a failure. The Pilgrimage of Grace had been

drowned in the blood of ruthless slaughter: and partly because of Mary's

scruples and fears, partly because they themselves had been gorged with

the plunder of the Church, nearly all the great nobles stood aside and

raised no voice whilst Cromwell and his master still worked havoc on the

religious houses, regardless of Jane's timid intercession. Boxley,

Walsingham, and even the sacred shrine of Canterbury, yielded their relics

and images, venerated for centuries, to be scorned and destroyed; whilst

the vast accumulated treasures of gold and gems that enriched them went to

fill the coffers of the King, and their lands to bribe his favourites.

Throughout England the work of confiscation was carried on now with a zeal

which only greed for the resultant profit can explain.[183] The attacks

upon superstition in the Church by those in authority naturally aroused a

feeling of greater freedom of thought amongst the mass of the people. The

establishment of an open Bible in English in every church for the perusal

of the parishioners, due, as indeed most of the doctrinal changes were,

to Cranmer, encouraged men to think to some extent for themselves. But

though, for purposes to which reference will be made presently, Henry

willingly concurred in Cranmer's reforming tendencies and Cromwell's

anti-ecclesiastical plans for providing him with abundant money, he would

allow no departure from orthodoxy as he understood it. His love for

theological controversy, and his undoubted ability and learning in that

direction, enabled him to enforce his views with apparently unanswerable

arguments, especially as he was able, and quite ready, to close the

dispute with an obstinate antagonist by prescribing the stake and the

gibbet either to those who repudiated his spiritual supremacy or to those

who, like the Anabaptists, questioned the efficacy of a sacrament which he

had adopted. For Henry it was to a great extent a matter of pride and

self-esteem now to show to his own subjects and the world that he was

absolutely supreme and infallible, and this feeling unquestionably had

greatly influenced the progress effected by the reformation and

emancipation from Rome made after the disappointing marriage with Jane

Seymour.

But there was also policy in Henry's present action. Throughout the years

1536 and 1537 Francis and the Emperor had continued at war; but by the

close of the latter year it was evident that both combatants were

exhausted, and would shortly make up their differences. The Papal

excommunication of Henry and his realm was now in full force, making

rebellion against the King a laudable act for all good Catholics; and any

agreement between the two great Continental sovereigns in union with Rome

boded ill for England and for its King. There were others, too, to whom

such a combination boded ill. The alliance between France and the infidel

Turk to attack the Christian Emperor had aroused intense indignation

amongst Catholics throughout the world against Francis; and the Pope,

utilising this feeling, strove hard to persuade both Christian sovereigns

to cease their fratricidal struggle and to recognise that the real enemy

to be feared and destroyed was Lutheranism or heresy in their midst.

During the Emperor's absence, and the war, Protestantism in Germany had

advanced with giant strides. The Princes had boldly refused to recognise

any conciliatory Council of the Church under the control of the Pope; and

the pressure used by the Emperor to compel them to do so aroused the

suspicion that the day was fast approaching when Lutheranism would have to

fight for its life against the imperial suzerain of Germany.

Already the forces were gathering. George of Saxony, the enemy of Luther,

was hurrying to the grave, and Henry his brother and heir was a strong

Protestant. Philip of Hesse had two years before thrown down the gage, and

had taken by force from the Emperor the territory of Wuertemburg, and had

restored the Protestant Duke Ulrich. Charles' brother Ferdinand, who ruled

the empire, clamoured as loudly as did Mary of Hungary in Flanders and

Eleanor of Austria in France, for a peace between the two champions of

Christendom, the repudiation by France of the Turkish alliance, and a

concentration of the Catholic forces in the world before it was too late

to crush the hydra of heresy which threatened them all. It was natural in

the circumstances that the enemies of the Papacy should be drawn together.

A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind, and a common danger drew Henry of

England and Philip of Hesse together. Henry was no Lutheran, and did not

pretend to be. He had been drawn into the Reformation by the process that

we have followed, in which interested advisers had worked upon his

passions and self-esteem; but he had gone too far in defiance of Rome now

to turn back, and was forced to look to his own safety by such policy as

was possible to him. For several months after Jane Seymour's death the

envoys of the German Protestants were in England in close negotiation with

Henry and Cromwell. In order that a close league should be made, it was

necessary that some common doctrinal standpoint should be agreed upon, and

infinite theological discussions took place to bring this about. Henry

would not give way on any principal point, and the Protestant ambassadors

went home again without a formal understanding. But though Henry remained,

as he intended to do, thus unpledged, it was good policy for him to

impress upon the Germans by his ruthless suppression of the monasteries,

and his prohibition of the ancient superstitions, that he was the enemy of

their enemy; and that if he was attacked for heresy, it would be incumbent

upon the Lutherans to be on his side even against their own suzerain.

This was not, however, the only move made by Henry against the

threatening danger of a joint attack of the Catholic powers. He had hardly

thrown off his mourning for Jane before he turned his hand to the old game

of dividing his rivals. His bluff was as audacious and brilliant as usual.

To the imperial and French ambassadors in turn he boasted that either of

their masters would prefer his friendship and alliance to that of the

other; and, rightly convinced that he would really be more likely to gain

latitudinarian Francis than Charles, he proposed in the spring of 1538

that he should marry a French princess. As the two great Catholic

sovereigns drew closer together, though still nominally at war in Italy,

Henry became, indeed, quite an eager wooer. His friend, Sir Francis Brian,

was sent to Paris, secretly to forward his suit, and obtained a portrait

of the Duke of Guise's second daughter, the sister of the King of

Scotland's bride, Mary of Lorraine; with which Henry confessed himself

quite smitten. He had, before this, only three months after Jane's death,

made a desperate attempt to prevail upon Francis to let him have Mary of

Lorraine herself; though she was already betrothed to the King of Scots,

his nephew; but this had been positively and even indignantly refused.

Even the younger daughter of Guise, beautiful as she was, did not quite

satisfy his vanity. Both he and his agent Brian, who was a fit

representative for him, disgusted Francis by suggesting that three other

French princesses should be taken to Calais by the Queen of

Navarre--Francis' sister--in order that they might be paraded before the

King of England for his selection, "like hackneys," as was said at the

time.[184] He thought that the angry repudiation of such an insulting

proposal was most unreasonable. "How can I choose a wife by deputy?" he

asked. "I must depend upon my own eyes"; besides, he added, he must hear

them sing, and see how they comported themselves. Perhaps, suggested the

French ambassador sarcastically, he would like to go further and test the

ladies in other ways, as the knights of King Arthur used to do. Henry

coloured at this; but vauntingly replied that he could, if he pleased,

marry into the imperial house; but he would not marry at all unless he was

quite sure that his new relation would prefer his alliance to all others.

When, at length, in June, the truce of Nice was signed, and soon

afterwards the fraternal meeting and close community between Francis and

Charles was effected at Aigues Mortes, Henry began to get seriously

alarmed. His matrimonial offers, to his surprise, were treated very

coolly; all his attempts to breed dissension between the imperial and

French ambassadors, who were now hand and glove, were laughed at;[185] and

the intimate confidence and friendship between his two Catholic rivals

seemed at last to bring disaster to Henry's very doors; for it was not

concealed that the first blow to be struck by the Catholic confederacy was

to be upon the schismatic heretic who ruled England.

With Francis there was no more to be done; for Henry and Brian, by their

want of delicacy, had between them deeply wounded all the possible French

brides and their families. But, at least, Henry hoped that sufficient show

of friendship with Charles might be simulated to arouse Francis' jealousy

of his new ally. Henry therefore began to sneer at the patched-up

friendship, as he called it.[186] "And how about Milan?" he asked the

French ambassador, knowing that that was the still rankling sore; and soon

he began to boast more openly that he himself might have Milan by the

cession of it as a dower to Dom Luiz of Portugal, on his marriage with the

Princess Mary; whilst Henry himself married the young widowed Duchess of

Milan, Charles' niece, Christina of Denmark, that clever, quick-witted

woman, whose humorous face lives for ever on the canvas of Holbein in the

English National Gallery.[187] There had been a Spanish ambassador, Diego

Hurtado de Mendoza, in England since the spring of 1537, to negotiate the

Portuguese marriage of the Princess Mary; but the eternal questions of

dowry, security, and the legitimacy of the Princess had made all

negotiations so far abortive. Now they were taken up more strongly, by

means of Wyatt at Madrid, and by special envoys to Mary of Hungary in

Flanders. But it was all "buckler play," as the imperial agents and

Charles himself soon found out. Henry and Cromwell knew perfectly well

that no stable alliance with the Emperor was possible then unless their

religious policy was changed; and they had gone too far to change it

without humiliation, if not destruction, to Henry; the real object of the

negotiations being simply to obtain some sort of promise about the cession

of Milan, by which Francis might be detached from the imperial alliance.

But it was unsuccessful; and, for once, the two great antagonists held

together for a time against all Lutheranism and heresy.

Then Henry and Cromwell had to look anxiously for support and alliances

elsewhere. To the King it was a repugnant and humiliating necessity. He

had puffed himself into the belief that he was the most potent and

infallible of sovereigns, and he found himself, for the first time,

scorned by all those he had reason to fear. He, the embodiment of the idea

of regal omnipotence, would be forced to make common cause with those who,

like the German Protestants, stood for resistance to supreme authority;

with usurpers like Christian III. of Denmark, and trading democracies like

Luebeck. With much hesitation and dislike, therefore, he listened, whilst

Cromwell urged the inevitable policy upon him, which led him farther and

farther away from the inner circle of potentates to which he and his

father had gained entrance in the course of the events related in the

first chapters of this book.

Cromwell's arguments would probably have been unavailing but for the

opportune "discovery," in the usual fortuitous Cromwell fashion, of a

dangerous aristocratic conspiracy against Henry himself. Cardinal Pole had

been entrusted with the Papal excommunication, and everywhere impressed

upon English Catholics the duty of obeying their spiritual father by

deposing the King.[188] Whether anything in the form of a regular

conspiracy to do this existed in England is extremely doubtful; but the

Cardinal had naturally written to his relatives in England, especially to

his brother Geoffrey, and perhaps to his mother, the Countess of

Salisbury, a princess of the blood royal of York. First Geoffrey was

seized and carried to the Tower, and some sort of incriminating admission

drawn from him by threats of torture, though, so far as can be gathered,

nothing but the repetition of disaffected conversations. It was enough,

however, for Cromwell's purpose when he needed it; and the fatal net was

cast over Pole's elder brother, Lord Montague, the Marquis of Exeter,

allied to the royal house, the Master of the Horse, Sir Nicholas Carew,

Sir Edward Neville, and half a score of other high gentlemen, known to be

faithful to the old cause--all to be unjustly sacrificed on the scaffold

to the fears of Henry and the political exigencies of Cromwell. Even the

women and children of the supposed sympathisers with the Papacy were not

spared; and the aged Countess of Salisbury, with her grandson, and the

Marchioness of Exeter, with her son, were imprisoned with many humbler

ones.

The defences of the kingdom on the coast and towards Scotland were rapidly

made ready to resist attack from abroad, which indeed looked imminent; and

when the noble and conservative party had been sufficiently cowed by the

sight of the blood of the highest of its members, when the reign of terror

over the land had made all men so dumb and fearsome that none dared say

him nay, Cromwell felt himself strong enough to endeavour to draw England

into the league of Protestant princes and defy the Catholic world. The

position for Henry personally was an extraordinary one. He had gradually

drifted into a position of independence from Rome; but he still professed

to be a strict Catholic in other respects. His primate, Cranmer, and

several other of his bishops whose ecclesiastical status was unrecognised

by the Pope, were unquestionably, and not unnaturally, Protestant in their

sympathies; whilst Cromwell was simply a politician who cared nothing for

creeds and faiths, except as ancillary to State policy. Francis, and even

on occasion Charles himself, made little of taking Church property for lay

purposes when he needed it: he had more than once been the ally of the

infidel against Catholic princes, and his religious belief was notoriously

lax; and yet he remained "the eldest son of the Church." Charles had

struggled successfully against the Papal pretensions to control the

temporalities of the Spanish Church, his troops had sacked Rome and

imprisoned the Pope, and his ministers for years had bullied pontiffs and

scolded them as if they were erring schoolboys. Excommunication had fallen

upon him and his, and as hard things had been said of him in Rome as of

Henry; and yet he was the champion of Catholic Christendom. The conclusion

is obvious that Henry's sin towards the Papacy was not primarily the

spoliation of the Church, the repudiation of Katharine, or even the

assumption of control over the temporalities, but that he had arrogated to

himself the spiritual headship in his realm. In most other respects he was

as good a Catholic as Charles, and a much better one than Francis; and yet

under stress of circumstances he was forced into common cause with the

growing party of reform in Europe, whose separation from the Church was

profoundly doctrinal, and arose from entirely different motives from those

of Henry.

The danger that threatened England at the time (early in 1539) was not

really quite so serious as it seemed; for, close as the alliance between

Charles and Francis was, old jealousies were not dead, and a joint war

against England would have revived them; whilst the Papal plan of treating

England commercially as outside the pale of civilisation would have ruined

Charles' subject and was impracticable. But, in any case, the peril was

real to Henry and Cromwell; and under the stress of it they were driven

into the attempted policy of a Protestant confederacy. At the end of

January 1539, Christopher Mont was sent to Germany with the first

overtures. He carried letters of credence to Philip of Hesse, and Hans

Frederick of Saxony, with the ostensible object of asking whether they had

come to any conclusion respecting the theological disputations held in the

previous year between their envoys and the English bishops to establish a

common doctrinal basis. This, of course, was a mere pretext, the real

object of the mission being to discover to what extent Henry could depend

upon the German Protestant princes if he were attacked by their suzerain

the Emperor. A private instruction was given to Mont by Cromwell, to

remind one of the Saxon ministers who had come to England of a former

conversation about a possible marriage between the young Duke of Cleves

and the Princess Mary; and he was to take the opportunity of finding out

all he could about the "beauty and qualities, shape, stature, and

complexion" of the elder of the two unmarried daughters of the old Duke of

Cleves, whose eldest daughter, Sybilla, had married Hans Frederick of

Saxony himself, and was as bold a Protestant as he was. At the same time

approaches were made to Christian III. of Denmark, who had joined the

Evangelical league; and gradually the forces against the Papacy were to be

knitted together. An excuse also was found to send English envoys to

Cleves itself to offer an alliance in the matter of the Duchy of Gueldres,

which the Duke of Cleves had just seized without the Emperor's connivance

or consent. Carne and Wotton, the envoys, were also to offer the hand of

the Princess Mary to the young Duke, and cautiously to hint at a marriage

between his sister Anne and Henry, if conditions were favourable; and,

like Mont in Saxony, were to close the ranks of Protestantism around the

threatened Henry, from whose Court both the imperial and French

ambassadors had now been withdrawn.

Whilst these intrigues for Protestant support on the Continent were being

carried on, and the defences of England on all sides were being

strengthened, Henry, apparently for the purpose of disarming the Catholic

elements, and proving that, apart from the Papal submission, he was as

good a Catholic as any, forced through Parliament (May 1539) the

extraordinary statute called the Six Articles, or the Bloody Statute,

which threw all English Protestants into a panic. The Act was drafted on

Henry's instructions by Bishop Gardiner, and was called an "Act to abolish

diversity of opinions." The articles of faith dictated by the King to his

subjects under ferocious penalties included the main Catholic doctrine;

the real presence in the Sacrament in its fullest sense; the celibacy of

the clergy; that the administration of the Sacrament in two kinds is not

necessary; that auricular confession is compulsory, that private masses

may be said, and that vows of chastity must be kept for ever. Cranmer, who

was married and had children, dared to argue against the Bill when the

Duke of Norfolk introduced it in the House of Lords, and others of the new

bishops timidly did likewise; but they were overborne by the old bishops

and the great majority of the lay peers, influenced by their traditions

and by the peremptory arguments of the King himself. Even more important

was an Act passed in the same servile Parliament giving to the King's

proclamations the force of law; and an Act of attainder against every one,

living or dead, in England or abroad, who had opposed the King, completed

the terror under which thenceforward the country lay. Henry was now,

indeed, master of the bodies and souls of his subjects, and had reduced

them all, Protestants and Catholics alike, to a condition of abject

subjection to his mere will. The passage of these Acts, especially the Six

Articles, marks a temporarily successful attempt of the conservative

party, represented by the old bishops and the nobles under Norfolk, to

overcome the influence of Cromwell, who was forwarding the Protestant

league;[189] but to Henry the policy must in any case have seemed a good

one, as it tended to increase his personal power and prestige, and to keep

both parties dependent upon him.

Before the summer of 1539 had passed it was evident to Henry that the new

combination against him would not stand the strain of a joint attack upon

England. Charles was full of cares of his own. The Lutherans were

increasingly threatening; even his own city of Ghent had revolted, and it

was plain from his reception of Pole at Toledo that he could not proceed

to extremes against Henry. It certainly was not the intention of Francis

to do so; and the panic in England--never fully justified--passed away.

The French ambassador came back, and once more Henry's intrigues to sow

dissension between the Catholic powers went ceaselessly on. In the

circumstances it was natural that, after the passage of the Six Articles

and the resumption of diplomatic relations with France, the negotiations

with the German Protestants slackened. But the proposed marriage of Henry

with the Princess of Cleves offered too good an opportunity, as Cromwell

pointed out to him, of troubling the Emperor when he liked, to be dropped,

even though no general political league was effected with the German

Lutherans. Her brother-in-law, Hans Frederick of Saxony, was cool about

it. He said that some sort of engagement had been made by her father and

the Duke of Lorraine to marry her to the heir of the latter, but finally

in August Wotton reported from Duren that Hans Frederick would send

envoys to Cleves to propose the match, and they would then proceed to

England to close the matter. Wotton had been somewhat distrustful about

the previous engagement of Anne with the Duke of Lorraine's son, but was

assured by the Council of Cleves that it was not binding upon the

Princess, "who was free to marry as she pleased." "She has been brought

up," he writes, "with the Lady Duchess, her mother ... and in a manner

never from her elbow; the Lady Duchess being a wise lady, and one that

very straitly looketh to her children. All report her (Anne) to be of very

lowly and gentle conditions, by the which she hath so much won her

mother's favour that she is loth to suffer her to depart from her. She

occupieth her time mostly with her needle, wherewithal ... she can read

and write (Dutch); but as to French, Latin, or any other language, she

hath none. Nor yet she cannot sing nor play any instrument, for they take

it here in Germany for a rebuke, and an occasion of lightness that great

ladies should be learned or have any knowledge of music. Her wit is good,

and she will no doubt learn English soon when she puts her mind to it. I

could never hear that she is inclined to the good cheer of this country;

and marvel it were if she should, seeing that her brother ... doth so well

abstain from it. Your Grace's servant Hans Holbein hath taken the effigies

of my Lady Anne and the Lady Amelia, and hath expressed their images very

lively."[190]

Holbein was not usually a flattering painter to his sitters, and the

portrait he sent of Anne was that of a somewhat masculine and

large-featured, but handsome and intellectual young woman, with fine,

soft, contemplative brown eyes, thick lashes, and strong eyebrows. The

general appearance is dignified, though handicapped by the very unbecoming

Dutch dress of the period; and though there is nothing of the _petite_

sprightliness and soft rotundity that would be likely to attract a man of

Henry's characteristics, the Princess cannot have been ill-favoured.

Cromwell some months earlier had reported to Henry that Mont informed him

that "everybody praises the lady's beauty, both of face and body. One said

she excelled the Duchess (of Milan ?) as the golden sun did the silver

moon."[191] If the latter statement be near the truth, Anne, in her own

way, must have been quite good-looking. There was no delay or difficulty

in carrying through the arrangements for the marriage. The envoys from

Cleves and Saxony arrived in London in September, and saw Henry at

Windsor. They could offer no great dowry, for Cleves was poor; but they

would not be exacting about the appanage to be settled upon the Queen by

her husband, to whom they left the decision of the sum; and the other

covenants as to the eventual succession to her brother's duchy, in case of

his death without heirs, were to be the same as those under which her

elder sister married Hans Frederick.

This was the sort of spirit that pleased Henry in negotiators, and with

such he was always disposed to be liberal. He practically waived the

dowry, and only urged that the lady should come at once, before the winter

was too far advanced. When he suggested that she should come from her home

down the Rhine through Holland, and thence by sea to England, the envoys

prayed that she might go through Germany and Flanders by land to Calais,

and so across. For, said they, by sea there will be great peril of capture

and insult by some too zealous subjects of the Emperor. "Besides, they

fear lest, the time of year being now cold and tempestuous, she might

there, though she never were so well ordered, take such cold or other

disease, considering she never was before upon the seas, as should be to

her great peril.... She is, moreover, young and beautiful; and if she

should be transported by sea they fear much how it might alter her

complexion."[192] No sooner was the marriage treaty signed than splendid

preparations were made for the reception of the King's coming bride. The

Lord Admiral (Fitzwilliam) was ordered to prepare a fleet of ten vessels

to escort her from Calais; repairs and redecorations of the royal

residences went on apace; and especially in the Queen's apartments, where

again the initials of poor Jane had to be altered to those of her

successor, and the "principal lords have bought much cloth of gold and

silk, a thing unusual for them except for some great solemnity."[193]

The conclusion of the treaty was a triumph for Cromwell and the

Protestant party in Henry's Council; and the Commissioners who signed it

reflect the fact. Cranmer, Cromwell, the Duke of Suffolk, Lord Chancellor

Audley, and Lord Admiral Fitzwilliam, were all of them inclined to the

reforming side, whilst Bishop Tunstal, though on the Catholic side, was a

personal friend of the King; and the new man, Hertford, Jane Seymour's

brother, though not one of the Commissioners, gave emphatic approval of

the match. "I am as glad," he wrote to Cromwell, "of the good resolution

(of the marriage) as ever I was of a thing since the birth of the Prince;

for I think the King's Highness could not in Christendom marry in any

place meet for his Grace's honour that should be less prejudicial to his

Majesty's succession."[194] Henry himself was in his usual vaunting mood

about the alliance. He had long desired, he said, to cement a union with

the German confederation, and could now disregard both France and the

Emperor; besides, his influence would suffice to prevent the Lutherans

from going too far in their religious innovations. As for the lady, he had

only one male child, and he was convinced that his desire for more issue

could not be better fulfilled "than with the said lady, who is of

convenient age, healthy temperament, elegant stature, and endowed with

other graces."

The news of the engagement was ill received by Francis and Charles. They

became more ostentatiously friendly than ever; and their ambassadors in

London were inseparable. When Marillac and the Emperor's temporary envoy

went together to tell Cromwell that the Emperor was so confident of the

friendship of Francis that he was riding through France from Spain to

Flanders, the English minister quite lost his composure. He was informed,

he told the ambassadors, that this meeting of the monarchs was "merely

with the view to making war on this poor King (Henry), who aimed at

nothing but peace and friendship." Ominous mutterings came, too, from

Flanders at the scant courtesy Henry had shown in throwing over the match

with the Duchess of Milan in the midst of the negotiation. Cromwell was

therefore full of anxiety, whilst the elaborate preparations were being

made in Calais and in England for the new Queen's reception. Not only was

a fresh household to be appointed, the nobility and gentry and their

retinues summoned, fine clothes galore ordered or enjoined for others, the

towns on the way from Dover to be warned of the welcome expected from

them, and the hundred details dependent upon the arrival and installation

of the King's fourth wife, but Henry himself had to be carefully handled,

to prevent the fears engendered by the attitude of his rivals causing him

to turn to the party opposed to Cromwell before the Protestant marriage

was effected.

In the meanwhile, Anne with a great train of guards and courtiers, three

hundred horsemen strong, rode from Dusseldorf towards Calais through

Cleves, Antwerp, Bruges, and Dunkirk. It was ordered that Lord Lisle, Lord

Deputy of Calais, should meet the Queen on the English frontier, near

Gravelines, and that at St. Pierre, Lord Admiral Fitzwilliam, who had a

fleet of fifty sail in the harbour, should greet her in the name of his

King, gorgeously dressed in blue velvet, smothered with gold embroidery,

and faced with crimson satin, royal blue and crimson, the King's colours,

in velvet, damask, and silk, being the universal wear, even of the sailors

and men-at-arms. The aged Duke of Suffolk and the Lord Warden were to

receive her on her landing at Dover; and at Canterbury she was to be

welcomed and entertained by Archbishop Cranmer. Norfolk and a great

company of armed nobles were to greet the new Queen on the downs beyond

Rochester; whilst the Queen's household, with Lady Margaret Douglas, the

King's niece, and the Duchess of Richmond, his daughter-in-law, were to

join her at Deptford, and the whole vast and glittering multitude were to

convey her thence to where the King's pavilions were erected for her

reception at Blackheath.[195]

In the midwinter twilight of early morning, on the 11th December 1539,

Anne's cavalcade entered the English town of Calais, and during the long

time she remained weather-bound there she was entertained as sumptuously

as the nobles and townsmen could entertain her. The day she had passed

through Dunkirk in the Emperor's dominions, just before coming to Calais,

a sermon was preached against her and all Lutherans; but with that

exception no molestation was offered to her. The ship that was to carry

her over, dressed fore and aft with silken flags, streamers, and banners,

was exhibited to her admiration by Fitzwilliam, royal salutes thundered

welcome to her, bands of martial music clashed in her honour, and banquets

and jousts were held to delight her.[196] Good sense and modesty were

shown by her in many ways at this somewhat trying time. Her principal

mentor, Chancellor Olsiliger, begged Fitzwilliam to advise her as to her

behaviour; and she herself asked him to teach her some game of cards that

the King of England usually played. He taught her a game which he calls

"Sent, which she did learn with good grace and countenance"; and she then

begged him to come to sup with her, and bring some noble folk with him to

sit with her in the German way. He told her that this was not the fashion

in England, but he accepted her invitation.

Thus Anne began betimes to prepare for what she hoped--greatly

daring--would be a happy married life in England; whilst the wind and the

waves thundering outside the harbour forbade all attempt to convey the

bride to her now expectant bridegroom. Henry had intended to keep

Christmas with unusual state at Greenwich in the company of his new wife;

but week after week slipped by, with the wind still contrary, and it was

the 27th December before a happy change of weather enabled Anne to set

sail for her new home. She had a stout heart, for the passage was a rough

though rapid one. When she landed at Deal, and thence, after a short rest,

was conducted in state to Dover Castle, the wind blew blusterously, and

the hail and winter sleet drove "continually in her Grace's face"; but she

would hear of no delay in her journey forward, "so desirous was her Grace

of reaching the King's presence." At Canterbury the citizens received her

with a great torchlight procession and peals of guns. "In her chamber were

forty or fifty gentlewomen waiting to receive her in velvet bonnets; all

of which she took very joyously, and was so glad to see the King's

subjects resorting to her so lovingly, that she forgot all the foul

weather and was very merry at supper."[197]

And so, with an evident determination to make the best of everything, Anne

rode onward, accompanied by an ever-growing cavalcade of sumptuously

bedizened folk, through Sittingbourne, and so to Rochester, where she was

lodged at the bishop's palace, and passed New Year's Day 1540. News daily

reached the King of his bride's approach, whilst he remained consumed with

impatience at Greenwich. At each successive stage of her journey forward

supple courtiers had written to Henry glowing accounts of the beauty and

elegance of the bride. Fitzwilliam from Calais had been especially

emphatic, and the King's curiosity was piqued to see the paragon he was to

marry. At length, when he knew that Anne was on the way from Sittingbourne

to Rochester, and would arrive there on New Year's Eve, he told Cromwell

that he himself, with an escort of eight gentlemen clad in grey, would

ride to Rochester incognito to get early sight of his bride, "whom he

sorely desired to see." He went, he said, "to nourish love"; and full of

hopeful anticipation, Henry on a great courser ambled over Gad's Hill from

Gravesend to Rochester soon after dawn on New Year's Day 1540, with Sir

Anthony Browne, his Master of the Horse, on one side, and Sir John Russell

on the other. It was in accordance with the chivalrous tradition that this

should be done, and that the lady should pretend to be extremely surprised

when she was informed who her visitor was; so that Anne must have made a

fair guess as to what was coming when Sir Anthony Browne, riding a few

hundred yards ahead of his master, entered her presence, and, kneeling,

told her that he had brought a New Year's gift for her. When the courtier

raised his eyes and looked critically upon the lady before him,

experienced as he was in Henry's tastes, "he was never more dismayed in

his life to see her so far unlike that which was reported."[198]

Anne was about twenty-four years of age, but looked older, and her frame

was large, bony, and masculine, which in the facial portraits that had

been sent to Henry was not indicated, and her large, low-German features,

deeply pitted with the ravages of smallpox, were, as Browne knew, the very

opposite of the type of beauty which would be likely to stimulate a gross,

unwholesome voluptuary of nearly fifty. So, with a sinking heart, he went

back to his master, not daring to prepare him for what was before him by

any hint of disparagement of the bride. As soon as Henry entered with

Russell and Browne and saw for himself, his countenance fell, and he made

a wry face, which those who knew him understood too well; and they

trembled in their shoes at what was to come of it. He nevertheless greeted

the lady politely, raising her from the kneeling position she had assumed,

and kissed her upon the cheek, passing a few minutes in conversation with

her about her long journey. He had brought with him some rich presents of

sables and other furs; but he was "so marvellously astonished and abashed"

that he had not the heart to give them to her, but sent them the next

morning with a cold message by Sir Anthony Browne.

In the night the royal barge had been brought round from Gravesend to

Rochester, and the King returned to Greenwich in the morning by water. He

had hardly passed another word with Anne since the first meeting, though

they had supped together, and it was with a sulky, frowning face that he

took his place in the shelter of his galley. Turning to Russell, he asked,

"Do you think this woman so fair or of such beauty as report has made

her?" Russell, courtier-like, fenced with the question by feigning to

misunderstand it. "I should hardly take her to be fair," he replied, "but

of brown complexion." "Alas!" continued the King, "whom should men trust?

I promise you I see no such thing in her as hath been showed unto me of

her, and am ashamed that men have so praised her as they have done. I like

her not."[199] To Browne he was quite as outspoken. "I see nothing in

this woman as men report of her," he said angrily, "and I am surprised

that wise men should make such reports as they have done." Whereat Browne,

who knew that his brother-in-law, Fitzwilliam, was one of the "wise men"

referred to, scented danger and was silent. The English ladies, too, who

had accompanied Anne on the road began to whisper in confidence to their

spouses that Anne's manners were coarse, and that she would never suit the

King's fastidious taste.

But he who had most to lose and most to fear was Cromwell. It was he who

had drawn and driven his master into the Protestant friendship against the

Emperor and the Pope, of which the marriage was to be the pledge, and he

had repeated eagerly for months the inflated praises of Anne's beauty sent

by his agents and friends in order to pique Henry to the union. He knew

that vigilant enemies of himself and his policy were around him, watching

for their opportunity, Norfolk and the older nobles, the Pope's bishops,

and, above all, able, ambitious Stephen Gardiner, now sulking at

Winchester, determined to supplant him if he could. When, on Friday the

2nd January, Henry entered his working closet at Greenwich after his water

journey from Rochester, Cromwell asked him "how he liked the Lady Anne."

The King answered gloomily, "Nothing so well as she was spoken of," adding

that if he had known before as much as he knew then, she should never have

come within his realm. In the grievous self-pity usual with him in his

perplexity, he turned to Cromwell, the man hitherto so fertile in

expedients, and wailed, "What is the remedy?"[200] Cromwell, for once at

a loss, could only express his grief, and say he knew of none. In very

truth it was too late now to stop the state reception; for preparations

had been ordered for such a pageant as had rarely been seen in England.

Cromwell had intended it for his own triumph, and as marking the

completeness of his victory over his opponents. Once more ambition

o'erleaped itself, and the day that was to establish Cromwell's supremacy

sealed his doom.

What Anne thought of the situation is not on record. She had seen little

of the world, outside the coarse boorishness of a petty low-German court;

she was neither educated nor naturally refined, and she probably looked

upon the lumpishness of her lover as an ordinary thing. In any case, she

bated none of her state and apparent contentment, as she rode gorgeously

bedight with her great train towards Greenwich. At the foot of Shooter's

Hill there had been erected an imposing pavilion of cloth of gold, and

divers other tents warmed with fires of perfumed wood; and here a company

of ladies awaited the coming of the Queen on Saturday, 3rd January 1540. A

broad way was cleared from the pavilion, across Woolwich Common and

Blackheath, for over two miles, to the gates of Greenwich Park; and the

merchants and Corporation of London joined with the King's retinue in

lining each side of this long lane. Cromwell had recently gained the

goodwill of foreigners settled in London by granting them exemption from

special taxation for a term of years, and he had claimed, as some return,

that they should make the most of this day of triumph. Accordingly, the

German merchants of the Steelyard, the Venetians, the Spaniards, the

French, and the rest of them, donned new velvet coats and jaunty crimson

caps with white feathers, each master with a smartly clad servant behind

him, and so stood each side of the way to do honour to the bride at the

Greenwich end of the route. Then came the English merchants, the

Corporation of London, the knights and gentlemen who had been bidden from

the country to do honour to their new Queen, the gentlemen pensioners, the

halberdiers, and, around the tent, the nobler courtiers and Queen's

household, all brave in velvet and gold chains.[201] Behind the ranks of

gentlemen and servitors there was ample room and verge enough upon the

wide heath for the multitudes who came to gape and cheer King Harry's new

wife; more than a little perplexed in many cases as to the minimum amount

of enthusiasm which would be accepted as seemly. Cromwell himself

marshalled the ranks on either side, "running up and down with a staff in

his hand, for all the world as if he had been a running postman," as an

eye-witness tells us.

It was midday before the Queen's procession rode down Shooter's Hill to

the tents, where she was met by her official household and greeted with a

long Latin oration which she did not understand, whilst she sat in her

chariot. Then heartily kissing the great ladies sent to welcome her, she

alighted and entered the tent to rest and warm herself over the perfumed

fires, and to don even more magnificent raiment than that she wore. When

she was ready for her bridegroom's coming she must have been a blaze of

magnificence. She wore a wide skirt of cloth of gold with a raised pattern

in bullion and no train, and her head was covered first with a close cap

and then a round cap covered with pearls and fronted with black velvet;

whilst her bodice was one glittering mass of precious stones. When swift

messengers brought news that the King was coming, Anne mounted at the door

of the tent a beautiful white palfrey; and surrounded by her servitors,

each bearing upon his golden coat the black lion of Cleves, and followed

by her train, she set forth to meet her husband.

Henry, unwieldy and lame as he was with a running ulcer in the leg, was as

vain and fond of pomp as ever, and outdid his bride in splendour. His coat

was of purple velvet cut like a frock, embroidered all over with a flat

gold pattern interlined with narrow gold braid, and with gold lace laid

crosswise over it all. A velvet overcoat surmounted the gorgeous garment,

lined also with gold tissue, the sleeves and breast held together with

great buttons of diamonds, rubies, and pearls. His sword and belt were

covered with emeralds, and his bonnet and under-cap were "so rich in

jewels that few men could value them"; whilst across his shoulders he wore

a baldrick, composed of precious stones and pearls, that was the wonder of

all beholders. The fat giant thus bedizened bestrode a great war-horse

to match, and almost equally magnificent; and, preceded by heralds and

trumpeters, followed by the great officers, the royal household and the

bishops, and accompanied by the Duke Philip of Bavaria, just betrothed to

the Princess Mary, Henry rode through the long lane of his velvet-clad

admirers to meet Anne, hard by the cross upon Blackheath. When she

approached him, he doffed his jewelled bonnet and bowed low; and then

embraced her, whilst she, with every appearance of delight and duty,

expressed her pleasure at meeting him. Thus, together, with their great

cavalcades united, over five thousand horsemen strong, they rode in the

waning light of a midwinter afternoon to Greenwich; and, as one who saw it

but knew not the tragedy that lurked behind the splendour, exclaimed, "Oh!

what a sight was this to see, so goodly a Prince and so noble a King to

ride with so fair a lady of so goodly a stature, and so womanly a

countenance, and especial of so good qualities. I think that no creature

could see them but his heart rejoiced."[202]

[Illustration: _ANNE OF CLEVES_

_From a portrait by a German artist in St. John's College, Oxford_]

There was one heart, at all events, that did not rejoice, and that was

Henry's. He went heavily through the ceremony of welcoming home his bride

in the great hall at Greenwich, and then led her to her chamber; but no

sooner had he got quit of her, than retiring to his own room he summoned

Cromwell. "Well!" he said, "is it not as I told you? Say what they will,

she is nothing like so fair as she was reported to be. She is well and

seemly, but nothing else." Cromwell, confused, could only mumble something

about her having a queenly manner. But Henry wanted a way out of his

bargain rather than reconciliation to it; and he ordered Cromwell to

summon the Council at once--Norfolk, Suffolk, Cromwell, Cranmer,

Fitzwilliam, and Tunstal--to consider the prior engagement made between

Anne and the Duke of Lorraine's son.[203] The question had already been

discussed and disposed of, and the revival of it thus at the eleventh hour

shows how desperate Henry was. The Council assembled immediately, and

summoned the German envoys who had negotiated the marriage and were now in

attendance on Anne. The poor men were thunderstruck at the point of an

impediment to the marriage being raised then, and begged to be allowed to

think the matter over till the next morning, Sunday. When they met the

Council again in the morning, they could only protest that the prior

covenant had only been a betrothal, which had never taken effect, and had

been formally annulled. If there was any question about it, however, they

offered to remain as prisoners in England until the original deed of

revocation was sent from Cleves.

When this answer was carried to Henry he broke out angrily that he was not

being well treated, and upbraided Cromwell for not finding a loophole for

escape. He did not wish to marry the woman, he said. "If she had not come

so far, and such great preparations made, and for fear of making a ruffle

in the world--of driving her brother into the hands of the Emperor and

the French King--he never would marry her." Cromwell was apparently afraid

to encourage him in the idea of repudiation, and said nothing; and after

dinner the King again summoned the Council to his presence. To them he

bitterly complained of having been deceived. Would the lady, he asked,

make a formal protestation before notaries that she was free from all

contracts? Of course she would, and did, as soon as she was asked; but

Henry's idea in demanding this is evident. If she had refused it would

give a pretext for delay, but if she did as desired, and by any quibble

the prior engagement was found to be valid, her protestation to the

contrary would be good grounds for a divorce. But still Henry would much

rather not have married her at all. "Oh! is there no other remedy?" he

asked despairingly on Monday, after Anne had made her protestation. "Must

I needs against my will put my neck into the yoke?" Cromwell could give

him no comfort, and left him gloomy at the prospect of going through the

ceremony on the morrow. On Tuesday morning, when he was apparelled for the

wedding, as usual in a blaze of magnificence of crimson satin and cloth of

gold, Cromwell entered his chamber on business. "My lord," said Henry, "if

it were not to satisfy the world and my realm, I would not do what I must

do this day for any earthly thing." But withal he went through it as best

he might, though with heavy heart and gloomy countenance, and the

unfortunate bride, we are told, was remarked to be "demure and sad," as

well she might be, when her husband and Cranmer placed upon her finger the

wedding-ring with the ominous inscription, "God send me well to keep."

Early the next morning Cromwell entered the King's chamber between hope

and fear, and found Henry frowning and sulky. "How does your Grace like

the Queen?" he asked. Henry grumblingly, and not quite relevantly, replied

that he, Cromwell, was not everybody; and then he broke out, "Surely, my

lord, as you know, I liked her not well before, but now I like her much

worse." With an incredible grossness, and want of common decency, he then

went into certain details of his wife's physical qualities that had

disgusted him and turned him against her. He did not believe, from certain

peculiarities that he described, that she was a maid, he said; but so far

as he was concerned, he was so "struck to the heart" that he had left her

as good a maid as he had found her.[204] Nor was the King more reticent

with others. He was free with his details to the gentlemen of his chamber,

Denny, Heneage, and others, as to the signs which it pleased him to

consider suspicious as touching his wife's previous virtue, and protested

that he never could, or would, consummate the marriage; though he

professed later that for months after the wedding he did his best to

overcome his repugnance, and lived constantly in contact with his wife.

But he never lost sight of the hope of getting free. If he did not find

means soon to do so, he said, he should have no more issue. His conscience

told him--that tender conscience of his--that Anne was not his legal wife;

and he turned to Cromwell for a remedy, and found none: for Cromwell knew

that the breaking up of the Protestant union, upon which he had staked his

future, would inevitably mean now the rise of his rivals and his own ruin.

He fought stoutly for his position, though Norfolk and Gardiner were often

now at the King's ear. His henchman, Dr. Barnes, who had gone to Germany

as envoy during the marriage negotiations, was a Protestant, and in a

sermon on justification by faith he violently attacked Gardiner. The

latter, in spite of Cromwell and Cranmer, secured from the King an order

that Barnes should humbly and publicly recant. He did so at Easter at the

Spital, but at once repeated the offence, and he and two other clergymen

who thought like him were burnt for heresy. Men began to shake their heads

and look grave now as they spoke of Cromwell and Cranmer; but the

Secretary stood sturdily, and in May seemed as if he would turn the tables

upon his enemies. Once, indeed, he threatened the Duke of Norfolk roughly

with the King's displeasure, and at the opening of Parliament he took the

lead as usual, expressing the King's sorrow at the religious bitterness in

the country, and demanding large supplies for the purposes of national

defence.

But, though still apparently as powerful as ever, and more than ever

overbearing, he dared not yet propose to the King a way out of the

matrimonial tangle. Going home to Austin Friars from the sitting of

Parliament on the 7th June, he told his new colleague, Wriothesley, that

the thing that principally troubled him was that the King did not like

the Queen, and that his marriage had never been consummated. Wriothesley,

whose sympathies were then Catholic, suggested that "some way might be

devised for the relief of the King." "Ah!" sighed Cromwell, who knew what

such a remedy would mean to him, "but it is a great matter." The next day

Wriothesley returned to the subject, and begged Cromwell to devise some

means of relief for the King: "for if he remained in this grief and

trouble they should all smart for it some day." "Yes," replied Cromwell,

"it is true; but it is a great matter." "Marry!" exclaimed Wriothesley,

out of patience, "I grant that, but let a remedy be searched for." But

Cromwell had no remedy yet but one that would ruin himself, and that he

dared not propose, so he shook his head sadly and changed the

subject.[205]

The repudiation of Anne was, as Cromwell said, a far greater matter than

at first sight appeared. The plan to draw into one confederation for the

objects of England the German Protestants, the King of Denmark, and the

Duke of Cleves, whose seizure of Guelderland had brought him in opposition

to the Emperor, was the most threatening that had faced Charles for years.

His own city of Ghent was in open revolt, and Francis after all was but a

fickle ally. If once more the French King turned from him and made friends

with the Turk and the Lutherans, then indeed would the imperial power have

cause to tremble and Henry to rejoice. Cromwell had striven hard to cement

the Protestant combination; but again and again he had been thwarted by

his rivals. The passage of the Six Articles against his wish, although the

execution of the Act was suspended at Cromwell's instance, had caused the

gravest distrust on the part of Hans Frederick and the Landgrave of Hesse;

and if Henry were encouraged to repudiate his German wife, not only would

her brother--already in negotiation with the imperial agents for the

investiture of Gueldres, and his marriage with the Emperor's niece, the

Duchess of Milan--be at once driven into opposition to England, but Hans

Frederick and Hesse would also abandon Henry to the tender mercies of his

enemies.

The only way to avoid such a disaster following upon the repudiation of

Anne was first to drive a wedge of distrust between Charles and Francis,

now in close confederacy. In January the Emperor had surprised the world

by his boldness in traversing France to his Flemish dominions. He was

feasted splendidly by Francis, and escaped unbetrayed; but during his stay

in France desperate attempts were made by Wyatt, Henry's ambassador with

Charles, Bonner, the ambassador in France, and by the Duke of Norfolk, who

went in February on a special mission, to sow discord between the allied

sovereigns, and not without some degree of success. Charles during his

stay in France was badgered by Wyatt into saying some hasty words, which

were deliberately twisted by Norfolk into a menace to France and England

alike. Francis was reminded with irritating iteration that Charles had

plenty of smiles and soft words for his French friends, but avoided

keeping his promises about the cession of Milan or anything else. So in

France those who were in favour of the imperial alliance, the

Montmorencies and the Queen, declined in their hold over Francis, and

their opponents, the Birons, the Queen of Navarre, Francis' sister, and

the Duchess of Etampes, his mistress, planned with Henry's agents for an

understanding with England. This, as may be supposed, was not primarily

Cromwell's policy, but that of Norfolk and his friends, because its

success would inevitably mean the conciliation of the German princes and

Cleves by the Emperor, and the break-up of the Protestant confederacy and

England, by which Cromwell must now stand or fall.

As early as April, Marillac, the French ambassador in England, foretold

the great change that was coming. The arrest of Barnes, Garrard, and

Jerome, for anti-Catholic teaching, and the persecutions everywhere for

those who offended ever so slightly in the same way, presaged Cromwell's

fall. "Cranmer and Cromwell," writes Marillac, "do not know where they

are. Within a few days there will be seen in this country a great change

in many things, which this King begins to make in his ministers, recalling

those he had disgraced, and degrading those he had raised. Cromwell is

tottering: for all those now recalled were dismissed at his request, and

bear him no little grudge--amongst others, the Bishops of Winchester

(_i.e._ Gardiner), Durham, and Bath, men of great learning and experience,

who are now summoned to the Privy Council. It is said that Tunstal (_i.e._

Durham) will be Vicar-General, and Bath Privy Seal, which are Cromwell's

principal offices.... If he holds his own (_i.e._ Cromwell), it will only

be because of his close assiduity in business, though he is very rude in

his demeanour. He does nothing without consulting the King, and is

desirous of doing justice, especially to foreigners."

This was somewhat premature, but it gives a good idea of the process that

was going on. There is no doubt that Cromwell believed in his ability to

keep his footing politically; for he was anything but rigid in his

principles, and if the friendship with France initiated by his rivals had,

as it showed signs of doing, developed into an alliance that would enable

Henry both to dismiss his fears of the Emperor and throw over the

Protestants, he would probably have accepted the situation, and have

proposed a means for Henry to get rid of his distasteful wife. But this

opportunism did not suit his opponents in Henry's Council. They wanted to

get rid of the man quite as much as they did his policy; for his insolence

had stung them to the quick, great nobles as most of them were, and he the

son of a blacksmith. Some other means, therefore, than a mere change of

policy was necessary to dislodge the strong man who guided the King.

Parliament had met on the 12th April, and it was managed with Cromwell's

usual boldness and success.[206] As if to mark that his great ability was

still paramount, he was made Earl of Essex and Great Chamberlain of

England in the following week.

But the struggle in the Council, and around the King, continued unabated.

Henry was warned by Cromwell's enemies of the danger of allowing religious

freedom to be carried too far, and of thus giving the Catholic powers an

excuse for executing the Pope's decree of deprivation against him. He was

reminded that the Emperor and Francis were still friends, that the latter

was suspiciously preparing for war, and that Henry's brother-in-law the

Duke of Cleves' quarrel with the Emperor might drag England into war for

the sake of a beggarly German dukedom of no importance or value to her. On

the other hand, Cromwell would point out to Henry the disobedience and

insolence of the Catholics who questioned his spiritual supremacy, and

cause Churchmen who advocated a reconciliation with Rome to be imprisoned.

Clearly such a position could not continue indefinitely, and Norfolk

anticipated Cromwell by playing the final trump card--that of arousing

Henry's personal fears. The word treason and a hint that anything could be

intended against his person always brought Henry to heel. What the exact

accusation against Cromwell was no one knows, though it was whispered at

the time that the nobles had told Henry that Cromwell had amassed great

stores of money and arms, and maintained a vast number of dependants (1500

men, it was asserted, wore his livery), with a sinister object; some said

to marry the Princess Mary and make himself King; and that he had received

a great bribe from the Duke of Cleves and the Protestants to bring about

the marriage of Anne. Others said that he had boasted that he was to

receive a crown abroad from a foreign potentate (_i.e._, the Emperor), and

that he had talked of defending the new doctrines at the sword's

point.[207] No such accusations, however, are on official record; and

there is no doubt that the real reason for his arrest was the animosity of

the aristocratic and Catholic party against him, acting upon the King's

fears and his desire to get rid of Anne of Cleves.

On the 9th June Parliament was still sitting, discussing the religious

question with a view to the settlement of some uniform doctrine. The Lords

of the Council left the Chamber to go across to Whitehall to dinner before

midday; and as they wended their way across the great courtyard of

Westminster a high wind carried away Cromwell's flat cap from his head. It

was the custom when one gentleman was even accidentally uncovered for

those who were with him also to doff their bonnets. But, as an attendant

ran and recovered Cromwell's flying headgear on that occasion, the haughty

minister looked grimly round and saw all his colleagues, once so humble,

holding their own caps upon their heads. "A high wind indeed must this

be," sneered Cromwell, "to blow my cap off, and for you to need hold yours

on." He must have known that ill foreboded; for during dinner no one spoke

to him. The meal finished, Cromwell went to the Council Chamber with the

rest, and, as was his custom, stood at a window apart to hear appeals and

applications to him, and when these were disposed of he turned to the

table to take his usual seat with the rest. On this occasion Norfolk

stopped him, and told him that it was not meet that traitors should sit

amongst loyal gentlemen. "I am no traitor!" shouted Cromwell, dashing his

cap upon the ground; but the captain of the guard was at the door, and

still protesting the wretched man was hurried to the Water Gate and rowed

swiftly to the Tower, surrounded by halberdiers, Norfolk as he left the

Council Chamber tearing off the fallen minister's badge of the Garter as a

last stroke of ignominy.

Cromwell knew he was doomed, for by the iniquitous Act that he himself had

forged for the ruin of others, he might be attainted and condemned legally

without his presence or defence. "Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!" he wrote to the

King in his agony; but for him there was as little mercy as he had shown

to others. His death was a foregone conclusion, for Henry's fears had been

aroused: but Cromwell had to be kept alive long enough for him to furnish

such information as would provide a plausible pretext for the repudiation

of Anne. He was ready to do all that was asked of him--to swear to

anything the King wished. He testified that he knew the marriage had never

been consummated, and never would be; that the King was dissatisfied from

the first, and had complained that the evidence of the nullification of

the prior contract with the heir of Lorraine was insufficient; that the

King had never given full consent to the marriage, but had gone through

the ceremony under compulsion of circumstances, and with mental

reservation. When all this was sworn to, Cromwell's hold upon the world

was done. Upon evidence now unknown he was condemned for treason and

heresy without being heard in his own defence, and on the 28th July 1540

he stood, a sorry figure, upon the scaffold in the Tower. He had been a

sinner, he confessed, and had travailed after the things of this world;

but he fervently avowed that he was a good Catholic and no heretic, and

had harboured no thought of evil towards his sovereign. But protestations

availed not; and his head, the cleverest head in England, was pitiably

hacked off by a bungling headsman. Before that happened, the repudiation

of Anne of Cleves was complete, and a revival of the aristocratic and

Catholic influence in England was an accomplished fact.