CHAPTER XI

TRIAL AND DEATH OF ANNE BOLEYN.

The first act of the great drama appeared to have closed. No further

changes were for the present in contemplation. The church was

reestablished under its altered constitution; and the parliament had

been dissolved under the impression that it would be unnecessary to

summon another for an indefinite time.[536] Within four weeks of the

dissolution, writs were issued for a fresh election, under the pressure

of a misfortune which is alike calamitous, under whatever aspect we

regard it; and which blotted the Reformation with a black and frightful

stain. The guilt must rest where it is due; but under any hypothesis,

guilt there was, dark, mysterious, and most miserable.

[Sidenote: Death of Queen Catherine.]

[Sidenote: January 7. Her last letter to Henry.]

The fate of Queen Catherine had by this time completed itself. She had

taken her leave of a world which she had small cause to thank for the

entertainment which it had provided for her; and she died, as she had

lived, resolute, haughty, and unbending. In the preceding October (1535)

she was in bad health; her house, she imagined, disagreed with her, and

at her own desire she was removed to Kimbolton. But there were no

symptoms of immediate danger. She revived under the change, and was in

better spirits than she had shown for many previous months, especially

after she heard of the new pope's resolution to maintain her cause.

"Much resort of people came daily to her."[537] The vexatious dispute

upon her title had been dropped, from an inability to press it; and it

seemed as if life had become at least endurable to her, if it never

could be more. But the repose was but the stillness of evening as night

is hastening down. The royal officers of the household were not admitted

into her presence; the queen lived wholly among her own friends and her

own people; she sank unperceived; and so effectually had she withdrawn

from the observation of those whom she desired to exclude, that the king

was left to learn from the Spanish ambassador that she was at the point

of death, before her chamberlain was aware that she was more than

indisposed.[538] In the last week of December Henry learnt that she was

in danger. On the 2d of January the ambassador went down from London to

Kimbolton, and spent the day with her.[539] On the 5th, Sir Edmund

Bedingfield wrote that she was very ill, and that the issue was

doubtful. On the morning of the 7th she received the last sacrament, and

at two o'clock on that day she died.[540] On her deathbed she dictated

the following letter of farewell to him whom she still called, her most

dear lord and husband.

"The hour of my death now approaching, I cannot choose but, out of the

love I bear you, advise you of your soul's health, which you ought to

prefer before all considerations of the world or flesh whatsoever; for

which yet you have cast me into many calamities, and yourself into many

troubles. But I forgive you all, and pray God to do so likewise. For the

rest I commend unto you Mary our daughter, beseeching you to be a good

father to her, as I have heretofore desired. I must entreat you also to

respect my maids, and give them in marriage, which is not much, they

being but three; and to all my other servants a year's pay besides their

due, lest otherwise they should be unprovided for. Lastly, I make this

vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things. Farewell."[541]

This letter reached Henry with the intimation that she was gone. He was

much affected, and is said to have shed tears.[542]

[Sidenote: She is buried at Peterborough, and the See of Peterborough is

founded as a memorial of her.]

The court was ordered into mourning--a command which Anne Boleyn

distinguished herself by imperfectly obeying.[543] Catherine was buried

at Peterborough, with the estate of Princess Royal;[544] and shortly

after, on the foundation of the new bishoprics, the See of Peterborough

was established in her memory. We may welcome, however late, these acts

of tardy respect.[545] Henry, in the few last years, had grown wiser in

the ways of women; and had learnt to prize more deeply the austerity of

virtue, even in its unloveliest aspect.

[Sidenote: Fall of Anne Boleyn.]

The death of Catherine was followed, four months later, by the tragedy

which I have now to relate. The ground on which I am about to tread is

so critical, and the issues at stake affect so deeply the honour of many

of our most eminent English statesmen, that I must be pardoned if I

cannot here step boldly out with a flowing narrative, but must pick my

way slowly as I can: and I, on my part, must ask my readers to move

slowly also, and be content to allow their judgment, for a few pages, to

remain in suspense.

And first, I have to say that, as with all the great events of Henry's

reign, so especially with this, we must trust to no evidence which is

not strictly contemporary. During periods of revolution, years do the

work of centuries in colouring actions and disturbing forms; and events

are transferred swiftly from the deliberation of the judgment to the

precipitate arrogance of party spirit. When the great powers of Europe

were united against Elizabeth, and when Elizabeth's own character was

vilely and wantonly assailed, the Catholic writers dipped their pens in

the stains which blotted her mother's name; and, more careless of truth

than even theological passion can excuse, they poured out over both

alike a stream of indiscriminate calumny. On the other hand, as

Elizabeth's lordly nature was the pride of all true-hearted Englishmen,

so the Reformers laboured to reflect her virtues backwards. Like the

Catholics, they linked the daughter with the parent; and became no less

extravagant in their panegyrics than their antagonists in their

gratuitous invective. But the Anne Boleyn, as she appears in

contemporary letters, is not the Anne Boleyn of Foxe, or Wyatt, or the

other champions of Protestantism, who saw in her the counterpart of her

child. These writers, though living so near to the events which they

described, yet were divided from the preceding generation by an

impassable gulf. They were surrounded with the heat and flame of a

controversy, in which public and private questions were wrapped

inseparably together; and the more closely we scrutinize their

narratives, the graver occasion there appears for doing so.

[Sidenote: Rules to be observed in judging this question.]

While, therefore, in following out this miserable subject, I decline so

much as to entertain the stories of Sanders, who has represented Queen

Anne as steeped in profligacy from her childhood, so I may not any more

accept those late memorials of her saintliness, which are alike

unsupported by the evidence of those who knew her. If Protestant legends

are admitted as of authority, the Catholic legends must enter with them,

and we shall only deepen the confusion. I cannot follow Burnet, in

reporting out of Meteren a version of Anne Boleyn's trial, unknown in

England. The subject is one on which rhetoric and rumour are alike

unprofitable. We must confine ourselves to accounts written at the time

by persons to whom not the outline of the facts only was known, but the

circumstances which surrounded them; by persons who had seen the

evidence upon the alleged offences, which, though now lost

irrecoverably, can be proved to have once existed.

[Sidenote: Difficulty of ascertaining Anne Boleyn's early character.]

We are unable, as I early observed, to form any trustworthy judgment of

Anne Boleyn before her marriage. Her education had been in the worst

school in Europe. On her return from the French court to England, we

have seen her entangled in an unintelligible connexion with Lord Percy;

and if the account sent to the Emperor was true, she was Lord Percy's

actual wife; and her conduct was so criminal as to make any

after-charges against her credible.[546]

If the Protestants, again, found in her a friend and supporter, she was

capable, as Wolsey experienced, of inveterate hatred; and although among

the Reformers she had a reputation for generosity, which is widely

confirmed,[547] yet it was exercised always in the direction in which

her interests pointed; and kindness of feeling is not incompatible,

happily, with seriously melancholy faults.

[Sidenote: Cranmer's evidence in her favour.]

[Sidenote: Early coolness between her and Henry.]

The strongest general evidence in her favour is that of Cranmer, who

must have known her intimately, and who, at the crisis of her life,

declared that he "never had better opinion in woman than he had in

her."[548] Yet there had been circumstances in her conduct, as by her

own after confessions was amply evident, which justified Sir Thomas More

in foretelling a stormy end to her splendour;[549] and her relations

with the king, whether the fault rested with him, or rested with her,

grew rapidly cool when she was his wife. In 1534, perhaps sooner, both

she herself, her brother, and her relations had made themselves odious

by their insolence; her over-bearing manners had caused a decline in the

king's affection for her; and on one side it was reported that he was

likely to return to Catherine,[550] on the other that he had transferred

his attention to some other lady, and that the court encouraged his

inconstancy to separate him from Anne's influence.[551] D'Inteville

confirms the account of a new love affair, particularising nothing, but

saying merely that Anne was falling out of favour; and that the person

alluded to as taking her place was Jane Seymour, appears from a letter

written after Anne's execution, by the Regent Mary to the Emperor of

Austria, and from the letter written (supposing it genuine) by Anne

herself to the king before her trial.[552]

On the other hand, it is equally clear that whether provoked or not by

infidelity on the part of Henry, her own conduct had been singularly

questionable. We know very little, but waiving for the present the

exposures at her trial, we know, by her own confession, that arrogance

and vanity had not been her only faults, and that she had permitted the

gentlemen who were the supposed partners of her guilt, to speak to her

of their passion for herself.[553]

In January, 1535, Henry's mind had been filled with "doubts and strange

suspicions" about his wife. There had been a misunderstanding, in which

she had implored the intercession of Francis I.[554]

[Sidenote: The probable cause of that coolness.]

[Sidenote: The antecedent probabilities amount to nothing.]

In February, 1536, she miscarried, with a dead boy, which later rumour

dwelt on as the cause of Henry's displeasure. But conversations such as

those which she described with her supposed paramours, lay bare far

deeper wounds of domestic unhappiness; and assure us, that if we could

look behind the scenes, we should see there estrangements, quarrels,

jealousies, the thousand dreary incidents that, if we knew them, would

break the suddenness with which at present the catastrophe bursts upon

us. It is the want of preparation, the blank ignorance in which we are

left of the daily life and daily occurrences of the court, which places

us at such disadvantage for recovering the truth. We are unable to form

any estimate whatever of those antecedent likelihoods which, in the

events of our own ordinary lives, guide our judgment so imperceptibly,

yet so surely. Henry is said to have been inconstant, but those who most

suspected Henry's motives charge Anne at the same time with a long

notorious profligacy.[555] We cannot say what is probable or what is

improbable; except, indeed, that the guilt or every person is improbable

antecedent to evidence; and in the present instance, since, either on

the side of the queen or of the king, there was and must have been most

terrible guilt, these opposite presumptions neutralize each other.

[Sidenote: April. Secret investigation by a committee of the privy

council.]

[Sidenote: April 27. Writs issued for a parliament.]

[Sidenote: Thursday, April 27; arrest of Sir William Brereton; and on

Sunday, April 30, of Mark Smeton.]

[Sidenote: May 1. Tournament at Greenwich.]

[Sidenote: The king goes to London.]

To proceed with the story. Towards the middle of April, 1536, certain

members of the privy council were engaged secretly in receiving evidence

which implicated the queen in adultery. Nothing is known of the quarter

from which the information came which led to the inquiry.[556]

Something, however, there was to call for inquiry, or something there

was thought to be; and on the 24th of April the case was considered

sufficiently complete to make necessary a public trial. On that day an

order was issued for a special commission. The members of the tribunal

were selected with a care proportioned to the solemnity of the

occasion.[557] It was composed of the lord chancellor, the first

noblemen of the realm, and of the judges. The investigation had,

however, been conducted so far with profound secrecy; and the object for

which it was to assemble was unknown even to Cranmer, himself a member

of the privy council.[558] With the same mysterious silence on the cause

of so unexpected a measure, the writs were issued for a general

election, and parliament was required to assemble as soon as

possible.[559] On Thursday, the 27th, the first arrest was made. Sir

William Brereton,[560] a gentleman of the king's household, was sent

suddenly to the Tower; and on the Sunday after, Mark Smeton, of whom we

know only that he was a musician high in favour at the court, apparently

a spoilt favourite of royal bounty.[561] The day following was the 1st

of May. It was the day on which the annual festival was held at

Greenwich, and the queen appeared, as usual, with her husband and the

court at the tournament. Lord Rochfort, the queen's brother, and Sir

Henry Norris, both of them implicated in the fatal charge, were defender

and challenger. The tilting had commenced, when the king rose suddenly

with signs of disturbance in his manner, left the court, and rode off

with a small company to London. Rumour, which delights in dramatic

explanations of great occurrences, has discovered that a handkerchief

dropped by the queen, and caught by Norris, roused Henry's jealousy; and

that his after conduct was the result of a momentary anger. The

incidents of the preceding week are a sufficient reply to this romantic

story. The mine was already laid, the match was ready for the fire.

[Sidenote: Tuesday, May 2; arrest of the queen. The privy council sit

at Greenwich.]

[Sidenote: She declares her innocence.]

[Sidenote: Norris, Weston, and Smeton examined.]

The king did not return: he passed the night in London, and Anne

remained at Greenwich. On the morning of Tuesday the privy council

assembled in the palace under the presidency of the Duke of Norfolk, and

she was summoned to appear before it. The Duke of Norfolk, her uncle,

was anxious, as Burnet insinuates, on political grounds that his niece

should be made away with. Such accusations are easily brought,

especially when unsupported by evidence. She was unpopular from her

manner. The London merchants looked on her with no favour as having

caused a breach in the alliance with Flanders, and the duke was an

imperialist and at heart a friend of Queen Catherine; but he had grown

old in the service of the state with an unblemished reputation; and he

felt too keenly the disgrace which Anne's conduct had brought upon her

family, to have contrived a scheme for her removal at once so awkward

and so ignominious.[562] On her examination, she declared herself

innocent; the details of what passed are unknown; only she told Sir

William Kingston that she was cruelly handled at Greenwich with the

king's council; "and that the Duke of Norfolk, in answer to her defence,

had said, 'Tut, tut, tut,' shaking his head three or four times."[563]

The other prisoners were then examined; not Brereton, it would seem,

but Smeton, who must have been brought down from the Tower, and Sir

Henry Norris, and Sir Francis Weston, two young courtiers, who had both

of them been the trusted friends of the king. Each day the shadow was

stretching further. The worst was yet to come.

[Sidenote: May 2. Tuesday. Smeton confesses, and Norris, who afterwards,

however, withdraws from what he has said.]

On being first questioned, these three made general admissions, but

denied resolutely that any actual offence had been committed. On being

pressed further and cross-examined, Smeton confessed to actual

adultery.[564] Norris hesitated: being pressed, however, by Sir William

Fitzwilliam to speak the truth, he also made a similar acknowledgment,

although he afterwards withdrew from what he had said.[565] Weston

persisted in declaring himself innocent. The result was unsatisfactory,

and it was thought that it would "much touch the king's honour" if the

guilt of the accused was not proved more clearly. "Only Mark," Sir

Edward Baynton said, would confess "of any actual thing"[566]; although

he had no doubt "the other two" were "as fully culpable as ever was he."

They were, however, for the present, recommitted to the Tower; whither

also in the afternoon the council conducted the queen, and left her in

the custody of Sir William Kingston.

[Sidenote: The queen, in the afternoon, is taken to the Tower.]

[Sidenote: She protests her innocence, and begs to have the sacrament in

her closet.]

She was brought up the river; the same river along which she sailed in

splendour only three short years before. She landed at the same Tower

Stairs; and, as it to complete the bitter misery of the change, she was

taken "to her own lodgings in which she lay at her coronation." She had

feared that she was to go to a dungeon. When Kingston told her that

these rooms had been prepared for her, "It is too good for me," she

said, "Jesu have mercy on me;" "and kneeled down, weeping a great space;

and in the same sorrow fell into a great laughing."[567] She then begged

that she might have the sacrament in the closet by her chamber, that she

might pray for mercy, declaring "that she was free from the company of

man as for sin," and was "the king's true wedded wife."

She was aware that the other prisoners were in the Tower, or, at least,

that Smeton, Weston, and Norris were there. Whether she knew at that

time of the further dreadful accusation which was hanging over her, does

not appear; but she asked anxiously for her brother; and, if she had

suspected anything, her fears must have been confirmed by Kingston's

evasive replies. It is so painful to dwell upon the words and actions of

a poor woman in her moments of misery, that Kingston may describe his

conversation with her in his own words. Lord Rochfort had returned to

London at liberty; he seems to have been arrested the same Tuesday

afternoon. "I pray you," she said, "to tell me where my Lord Rochfort

is?"--"I told her," Kingston wrote, that "I saw him afore dinner, in

the court." "Oh, where is my sweet brother?" she went on. "I said I left

him at York-place;" and so I did. "I hear say," said she, "that I should

be accused with three men; and I can say no more but nay, without I

should open my body,"--and therewith she opened her gown, saying, "Oh,

Norris, hast thou accused me? Thou art in the Tower with me, and thou

and I shall die together. And, Mark, thou art here too. Oh, my mother,

thou wilt die for sorrow." And much she lamented my Lady of Worcester,

for because her child did not stir in her body. And my wife said, "What

should be the cause?" She said, "For the sorrow she took for me." And

then she said, "Mr. Kingston, shall I die without justice?" And I said,

"The poorest subject the king hath, had justice;" and therewith she

laughed.[568]

[Sidenote: Lady Boleyn and three other ladies sent to attend upon her.]

Lady Boleyn, her aunt, had been sent for, with a Mrs. Cousins, and two

other ladies, selected by the king.[569] They were ordered to attend

upon the queen, but to observe a strict silence; and to hold no

communication with her, except in the presence of Lady Kingston. This

regulation, it was found, could not be insisted on. Lady Boleyn and Mrs.

Cousins slept in the queen's room, and conversation could not be

prevented. Mrs. Cousins undertook, on her part, to inform Kingston if

anything was said which "it was meet that he should know."[570]

[Sidenote: Wednesday, May 3. Reported conversation of the queen with

Norris,]

[Sidenote: And with Sir Francis Weston.]

In compliance with this promise, she told him, the next morning, that

the queen had been speaking to her about Norris. On the preceding

Sunday, she said that Norris had offered to "swear for the queen, that

she was a good woman."--"But how," asked Mrs. Cousins, very naturally,

"how came any such things to be spoken of at all?"--"Marry," the queen

said, "I bade him do so: for I asked him why he went not through with

his marriage; and he made answer, that he would tarry a time. Then, I

said, You look for dead men's shoes; for if aught came to the king but

good, you would look to have me.[571] And he said, if he should have any

such thought, he would his head were off. And then she said she could

undo him, if she would. And therewith they fell out." "But she said she

more feared Weston; for on Whitsun Tuesday last, Weston told her that

Norris came more unto her chamber for her than for Mage."[572]

Afterwards, "The queen spake of Weston, that she had spoken to him,

because he did love her kinswoman, Mrs. Skelton, and that she said he

loved not his wife; and he made answer to her again, that he loved one

in her house better than them both. She asked him who is that? to which

he answered, that it is yourself. 'And then,' she said, 'she defied

him.'"[573]

So passed Wednesday at the Tower. Let us feel our very utmost

commiseration for this unhappy woman; if she was guilty, it is the more

reason that we should pity her; but I am obliged to say, that

conversations of this kind, admitted by herself, disentitle her to plead

her character in answer to the charges against her. Young men do not

speak of love to young and beautiful married women, still less to ladies

of so high rank, unless something more than levity has encouraged them;

and although to have permitted such language is no proof of guilt, yet

it is a proof of the absence of innocence.

[Sidenote: The news reaches Cranmer. He is ordered to Lambeth till he

hears further.]

Meanwhile, on the Tuesday morning, a rumour of the queen's arrest was

rife in London; and the news for the first time reached the ears of

Cranmer. The archbishop was absent from home, but in the course of the

day he received an order, through Cromwell, to repair to his palace, and

remain there till he heard further. With what thoughts he obeyed this

command may be gathered from the letter which, on the following morning,

he wrote to Henry. The fortunes of the Reformation had been so closely

linked to those of the queen, that he trembled for the consequences to

the church of the king's too just indignation. If the barren womb of

Catherine had seemed a judgment against the first marriage, the shameful

issue of the second might be regarded too probably as a witness against

that and against every act which had been connected with it. Full of

these forebodings, yet not too wholly occupied with them to forget the

unhappy queen, he addressed the king, early on Wednesday, in the

following language:--

[Sidenote: He writes to the king. He implores Henry to bear his

misfortune like a man,]

[Sidenote: And to accept submissively the trial which God has sent upon

him.]

"Please it your most noble Grace to be advertised, that at your Grace's

commandment, by Mr. Secretary's letter, written in your Grace's name, I

came to Lambeth yesterday, and there I do remain to know your Grace's

further pleasure. And forasmuch as without your Grace's commandment, I

dare not, contrary to the contents of the said letter, presume to come

unto your Grace's presence; nevertheless, of my most bounden duty, I can

do no less than most humbly to desire your Grace, by your great wisdom,

and by the assistance of God's help, somewhat to suppress the deep

sorrows of your Grace's heart, and to take all adversities of God's

hands both patiently and thankfully. I cannot deny but your Grace hath

good cause many ways of lamentable heaviness; and also, that in the

wrongful estimation of the world, your Grace's honour of every part is

so highly touched (whether the things that commonly be spoken of be true

or not), that I remember not that ever Almighty God sent unto your Grace

any like occasion to try your Grace's constancy throughout, whether your

Highness can be content to take of God's hands as well things

displeasant as pleasant. And if He find in your most noble heart such an

obedience unto his will, that your Grace, without murmuration and

over-much heaviness, do accept all adversities, not less thanking Him

than when all things succeed after your Grace's will and pleasure, then

I suppose your Grace did never thing more acceptable unto Him since your

first governance of this your realm. And moreover, your Grace shall give

unto Him occasion to multiply and increase his graces and benefits unto

your Highness, as He did unto his most faithful servant Job; unto whom,

after his great calamities and heaviness, for his obedient heart and

willing acceptation of God's scourge and rod, addidit Dominus cuncta

duplicia. And if it be true that is openly reported of the Queen's

Grace, if men had a right estimation of things, they should not esteem

any part of your Grace's honour to be touched thereby; but her honour to

be clean disparaged. And I am in such perplexity, that my mind is clean

amazed; for I never had better opinion in woman than I had in her; which

maketh me to think that she should not be culpable. And again, I think

your Highness would not have gone so far, except she had been surely

culpable.

[Sidenote: Of the queen's guilt, he knows not what to believe.]

[Sidenote: He will pray that she may be found innocent.]

[Sidenote: But if she be guilty, let her be punished with all extremity,

for the dishonour which she has brought upon the gospel.]

[Sidenote: He trusts that the king will still continue to favour the

gospel, however, as before.]

"Now I think that your Grace best knoweth that, next unto your Grace, I

was most bound unto her of all creatures living. Wherefore, I most

humbly beseech your Grace to suffer me in that which both God's law,

nature, and also her kindness bindeth me unto: that is, that I may with

your Grace's favour wish and pray for her that she may declare herself

inculpable and innocent. And if she be found culpable, considering your

Grace's goodness to her, and from what condition your Grace of your only

mere goodness took her, and set the crown upon her head, I repute him

not your Grace's faithful servant and subject, nor true unto the realm,

that would not desire the offence without mercy to be punished, to the

example of all other. And as I loved her not a little for the love

which I judged her to bear towards God and his gospel; so if she be

proved culpable, there is not one that loveth God and his gospel that

will ever favour her, but must hate her above all other; and the more

they favour the gospel, the more they will hate her; for there never was

creature in our time that so much slandered the gospel. And God hath

sent her this punishment for that she feignedly hath professed his

gospel in her mouth, and not in heart and deed. And though she hath

offended so that she hath deserved never to be reconciled to your

Grace's favour, yet Almighty God hath manifoldly declared his goodness

towards your Grace, and never offended you. But your Grace, I am sure,

acknowledgeth that you have offended Him. Wherefore, I trust that your

Grace will bear no less entire favour unto the truth of the gospel than

you did before; forasmuch as your Grace's favour to the gospel was not

led by affection unto her, but by zeal unto the truth. And thus I

beseech Almighty God, whose gospel he hath ordained your Grace to be

defender of, ever to preserve your Grace from all evil, and give you at

the end the promise of his gospel. From Lambeth, the third of May."

[Sidenote: He is sent for to the Star Chamber.]

[Sidenote: The postscript of his letter.]

The letter was written; it was not, however, sent upon the instant; and

in the course of the morning the archbishop was requested to meet the

Lord Chancellor, Lord Oxford, Lord Sussex, and the Lord Chamberlain, in

the Star Chamber. He went, and on his return to Lambeth he added a few

words in a postscript. In the interview from which he had at the moment

returned, those noblemen, he said, had declared unto him such things as

his Grace's pleasure was they should make him privy unto; for the which

he was most bounden unto his Grace. "What communications we had

together," he added, "I doubt not but they will make the true report

thereof unto your Grace. _I am exceedingly sorry that such faults can be

proved by the queen, as I heard of their relation._"[574]

If we may believe, as I suppose we may, that Cranmer was a man of sound

understanding, and of not less than ordinary probity, this letter is of

the greatest value; it shows the impression which was made upon a

sensible person by the first rumours of the discovery; it shows also the

archbishop's opinion of the king's character, with the effect upon his

own mind of the evidence which the chancellor, at the king's command,

had laid before him.

[Sidenote: Friday, May 5. Henry writes to the queen with a promise of

pardon if she will confess.]

[Sidenote: She persists in maintaining her innocence,]

[Sidenote: Being satisfied that there was no witness of her guilt.]

We return to the prisoners in the Tower. Mark Smeton, who had confessed

his guilt, was ironed.[575] The other gentlemen, not in consideration of

their silence, but of their rank, were treated more leniently. To the

queen, with an object which may be variously interpreted, Henry wrote

the Friday succeeding her arrest, holding out hopes of forgiveness if

she would be honest and open with him. Persons who assume that the whole

transaction was the scheme of a wicked husband to dispose of a wife of

whom he was weary, will believe that he was practising upon her terror

to obtain his freedom by a lighter crime than murder. Those who consider

that he possessed the ordinary qualities of humanity, and that he was

really convinced of her guilt, may explain his offer as the result of

natural feeling. But in whatever motive his conduct originated, it was

ineffectual. Anne, either knowing that she was innocent, or trusting

that her guilt could not be proved, trusting, as Sir Edmund Baynton

thought, to the constancy of Weston and Norris,[576] declined to confess

anything. "_If any man accuse me_," she said to Kingston, "_I can but

say nay, and they can bring no witness_."[577] Instead of acknowledging

any guilt in herself, she perhaps retaliated upon the king in the

celebrated letter which has been thought a proof both of her own

innocence, and of the conspiracy by which she was destroyed.[578] This

letter also, although at once so well known and of so dubious authority,

it is fair to give entire.

[Sidenote: Saturday, May 6. Her letter to the king.]

"Sir,--Your Grace's displeasure and my imprisonment are things so

strange unto me, as what to write, or what to excuse, I am altogether

ignorant. Whereas you send unto me (willing [me] to confess a truth, and

to obtain your favour) by such an one whom you know to be mine antient

professed enemy, I no sooner conceived this message by him, than I

rightly conceived your meaning; and if, as you say, confessing a truth

indeed may procure my safety, I shall with all willingness and duty

perform your command.

[Sidenote: Never prince had more loyal wife.]

[Sidenote: She, however, always looked for what now she finds.]

"But let not your Grace ever imagine that your poor wife will ever be

brought to acknowledge a fault where not so much as a thought thereof

proceeded. And to speak a truth, never prince had wife more loyal in all

duty, and in all true affection, than you have ever found in Anne

Boleyn; with which name and place I could willingly have contented

myself, if God and your Grace's pleasure had been so pleased. Neither

did I at any time so far forget myself in my exaltation or received

queenship, but that I always looked for such an alteration as now I

find: for the ground of my preferment being on no surer foundation than

your Grace's fancy, the least alteration I knew was fit and sufficient

to draw that fancy to some other subject. You have chosen me from a low

estate to be your queen and companion, far beyond my desert or desire.

If then you found me worthy of such honour, good your Grace, let not any

light fancy or bad counsel of mine enemies withdraw your princely favour

from me; neither let that stain, that unworthy stain, of a disloyal

heart towards your good Grace, ever cast so foul a blot on your most

dutiful wife, and the infant princess, your daughter.

[Sidenote: She begs for a fair trial,]

[Sidenote: And if she is condemned, Henry may lawfully follow his new

fancy.]

"Try me, good king, but let me have a lawful trial; and let not my

sworn enemies sit as my accusers and my judges; yea, let me receive an

open trial, for my truth shall fear no open shame. Then shall you see

either mine innocency cleared, your suspicions and conscience satisfied,

the ignominy and slander of the world stopped, or my guilt openly

declared; so that, whatsoever God or you may determine of me, your Grace

may be freed from an open censure; and mine offence being so lawfully

proved, your Grace is at liberty, both before God and man, not only to

execute worthy punishment on me, as an unlawful wife, but to follow your

affection already settled on that party for whose sake I am now as I am,

whose name I could some good while since have pointed unto; your Grace

not being ignorant of my suspicion therein.

[Sidenote: If her fate is already decided, she prays God will pardon his

great sin,]

"But if you have already determined of me; and that not only my death,

but an infamous slander, must bring you the enjoying of your desired

happiness; then I desire of God that he will pardon your great sin

therein, and likewise my enemies the instruments thereof; and that He

will not call you to a strict account for your unprincely and cruel

usage of me, at his general judgment-seat, where both you and myself

must shortly appear; and in whose judgment, I doubt not, whatsoever the

world may think of me, mine innocence shall be openly known and

sufficiently cleared.

[Sidenote: And also that her own death may suffice, and the poor

gentlemen be spared.]

"My last and only request shall be, that myself may only bear the burden

of your Grace's displeasure, and that it may not touch the innocent

souls of those poor gentlemen who, as I understand, are likewise in

strait imprisonment for my sake. If ever I have found favour in your

sight, if ever the name of Anne Boleyn hath been pleasing in your ears,

then let me obtain this request; and I will so leave to trouble your

Grace any further; with mine earnest prayers to the Trinity, to have

your Grace in his good keeping, and to direct you in all your actions.

From my doleful prison in the Tower, this 6th of May. Your most loyal

and ever faithful wife,

ANNE BOLEYN."[579]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: A second requisition to confess from the king, and a second

refusal.]

[Sidenote: The tone of the queen's answers not what it ought to have

been, even on her own showing.]

This letter is most affecting; and although it is better calculated to

plead the queen's cause with posterity than with the king, whom it could

only exasperate, yet if it is genuine it tells (so far as such a

composition can tell at all) powerfully in her favour. On the same page

of the manuscript, carrying the same authority, and subject to the same

doubt, is a fragment of another letter, supposed to have been written

subsequently, and therefore in answer to a second invitation to confess.

In this she replied again, that she could confess no more than she had

already spoken; that she might conceal nothing from the king, to whom

she did acknowledge herself so much bound for so many favours; for

raising her first from a mean woman to be a marchioness; next to be his

queen; and now, seeing he could bestow no further honours upon her on

earth, for purposing by martyrdom to make her a saint in heaven.[580]

This answer also was unwise in point of worldly prudence; and I am

obliged showing to add, that the tone which was assumed, both in this

and in her first letter, was unbecoming (even if she was innocent of

actual sin) in a wife who, on her own showing, was so gravely to blame.

It is to be remembered that she had betrayed from the first the king's

confidence; and, as she knew at the moment at which she was writing, she

had never been legally married to him.

[Sidenote: Her wild words in the Tower.]

Her spirits meanwhile had something rallied, though still violently

fluctuating. "One hour," wrote Kingston,[581] "she is determined to die,

and the next hour much contrary to that." Sometimes she talked in a

wild, wandering way, wondering whether any one made the prisoners' beds,

with other of those light trifles which women's minds dwell upon so

strangely, when strained beyond their strength. "There would be no

rain," she said, "till she was out of the Tower; and if she died, they

would see the greatest punishment for her that ever came to England."

"And then," she added, "I shall be a saint in heaven, for I have done

many good deeds in my days; but I think it much unkindness in the king

to put such about me as I never loved."[582] Kingston was a hard

chronicler, too convinced of the queen's guilt to feel compassion for

her; and yet these rambling fancies are as touching as Ophelia's; and,

unlike hers, are no creation of a poet's imagination, but words once

truly uttered by a poor human being in her hour of agony. Yet they

proved nothing. And if her wanderings seem to breathe of innocence, they

are yet compatible with the absence of it. We must remind ourselves that

two of the prisoners had already confessed both their own guilt and

hers.

[Sidenote: Preparations for the trial. Necessity of entering into

offensive details.]

The queen demanded a trial; it was not necessary to ask for it. Both

she and her supposed accomplices were tried with a scrupulousness

without a parallel, so far as I am aware, in the criminal records of the

time. The substance of the proceedings is preserved in an official

summary;[583] and distressing as it is to read of such sad matters, the

importance of arriving at a fair judgment must excuse the details which

will be entered into. The crime was alike hideous, whether it was the

crime of the queen or of Henry; we may not attempt to hide from

ourselves the full deformity of it.

On the 24th of April, then, a special commission was appointed, to try

certain persons for offences committed at London, at Hampton Court, and

at the palace at Greenwich. The offences in question having been

committed in Middlesex and in Kent, bills were first to be returned by

the grand juries of both counties.

[Sidenote: The names of the commissioners appointed to try the queen's

accomplices.]

[Sidenote: The queen and her brother to be tried by the House of Lords.]

Men are apt to pass vaguely over the words "a commission" or "a jury,"

regarding them rather as mechanical abstractions than as bodies of

responsible men. I shall therefore give the list of the persons who, in

these or any other capacities, were engaged upon the trials. The special

commission consisted of Sir Thomas Audeley, the lord chancellor; the

Duke of Norfolk, uncle of the queen and of Lord Rochfort; the Duke of

Suffolk, the king's brother-in-law; the Earl of Wiltshire, the queen's

father; the Earls of Oxford, Westmoreland, and Sussex; Lord Sandys;

Thomas Cromwell; Sir William Fitzwilliam the Lord High Admiral, an old

man whose career had been of the most distinguished brilliancy; Sir

William Paulet, lord treasurer, afterwards Marquis of Winchester; and,

finally, the nine judges of the Courts of Westminster, Sir John

Fitzjames, Sir John Baldewyn, Sir Richard Lister, Sir John Porte, Sir

John Spelman, Sir Walter Luke, Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, Sir Thomas

Englefield, and Sir William Shelley. The duty of this tribunal was to

try the four commoners accused of adultery with the queen. She herself,

with her brother, would be tried by the House of Lords. Of the seven

peers, three were her own nearest connexions; the remaining

commissioners were those who, individually and professionally, might

have been considered competent for the conduct of the cause above all

other persons in the realm. Antecedently to experience, we should not

have expected that a commission so constituted would have lent itself to

a conspiracy; and if foul play had been intended, we should have looked

to see some baser instruments selected for so iniquitous a purpose.

[Sidenote: Wednesday, May 10. True bill found by the grand jury of

Middlesex.]

In the middle of the second week in May, the grand juries had completed

their work. On the 10th, a true bill was found at Westminster, by the

oaths of Giles Heron, Esq.; Roger More, Esq.; Richard Awnsham, Esq.;

Thomas Byllyngton, Esq.; Gregory Lovel, Esq.; John Worsop, Esq.; William

Goddard, gentleman; William Blakwall, gentleman; John Wylford,

gentleman; William Berd, gentleman; Henry Hubbylthorne, gentleman;

William Huning, gentleman; Robert Walys, gentleman; John Englond,

gentleman; Henry Lodysman, gentleman; and John Averey, gentleman.

[Sidenote: Thursday, May 11. True bill found by the grand jury of Kent.]

On the 11th a true bill was found at Deptford by the oaths of Sir

Richard Clement, Sir William Fynche, Sir Edward Boughton, Anthony St.

Leger, Esq.;[584] John Cromer, Esq.; John Fogg, Esq.; Thomas Wylleford,

Esq.; John Norton, Esq.; Humphrey Style, Esq.; Robert Fisher, gentleman;

Thomas Sybbell, gentleman; John Lovelace, gentleman; Walter Harrington,

gentleman; Edmund Page, gentleman; Thomas Fereby, gentleman; and Lionel

Ansty, gentleman.

I am thus particular in recording the names of these jurors, before I

relate the indictment which was found by them, because, if that

indictment was unjust, it stamps their memory with eternal infamy; and

with the judges, the commissioners, the privy council, the king, with

every living person who was a party, active or passive, to so enormous a

calumny, they must be remembered with shame for ever.

[Sidenote: The indictment.]

The indictment, then, found by the grand jury of Middlesex was to the

following effect:[585]

"1. That the Lady Anne, Queen of England, having been the wife of the

king for the space of three years and more, she, the said Lady Anne,

contemning the marriage so solemnized between her and the king, and

bearing malice in her heart against the king, and following her frail

and carnal lust, did falsely and traitorously procure, by means of

indecent language, gifts, and other acts therein stated, divers of the

king's daily and familiar servants to be her adulterers and concubines;

so that several of the king's servants, by the said queen's most vile

provocation and invitation, became given and inclined to the said queen.

"2. That the queen [on the] 6th of October, 25 Hen. VIII. [1533], at

Westminster, by words, &c., procured and incited one Henry Norris, Esq.,

one of the gentlemen of the king's privy chamber, to have illicit

intercourse with her; and that the act was committed at Westminster,

12th October, 25 Hen. VIII.

"3. That the queen, 2nd of November, 27 Hen. VIII. [1535], by the means

therein stated, procured and incited George Boleyn, knight, Lord

Rochfort, her own natural brother, to have illicit intercourse with her;

and that the act was committed 5th of November in the same year, at

Westminster, against the commands of Almighty God, and all laws human

and divine.

"4. That the queen, 3rd December, 25 Hen. VIII., procured and incited

William Brereton, Esq., one of the gentlemen of the king's privy

chamber, to have illicit intercourse with her; and that the act was

committed at Hampton Court, 25th December, 25 Hen. VIII.

"5. That the queen, 8th of May, 26 Hen. VIII., procured and incited

Francis Weston, one of the gentlemen of the king's privy chamber, to

have illicit intercourse with her; and that the act was committed at

Westminster, 20th May, 26 Hen. VIII.

"6. That the queen, 12th of April, 26 Hen. VIII., procured and incited

Mark Smeton, Esq., one of the grometers of the king's chamber, to have

illicit intercourse with her; and that the act was committed at

Westminster, 26th April, 26 Henry VIII.

"7. Furthermore, that the said George, Lord Rochfort, Henry Norris,

William Brereton, Sir Francis Weston, and Mark Smeton, being thus

inflamed by carnal love of the queen, and having become very jealous of

each other, did, in order to secure her affections, satisfy her

inordinate desires; and that the queen was equally jealous of the Lord

Rochfort and other the before-mentioned traitors; and she would not

allow them to show any familiarity with any other woman, without her

exceeding displeasure and indignation; and that on the 27th day of

November, 27 Hen. VIII., and other days, at Westminster, she gave them

gifts and great rewards, to inveigle them to her will.

"8. Furthermore, that the queen, and other the said traitors, jointly

and severally, 31st of October, 27 Hen. VIII., and at various times

before and after, compassed and imagined the king's death; and that the

queen had frequently promised to marry some one of the traitors,

whenever the king should depart this life, affirming she never would

love the king in her heart.

"9. Furthermore, that the king, having within a short time before become

acquainted with the before-mentioned crimes, vices, and treasons, had

been so grieved that certain harms and dangers had happened to his royal

body."[586]

[Sidenote: The improbability of the queen's guilt and the improbability

of a conspiracy against her increase in the same ratio.]

[Sidenote: There is no room for the hypothesis of mistake.]

[Sidenote: The parallel of Leontes suggested, but not admissible.]

I suppose that persons who have made up their minds conclusively, and

are resolved to abide by the popular verdict of English historians, will

turn with disgust from these hideous charges; seeming, as they do, to

overstep all ordinary bounds of credibility. On one side or the other

there was indeed no common guilt. The colours deepen at every step. But

it is to be remembered that if the improbability of crimes so revolting

is becoming greater, the opposite improbability increases with equal

strength--that English noblemen and gentlemen could have made themselves

a party to the invention of the story. For invention is unfortunately

the only word; would indeed that any other were admissible! The

discovery of the indictment disposes at once of Burnet's legend, that

the queen was condemned on hearsay evidence; or that her guilt was

conjectured from an exaggerated report of foolish conversations. It cuts

off all hope, too, of possible mistake. I have heard the name Leontes

mentioned as a parallel to Henry; and if the question lay only between

the king and his wife, we would gladly welcome the alternative. Charity

would persuade us that a husband had been madly blind, sooner far than

that a queen had been madly wicked. But this road for escape is closed.

The mistake of Leontes was transparent to every eye but his own. The

charges against Anne Boleyn were presented by two grand juries before

the highest judicial tribunal in the realm. There was nothing vague,

nothing conjectural. The detail was given of acts and conversations

stretching over a period of two years and more; and either there was

evidence for these things, or there was none. If there was evidence, it

must have been close, elaborate, and minute; if there was none, these

judges, these juries and noblemen, were the accomplices of the king in a

murder perhaps the most revolting which was ever committed.

[Sidenote: The difficulty in the way of supposing the accusations

forged.]

It may be thought that the evidence was pieced together in the secrets

of the cabinet; that the juries found their bills on a case presented to

them by the council. This would transfer the infamy to a higher stage;

but if we try to imagine how the council proceeded in such a business,

we shall not find it an easy task. The council, at least, could not have

been deceived. The evidence, whatever it was, must have been examined by

them; and though we stretch our belief in the complacency of statesmen

to the furthest limit of credulity, can we believe that Cromwell would

have invented that dark indictment,--Cromwell who was, and who remained

till his death, the dearest friend of Latimer? Or the Duke of Norfolk,

the veteran who had won his spurs at Flodden? Or the Duke of Suffolk and

Sir William Fitzwilliam, the Wellington and the Nelson of the sixteenth

century? Scarcely among the picked scoundrels of Newgate could men be

found for such work; and shall we believe it of men like these? It is to

me impossible. Yet, if it was done at all, it was done by those four

ministers.

[Sidenote: To what purpose the multiplication of offences, and the

number of offenders?]

Even if we could believe that they forged the accusations, yet they

would at least limit the dimensions of them. The most audacious villain

will not extend his crimes beyond what he requires for his object; and

if the king desired only to rid himself of his wife, to what purpose the

multiplication of offenders, and the long list of acts or guilt, when a

single offence with the one accomplice who was ready to abide by a

confession would have sufficed? The four gentlemen gratuitously, on this

hypothesis, entangled in the indictment, were nobly connected: one of

them, Lord Rochfort, was himself a peer; they had lived, all four,

several years at the court, and were personally known to every member

of the council. Are we to suppose that evidence was invented with no

imaginable purpose, for wanton and needless murders?--that the council

risked the success of their scheme, by multiplying charges which only

increased difficulty of proof, and provoked the interference of the

powerful relations of the accused?[587]

Such are the difficulties in which, at this early stage of the

transaction, we are already implicated. They will not diminish as we

proceed.

[Sidenote: Friday, May 12. The court opens.]

[Sidenote: The four commoners are brought to the bar.]

[Sidenote: A petty jury return a verdict of guilty.]

Friday, the 12th of May, was fixed for the opening of the court. On that

day, a petty jury was returned at Westminster, for the trial of Sir

Henry Norris, Sir Francis Weston, Sir William Brereton, and Mark Smeton.

The commission sat,--the Earl of Wiltshire sitting with them,[588]--and

the four prisoners were brought to the bar. On their arraignment, Mark

Smeton, we are told, pleaded guilty of adultery with the queen; not

guilty of the other charges. Norris, Weston, and Brereton severally

pleaded not guilty. Verdict, guilty. The king's sergeant and attorney

pray judgment. Judgment upon Smeton, Norris, Weston, and Brereton as

usual in cases of high treason. This is all which the record contains.

The nature of the evidence is not mentioned. But again there was a jury;

and if we have not the evidence which convinced that jury, we have the

evidence that they were, or professed to be, convinced.

[Sidenote: The Duke of Norfolk is named Lord High Steward.]

The queen and her brother were to be tried on the following Monday.

Their crime was not adultery only, but was coloured with the deeper

stain of incest. On the Friday, while the other prisoners were at the

bar, "Letters patent were addressed to Thomas, Duke of Norfolk,

Treasurer and Earl Marshal of England, setting forth that the Lady Anne,

Queen of England, and Sir George Boleyn, knight, Lord Rochfort, had been

indicted of certain capital crimes; and that the king, considering that

justice was a most excellent virtue, and pleasing to the Most Highest;

and inasmuch as the office of High Steward of England, whose presence

for the administration of the law in this case is required, was vacant,

the king therefore appointed the said duke Lord High Steward of England,

with full powers to receive the indictments found against Queen Anne and

the Lord Rochfort, and calling them before him, for the purpose of

hearing and examining them, and compelling them to answer thereto." The

duke was to collect also "such and so many lords, peers, and magnates of

the kingdom of England, peers of the said Queen Anne and Lord Rochfort,

by whom the truth could be better known; and the truth being known, to

give judgment according to the laws and customs of England, and to give

sentence and judgment, and to direct execution, with the other usual

powers."[589] As a certain number only of the peers were summoned, it

may be imagined that some fraud was practised in the selection, and that

those only were admitted whose subserviency could be relied upon. I will

therefore give the names as before.

[Sidenote: List of peers summoned to try the queen and her brother.]

The two English Dukes, of Norfolk and Suffolk.[590] The one English

Marquis, of Exeter. The Earls of Arundel, Oxford, Northumberland (the

queen's early lover), Westmoreland, Derby, Worcester, Rutland, Sussex,

and Huntingdon all the earls in the peerage except four--those of

Shrewsbury, Essex, Cumberland, and Wiltshire. Why the first three were

omitted I do not know. Lord Wiltshire had already fulfilled his share of

the miserable duty; he was not compelled to play the part of Brutus, and

condemn, in person, his two children. The remaining peers were the Lords

Audeley, De la Ware, Montague, Morley, Dacre, Cobham, Maltravers, Powis,

Mounteagle, Clinton, Sandys, Windsor, Wentworth, Burgh, and Mordaunt:

twenty-seven in all: men hitherto of unblemished honour--the noblest

blood in the realm.

[Sidenote: Monday, May 15. Account of the trial in the Baga de

Secretis.]

These noblemen assembled in the Tower on the 15th of May. The queen was

brought before them; and the record in the Baga de Secretis relates the

proceeding as follows:--

"Before the Lord High Steward at the Tower, Anne, Queen of England,

comes in the custody of Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower,

and is brought to the bar. Being arraigned of the before-mentioned

treasons, she pleads not guilty, and puts herself upon her peers;

whereupon the Duke of Suffolk, Marquis of Exeter, and others the

before-mentioned earls and barons, peers of the said queen, being

charged by the said Lord High Steward to say the truth, and afterwards

being examined severally by the Lord High Steward, from the lowest peer

to the highest, each of them severally saith that she is guilty.

[Sidenote: The queen is found guilty, and sentenced to be burned or

beheaded at the king's pleasure.]

"Judgment--that the queen be taken by the said Constable back to the

king's prison within the Tower; and then, as the king shall command, be

brought to the green within the said Tower, and there burned or

beheaded, as shall please the king."[591]

In such cold lines is the story of this tragedy unrolling itself to its

close. The course which it followed, however, was less hard in the

actual life; and men's hearts, even in those stern times, could beat

with human emotions. The Duke of Norfolk was in tears as he passed

sentence.[592] The Earl of Northumberland "was obliged by a sudden

illness to leave the court."[593] The sight of the woman whom he had

once loved, and to whom he was perhaps married, in that dreadful

position, had been more than he could bear; and the remainder of the

work of the day went forward without him.

[Sidenote: Lord Rochfort found guilty also.]

The queen withdrew. Her brother took his place at the bar. Like Anne, he

declared himself innocent. Like Anne, he was found guilty, and sentenced

to die.[594]

We can form no estimate of the evidence; for we do not know what it was.

We cannot especially accuse the form of the trial; for it was the form

which was always observed. But the fact remains to us, that these

twenty-seven peers, who were not ignorant, as we are, but were fully

acquainted with the grounds of the prosecution, did deliberately, after

hearing the queen's defence, pronounce against her a unanimous verdict.

If there was foul play, they had advantages infinitely greater than any

to which we can pretend for detecting it. The Boleyns were unpopular,

and Anne herself was obnoxious to the imperialists and Catholics; but

all parties, Catholic and Protestant alike, united in the sentence.

[Sidenote: The popular interpretation is not credible.]

Looking at the case, then, as it now stands, we have the report for some

time current, that the queen was out of favour, and that the king's

affection was turned in another direction,--a report, be it observed,

which had arisen before the catastrophe, and was not, therefore, an

afterthought, or legend; we have also the antecedent improbability,

which is very great, that a lady in the queen's position could have been

guilty of the offences with which the indictment charges her. We have

also the improbability, which is great, that the king, now forty-four

years old, who in his earlier years had been distinguished for the

absence of those vices in which contemporary princes indulged

themselves, in wanton weariness of a woman for whom he had

revolutionized the kingdom, and quarrelled with half Christendom,

suddenly resolved to murder her; that, instead of resorting to poison,

or to the less obtrusive methods of criminality, he invented, and

persuaded his council to assist him in inventing, a series of

accusations which reflected dishonour on himself, and which involved the

gratuitous death of five persons with whom he had no quarrel, who were

attached to his court and person. To maintain these accusations, he

would have to overawe into an active participation in his crime, judges,

juries, peers, the dearest relations of those whom he was destroying,

and this with no standing army, no praetorians or janissaries at his

back, with no force but the yeomen of the guard, who could be scattered

by a rising of the apprentices. He had gone out of his way, moreover, to

call a parliament; and the summons had been so hasty that no time was

left to control the elections; while again to fail was ruin; and the

generation of Englishmen to whom we owe the Reformation were not so

wholly lost to all principles of honour, that Henry could have counted

beforehand upon success in so desperate a scheme with that absolute

certainty without which he would scarcely have risked the experiment. I

think that there is some improbability here. Unlikely as it is that

queens should disgrace themselves, history contains unfortunately more

than one instance that it is not impossible. That queens in that very

age were capable of profligacy was proved, but a few years later, by the

confessions of Catherine Howard. I believe history will be ransacked

vainly to find a parallel for conduct at once so dastardly, so

audacious, and so foolishly wicked as that which the popular hypothesis

attributes to Henry VIII.

[Sidenote: The facts in favour of the queen.]

[Sidenote: The facts against her.]

This is a fair statement of the probabilities; not, I believe,

exaggerated on either side. Turning to the positive facts which are

known to us, we have amongst those which make for the queen her own

denial of her guilt; her supposed letter to the king, which wears the

complexion of innocence; the assertions of three out of the five other

persons who were accused, up to the moment of their execution; and the

sympathizing story of a Flemish gentleman who believed her innocent, and

who says that many other people in England believed the same. On the

other side, we have the judicial verdict of more than seventy noblemen

and gentlemen,[595] no one of whom had any interest in the deaths of the

accused, and some of whom had interests the most tender in their

acquittal; we have the assent of the judges who sat on the commission,

and who passed sentence, after full opportunities of examination, with

all the evidence before their eyes; the partial confession of one of the

prisoners, though afterwards withdrawn; and the complete confession of

another, maintained till the end, and not withdrawn upon the scaffold.

Mr. Hallam must pardon me for saying that this is not a matter in which

doubt is unpermitted.

[Sidenote: Wednesday, May 17. The execution of the five gentlemen.]

A brief interval only was allowed between the judgment and the final

close. On Wednesday, the 17th, the five gentlemen were taken to

execution. Smeton was hanged; the others were beheaded. Smeton and

Brereton acknowledged the justice of their sentence. Brereton said that

if he had to die a thousand deaths, he deserved them all; and Brereton

was the only one of the five whose guilt at the time was doubted.[596]

Norris died silent; Weston, with a few general lamentations on the

wickedness of his past life. None denied the crime for which they

suffered; all but one were considered by the spectators to have

confessed. Rochfort had shown some feeling while in the Tower. Kingston

on one occasion found him weeping bitterly. The day of the trial he sent

a petition to the king, to what effect I do not learn; and on the

Tuesday he begged to see Cromwell, having something on his conscience,

as he said, which he wished to tell him.[597] His desire, however, does

not seem to have been complied with; he spoke sorrowfully on the

scaffold of the shame which he had brought upon the gospel, and died

with words which appeared to the spectators, if not a confession, yet

something very nearly resembling it, "This said lord," wrote a spectator

to the court at Brussels, "made a good Catholic address to the people.

He said that he had not come there to preach to them, but rather to

serve as a mirror and an example. He acknowledged the crimes which he

had committed against God, and against the king his sovereign; there was

no occasion for him, he said, to repeat the cause for which he was

condemned; they would have little pleasure in hearing him tell it. He

prayed God, and he prayed the king, to pardon his offences; and all

others whom he might have injured he also prayed to forgive him as

heartily as he forgave every one. He bade his hearers avoid the vanities

of the world, and the flatteries of the court which had brought him to

the shameful end which had overtaken him. Had he obeyed the lessons of

that gospel which he had so often read, he said he should not have

fallen so far; it was worth more to be a good doer than a good reader.

Finally, he forgave those who had adjudged him to die, and he desired

them to pray God for his soul."[598]

[Sidenote: Anne Boleyn confesses to Cranmer that she has never been

lawfully married to the king.]

The queen was left till a further mystery had perplexed yet deeper the

disgraceful exposure. Henry had desired Cranmer to be her confessor. The

archbishop was with her on the day after her trial,[599] and she then

made an extraordinary avowal,[600] either that she had been married or

contracted in early life, or had been entangled in some connexion which

invalidated her marriage with the king. The letter to the emperor, which

I have already quoted,[601] furnishes the solitary explanation of the

mystery which remains. Some one, apparently the imperial ambassador,

informed Charles that she was discovered to have been nine years before

married to Lord Percy, not formally only, but really and completely. If

this be true, her fate need scarcely excite further sympathy.

[Sidenote: The queen is pronounced divorced.]

On Wednesday she was taken to Lambeth, where she made her confession in

form, and the archbishop, sitting judicially, pronounced her marriage

with the king to have been null and void. The supposition, that this

business was a freak of caprice or passion, is too puerile to be

considered. It is certain that she acknowledged something; and it is

certain also that Lord Northumberland was examined upon the subject

before the archbishop. In person upon oath indeed, and also in, a letter

to Cromwell, Northumberland denied that he had ever been legally

connected with her; but perhaps Northumberland was afraid to make an

admission so dangerous to himself, or perhaps the confession itself was

a vague effort which she made to save her life.[602] But whatever she

said, and whether she spoke truth or falsehood, she was pronounced

divorced, and the divorce did not save her.[603] Friday, the 19th, was

fixed for her death; and when she found that there was no hope she

recovered her spirits. The last scene was to be on the green inside the

Tower. The public were to be admitted; but Kingston suggested that to

avoid a crowd it was desirable not to fix the hour, since it was

supposed that she would make no further confession.

[Sidenote: Thursday, May 18. Kingston's tribute to her conduct in the

Tower.]

"This morning she sent for me," he added, "that I might be with her at

such time as she received the good Lord, to the intent that I should

hear her speak as touching her innocency always to be clear. 'Mr.

Kingston,' she said, 'I hear say I shall not die afore noon, and I am

very sorry therefore, for I thought to be dead by this time, and past my

pain.' I told her it should be no pain, it was so subtle; and then she

said, 'I heard say the executioner was very good, and I have a little

neck,' and put her hands about it, laughing heartily. I have seen many

men, and also women, executed, and they have been in great sorrow; and

to my knowledge, this lady hath much joy and pleasure in death."[604]

[Sidenote: Friday, May 19. Tower Green at noon.]

We are very near the termination of the tragedy. A little before noon on

the 19th of May, Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, was led down to the

green. A single cannon stood loaded on the battlements; the motionless

cannoneer was ready, with smoking linstock, to tell London that all was

over. The yeomen of the guard were there, and a crowd of citizens; the

lord mayor in his robes, the deputies of the guilds, the sheriffs, and

the aldermen; they were come to see a spectacle which England had never

seen before--a head which had worn the crown falling under the sword of

an executioner.

[Sidenote: The scaffold, and the persons present upon it.]

On the scaffold, by the king's desire, there were present Cromwell, the

Lord Chancellor, the Duke of Suffolk, and lastly, the Duke of Richmond,

who might now, when both his sisters were illegitimized, be considered

heir presumptive to the throne. As in the choice of the commission, as

in the conduct of the trial, as in the summons of parliament, as in

every detail through which the cause was passed, Henry had shown

outwardly but one desire to do all which the most strict equity

prescribed, so around this last scene he had placed those who were

nearest in blood to himself, and nearest in rank to the crown. If she

who was to suffer was falling under a forged charge, he acted his part

with horrible completeness.

[Sidenote: The queen's last words.]

The queen appeared walking feebly, supported by the Lieutenant of the

Tower. She seemed half stupified and looked back from time to time at

the ladies by whom she was followed. On reaching the platform, she asked

if she might say a few words;[605] and permission being granted, she

turned to the spectators and said: "Christian people, I am come to die.

And according to law, and by law, I am judged to death; and therefore I

will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to

speak anything of that whereof I am accused and condemned to die. But I

pray God save the king, and send him long to reign over you; for a

gentler and more merciful prince was there never; and to me he was ever

a good, a gentle, and sovereign lord. If any person will meddle of my

cause, I require him to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the

world and of you; and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. Oh,

Lord, have mercy on me. To God I commend my soul."[606] "These words,"

says Stow, "she spoke with a smiling countenance." She wore an ermine

cloak which was then taken off. She herself removed her headdress, and

one of her attendants gave her a cap into which she gathered her hair.

She then knelt, and breathing faintly a commendation of her soul to

Christ, the executioner with a single blow struck off her head. A white

handkerchief was thrown over it as it fell, and one of the ladies took

it up and carried it away. The other women lifted the body and bore it

into the Chapel of the Tower, where it was buried in the choir.[607]

Thus she too died without denying the crime for which she suffered.

Smeton confessed from the first. Brereton, Weston, Rochfort, virtually

confessed on the scaffold. Norris said nothing. Of all the sufferers not

one ventured to declare that he or she was innocent,--and that six human

beings should leave the world with the undeserved stain of so odious a

charge on them, without attempting to clear themselves, is credible only

to those who form opinions by their wills, and believe or disbelieve as

they choose.

To this end the queen had come at last, and silence is the best comment

which charity has to offer upon it. Better far it would have been if the

dust had been allowed to settle down over the grave of Anne Boleyn, and

her remembrance buried in forgetfulness. Strange it is that a spot which

ought to have been sacred to pity, should have been made the arena for

the blind wrestling of controversial duellists. Blind, I call it; for

there has been little clearness of judgment, little even of common

prudence in the choice of sides. If the Catholics could have fastened

the stain of murder on the king and the statesmen of England, they would

have struck the faith of the establishment a harder blow than by a poor

tale of scandal against a weak, erring, suffering woman: and the

Protestants, in mistaken generosity, have courted an infamy for the

names of those to whom they owe their being, which, staining the

fountain, must stain for ever the stream which flows from it. It has

been no pleasure to me to rake among the evil memories of the past, to

prove a human being sinful whom the world has ruled to have been

innocent. Let the blame rest with those who have forced upon our history

the alternative of a reassertion of the truth, or the shame of noble

names which have not deserved it at our hands.

[Sidenote: Fresh perplexity in the succession.]

[Sidenote: Elizabeth now illegitimate.]

[Sidenote: Lord Thomas Howard and Lady Margaret Douglas.]

No sooner had the result of the trial appeared to be certain, than the

prospects of the succession to the throne were seen to be more perplexed

than ever. The prince so earnestly longed for had not been born. The

disgrace of Anne Boleyn, even before her last confession, strengthened

the friends of the Princess Mary. Elizabeth, the child of a doubtful

marriage which had terminated in adultery and incest, would have had

slight chance of being maintained, even if her birth had suffered no

further stain; and by the Lambeth sentence she was literally and legally

illegitimate. The King of Scotland was now the nearest heir; and next to

him stood Lady Margaret Douglas, his sister, who had been born in

England, and was therefore looked upon with better favour by the people.

As if to make confusion worse confounded, in the midst of the

uncertainty Lord Thomas Howard, taking advantage of the moment, and, as

the act or his attainder says,[608] "being seduced by the devil, and not

having the fear of God before his eyes," persuaded this lady into a

contract of marriage with him; "The presumption being," says the same

act, "that he aspired to the crown by reason of so high a marriage; or,

at least, to the making division for the same; having a firm hope and

trust _that the subjects of this realm[609] would incline and bear

affection to the said Lady Margaret, being born in this realm; and not

to the King of Scots, her brother, to whom this realm hath not, nor ever

had, any affection; but would resist his attempt to the crown of this

realm to the uttermost of their powers_."[610]

[Sidenote: The council and the peers urge the king to an instant

re-marriage.]

Before the discovery of this proceeding, but in anticipation of

inevitable intrigues of the kind, the privy council and the peers, on

the same grounds which had before led them to favour the divorce from

Catherine, petitioned the king to save the country from the perils

which menaced it, and to take a fresh wife without an hour's delay.

Henry's experience of matrimony had been so discouraging, that they

feared he might be reluctant to venture upon it again. Nevertheless, for

his country's sake, they trusted that he would not refuse.[611]

[Sidenote: He marries Jane Seymour.]

Henry, professedly in obedience to this request, was married,

immediately after the execution, to Jane, daughter of Sir John Seymour.

The indecent haste is usually considered a proof entirely conclusive of

the cause of Anne Boleyn's ruin.[612] Under any aspect it was an

extraordinary step, which requires to be gravely considered. Henry, who

waited seven years for Anne Boleyn, to whom he was violently attached,

was not without control over his passions; and if appetite had been the

moving influence with him, he would scarcely, with the eyes of all the

world upon him, have passed so extravagant an insult upon the nation of

which he was the sovereign. If Jane Seymour had really been the object

of a previous unlawful attachment, her conduct in accepting so

instantly a position so frightfully made vacant, can scarcely be painted

in too revolting colours. Yet Jane Seymour's name, at home and abroad,

by Catholic and Protestant, was alike honoured and respected. Among all

Henry's wives she stands out distinguished by a stainless name,

untarnished with the breath of reproach.

If we could conceive the English nation so tongue-tied that they dared

not whisper their feelings, there were Brussels, Paris, Rome, where the

truth could be told; yet, with the exception of a single passage in a

letter of Mary of Hungary,[613] there is no hint in the correspondence,

either in Paris, Simancas, or Brussels, that there was a suspicion of

foul play. If Charles or Francis had believed Henry really capable of so

deep atrocity, no political temptation would have induced either of them

to commit their cousins or nieces to the embrace of a monster, yet no

sooner was Jane Seymour dead, than we shall find them competing eagerly

with each other to secure his hand.

It is quite possible that when Anne Boleyn was growing licentious, the

king may have distinguished a lady of acknowledged excellence by some in

no way improper preference, and that when desired by the council to

choose a wife immediately, he should have taken a person as unlike as

possible to the one who had disgraced him. This was the interpretation

which was given to his conduct by the Lords and Commons of England. In

the absence of any evidence, or shadow of evidence, that among

contemporaries who had means of knowing the truth, another judgment was

passed upon it, the deliberate assertion of an act of parliament must be

considered a safer guide than modern unsupported conjecture.[614]

[Sidenote: June 8. Parliament meets.]

This matter having been accomplished, the king returned to London to

meet parliament. The Houses assembled on the 8th of June; the peers had

hastened up in unusual numbers, as if sensible of the greatness of the

occasion. The Commons were untried and unknown; and if Anne Boleyn was

an innocent victim, no king of England was ever in so terrible a

position as Henry VIII. when he entered the Great Chamber fresh from his

new bridal. He took his seat upon the throne; and then Audeley, the Lord

Chancellor, rose and spoke:[615]

[Sidenote: The Lord Chancellor's speech at the opening.]

[Sidenote: The succession must be reconsidered.]

[Sidenote: And the king desires the parliament to name an heir

apparent.]

"At the dissolution of the late parliament, the King's Highness had not

thought so soon to meet you here again. He has called you together now,

being moved thereunto by causes of grave moment, affecting both his own

person and the interests of the commonwealth. You will have again to

consider the succession to the crown of this realm. His Highness knows

himself to be but mortal, liable to fall sick, and to die.[616] At

present he perceives the peace and welfare of the kingdom to depend upon

his single life; and he is anxious to leave it, at his death, free from

peril. He desires you therefore to nominate some person as his heir

apparent, who, should it so befall him (which God forbid!) to depart out

of this world without children lawfully begotten, may rule in peace over

this land, with the consent and the good will of the inhabitants

thereof.

"You will also deliberate upon the repeal of a certain act passed in the

late parliament, by which the realm is bound to obedience to the Lady

Anne Boleyn, late wife of the king, and the heirs lawfully begotten of

them twain, and which declares all persons who shall, by word or deed,

have offended against this lady or her offspring, to have incurred the

penalties of treason.

[Sidenote: The Lord Chancellor's advice to the Houses.]

"These are the causes for which you are assembled; and if you will be

advised by me, you will act in these matters according to the words of

Solomon, with whom our most gracious king may deservedly be compared.

The "wise man" counsels us to bear in mind such things as be past, to

weigh well such things as be present, and provide prudently for the

things which be to come. And you I would bid to remember, first, those

sorrows and those burdens which the King's Highness did endure on the

occasion of his first unlawful marriage--a marriage not only judged

unlawful by the most famous universities in Christendom, but so

determined by the consent of this realm; and to remember further the

great perils which have threatened his most royal Majesty from the time

when he entered on his second marriage.

[Sidenote: The gratitude due to the king for his third adventure into

marriage.]

"Then, turning to the present, you will consider in what state the realm

now standeth with respect to the oath by which we be bound to the Lady

Anne and to her offspring; the which Lady Anne, with her accomplices,

has been found guilty of high treason, and has met the due reward of her

conspiracies. And then you will ask yourselves, what man of common

condition would not have been deterred by such calamities from venturing

a third time into the state of matrimony. Nevertheless, our most

excellent prince, not in any carnal concupiscence, but at the humble

entreaty of his nobility, hath consented once more to accept that

condition, and has taken to himself a wife who in age and form is deemed

to be meet and apt for the procreation of children.

"Lastly, according to the third injunction, let us now do our part in

providing for things to come. According to the desire of his most

gracious Highness, let us name some person to be his heir; who, in case

(_quod absit_) that he depart this life leaving no offspring lawfully

begotten, may be our lawful sovereign. But let us pray Almighty God that

He will graciously not leave our prince thus childless; and let us give

Him thanks for that He hath preserved his Highness to us out of so many

dangers; seeing that his Grace's care and efforts be directed only to

the ruling his subjects in peace and charity so long as his life

endures, and to the leaving us, when he shall come to die, in sure

possession of these blessings."

[Sidenote: The speech digested into a statute.]

[Sidenote: July 1. Reassertion of the independence of the realm.]

Three weeks after Anne Boleyn's death and the king's third marriage, the

chancellor dared to address the English legislature in these terms: and

either he spoke like a reasonable man, which he may have done, or else

he was making an exhibition of effrontery to be paralleled only by

Seneca's letter to the Roman Senate after the murder of Agrippina. The

legislature adopted the first interpretation, and the heads of the

speech were embodied in an act of parliament. While the statute was in

preparation, they made use of the interval in continuing the business of

the Reformation. They abolished finally the protection of sanctuary in

cases of felony, extending the new provisions even to persons in holy

orders:[617] they calmed the alarms of Cranmer and the Protestants by re

asserting the extinction of the authority of the pope;[618] and they

passed various other laws of economic and social moment. At length, on

the 1st of July, in a crowded house, composed of fourteen bishops,[619]

eighteen abbots, and thirty-nine lay peers,[620] a bill was read a first

time of such importance that I must quote at length its own most

noticeable words.

[Sidenote: Second great Act of Succession. The parliament endorse all

the proceedings in the late trials.]

The preamble commenced with reciting those provisions of the late acts

which were no longer to remain in force. It then proceeded, in the form

of an address to the king, to adopt and endorse the divorce and the

execution. "Albeit," it ran, "most dread Sovereign Lord, that these acts

were made, as it was then thought, upon a pure, perfect, and clear

foundation; your Majesty's nobles and commons, thinking the said

marriage then had between your Highness and the Lady Anne in their

consciences to have been pure, sincere, perfect, and good, and so was

reputed and taken in the realm; [yet] now of late God, of his infinite

goodness, from whom no secret things can be hid, hath caused to be

brought to light evident and open knowledge of certain just, true, and

lawful impediments, unknown at the making of the said acts; and since

that time confessed by the Lady Anne, before the Most Reverend Father in

God, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, sitting judicially for the same;

by the which it plainly appeareth that the said marriage was never good,

nor consonant to the laws, but utterly void and of none effect; by

reason whereof your Highness was and is lawfully divorced from the bonds

of the said marriage in the life of the said Lady Anne:

"And over this, most dread Lord, albeit that your Majesty, not knowing

of any lawful impediments, entered into the bonds of the said unlawful

marriage, and advanced the same Lady Anne to the honour of the sovereign

estate of the queen of this realm; yet she, nevertheless, inflamed with

pride and carnal desires of her body, putting apart the dread of God and

excellent benefits received of your Highness, confederated herself with

George Boleyn, late Lord Rochfort, her natural brother, Henry Norris,

Esq., Francis Weston, Esq., William Brereton, Esq., gentlemen of your

privy chamber, and Mark Smeton, groom of your said privy chamber; and so

being confederate, she and they most traitorously committed and

perpetrated divers detestable and abominable treasons, to the fearful

peril and danger of your royal person, and to the utter loss,

disherison, and desolation of this realm, if God of his goodness had not

in due time brought their said treasons to light; for the which, being

plainly and manifestly proved, they were convict and attainted by due

course and order of your common law of this realm, and have suffered

according to the merits:"

[Sidenote: The late queen declared attainted.]

In consequence of these treasons, and to lend, if possible, further

weight to the sentence against her, the late queen was declared

attainted by authority of parliament, as she already was by the common

law. The Act then proceeded:

[Sidenote: Opinion of parliament upon the king's third marriage.]

"And forasmuch, most gracious Sovereign, as it hath pleased your royal

Majesty--(notwithstanding the great intolerable perils and occasions

which your Highness hath suffered and sustained, as well by occasion of

your first unlawful marriage, as by occasion of your second); at the

most humble petition and intercession of us your nobles of this realm,

for the ardent love and fervent affection which your Highness beareth to

the conservation of the peace and amity of the same, and of the good and

quiet governance thereof, of your most excellent goodness to enter into

marriage again; and [forasmuch as you] have chosen and taken a right

noble, virtuous, and excellent lady, Queen Jane, to your true and lawful

wife; who, for her convenient years, excellent beauty, and pureness of

flesh and blood, is apt to conceive issue by your Highness; which

marriage is so pure and sincere, without spot, doubt, or impediment,

that the issue presented under the same, when it shall please Almighty

God to send it, cannot be truly, lawfully, nor justly interrupted or

disturbed of the right and title in the succession of your crown: May it

now please your Majesty, for the extinguishment of all doubts, and for

the pure and perfect unity of us your subjects, and all our posterities,

that inasmuch as the marriage with the Lady Catherine having been

invalid, the issue of that marriage is therefore illegitimate; and the

marriage with the Lady Anne Boleyn having been upon true and just causes

deemed of no value nor effect, the issue of this marriage is also

illegitimate; the succession to the throne be now therefore determined

to the issue of the marriage with Queen Jane."[621]

[Sidenote: The succession determined to the issue of the king by Queen

Jane.]

[Sidenote: A reason for demurring to the popular judgment in this

matter.]

Thus was every step which had been taken in this great matter

deliberately sanctioned[622] by parliament. The criminality of the queen

was considered to have been proved; the sentence upon her to have been

just. The king was thanked in the name of the nation for having made

haste with the marriage which has been regarded as the temptation to his

crime. It is wholly impossible to dismiss facts like these with a few

contemptuous phrases; and when I remember that the purity of Elizabeth

is an open question among our historians, although the foulest kennels

must be swept to find the filth with which to defile it; while Anne

Boleyn is ruled to have been a saint, notwithstanding the solemn verdict

of the Lords and Commons, the clergy, the council, judges, and juries,

pronounced against her,--I feel that with such a judgment caprice has

had more to do than a just appreciation of evidence.

[Sidenote: The contingency to be provided for, of the last marriage

proving unfruitful.]

The parliament had not yet, however, completed their work. It was

possible, as the lord chancellor had said, that the last marriage might

prove unfruitful, and this contingency was still unprovided for. The

king had desired the Lords and Commons to name his successor; they

replied with an act which showed the highest confidence in his

patriotism; they conferred a privilege upon him unknown to the

constitution, yet a power which, if honestly exercised, offered by far

the happiest solution of the difficulty.

Henry had three children. The Duke of Richmond was illegitimate in the

strictest sense, but he had been bred as a prince; and I have shown

that, in default of a legitimate heir, the king had thought of him as

his possible successor. Mary and Elizabeth were illegitimate also,

according to law and form; but the illegitimacy of neither the one nor

the other could be pressed to its literal consequences. They were the

children, each of them, of connexions which were held legal at the

period of their birth. They had each received the rank of a princess;

and the instincts of justice demanded that they should be allowed a

place in the line of inheritance. Yet, while this feeling was distinctly

entertained, it was difficult to give effect to it by statute, without a

further complication of questions already too complicated, and without

provoking intrigue and jealousy in other quarters. The Princess Mary

also had not yet receded from the defiant attitude which she had

assumed. She had lent herself to conspiracy, she had broken her

allegiance, and had as yet made no submission. To her no favour could be

shown while she remained in this position; and it was equally

undesirable to give Elizabeth, under the altered circumstances, a

permanent preference to her sister.

[Sidenote: The parliament grant the king a power to bequeath the crown

by will.]

The parliament, therefore, with as much boldness as good sense, cut the

knot, by granting Henry the power to bequeath the crown by will. He

could thus advance the Duke of Richmond, if Richmond's character as a

man fulfilled the promise of his youth; and he could rescue his

daughters from the consequences of their mother's misfortunes or their

mother's faults. It was an expression of confidence, as honourable to

the country as to the king; and if we may believe, as the records say,

that the tragedy of the past month had indeed grieved and saddened

Henry, the generous language in which the legislature committed the

future of the nation into his hands, may have something soothed his

wounds.

[Sidenote: The reasons alleged for this measure.]

"Forasmuch as it standeth," they said, "in the only pleasure and will of

Almighty God, whether your Majesty shall have heirs begotten and

procreated from this (late) marriage, or else any lawful heirs or issues

hereafter of your own body, begotten by any other lawful wife; and if

such heirs should fail (as God defend), and no provision be made in your

life who should rule and govern this realm, then this realm, after your

transitory life, shall be destitute of a governor, or else percase [be]

encumbered with a person that would count to aspire to the same, whom

the subjects of this realm shall not find in their hearts to love,

dread, and obediently serve[623] as their sovereign lord; and if your

Grace, before it be certainly known whether ye shall have heirs or not,

should suddenly name and declare any person or persons to succeed after

your decease, then it is to be doubted that such person so named might

happen to take great heart and courage, and by presumption fall to

inobedience and rebellion; by occasion of which premises, divisions and

dissensions are likely to arise and spring in this realm, to the great

peril and destruction of us, your most humble and obedient servants, and

all our posterities: For reformation and remedy hereof, we, your most

bounden and loving subjects, most obediently acknowledging that your

Majesty, prudently, victoriously, politicly, and indifferently, hath

maintained this realm in peace and quietness during all the time of your

most gracious reign, putting our trust and confidence in your Highness,

and nothing doubting but that your Majesty, if you should fail of heirs

lawfully begotten, for the love and affection that ye bear to this

realm, and for avoiding all the occasions of divisions afore rehearsed,

so earnestly mindeth the wealth of the same, that ye can best and most

prudently provide such a governour for us and this your realm, as will

succeed and follow in the just and right tract of all your proceedings,

and maintain, keep, and defend the same and all the laws and ordinances

established in your Grace's time for the wealth of the realm, which we

all desire, do therefore most humbly beseech your Highness, that it may

be enacted, for avoiding all ambiguities, doubts, and divisions, that

your Highness shall have full and plenary power and authority to

dispose, by your letters patent under your great seal, or else by your

last will made in writing, and signed with your hand, the imperial crown

of this realm, and all other the premises thereunto belonging, to such

person or persons as shall please your Highness.

"And we, your humble and obedient subjects, do faithfully promise to

your Majesty, by one common assent, that after your decease, we, our

heirs and successors, shall accept and take, love, dread, and only obey

such person or persons, male or female, as your Majesty shall give your

imperial crown unto; and wholly to stick to them as true and faithful

subjects ought to do."[624]

NOTES:

[536] Speech of the Lord Chancellor: _Lords' Journals_, p. 84

[537] Strype's _Memorials_, Vol. I. p. 370.

[538] Sir Edmund Bedingfield to Cromwell: _State Papers_, Vol. I. p.

451.

[539] Strype's _Memorials_, Vol. I.; and see Appendix, p. 241, et seq.

[540] _State Papers_, Vol. I. p. 452

[541] Lord Herbert, p. 188.

[542] Lord Herbert, p. 188. It will have been observed, that neither in

this letter, nor in the other authentic papers connected with her death,

is there any allusion to Cardinal Pole's famous story, that being on her

deathbed, Queen Catherine prayed the king to allow her to see her

daughter for the last time, and that the request was refused. Pole was

not in England at the time. He drew his information from Catholic

rumour, as vindictive as it was credulous; and in the many letters from

members of the privy council to him which we possess, his narrative is

treated as throughout a mere wild collection of fables. I require some

better evidence to persuade me that this story is any truer than the

rest, when we know that Catherine allowed the king to hear that she was

dying, not from herself, but from a foreign ambassador; and that such a

request could have been made in the few days which intervened between

this intimation and her death, without some traces of it appearing in

the close account which we possess of her language and actions during

those days, is in a high degree unlikely.

[543] See Lingard, Vol. V. p. 30. Hall says: "Queen Anne wore yellow for

mourning."

[544] The directions for the funeral are printed in Lingard Vol. V.,

Appendix, p. 267.

[545] It ought not to be necessary to say that her will was

respected--Lord Herbert, p. 188; but the king's conduct to Catherine of

Arragon has provoked suspicion even where suspicion is unjust; and much

mistaken declamation has been wasted in connexion with this matter upon

an offence wholly imaginary.

In making her bequests, Catherine continued to regard herself as the

king's wife, in which capacity she professed to have no power to dispose

of her property. She left her legacies in the form of a petition to her

husband. She had named no executors; and being in the eyes of the law "a

sole woman," the administration lapsed in consequence to the nearest of

kin, the emperor. Some embarrassment was thus created, and the

attorney-general was obliged to evade the difficulty by a legal

artifice, before the king could take possession, and give effect to the

bequests.--See Strype's _Memor._, Vol. I., Appendix, pp. 252-255. Miss

Strickland's valuable volumes are so generally read, that I venture to

ask her to reconsider the passage which she has written on this subject.

The king's offences against Catherine require no unnecessary

exaggeration.

[546] See Vol. I. pp. 175, 176.

[547] Foxe speaks very strongly on this point. In Ellis's Letters we

find many detailed instances, and indeed in all contemporary

authorities.

[548] Cranmer's Letter to the King: Burnet, Vol. I. p. 323.

[549] More's _Life of More_; and see Chap. IX.

[550] Il Re de Inghilterra haveva fatto venire in la Corte sua il

majordomo de la Regina et mostrava esserse mitigato alquanto. La causa

della mitigation procede del buon negotiar ha fatto et fa la Catolica

Mata con lo Ambaxiatore del Re de Inghilterra con persuadirle con buoni

paroli et pregeri che debbia restituir la Regina in la antigua dignita.

Dicano anchore che la Anna e mal voluta degli Si di Inghilterra si per

la sua superbia, si anche per l'insolentia et mali portementi che fanno

nel regno li fratelli e parenti di Anna e che per questo il Re non la

porta la affezione que soleva.--"Nuevas de Inglaterra": _MS. Archives of

Simancas._

[551] Il Re festeggia una altra donna della quale se mostra esser

inamorato; e molti Si di Inghilterra lo ajutano nel seguir el preditto

amore per desviar questo Re de la pratica di Anna.--_Ibid._

[552] Burnet's _Collectanea_, p. 87.

[553] _Pilgrim_, p. 117.

[554] _Le Laboureur_, I. 405: quoted in Lingard, Vol. V. p. 30.

[555] Quoy qu'il en soit l'on me luy peult faire grand tort quand cires

l'on a repute pour meschante. Car ce a este des longtemps son

stile.--The Regent Mary to Ferdinand: _MS. Brussels._

[556] Later writers point to the ladies of the court, but report could

not agree upon any single person: and _nothing_ is really known.

[557] Baga de Secretis, pouch 8: Appendix II. to the _Third Report of

the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records_.

[558] Cranmer to the King: Burnet, Vol. I. p. 322.

[559] I must draw particular attention to this. Parliament had been just

dissolved, and a fresh body of untried men were called together for no

other purpose than to take cognizance of the supposed discovery.--See

the Speech of the Lord Chancellor: _Lords' Journals_, p. 84. If the

accusations were intentionally forged by the king, to go out of the way

to court so needless publicity was an act most strange and most

incomprehensible.

[560] Constantyne says, Smeton was arrested first on Saturday evening,

at Stepney; but he seems inconsistent with himself. See his Memorial,

_Archaeologia_, Vol. XXIII. p. 63.

[561] His name repeatedly occurs in "the Privy Purse Expenses of Henry

VIII."

[562] Five years later, after the shameful behaviour of Catherine

Howard, the duke wrote to the king of "_the abominable deeds done by two

of my nieces against your Highness_;" which he said have "brought me

into the greatest perplexity that ever poor wretch was in, fearing that

your Majesty, having so often and by so many of my kyn been thus falsely

and traitorously handled, might not only conceive a displeasure in your

heart against me and all other of that kyn, but also in manner abhor to

hear speak of any of the same."--Norfolk to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_,

Vol. I. p. 721.

[563] Kingston to Cromwell: Singer's Cavendish, p. 456 et seq., in

Strype's _Memorials_, Vol. I.

[564] Sir Edward Baynton to the Lord Treasurer, from Greenwich: Singer's

Cavendish, p. 458.

[565] See Lingard, Vol. V. p. 33. It is not certain whether the

examination of the prisoners was at Greenwich or at the Tower. Baynton's

letter is dated from Greenwich, but that is not conclusive. Constantyne

says (_Archaeologia_, Vol. XXIII. p. 63) that the king took Norris with

him to London, and, as he heard say, urged him all the way to confess,

with promises of pardon if he would be honest with him. Norris persisted

in his denial, however, and was committed to the Tower. Afterwards,

before the council, he confessed. On his trial, his confession was read

to him, and he said he was deceived into making it by Sir W.

Fitzwilliam: an accusation against this gentleman very difficult to

believe.

[566] Letter to the Lord Treasurer.

[567] Kingston to Cromwell; Singer's Cavendish, p. 451.

[568] Kingston to Cromwell: Singer's Cavendish, p. 451.

[569] She said, "I think it much unkindness in the king to put such

about me as I never loved." I shewed her that the king took them to be

honest and good women. "But I would have had of mine own privy chamber,"

she said, "which I favour most."--Kingston to Cromwell: Ibid. p. 457.

[570] Ibid. p. 453.

[571] The disorder of which the king ultimately died--ulceration in the

legs--had already begun to show itself.

[572] The lady, perhaps, to whom Norris was to have been married. Sir

Edward Baynton makes an allusion to a Mistress Margery. The passage is

so injured as to be almost unintelligible:--"I have mused much et ... of

Mistress Margery, which hath used her ... strangely towards me of late,

being her friend as I have been. But no doubt it cannot be but she must

be of councell therewith. There hath been great friendship between the

queen and her of late."--Sir E. Baynton to the Lord Treasurer: Singer,

p. 458.

[573] Kingston to Cromwell: Singer, pp. 452, 453. Of Smeton she said,

"He was never in my chamber but at Winchester;" she had sent for him "to

play on the virginals," for there her lodging was above the king's....

"I never spoke with him since," she added, "but upon Saturday before May

day, and then I found him standing in the round window in my chamber of

presence, and I asked why he was so sad, and he answered and said it was

no matter; and then she said, 'You may not look to have me speak to you

as I should to a nobleman, because you be an inferior person.'--'No, no,

madam; a look sufficeth me [he said], and thus fare you well.'"--Singer,

p. 455.

[574] Printed in Burnet, Vol. I. p. 322, et seq.

[575] "Mark is the worst cherished of any man in the house, for he wears

irons."--Kingston to Cromwell. Later writers have assured themselves

that Smeton's confession was extorted from him by promises of pardon.

Why, then, was the government so impolitic as to treat him with especial

harshness so early in the transaction? When he found himself "ironed,"

he must have been assured that faith would not be kept with him; and he

had abundant time to withdraw what he had said.

[576] The sentence is mutilated, but the meaning seems intelligible:

"The queen standeth stiffly in her opinion that she wo ... which I think

is in the trust that she [hath in the] other two,"--i.e. Norris and

Weston.--Baynton to the Lord Treasurer. The government seems to have

been aware of some secret communication between her and Norris.--Ibid

Singer, p. 458.

[577] Kingston to Cromwell: Singer, p. 457.

[578] My first impression of this letter was strongly in favour of its

authenticity. I still allow it to stand in the text because it exists,

and because there is no evidence, external or internal, to prove it to

be a forgery. The more carefully I have examined the MS., however, the

greater uncertainty I have felt about it. It is not an original. It is

not an official copy. It does not appear, though here I cannot speak

conclusively, to be even a contemporary copy. The only guide to the date

is the watermark on the paper, and in this instance the evidence is

indecisive.--Note to the 2d edition.

[579] Burnet's _Collectanea_, p. 87; _Cotton. MS._

[580] Strype's _Eccles. Memorials_, Vol. I. Lord Bacon speaks of these

words as a message sent by the queen on the morning of the execution.

[581] Kingston to Cromwell: Singer, p. 456.

[582] Ibid. p. 457.

[583] Baga de Secretis, pouches 8 and 9: Appendix II to the _Third

Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records_.

[584] We shall meet him again in Ireland: he was the queen's cousin, and

man of the very highest character and ability. The grand jury of Kent

were nominated by Sir Thomas Wyatt, who was sheriff for that year. This

is not unimportant, for Wyatt in past times had been Anne's intimate

friend, if not her lover.

[585] The indictment found at Deptford was exactly similar; referring to

other acts of the same kind, committed by the same persons at Greenwich.

[586] Baga de Secretis, pouch 9.

[587] Sir Francis Bryan, the queen's cousin, was at first suspected. He

was absent from the court, and received a message from Cromwell to

appeal instantly on his allegiance. The following extract is from the

Deposition of the Abbot of Woburn--_MS. Cotton._ Cleopatra, E 4.:

"The said abbot remembereth that at the fall of Queen Anne, whom God

pardon, Master Bryan, being in the country, was suddenly sent for by the

Lord Privy Seal, as the said Master Bryan afterwards shewed me, charging

him upon his allegiance to come to him wheresoever he was within this

realm upon the sight of his letter, and so he did with all speed. And at

his next repair to Ampthill, I came to visit him there, at what time the

Lord Grey of Wilton, with many other men of worship, was with him in the

great court at Ampthill aforesaid. And at my coming in at the outer gate

Master Bryan perceived me, and of his much gentleness came towards

meeting me; to whom I said, 'Now welcome home and never so welcome.' He,

astonished, said unto me, 'Why so?' The said abbot said, 'Sir, I shall

shew you that at leisure,' and walked up into the great chamber with the

men of worship. And after a pause it pleased him to sit down upon a

bench and willed me to sit by him, and after that demanded of me what I

meant when I said, 'Never so welcome as then;' to whom I said thus:

'Sir, Almighty God in his first creation made an order of angels, and

among all made one principal, which was the ----, who would not be

content with his estate, but affected the celsitude and rule of Creator,

for the which he was divested from the altitude of heaven into the

profundity of hell into everlasting darkness, without repair or return,

with those that consented unto his pride. So it now lately befell in

this our worldly hierarchy of the court by the fall of Queen Anne as a

worldly Lucifer, not content with her estate to be true unto her

creator, making her his queen, but affected unlawful concupiscence, fell

suddenly out of that felicity wherein she was set, irrecoverably with

all those that consented unto her lust, whereof I am glad that ye were

never; and, therefore, now welcome and never so welcome, here is the end

of my tale.' And then he said unto me: 'Sir, indeed, as you say, I was

suddenly sent for, marvelling thereof and debating the matter in my mind

why this should be; at the last I considered and knew myself true and

clear in conscience unto my prince, and with all speed and without fear

[hastily set] me forward and came to my Lord Privy Seal, and after that

to the King's Grace, and nothing found in me, nor never shall be, but

just and true to my master the King's Grace.' And then I said

'Benedictus, but this was a marvellous peremptory commandment,' said I,

'and would have astonished the wisest man in this realm.' And he said,

'What then, he must needs do his master's commandment, and I assure you

there never was a man wiser to order the king's causes than he is; I

pray God save his life.'"

The language both of Sir Francis Bryan and the abbot is irreconcileable

with any other supposition, except that they at least were satisfied of

the queen's guilt.

[588] Baga de Secretis, pouch 8. The discovery of these papers sets at

rest the controversy whether the Earl of Wiltshire took part in the

trial. He was absent at the trial of his children; he was present at the

trial of the other prisoners.

[589] Baga de Secretis, pouch 9.

[590] The Duke of Richmond was under age.

[591] Baga de Secretis, pouch 9.

[592] Constantyne, _Archaeologia_, Vol. XXIII. p. 66.

[593] Baga de Secretis. When the Pilgrimage of Grace broke out four

months later, Northumberland was the only nobleman in the power of the

insurgents who refused to join in the rebellion. They threatened to kill

him; but "at that and all times the earl was very earnest against the

commons in the king's behalf and the Lord Privy Seal's."--Confession of

William Stapleton: _Rolls House MS._ A 2, 2. See Vol. III. of this work

chap. xiii.

[594] I know not whether I should here add the details which Meteren

gives of these trials. His authority, a Flemish gentleman, was in London

at the time, but was not present in the court. The Lord of Milherve

(that was this gentleman's name) was persuaded that the queen was

unjustly accused, and he worked out of the rumours which he heard an

interesting picture, touched with natural sympathy. It has been often

repeated, however. It may be read elsewhere; and as an authority it is

but of faint importance. If we allow it its fullest weight, it proves

that a foreigner then in England believed the queen innocent, and that

she defended herself with an eloquence which deeply touched her hearers.

His further assertion, that "Smeton's confession was all which was

alleged" against her, is certainly inaccurate; and his complaint, which

has been so often echoed, of the absence of witnesses, implies only a

want of knowledge of the forms which were observed in trials for high

treason. The witnesses were not brought into court and confronted with

the prisoner: their depositions were taken on oath before the grand

juries and the privy council, and on the trial were read out for the

accused to answer as they could.

[595] Two grand juries, the petty jury, and the twenty-seven peers.

[596] Constantyne's _Memor., Archaeol._, Vol. XXIII. pp. 63-66.

Constantyne was an attendant of Sir Henry Norris at this time, and a

friend and school-fellow of Sir W. Brereton. He was a resolute

Protestant, and he says that at first he and all other friends of the

gospel were unable to believe that the queen had behaved so abominably.

"As I may be saved before God," he says, "I could not believe it, afore

I heard them speak at their death." ... But on the scaffold, he adds,

"In a manner all confessed but Mr. Norris, who said almost nothing at

all."

[597] Kingston to Cromwell: Singer, p. 459.

[598] _The Pilgrim_: Appendix, p. 116.

[599] Kingston to Cromwell; and see Constantyne's _Memorial_.

[600] "Now of late, God, of his infinite goodness, from whom no secret

things can be hid, hath caused to be brought to light, evident and open

knowledge of certain just, true, and lawful impediments, unknown at the

making of the said acts [by which the marriage had been declared

legitimate], and since that time confessed by the Lady Anne, by the

which it plainly appeareth that the said marriage was never good nor

consonant to the laws."--28 Henry VIII. cap. 7. See also the appendix to

the fourth volume of this work.

[601] Vol. I. pp. 175, 176.

[602] On the day on which she first saw the archbishop, she said, at

dinner, that she expected to be spared, and that she would retire to

Antwerp.--to Cromwell: Singer, p. 460.

[603] Burnet raises a dilemma here. If, he says, the queen was not

married to the king, there was no adultery; and the sentence of death

and the sentence of divorce mutually neutralize each other. It is

possible that in the general horror at so complicated a delinquency, the

technical defence was overlooked.

[604] Kingston to Cromwell: Singer, p. 461.

[605] Letter of ---- to ----, _The Pilgrim_, p. 116.

[606] Wyatt's _Memoirs_, Hall, Stow, Constantyne's _Memorial_. There is

some little variation in the different accounts, but none of importance.

[607] _Pilgrim_, p. 116.

[608] 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 24.

[609] This paragraph is of great importance: it throws a light on many

of the most perplexing passages in this and the succeeding reigns.

[610] 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 24.

[611] Speech of the Lord Chancellor: _Lords' Journals_, p. 84. Statutes

of the Realm; 28 Henry VIII. cap. 7. Similarly, on the death of Jane

Seymour, the council urged immediate re-marriage on the king,

considering a single prince an insufficient security for the future. In

a letter of Cromwell's to the English ambassador at Paris, _on the day

of Jane Seymour's death_, there is the following passage:

"And forasmuch as, though his Majesty is not anything disposed to marry

again--albeit his Highness, God be thanked, taketh this chance as a man

that by reason with force overcometh his affections may take such an

extreme adventure--yet as sundry of his Grace's council here have

thought it meet for us to be most humble suitors to his Majesty to

consider the state of his realm, and to enter eftsoons into another

matrimony: so his tender zeal to us his subjects hath already so much

overcome his Grace's said disposition, and framed his mind both to be

indifferent to the thing and to the election of any person from any part

that, with deliberation, shall be thought meet for him, that we live in

hope that his Grace will again couple himself to our comforts."--_State

Papers_, Vol. VIII. p. 1.

[612] Burnet, Hume, Strickland, &c. There is an absolute consensus of

authorities.

[613] "The king has, I understand, already married another woman, who,

they say, is a good Imperialist. I know not whether she will so

continue. He had shown an inclination for her before the other's death;

and as neither that other herself, nor any of the rest who were put to

death, confessed their guilt, except one who was a musician, some people

think he invented the charge to get rid of her. However it be, no great

wrong can have been done to the woman herself. She is known to have been

a worthless person. It has been her character for a long time.

"I suppose, if one may speak so lightly of such things, that when he is

tired of his new wife he will find some occasion to quit himself of her

also. Our sex will not be too well satisfied if these practices come

into vogue; and, though I have no fancy to expose myself to danger, yet,

being a woman, I will pray with the rest that God will have mercy on

us."--_The Pilgrim_, p. 117.

[614] Within four months the northern counties were in arms. Castle and

cottage and village pulpit rang with outcries against the government.

Yet, in the countless reports of the complaints of the insurgents, there

is no hint of a suspicion of foul play in the late tragedy. If the

criminality of the king is self-evident to us, how could it have been

less than evident to Aske and Lord Darcy?

[615] _Lords' Journals_, p. 84.

[616] He had been very ill.

[617] 26 Hen. VIII. cap. 1.

[618] Ibid. cap. 10.

[619] Including Latimer and Cranmer.

[620] _Lords' Journals._

[621] 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 7. The three last paragraphs, I need scarcely

say, are a very brief epitome of very copious language.

[622] The archbishop's sentence of divorce was at the same time

submitted to Convocation and approved by it.

[623] The King of Scots: 28 Hen. VIII. c. 24.

[624] 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 7.

END OF VOL. II.