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[Transcriber's note: A small number of typographical errors found in the
original, printed book have been corrected; neither the language nor the
spelling has been modernized. There are two chapters numbered thirteen;
they have been labeled XIIIa and XIIIb.]
[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH In the dress in which she went to St
Pauls, to return thanks for the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Engraved
by Bond, from the extremely rare print by Crispin de Passe, after a
drawing by Isaac Oliver.]
MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH
BY LUCY AIKIN
IN TWO VOLUMES.
(combined)
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN,
PATERNOSTER ROW.
1818.
PRINTED BY RICHARD AND ARTHUR TAYLOR, SHOE-LANE.
PREFACE.
In the literature of our country, however copious, the eye of the
curious student may still detect important deficiencies.
We possess, for example, many and excellent histories, embracing every
period of our domestic annals;--biographies, general and particular,
which appear to have placed on record the name of every private
individual justly entitled to such commemoration;--and numerous and
extensive collections of original letters, state-papers and other
historical and antiquarian documents;--whilst our comparative penury is
remarkable in royal lives, in court histories, and especially in that
class which forms the glory of French literature,--memoir.
To supply in some degree this want, as it affects the person and reign
of one of the most illustrious of female and of European sovereigns, is
the intention of the work now offered with much diffidence to the
public.
Its plan comprehends a detailed view of the private life of Elizabeth
from the period of her birth; a view of the domestic history of her
reign; memoirs of the principal families of the nobility and
biographical anecdotes of the celebrated characters who composed her
court; besides notices of the manners, opinions and literature of the
reign.
Such persons as may have made it their business or their entertainment
to study very much in detail the history of the age of Elizabeth, will
doubtless be aware that in the voluminous collections of Strype, in the
edited Burleigh, Sidney, and Talbot papers, in the Memoirs of Birch, in
various collections of letters, in the chronicles of the times,--so
valuable for those vivid pictures of manners which the pen of a
contemporary unconsciously traces,--in the Annals of Camden, the
Progresses of Nichols, and other large and laborious works which it
would be tedious here to enumerate, a vast repertory existed of curious
and interesting facts seldom recurred to for the composition of books of
lighter literature, and possessing with respect to a great majority of
readers the grace of novelty. Of these and similar works of reference,
as well as of a variety of others, treating directly or indirectly on
the biography, the literature, and the manners of the period, a large
collection has been placed under the eyes of the author, partly by the
liberality of her publishers, partly by the kindness of friends.
In availing herself of their contents, she has had to encounter in full
force the difficulties attendant on such a task; those of weighing and
comparing authorities, of reconciling discordant statements, of bringing
insulated facts to bear upon each other, and of forming out of materials
irregular in their nature and abundant almost to excess, a compact and
well-proportioned structure.
How far her abilities and her diligence may have proved themselves
adequate to the undertaking, it remains with a candid public to decide.
Respecting the selection of topics it seems necessary however to remark,
that it has been the constant endeavour of the writer to preserve to her
work the genuine character of Memoirs, by avoiding as much as possible
all encroachments on the peculiar province of history;--that amusement,
of a not illiberal kind, has been consulted at least equally with
instruction:--and that on subjects of graver moment, a correct sketch
has alone been attempted.
By a still more extensive course of reading and research, an additional
store of anecdotes and observations might unquestionably have been
amassed; but it is hoped that of those assembled in the following pages,
few will be found to rest on dubious or inadequate authority; and that a
copious choice of materials, relatively to the intended compass of the
work, will appear to have superseded the temptation to useless
digression, or to prolix and trivial detail.
The orthography of all extracts from the elder writers has been
modernized, and their punctuation rendered more distinct; in other
respects reliance may be placed on their entire fidelity.
MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.
VOL. I.
CHAPTER I.
1533 TO 1536.
Birth of Elizabeth.--Circumstances attending the marriage of her
parents.--Public entry of Anne Boleyn into London.--Pageants
exhibited.--Baptism of Elizabeth.--Eminent persons present.--Proposal of
marriage between Elizabeth and a French prince.--Progress of the
reformation.--Henry persecutes both parties.--Death of Catherine of
Arragon.--Disgrace of Anne Boleyn.--Her death.--Confesses an obstacle to
her marriage.--Particulars on this subject.--Elizabeth declared
illegitimate.--Letter of lady Bryan respecting her.--The king marries
Jane Seymour.
On the 7th of September 1533, at the royal palace of Greenwich in Kent,
was born, under circumstances as peculiar as her after-life proved
eventful and illustrious, ELIZABETH daughter of king Henry VIII. and his
queen Anne Boleyn.
Delays and difficulties equally grievous to the impetuous temper of the
man and the despotic habits of the prince, had for years obstructed
Henry in the execution of his favourite project of repudiating, on the
plea of their too near alliance, a wife who had ceased to find favor in
his sight, and substituting on her throne the youthful beauty who had
captivated his imagination. At length his passion and his impatience had
arrived at a pitch capable of bearing down every obstacle. With that
contempt of decorum which he displayed so remarkably in some former, and
many later transactions of his life, he caused his private marriage with
Anne Boleyn to precede the sentence of divorce which he had resolved
that his clergy should pronounce against Catherine of Arragon; and no
sooner had this judicial ceremony taken place, than the new queen was
openly exhibited as such in the face of the court and the nation.
An unusual ostentation of magnificence appears to have attended the
celebration of these august nuptials. The fondness of the king for pomp
and pageantry was at all times excessive, and on this occasion his love
and his pride would equally conspire to prompt an extraordinary display.
Anne, too, a vain, ambitious, and light-minded woman, was probably
greedy of this kind of homage from her princely lover; and the very
consciousness of the dubious, inauspicious, or disgraceful circumstances
attending their union, might secretly augment the anxiety of the royal
pair to dazzle and impose by the magnificence of their public
appearance. Only once before, since the Norman conquest, had a king of
England stooped from his dignity to elevate a private gentlewoman and a
subject to a partnership of his bed and throne; and the bitter
animosities between the queen's relations on one side, and the princes
of the blood and great nobles on the other, which had agitated the reign
of Edward IV., and contributed to bring destruction on the heads of his
helpless orphans, stood as a strong warning against a repetition of the
experiment.
The unblemished reputation and amiable character of Henry's "some-time
wife," had long procured for her the love and respect of the people; her
late misfortunes had engaged their sympathy, and it might be feared that
several unfavorable points of comparison would suggest themselves
between the high-born and high-minded Catherine and her present
rival--once her humble attendant--whose long-known favor with the king,
whose open association with him at Calais, whither she had attended him,
whose private marriage of uncertain date, and already advanced
pregnancy, afforded so much ground for whispered censures.
On the other hand, the personal qualities of the king gave him great
power over popular opinion. The manly beauty of his countenance, the
strength and agility which in the chivalrous exercises of the time
rendered him victorious over all competitors; the splendor with which he
surrounded himself; his bounty; the popular frankness of his manners,
all conspired to render him, at this period of his life, an object of
admiration rather than of dread to his subjects; while the respect
entertained for his talents and learning, and for the conscientious
scruples respecting his first marriage which he felt or feigned, mingled
so much of deference in their feelings towards him, as to check all
hasty censures of his conduct. The protestant party, now considerable
by zeal and numbers, foresaw too many happy results to their cause from
the circumstances of his present union, to scrutinize with severity the
motives which had produced it. The nation at large, justly dreading a
disputed succession, with all its long-experienced evils, in the event
of Henry's leaving behind him no offspring but a daughter whom he had
lately set aside on the ground of illegitimacy, rejoiced in the prospect
of a male heir to the crown. The populace of London, captivated, as
usual, by the splendors of a coronation, were also delighted with the
youth, beauty, and affability of the new queen.
The solemn entry therefore of Anne into the city of London was greeted
by the applause of the multitude; and it was probably the genuine voice
of public feeling, which, in saluting her queen of England, wished her,
how much in vain! a long and prosperous life.
The pageants displayed in the streets of London on this joyful occasion,
are described with much minuteness by our chroniclers, and afford ample
indications that the barbarism of taste which permitted an incongruous
mixture of classical mythology with scriptural allusions, was at its
height in the learned reign of our eighth Henry. Helicon and Mount
Parnassus appeared on one side; St. Anne, and Mary the wife of Cleophas
with her children, were represented on the other. Here the three Graces
presented the queen with a golden apple by the hands of their orator
Mercury; there the four cardinal Virtues promised, in set speeches, that
they would always be aiding and comforting to her.
On the Sunday after her public entry, a day not at this period regarded
as improper for the performance of such a ceremonial, Henry caused his
queen to be crowned at Westminster with great solemnity; an honor which
he never thought proper to confer on any of her successors.
In the sex of the child born to them a few months afterwards, the hopes
of the royal pair must doubtless have sustained a severe disappointment:
but of this sentiment nothing was suffered to appear in the treatment of
the infant, whom her father was anxious to mark out as his only
legitimate offspring and undoubted heir to the crown.
She was destined to bear the auspicious name of Elizabeth, in memory of
her grandmother, that heiress of the house of York whose marriage with
the earl of Richmond, then Henry VII., had united the roses, and given
lasting peace to a country so long rent by civil discord. The
unfortunate Mary, now in her sixteenth year, was stripped of the title
of princess of Wales, which she had borne from her childhood, that it
might adorn a younger sister; one too whose birth her interest, her
religion, and her filial affection for an injured mother, alike taught
her to regard as base and infamous.
A public and princely christening served still further to attest the
importance attached to this new member of the royal family.
By the king's special command, Cranmer archbishop of Canterbury stood
godfather to the princess; and Shakespeare, by a fiction equally
poetical and courtly, has represented him as breaking forth on this
memorable occasion into an animated vaticination of the glories of the
"maiden reign." Happy was it for the peace of mind of the noble
personages there assembled, that no prophet was empowered at the same
time to declare how few of them should live to share its splendors; how
awfully large a proportion of their number should fall, or behold their
nearest connexions falling, untimely victims of the jealous tyranny of
Henry himself, or of the convulsions and persecutions of the two
troubled reigns destined to intervene before those halcyon days which
they were taught to anticipate!
For the purpose of illustrating the truth of this remark, and at the
same time of introducing to the reader the most distinguished personages
of Henry's court, several of whom will afterwards be found exerting
different degrees of influence on the character or fortunes of the
illustrious subject of this work, it may be worth while to enumerate in
regular order the performers in this august ceremonial. The
circumstantial Holinshed, to whom we are indebted for their names and
offices, will at the same time furnish some of those minute particulars
which serve to bring the whole pompous scene before the eye of fancy.
Early in the afternoon, the lord-mayor and corporation of London, who
had been summoned to attend, took boat for Greenwich, where they found
many lords, knights, and gentlemen assembled. The whole way from the
palace to the friery was strown with green rushes, and the walls were
hung with tapestry, as was the Friers' church in which the ceremony was
performed.
A silver font with a crimson canopy was placed in the middle of the
church; and the child being brought into the hall, the long procession
set forward. It began with citizens walking two-and-two, and ended with
barons, bishops, and earls. Then came, bearing the gilt basins, Henry
earl of Essex, the last of the ancient name of Bourchier who bore the
title. He was a splendid nobleman, distinguished in the martial games
and gorgeous pageantries which then amused the court: he also boasted of
a royal lineage, being sprung from Thomas of Woodstock, youngest son of
Edward III.; and perhaps he was apprehensive lest this distinction might
hereafter become as fatal to himself as it had lately proved to the
unfortunate duke of Buckingham. But he perished a few years after by a
fall from his horse; and leaving no male issue, the king, to the disgust
of this great family, conferred the title on the low-bred Cromwel, then
his favorite minister.
The salt was borne by Henry marquis of Dorset, the unfortunate father of
lady Jane Grey; who, after receiving the royal pardon for his share in
the criminal plot for setting the crown on the head of his daughter,
again took up arms in the rebellion of Wyat, and was brought to expiate
this treason on the scaffold.
William Courtney marquis of Exeter followed with the taper of virgin
wax; a nobleman who had the misfortune to be very nearly allied to the
English throne; his mother being a daughter of Edward IV. He was at this
time in high favor with the king his cousin, who, after setting aside
his daughter Mary, had even declared him heir-apparent, to the
prejudice of his own sisters: but three years after he fell a victim to
the jealousy of the king, on a charge of corresponding with his
proscribed kinsman cardinal Pole: his honors and estates were forfeited;
and his son, though still a child, was detained in close custody.
The chrism was borne by lady Mary Howard, the beautiful daughter of the
duke of Norfolk; who lived not only to behold, but, by the evidence
which she gave on his trial, to assist in the most unmerited
condemnation of her brother, the gallant and accomplished earl of Surry.
The king, by a trait of royal arrogance, selected this lady, descended
from our Saxon monarchs and allied to all the first nobility, for the
wife of his base-born son created duke of Richmond; but it does not
appear that the spirit of the Howards was high enough in this reign to
feel the insult as it deserved.
The royal infant, wrapped in a mantle of purple velvet, having a long
train furred with ermine, was carried by one of her godmothers, the
dowager-duchess of Norfolk. Anne Boleyn was this lady's
step-grand-daughter: but in this alliance with royalty she had little
cause to exult; still less in the closer one which was afterwards formed
for her by the elevation of her own grand-daughter Catherine Howard. On
discovery of the ill conduct of this queen, the aged duchess was
overwhelmed with disgrace; she was even declared guilty of misprision of
treason, and committed to custody, but was released by the king after
the blood of Catherine and her paramours had quenched his fury.
The dowager-marchioness of Dorset was the other godmother at the
font:--of the four sons of this lady, three perished on the scaffold;
her grand-daughter lady Jane Grey shared the same fate; and the
surviving son died a prisoner during the reign of Elizabeth, for the
offence of distributing a pamphlet asserting the title of the Suffolk
line to the crown.
The marchioness of Exeter was the godmother at the confirmation, who had
not only the affliction to see her husband brought to an untimely end,
and her only son wasting his youth in captivity, but, being herself
attainted of high treason some time afterwards, underwent a long and
arbitrary imprisonment.
On either hand of the duchess of Norfolk walked the dukes of Norfolk and
Suffolk, the only nobles of that rank then existing in England.
Their names occur in conjunction on every public occasion, and in almost
every important transaction, civil and military, of the reign of Henry
VIII., but the termination of their respective careers was strongly
contrasted. The duke of Suffolk had the extraordinary good fortune never
to lose that favor with his master which he had gained as Charles
Brandon, the partner of his youthful pleasures. What was a still more
extraordinary instance of felicity, his marriage with the king's sister
brought to him neither misfortunes nor perils, and he did not live to
witness those which overtook his grand-daughters. He died in peace,
lamented by a sovereign who knew his worth.
The duke of Norfolk, on the contrary, was powerful enough by birth and
connexions to impress Henry with fears for the tranquillity of his son's
reign. The memory of former services was sacrificed to present alarm.
Almost with his last breath he ordered his old and faithful servant to
the scaffold; but even Henry was no longer absolute on his death-bed.
For once he was disobeyed, and Norfolk survived him; but the long years
of his succeeding captivity were poorly compensated by a brief and tardy
restoration to liberty and honors under Mary.
One of the child's train-bearers was the countess of Kent. This was
probably the widow of the second earl of that title and of the name of
Grey: she must therefore have been the daughter of the earl of Pembroke,
a zealous Yorkist who was slain fighting in the cause of Edward IV.
Henry VIII. was doubtless aware that his best hereditary title to the
crown was derived from his mother, and during his reign the Yorkist
families enjoyed at least an equal share of favor with the Lancastrians,
whom his father had almost exclusively countenanced.
Thomas Boleyn earl of Wiltshire, the proud and happy grandfather of the
princely infant, supported the train on one side. It is not true that he
afterwards, in his capacity of a privy councillor, pronounced sentence
of death on his own son and daughter; even Henry was not inhuman enough
to exact this of him; but he lived to witness their cruel and
disgraceful end, and died long before the prosperous days of his
illustrious grandchild.
On the other side the train was borne by Edward Stanley third earl of
Derby. This young nobleman had been a ward of Wolsey, and was carefully
educated by that splendid patron of learning in his house and under his
own eye. He proved himself a faithful and loyal subject to four
successive sovereigns; stood unshaken by the tempests of the most
turbulent times; and died full of days in the possession of great
riches, high hereditary honors, and universal esteem, in 1574.
A splendid canopy was supported over the infant by four lords, three of
them destined to disastrous fates. One was her uncle, the elegant,
accomplished, viscount Rochford, whom the impartial suffrage of
posterity has fully acquitted of the odious crime for which he suffered
by the mandate of a jealous tyrant.
Another was lord Hussey; whom a rash rebellion brought to the scaffold a
few years afterwards. The two others were brothers of that illustrious
family of Howard, which furnished in this age alone more subjects for
tragedy than "Thebes or Pelops' line" of old. Lord William, uncle to
Catherine Howard, was arbitrarily adjudged to perpetual imprisonment and
forfeiture of goods for concealing her misconduct; but Henry was pleased
soon after to remit the sentence: he lived to be eminent in the state
under the title of lord Howard of Effingham, and died peacefully in a
good old age. Lord Thomas suffered by the ambition so frequent in his
house, of matching with the blood royal. He formed a secret marriage
with the lady Margaret Douglas, niece to the king; on discovery of
which, he was committed to a close imprisonment, whence he was only
released by death.
After the ceremony of baptism had been performed by Stokesly bishop of
London, a solemn benediction was pronounced upon the future queen by
Cranmer, that learned and distinguished prelate, who may indeed be
reproached with some too courtly condescensions to the will of an
imperious master, and what is worse, with several cruel acts of
religious persecution; but whose virtues were many, whose general
character was mild and benevolent, and whose errors and weaknesses were
finally expiated by the flames of martyrdom.
In the return from church, the gifts of the sponsors, consisting of cups
and bowls, some gilded, and others of massy gold, were carried by four
persons of quality: Henry Somerset second earl of Worcester, whose
father, notwithstanding his illegitimacy, had been acknowledged as a
kinsman by Henry VII., and advanced to the peerage; lord Thomas Howard
the younger, a son of the duke of Norfolk who was restored in blood
after his father's attainder, and created lord Howard of Bindon; Thomas
Ratcliffe lord Fitzwalter, afterwards earl of Sussex; and sir John
Dudley, son of the detested associate of Empson, and afterwards the
notorious duke of Northumberland, whose crimes received at length their
due recompense in that ignominious death to which his guilty and
extravagant projects had conducted so many comparatively innocent
victims.
We are told, that on the same day and hour which gave birth to the
princess Elizabeth, a son was born to this "bold bad man," who received
the name of Robert, and was known in after-times as earl of Leicester.
It was believed by the superstition of the age, that this coincidence of
their nativities produced a secret and invincible sympathy which secured
to Dudley, during life, the affections of his sovereign lady. It may
without superstition be admitted, that this circumstance, seizing on the
romantic imagination of the princess, might produce a first impression,
which Leicester's personal advantages, his insinuating manners, and
consummate art of feigning, all contributed to render deep and
permanent.
The personal history of Elizabeth may truly be said to begin with her
birth; for she had scarcely entered her second year when her
marriage--that never-accomplished project, which for half a century
afterwards inspired so many vain hopes and was the subject of so many
fruitless negotiations, was already proposed as an article of a treaty
between France and England.
Henry had caused an act of succession to be passed, by which his divorce
was confirmed, the authority of the pope disclaimed, and the crown
settled on his issue by Anne Boleyn. But, as if half-repenting the
boldness of his measures, he opened a negotiation almost immediately
with Francis I., for the purpose of obtaining a declaration by that king
and his nobility in favor of his present marriage, and the intercession
of Francis for the revocation of the papal censures fulminated against
him. And in consideration of these acts of friendship, he offered to
engage the hand of Elizabeth to the duke d'Angouleme, third son of the
French king. But Francis was unable to prevail upon the new pope to
annul the acts of his predecessor; and probably not wishing to connect
himself more closely with a prince already regarded as a heretic, he
suffered the proposal of marriage to fall to the ground.
The doctrines of Zwingle and of Luther had at this time made
considerable progress among Henry's subjects, and the great work of
reformation was begun in England. Several smaller monasteries had been
suppressed; the pope's supremacy was preached against by public
authority; and the parliament, desirous of widening the breach between
the king and the pontiff, declared the former, head of the English
church. After some hesitation, Henry accepted the office, and wrote a
book in defence of his conduct. The queen was attached, possibly by
principle, and certainly by interest, to the antipapal party, which
alone admitted the validity of the royal divorce, and consequently of
her marriage; and she had already engaged her chaplain Dr. Parker, a
learned and zealous reformist, to keep a watchful eye over the childhood
of her daughter, and early to imbue her mind with the true principles of
religious knowledge.
But Henry, whose passions and interests alone, not his theological
convictions, had set him in opposition to the old church establishment,
to the ceremonies and doctrines of which he was even zealously attached,
began to be apprehensive that the whole fabric would be swept away by
the strong tide of popular opinion which was now turned against it, and
he hastened to interpose in its defence. He brought to the stake several
persons who denied the real presence, as a terror to the reformers;
whilst at the same time he showed his resolution to quell the adherents
of popery, by causing bishop Fisher and sir Thomas More to be attainted
of treason, for refusing such part of the oath of succession as implied
the invalidity of the king's first marriage, and thus, in effect,
disallowed the authority of the papal dispensation in virtue of which it
had been celebrated.
Thus were opened those dismal scenes of religious persecution and
political cruelty from which the mind of Elizabeth was to receive its
early and indelible impressions.
The year 1536, which proved even more fertile than its predecessor in
melancholy incidents and tragical catastrophes, opened with the death of
Catherine of Arragon; an event equally welcome, in all probability, both
to the sufferer herself, whom tedious years of trouble and mortification
must have rendered weary of a world which had no longer a hope to
flatter her; and to the ungenerous woman who still beheld her, discarded
as she was, with the sentiments of an enemy and a rival. It is
impossible to contemplate the life and character of this royal lady,
without feelings of the deepest commiseration. As a wife, the bitter
humiliations which she was doomed to undergo were entirely unmerited;
for not only was her modesty unquestioned, but her whole conduct towards
the king was a perfect model of conjugal love and duty. As a queen and a
mother, her firmness, her dignity, and her tenderness, deserved a far
other recompense than to see herself degraded, on the infamous plea of
incest, from the rank of royalty, and her daughter, so long heiress to
the English throne, branded with illegitimacy, and cast out alike from
the inheritance and the affections of her father. But the memory of this
unhappy princess has been embalmed by the genius of Shakespeare, in the
noble drama of which he has made her the touching and majestic heroine;
and let not the praise of magnanimity be denied to the daughter of Anne
Boleyn, in permitting those wrongs and those sufferings which were the
price of her glory, nay of her very existence, to be thus impressively
offered to the compassion of her people.
Henry was moved to tears on reading the tender and pious letter
addressed to him by the dying hand of Catherine; and he marked by
several small but expressive acts, the respect, or rather the
compunction, with which the recollection of her could not fail to
inspire him. Anne Boleyn paid to the memory of the princess-dowager of
Wales--such was the title now given to Catherine--the unmeaning
compliment of putting on yellow mourning; the color assigned to queens
by the fashion of France: but neither humanity nor discretion restrained
her from open demonstrations of the satisfaction afforded her by the
melancholy event.
Short was her unfeeling triumph. She brought into the world a few days
afterwards, a dead son; and this second disappointment of his hopes
completed that disgust to his queen which satiety, and perhaps also a
growing passion for another object, was already beginning to produce in
the mind of the king.
It is traditionally related, that at Jane Seymour's first coming to
court, the queen, espying a jewel hung round her neck, wished to look at
it; and struck with the young lady's reluctance to submit it to her
inspection, snatched it from her with violence, when she found it to
contain the king's picture, presented by himself to the wearer. From
this day she dated her own decline in the affections of her husband, and
the ascendancy of her rival. However this might be, it is certain that
the king about this time began to regard the conduct of his once
idolized Anne Boleyn with an altered eye. That easy gaiety of manner
which he had once remarked with delight, as an indication of the
innocence of her heart and the artlessness of her disposition, was now
beheld by him as a culpable levity which offended his pride and alarmed
his jealousy. His impetuous temper, with which "once to suspect was once
to be resolved," disdained to investigate proofs or to fathom motives; a
pretext alone was wanting to his rising fury, and this he was not long
in finding.
On May-day, then observed at court as a high festival, solemn justs were
held at Greenwich, before the king and queen, in which viscount
Rochford, the queen's brother, was chief challenger, and Henry Norris
principal defender. In the midst of the entertainment, the king suddenly
rose and quitted the place in anger; but on what particular provocation
is not certainly known. Saunders the Jesuit, the great calumniator of
Anne Boleyn, says that it was on seeing his consort drop her
handkerchief, which Norris picked up and wiped his face with. The queen
immediately retired, and the next day was committed to custody. Her
earnest entreaties to be permitted to see the king were disregarded, and
she was sent to the Tower on a charge of treason and adultery.
Lord Rochford, Norris, one Smeton a musician, and Brereton and another
gentleman of the bed-chamber, were likewise apprehended, and brought to
trial on the accusation of criminal intercourse with the queen. They
were all convicted; but from the few particulars which have come down to
us, it seems to be justly inferred, that the evidence produced against
some at least of these unhappy gentlemen, was slight and inconclusive.
Lord Rochford is universally believed to have fallen a victim to the
atrocious perjuries of his wife, who was very improperly admitted as a
witness against him, and whose infamous conduct was afterwards fully
brought to light. No absolute criminality appears to have been proved
against Weston and Brereton; but Smeton confessed the fact. Norris died
much more generously: he protested that he would rather perish a
thousand times than accuse an innocent person; that he believed the
queen to be perfectly guiltless; he, at least, could accuse her of
nothing; and in this declaration he persisted to the last. His
expressions, if truly reported, seem to imply that he might have saved
himself by criminating the queen: but besides the extreme improbability
that the king would have shown or promised any mercy to such a
delinquent, we know in fact that the confession of Smeton did not obtain
for him even a reprieve: it is therefore absurd to represent Norris as
having died in vindication of the honor of the queen; and the favor
afterwards shown to his son by Elizabeth, had probably little connexion
with any tenderness for the memory of her mother, a sentiment which she
certainly exhibited in no other circumstance.
The trial and condemnation of the queen followed. The process was
conducted with that open disregard of the first principles of justice
and equity then universal in all cases of high treason: no counsel were
assigned her, no witnesses confronted with her, and it does not appear
that she was even informed of Smeton's confession: but whether, after
all, she died innocent, is a problem which there now exist no means of
solving, and which it is somewhat foreign from the purpose of this work
to discuss.
One part of this subject, however, on account of the intimate relation
which it bears to the history of Elizabeth, and the influence which it
may be presumed to have exercised in the formation of her character,
must be treated somewhat at large.
The common law of England, by an anomaly truly barbarous, denounced,
against females only, who should be found guilty of high treason, the
punishment of burning. By menaces of putting into execution this
horrible sentence, instead of commuting it for decapitation, Anne Boleyn
was induced to acknowledge some legal impediment to her marriage with
the king; and on this confession alone, Cranmer, with his usual
subserviency, gratified his royal master by pronouncing that union null
and void, and its offspring illegitimate.
What this impediment, real or pretended, might be, we only learn from a
public declaration made immediately afterwards by the earl of
Northumberland, stating, that whereas it had been pretended, that a
precontract had subsisted between himself and the late queen, he has
declared upon oath before the lords of the council, and taken the
sacrament upon it, that no such contract had ever passed between them.
In explanation of this protest, the noble historian of Henry VIII.[1]
furnishes us with the following particulars. That the earl of
Northumberland, when lord Percy, had made proposals of marriage to Anne
Boleyn, which she had accepted, being yet a stranger to the passion of
the king; that Henry, unable to bear the idea of losing her, but averse
as yet to a declaration of his sentiments, employed Wolsey to dissuade
the father of lord Percy from giving his consent to their union, in
which he succeeded; the earl of Northumberland probably becoming aware
how deeply the personal feelings of the king were concerned: that lord
Percy, however, refused to give up the lady, alleging in the first
instance that he had gone too far to recede with honor; but was
afterwards compelled by his father to form another matrimonial
connexion. It should appear by this statement, that some engagement had
in fact subsisted between Northumberland and Anne; but there is no
necessity for supposing it to have been a contract of that solemn nature
which, according to the law as it then stood, would have rendered null
the subsequent marriage of either party. The protestation of the earl
was confirmed by the most solemn sanctions; which there is no ground for
supposing him capable of violating, especially as on this occasion, so
far from gaining any advantage by it, he was likely to give high offence
to the king. If then, as appears most probable, the confession by which
Anne Boleyn disinherited and illegitimatised her daughter was false; a
perjury so wicked and cowardly must brand her memory with everlasting
infamy:--even should the contrary have been the fact, the transaction
does her little honor; in either case it affords ample justification to
that daughter in leaving, as she did, her remains without a monument and
her conduct without an apology.
[Note 1: Lord Herbert of Chirbury.]
The precarious and equivocal condition to which the little Elizabeth was
reduced by the divorce and death of her mother, will be best illustrated
by the following extracts of a letter addressed soon after the event, by
lady Bryan her governess, to lord Cromwel. It may at the same time amuse
the modern reader to remark the minute details on which, in that day,
the first minister of state was expected to bestow his personal
attention.
* * * * *
"...My lord, when your lordship was last here, it pleased you to say,
that I should not mistrust the king's grace, nor your lordship. Which
word was more comfort to me than I can write, as God knoweth. And now it
boldeneth me to show you my poor mind. My lord, when my lady Mary's
grace was born, it pleased the king's grace to [appoint] me lady
mistress, and made me a baroness. And so I have been to the children his
grace have had since.
"Now, so it is, my lady Elizabeth is put from that degree she was afore;
and what degree she is at now, I know not but by hearsay. Therefore I
know not how to order her, nor myself, nor none of hers that I have the
rule of; that is, her women and her grooms. Beseeching you to be good
lord to my lady and to all hers; and that she may have some rayment. For
she hath neither gown, nor kirtle, nor petticoat, nor no manner of
linen, nor foresmocks, nor kerchiefs, nor sleeves, nor rails, nor
body-stitchets, nor mufflers, nor biggins. All these, her grace's
_mostake_[2], I have driven off as long as I can, that, by my troth, I
cannot drive it no lenger. Beseeching you, my lord, that you will see
that her grace may have that is needful for her, as my trust is ye will
do--that I may know from you by writing how I shall order myself; and
what is the king's grace's pleasure and yours, that I shall do in every
thing.
"My lord, Mr. Shelton saith he is the master of this house: what fashion
that shall be, I cannot tell; for I have not seen it before.--I trust
your lordship will see the house honourably ordered, howsomever it hath
been ordered aforetime.
"My lord, Mr. Shelton would have my lady Elizabeth to dine and sup
every day at the board of estate. Alas! my lord, it is not meet for a
child of her age to keep such rule yet. I promise you, my lord, I dare
not take it upon me to keep her in health and she keep that rule. For
there she shall see divers meats and fruits, and wine: which would be
hard for me to restrain her grace from it. Ye know, my lord, there is no
place of correction there. And she is yet too young to correct greatly.
I know well, and she be there, I shall nother bring her up to the king's
grace's honour, nor hers; nor to her health, nor my poor honesty.
Wherefore I show your lordship this my desire. Beseeching you, my lord,
that my lady may have a mess of meat to her own lodging, with a good
dish or two, that is meet for her grace to eat of.
"God knoweth my lady hath great pain with her great teeth, and they come
very slowly forth: and causeth me to suffer her grace to have her will,
more than I would. I trust to God and her teeth were well graft, to have
her grace after another fashion than she is yet: so as I trust the
king's grace shall have great comfort in her grace. For she is as toward
a child, and as gentle of conditions, as ever I knew any in my life.
Jesu preserve her grace! As for a day or two at a hey time, or
whensomever it shall please the king's grace to have her set abroad, I
trust so to endeavour me, that she shall so do, as shall be to the
king's honour and hers; and then after to take her ease again.
"Good my lord, have my lady's grace, and us that be her poor servants in
your remembrance.
"_From Hunsdon_." (No date of time.)
[Note 2: This is a word which I am utterly unable to explain; but it
is thus printed in Strype's "Memorials," whence the letter is copied.]
* * * * *
On the day immediately following the death of the unfortunate Anne
Boleyn, the king was publicly united in marriage to Jane Seymour; and an
act of parliament soon after passed by which the lady Elizabeth was
declared incapable of succeeding to the crown, which was now settled on
the offspring of Henry by his present queen.