MRS. ANNE ASKEW
It was in the latter years of Henry VIII’s reign that Stephen Gardiner,
Bishop of Winchester, conceived his scheme for the reconciliation of
England and England’s monarch with the Roman Pontiff. Although a less
astute intriguer than his powerful opponent Cranmer, Gardiner, who was
apt to lose his temper and blurt out things best kept to himself, was
a man of marked ability, one of whom his crafty master made frequent
use, playing him off against the Archbishop, and so retaining the
balance of power in his own jealous hands. Cranmer was at this period
using his influence with Henry to abolish the use of Latin in the
Mass, preparatory to the eventual introduction of the Book of Common
Prayer and the early and total abrogation of the Eucharistic Service
in the Roman sense. Yet the wily Churchman knew right well that so
long as the King lived there was but faint hope of this change. For
His Majesty clung to the doctrine of Transubstantiation closer than to
any other tenet; not so much on account of his faith--did he believe
anything?--as because, in the days of his youth, he had indited a work
in defence of the Catholic doctrine of the Sacraments, which, so his
clergy had averred, proved him wiser than Solomon himself, and which
Pope Leo X had favourably compared with the writings of St. Augustine
and Gregory the Great, rewarding the royal author with that title of
“Defender of the Faith” which is still a cherished appanage of British
royalty. Henry had even made belief in the Sacrament of the Altar a
principal Article amongst the famous Six, any denial of which was
punishable with death. Yet, if the King had searched Cranmer’s study
at Lambeth at the very moment when that wily prelate was professing
to accept his beliefs from his King, as submissively as though the
monarch had possessed the infallible powers of his own Maker, he might
have laid his hand on a bulky correspondence between the Primate and
every Lutheran and Calvinistic leader in Germany and Switzerland--with
Calvin, Bullinger, Œcolampadius, Osiander, Dryander, Bucer, and the
rest. Gardiner, on his side, was in communication with Cardinal Pole,
Charles V, the Pope, and the entire papal party at home and abroad.
This duel between the papal leader and the Reformers, then, was the
true basis of all political undertakings at this momentous crisis. The
rival parties were really preparing themselves for the departure of
the dying King, and aimed at controlling the inevitable Protectorate,
necessitated by the minority of his successor, a lad of nine summers.
Had Gardiner, the Howards, and the Catholic party won the day, history
would have had little, perhaps nothing, to record concerning Lady Jane
Grey. Her name, like that of her accomplished friend Lady Jane Seymour,
daughter of Lord Hertford, would have been lost, buried in the spent
sands of the past.
The decline of the King’s health began in the summer of 1541-2, when he
was attacked by a dangerous tertian fever, from which, thanks to his
powerful constitution, he partially recovered.
At the time of his marriage with Anne of Cleves he was again in poor
health, and during the proceedings for the King’s divorce from his
Dutch consort, Cranmer laid great stress on the fact that although
she had shared his chamber for six months, the bride was still to all
intents and purposes unwed. At the siege of Boulogne, as we have seen,
Henry was terribly altered, and the French ballad-writers jested about
_le cercle de fer_, which, they averred, kept his ungainly carcass
together. Queen Katherine was probably espoused rather as a skilful
nurse than as a wife, in the ordinary acceptance of the term, and a
most assiduous attendant she proved, kneeling for hours at a time
rubbing his swelled legs and dressing his many ulcers. It would be
unjust to the Queen’s memory to attribute this wifely devotion to none
but selfish motives. But her contemporaries shrewdly guessed that,
while fulfilling her wifely duty, she did not fail to work in her own
interest, and that of her friends, with her own peculiar skill and
tact. She certainly wished to be appointed Regent during Edward’s
minority, and would gladly have excluded the Howards, Wriothesley,
Gardiner, Rich, and the whole Catholic element from the King’s
sick-room, while doing all she could to strengthen the hand of the
Seymours, maternal uncles of the future King, who were intent on ruling
his kingdom for him on strictly anti-papal lines. In the spring of the
year 1546 the King had a bad relapse, and day by day the grey shadows
of approaching death deepened on that broad and bloated countenance.
He would not have the grim word mentioned in his presence, and any
courtier who appeared before him dressed in mourning[55]--even for
the nearest kin--was driven in fury from his sight. None the less,
he realised that he had not many months to live. It was imperative,
therefore, if any reconciliation with Rome was to be effected before
the new reign began, that no time should be lost, and that some sharp
and decisive blow should overthrow the influence of the Queen, now the
chief intermediary between her sick spouse, Cranmer, and the Seymours.
But Katherine, in spite of the notoriety of her intimate friendship
with Sir Thomas Seymour, was far too clever to give her enemies any
chance of blasting, or even smirching, her reputation. With respect
to her religious opinions, which were distinctly heterodox, she was
less guarded, however, and her enemies had good reason to believe that
if they could convince the King, beyond any doubt, that she was in
correspondence with those whom he was pleased to term “heretics,” she
would never be able to weather the storm her treachery must inevitably
raise in the King’s resentful breast.
Henry, whose brain remained astonishingly active, notwithstanding his
infirmities, had never been so irritable and ferocious as during the
last few months of his life. He was like a half-dead rattlesnake, which
may recover life and spring afresh upon its prey at any moment. Never
were the fires at Smithfield so active as in 1546. Early in this year
six poor wretches were sent to the stake--three Catholics; the other
three, Reformers. To demonstrate the impartiality of their merciless
judge they were all chained together. People scarcely knew what they
must believe or what disbelieve, to escape execution. The King’s
informers were always at work, spying upon the sayings and doings of
people in every rank of life; and the wonder is that the Queen and
her ladies were not caught in some imprudent admission or other, and
convicted. At last, however, in the early spring of 1546, an incident
occurred which brought Katherine’s foes their longed-for chance of
effecting her downfall.
Anne Askew, second daughter of Sir William Askew, or Ayscough, of
South Kelsy, Lincolnshire, was born at Stallingbrough, near Grimsby,
in 1521. When about fifteen years of age, she was married, without her
consent, to Mr. Thomas Kyme, a Lincolnshire squire and neighbour, who
had been previously “contracted” to her elder sister. During her early
wedded life Mrs. Kyme appears to have been happy enough, and became
the mother of two children. She presently occupied herself in studying
the newly translated Scriptures, and shortly after imagined she had a
divine mission to preach the gospel and correct what she deemed the
theological errors of her neighbours, especially on the subject of the
Lord’s Supper, concerning which she held Genevan views.
After a few years of discomfort, Mr. Kyme, who, according to the
latest researches, entertained contrary religious opinions to those of
his wife, began to complain of the scanty enjoyment he derived from
her society. She was perpetually “gadding up and down the country,
a-gospelling and a-gossiping, instead of looking after her children.”
Anne is described as a handsome and daring young woman with a good
deal of native wit and ability, and was evidently the prototype of not
a few ladies of our own time, who prefer public life and controversy
to domestic duty and retirement. She even took upon herself to read
and comment on the New Testament in the nave of Lincoln Cathedral,
where she was often to be found surrounded by an interested or amused
group of priests and people. This state of things no Dean or Chapter
could be expected to endure, and one fine day Mrs. Kyme found herself
forcibly ejected from the sacred edifice. After this incident, she must
have had some unusual disagreement with her husband, for her relations
persuaded her to leave the town, and she travelled to London, where
she soon made herself conspicuous as a preacher of the new learning,
and secured several distinguished converts. She lodged in a house near
the Temple, and one of her neighbours, Mr. Wadloe, a hot Catholic, who
began by deriding her behaviour, ended by admiring her “godliness”; to
use his own expression--“At mydnyght when I and others applye ourselves
to sleape, or do worse, Mrs. Askew” (she had resumed her maiden name),
“begins to pray, and ceaseth not in many howers after,” doubtless to
the edification of such of her neighbours as suffered from insomnia.
By dint of perseverance, and also, it may be, through her connections,
Anne Askew formed the acquaintance of several great ladies of the
Court, and is said to have obtained, through the offices of the Duchess
of Suffolk, an interview with the Queen, to whom, in the presence
of her ladies, notably Lady Tyrwhitt, Lady Lane, Lady Denny, and
the little Lady Jane Grey,[56] she offered some copies of Tyndale’s
version of the New Testament, and certain tracts arguing against
Transubstantiation, which were subsequently found in the Queen’s own
closet and in the possession of the King’s “Suffolk nieces.”
It was in March 1545 that Mrs. Askew was first arrested on a charge
of heresy and taken to Sadler’s Hall, where she was denounced to the
civil authorities and taken before the Lord Mayor, who in the course
of his examination questioned her as to the probable changes in a
consecrated wafer after a “mowse” had swallowed it, whereupon she
“made no answer but smiled,” and was committed to the Counter. That
much-abused man, Bishop Bonner, appears to have taken an interest
in her case, and endeavoured to save her from an awful fate. He
granted her a private interview and drew up a form of recantation
which she signed in the following ambiguous terms: “I, Anne Askew,
do believe all manner of things contained in the Catholic Church and
not otherwise.” On this, Bonner, whose patience had been severely
tried,--for Anne was very sharp-tongued and uncompromising,--waxed
wroth, and taking her by the shoulders, pushed her out of the chamber.
Her next friend was Dr. Weston, afterwards Bishop of Westminster, who
got her liberated on her own security; and for some months we hear no
more about her, except that she was busy preaching and distributing
her tracts secretly. On 10th May 1546 both Mr. and Mrs. Kyme received
a summons to present themselves within a specified time before the
Privy Council, then sitting at Greenwich, and they accordingly appeared
on the 19th of the following June before the Chancellor of the
Augmentations, Sir Richard Rich, the Bishops of Durham and Winchester
and a number of other noblemen and gentlemen, and were put through a
severe cross-examination.[57] Anne, we learn, received this summons in
London, but her husband came to town on purpose to attend. Kyme got
off with a caution, on his promise to return forthwith to Lincoln,
and remain there. His wife, in open court, declared she would never
again recognise him as her husband. He went back to Lincoln, and we
lose sight of him. All we know is that he died, where he is buried, at
Friskne in 1591.
Anne Askew was eventually arraigned before the King’s Justices at
Guildhall for speaking against the Sacrament of the Altar, contrary to
the Statute of the Six Articles. This time she appeared with two other
“heretics,” one of them that singular personage Dr. Nicholas Shaxton,
ex-Bishop of Salisbury, whose pupil she is said to have been. Shaxton,
a Norfolk man by birth, was one of the Commission appointed by Gardiner
in connection with the divorce of Katherine of Aragon, and during the
proceedings he so favoured the King’s view that he eventually became
almoner to Anne Boleyn and Bishop of Salisbury. At a later date he
preached Zwinglian doctrines concerning the Eucharist, got himself
into serious difficulties with Archbishop Cranmer, and was forced to
relinquish his see. After a time he became a notorious “gospeller,”
and was finally arrested with Anne Askew and a man named Christopher
White. The lady and White were both sent to Newgate; but the former
recanted, and so escaped a fiery ordeal. Shaxton did the same, obtained
his pardon, and was actually ordered to visit Anne in prison, and
persuade her to follow his example. But, weak woman though she was,
Anne was made of sterner stuff than the ex-prelate. “It were better for
you you had not been born than do that which you have done,” cried she;
and, crestfallen, her former friend and tutor left her presence. Her
condemnation followed immediately afterwards. It was presently noticed
that Anne enjoyed more creature comforts in prison than the customs
of Newgate allowed. She explained the matter by saying that “her maid
went abroad into the streets and made moan to the prentices and they
did send her money!” But her persecutors refused to believe this story,
and so one afternoon, not long before her martyrdom, she was conveyed
to the Tower, taken to the torture chamber, and there racked in the
presence of Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, Sir Richard Rich, Sir John
Barker, and Sir Anthony Knyvett, Constable of the Tower. Hitherto no
one had been tortured in England for conscience’ sake, this terrible
resource being solely employed to extract information from persons
suspected of treasonable practices. Wriothesley, exasperated at his
failure to elicit direct information or satisfactory answers from his
victim, turned the screws himself, after Knyvett had refused to order
her to be further tormented by the official executioner. Sir Richard
Rich lent his hand to the Chancellor in this merciless task, and so, to
use poor Anne’s own words, she “was nigh dead.”[58]
Dr. Lingard and other historians have cast doubt upon the veracity of
this horrible story, but the scene is described by Anne herself in
her “Narrative,” dictated a few days before her death, and published
at Marburg, in the Duchy of Hesse, in 1547, with a long running
commentary by John Bale, afterwards Bishop of Ossory. In his _Three
Conversions of England_, the Jesuit, Father Parsons, who had access
to much information and evidence long since destroyed or lost, not
only confirms the truth of the torture episode, but adds that it was
ordered by the King himself, who, hearing of the intercourse between
his Queen and Anne, “caused her to be apprehended and put to the rack,
to know the truth thereof. And by her confession he learned so much of
Queen Katherine, as he had purposed to burn her also, if he had lived.”
Parsons goes on to say that “the King’s sickness and death, shortly
ensuing, was the chief cause of her escape.” Mrs. Askew bravely endured
the most horrible torments rather than betray her friends’ trust, and
only yielded so far as to admit that whilst in prison she had received
ten shillings, delivered by a man in a blue livery. She thought the
money had been sent her by the Countess of Hertford, but was not sure.
She had a further sum of eight shillings at the hand of a footman in a
purple livery, and believed it was a gift from Lady Denny. Questioned
if she knew Lady Fitzwilliam, the Duchess of Suffolk, Lady Sussex, or
any other great ladies of the Court, she evasively answered that she
“knew nothing about them that could be proved.” She does not seem to
have been questioned point-blank as to whether she had ever had any
direct dealings with the Queen. Wriothesley may have thought he had
already obtained sufficient information for his purpose. However that
may have been, the stout-hearted lady was sent back to Newgate, there
to spend her last three days of life, which she occupied in writing and
dictating the “Narrative” to be found among Dr. Bale’s writings.[59]
On the eve of her execution Anne Askew and three men who had been
condemned for heresy at the same time as herself were visited in the
little parlour at Newgate by George Throckmorton and his brother, who
were kinsmen of the Queen--a rather suspicious circumstance. They
were cautioned in time, and thus escaped being arrested on a charge
of heresy, which might have proved fatal to themselves and their
royal cousin. John Louthe, the Reformer, who has left us an account
of the meeting, also came, at great risk to himself, to encourage
the unfortunate Anne. Mrs. Askew, with an “Angel’s countenance and
a smiling face,” talked “merrily” with her unhappy companions, John
Laselles, who had been a gentleman in attendance upon the King, and
is supposed to have been the individual who betrayed the secrets of
Katherine Howard; Nicholas Bolenian, a priest from Shropshire; and
John Adams, a tailor. They talked on religious subjects until it was
time to separate. The next day, 16th July, Mrs. Askew and her three
fellow-prisoners were taken from Newgate to Smithfield. So dislocated
were the poor lady’s limbs that she had to be carried to her doom in
a chair. Cranmer, seeking to throw the full odium of the horrible
business on Gardiner, kept much in the background in the whole matter
of Anne Askew. He did not attend the ecclesiastical commission which
condemned her to the stake; but for all that his signature is affixed
to her death-warrant. Six years later, another martyr, Joan Bocher,
one of the last of his many victims, reminded the Archbishop that he
had martyred her friend Anne Askew for teaching more or less the same
doctrines he now preached himself.
In the 1563 edition of Foxe’s _Martyrs_ there is a most curious
engraving, probably after an original drawing, representing the burning
of Anne Askew and her companions. The spectators are kept back by a
ring fence within which we see the stake, and a quaint pulpit, from
which Dr. Nicholas Shaxton, duly restored to grace, preached a sermon,
supporting the very dogma for denying which he had been prosecuted but
a few days previously. Anne is shown dressed in white; one side of the
pyre is entirely devoted to her, while the three men, apparently naked
to the waist, are bound together, on the side opposite the pulpit.
The concourse of people appears enormous; the mob seems to seethe
round the scaffold, loll out of the surrounding windows, and even
swarm on the opposite roofs. On a raised bench, under a canopy, sit
Wriothesley, Rich, the Dukes of Norfolk, Surrey, “Swearing Russell,”
and the Lord Mayor. These worthies, it appears, were sorely perturbed
by a rumour that there was an unusual amount of gunpowder on the spot,
and were very much afraid of a dangerous explosion. Their terrors were
swiftly allayed when Bedford informed the company that the explosive
in question was merely a number of small bags of gunpowder concealed
about the persons of the victims with the object of shortening their
sufferings.
At the very last moment Mrs. Askew was offered a pardon on condition
that she recanted and gave up the names of her high-born friends. She
refused: the Lord Mayor shouted _Fiat justitia_, and the faggots were
lighted. Presently the fire crackled. A quick succession of explosions
followed, the smoke concealing the wretched victims from sight. When
the flames and smoke died down only the charred and blackened remains
of four human beings could be descried. Clouds had been gathering; a
peal of thunder rolled, and heavy drops of rain soon dispersed the
throng. The show was over, and the home-returning spectators chatted as
they went, blaming or praising the deed, according to their individual
view. The horror of it does not seem to have affected them much,
although among the Reformers and the better classes of all creeds
expressions of hearty indignation were not lacking. But the masses
were accustomed to such sights of horror, and so, indeed, were our
own immediate forbears, until public executions ceased and the death
sentence was carried out in the courtyards of the prisons. We have
indeed progressed in these matters since 1546 and even since 1868.
A few days after the burning of the unfortunate Lincolnshire lady,
Foxe tells us, Wriothesley, Gardiner, and Rich waited on the King, and
so persuaded him that Anne had made damaging revelations concerning
the Queen’s intercourse with heretics that Henry “proposed to burn
her also.” His Majesty, in his rage, actually signed a warrant for
the arrest of his offending Consort and handed it to Wriothesley.
That worthy let the paper drop in a corridor or gallery close to the
Queen’s apartment. One of her servants picked it up and carried it to
Her Majesty, who was so terrified by its contents that she fell into
violent hysterics. Her apartments were close to the King’s, and Henry,
overhearing the outcry, and probably disturbed by the noise, sent to
inquire what was amiss. The Queen’s physician, Wendy, informed the
messenger that Her Majesty was dangerously ill, and her sickness, to
his reckoning, caused by sudden and extreme distress of mind. Whereupon
the King sent word that she was not to trouble herself further, as no
ill was intended to her. Greatly comforted by this reassuring message,
Katherine presently felt herself sufficiently recovered to receive a
visit from her husband, who, at great personal inconvenience, caused
himself to be conveyed into her apartment in his chair. Nothing could
have been better calculated to revive the drooping spirits of the
scared Consort than the sight of her august spouse in a good humour.
The following evening she was well enough to return the King’s visit.
She was accompanied by the Lady Tyrwhitt, her sister the Lady Herbert,
by the King’s niece the Lady Jane Grey, and by the Lady Lane, who bore
the candles before Her Majesty. The King welcomed the Queen and her
company very courteously, and, bidding her be seated, in a cheerful
tone entered into a controversial conversation with her. He possibly
wished to “draw” his Consort upon certain theological questions; but
she shrewdly observed that “since God had appointed him Supreme Head
of the Church it was not for her to teach him theology, but to learn
it from him.” “Not so, by St. Mary,” said the King, “you are become
a doctor, Kate, to instruct us, and not to be instructed of us, as
oftentimes we have seen.” “Indeed, indeed, Sire,” quoth the Queen,
“if your Majesty so conceive, my meaning has been mistaken, for I
have always held it preposterous for a woman to instruct her lord.”
“If,” she continued, “I have occasionally ventured to differ with your
Highness on religious matters, it was partly to obtain information, and
also to pass away the pain and weariness of your present infirmity with
arguments that interested you.” “And is it so, sweetheart?” replied His
Majesty, “then we are perfect friends,” and thereupon he kissed her and
gave her leave to depart.
The day appointed by her foes for the Queen’s arrest chanced to be fine
and the sun shone brightly. The King sent for her to take the early air
with him on the garden terrace overlooking the Thames. Katherine came,
attended as before by her sister, the Lady Herbert, the Lady Lane,
the Lady Tyrwhitt, and the little Lady Jane Grey. They had not been
long walking up and down in the sunshine before the Lord Chancellor,
with forty of the guard, entered the garden, expecting to carry off
the Queen to the Tower--for no intimation of the change in the King’s
intentions had reached him. Henry received his minister with a burst
of furious invective. Bidding the Queen and her ladies stand apart, he
called up Wriothesley and cast every evil name he could think of at
him, commanding him, finally, to “avaunt from his presence and never
show his face again till he was summoned.” Wriothesley, crestfallen and
humbled, was about to withdraw, when the Queen advanced and interceded
for him: “Poor soul, poor soul!” quoth the King; “thou little knowest,
Kate, how ill he deserveth this grace at thy hands. On my hand,
sweetheart, he hath been to thee a very knave!” So the disappointed
minister departed, and Henry walked up and down the terrace again,
leaning on his Queen and followed by her escort of ladies. Although
Wriothesley’s part in this tragi-comedy seems to have been overlooked,
the King is said never to have forgiven Gardiner his share in the
matter. A little later, notwithstanding the royal prohibition, both
conspirators presented themselves with their colleagues. The King
forthwith reminded Wriothesley in his most forcible manner that he had
ordered him never to show his face again, and above all never, on any
pretext whatever, to bring “that beast Gardiner” along with him. “My
Lord of Winchester,” replied the cunning Wriothesley, “has come to
wait upon your Highness with an offer of benevolence from his clergy.”
The King being as usual in great need of money, began to listen
more benignly, allowed Gardiner to present the address, and finally
accepted the bribe.[60] But he took no further notice of the Bishop,
and is said to have struck his name off the list of his executors
within the next few days. He also cancelled that of Thirlby, Bishop of
Westminster, because, said he, “he is too much under the influence of
Gardiner.”[61] Queen Katherine may have had a hand in this affair, and
after the revelation of the treachery which would fain have destroyed
her she very likely took the opportunity of letting the King know more
concerning the machinations of Gardiner and Wriothesley than was good
for their credit or likely to serve their influence.
The details of this formidable but abortive plot against Katherine
Parr rest mainly on the authority of Foxe. But it must be remembered,
by those inclined to doubt the “Martyrologist,” that at this time he
had attained his thirtieth year, he was in touch with most of the
personages named, and was consequently in a position to obtain the
information which he wove into his famous narrative--not, we admit,
without considerable embellishment and exaggeration, introduced to
suit the taste of his readers--from living witnesses. Foxe also made
liberal use of Paget’s statement during the proceedings for Gardiner’s
deprivation, which took place early in Edward’s reign. All the
Elizabethan and Jacobean historians of Henry VIII--Herbert, Parsons,
Holinshed, Strype, Speed, Oldmixon, and others--reproduce the story
with slight emendations and additions from Foxe. No direct confirmation
of it is to be found indeed in the State Papers, but this is not
surprising, for such matters were not usually set down in writing.
Nevertheless, it is hinted at.[62] Nor do the Ambassadors seem to have
known anything about it. Father Parsons, who, like Foxe, obtained
much of his information at first hand, introduces the incident in his
_Three Conversions of England_, a book written to refute some of Foxe’s
errors, and adds that although Foxe lays “all the cause of the Queen’s
trouble upon Bishop Gardiner and others, and though the King did kindly
and lovingly pardon her, the truth is that the King’s sickness and
death were the chief causes of her escape, for had the King found her
guilty he would have commanded her also to be burned.”
Speed, possibly mistaking Lady _Lane_ for Lady Jane, introduces
the King’s little niece on this occasion, not only as a witness of
the reconciliation of the royal couple, but in the character of a
candle-bearer before the Queen. Jane Grey, being a Princess of the
Blood, could never have been in _attendance_ upon the Queen, and
she was too small a child to be laden with a pair of heavy branch
candlesticks. Lady Lane, on the other hand, was certainly in the
Queen’s Household at this particular juncture. She was Her Majesty’s
cousin-german, being the daughter of her uncle, Lord Parr of Horton,
and wife of Sir Ralph Lane of Orlingby, Nottinghamshire. Still,
since the fact of her being present is mentioned by so many almost
contemporary writers, we may conclude that Lady Jane was a witness
of the dramatic scenes that took place between King Henry and his
terrified Consort, and may herself, in after life, have narrated the
incident to some friend of Foxe or immediate forbear of Parson’s
informant. Gardiner’s disgrace does not seem to have been quite as
complete as Foxe has been pleased to represent it, and he was in close
enough contact with those in power to be selected as chief celebrant at
the King’s Requiem.
That the King was completely reconciled to his wife is proved by the
conspicuous part he assigned her in the splendid series of festivities
in honour of the French Envoy, who arrived in August, when the Court
had removed to Hampton Court. Not only was her apartment refurnished
with sumptuous tapestries, but her wardrobe was renewed, and the King
presented her with a quantity of magnificent jewellery, which, after
his death, gave rise to considerable misunderstanding and trouble.
These festivities in honour of Monsieur d’Annebault, Francis I’s
special Envoy, were the last flicker of the pageantry of Henry VIII’s
reign, and revived for a week something of the brilliance of the
Court of England in the great days of Wolsey. For the first and only
time, Prince Edward, as heir-apparent, played a conspicuous part. On
Monday, 23rd August, the boy-prince rode out towards London to meet
the Ambassador, attended by the Archbishop of York and the Earls of
Hertford and Huntingdon, and by a retinue of “five hundred and forty
persons in velvet coats, and the Prince’s liveries wore sleeves of
cloth of gold, and half the coats embroidered also with gold, and there
were the number of eight hundred, royally apparelled.” D’Annebault,
who came to ratify the peace recently concluded between the sovereigns
of France and England, was accompanied by a suite of two hundred
gentlemen, who were all lodged at the King’s expense and entertained
in the most hospitable manner. His Majesty was not well enough to
receive the Ambassador on his arrival, but he received him in audience
on the following day, after which monarch and Ambassador proceeded
to the Chapel Royal, where, during Mass, they solemnly received the
Host together.[63] Then followed six days of banqueting, hunting, and
merry-making, masques, and mummeries, “with divers and sundry changes,
inasmuch that the torch-bearers were clothed with gold cloth, and
such like honourable entertainments, it were much to utter and hard
to believe.” On these occasions the Marchioness of Dorset and her
daughter, the Lady Jane Grey, were present, and Prince Edward danced
with his little cousin, who also tripped it with young Lord Edward
Seymour, the Lord Hertford’s eldest boy. When the Ambassador took his
leave, Henry made him a present of silver plate to the value of £1200.
After his departure the dying King seems to have led a very quiet life
at Hampton Court and Whitehall. The end was visibly approaching. His
feet and hands were abnormally swollen; dropsy had set in, and he was
probably also suffering from an internal tumour. Even his most fervent
admirers were obliged to confess that in appearance, at least, he had
assumed somewhat of the aspect of a monster; but music still charmed
the suffering monarch, and the last Household Books of his reign
contain various items of payments to musicians and madrigal singers.
NOTE.--Dr. Gairdner makes the following comments on this subject in
his Preface to vol. 21, part i. of the Calendar of State Papers for
1546 (published in 1908): “But one word may be permitted here about
that dreadful incident, the racking in the Tower. It took place
_after_ her (Anne’s) condemnation, the object being to elicit from
her information about persons at the Court who it was suspected had
been her allies in promoting heresy. Besides others whose names
are given, against whom she positively refused to utter a word,
she was probably expected to accuse Queen Katherine Parr herself;
for Parsons (_Three Conversions of England_, ii. 493) is no doubt
perfectly correct in saying that the well-known incident related by
Foxe, about this Queen, when she stood in real danger from a charge
of heresy, was connected with the affair of Anne Askew. But Parsons
is certainly wrong in saying that the King would have burned
Katherine Parr also if he had lived. For though her heretical
propensities were no secret, she survived the King, and he himself
for fully six months survived Anne Askew. More probably the Queen
was saved by Anne’s refusal to commit anyone except herself.”