The Wives of Henry the Eighth and the Parts They Played in History Part 14

[125] Letters of Stephen Vaughan, Henry's envoy to Germany. (_Calendar Henry VIII._, vol. 7, etc.)

[126] Letters of Chapuys in the autumn of 1534. (_Spanish Calendar._)

[127] Chapuys to the Emperor, 2nd May 1536.

[128] Lady Shelton.

[129] The plans for Mary's flight from Eltham and her deportation to the Continent were nearly successful at this time.

[130] Katharine had first met the saintly Friar Forest when she had gone on the famous pilgrimage to Walsingham after the victory of Flodden (October 1513), and on his first imprisonment she and her maid, Elizabeth Hammon, wrote heart-broken letters to him urging him to escape. (_Calendar Henry VIII._)

[131] A vivid picture of the general discontent in England at this time, and the steadfast fidelity of the people to the cause of Katharine and Mary, is given by the French envoy, the Bishop of Tarbes. (_Calendar Henry VIII._, October 1535.)

[132] The suggestion had been tentatively put forward by the English Minister in Flanders three months before.

[133] This is according to Bedingfield's statement, although from Chapuys'

letters, in which the chronology is a little confusing, it might possibly be inferred that he arrived at Kimbolton on the 1st January and that Lady Willoughby arrived soon after him. I am inclined to think that the day I have mentioned, however, is the correct one.

[134] In the previous month of November she had written what she called her final appeal to the Emperor through Chapuys. In the most solemn and exalted manner she exhorted her nephew to strike and save her before she and her daughter were done to death by the forthcoming Parliament. This supreme heart-cry having been met as all similar appeals had been by smooth evasions on the part of Charles, Katharine thenceforward lost hope, and resigned herself to her fate.

[135] Before Chapuys left Kimbolton he asked De la Sa if he had any suspicion that the Queen was being poisoned. The Spanish doctor replied that he feared that such was the case, though some slow and cunningly contrived poison must be that employed, as he could not see any signs or appearance of a simple poison. The Queen, he said, had never been well since she had partaken of some Welsh beer. The matter is still greatly in doubt, and there are many suspicious circ.u.mstances--the exclusion of De la Sa and the Bishop of Llandaff from the room when the body was opened, and the strenuous efforts to retain both of them in England after Katharine's death; and, above all, the urgent political reasons that Henry had for wis.h.i.+ng Katharine to die, since he dared not carry out his threat of having her attainted and taken to the Tower. Such a proceeding would have provoked a rising which would almost certainly have swept him from the throne.

[136] Even this small gold cross with a sacred relic enclosed in it--the jewel itself not being worth, as Chapuys says, more than ten crowns--was demanded of Mary by Cromwell soon afterwards.

[137] This account of Katharine's death is compiled from Chapuys' letters, Bedingfield's letters, and others in the _Spanish_ and _Henry VIII.

Calendars_, and from the _Chronicle of Henry VIII._

[138] The letter tells Henry that death draws near to her, and she must remind him for her love's sake to safeguard his soul before the desires of his body, "for which you have cast me into many miseries and yourself into many cares. For my part I do pardon you all, yea I do wish and devoutly pray G.o.d that He will also pardon you." She commends her daughter and her maids to him, and concludes, "Lastly, I do vow that mine eyes desire you above all things." Katharine, Queen of England. (Cotton MSS., British Museum, Otho C. x.)

[139] The death of Sir Thomas More greatly increased Anne's unpopularity.

It is recorded (More's _Life of More_) that when the news came of the execution the King and Anne sat at play, and Henry ungenerously told her she was the cause of it, and abruptly left the table in anger.

[140] Even the King's fool dared (July 1535) to call her a bawd and her child a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

[141] Chapuys to the Emperor, 24th February 1536.

[142] Chapuys to the Emperor, 29th January 1536.

[143] Probably the following letter, which has been frequently printed:--"My dear friend and mistress. The bearer of these few lines from thy entirely devoted servant will deliver into thy fair hands a token of my true affection for thee, hoping you will keep it for ever in your sincere love for me. Advertising you that there is a ballad made lately of great derision against us, which if it go much abroad and is seen by you I pray you pay no manner of regard to it. I am not at present informed who is the setter forth of this malignant writing, but if he is found he shall be straitly punished for it. For the things ye lacked I have minded my lord to supply them to you as soon as he can buy them. Thus hoping shortly to receive you in these arms I end for the present your own loving servant and Sovereign. H. R."

[144] Chapuys to the Emperor, 1st April 1536.

[145] See p. 264.

[146] It will be recollected that this question of the return of the alienated ecclesiastical property was the princ.i.p.al difficulty when Mary brought England back again into the fold of the Church. Pole and the Churchmen at Rome were for unconditional rest.i.tution, which would have made Mary's task an impossible one; the political view which recommended conciliation and a recognition of facts being that urged by Charles and his son Philip, and subsequently adopted. Charles had never shown undue respect for ecclesiastical property in Spain, and had on more than one occasion spoliated the Church for his own purposes.

[147] Chapuys to the Emperor, 6th June 1536. (_Spanish Calendar._)

[148] _Spanish Chronicle of Henry VIII._, ed. Martin Hume. The author was Antonio de Guaras, a Spanish merchant in London, and afterwards Charge d'Affaires. His evidence is to a great extent hearsay, but it truly represented the belief current at the time.

[149] British Museum, Cotton, Otho C. x., and Singer's addition to Cavendish's _Wolsey_.

[150] _Spanish Chronicle of Henry VIII._

[151] It must not be forgotten that the dinner hour was before noon.

[152] _Spanish Chronicle of Henry VIII._

[153] _Spanish Chronicle of Henry VIII._

[154] See letter from Sir W. Kingston, Governor of the Tower, to Cromwell, 3rd May 1536, Cotton MSS., Otho C. x.

[155] _Spanish Chronicle of Henry VIII._

[156] Full account of her behaviour from day to day in the Tower will be found in Kingston's letters to Cromwell, Cotton MSS., Otho C. x., which have been printed in several places, and especially in the _Calendars Henry VIII._

[157] The beautiful letter signed Ann Bullen and addressed to the King with the date of 6th May, in which the writer in dignified language protests innocence and begs for an impartial trial, is well known, having been printed many times. It is, however, of extremely doubtful authenticity; the writing and signature being certainly not that of Anne, and the composition unconvincing, though the letter is said to have been found amongst Cromwell's papers after his arrest. The genuineness of the doc.u.ment being so questionable, I have not thought well to reproduce it here.

[158] Strype's _Cranmer_. Cranmer was at Croydon when Cromwell sent him news of Anne's arrest, with the King's command that he should go to Lambeth and stay there till further orders reached him. This letter was written as soon as he arrived there.

[159] Much appears to have been made of a certain alleged death-bed deposition of Lady Wingfield recently dead, who had been one of Anne's attendants, and as it was a.s.serted, the conniver of her amours. Exactly what Lady Wingfield had confessed is not now known, nor the amount of credence to be given to her declarations. They appear, however, to have princ.i.p.ally incriminated Anne with Smeaton, and, on the whole, the balance of probability is that if Anne was guilty at all, which certainly was not proved, as she had no fair trial or defence, it was with Smeaton. The charge that she and Norreys had "imagined" the death of the King is fantastically improbable.

[160] G.o.dwin.

[161] "Je ne veux pas omettre qu'entre autres choses luy fust objecte pour crime que sa soeur la putain avait dit a sa femme (_i.e._ Lady Rochford) que le Roy n'estait habile en cas de soy copuler avec femme, et qu'il navait ni vertu ni puissance." This accusation was handed to Rochford in writing to answer, but to the dismay of the Court he read it out before denying it. (Chapuys to the Emperor, 19th May. _Spanish Calendar._)

[162] Chapuys to Granvelle, 18th May 1536. See also Camden.

[163] Froude says Smeaton was hanged; but the evidence that he was beheaded like the rest is the stronger.

[164] The whole question is exhaustively discussed by Mr. Friedmann in his _Anne Boleyn_, to which I am indebted for several references on the subject.

[165] Lady Kingston, who was present, hastened to send this news secretly to Chapuys, who, bitter enemy as he was to Anne, to do him justice seems to have been shocked at the disregard of legality in the procedure against her.

[166] The curious gossip, Antonio de Guaras, a Spaniard, says that he got into the fortress overnight. Constantine gives also a good account of the execution, varying little from that of Guaras. The Portuguese account used by Lingard and Froude confirms them.

[167] Chapuys to the Emperor, 19th May 1536. (_Spanish Calendar._)

[168] This was Cromwell's version as sent to the English agents in foreign Courts. He speaks of a conspiracy to kill the King which "made them all quake at the danger he was in."

[169] Chapuys to the Emperor, 19th May. (_Spanish Calendar._)

[170] Chapuys to Granvelle, 20th May. (_Spanish Calendar._)

[171] The local story that the marriage took place at Wolf Hall, the seat of the Seymours in Wilts.h.i.+re, and that a barn now standing on the estate was the scene of the wedding feast, may be dismissed. That festivities would take place there in celebration of the wedding is certain; and on more than one occasion Henry was entertained at Wolf Hall, and probably feasted in the barn itself; but the royal couple were not there on the occasion of their marriage. The romantic account given by Nott in his _Life of Surrey_, of Henry's waiting with straining ears, either in Epping Forest or elsewhere in hunting garb, to hear the signal gun announcing Anne's death before galloping off to be married at Tottenham Church, near Wolf Hall, is equally unsupported, and, indeed, impossible. Henry's private marriage undoubtedly took place, as related in the text, at Hampton Court, and the public ceremony on the 30th May at Whitehall.

[172] Henry's apologists have found decent explanations for his hurry to marry Jane. Mr. Froude pointed to the urgent pet.i.tion of the Privy Council and the peers that the King would marry at once, and opined that it could hardly be disregarded; and another writer reminds us that if Henry had not married Jane privately on the day he did, 20th May, the ceremony would have had to be postponed--as, in fact, the full ceremony was--until after the Rogation days preceding Whitsuntide. But nothing but callous concupiscence can really explain the unwillingness of Henry to wait even a week before his remarriage.

[173] The Catholics were saying that before Anne's head fell the wax tapers on Katharine's shrine at Peterborough kindled themselves. (John de Ponte's letter to Cromwell, Cotton MSS., t.i.tus B 1, printed by Ellis.)