The Wives of Henry the Eighth and the Parts They Played in History Part 12

[31] The amba.s.sador Martin de Salinas, who arrived in England during the Emperor's stay, from the Archduke Ferdinand who acted as _loc.u.m tenens_ in Germany for his brother, reports (_Spanish Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 2) that he delivered separate credentials to Queen Katharine, who promised to read them and give him her answer later. He continues: "I went to see her again this morning. She said that one of the letters had contained my credentials and the other spoke of the business of the Turks. The time for a war with the Turks, she declared, was ill chosen; as the war with France absorbed all the English resources. I told her that the Infante (_i.e._ Ferdinand) regarded her as his true mother, and prayed her not to forsake him, but to see that the King of England sent him succour against the Turk. She answered that it will be impossible for the King to do so." It will be seen by this and other references to the same matter that Katharine at this time, during the imperial alliance, was again taking a powerful part in political affairs.

[32] See the series of letters in Bradford's "Charles V." and Pace's correspondence in the _Henry VIII. Calendar_.

[33] A good idea of the magnitude and splendour of the preparations may be gained by the official lists of personages and "diets," in the _Rutland Papers_, Camden Society. The pageants themselves are fully described in Hall.

[34] Amongst others the 10 per cent. tax on all property in 1523. See Roper's "Life of More," Hall's _Chronicle_, Herbert's "Henry VIII.," &c.

[35] Henry's answer, which was very emphatic, testified that although he had lost affection for his wife he respected her still; indeed his att.i.tude to her throughout all his subsequent cruelty was consistently respectful to her character as a woman and a queen. "If," he said on this occasion, "he should seek a mistress for her (the Princess Mary), to frame her after the manner of Spain, and of whom she might take example of virtue, he should not find in all Christendom a more mete than she now hath, that is the Queen's grace, her mother."--_Venetian Calendar._

[36] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 3, p. 1.

[37] Late in 1525. A sad little letter written by Katharine in her quaint English to her daughter at this time is well known, but will bear repeating. Mary had written asking how she was; and the reply a.s.sures the Princess that it had not been forgetfulness of her that had caused her mother to delay the answer. "I am in that case that the long absence of the King and you troubleth me. My health is metely good; and I trust in G.o.d, he that sent me the last (illness?) doth it to the best and will shortly turn it (_i.e._ like?) to the fyrst to come to good effect. And in the meantime, I am veray glad to hear from you, specially when they shew me that ye be well amended. As for your writing in Latin, I am glad ye shall change from me to Master Federston; for that shall do you much good to learn by him to write right. But yet sometimes I would be glad when ye do write to Master Federston of your own enditing, when he hath read it that I may see it. For it shall be a great comfort to me to see you keep your Latin and fair writing and all." (Ellis' "Original Letters," B.M.

Cotton Vesp. F. xiii.)

[38] Mr. Froude denied that there is any foundation for the a.s.sertion that Mary Boleyn was the King's mistress. It seems to me, on the contrary, to be as fully supported by evidence as any such fact can be.

[39] As usual, Hall is very diffuse in his descriptions of these festivities, especially in their sartorial aspects, and those readers who desire such details may be referred to his _Chronicle_.

[40] Cavendish, "Life of Wolsey."

[41] Letters of Inigo Lopez de Mendoza early in 1527. _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 3, part 2.

[42] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. 3, part 2, Mendoza's letters, and _Henry VIII. Calendar_, vol. 4, part 2, Wolsey to the King, 5th July 1527.

[43] How false were all the parties to each other at this time may be seen in a curious letter from Knight, the King's secretary, to Wolsey (when in France) about this man's going (Ellis' "Original Letters"). "So yt is that Francisco Philip Spaniard hath instantly laboured for license to go into Spain pretendyng cawse and colour of his goyng to be forasmuch as he saiyth he wolde visite his modre which is veari sore syk. The Queen hath both refused to a.s.sent unto his going and allso laboured unto the King's Highnesse to empesh the same. The King's Highnesse, knowing grete colusion and dissymulation betwene theym, doth allso dissymule faynyng that Philip's desyre is made upon good grownde and consideration, and hath easyli persuaded the Quene to be content with his goyng." The writer continues that the King had even promised to ransom Felipe if he was captured on his way through France, and desires Wolsey, notwithstanding the man's pa.s.sport, to have him secretly captured, taking care that the King's share in the plot should never be known. Wolsey in reply says that it shall be done, unless Felipe went to Spain by sea. Probably Katharine guessed her husband's trick, for Felipe must have gone by sea, as he duly arrived at Valladolid and told the Emperor his message.

[44] Blickling Hall, Norfolk, is frequently claimed as her birthplace, and even Ireland has put in its claim for the doubtful honour. The evidence in favour of Hever is, however, the strongest.

[45] Mr. Brewer was strongly of opinion that Anne did not go to France until some years afterwards, and that it was Mary Boleyn who accompanied the Princess in 1514. He also believed that Anne was the younger of the two sisters. There was, of course, some ground for both of these contentions, but the evidence marshalled against them by Mr. Friedmann in an appendix to his "Anne Boleyn" appears to me unanswerable.

[46] "Life of Wolsey." Cavendish was the Cardinal's gentleman usher.

[47] "Life of Wolsey." It was afterwards stated, with much probability of truth, that Anne's _liaison_ with Percy had gone much further than a mere engagement to marry.

[48] Cavendish, Wolsey's usher, tells a story which shows how Katharine regarded the King's flirtation with Anne at this time. Playing at cards with her rival, the Queen noticed that Anne held the King several times.

"My lady Anne," she said, "you have good hap ever to stop at a King; but you are like the others, you will have all or none." Contemptuous tolerance by a proud royal lady of a light jade who was scheming to be her husband's mistress, was evidently Katharine's sentiment.

[49] Wolsey to Henry from Compiegne, 5th September 1527. _Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 2.

[50] Wolsey to Ghinucci and Lee, 5th August 1527. _Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 2.

[51] Several long speeches stated to have been uttered by her to Henry when he sought her illicit love are given in the Sloane MSS., 2495, in the British Museum, but they are stilted expressions of exalted virtue quite foreign to Anne's character and manner.

[52] Although it was said to have been suggested by Dr. Barlow, Lord Rochford's chaplain.

[53] The dispensation asked for was to permit Henry to marry a woman, even if she stood in the first degree of affinity, "either by reason of licit or illicit connection," provided she was not the widow of his deceased brother. This could only refer to the fact that Mary Boleyn, Anne's sister, had been his mistress, and that Henry desired to provide against all risk of a disputed succession arising out of the invalidity of the proposed marriage. By the canon law previous to 1533 no difference had been made between legitimate and illegitimate intercourse so far as concerned the forbidden degrees of affinity between husband and wife. In that year (1533) when Henry's marriage with Anne had just been celebrated, an Act of Parliament was pa.s.sed setting forth a list of forbidden degrees for husband and wife, and in this the affinities by reason of illicit intercourse were omitted. In 1536, when Anne was doomed, another Act was pa.s.sed ordering every man who had married the sister of a former mistress to separate from her and forbidding such marriages in future. Before Henry's marriage with Anne, Sir George Throgmorton mentioned to him the common belief that Henry had carried on a _liaison_ with both the stepmother and the sister of Anne. "_Never with the mother_," replied the King; "nor with the sister either," added Cromwell. But most people will conclude that the King's remark was an admission that Mary Boleyn was his mistress. (Friedmann's "Anne Boleyn," Appendix B.)

[54] It would not be fair to accept as gospel the unsupported a.s.sertions of the enemies of Anne with regard to her light behaviour before marriage, though they are numerous and circ.u.mstantial, but Wyatt's own story of his s.n.a.t.c.hing a locket from her and wearing it under his doublet, by which Henry's jealousy was aroused, gives us the clue to the meaning of another contemporary statement (_Chronicle of Henry VIII._, edited by the writer), to the effect that Wyatt, who was a great friend of the King, and was one of those accused at the time of Anne's fall, when confronted with Cromwell, privately told him to remind the King of the warning he gave him about Anne before the marriage. Chapuys, also, writing at the time when Anne was in the highest favour (1530), told the Emperor that she had been accused by the Duke of Suffolk of undue familiarity with "a gentleman who on a former occasion had been banished on suspicion." This might apply either to Percy or Wyatt. All authorities agree that her demeanour was not usually modest or decorous.

[55] _Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 2.

[56] Not content with her Howard descent through her mother, Anne, or rather her father, had caused a bogus pedigree to be drawn up by which the city mercer who had been his grandfather was represented as being of n.o.ble Norman blood. The d.u.c.h.ess of Norfolk was scornful and indignant, and gave to Anne "a piece of her mind" on the subject, greatly to Henry's annoyance. (_Spanish Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 2.)

[57] They took with them a love-letter from the King to Anne which is still extant (_Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 2). He tells her that "they were despatched with as many things to compa.s.s our matter as wit could imagine," and he trusts that he and his sweetheart will shortly have their desired end. "This would be more to my heart's ease and quietness of mind than anything in the world.... Keep him (_i.e._ Gardiner) not too long with you, but desire him for your sake to make the more speed; for the sooner we have word of him the sooner shall our matter come to pa.s.s.

And thus upon trust of your short repair to London I make end of my letter, mine own sweetheart. Written with the hand of him which desireth as much to be yours as you do to have him." Gardiner also took with him Henry's book justifying his view of the invalidity of his marriage. A good description of the Pope's cautious att.i.tude whilst he read this production is contained in Gardiner's letter from Orvieto, 31st March 1528. (_Henry VIII. Calendar_, vol. 4, part 2.)

[58] Hall tells a curious and circ.u.mstantial story that the declaration of war, which led to the confiscation of great quant.i.ties of English property in the imperial dominions, was brought about purely by a trick of Wolsey, his intention being to sacrifice Clarencieux Herald, who was sent to Spain with the defiance. Clarencieux, however, learnt of the intention as he pa.s.sed through Bayonne on his way home, and found means through Nicholas Carew to see the King at Hampton Court before Wolsey knew of his return.

When he had shown Henry by the Cardinal's own letters that the grounds for the declaration of war had been invented by the latter, the King burst out angrily: "O Lorde Jesu! he that I trusted moste told me all these things contrary. Well, Clarencieux, I will be no more of so light credence hereafter, for now I see perfectly that I am made to believe the thing that never was done." Hall continues that the King was closeted with Wolsey, from which audience the Cardinal came "not very mery, and after that time the Kyng mistrusted hym ever after." This must have been in April 1528.

[59] For Erasmus' letter see _Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 2, and for Vives' letter see "Vives Opera," vol. 7.

[60] The Pope was told that there were certain secret reasons which could not be committed to writing why the marriage should be dissolved, the Queen "suffering from certain diseases defying all remedy, for which, as well as other reasons, the King would never again live with her as his wife."

[61] This was written before the death of the courtiers already mentioned.

[62] See the letters on the question of the appointment of the Abbess of Wilton in Fiddes' "Life of Wolsey," and the _Calendar Henry VIII._, vol.

4, part 2, &c.

[63] This letter was stated by Sir H. Ellis in his "Original Letters" to be from Katharine and Henry; and many false presumptions with regard to their relations at this time have been founded on the error.

[64] It will be remarked that her statement was limited to the fact that she had remained intact _da lui_, "by him." This might well be true, and yet there might be grounds for Henry's silence in non-confirmation of her public and repeated reiteration of the statement in the course of the proceedings, and for the stress laid by his advocates upon the boyish boast of Arthur related in an earlier chapter. The episode of the young cleric, Diego Fernandez, must not be forgotten in this connection.

[65] The words, often quoted, are given by Hall.

[66] _Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 2.

[67] Wolsey to Sir Gregory Casale, 1st November 1528. _Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 2.

[68] Or as Henry himself puts it in his letters to his envoys in Rome, "for him to have two legal wives instead of one," Katharine in a convent and the other by his side.

[69] So desirous was the Papal interest to persuade Katharine to this course that one of the Cardinals in Rome (Salviati) told the Emperor's envoy Mai that she would be very unwise to resist further or she might be poisoned, as the English amba.s.sadors had hinted she would be. Mai's reply was that "the Queen was ready to incur that danger rather than be a bad wife and prejudice her daughter." (_Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 3.)

[70] Hall's _Chronicle_.

[71] This is Hall's version. Du Bellay, the French amba.s.sador (_Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 2), adds that Henry began to hector at the end of the speech, saying that if any one dared in future to speak of the matter in a way disrespectful to him he would let him know who was master.

"There was no head so fine," he said, "that he would not make it fly."

[72] _Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 2. "Intended Address of the Legates to the Queen."

[73] This is not surprising, as only a month before she had been reproved and threatened for not being sad enough.

[74] There seems to be no doubt, from a letter written in January 1529 by the Pope to Campeggio, that the copy sent to Katharine from Spain was a forgery, or contained clauses which operated in her favour, but which were not in the original doc.u.ment. It was said that there was no entry of such a brief in the Papal archives, and Katharine herself a.s.serted that the wording of it--alleging the consummation of Arthur's marriage--was unknown to her. The Spaniards explained the absence of any record of the doc.u.ment in the Papal Registry by saying that at the urgent prayer of Isabel the Catholic on her deathbed, the original brief had been sent to her as soon as it was granted. (_Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 3, p. 2278.)

[75] _Ibid._

[76] _Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 4, part 3.

[77] _Ibid._ The suspicion against Wolsey at this time arose doubtless from his renewed attempts to obtain the Papacy on Clement's death. These led him to oppose a decision of the divorce except by the ecclesiastical authority.