The Wives of Henry the Eighth and the Parts They Played in History Part 7

_From a painting by_ HOLBEIN _in the Imperial Collection at Vienna_]

CHAPTER VII

1536-1540

PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT--JANE SEYMOUR AND ANNE OF CLEVES

From the moment that Henry abruptly left the lists at May-day on the receipt of Cromwell's letter detailing the admissions of Smeaton, he saw Anne no more. No pang of remorse, no wave of compa.s.sion pa.s.sed over him.

He easily believed what he wished to believe, and Anne was left to the tender mercies of Cromwell, to be done to death. Again Henry was a prey to profound self-pity for ever having fallen under the enchantment of such a wicked woman. He, of course, was not to blame for anything. He never was.

He was always the clement, just man whose unsuspecting goodness of heart had been abused by others, and who tried to find distraction and to forget the evil done him. On the very night of the day that Anne was arrested the Duke of Richmond, Henry's son, now a grown youth, went, as was his custom, into his father's room at Whitehall to bid him good night and ask his blessing. The King, we are told,[167] fell a-weeping as he blessed his son, "saying that he and his sister (Mary) might well be grateful to G.o.d for saving them from the hands of that accursed and venomous harlot who had intended to poison them." That Anne may have planned the a.s.sa.s.sination of Mary is quite probable, even if she had no hand in the shortening of Katharine's days, and this may have been the real hidden pretext of her death acting upon Henry's fears for himself.[168] But if such were the case, Henry, at least, was deserving of no pity, for when it was only Katharine's life that was in danger he was, as we have seen, brutally callous, and only awoke to the enormity of the "venomous harlot" when Cromwell made him believe that his own safety was jeopardised. Then no fate was too cruel for the woman he once had loved.

On the day preceding Anne's trial, Jane Seymour was brought from Sir Nicholas Carew's house to another residence on the river bank, only a mile from Whitehall Stairs, to be ready for her intended elevation as soon as the Queen was disposed of. Here Jane was served for the few days she stayed "very splendidly by the cooks and certain officers of the King, and very richly adorned."[169] So certain was Henry that nothing would now stand in the way of his new marriage that Jane was informed beforehand that on the 15th, by three in the afternoon, she would hear of her predecessor's condemnation; and Anne's cousin and enemy, Sir Francis Brian, eagerly brought the news to the expectant lady at the hour antic.i.p.ated. The next day, when the sword of the French headsman had made Henry indeed a widower, the King only awaited receipt of the intelligence to enter his barge and seek the consolation of Jane Seymour. At six o'clock in the morning of the 20th May, when the headless body of Anne, barely cold, still awaited sepulture huddled in an old arrow-box in the Church of St. Peter within the Tower, Jane was secretly carried by water from her residence to Hampton Court; and before nine o'clock she had been privately married to the King,[170] by virtue of a dispensation issued the day previously by the accommodating Cranmer.[171] It would seem probable that the day after the private espousals Jane travelled to her home in Wilts.h.i.+re, where she stayed for several days whilst preparations were being made in the King's abodes for her reception as Queen: for all the A's had to be changed to J's in the royal ciphers, and traces of Anne's former presence abolished wherever possible. Whether Henry accompanied his new wife to Wilts.h.i.+re on this occasion is not quite certain, though from Sir John Russell's account it is probable that he did. In any case the King and his new wife visited Mercer's Hall, in Cheapside, on the 29th May, St. Peter's Eve, to witness from the windows the civic ceremony of the annual setting of the watch; and on the following day, 30th May, the pair were formally married in the Queen's closet at Whitehall.

The people at large looked somewhat askance at this furious haste to marry the new wife before the shed blood of the previous one was dry;[172] but the Court, and those who still recollected the wronged Princess Mary and her dead mother, were enthusiastic in their welcome to Jane.[173] The Emperor's friends, too, were in joyous mood; and Princess Mary at Hunsdon was full of hope, and eager to be allowed to greet her father and his wife now that "that woman" was dead. Chapuys, we may be sure, did not stand behind the door now when he went to Court. On the contrary, when he first visited Whitehall a few days after the wedding, Henry led him by the hand to Jane's apartments, and allowed the diplomatist to kiss the Queen--"congratulating her upon her marriage and wis.h.i.+ng her prosperity. I told her that, although the device of the lady who had preceded her on the throne was 'The happiest of women,' I had no doubt that she herself would realise that motto. I was sure that the Emperor would be equally rejoiced as the King himself had been at meeting such a virtuous and amiable Queen, the more so that her brother (_i.e._ Sir E. Seymour, afterwards the Duke of Somerset) had been in the Emperor's service. I added that it was almost impossible to believe the joy and pleasure which Englishmen generally had felt at the marriage; especially as it was said that she was continually trying to persuade the King to restore the Princess to his favour, as formerly." Most of Chapuys' courtly talk with Jane, indeed, was directed to this point of the restoration of Mary; but the new Queen, though inexperienced, had been well coached, and did not unduly commit herself; only promising to favour the Princess, and to endeavour to deserve the t.i.tle that Chapuys had given her of "peacemaker." Henry strolled up to the pair at this point, and excused his new wife for any want of expertness: "as I was the first amba.s.sador she had received, and she was not used yet to such receptions. He (Henry) felt sure, however, that she would do her utmost to obtain the t.i.tle of 'peacemaker,' with which I (Chapuys) had greeted her, as, besides being naturally of a kind and amiable disposition and much inclined to peace, she would strive to prevent his (Henry's) taking part in a foreign war, if only out of the fear of being separated from him."[174]

But all these fine hopes were rapidly banished. Jane never possessed or attempted to exercise any political influence on her husband. She smiled sweetly and in a non-committal way upon the Princess Mary, and upon the imperialist and moderate Catholic party that had hoped to make the new Queen their instrument; but Cromwell's was still the strong mind that swayed the King. He had obtained renewed control over his master by ridding him of Anne; and had, at all events, prevented England from being drawn into a coalition with France against the Emperor; but he had no intention, even if it had been possible, of going to the other extreme and binding his country to go to war against France to please the Emperor.

Henry's self-will and vanity, as well as his greed, also stood in the way of a complete submission to the Papacy, and those who had brought Jane Seymour in, hoping that her advent would mean a return to the same position as that previous to Anne's rise, now found that they had been over sanguine. Charles and Francis were left to fight out their great duel alone in Italy and Provence, to the general discomfiture of the imperial cause; and, instead of hastening to humble himself at the feet of Paul III., as the pontiff had fondly expected, Henry summoned Parliament, and gave stronger statutory sanction than ever to his ecclesiastical independence of Rome.[175] Anne's condemnation and Elizabeth's b.a.s.t.a.r.dy were obediently confirmed by the Legislature, and the entire freedom of the English Church from Rome rea.s.serted.

But the question of the succession was that which aroused the strongest feeling, and its settlement the keenest disappointment. Now that Anne's offspring was disinherited, Princess Mary and her friends naturally expected that she, with the help of the new Queen, would once more enter into the enjoyment of her birthright. Eagerly Mary wrote to Cromwell bespeaking his aid, which she had been led to expect that he would give; and by his intercession she was allowed to send her humble pet.i.tion to her father, praying for leave to see him. Her letters are all couched in terms of cringing humility, praying forgiveness for past offences, and promising to be a truly dutiful daughter in future. But this did not satisfy Henry.

Cromwell, desirous, in pursuance of his policy of keeping friendly with the Emperor without going to war with France, or kneeling to Rome, hoped to bring about peace between Mary and her father. But the strongest pa.s.sions of Henry's nature were now at stake, and he would only accept his daughter's submission on terms that made her a self-confessed b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and against this the girl, as obstinate as her father and as righteously proud as her mother, still rebelled. Henry's son, the Duke of Richmond, was now a straight stripling of eighteen, already married to Norfolk's daughter, and, failing issue by Jane, here was an heir to the Crown that might carry the Tudor line onward in the male blood, if Parliament could be chicaned or threatened into acknowledging him. So Mary was plied with letters from Cromwell, each more pressing and cruel than the previous one, driving the girl to distraction by the King's insistence upon his terms.[176] Threats, cajolery, and artful casuistry were all tried. Again Mary turned to her foreign advisers and the King's rebellious subjects for support, and again her father's heart hardened when he knew it. Norfolk, who with others was sent to persuade her, was so incensed with her firmness that he said if she had been his daughter he would have knocked her head against the wall until it was as soft as a codlin. But Norfolk's daughter was the d.u.c.h.ess of Richmond, and might be Queen Consort after Henry's death if Mary were disinherited, so that there was some excuse for his violence. Those who were in favour of Mary were dismissed from the Council--even Cromwell was in fear--and Jane Seymour was rudely snubbed by the King for daring to intercede for the Princess. At length, with death threatening her, Mary could stand out no longer. Without even reading it, she signed with a mental reservation, and confident of obtaining the Papal absolution for which she secretly asked, the shameful declaration forced upon her, repudiating the Papal authority, and specifically acknowledging herself a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

Then Henry was all amiability with his wronged daughter. He and Jane went to visit her at Richmond, whither she had been brought, giving her handsome presents of money and jewels; liberty was given to her to come to Court, and stately service surrounded her. But it was all embittered by the knowledge that Parliament had been induced to acknowledge that all the King's children were illegitimate, and to grant to Henry himself the right of appointing his own successor by letters patent or by will. Alas! the youth in whose immediate interest the injustice was done was fast sinking to his grave; and on the 22nd July 1536 the Duke of Richmond breathed his last, to Henry's bitter grief, Mary's prospects again became brighter, and all those who resented the religious policy and Henry's recalcitrancy now looked to the girl as their only hope of a return to the old order of things. Chapuys, too, was ceaseless in his intrigues to bring England once more into a condition of obedience to the Pope, that should make her a fit instrument for the imperial policy, and soon the disappointment that followed on the elevation of Jane Seymour found vent in the outbreak of rebellion in Lincolns.h.i.+re and Yorks.h.i.+re.

The priests and the great ma.s.s of the people had bent the neck patiently to the King's violent innovations in the observances that they had been taught to hold sacred. They had seen the religious houses, to which they looked for help and succour in distress, destroyed and alienated. The abuses of the clergy had doubtless been great, and the first measures against them had been welcomed; but the complete confiscation of vast properties, in the main administered for the benefit of the lowly, the continued enclosure of common lands by the gentry newly enriched by ecclesiastical plunder, and the rankling sense of the scandalous injustice that had been suffered by Katharine and Mary, for the sake, as the people said, of the King's l.u.s.tful caprice, at last provided the extreme militant Catholic party with the impetus needed for revolt against the Crown.

Imperious Henry was beside himself with rage; and for a time it looked as if he and his system might be swept away in favour of his daughter, or one of the Poles, who were being put forward by the Pope. The Bull of excommunication against Henry and England, so long held back, was now launched, making rebellion righteous; and the imperial interest in England, which was still strong, did its best to aid the rising of Henry's lieges against him. But the rebels were weakly led: the greater n.o.bles had for the most part been bought by grants of ecclesiastical lands; and Norfolk, for all his moral baseness, was an experienced and able soldier.

So the Pilgrimage of Grace, threatening as it looked for a time, flickered out; and the yoke was riveted tighter than ever upon the neck of rural England. To the party that had hoped to make use of her, Jane Seymour was thus, to some extent, a disappointment;[177] but her placid submissiveness, which made her a bad political instrument, exactly suited a husband so imperious as Henry; and from a domestic point of view the union was successful. During the summer Jane shared in her husband's progresses and recreations, but as the months rolled on and no hope came of offspring, ominous rumours ran that Jane's coronation would be deferred until it was proved that she might bear children to the King; and some said that if she proved barren a pretext would be found for displacing her in favour of another. Indeed, only a few days after the public marriage, Henry noticed two very beautiful girls at Court, and showed his annoyance that he had not seen them before taking Jane.

After six months of marriage without sign of issue, Henry began to take fright. The Duke of Richmond was dead, and both the King's daughters were acknowledged by the law of England to be illegitimate. He was already forty-six years of age, and had lately grown very obese; and his death without further issue or a resettlement of the succession would inevitably lead to a dynastic dispute, with the probable result of the return of the House of York to the throne in the person of one of the Poles under the aegis of Rome. Whenever possible, Jane had said a good word for the Princess Mary, and Henry began to listen more kindly than before to his wife's well-meant attempts to soften him in favour of his daughter. The Catholic party was all alert with new hopes that the King, convinced that he could father no more sons, would cause his elder daughter to be acknowledged his heir;[178] but the reformers, who had grown up numerously, especially in and about London, during Henry's defiance of Rome, looked askance at a policy which in time they feared might bring back the old order of things. The mainstay of this party at Court, apart from the professed Lutherans and the new bishops, were those who, having received grants of ecclesiastical property, despaired of any return to the Roman communion and the imperial alliance without the restoration of the Church property. Amongst these courtiers was Jane's brother, Edward Seymour, Viscount Beauchamp, who had received large grants of ecclesiastical lands at intervals since 1528. He was a personal friend of the King, and had taken no active part in the intrigue that accompanied his sister's elevation, though after the marriage he naturally rose higher than before in the favour of the King. He was a clever and superficially brilliant, but ostentatious and greedy man, of no great strength of purpose, whose new relations.h.i.+p to the King marked him out as a dominating influence in the future. The Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, upon whom Henry had depended as generals, were now very old and ailing, and there was no other peer but Cromwell of any ability in the Councils.

Even thus early it was clear that Seymour's weight would, notwithstanding the circ.u.mstances of his sister's rise, be thrown on to the anti-Papal side when the crucial struggle came. He was, moreover, a new man; and as such not welcomed by the older n.o.bility, who, though desirous of retaining their Church plunder, were yet bound by their traditions against bureaucrats such as Cromwell, and the policy of defiance of the Papacy that he and his like had suggested and carried out. Cromwell's own position at this time (1536-37) was a paradoxical one. It was he who had led Henry on, step by step, to entire schism and the plunder of the Church; it was he who not only had shown how to get rid of Katharine, but how to destroy her successor; and it was he whom the Catholic party hated with a whole-hearted detestation, for the King's acts as well as his own.

On the other hand, he was hardly less distrusted by the reforming party; for his efforts were known to be directed to a reconciliation with the Emperor, which could only be effected conjointly with some sort of arrangement with the Papacy. His efforts to please the imperialists by siding with the Princess Mary during her dispute with her father led him to the very verge of destruction. Whilst the young Princess was being badgered into making her shameful and insincere renunciation of her faith and birthright, Cromwell, the very man who was the instrument for extorting her submission, sat, as he says, for a week in the Council considering himself "a dead man," because the King believed that he was encouraging Mary to resist. Cromwell, therefore, like most men who endeavour to hold a middle course, was distrusted and hated by every one; and it must have been obvious to him that if he could ensure the adhesion of the rising Seymour interest his chance of weathering the storm would be infinitely improved. His son had recently married Jane Seymour's sister, and this brought him into close relations.h.i.+p with the family, and, as will be seen, led in the next year to a compact political union between the Seymour brothers, Cromwell, and the reforming party, as against the n.o.bles and traditional conservatives.

For the time, however, Cromwell held on his way, endeavouring to keep in with the imperialists and Mary; and it was doubtless to his prompting that Jane used her influence, when at its highest point, to reconcile the Princess personally to her father. To the great joy of the King, in March 1537, Jane was declared to be with child. The Emperor had already opened a negotiation for the marriage of Mary with his brother-in-law, the Infante Luiz of Portugal, and Henry was playing a waiting game till he saw if Jane would bear him a child. If so, Mary might go; although he still refused to legitimise her; but if no more issue was to be born to him, he could hardly allow his elder daughter to leave England and fall into the hands of the Emperor. Charles, on the other hand, was extremely anxious to obtain possession of so valuable a pledge for the future as Mary; and was willing to go to almost any lengths to get her, either by fair means or foul, fearing, as he did, that the girl might be married discreditably in England--he thought even to Cromwell himself--in order to destroy her international value to Henry's rivals.

As soon, however, as Jane's pregnancy was announced Mary's position changed. If a child was born in wedlock to the King, especially if it were a son, there would be no need to degrade Mary by joining her to a lowly husband; she might, on the contrary, become a good international marriage a.s.set in the hands of her father, who might bargain with Charles or Francis for her. The fresh move of Jane Seymour, therefore, in her favour, in the spring of 1537, when the Queen's pregnancy had given her greater power over her husband, was probably welcome both to the King and Cromwell, as enhancing Mary's importance at a time when she might be used as an international political p.a.w.n without danger. Jane was sad one day in the early period of her pregnancy. "Why, darling," said the King, "how happeneth it you are not merrier?"[179] "It hath pleased your Grace,"

replied the Queen, "to make me your wife, and there are none but my inferiors with whom to make merry, withal, your Grace excepted; unless it would please you that we might enjoy the company of the Lady Mary at Court. I could be merry with her." "We will have her here, darling, if that will make thee merry," said the King. And before many days had gone, Mary, with a full train of ladies, was brought from Hunsdon, magnificently dressed, to Whitehall, where, in the great presence chamber, Henry and his wife stood before the fire. The poor girl was almost overcome at the tenderness of her reception, and fell upon her knees before her father and his wife. Henry, as usual anxious to throw upon others the responsibility of his ill-treatment of his daughter, turned to his Councillors, who stood around, and said, "Some of you were desirous that I should put this jewel to death." "That were a pity," quoth the Queen, "to have lost your chiefest jewel of England."[180] The hint was too much for Mary, who changed colour and fell into a swoon, greatly to her father's concern.

At length the day long yearned and prayed for by Henry came. Jane had for some months lived in the strictest quietude, and prayers and ma.s.ses for her safe delivery were offered in the churches for weeks before. In September she had travelled slowly to Hampton Court, and on the 12th October 1537 a healthy son was born to her and Henry. The joy of the King was great beyond words. The gross sensualist, old beyond his years, had in vain hoped through all his st.u.r.dy youth for a boy, who, beyond reproach, might bear his regal name. He had flouted Christendom and defied the greatest powers on earth in order to marry a woman who might bear him a man child. When she failed to do so, he had coldly stood aside whilst his instruments defamed her and did her to death; and now, at last, in his declining years, his prayer was answered, and the House of Tudor was secure upon the future throne of England. Bonfires blazed and joy bells rang throughout the land; feasts of unexampled bounteousness coa.r.s.ely brought home to the lieges the blessing that had come to save the country from the calamity of a disputed succession. The Seymour brothers at once became, next the King and his son, the most important personages in England, the elder, Edward, being created Earl of Hertford, and both receiving great additional grants of monastic lands. In the general jubilation at the birth, the interests of the mother were forgotten. No attempt appears to have been made to save her from the excitement that surrounded her; and on the very day of her delivery she signed an official letter "Jane the Quene" to Cromwell, directing him to communicate to the Privy Council the joyful news.

The most sumptuous royal christening ever seen was in bustling preparation in and about her sick-chamber; and that no circ.u.mstance of state should be lacking, the mother herself, only four days after the birth, was forced to take part in the exhausting ceremony. In the chapel at Hampton Court, newly decorated like the splendid banqueting-hall adjoining, where the initials of Jane carved in stone with those of the King, and her arms and device on glowing gla.s.s and gilded scutcheon still perpetuate her fleeting presence, the christening ceremony was held by torchlight late in the chill autumn evening. Through the long draughty corridors, preceded by braying trumpets and followed by rustling crowds of elated courtiers, the sick woman was carried on her stately pallet covered with heavy robes of crimson velvet and ermine. Under a golden canopy, supported by the four greatest n.o.bles in the land, next to Norfolk, who was one of the G.o.dfathers, the Marchioness of Exeter bore the infant in her arms to the scene of the ceremony; and the Princess Mary, fiercely avid of love as she ever was, held the prince at the font. Suffolk, Arundel, and doomed Exeter, with a host of other magnates, stood around; whilst one towering handsome figure, with a long brown beard, carried aloft in his arms the tiny fair girl-child of Anne, the Lady Elizabeth, holding in her dainty hands the holy chrisom. It was Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, looked at askance by the rest as a new man, but already overlapping them all as the uncle of the infant prince. During the _Te Deum_ and the long, pompous ceremony of the baptism the mother lay flushed and excited upon her couch; whilst the proud father, his broad face beaming with pride, sat by her side, holding her hand.

It was hard upon midnight when the Queen gave her blessing to her child and was carried back to her chamber, with more trumpet blasts and noisy gratulation. The next day, as was to be expected, she was in a high fever, so ill that she was confessed and received extreme unction. But she rallied, and seemed somewhat amended for the next few days, though ominous rumours were rife in London that her life had purposely been jeopardised in order to save that of the child at birth.[181] They were not true, but they give the measure of the public estimate of Henry's character, and have been made the most of by Sanders, Rivadeneyra, and the other Jesuit historians. On the 23rd October the Queen fell gravely ill again, and in the night was thought to be dying. Henry had intended to ride to Esher that day, but "could not find it in his heart" to go; and the next night, the 24th October, Jane Seymour died, a sacrifice to improper treatment and heartlessly exacted ceremonial. Henry had not been married long enough to her to have become tired of her, and her somewhat lethargic placidity had suited him. She had, moreover, borne him the long-looked-for son; and his grief for her loss was profound, and no doubt sincere. Much as he hated signs of mortality, he wore black mourning for her for three months, and shut himself up at Windsor away from the world, and above all away from the corpse of his dead wife, for a fortnight. Jane's body, embalmed, lay in the presence chamber at Hampton Court for a week. Blazing tapers surrounded the great hea.r.s.e, and ma.s.ses went on from dawn to midday in the chamber. All night long the Queen's ladies, with Princess Mary, watched before the bier, until the end of the month, when the catafalque had been erected in the chapel for the formal lying in state. On the 12th November, with the greatest possible pomp, the funeral procession bore the dead Queen to Windsor for burial in a grave in St. George's Chapel, destined to receive the remains of Henry as well as that of his third wife, the mother of his son.[182] The writers of the time, following the lead of Henry and his courtiers, never mentioned their grief for the Queen without promptly suggesting that it was more than counterbalanced by their joy at the birth of her son, who from his first appearance in the world was hailed as a paragon of beauty and perfection. Thanksgivings for the boon of a male heir to the King blended their sounds of jubilation with the droning of the ma.s.ses for the mother's soul, and the flare of the bonfires died down into the flickering tapers that dimly lit the funerals. Even Henry himself, in writing to give the news of his son's birth, confessed that his joy at the event had far exceeded his grief for Jane's death.

So far as the Catholic party that had promoted it was concerned, the marriage with Jane had been a failure. The Pilgrimage of Grace had been drowned in the blood of ruthless slaughter: and partly because of Mary's scruples and fears, partly because they themselves had been gorged with the plunder of the Church, nearly all the great n.o.bles stood aside and raised no voice whilst Cromwell and his master still worked havoc on the religious houses, regardless of Jane's timid intercession. Boxley, Walsingham, and even the sacred shrine of Canterbury, yielded their relics and images, venerated for centuries, to be scorned and destroyed; whilst the vast acc.u.mulated treasures of gold and gems that enriched them went to fill the coffers of the King, and their lands to bribe his favourites.

Throughout England the work of confiscation was carried on now with a zeal which only greed for the resultant profit can explain.[183] The attacks upon superst.i.tion in the Church by those in authority naturally aroused a feeling of greater freedom of thought amongst the ma.s.s of the people. The establishment of an open Bible in English in every church for the perusal of the paris.h.i.+oners, due, as indeed most of the doctrinal changes were, to Cranmer, encouraged men to think to some extent for themselves. But though, for purposes to which reference will be made presently, Henry willingly concurred in Cranmer's reforming tendencies and Cromwell's anti-ecclesiastical plans for providing him with abundant money, he would allow no departure from orthodoxy as he understood it. His love for theological controversy, and his undoubted ability and learning in that direction, enabled him to enforce his views with apparently unanswerable arguments, especially as he was able, and quite ready, to close the dispute with an obstinate antagonist by prescribing the stake and the gibbet either to those who repudiated his spiritual supremacy or to those who, like the Anabaptists, questioned the efficacy of a sacrament which he had adopted. For Henry it was to a great extent a matter of pride and self-esteem now to show to his own subjects and the world that he was absolutely supreme and infallible, and this feeling unquestionably had greatly influenced the progress effected by the reformation and emanc.i.p.ation from Rome made after the disappointing marriage with Jane Seymour.

But there was also policy in Henry's present action. Throughout the years 1536 and 1537 Francis and the Emperor had continued at war; but by the close of the latter year it was evident that both combatants were exhausted, and would shortly make up their differences. The Papal excommunication of Henry and his realm was now in full force, making rebellion against the King a laudable act for all good Catholics; and any agreement between the two great Continental sovereigns in union with Rome boded ill for England and for its King. There were others, too, to whom such a combination boded ill. The alliance between France and the infidel Turk to attack the Christian Emperor had aroused intense indignation amongst Catholics throughout the world against Francis; and the Pope, utilising this feeling, strove hard to persuade both Christian sovereigns to cease their fratricidal struggle and to recognise that the real enemy to be feared and destroyed was Lutheranism or heresy in their midst.

During the Emperor's absence, and the war, Protestantism in Germany had advanced with giant strides. The Princes had boldly refused to recognise any conciliatory Council of the Church under the control of the Pope; and the pressure used by the Emperor to compel them to do so aroused the suspicion that the day was fast approaching when Lutheranism would have to fight for its life against the imperial suzerain of Germany.

Already the forces were gathering. George of Saxony, the enemy of Luther, was hurrying to the grave, and Henry his brother and heir was a strong Protestant. Philip of Hesse had two years before thrown down the gage, and had taken by force from the Emperor the territory of Wurtemburg, and had restored the Protestant Duke Ulrich. Charles' brother Ferdinand, who ruled the empire, clamoured as loudly as did Mary of Hungary in Flanders and Eleanor of Austria in France, for a peace between the two champions of Christendom, the repudiation by France of the Turkish alliance, and a concentration of the Catholic forces in the world before it was too late to crush the hydra of heresy which threatened them all. It was natural in the circ.u.mstances that the enemies of the Papacy should be drawn together.

A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind, and a common danger drew Henry of England and Philip of Hesse together. Henry was no Lutheran, and did not pretend to be. He had been drawn into the Reformation by the process that we have followed, in which interested advisers had worked upon his pa.s.sions and self-esteem; but he had gone too far in defiance of Rome now to turn back, and was forced to look to his own safety by such policy as was possible to him. For several months after Jane Seymour's death the envoys of the German Protestants were in England in close negotiation with Henry and Cromwell. In order that a close league should be made, it was necessary that some common doctrinal standpoint should be agreed upon, and infinite theological discussions took place to bring this about. Henry would not give way on any princ.i.p.al point, and the Protestant amba.s.sadors went home again without a formal understanding. But though Henry remained, as he intended to do, thus unpledged, it was good policy for him to impress upon the Germans by his ruthless suppression of the monasteries, and his prohibition of the ancient superst.i.tions, that he was the enemy of their enemy; and that if he was attacked for heresy, it would be inc.u.mbent upon the Lutherans to be on his side even against their own suzerain.

This was not, however, the only move made by Henry against the threatening danger of a joint attack of the Catholic powers. He had hardly thrown off his mourning for Jane before he turned his hand to the old game of dividing his rivals. His bluff was as audacious and brilliant as usual.

To the imperial and French amba.s.sadors in turn he boasted that either of their masters would prefer his friends.h.i.+p and alliance to that of the other; and, rightly convinced that he would really be more likely to gain lat.i.tudinarian Francis than Charles, he proposed in the spring of 1538 that he should marry a French princess. As the two great Catholic sovereigns drew closer together, though still nominally at war in Italy, Henry became, indeed, quite an eager wooer. His friend, Sir Francis Brian, was sent to Paris, secretly to forward his suit, and obtained a portrait of the Duke of Guise's second daughter, the sister of the King of Scotland's bride, Mary of Lorraine; with which Henry confessed himself quite smitten. He had, before this, only three months after Jane's death, made a desperate attempt to prevail upon Francis to let him have Mary of Lorraine herself; though she was already betrothed to the King of Scots, his nephew; but this had been positively and even indignantly refused.

Even the younger daughter of Guise, beautiful as she was, did not quite satisfy his vanity. Both he and his agent Brian, who was a fit representative for him, disgusted Francis by suggesting that three other French princesses should be taken to Calais by the Queen of Navarre--Francis' sister--in order that they might be paraded before the King of England for his selection, "like hackneys," as was said at the time.[184] He thought that the angry repudiation of such an insulting proposal was most unreasonable. "How can I choose a wife by deputy?" he asked. "I must depend upon my own eyes"; besides, he added, he must hear them sing, and see how they comported themselves. Perhaps, suggested the French amba.s.sador sarcastically, he would like to go further and test the ladies in other ways, as the knights of King Arthur used to do. Henry coloured at this; but vauntingly replied that he could, if he pleased, marry into the imperial house; but he would not marry at all unless he was quite sure that his new relation would prefer his alliance to all others.

When, at length, in June, the truce of Nice was signed, and soon afterwards the fraternal meeting and close community between Francis and Charles was effected at Aigues Mortes, Henry began to get seriously alarmed. His matrimonial offers, to his surprise, were treated very coolly; all his attempts to breed dissension between the imperial and French amba.s.sadors, who were now hand and glove, were laughed at;[185] and the intimate confidence and friends.h.i.+p between his two Catholic rivals seemed at last to bring disaster to Henry's very doors; for it was not concealed that the first blow to be struck by the Catholic confederacy was to be upon the schismatic heretic who ruled England.

With Francis there was no more to be done; for Henry and Brian, by their want of delicacy, had between them deeply wounded all the possible French brides and their families. But, at least, Henry hoped that sufficient show of friends.h.i.+p with Charles might be simulated to arouse Francis' jealousy of his new ally. Henry therefore began to sneer at the patched-up friends.h.i.+p, as he called it.[186] "And how about Milan?" he asked the French amba.s.sador, knowing that that was the still rankling sore; and soon he began to boast more openly that he himself might have Milan by the cession of it as a dower to Dom Luiz of Portugal, on his marriage with the Princess Mary; whilst Henry himself married the young widowed d.u.c.h.ess of Milan, Charles' niece, Christina of Denmark, that clever, quick-witted woman, whose humorous face lives for ever on the canvas of Holbein in the English National Gallery.[187] There had been a Spanish amba.s.sador, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, in England since the spring of 1537, to negotiate the Portuguese marriage of the Princess Mary; but the eternal questions of dowry, security, and the legitimacy of the Princess had made all negotiations so far abortive. Now they were taken up more strongly, by means of Wyatt at Madrid, and by special envoys to Mary of Hungary in Flanders. But it was all "buckler play," as the imperial agents and Charles himself soon found out. Henry and Cromwell knew perfectly well that no stable alliance with the Emperor was possible then unless their religious policy was changed; and they had gone too far to change it without humiliation, if not destruction, to Henry; the real object of the negotiations being simply to obtain some sort of promise about the cession of Milan, by which Francis might be detached from the imperial alliance.

But it was unsuccessful; and, for once, the two great antagonists held together for a time against all Lutheranism and heresy.

Then Henry and Cromwell had to look anxiously for support and alliances elsewhere. To the King it was a repugnant and humiliating necessity. He had puffed himself into the belief that he was the most potent and infallible of sovereigns, and he found himself, for the first time, scorned by all those he had reason to fear. He, the embodiment of the idea of regal omnipotence, would be forced to make common cause with those who, like the German Protestants, stood for resistance to supreme authority; with usurpers like Christian III. of Denmark, and trading democracies like Lubeck. With much hesitation and dislike, therefore, he listened, whilst Cromwell urged the inevitable policy upon him, which led him farther and farther away from the inner circle of potentates to which he and his father had gained entrance in the course of the events related in the first chapters of this book.

Cromwell's arguments would probably have been unavailing but for the opportune "discovery," in the usual fortuitous Cromwell fas.h.i.+on, of a dangerous aristocratic conspiracy against Henry himself. Cardinal Pole had been entrusted with the Papal excommunication, and everywhere impressed upon English Catholics the duty of obeying their spiritual father by deposing the King.[188] Whether anything in the form of a regular conspiracy to do this existed in England is extremely doubtful; but the Cardinal had naturally written to his relatives in England, especially to his brother Geoffrey, and perhaps to his mother, the Countess of Salisbury, a princess of the blood royal of York. First Geoffrey was seized and carried to the Tower, and some sort of incriminating admission drawn from him by threats of torture, though, so far as can be gathered, nothing but the repet.i.tion of disaffected conversations. It was enough, however, for Cromwell's purpose when he needed it; and the fatal net was cast over Pole's elder brother, Lord Montague, the Marquis of Exeter, allied to the royal house, the Master of the Horse, Sir Nicholas Carew, Sir Edward Neville, and half a score of other high gentlemen, known to be faithful to the old cause--all to be unjustly sacrificed on the scaffold to the fears of Henry and the political exigencies of Cromwell. Even the women and children of the supposed sympathisers with the Papacy were not spared; and the aged Countess of Salisbury, with her grandson, and the Marchioness of Exeter, with her son, were imprisoned with many humbler ones.

The defences of the kingdom on the coast and towards Scotland were rapidly made ready to resist attack from abroad, which indeed looked imminent; and when the n.o.ble and conservative party had been sufficiently cowed by the sight of the blood of the highest of its members, when the reign of terror over the land had made all men so dumb and fearsome that none dared say him nay, Cromwell felt himself strong enough to endeavour to draw England into the league of Protestant princes and defy the Catholic world. The position for Henry personally was an extraordinary one. He had gradually drifted into a position of independence from Rome; but he still professed to be a strict Catholic in other respects. His primate, Cranmer, and several other of his bishops whose ecclesiastical status was unrecognised by the Pope, were unquestionably, and not unnaturally, Protestant in their sympathies; whilst Cromwell was simply a politician who cared nothing for creeds and faiths, except as ancillary to State policy. Francis, and even on occasion Charles himself, made little of taking Church property for lay purposes when he needed it: he had more than once been the ally of the infidel against Catholic princes, and his religious belief was notoriously lax; and yet he remained "the eldest son of the Church." Charles had struggled successfully against the Papal pretensions to control the temporalities of the Spanish Church, his troops had sacked Rome and imprisoned the Pope, and his ministers for years had bullied pontiffs and scolded them as if they were erring schoolboys. Excommunication had fallen upon him and his, and as hard things had been said of him in Rome as of Henry; and yet he was the champion of Catholic Christendom. The conclusion is obvious that Henry's sin towards the Papacy was not primarily the spoliation of the Church, the repudiation of Katharine, or even the a.s.sumption of control over the temporalities, but that he had arrogated to himself the spiritual heads.h.i.+p in his realm. In most other respects he was as good a Catholic as Charles, and a much better one than Francis; and yet under stress of circ.u.mstances he was forced into common cause with the growing party of reform in Europe, whose separation from the Church was profoundly doctrinal, and arose from entirely different motives from those of Henry.

The danger that threatened England at the time (early in 1539) was not really quite so serious as it seemed; for, close as the alliance between Charles and Francis was, old jealousies were not dead, and a joint war against England would have revived them; whilst the Papal plan of treating England commercially as outside the pale of civilisation would have ruined Charles' subject and was impracticable. But, in any case, the peril was real to Henry and Cromwell; and under the stress of it they were driven into the attempted policy of a Protestant confederacy. At the end of January 1539, Christopher Mont was sent to Germany with the first overtures. He carried letters of credence to Philip of Hesse, and Hans Frederick of Saxony, with the ostensible object of asking whether they had come to any conclusion respecting the theological disputations held in the previous year between their envoys and the English bishops to establish a common doctrinal basis. This, of course, was a mere pretext, the real object of the mission being to discover to what extent Henry could depend upon the German Protestant princes if he were attacked by their suzerain the Emperor. A private instruction was given to Mont by Cromwell, to remind one of the Saxon ministers who had come to England of a former conversation about a possible marriage between the young Duke of Cleves and the Princess Mary; and he was to take the opportunity of finding out all he could about the "beauty and qualities, shape, stature, and complexion" of the elder of the two unmarried daughters of the old Duke of Cleves, whose eldest daughter, Sybilla, had married Hans Frederick of Saxony himself, and was as bold a Protestant as he was. At the same time approaches were made to Christian III. of Denmark, who had joined the Evangelical league; and gradually the forces against the Papacy were to be knitted together. An excuse also was found to send English envoys to Cleves itself to offer an alliance in the matter of the Duchy of Gueldres, which the Duke of Cleves had just seized without the Emperor's connivance or consent. Carne and Wotton, the envoys, were also to offer the hand of the Princess Mary to the young Duke, and cautiously to hint at a marriage between his sister Anne and Henry, if conditions were favourable; and, like Mont in Saxony, were to close the ranks of Protestantism around the threatened Henry, from whose Court both the imperial and French amba.s.sadors had now been withdrawn.

Whilst these intrigues for Protestant support on the Continent were being carried on, and the defences of England on all sides were being strengthened, Henry, apparently for the purpose of disarming the Catholic elements, and proving that, apart from the Papal submission, he was as good a Catholic as any, forced through Parliament (May 1539) the extraordinary statute called the Six Articles, or the b.l.o.o.d.y Statute, which threw all English Protestants into a panic. The Act was drafted on Henry's instructions by Bishop Gardiner, and was called an "Act to abolish diversity of opinions." The articles of faith dictated by the King to his subjects under ferocious penalties included the main Catholic doctrine; the real presence in the Sacrament in its fullest sense; the celibacy of the clergy; that the administration of the Sacrament in two kinds is not necessary; that auricular confession is compulsory, that private ma.s.ses may be said, and that vows of chast.i.ty must be kept for ever. Cranmer, who was married and had children, dared to argue against the Bill when the Duke of Norfolk introduced it in the House of Lords, and others of the new bishops timidly did likewise; but they were overborne by the old bishops and the great majority of the lay peers, influenced by their traditions and by the peremptory arguments of the King himself. Even more important was an Act pa.s.sed in the same servile Parliament giving to the King's proclamations the force of law; and an Act of attainder against every one, living or dead, in England or abroad, who had opposed the King, completed the terror under which thenceforward the country lay. Henry was now, indeed, master of the bodies and souls of his subjects, and had reduced them all, Protestants and Catholics alike, to a condition of abject subjection to his mere will. The pa.s.sage of these Acts, especially the Six Articles, marks a temporarily successful attempt of the conservative party, represented by the old bishops and the n.o.bles under Norfolk, to overcome the influence of Cromwell, who was forwarding the Protestant league;[189] but to Henry the policy must in any case have seemed a good one, as it tended to increase his personal power and prestige, and to keep both parties dependent upon him.

Before the summer of 1539 had pa.s.sed it was evident to Henry that the new combination against him would not stand the strain of a joint attack upon England. Charles was full of cares of his own. The Lutherans were increasingly threatening; even his own city of Ghent had revolted, and it was plain from his reception of Pole at Toledo that he could not proceed to extremes against Henry. It certainly was not the intention of Francis to do so; and the panic in England--never fully justified--pa.s.sed away.

The French amba.s.sador came back, and once more Henry's intrigues to sow dissension between the Catholic powers went ceaselessly on. In the circ.u.mstances it was natural that, after the pa.s.sage of the Six Articles and the resumption of diplomatic relations with France, the negotiations with the German Protestants slackened. But the proposed marriage of Henry with the Princess of Cleves offered too good an opportunity, as Cromwell pointed out to him, of troubling the Emperor when he liked, to be dropped, even though no general political league was effected with the German Lutherans. Her brother-in-law, Hans Frederick of Saxony, was cool about it. He said that some sort of engagement had been made by her father and the Duke of Lorraine to marry her to the heir of the latter, but finally in August Wotton reported from Duren that Hans Frederick would send envoys to Cleves to propose the match, and they would then proceed to England to close the matter. Wotton had been somewhat distrustful about the previous engagement of Anne with the Duke of Lorraine's son, but was a.s.sured by the Council of Cleves that it was not binding upon the Princess, "who was free to marry as she pleased." "She has been brought up," he writes, "with the Lady d.u.c.h.ess, her mother ... and in a manner never from her elbow; the Lady d.u.c.h.ess being a wise lady, and one that very straitly looketh to her children. All report her (Anne) to be of very lowly and gentle conditions, by the which she hath so much won her mother's favour that she is loth to suffer her to depart from her. She occupieth her time mostly with her needle, wherewithal ... she can read and write (Dutch); but as to French, Latin, or any other language, she hath none. Nor yet she cannot sing nor play any instrument, for they take it here in Germany for a rebuke, and an occasion of lightness that great ladies should be learned or have any knowledge of music. Her wit is good, and she will no doubt learn English soon when she puts her mind to it. I could never hear that she is inclined to the good cheer of this country; and marvel it were if she should, seeing that her brother ... doth so well abstain from it. Your Grace's servant Hans Holbein hath taken the effigies of my Lady Anne and the Lady Amelia, and hath expressed their images very lively."[190]

Holbein was not usually a flattering painter to his sitters, and the portrait he sent of Anne was that of a somewhat masculine and large-featured, but handsome and intellectual young woman, with fine, soft, contemplative brown eyes, thick lashes, and strong eyebrows. The general appearance is dignified, though handicapped by the very unbecoming Dutch dress of the period; and though there is nothing of the _pet.i.te_ sprightliness and soft rotundity that would be likely to attract a man of Henry's characteristics, the Princess cannot have been ill-favoured.

Cromwell some months earlier had reported to Henry that Mont informed him that "everybody praises the lady's beauty, both of face and body. One said she excelled the d.u.c.h.ess (of Milan ?) as the golden sun did the silver moon."[191] If the latter statement be near the truth, Anne, in her own way, must have been quite good-looking. There was no delay or difficulty in carrying through the arrangements for the marriage. The envoys from Cleves and Saxony arrived in London in September, and saw Henry at Windsor. They could offer no great dowry, for Cleves was poor; but they would not be exacting about the appanage to be settled upon the Queen by her husband, to whom they left the decision of the sum; and the other covenants as to the eventual succession to her brother's duchy, in case of his death without heirs, were to be the same as those under which her elder sister married Hans Frederick.

This was the sort of spirit that pleased Henry in negotiators, and with such he was always disposed to be liberal. He practically waived the dowry, and only urged that the lady should come at once, before the winter was too far advanced. When he suggested that she should come from her home down the Rhine through Holland, and thence by sea to England, the envoys prayed that she might go through Germany and Flanders by land to Calais, and so across. For, said they, by sea there will be great peril of capture and insult by some too zealous subjects of the Emperor. "Besides, they fear lest, the time of year being now cold and tempestuous, she might there, though she never were so well ordered, take such cold or other disease, considering she never was before upon the seas, as should be to her great peril.... She is, moreover, young and beautiful; and if she should be transported by sea they fear much how it might alter her complexion."[192] No sooner was the marriage treaty signed than splendid preparations were made for the reception of the King's coming bride. The Lord Admiral (Fitzwilliam) was ordered to prepare a fleet of ten vessels to escort her from Calais; repairs and redecorations of the royal residences went on apace; and especially in the Queen's apartments, where again the initials of poor Jane had to be altered to those of her successor, and the "princ.i.p.al lords have bought much cloth of gold and silk, a thing unusual for them except for some great solemnity."[193]

The conclusion of the treaty was a triumph for Cromwell and the Protestant party in Henry's Council; and the Commissioners who signed it reflect the fact. Cranmer, Cromwell, the Duke of Suffolk, Lord Chancellor Audley, and Lord Admiral Fitzwilliam, were all of them inclined to the reforming side, whilst Bishop Tunstal, though on the Catholic side, was a personal friend of the King; and the new man, Hertford, Jane Seymour's brother, though not one of the Commissioners, gave emphatic approval of the match. "I am as glad," he wrote to Cromwell, "of the good resolution (of the marriage) as ever I was of a thing since the birth of the Prince; for I think the King's Highness could not in Christendom marry in any place meet for his Grace's honour that should be less prejudicial to his Majesty's succession."[194] Henry himself was in his usual vaunting mood about the alliance. He had long desired, he said, to cement a union with the German confederation, and could now disregard both France and the Emperor; besides, his influence would suffice to prevent the Lutherans from going too far in their religious innovations. As for the lady, he had only one male child, and he was convinced that his desire for more issue could not be better fulfilled "than with the said lady, who is of convenient age, healthy temperament, elegant stature, and endowed with other graces."

The news of the engagement was ill received by Francis and Charles. They became more ostentatiously friendly than ever; and their amba.s.sadors in London were inseparable. When Marillac and the Emperor's temporary envoy went together to tell Cromwell that the Emperor was so confident of the friends.h.i.+p of Francis that he was riding through France from Spain to Flanders, the English minister quite lost his composure. He was informed, he told the amba.s.sadors, that this meeting of the monarchs was "merely with the view to making war on this poor King (Henry), who aimed at nothing but peace and friends.h.i.+p." Ominous mutterings came, too, from Flanders at the scant courtesy Henry had shown in throwing over the match with the d.u.c.h.ess of Milan in the midst of the negotiation. Cromwell was therefore full of anxiety, whilst the elaborate preparations were being made in Calais and in England for the new Queen's reception. Not only was a fresh household to be appointed, the n.o.bility and gentry and their retinues summoned, fine clothes galore ordered or enjoined for others, the towns on the way from Dover to be warned of the welcome expected from them, and the hundred details dependent upon the arrival and installation of the King's fourth wife, but Henry himself had to be carefully handled, to prevent the fears engendered by the att.i.tude of his rivals causing him to turn to the party opposed to Cromwell before the Protestant marriage was effected.

In the meanwhile, Anne with a great train of guards and courtiers, three hundred hors.e.m.e.n strong, rode from Dusseldorf towards Calais through Cleves, Antwerp, Bruges, and Dunkirk. It was ordered that Lord Lisle, Lord Deputy of Calais, should meet the Queen on the English frontier, near Gravelines, and that at St. Pierre, Lord Admiral Fitzwilliam, who had a fleet of fifty sail in the harbour, should greet her in the name of his King, gorgeously dressed in blue velvet, smothered with gold embroidery, and faced with crimson satin, royal blue and crimson, the King's colours, in velvet, damask, and silk, being the universal wear, even of the sailors and men-at-arms. The aged Duke of Suffolk and the Lord Warden were to receive her on her landing at Dover; and at Canterbury she was to be welcomed and entertained by Archbishop Cranmer. Norfolk and a great company of armed n.o.bles were to greet the new Queen on the downs beyond Rochester; whilst the Queen's household, with Lady Margaret Douglas, the King's niece, and the d.u.c.h.ess of Richmond, his daughter-in-law, were to join her at Deptford, and the whole vast and glittering mult.i.tude were to convey her thence to where the King's pavilions were erected for her reception at Blackheath.[195]

In the midwinter twilight of early morning, on the 11th December 1539, Anne's cavalcade entered the English town of Calais, and during the long time she remained weather-bound there she was entertained as sumptuously as the n.o.bles and townsmen could entertain her. The day she had pa.s.sed through Dunkirk in the Emperor's dominions, just before coming to Calais, a sermon was preached against her and all Lutherans; but with that exception no molestation was offered to her. The s.h.i.+p that was to carry her over, dressed fore and aft with silken flags, streamers, and banners, was exhibited to her admiration by Fitzwilliam, royal salutes thundered welcome to her, bands of martial music clashed in her honour, and banquets and jousts were held to delight her.[196] Good sense and modesty were shown by her in many ways at this somewhat trying time. Her princ.i.p.al mentor, Chancellor Olsiliger, begged Fitzwilliam to advise her as to her behaviour; and she herself asked him to teach her some game of cards that the King of England usually played. He taught her a game which he calls "Sent, which she did learn with good grace and countenance"; and she then begged him to come to sup with her, and bring some n.o.ble folk with him to sit with her in the German way. He told her that this was not the fas.h.i.+on in England, but he accepted her invitation.

Thus Anne began betimes to prepare for what she hoped--greatly daring--would be a happy married life in England; whilst the wind and the waves thundering outside the harbour forbade all attempt to convey the bride to her now expectant bridegroom. Henry had intended to keep Christmas with unusual state at Greenwich in the company of his new wife; but week after week slipped by, with the wind still contrary, and it was the 27th December before a happy change of weather enabled Anne to set sail for her new home. She had a stout heart, for the pa.s.sage was a rough though rapid one. When she landed at Deal, and thence, after a short rest, was conducted in state to Dover Castle, the wind blew bl.u.s.terously, and the hail and winter sleet drove "continually in her Grace's face"; but she would hear of no delay in her journey forward, "so desirous was her Grace of reaching the King's presence." At Canterbury the citizens received her with a great torchlight procession and peals of guns. "In her chamber were forty or fifty gentlewomen waiting to receive her in velvet bonnets; all of which she took very joyously, and was so glad to see the King's subjects resorting to her so lovingly, that she forgot all the foul weather and was very merry at supper."[197]

And so, with an evident determination to make the best of everything, Anne rode onward, accompanied by an ever-growing cavalcade of sumptuously bedizened folk, through Sittingbourne, and so to Rochester, where she was lodged at the bishop's palace, and pa.s.sed New Year's Day 1540. News daily reached the King of his bride's approach, whilst he remained consumed with impatience at Greenwich. At each successive stage of her journey forward supple courtiers had written to Henry glowing accounts of the beauty and elegance of the bride. Fitzwilliam from Calais had been especially emphatic, and the King's curiosity was piqued to see the paragon he was to marry. At length, when he knew that Anne was on the way from Sittingbourne to Rochester, and would arrive there on New Year's Eve, he told Cromwell that he himself, with an escort of eight gentlemen clad in grey, would ride to Rochester incognito to get early sight of his bride, "whom he sorely desired to see." He went, he said, "to nourish love"; and full of hopeful antic.i.p.ation, Henry on a great courser ambled over Gad's Hill from Gravesend to Rochester soon after dawn on New Year's Day 1540, with Sir Anthony Browne, his Master of the Horse, on one side, and Sir John Russell on the other. It was in accordance with the chivalrous tradition that this should be done, and that the lady should pretend to be extremely surprised when she was informed who her visitor was; so that Anne must have made a fair guess as to what was coming when Sir Anthony Browne, riding a few hundred yards ahead of his master, entered her presence, and, kneeling, told her that he had brought a New Year's gift for her. When the courtier raised his eyes and looked critically upon the lady before him, experienced as he was in Henry's tastes, "he was never more dismayed in his life to see her so far unlike that which was reported."[198]

Anne was about twenty-four years of age, but looked older, and her frame was large, bony, and masculine, which in the facial portraits that had been sent to Henry was not indicated, and her large, low-German features, deeply pitted with the ravages of smallpox, were, as Browne knew, the very opposite of the type of beauty which would be likely to stimulate a gross, unwholesome voluptuary of nearly fifty. So, with a sinking heart, he went back to his master, not daring to prepare him for what was before him by any hint of disparagement of the bride. As soon as Henry entered with Russell and Browne and saw for himself, his countenance fell, and he made a wry face, which those who knew him understood too well; and they trembled in their shoes at what was to come of it. He nevertheless greeted the lady politely, raising her from the kneeling position she had a.s.sumed, and kissed her upon the cheek, pa.s.sing a few minutes in conversation with her about her long journey. He had brought with him some rich presents of sables and other furs; but he was "so marvellously astonished and abashed"

that he had not the heart to give them to her, but sent them the next morning with a cold message by Sir Anthony Browne.

In the night the royal barge had been brought round from Gravesend to Rochester, and the King returned to Greenwich in the morning by water. He had hardly pa.s.sed another word with Anne since the first meeting, though they had supped together, and it was with a sulky, frowning face that he took his place in the shelter of his galley. Turning to Russell, he asked, "Do you think this woman so fair or of such beauty as report has made her?" Russell, courtier-like, fenced with the question by feigning to misunderstand it. "I should hardly take her to be fair," he replied, "but of brown complexion." "Alas!" continued the King, "whom should men trust?

I promise you I see no such thing in her as hath been showed unto me of her, and am ashamed that men have so praised her as they have done. I like her not."[199] To Browne he was quite as outspoken. "I see nothing in this woman as men report of her," he said angrily, "and I am surprised that wise men should make such reports as they have done." Whereat Browne, who k