1546
Anne Askew--Her trial and execution--Katherine Parr’s danger--Plot
against her--Her escape.
As the months of 1546 went by the measures taken by the King and his
advisers to enforce unanimity of practice and opinion in matters
of religion did not become less drastic. A great burning of books
disapproved by Henry took place during the autumn, preceded in July
by the condemnation and execution of a victim whose fate attracted an
unusual amount of attention, the effect at Court being enhanced by the
fact that the heroine of the story was personally known to the Queen
and her ladies. It was indeed reported that one of the King’s special
causes of displeasure was that she had been the means of imbuing his
nieces--among whom was Lady Dorset, Jane Grey’s mother--as well as his
wife, with heretical doctrines.
Added to the species of glamour commonly surrounding a spiritual
leader, more particularly in times of persecution, Anne Askew was
beautiful and young--not more than twenty-five at the time of her
death--and the thought of her racked frame, her undaunted courage, and
her final agony at the stake, may well have haunted with the horror of
a night-mare those who had been her disciples, and who looked on from a
distance, and with sympathy they dared not display.
There were other circumstances increasing the interest with which
the melancholy drama was watched. Well born and educated, Anne had
been the wife of a Lincolnshire gentleman of the name of Kyme. Their
life together had been of short duration. In a period of bitter party
feeling and recrimination, it is difficult to ascertain with certainty
the truth on any given point; and whilst a hostile chronicler asserts
that Anne left her husband in order “to gad up and down a-gospelling
and gossipping where she might and ought not, but especially in
London and near the Court,”[28] another authority explains that Kyme
had turned her out of his house upon her conversion to Protestant
doctrines. Whatever might have been the origin of her mode of life, it
is certain that she resumed her maiden name, and proceeded to “execute
the office of an apostle.”[29]
Her success in her new profession made her unfortunately conspicuous,
and in 1545 she was committed to Newgate, “for that she was very
obstinate and heady in reasoning on matters of religion.” The
charge, it must be confessed, is corroborated by her demeanour under
examination, when the qualities of meekness and humility were markedly
absent, and her replies to the interrogatories addressed to her were
rather calculated to irritate than to prove conciliatory. On this first
occasion, for example, asked to interpret certain passages in the
Scriptures, she declined to comply with the request on the score that
she would not cast pearls among swine--acorns were good enough; and,
urged by Bonner to open her wound, she again refused. Her conscience
was clear, she said; to lay a plaster on a whole skin might seem much
folly, and the similitude of a wound appeared to her unsavoury.[30]
For the time she escaped; but in the course of the following year
her case was again brought forward, and on this occasion she found
no mercy. Her examinations, mostly reported by herself, show her as
alike keen-witted and sharp-tongued, rarely at a loss for an answer,
and profoundly convinced of the justice of her cause. If she was not
without the genuine enjoyment of the born controversialist in the
opportunity of argument and discussion, she possessed, underlying the
self-assertion and confidence natural in a woman holding the position
of a religious leader, a fund of indomitable heroism. For she must
have been fully conscious of her danger. It is possible that, had she
not been brought into prominence by her association with those in high
places, she might again have escaped; but, apart from the grudge owed
her for her influence over the King’s own kin, her attitude was almost
such as to court her fate. Refusing “to sing a new song of the Lord
in a strange land,” she replied to the Bishop of Winchester, when he
complained that she spoke in parables, that it was best for him that
she should do so. Had she shown him the open truth, he would not accept
it.
“Then the Bishop said he would speak with me familiarly. I said, ‘So
did Judas when he unfriendlily betrayed Christ....’ In conclusion,” she
ended, in her account of the interview, “we could not agree.”
Spirited as was her bearing, and thrilling as the prisoner plainly was
with all the excitement of a battle of words, it was not strange that
the strain should tell upon her.
“On the Sunday,” she proceeds--and there is a pathetic contrast between
the physical weakness to which she confesses and her undaunted boldness
in confronting the men bent upon her destruction--“I was sore sick,
thinking no less than to die.... Then was I sent to Newgate in my
extremity of sickness, for in all my life I was never in such pain.
Thus the Lord strengthen us in His truth. Pray, pray, pray.”
Her condemnation was a foregone conclusion. It followed quickly, with
a subsequent visit from one Nicholas Shaxton, who, having, for his own
part, made his recantation, counselled her to do the same. He spoke
in vain. It were, she told him, good for him never to have been born,
“with many like words.” More was to follow. If her assertion is to
be believed--and there seems no valid reason to doubt it--the rack
was applied “till I was nigh dead.... After that I sat two long hours
reasoning with my Lord Chancellor upon the bare floor. Then was I
brought into a house and laid in a bed with as weary and painful bones
as ever had patient Job. I thank my God therefore.”
A scarcely credible addition is made to the story, to the effect that
when the Lieutenant of the Tower had refused to put the victim to the
torture a second time, the Lord Chancellor, Wriothesley, less merciful,
took the office upon himself, and applied the rack with his own hands,
the Lieutenant departing to report the matter to the King, “who seemed
not very well to like such handling of a woman.”[31] What is certain
is the final scene at Smithfield, where Shaxton delivered a sermon,
Anne listening, endorsing his words when she approved of them and
correcting them “when he said amiss.”
So the shameful episode was brought to an end. The tale, penetrating
even the thick walls of a palace, must have caused a thrill of horror
at Whitehall, accentuated by reason of certain events going forward
there about the same time.
The King’s disease was gaining upon him apace. He had become so
unwieldy in bulk that the use of machinery was necessary to move him,
and with the progress of his disorder his temper was becoming more
and more irritable. In view of his approaching death the question of
the guardianship and custody of the heir to the throne was increasing
in importance and the jealousy of the rival parties was becoming more
embittered. In the course of the summer the Catholics about the Court
ventured on a bold stroke, directed against no less a person than the
Queen.
Emboldened by the tolerance displayed by the King towards her religious
practices and the preachers and teachers she gathered around her,
Katherine had grown so daring as to make matters of doctrine a constant
subject of conversation with Henry, urging him to complete the work he
had begun, and to free the Church of England from superstition.[32]
Henry appears at first--though he was a man ill to argue with--to
have shown singular patience under his wife’s admonitions. But daily
controversy is not soothing to a sick man’s nerves and temper, and
Katherine’s enemies, watching their opportunity, conceived that it was
at hand.
Henry’s habits had been altered by illness, and it had become the
Queen’s custom to wait for a summons before visiting his apartments;
although on some occasions, after dinner or supper, or when she had
reason to imagine she would be welcome, she repaired thither on her own
initiative. But perhaps the more as she perceived that time was short,
she continued her imprudent exhortations. And still her enemies, wary
and silent, watched.
Henry appears--and it says much for his affection for her--to have
for a time maintained the attitude of a not uncomplacent listener.
On a certain day, however, when Katherine was, as usual, descanting
upon questions of theology, he changed the subject abruptly, “which
somewhat amazed the Queen.” Reassured by perceiving no further signs of
displeasure, she talked upon other topics until the time came for the
King to bid her farewell, which he did with his customary affection.
The account of what followed--Foxe being, as before, the narrator--must
be accepted with reservation. Gardiner, chancing to be present, was
made the recipient of his master’s irritation. It was a good hearing,
the King said ironically, when women were become clerks, and a thing
much to his comfort, to come in his old days to be taught by his wife.
Gardiner made prompt use of the opening afforded him; he had waited
long for it, and it was not wasted. The Queen, he said, had forgotten
herself, in arguing with a King whose virtues and whose learnedness in
matters of religion were not only greater than were possessed by other
princes, but exceeded those of doctors in divinity. For the Bishop and
his friends it was a grievous thing to hear. Proceeding to enlarge upon
the subject at length, he concluded by saying that, though he dared not
declare what he knew without special warranty from the King, he and
others were aware of treason cloaked in heresy. Henry, he warned him,
was cherishing a serpent in his bosom.
It was risking much, but the Bishop knew to whom he spoke, and,
working adroitly upon Henry’s fears and wrath, succeeded in obtaining
permission to consult with his colleagues and to draw up articles by
which the Queen’s life might be touched. “They thought it best to
begin with such ladies as she most esteemed and were privy to all her
doings--as the Lady Herbert, her sister, the Lady Lane, who was her
first cousin, and the Lady Tyrwhitt, all of her privy chamber.” The
plan was to accuse these ladies of the breach of the Six Articles, to
search their coffers for documents or books compromising to the Queen,
and, in case anything of that nature were found, to carry Katherine
by night to the Tower. The King, acquainted with the design, appears
to have given his consent, and all went on as before, Henry still
encouraging, or at least not discouraging, his wife’s discourse on
spiritual matters.
Time was passing; the bill of articles against the Queen had been
prepared, and Henry had affixed his signature to it, whether with a
deliberate intention of giving her over to her enemies, or, as some
said, meaning to deter her from the study of prohibited literature--in
which case, as Lord Herbert of Cherbury observes, it was “a terrible
jest.”[33] That Katherine herself did not regard the affair, as soon as
she came to be cognisant of it, in the light of a kindly warning, is
plain; for when, by a singular accident, the document containing the
charges against her was dropped by one of the council and brought for
her perusal, the effect upon her was such that the King’s physicians
were summoned to attend her, and Henry himself, ignorant of the
cause of her illness, and possibly softened by it, paid her a visit,
and, hearing that she entertained fears that she had incurred his
displeasure, reassured her with sweet and comfortable words, remained
with her an hour, and departed.
Though Katherine had played her part well, she must have been aware
that she stood on the brink of a precipice, and the ghosts of Anne
Boleyn and Katherine Howard warned her how little reliance could be
placed upon the King’s fitful affection. Deciding upon a bold step,
she sought his bed-chamber uninvited after supper on the following
evening, attended only by her sister, Lady Herbert, and with Lady
Lane,[34] her cousin, to carry the candle before her. Henry, found in
conversation with his attendant gentlemen, gave his wife a courteous
welcome, entering at once--contrary to his custom--upon the subject
of religion, as if moved by a desire of gaining instruction from her
replies. Read in the light of what Katherine already knew, this new
departure may well have been viewed by her with misgiving; and she
hastened to disclaim the position the King appeared anxious to assign
her. The inferiority of women being what it was, she said, it was for
man to supply from his wisdom what they lacked. She being a silly poor
woman, and his Majesty so wise, how could her judgment be of use to
him, in all things her only anchor, and, next to God, her supreme head
and governor on earth?
The King demurred. The attitude of submission may have struck him as
unfamiliar.
“Not so, by St. Mary,” he said. “You are become a doctor, Kate, to
instruct us, as we take it, and not to be instructed or directed by us.”
The plain charge elicited, it was more easy to reply to it. The King
had much mistaken her, Katherine humbly declared. It had ever been
her opinion that it was unseemly for the woman to instruct and teach
her lord and husband; her place was rather to learn of him. If she
had been bold to maintain opinions differing from the King’s, it had
been to “minister talk”--to make conversation, in modern language--to
distract him from the thought of his infirmities, as also in the hope
of profiting by his learned discourse--with more of the same nature.
Henry, perhaps not sorry to be convinced, yielded to the skilful
flattery thus administered.
“Is it even so, sweetheart?” he said, “and tend your arguments to no
worse end? Then perfect friends we are now again,” adding, as he took
her in his arms and kissed her, that her words had done him more good
than news of a hundred thousand pounds.
The next day had been fixed for the Queen’s arrest. As the appointed
hour approached the King sought the garden, sending for Katherine
to attend him there. Accompanied by the same ladies as on the night
before, the Queen obeyed the summons, and there, under the July sun,
the closing scene of the serio-comic drama was played. Amused, it may
be, by the anticipation of his counsellors’ discomfiture, Henry was
in good spirits and “as pleasant as ever he was in his life before,”
when the Chancellor, with forty of the royal guard, appeared, ready to
take possession of the culprit. What passed between Wriothesley and his
master, at a little distance from the rest of the party, could only be
matter of conjecture. The Chancellor’s words, as he knelt before the
angry King, were not audible to the curious bystanders, but the King’s
rejoinder, “vehemently whispered,” was heard. “Knave, arrant knave,
beast and fool,” were the epithets applied to the crestfallen official.
After which, he was promptly dismissed.
Katherine, whether or not she divined the truth, set herself to plead
Wriothesley’s cause. Ignorance, not will, was in her opinion the
probable origin of what had so manifestly moved Henry to wrath. The
advocacy of the intended victim softened the King’s heart even more
towards her.
“Ah, poor soul,” he said, “thou little knowest how ill he deserves this
grace at thy hands. On my word, sweetheart, he hath been towards thee
an arrant knave, and so let him go.”[35]
For the moment, at least, the danger was averted, and before it
recurred the despot was in his grave, and Katherine was safe. It is
curious to observe that in the list of contents to the _Acts and
Monuments_ the danger of the Queen is pointed out, “and how gloriously
she was preserved by her kind and loving Husband the King.”