THE WIVES OF HENRY THE EIGHTH

HENRY VIII.

From a portrait by Jost Van Cleef in the Royal Collection at Hampton Court Palace

The Wives

of

Henry the Eighth

AND THE PARTS THEY PLAYED
IN HISTORY

BY

MARTIN HUME

AUTHOR OF “THE COURTSHIPS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH”
“THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS”
ETC. ETC. ETC.

LONDON
EVELEIGH NASH
1905

PREFACE

Either by chance or by the peculiar working of our constitution, the Queen Consorts of England have as a rule been nationally important only in proportion to the influence exerted by the political tendencies which prompted their respective marriages. England has had no Catharine or Marie de Medici, no Elizabeth Farnese, no Catharine of Russia, no Caroline of Naples, no Maria Luisa of Spain, who, either through the minority of their sons or the weakness of their husbands, dominated the countries of their adoption; the Consorts of English Kings having been, in the great majority of cases, simply domestic helpmates of their husbands and children, with comparatively small political power or ambition for themselves. Only those whose elevation responded to tendencies of a nationally enduring character, or who represented temporarily the active forces in a great national struggle, can claim to be powerful political factors in the history of our country. The six Consorts of Henry VIII., whose successive rise and fall synchronised with the beginning and progress of the Reformation in England, are perhaps those whose fleeting prominence was most pregnant of good or evil for the nation and for civilisation at large, because they personified causes infinitely more important than themselves.

The careers of these unhappy women have almost invariably been considered, nevertheless, from a purely personal point of view. It is true that the many historians of the Reformation have dwelt upon the rivalry between Katharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, and their strenuous efforts to gain their respective ends; but even in their case their action has usually been regarded as individual in impulse, instead of being, as I believe it was, prompted or thwarted by political forces and considerations, of which the Queens themselves were only partially conscious. The lives of Henry’s Consorts have been related as if each of the six was an isolated phenomenon that had by chance attracted the desire of a lascivious despot, and in her turn had been deposed when his eye had fallen, equally fortuitously, upon another woman who pleased his errant fancy better. This view I believe to be a superficial and misleading one. I regard Henry himself not as the far-seeing statesman he is so often depicted for us, sternly resolved from the first to free his country from the yoke of Rome, and pressing forward through a lifetime with his eyes firmly fixed upon the goal of England’s religious freedom; but rather as a weak, vain, boastful man, the plaything of his passions, which were artfully made use of by rival parties to forward religious and political ends in the struggle of giants that ended in the Reformation. No influence that could be exercised over the King was neglected by those who sought to lead him, and least of all that which appealed to his uxoriousness; and I hope to show in the text of this book how each of his wives in turn was but an instrument of politicians, intended to sway the King on one side or the other. Regarded from this point of view, the lives of these six unhappy Queens assume an importance in national history which cannot be accorded to them if they are considered in the usual light as the victims of a strong, lustful tyrant, each one standing apart, and in her turn simply the darling solace of his hours of dalliance. Doubtless the latter point of view provides to the historian a wider scope for the description of picturesque ceremonial and gorgeous millinery, as well as for pathetic passages dealing with the personal sufferings of the Queens in their distress; but I can only hope that the absence of much of this sentimental and feminine interest from my pages will be compensated by the wider aspect in which the public and political significance of Henry’s wives is presented; that a clearer understanding than usual may thus be gained of the tortuous process by which the Reformation in England was effected, and that the figure of the King in the picture may stand in a juster proportion to his environment than is often the case.

MARTIN HUME.

London, October 1905.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE WIVES OF HENRY THE EIGHTH

CHAPTER I

1488-1501

INTRODUCTORY—WHY KATHARINE CAME TO ENGLAND—POLITICAL MATRIMONY

The history of modern Europe takes its start from an event which must have appeared insignificant to a generation that had witnessed the violent end of the English dominion in France, had been dinned by the clash of the Wars of the Roses, and watched with breathless fear the savage hosts of Islam striking at the heart of Christendom over the still smoking ruins of the Byzantine Empire.

Late one night, in the beginning of October 1469, a cavalcade of men in the guise of traders halted beneath the walls of the ancient city of Burgo de Osma in Old Castile. They had travelled for many days by little-used paths through the mountains of Soria from the Aragonese frontier town of Tarrazona; and, impatient to gain the safe shelter of the fortress of Osma, they banged at the gates demanding admittance. The country was in anarchy. Leagues of churchmen and nobles warred against each other and preyed upon society at large. An impotent king, deposed with ignominy by one faction, had been as ignominiously set up again by another, and royal pretenders to the succession were the puppets of rival parties whose object was to monopolise for themselves all the fruits of royalty, whilst the monarch fed upon the husks. So when the new-comers called peremptorily for admittance within the gates of Osma, the guards upon the city walls, taking them for enemies or freebooters, greeted them with a shower of missiles from the catapults. One murderous stone whizzed within a few inches of the head of a tall, fair-haired lad of good mien and handsome visage, who, dressed as a servant, accompanied the cavalcade. If the projectile had effectively hit instead of missed the stripling, the whole history of the world from that hour to this would have been changed, for this youth was Prince Ferdinand, the heir of Aragon, who was being conveyed secretly by a faction of Castilian nobles to marry the Princess Isabel, who had been set forward as a pretender to her brother’s throne, to the exclusion of the King’s doubtful daughter, the hapless Beltraneja. A hurried cry of explanation went up from the travellers: a shouted password; the flashing of torches upon the walls, the joyful recognition of those within, and the gates swung open, the drawbridge dropped, and thenceforward Prince Ferdinand was safe, surrounded by the men-at-arms of Isabel’s faction. Within a week the eighteen-years-old bridegroom greeted his bride, and before the end of the month Ferdinand and Isabel were married at Valladolid.

To most observers it may have seemed a small thing that a petty prince in the extreme corner of Europe had married the girl pretender to the distracted and divided realm of Castile; but there was one cunning, wicked old man in Barcelona who was fully conscious of the importance of the match that he had planned; and he, John II. of Aragon, had found an apt pupil in his son Ferdinand, crafty beyond his years. To some extent Isabel must have seen it too, for she was already a dreamer of great dreams which she meant to come true, and the strength of Aragon behind her claim would insure her the sovereignty that was to be the first step in their realisation.

This is not the place to tell how the nobles of Castile found to their dismay that in Ferdinand and Isabel they had raised a King Stork instead of King Log to the throne, and how the Queen, strong as a man, subtle as a woman, crushed and chicaned her realms into order and obedience. The aims of Ferdinand and his father in effecting the union of Aragon and Castile by marriage went far beyond the Peninsula in which they lived. For ages Aragon had found its ambitions checked by the consolidation of France. The vision of a great Romance empire, stretching from Valencia to Genoa, and governed from Barcelona or Saragossa, had been dissipated when Saint Louis wrung from James the Conqueror, in the thirteenth century, his recognition of French suzerainty over Provence.

But Aragonese eyes looked still towards the east, and saw a Frenchman ever in their way. The Christian outpost in the Mediterranean, Sicily, already belonged to Aragon; so did the Balearic isles: but an Aragonese dynasty held Naples only in alternation and constant rivalry with the French house of Anjou; and as the strength of the French monarchy grew it stretched forth its hands nearer, and ever nearer, to the weak and divided principalities of Italy with covetous intent. Unless Aragon could check the French expansion across the Alps its own power in the Mediterranean would be dwarfed, its vast hopes must be abandoned, and it must settle down to the inglorious life of a petty State, hemmed in on all sides by more powerful neighbours. But although too weak to vanquish France alone, a King of Aragon who could dispose of the resources of greater Castile might hope, in spite of French opposition, to dominate a united Italy, and thence look towards the illimitable east. This was the aspiration that Ferdinand inherited, and to which the efforts of his long and strenuous life were all directed. The conquest of Granada, the unification of Spain, the greed, the cruelty, the lying, the treachery, the political marriages of all his children, and the fires of the Inquisition, were all means to the end for which he fought.

But fate was unkind to him. The discovery of America diverted Castilian energy from Aragonese objects, and death stepped in and made grim sport of all his marriage jugglery. Before he died, beaten and broken-hearted, he knew that the little realm of his fathers, instead of using the strength of others for its aims, would itself be used for objects which concerned it not. But though he failed his plan was a masterly one. Treaties, he knew, were rarely binding, for the age was faithless, and he himself never kept an oath an hour longer than suited him; but mutual interests by kinship might hold sovereigns together against a common opponent. So, one after the other, from their earliest youth, the children of Ferdinand and Isabel were made political counters in their father’s great marriage league. The eldest daughter, Isabel, was married to the heir of Portugal, and every haven into which French galleys might shelter in their passage from the Mediterranean to the Bay of Biscay was at Ferdinand’s bidding. The only son, John, was married to the daughter of Maximilian, King of the Romans, and (from 1493) Emperor, whose interest also it was to check the French advance towards north Italy and his own dominions. The second daughter, Juana, was married to the Emperor’s son, Philip, sovereign, in right of his mother, of the rich inheritance of Burgundy, Flanders, Holland, and the Franche Comté, and heir to Austria and the Empire, who from Flanders might be trusted to watch the French on their northern and eastern borders; and the youngest of Ferdinand’s daughters, Katharine, was destined almost from her birth to secure the alliance of England, the rival of France in the Channel, and the opponent of its aggrandisement towards the north.

Ferdinand of Aragon and Henry Tudor, Henry VII., were well matched. Both were clever, unscrupulous, and greedy; each knew that the other would cheat him if he could, and tried to get the better of every deal, utterly regardless not only of truth and honesty but of common decency. But, though Ferdinand usually beat Henry at his shuffling game, fate finally beat Ferdinand, and a powerful modern England is the clearly traceable consequence. How the great result was brought about it is one of the principal objects of this book to tell. That Ferdinand had everything to gain by thus surrounding France by possible rivals in his own interests is obvious, for if his plans had not miscarried he could have diverted France whenever it suited him, and his way towards the east would have been clear; but at first sight the interest of Henry VII. in placing himself into a position of antagonism towards France for the benefit of the King of Spain is not so evident. The explanation must be found in the fact that he held the throne of England by very uncertain tenure, and sought to disarm those who would be most able and likely to injure him. The royal house of Castile had been closely allied to the Plantagenets, and both Edward IV. and his brother Richard had been suitors for the hand of Isabel. The Dowager-Duchess of Burgundy, moreover, was Margaret Plantagenet, their sister, who sheltered and cherished in Flanders the English adherents of her house; and Henry Tudor, half a Frenchman by birth and sympathies, was looked at askance by the powerful group of Spain, the Empire, and Burgundy when first he usurped the English throne. He knew that he had little or nothing to fear from France, and one of his earliest acts was in 1487 to bid for the friendship of Ferdinand by means of an offer of alliance, and the marriage of his son Arthur, Prince of Wales, then a year old, with the Infanta Katharine, who was a few months older. Ferdinand at the time was trying to bring about a match between his eldest daughter, Isabel, and the young King of France, Charles VIII., and was not very eager for a new English alliance which might alarm the French. Before the end of the year, however, it was evident that there was no chance of the Spanish Infanta’s marriage with Charles VIII. coming to anything, and Ferdinand’s plan for a great coalition against France was finally adopted.

In the first days of 1488 Ferdinand’s two ambassadors arrived in London to negotiate the English match, and the long duel of diplomacy between the Kings of England and Spain began. Of one of the envoys it behoves us to say something, because of the influence his personal character exercised upon subsequent events. Rodrigo de Puebla was one of the most extraordinary diplomatists that can be imagined, and could only have been possible under such monarchs as Henry and Ferdinand, willing as both of them were to employ the basest instruments in their underhand policy. Puebla was a doctor of laws and a provincial mayor when he attracted the attention of Ferdinand, and his first diplomatic mission of importance was that to England. He was a poor, vain, greedy man, utterly corrupt, and Henry VII. was able to dominate him from the first. In the course of time he became more of an intimate English minister than a foreign ambassador, though he represented at Henry’s court not only Castile and Aragon, but also the Pope and the Empire. He constantly sat in the English council, and was almost the only man admitted to Henry’s personal confidence. That such an instrument would be trusted entirely by the wary Ferdinand, was not to be expected: and though Puebla remained in England as ambassador to the end of his life, he was, to his bitter jealousy, always associated with others when important negotiations had to be conducted. Isabel wrote to him often, sometimes threatening him with punishment if he failed in carrying out his instructions satisfactorily, sometimes flattering him and promising him rewards, which he never got. He was recognised by Ferdinand as an invaluable means of gaining knowledge of Henry’s real intentions, and by Henry as a tool for betraying Ferdinand. It is hardly necessary to say that he alternately sold both and was never fully paid by either. Henry offered him an English bishopric which his own sovereigns would not allow him to accept, and a wealthy wife in England was denied him for a similar reason; for Ferdinand on principle kept his agents poor. On a wretched pittance allowed him by Henry, Puebla lived thus in London until he died almost simultaneously with his royal friend. When not spunging at the tables of the King or English nobles he lived in a house of ill-fame in London, paying only twopence a day for his board, and cheating the other inmates, in the interests of the proprietor, for the balance. He was, in short, a braggart, a liar, a flatterer, and a spy, who served two rogues roguishly and was fittingly rewarded by the scorn of honest men.

This was the ambassador who, with a colleague called Juan de Sepulveda, was occupied through the spring of 1488 in negotiating the marriage of the two babies—Arthur, Prince of Wales, and the Infanta Katharine. They found Henry, as Puebla says, singing Te Deum Laudamus about the alliance and marriage: but when the parties came to close quarters matters went less smoothly. What Henry had to gain by the alliance was the disarming of possible enemies of his own unstable throne, whilst Ferdinand needed England’s active or passive support in a war against France, for the purpose of extorting the restoration to Aragon of the territory of Roussillon and Cerdagne, and of preventing the threatened absorption of the Duchy of Brittany into the French monarchy. The contest was keen and crafty. First the English commissioners demanded with the Infanta a dowry so large as quite to shock Puebla; it being, as he said, five times as much as had been mentioned by English agents in Spain. Puebla and Sepulveda offered a quarter of the sum demanded, and hinted with pretended jocosity that it was a great condescension on the part of the sovereigns of Spain to allow their daughter to marry at all into such a parvenu family as the Tudors. After infinite haggling, both as to the amount and the form of the dowry, it was agreed by the ambassadors that 200,000 gold crowns of 4s. 2d. each should be paid in cash with the bride on her marriage. But the marriage was the least part of Ferdinand’s object, if indeed he then intended, which is doubtful, that it should take place at all. What he wanted was the assurance of Henry’s help against France; and, of all things, peace was the first need for the English king. When the demand was made therefore that England should go to war with France whenever Ferdinand chose to do so, and should not make peace without its ally, baited though the demand was with the hollow suggestion of recovering for England the territories of Normandy and Guienne, Henry’s duplicity was brought into play. He dared not consent to such terms, but he wanted the benevolent regards of Ferdinand’s coalition: so his ministers flattered the Spanish king, and vaguely promised “mounts and marvels” in the way of warlike aid, as soon as the marriage treaty was signed and sealed. Even Puebla wanted something more definite than this; and the English commissioners (the Bishop of Exeter and Giles Daubeney), “took a missal in their hands and swore in the most solemn way before the crucifix that it is the will of the King of England first to conclude the alliance and the marriage, and afterwards to make war upon the King of France, according to the bidding of the Catholic kings.” Nor was this all: for when Puebla and his colleagues later in the day saw the King himself, Henry smiled at and flattered the envoys, and flourishing his bonnet and bowing low each time the names of Ferdinand and Isabel passed his lips, confirmed the oath of his ministers, “which he said we must accept for plain truth, unmingled with double dealing or falsehood.”[1] Ferdinand’s ambassadors were fairly dazzled. They were taken to see the infant bridegroom; and Puebla grew quite poetical in describing his bodily perfections, both dressed and in puribus naturalibus, and the beauty and magnificence of the child’s mother were equally extolled. The object of all Henry’s amiability, and, indeed, of Puebla’s dithyrambics also, was to cajole Ferdinand into sending his baby daughter Katharine into England at once on the marriage treaty alone. With such a hostage in his hands, Henry knew that he might safely break his oath about going to war with France to please the Spanish king.

But Ferdinand was not a man easy to cajole, and when hapless, simple Sepulveda reached Spain with the draft treaty he found himself in the presence of two very angry sovereigns indeed. Two hundred thousand crowns dowry, indeed! One hundred was the most they would give, and that must be in Spanish gold, or the King of England would be sure to cheat them over the exchange; and they must have three years in which to pay the amount, for which moreover no security should be given but their own signatures. The cost of the bride’s trousseau and jewels also must be deducted from the amount of the dowry. On the other hand, the Infanta’s dowry and income from England must be fully guaranteed by land rents; and, above all, the King of England must bind himself at the same time—secretly if he likes, but by formal treaty—to go to war with France to recover for Ferdinand Roussillon and Cerdagne. Though Henry would not go quite so far as this, he conceded much for the sake of the alliances so necessary to him. The dowry from Spain was kept at 200,000 crowns, and England was pledged to a war with France whenever Ferdinand should find himself in the same position.

With much discussion and sharp practice on both sides the treaties in this sense were signed in March 1489, and the four-years-old Infanta Katharine became Princess of Wales. It is quite clear throughout this early negotiation that the marriage that should give to the powerful coalition of which Ferdinand was the head a family interest in the maintenance of the Tudor dynasty was Henry’s object, to be gained on terms as easy as practicable to himself; whereas with Ferdinand the marriage was but the bait to secure the armed co-operation of England against France; and probably at the time neither of the kings had any intention of fulfilling that part of the bargain which did not specially interest him. As will be seen, however, the force of circumstances and the keenness of the contracting parties led eventually to a better fulfilment of the treaty than was probably intended.

For the next two years the political intrigues of Europe centered around the marriage of the young Duchess of Brittany. Though Roussillon and Cerdagne mattered nothing to Henry VII., the disposal of the rich duchy opposite his own shores was of importance to him. France, Spain, England, and the Empire were all trying to outbid one another for the marriage of the Duchess; and, as Charles VIII. of France was the most dangerous suitor, Henry was induced to send his troops across the Channel to Brittany to join those of Spain and the Empire, though neither of the latter troops came. From the first all the allies were false to each other, and hastened to make separate terms with France; Ferdinand and Maximilian endeavouring above all to leave Henry at war. When, at the end of 1491, Charles VIII. carried off the matrimonial prize of the Duchess of Brittany and peace ensued, none of the allies had gained anything by their tergiversation. Reasons were soon found by Ferdinand for regarding the marriage treaty between Arthur and Katharine as in abeyance, and once more pressure was put upon Henry to buy its fulfilment by another warlike coalition. The King of England stood out for a time, especially against an alliance with the King of the Romans, who had acted so badly about Brittany; but at length the English contingent was led against Boulogne by the King himself, as part of the allied action agreed upon. This time, however, it was Henry who, to prevent the betrayal he foresaw, scored off his allies, and without striking a blow he suddenly made a separate peace with France (November 1492). But yet he was the only party who had not gained what he had bid for. Roussillon and Cerdagne were restored to Ferdinand, in consequence of Henry’s threat against Boulogne; France had been kept in check during the time that all the resources of Spain were strained in the supreme effort to capture the last Moorish foothold in the Peninsula, the peerless Granada; the King of France had married the Duchess of Brittany and had thus consolidated and strengthened his realm; whilst Henry, to his chagrin, found that not only had he not regained Normandy and Guienne, but that in the new treaty of peace between Spain and France, “Ferdinand and Isabel engage their loyal word and faith as Christians, not to conclude or permit any marriage of their children with any member of the royal family of England; and they bind themselves to assist the King of France against all his enemies, and particularly against the English.” This was Henry’s first experience of Ferdinand’s diplomacy, and he found himself outwitted at every point. Katharine, all unconscious as she conned her childish lessons at Granada, ceased for a time to be called “Princess of Wales.”

With the astute King of England thus cozened by Ferdinand, it is not wonderful that the vain and foolish young King of France should also have found himself no match for his new Spanish ally. Trusting upon his alliance, Charles VIII. determined to strike for the possession of the kingdom of Naples, which he claimed as representing the house of Anjou. Naples at the time was ruled by a close kinsman of Ferdinand, and it is not conceivable that the latter ever intended to allow the French to expel him for the purpose of ruling there themselves. But he smiled, not unkindly at first, upon Charles’s Italian adventure, for he knew the French king was rash and incompetent, and that the march of a French army through Italy would arouse the hatred and fear of the Italian princes and make them easy tools in his hands. The King of Naples, moreover, was extremely unpopular and of illegitimate descent: and Ferdinand doubtless saw that if the French seized Naples he could not only effect a powerful coalition to expel them, but in the scramble might keep Naples for himself; and this is exactly what happened. The first cry against the French was raised by the Pope Alexander VI., a Spanish Borgia. By the time Charles VIII. of France was crowned King of Naples (May 1495) all Italy was ablaze against the intruders, and Ferdinand formed the Holy League—of Rome, Spain, Austria, Venice, and Milan—to crush his enemies.

Then, as usual, he found it desirable to secure the benevolence of Henry VII. of England. Again Henry was delighted, for Perkin Warbeck had been received by Maximilian and his Flemish kinsmen as the rightful King of England, and the Yorkist nobles still found aid and sympathy in the dominions of Burgundy. But Henry had already been tricked once by the allies, and was far more difficult to deal with than before. He found himself, indeed, for the first time in the position which under his successors enabled England to rise to the world power she attained; namely, that of the balancing factor between France and Spain. This was the first result of Ferdinand’s coalition against France for the purpose of forwarding Aragonese aims, and it remained the central point of European politics for the next hundred years. Henry was not the man to overlook his new advantage, with both of the great European powers bidding for his alliance; and this time he drove a hard bargain with Ferdinand. There was still much haggling about the Spanish dowry for Katharine, but Henry stood firm at the 200,000 gold crowns, though a quarter of the amount was to take the form of jewels belonging the bride. One stipulation was that the new marriage was to be kept a profound secret, in order that the King of Scots might not be alarmed; for Ferdinand was trying to draw even him away from France by hints of marriage with an Infanta. By the new treaty, which was signed in October 1497, the formal marriage of Arthur and Katharine per verba de presenti was to be celebrated when Arthur had completed his fourteenth year; and the bride’s dowry in England was to consist of a third of the revenues of Wales, Cornwall, and Chester, with an increase of the income when she became Queen.

But it was not all plain sailing yet. Ferdinand considered that Henry had tricked him about the amount and form of the dowry, but the fear that the King of France might induce the English to enter into a new alliance with him kept Ferdinand ostensibly friendly. In the summer of 1598 two special Spanish ambassadors arrived in London, and saw the King for the purpose of confirming him in the alliance with their sovereigns, and, if we are to believe Puebla’s account of the interview, both Henry and his Queen carried their expressions of veneration for Ferdinand and Isabel almost to a blasphemous extent. Henry, indeed, is said to have had a quarrel with his wife because she would not give him one of the letters from the Spanish sovereigns always to carry about with him, Elizabeth saying that she wished to send her letter to the Prince of Wales.

But for all Henry’s blandishments and friendliness, his constant requests that Katharine should be sent to England met with never-failing excuses and procrastination. It is evident, indeed, throughout that, although the Infanta was used as the attraction that was to keep Henry and England in the Spanish, instead of the French, interest, there was much reluctance on the part of her parents, and particularly of Queen Isabel, to trust her child, to whom she was much attached, to the keeping of a stranger, whose only object in desiring her presence was, she knew, a political one. Some anxiety was shown by Henry and his wife, on the other hand, that the young Princess should be trained in a way that would fit her for her future position in England. The Princess Margaret of Austria, daughter of Maximilian, who had just married Ferdinand’s heir, Prince John, was in Spain, and Puebla reports that the King and Queen of England were anxious that Katharine should take the opportunity of speaking French with her, in order to learn the language. “This is necessary, because the English ladies do not understand Latin, and much less Spanish. The King and Queen also wish that the Princess should accustom herself to drink wine. The water of England is not drinkable, and even if it were, the climate would not allow the drinking of it.” The necessary Papal Bulls for the marriage of the Prince and Princess arrived in 1498, and Henry pressed continually for the coming of the bride, but Ferdinand and Isabel were in no hurry. “The manner in which the marriage is to be performed, and the Princess sent to England, must all be settled first.” “You must negotiate these points,” they wrote to Puebla, “but make no haste.”[2] Spanish envoys of better character and greater impartiality than Puebla urged that Katharine should be sent “before she had become too much attached to Spanish life and institutions”; though the writer of this admits the grave inconvenience of subjecting so young a girl to the disadvantages of life in Henry’s court.

Young Arthur himself, even, was prompted to use his influence to persuade his new wife to join him, writing to his “most entirely beloved spouse” from Ludlow in October 1499, dwelling upon his earnest desire to see her, as the delay in her coming is very grievous to him, and he begs it may be hastened. The final disappearance of Perkin Warbeck in 1499 greatly changed the position of Henry and made him a more desirable connection: and the death without issue of Ferdinand’s only son and heir about the same time, also made it necessary for the Spanish king to draw his alliances closer, in view of the nearness to the succession of his second daughter, Juana, who had married Maximilian’s son, the Archduke Philip, sovereign of Flanders, who, as well as his Spanish wife, were deeply distrusted by both Ferdinand and Isabel. In 1500, therefore, the Spanish sovereigns became more acquiescent about their daughter’s coming to England. By Don Juan Manuel, their most skilful diplomatist, they sent a message to Henry in January 1500, saying that they had determined to send Katharine in the following spring without waiting until Arthur had completed his fourteenth year. The sums, they were told, that had already been spent in preparations for her reception in England were enormous, and when in March there was still no sign of the bride’s coming, Henry VII. began to get restive. He and his country, he said, would suffer great loss if the arrival of the Princess were delayed. But just then Ferdinand found that the treaty was not so favourable for him as he had expected, and the whole of the conditions, particularly as to the payment of the dowry, and the valuation of the bride’s jewels, had once more to be laboriously discussed; another Spanish ambassador being sent, to request fresh concessions. In vain Puebla told his master that when once the Princess arrived all England would be at his bidding, assured him of Henry’s good faith, and his own ability as a diplomatist. Ferdinand always found some fresh subject to be wrangled over: the style to be given to the King of England, the number of servants to come in the train of Katharine, Henry desiring that they should be few and Ferdinand many, and one of the demands of the English king was, “that the ladies who came from Spain with the Princess should all be beautiful, or at least none of them should be ugly.”

In the summer of 1500 there was a sudden panic in Ferdinand’s court that Henry had broken off the match. He had gone to Calais to meet for the first time the young Archduke Philip, Ferdinand’s son-in-law, and it was rumoured that the distrusted Fleming had persuaded Henry to marry the Prince of Wales to his sister the Arch duchess Margaret, the recently widowed daughter in-law of Ferdinand. It was not true, though it made Ferdinand very cordial for a time, and soon the relations between England and Spain resumed their usual course of smooth-tongued distrust and tergiversation. Still another ambassador was sent to England, and reported that people were saying they believed the Princess would never come, though great preparations for her reception continued to be made, and the English nobles were already arranging jousts and tournaments for her entertainment. Ferdinand, on the other hand, continued to send reassuring messages. He was, he said, probably with truth now, more desirous than ever that the marriage should take place when the bridegroom had completed his fourteenth year; but it was necessary that the marriage should be performed again by proxy in Spain before the bride embarked. Then there was a delay in obtaining the ships necessary for the passage, and the Spanish sovereigns changed their minds again, and preferred that the second marriage, after Arthur had attained his fifteenth year, should be performed in England. The stormy weather of August was then an excuse for another delay on the voyage, and a fresh quibble was raised about the value of the Princess’s jewels being considered as part of the first instalment of the dowry. In December 1500 the marriage was once more performed at Ludlow, Arthur being again present and pledging himself as before to Puebla.

Whilst delaying the voyage of Katharine as much as possible, now probably in consequence of her youth, her parents took the greatest of care to convince Henry of the indissoluble character of the marriage as it stood. Knowing the King of England’s weakness, Isabel wrote in March 1501 deprecating the great expense he was incurring in the preparations. She did not wish, she said, for her daughter to cause a loss to England, either in money or any other way; but to be a source of happiness to every one. When all was ready for the embarkation at Corunna in April 1501, an excuse for further delay was found in a rebellion of the Moors of Ronda, which prevented Ferdinand from escorting his daughter to the port; then both Isabel and Katharine had a fit of ague, which delayed the departure for another week or two. But at last the parting could be postponed no longer, and for the last time on earth Isabel the Catholic embraced her favourite daughter Katharine in the fairy palace of the Alhambra which for ever will be linked with the memories of her heroism.

The Queen was still weak with fever, and could not accompany her daughter on the way, but she stood stately in her sternly suppressed grief, sustained by the exalted religious mysticism, which in her descendants degenerated to neurotic mania. Grief unutterable had stricken the Queen. Her only son was dead, and her eldest daughter and her infant heir had also gone to untimely graves. The hopes founded upon the marriages of their children had all turned to ashes, and the King and Queen saw with gloomy foreboding that their daughter Juana and her foreign husband would rule in Spain as well as in Flanders and the Empire, to Spain’s irreparable disaster; and, worst of all, Juana had dared to dally with the hated thing heresy. In the contest of divided interest which they foresaw, it was of the utmost importance now to the Catholic kings that England at least should be firmly attached to them; and they dared no longer delay the sacrifice of Katharine to the political needs of their country. Katharine, young as she was, understood that she was being sent to a far country amongst strangers as much an ambassador as a bride, but she from her birth had been brought up in the atmosphere of ecstatic devotion that surrounded her heroic mother, and the din of battle against the enemies of the Christian God had rarely been silent in her childish ears. So, with shining eyes and a look of proud martyrdom, Katharine bade the Queen a last farewell, turned her back upon lovely Granada, and through the torrid summer of 1501 slowly traversed the desolate bridle-roads of La Mancha and arid Castile to the green valleys of Galicia, where, in the harbour of Corunna, her little fleet lay at anchor awaiting her.

From the 21st of May, when she last looked upon the Alhambra, it took her nearly two months of hard travel to reach Corunna, and it was almost a month more before all was ready for the embarkation with the great train of courtiers and servants that accompanied her. On the 17th August 1501 the flotilla sailed from Corunna, only to be stricken the next day by a furious north-easterly gale and scattered; the Princess’s ship, in dire danger, being driven into the little port of Laredo in the north of Spain. There Katharine was seriously ill, and another long delay occurred, the apprehension that some untoward accident had happened to the Princess at sea causing great anxiety to the King of England, who sent his best seamen to seek tidings of the bride. The season was late, and when, on the 26th September 1501, Katharine again left Laredo for England, even her stout heart failed at the prospect before her. A dangerous hurricane from the south accompanied her across the Channel and drove the ships finally into the safety of Plymouth harbour on Saturday the 2nd October 1501.

The Princess was but little expected at Plymouth, as Southampton or Bristol had been recommended as the best ports for her arrival; and great preparations had been made for her reception at both those ports. But the Plymouth folk were nothing backward in their loyal welcome of the new Princess of Wales; for one of the courtiers who accompanied her wrote to Queen Isabel that “she could not have been received with greater rejoicings if she had been the saviour of the world.” As she went in solemn procession through the streets to the church of Plymouth to give thanks for her safety from the perils past, with foreign speech sounding in her ears and surrounded by a curious crowd of fair folk so different from the swarthy subjects of her mother that she had left behind at Granada, the girl of sixteen might well be appalled at the magnitude of the task before her. She knew that henceforward she had, by diplomacy and woman’s wit, to keep the might and wealth of England and its king on the side of her father against France; to prevent any coalition between her new father-in-law and her brother-in-law Philip in Flanders in which Spain was not included; and, finally, to give an heir to the English throne, who, in time to come, should be Aragonese in blood and sympathy. Thenceforward Katharine must belong to England in appearance if her mission was to succeed; and though Spain was always in her heart as the exotic pomegranate of Granada was on her shield, England in future was the name she conjured by, and all England loved her, from the hour she first set foot on English soil to the day of the final consummation of her martyrdom.

CHAPTER II

1501-1509

KATHARINE’S WIDOWHOOD AND WHY SHE STAYED IN ENGLAND

The arrival of Katharine in England as his son’s affianced wife meant very much for Henry VII. and his house. He had already, by a master-stroke of diplomacy, betrothed his eldest daughter to the King of Scots, and was thus safe from French intrigue on his vulnerable northern border, whilst the new King of France was far too apprehensive of Ferdinand’s coalition to arouse the active enmity of England. The presence of Ferdinand’s daughter on English soil completed the security against attack upon Henry from abroad. It is true that the Yorkists and their friends were still plotting: “Solicited, allured and provoked, by that old venomous serpent, the Duchess of Burgundy, ever the sower of sedition and beginner of rebellion against the King of England;”[3] but Henry knew well that with Katharine at his Court he could strike a death-blow, as he soon did, at his domestic enemies, without fear of reprisals from her brother-in-law Philip, the present sovereign of Burgundy and Flanders.

Messengers were sent galloping to London to carry to the King the great news of Katharine’s arrival at Plymouth; but the roads were bad, and it was not Henry’s way to spoil his market by a show of over-eagerness, and though he sent forward the Duchess of Norfolk and the Earl of Surrey to attend upon the Princess on her way towards London, the royal party did not set out from Shene Palace to meet her until the 4th November. Travelling through a drenching rain by short stages from one seat to another, Henry VII. and his daughter-in-law gradually approached each other with their splendid troops of followers, all muffled up, we are told, in heavy rain cloaks to shield their finery from the inclemency of an English winter. Young Arthur, coming from the seat of his government in Wales, met his father near Chertsey, and together they continued their journey towards the west. On the third day, as they rode over the Hampshire downs, they saw approaching them a group of horsemen, the leader of which dismounted and saluted the King in Latin with a message from Ferdinand and Isabel. Ladies in Spain were kept in strict seclusion until their marriage, and the messenger, who was the Protonotary Cañazares, sent with Katharine to England to see that Spanish etiquette was not violated, prayed in the name of his sovereigns that the Infanta should not be seen by the King, and especially by the bridegroom, until the public marriage was performed. This was a part of the bargain that the cautious Puebla had not mentioned, and Henry was puzzled at such a request in his own realm, where no such oriental regard for women was known. Hastily taking counsel of the nobles on horseback about him, he decided that, as the Infanta was in England, she must abide by English customs. Indeed the demand for seclusion seems to have aroused the King’s curiosity, for, putting spurs to his horse, with but a small following, and leaving the boy bridegroom behind, he galloped on to Dogmersfield, at no great distance away, where the Infanta was awaiting his arrival. When he came to the house in which she lodged, he found a little group of horrified Spanish prelates and nobles, the Archbishop of Santiago, the Bishop of Majorca, and Count Cabra, at the door of the Infanta’s apartments, barring entrance. The Princess had, they said, retired to her chamber and ought not to be disturbed. There was no restraining a king in his own realm, however, and Henry brushed the group aside. “Even if she were in bed,” he said, “he meant to see and speak with her, for that was the whole intent of his coming.”

Finding that Spanish etiquette would not be observed in England, Katharine made the best of matters and received Henry graciously, though evidently her Latin and French were different from his; for they were hardly intelligible to one another. Then, after the King had changed his travelling garb, he sent word that he had a present for the Princess; and led in the blushing Prince Arthur to the presence of his bride. The conversation now was more easily conducted, for the Latin-speaking bishops were close by to interpret. Once more, and for the fourth time, the young couple formally pledged their troth; and then after supper the Spanish minstrels played, and the ladies and gentlemen of Katharine’s suite danced: young Arthur, though unable to dance in the Spanish way, trod an English measure with Lady Guildford to show that he was not unversed in courtly graces.[4]

Arthur appears to have been a slight, fair, delicate lad, amiable and gentle, and not so tall as his bride, who was within a month of sixteen years, Arthur being just over fifteen. Katharine must have had at this time at least the grace of girlhood, though she never can have been a great beauty. Like most of her mother’s house she had pale, rather hard, statuesque features and ruddy hair. As we trace her history we shall see that most of her mistakes in England, and she made many, were the natural result of the uncompromising rigidity of principle arising from the conviction of divine appointment which formed her mother’s system. She had been brought up in the midst of a crusading war, in which the victors drew their inspiration, and ascribed their triumph, to the special intervention of the Almighty in their favour; and already Katharine’s house had assumed as a basis of its family faith that the cause of God was indissolubly linked with that of the sovereigns of Castile and Leon. It was impossible that a woman brought up in such a school could be opportunist, or would bend to the petty subterfuges and small complaisances by which men are successfully managed; and Katharine suffered through life from the inflexibility born of self-conscious rectitude.

Slowly through the rain the united cavalcades travelled back by Chertsey; and the Spanish half then rode to Kingston, where the Duke of Buckingham, with four hundred retainers in black and scarlet, met the bride, and so to the palace at Kennington hard by Lambeth, where Katharine was lodged until the sumptuous preparations for the public marriage at St. Paul’s were completed. To give a list of all the splendours that preceded the wedding would be as tedious as it is unnecessary; but a general impression of the festivities as they struck a contemporary will give us a far better idea than a close catalogue of the wonderful things the Princess saw as she rode her white palfrey on the 12th November through Southwark, over London Bridge, and by Cheapside to the Bishop of London’s house adjoining St. Paul’s. “And, because I will not be tedious to you, I pass over the wise devices, the prudent speeches, the costly works, the cunning portraitures, practised and set forth in seven beautiful pageants erected and set up in divers places of the city. I leave also the goodaly ballds, the sweet harmony, the musical instruments, which sounded with heavenly noise in every side of the street. I omit the costly apparel, both of goldsmith’s work and embroidery, the rich jewels, the massy chains, the stirring horses, the beautiful bards, and the glittering trappers, both with bells and spangles of gold. I pretermit also the rich apparel of the Princess, the strange fashion of the Spanish nation, the beauty of the English ladies, the goodly demeanour of the young damosels, the amorous countenance of the lusty bachelors. I pass over the fine engrained clothes, the costly furs of the citizens, standing upon scaffolds, railed from Gracechurch to St. Paul’s. What should I speak of the odoriferous scarlets, and fine velvet and pleasant furs, and rich chains, which the Mayor of London with the Senate, sitting on horseback at the little conduit in Chepe, ware upon their bodies and about their necks. I will not molest you with rehearsing the rich arras, the costly tapestry, the fine cloths of silver and of gold, the curious velvets and satins, the pleasant silks, which did hang in every street where she passed; the wine that ran out of the conduits, the gravelling and railing of the streets, and all else that needeth not remembring.”[5] In short, we may conclude that Katharine’s passage through London before her wedding was as triumphal as the citizens could make it. Even the common people knew that her presence in England made for security and peace, and her Lancastrian descent from John of Gaunt seemed to add promise of legitimacy to future heirs to the crown.

A long raised gangway of timber handsomely draped ran from the great west door of St. Paul’s to the entrance to the choir. Near the end of the gangway there was erected upon it a high platform, reached by steps on each side, with room on the top for eight persons to stand. On the north side of the platform sat the King and Queen incognito in a tribune supposed to be private; whilst the corporation of London were ranged on the opposite side. The day of the ceremony was the 14th November 1501, Sunday and the day of St. Erkenwald, and all London was agog to see the show. Nobles and knights from every corner of the realm, glittering and flashing in their new finery, had come to do honour to the heir of England and his bride. Both bride and bridegroom were dressed in white satin, and they stood together, a comely young pair, upon the high scarlet stage to be married for the fifth time, on this occasion by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Then, after mass had been celebrated at the high altar with Archbishops, and mitred prelates by the dozen, a procession was formed to lead the newly married couple to the Bishop of London’s palace across the churchyard. The stately bride, looking older than her years, came first, followed by a hundred ladies; and whilst on her left hand there hobbled the disreputable, crippled old ambassador, Dr. Puebla, the greatest day of whose life this was, on the other side the Princess was led by the most engaging figure in all that vast assembly. It was that of a graceful little boy of ten years in white velvet and gold; his bearing so gallant and sturdy, his skin so dazzlingly fair, his golden hair so shining, his smile so frank, that a rain of blessings showered upon him as he passed. This was the bridegroom’s brother, Henry, Duke of York, who in gay unconsciousness was leading his own fate by the hand.

Again the details of crowds of lords and ladies in their sumptuous garments, of banquets and dancing, of chivalric jousts and puerile maskings, may be left to the imagination of the reader. When magnificence at last grew palling, the young bride and bridegroom were escorted to their chamber in the Bishop of London’s palace, with the broad suggestiveness then considered proper in all well-conducted weddings, and duly recorded in this case by the courtly chroniclers of the times. In the morning Arthur called at the door of the nuptial chamber to his attendants for a draught of liquor. To the bantering question of the chamberlain as to the cause of his unaccustomed thirst, it was not unnatural, considering the free manners of the day, that the Prince should reply in a vein of boyish boastfulness, with a suggestion which was probably untrue regarding the aridity of the Spanish climate and his own prowess as being the causes of his droughtiness. In any case this indelicate bit of youthful swagger of Arthur’s was made, nearly thirty years afterwards, one of the principal pieces of evidence gravely brought forward to prove the illegality of Katharine’s marriage with Henry.

On the day following the marriage the King and Queen came in full state to congratulate the newly married pair, and led them to the abode that had been elaborately prepared for them at Baynard’s Castle, whose ancient keep frowned over the Thames, below Blackfriars. On the Thursday following the feast was continued at Westminster with greater magnificence than ever. In a splendid tribune extending from Westminster Hall right across what is now Parliament Square sat Katharine with all the royal family and the Court, whilst the citizens crowded the stands on the other side of the great space reserved for the tilters. Invention was exhausted by the greater nobles in the contrivances by which they sought to make their respective entries effective. One had borne over him a green erection representing a wooded mount, crowded with allegorical animals; another rode under a tent of cloth of gold, and yet another pranced into the lists mounted upon a stage dragon led by a fearsome giant; and so the pageantry that seems to us so trite, and was then considered so exquisite, unrolled itself before the enraptured eyes of the lieges who paid for it all. How gold plate beyond valuation was piled upon the sideboards at the great banquet after the tilt in Westminster Hall, how Katharine and one of her ladies danced Spanish dances and Arthur led out his aunt Cicely, how masques and devices innumerable were paraded before the hosts and guests, and, above all, how the debonair little Duke of York charmed all hearts by his dancing with his elder sister; and, warming to his work, cast off his coat and footed it in his doublet, cannot be told here, nor the ceremony in which Katharine distributed rich prizes a few days afterwards to the successful tilters. There was more feasting and mumming at Shene to follow, but at last the celebration wore itself out, and Arthur and his wife settled down for a time to married life in their palace at Baynard’s Castle.

King Henry in his letter to the bride’s parents, expresses himself as delighted with her “beauty and agreeable and dignified manners,” and promises to be to her “a second father, who will ever watch over her, and never allow her to lack anything that he can procure for her.” How he kept his promise we shall see later; but there is no doubt that her marriage with his son was a great relief to him, and enabled him, first to cast his net awide and sweep into its meshes all the gentry of England who might be presumed to wish him ill, and secondly to send Empson and Dudley abroad to wring from the well-to-do classes the last ducat that could be squeezed in order that he might buttress his throne with wealth. Probably Arthur’s letter to Ferdinand and Isabel written at the same time (November 30, 1501) was drafted by other hands than his own, but the terms in which he expresses his satisfaction with his wife are so warm that they doubtless reflect the fact that he really found her pleasant. “He had never,” he assured them, “felt so much joy in his life as when he beheld the sweet face of his bride, and no woman in the world could be more agreeable to him.”[6] The honeymoon was a short, and could hardly have been a merry, one; for Arthur was obviously a weakling, consumptive some chroniclers aver; and the grim old castle by the river was not a lively abode.

Before the marriage feast were well over, Henry’s avarice began to make things unpleasant for Katharine. We have seen how persistent he had been in his demands that the dowry should be paid to him in gold, and how the bride’s parents had pressed that the jewels and plate she took with her should be considered as part of the dowry. On Katharine’s wedding the first instalment of 100,000 crowns had been handed to Henry by the Archbishop of Santiago, and there is no doubt that in the negotiations Puebla had, as usual with him, thought to smooth matters by concealing from both sovereigns the inconvenient conditions insisted by each of them. Henry therefore imagined—he said that he was led to believe it by Puebla—that the jewels and plate were to be surrendered to him on a valuation as part of the second instalment; whereas the bride’s parents were allowed to suppose that Katharine would still have the enjoyment of them. In the middle of December, therefore, Henry sent for Juan de Cuero, Katharine’s chamberlain, and demanded the valuables as an instalment of the remaining 100,000 crowns of the dowry. Cuero, astounded at such a request, replied that it would be his duty to have them weighed and valued and a list given to the King in exchange for a receipt for their value, but that he had not to give them up. The King, highly irate at what he considered an evasion of his due, pressed his demand, but without avail, and afterwards saw Katharine herself at Baynard’s Castle in the presence of Doña Elvira Manuel, her principal lady in waiting.

What was the meaning of it, he asked, as he told her of Cuero’s refusal to surrender her valuables in fulfilment of the promise, and further exposed Puebla’s double-dealing. Puebla, it appears, had gone to the King, and had suggested that if his advice was followed the jewels would remain in England, whilst their value would be paid to Henry in money as well. He had, he assured the King, already gained over Katharine to the plan, which briefly was to allow the Princess to use the jewels and plate for the present, so that when the time came for demanding their surrender her father and mother would be ashamed of her being deprived of them, and would pay their value in money. Henry explained to Katharine that he was quite shocked at such a dishonest suggestion, which he refused, he said, to entertain. He had therefore asked for the valuables at once as he saw that there was craft at work, and he would be no party to it. He acknowledged, however, that the jewels were not due to be delivered until the last payment on account of the dowry had to be made. It was all Puebla’s fault, he assured his daughter-in-law, which was probably true, though it will be observed that the course pursued allowed Henry to assert his eventual claim to the surrender of the jewels, and his many professions of disinterestedness cloaked the crudeness of his demand.

The next day Henry sent for Bishop Ayala, who was Puebla’s colleague and bitter enemy, and told him that Prince Arthur must be sent to Wales soon, and that much difference of opinion existed as to whether Katharine should accompany him. What did Ayala advise? The Spaniard thought that the Princess should remain with the King and Queen in London for the present, rather than go to Wales where the Prince must necessarily be absent from her a good deal, and she would be lonely. When Katharine herself was consulted by Henry she would express no decided opinion; and Arthur was worked upon by his father to persuade her to say that she wished to go to Wales. Finding that Katharine still avoided the expression of an opinion, Henry, with a great show of sorrow, decided that she should accompany Arthur. Then came the question of the maintenance of the Princess’s household. Puebla had again tried to please every one by saying that Henry would provide a handsome dotation for the purpose, but when Doña Elvira Manuel, on the eve of the journey to Wales, asked the King what provision he was going to make, he feigned the utmost surprise at the question. He knew nothing about it, he said. The Prince would of course maintain his wife and her necessary servants, but no special separate grant could be made to the Princess. When Puebla was brought to book he threw the blame upon the members of Katharine’s household, and was publicly rebuked by Henry for his shiftiness. But the Spaniards believed, probably with reason, that the whole comedy was agreed upon between the King and Puebla to obtain possession of the plate and jewels or their value: the sending of the Princess to Wales being for the purpose of making it necessary that she should use the objects, and so give good grounds for a demand for their value in money on the part of Henry. In any case Katharine found herself, only five weeks after her marriage, with an unpaid and inharmonious household, dependent entirely upon her husband for her needs, and conscious that an artful trick was in full execution with the object of either depriving her of her personal jewels, and everything of value, with which she had furnished her husband’s table as well as her own, or else of extorting a large sum of money from her parents. Embittered already with such knowledge as this, Katharine rode by her husband’s side out of Baynard’s Castle on the 21st December 1501 to continue on the long journey to Wales,[7] after passing their Christmas at Oxford.

The plague was rife throughout England, and on the 2nd April 1502 Arthur, Prince of Wales, fell a victim to it at Ludlow. Here was an unforeseen blow that threatened to deprive both Henry and Ferdinand of the result of their diplomacy. For Ferdinand the matter was of the utmost importance; for an approachment of England and Scotland to France would upset the balance of power he had so laboriously constructed, already threatened, as it was, by the prospect that his Flemish son-in-law Philip and his wife would wear the crowns of the Empire, Flanders, and Burgundy, as well as those of Spain and its possessions; in which case, he thought, Spanish interests would be the last considered. The news of the unexpected catastrophe was greeted in London with real sorrow, for Arthur was promising and popular, and both Henry and his queen were naturally attached to their elder son, just approaching manhood, upon whose training they had lavished so much care. Though Henry’s grief at his loss may have been as sincere as that of Elizabeth of York certainly was, his natural inclinations soon asserted themselves. Ludlow was unhealthy, and after the pompous funeral of Arthur at Worcester, Katharine and her household prayed earnestly to be allowed to approach London, but for some weeks without success, and by the time she arrived at her new abode at Croydon, the political intrigues of which she was the tool were in full swing again.

When Ferdinand and Isabel first heard the news of their daughter’s bereavement at the beginning of May they were at Toledo, and lost no time in sending off post haste to England a fresh ambassador with special instructions from themselves. The man they chose was the Duke de Estrada, whose only recommendation seems to have been his rank, for Puebla was soon able to twist him round his finger. His mission, as we now know, was an extraordinary and delicate one. Ostensibly he was to demand the immediate return of the 100,000 crowns paid to Henry on account of dowry, and the firm settlement upon Katharine of the manors and rents, securing to her the revenue assigned to her in England, and at the same time he was to urge Henry to send Katharine back to Spain at once. But these things were really the last that Ferdinand desired. He knew full well that Henry would go to any length to avoid disgorging the dowry, and secret instructions were given to Estrada to effect a betrothal between the ten-years-old Henry, Duke of York, and his brother’s widow of sixteen. Strict orders also were sent to Puebla of a character to forward the secret design, although he was not fully informed of the latter. He was to press amongst other things that Katharine might receive her English revenue punctually—Katharine, it appears, had written to her parents, saying that she had been advised to borrow money for the support of her household; and the King and Queen of Spain were indignant at such an idea. Not a farthing, they said, must she be allowed to borrow, and none of her jewels sold: the King of England must provide for her promptly and handsomely, in accordance with his obligations. This course, as the writers well knew, would soon bring Henry VII. himself to propose the marriage for which Ferdinand was so anxious. Henry professed himself very ready to make the settlement of the English income as requested, but in such case, he claimed that the whole of the Spanish dowry in gold must be paid to him. Ferdinand could not see it in this light at all, and insisted that the death of Arthur had dissolved the marriage. This fencing went on for some time, neither party wishing to be the first to propose the indecorous marriage with Henry that both desired.[8] It is evident that Puebla and the chaplain Alexander opposed the match secretly, and endeavoured to thwart it, either from an idea of its illegality or, more probably, with a view of afterwards bringing it about themselves. In the midst of this intrigue the King of France suddenly attacked Ferdinand both in Italy and on the Catalonian frontier, and made approaches to Henry for the marriage of his son with a French princess. This hurried the pace in Spain, and Queen Isabel ordered Estrada to carry through the betrothal of Katharine and her brother-in-law without loss of time, “for any delay would be dangerous.” So anxious were the Spanish sovereigns that nothing should stand in the way, that they were willing to let the old arrangement about the dowry stand, Henry retaining the 100,000 crowns already paid, and receiving, when the marriage was consummated, the remaining 100,000; on condition that in the meanwhile Katharine was properly maintained in England. Even the incestuous nature of the union was to be no bar to its being effected, though no Papal dispensation had been yet obtained. Isabel sought salve for her conscience in this respect by repeating Doña Elvira Manuel’s assurance that Katharine still remained intact; her marriage with Arthur not having been consummated. To lure Henry into an armed alliance against France once more, the old bait of the recovery of Normandy and Guienne was dangled before him. But the King of England played with a firmer hand now. He knew his worth as a balancing factor, his accumulated treasure made him powerful, and he held all the cards in his hand; for the King of Scots was his son-in-law, and the French were as anxious for his smiles as were the Spanish sovereigns. So he stood off and refused to pledge himself to a hostile alliance.

In view of this Ferdinand and Isabel’s tone changed, and they developed a greater desire than ever to have their daughter—and above all her dowry—returned to them. “We cannot endure,” wrote Isabel to Estrada on the 10th August 1502, “that a daughter whom we love should be so far away from us in her trouble.... You shall ... tell the King of England that you have our orders to freight vessels for her voyage. To this end you must make such a show of giving directions and preparing for the voyage that the members of the Princess’s household may believe that it is true. Send also some of her household on board with the captain I am now sending you ... and show all signs of departure.” If in consequence the English spoke of the betrothal with young Henry, the ambassador was to show no desire for it; but was to listen keenly to all that was proposed, and if the terms were acceptable he might clinch the matter at once without further reference. And then the saintly Queen concludes thus: “The one object of this business is to bring the betrothal to a conclusion as soon as possible in conformity with your instructions. For then all our anxiety will cease and we shall be able to seek the aid of England against France, for this is the most efficient aid we can have.” Henry was not for the moment to be frightened by fresh demands for his armed alliance against France. The betrothal was to be forwarded first, and then the rest would follow. Puebla, who was quite confident that he alone could carry on the marriage negotiation successfully, was also urged by mingled flattery and threats by his sovereign to do his utmost with that end.

Whilst this diplomatic haggling was going on in London for the disposal of the widowed Katharine to the best advantage, a blow fell that for a moment changed the aspect of affairs. Elizabeth of York, the wife of Henry VII., died on the 11th February 1503, in the Tower of London, a week after giving birth to her seventh child. She had been a good and submissive wife to the King, whose claim to the throne she had fortified by her own greater right; and we are told that the bereaved husband was “heavy and dolorous” with his loss when he retired to a solitary place to pass his sorrow; but before many weeks were over he and his crony Puebla put their crafty heads together, and agreed that the King might marry his widowed daughter-in-law himself. The idea was cynically repulsive but it gives us the measure of Henry’s unscrupulousness. Puebla conveyed the hint to Isabel and Ferdinand, who, to do them justice, appeared to be really shocked at the suggestion. This time (April 1503) the Spanish sovereigns spoke with more sincerity than before. They were, they told their ambassador, tired of Henry’s shiftiness, and of their daughter’s equivocal and undignified position in England, now that the Queen was dead and the betrothal still hung fire. The Princess was really to come to Spain in a fleet that should be sent for her, unless the marriage with the young Prince of Wales was agreed to at once. As for a wife for King Henry there was the widowed Queen of Naples, Ferdinand’s niece, who lived in Valencia, and he might have her with the blessing of the Spanish sovereigns.[9] The suggestion was a tempting one to Henry, for the Queen of Naples was well dowered, and the vigour of Isabel’s refusal to listen to his marriage with her daughter, made it evident that that was out of the question. So Henry at last made up his mind at least to execute the treaty which was to betroth his surviving son to Katharine. In the treaty, which was signed on the 23rd June 1503, it is set forth that, inasmuch as the bride and bridegroom were related in the first degree of affinity, a Papal dispensation would be necessary for the marriage; and it is distinctly stated that the marriage with Arthur had been consummated. This may have been a diplomatic form considered at the time unimportant in view of the ease with which a dispensation could be obtained, but it is at direct variance with Doña Elvira Manuel’s assurance to Isabel at the time of Arthur’s death, and with Katharine’s assertion, uncontradicted by Henry, to the end of her life.

Henry, Prince of Wales, was at this time twelve years old; and, if we are to believe Erasmus, a prodigy of precocious scholarship. Though his learning was superficial and carefully made the most of, he was, in effect, an apt and diligent student. From the first his mother and father had determined that their children should enjoy better educational advantages than had fallen to them, and as Henry had been until Arthur’s death intended for the Church, his learning was far in advance of that of most princes and nobles of his age. The bride, who thus became unwillingly affianced to a boy more than five years her junior, was now a young woman in her prime, experienced already in the chicane and falsity of the atmosphere in which she lived. She knew, none better, that in the juggle for her marriage she had been regarded as a mere chattel, and her own inclinations hardly taken into account, and she faced her responsibilities bravely in her mother’s exalted spirit of duty and sacrifice when she found herself once more Princess of Wales.

When Ferdinand, in accordance with his pledge in the treaty, instructed his ambassador in Rome to ask for the Pope’s dispensation, he took care to correct the statement embodied in the document to the effect that the marriage of Arthur and Katharine had been consummated; though the question might pertinently be asked, why, if it had not been, a dispensation was needed at all? The King himself answered the question by saying that “as the English are so much inclined to cavil, it appeared prudent to provide for the case as if the previous marriage had been completed; and the dispensation must be worded in accordance with the treaty, since the succession to the Crown depends on the undoubted legitimacy of the marriage.”[10] No sooner was the ratification of the betrothal conveyed to Ferdinand than he demanded the aid of Henry against France, and Estrada was instructed to “make use of” Katharine to obtain the favour demanded. If Henry hesitated to provide the money for raising the 2000 English troops required, Katharine herself was to be asked by her kind father to pawn her plate and jewels for the purpose. Henry, however, had no intention to be hurried now that the betrothal had been signed. There were several things he wanted on his side first. The Earl of Suffolk and his brother Richard Pole were still in Flanders; and the greatest wish of Henry’s life was that they should be handed over to his tender mercies. So the armed coalition against France still hung fire, whilst a French ambassador was as busy courting the King of England as Ferdinand himself. In the meanwhile Katharine for a time lived in apparent amity with Henry and his family, especially with the young Princess Mary, who was her constant companion. In the autumn of 1504 she passed a fortnight with them at Windsor and Richmond, hunting every day; but just as the King was leaving Greenwich for a progress through Kent the Princess fell seriously ill, and the letters written by Henry during his absence to his daughter-in-law are worded as if he were the most affectionate of fathers. On this progress the Prince of Wales accompanied his father for the first time, as the King had previously been loath to disturb his studies. “It is quite wonderful,” wrote an observer, “how much the King loves the Prince. He has good reason to do so, for he deserves all his love.” Already the crafty and politic King was indoctrinating his son in the system he had made his own: that the command of ready money, gained no matter how, meant power, and that to hold the balance between two greater rivals was to have them both at his bidding. And young Henry, though of different nature from his father, made good use of his lesson.

Katharine’s greatest trouble at this time (the autumn of 1504) was the bickering, and worse, of her Spanish household. We have already seen how Puebla had set them by the ears with his jealousy of his colleagues and his dodging diplomacy. Katharine appealed to Henry to bring her servants to order, but he refused to interfere, as they were not his subjects. Doña Elvira Manuel, the governess, was a great lady, and resented any interference with her domain.[11] There is no doubt that her rule, so far as regarded the Princess herself, was a wise one; but, as we shall see directly, she, Castilian that she was and sister of the famous diplomatist Juan Manuel, took up a position inimical to Ferdinand after Isabel’s death, and innocently led Katharine into grave political trouble.

In November 1504 the death of Isabel, Queen of Castile, long threatened after her strenuous life, changed the whole aspect for Ferdinand. The heiress of the principal crown of Spain was now Katharine’s sister Juana, who had lived for years in the latitudinarian court of Brussels with her consort Philip. The last time she had gone to Spain, her freedom towards the strict religious observances considered necessary in her mother’s court had led to violent scenes between Isabel and Juana. Even then the scandalised Spanish churchmen who flocked around Isabel whispered that the heiress of Castile must be mad: and her foreign husband, the heir of the empire, was hated and distrusted by the “Catholic kings.” Isabel by her will had left her husband guardian of her realms for Juana; and from the moment the Queen breathed her last the struggle between Ferdinand and his son-in-law never ceased, until Philip the Handsome, who thought he had beaten wily old Ferdinand, himself was beaten by poison. The death of her mother not only threw Katharine into natural grief for her loss, which truly was a great one; for, at least, Isabel deeply loved her youngest child, whilst Ferdinand loved nothing but himself and Aragon; but it greatly altered for the worse her position in England. Philip of Austria and his father the Emperor had begun to play false to Ferdinand long before the Queen’s death; and now that the crown of Castile had fallen to poor weak Juana, and a struggle was seen to be impending for the regency, Henry VII. found himself as usual courted by both sides in the dispute. The widowed Archduchess Margaret, who had married as a first husband Ferdinand’s heir, was offered to Henry as a bride by Philip and Maximilian and a close alliance between them proposed; and Ferdinand, whilst denouncing his son-in-law’s ingratitude, also bade high for the King of England’s countenance. Henry listened to both parties, but it was clear to him that he had now more to hope for from Philip and Maximilian, who were friendly with France, than from Ferdinand; and the unfortunate Katharine was again reduced to the utmost neglect and penury, unable to buy food for her own table, except by pawning her jewels.

In the ensuing intrigues Doña Elvira Manuel was on the side of the Queen of Castile, as against her father; and Katharine lost the impartial advice of her best counsellor, and involved herself in a very net of trouble. In the summer of 1505 it was already understood that Philip and Juana on their way to Spain by sea might possibly trust themselves in an English port; and Henry, in order to be ready for any matrimonial combinations that might be suggested, caused young Henry to make solemn protest before the Bishop of Winchester at Richmond against his marriage with Katharine.[12] Of this, at the time, of course the Spanish agents were ignorant; and so completely was even Puebla hoodwinked, that almost to the arrival of Philip and his wife in England he believed that Henry was in favour of Ferdinand against Philip and Maximilian. Early in August 1505, Puebla went to Richmond to see Katharine, and as he entered one of the household told him that an ambassador from the Archduke Philip, King of Castile, had just arrived and was waiting to see her. Puebla at once himself conveyed the news to Katharine; and to his glee served as interpreter between the ambassador and the Princess. On his knees before her the Fleming related that he had come to propose a marriage between the Duchess of Savoy (i.e. the widowed Archduchess Margaret) and Henry VII., and showed the Princess two portraits of the Archduchess. Furthermore, he said that Philip and his wife were going by overland through France to Spain, and he was to ask Henry what he thought of the plan. Puebla’s eyes were thus partially opened: and when a few days later he found that Doña Elvira had not only contrived frequent private meetings between Katharine and the Flemish ambassador, but had persuaded the Princess to propose a meeting between Philip, Juana, and the King of England, he at once sounded a note of alarm. Katharine, it must be recollected, was yet young; and probably did not fully understand the deadly antagonism that existed between her father and her brother-in-law. She was much under the influence of Doña Elvira, and doubtless yearned to see her unhappy sister Juana. So she was induced to write a letter to Philip, and to propose a meeting with Henry at Calais. When a prompt affirmative reply came, the Princess innocently showed it to Puebla at Durham House before sending it to Henry VII. The ambassador was aghast, and soundly rated Katharine for going against the interests of her father. He would take the letter to the King, he said. But this Katharine would not allow, and Doña Elvira was appealed to. She promised to retain the letter for the present, but just as Puebla was sitting down to dinner an hour afterwards, he learnt that she had broken her word and sent Philip’s letter to Henry VII. Starting up, he rushed to Katharine’s apartments, and with tears streaming down his face at his failure, told the Princess, under pledge of secrecy, that the proposed interview was a plot of the Manuels to injure both her father and sister. She must at once write a letter to Henry which he, Puebla, would dictate; and, whilst still feigning a desire for the meeting, she must try to prevent it with all her might, and beware of Doña Elvira in future. Poor Katharine, alarmed at his vehemence, did as she was told; and the letter was sent flying to Henry, apologising for the proposal of the interview. Henry must have smiled when he saw how eager they all were to court him. Nothing would please him better than the close alliance with Philip, which was already being secretly negotiated, though he was effusively assuring Ferdinand at the same time of the inviolability of their friendship; promising that the marriage—which he had secretly denounced—between his son and Katharine, should be celebrated on the very day provided by the treaty, and approving of some secret plot of Ferdinand against Philip which had been communicated to him.

Amidst such falsity as this it is most difficult to pick one’s way, though it is evident through it all that Henry had now gained the upper hand, and was fully a match for Ferdinand in his altered circumstances. But as things improved for Henry they became worse for Katharine. In December 1505 she wrote bitterly to her father from Richmond, complaining of her fate, the unhappiness of which, she said, was all Puebla’s fault. “Every day,” she wrote, “my troubles increase. Since my arrival in England I have not received a farthing except for food, and I and my household have not even garments to wear.” She had asked Puebla to pray the King to appoint an English dueña for her whilst Doña Elvira was in Flanders, but instead of doing so he had arranged with Henry that her household should be dismissed altogether, and that she should reside at Court. Her letter throughout shows that at the time she was in deep despondency and anger at her treatment; and especially resentful of Puebla, whom she disliked and distrusted profoundly, as did Doña Elvira Manuel. The very elements seemed to fight on the side of the King of England. Ferdinand was, in sheer desperation, struggling to prevent his paternal realms from being merged in Castile and the empire, and with that end was negotiating his marriage with the French king’s niece, Germaine de Foix, and a close alliance with France, in which England should be included, when Philip of Austria and his wife, Juana of Aragon, Queen of Castile, sailed from Flanders to claim their kingdom at Ferdinand’s hands. They too had made friends with France some time before, but the marriage of Ferdinand with a French princess had now drawn them strongly to the side of England; and as we have seen, they were already in full negotiation with Henry for his marriage with the doubly widowed and heavily dowered Archduchess Margaret.

The King and Queen of Castile were overtaken by a furious south-west gale in the Channel and their fine fleet dispersed. The ship that carried Philip and Juana was driven by the storm into Melcombe Regis, on the Dorset coast, on the 17th January 1506, and lay there weather-bound for some time. Philip the Handsome was a poor sailor, and was, we are told by an eye-witness, “fatigate and unquyeted in mynde and bodie.” He doubtless yearned to tread dry land again, and, against the advice of his Council, had himself rowed ashore. Only in the previous year he had as unguardedly put himself into the power of the King of France; and his boldness had succeeded well, as it had resulted in the treaty with the French king that had so much alarmed and shocked Ferdinand, but it is unlikely that Philip on this occasion intended to make any stay in England or to go beyond Weymouth. The news of his coming brought together all the neighbouring gentry to oppose or welcome him, according to his demeanour, and, finding him friendly, Sir John Trenchard prevailed upon him to take up his residence in his manor-house hard by until the weather mended. In the meanwhile formidable English forces mustered in the country around, and Philip began to grow uneasy; but Trenchard’s hospitality was pressing, and to all hints from the visitor that he wanted to be gone the reply was given that he really must wait until the King of England could bid him welcome. When at last Philip was given to understand that he was practically a prisoner, he made the best of the position, and with seeming cordiality awaited King Henry’s message. No wonder, as a chronicler says, that Henry when he heard the news “was replenyshed with an exceeding gladnes ... for that he trusted his landing in England should turn to his profit and commoditie.” This it certainly did. Philip and Juana were brought to Windsor in great state, and met by Henry and his son and a splendid train of nobles. Then the visitors were led through London in state to Richmond, and Philip, amidst all the festivity, was soon convinced that he would not be allowed to leave England until the rebel Plantagenet Earl of Suffolk was handed to Henry. And so the pact was made that bound England to Philip and Flanders against Ferdinand; the Archduchess Margaret with her vast fortune being promised, with unheard-of guarantees, to the widowed Henry.[13] When the treaty had been solemnly ratified on oath, taken upon a fragment of the true Cross in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, Philip was allowed to go his way on the 2nd March to join his ship at Falmouth, whither Juana had preceded him a fortnight before.

This new treaty made poor Katharine of little value as a political asset in England; since it was clear now that Ferdinand’s hold over anything but his paternal heritage in the Mediterranean was powerless. Flanders and Castile were a far more advantageous ally to England than the King of Aragon, and Katharine was promptly made to feel the fact. Dr. Puebla was certainly either kept quite out of the way or his compliance bought, or he would have been able to devise means for Katharine to inform her sister Juana of the real object of Henry’s treaty with Philip; for Ferdinand always insisted that Juana was a dutiful daughter, and was not personally opposed to him. As it was, Katharine was allowed to see her sister but for an hour just before Juana’s departure, and then in the presence of witnesses in the interests of Philip. Only a few weeks after the visitors had departed Katharine wrote to her father, in fear lest her letter should be intercepted, begging him to have pity upon her. She is deep in debt, not for extravagant things but for food. “The King of England refuses to pay anything, though she implores him with tears to do so. He says he has been cheated about the marriage portion. In the meanwhile she is in the deepest anguish, her servants almost begging for alms, and she herself nearly naked. She has been at death’s door for months, and prays earnestly for a Spanish confessor, as she cannot speak English.”[14]

How false Ferdinand met his “dear children,” and made with his daughter’s husband that hellish secret compact in the church of Villafafila, that seemed to renounce everything to Philip whilst Ferdinand went humbly to his realm of Naples, and his ill-used daughter Juana to life-long confinement, cannot be told here, nor the sudden death of Philip the Handsome, which brought back Ferdinand triumphant. If Juana was sane before, she certainly became more or less mad after her husband’s death, and moreover was morbidly devoted to his memory. But what mattered madness or a widow’s devotion to Henry VII. when he had political objects to serve? All through the summer and autumn of 1506 Katharine had been ill with fever and ague, unhappy at the neglect and poverty she suffered. Ferdinand threw upon Castile the duty of paying the rest of her dowry; the Castilians retorted that Ferdinand ought to pay it himself: and Katharine, in the depth of despondency, in October 1506 learnt of her brother-in-law Philip’s death. Like magic Henry VII. became amiable again to his daughter-in-law. He deplored her illness now, and cordially granted her the change of residence from Eltham to Fulham that she had so long prayed for in vain. The reason was soon evident; for before Juana had completed her dreary pilgrimage through Spain to Granada with her husband’s dead body, Henry had cajoled Katharine to ask her father for the distraught widow for his wife. Katharine must have fulfilled the task with repulsion, though she seems to have advocated the match warmly; and Ferdinand, though he knew, or rather said, that Juana was mad, was quite ready to take advantage of such an opportunity for again getting into touch with Henry. The letter in which Ferdinand gently dallied with Henry’s offer was written in Naples, after months of shifty excuses for not sending the rest of Katharine’s dowry to England,[15] and doubtless the time he gained by postponing the answer about Juana’s marriage until he returned to Spain was of value to him; for he was determined, now that a special providence carefully prepared had removed Philip from his path, that once more all Spain should bear his sway whilst he lived, and then should be divided, rather than his dear Aragon should be rendered subordinate to other interests.

The encouraging talk of Henry’s marriage with Juana, with which both Katharine and Puebla were instructed to beguile him, was all very well in its way, and the King of England became quite joyously sentimental at the prospect of the new tie of relationship between the houses of Tudor and Aragon; but, really, business was business: if that long overdue dowry for Katharine was not sent soon, young Henry would listen to some of the many other eligible princesses, better dowered than Katharine, who were offered to him. With much demur Henry at length consented to wait for five months longer for the dowry; that is to say, until Michaelmas 1507, and in the meanwhile drove a bargain as hard as that of a Jew huckster in the valuation of Katharine’s jewels and plate, which were to be brought into the account.[16] It is easy to see that this concession of five months’ delay was granted by Henry in the hope that his marriage with Juana would take place. The plan was hideously wicked, and Puebla made no secret of it in writing to Ferdinand. “No king in the world would make so good a husband to the Queen of Castile, whether she be sane or insane. She might recover her reason when wedded to such a husband, but even in that case King Ferdinand would at all events be sure to retain the regency of Castile. On the other hand, if the insanity of the Queen should prove incurable it would perhaps be not inconvenient that she should live in England. The English do not seem to mind her insanity much; especially since it is asserted that her mental malady would not prevent her from childbearing.”[17] Could anything be more repulsive than this pretty arrangement, which had been concocted by Henry and Puebla at Richmond during a time when the former was seriously ill with quinsy and inaccessible to any one but the Spanish ambassador?

In the meanwhile Katharine felt keenly the wretched position in which she found herself. The plate, about which so much haggling was taking place, was being pawned or sold by her bit by bit to provide the most necessary things for her own use; her servants were in rags, and she herself was contemned and neglected; forbidden even to see her betrothed husband for months together, though living in the same palace with him. The more confident Henry grew of his own marriage with the Archduchess Margaret, or with Queen Juana, the less inclined he was to wed his son to Katharine. A French princess for the Prince of Wales, and the Queen of Castile for Henry, would indeed have served England on all sides. On one occasion, in April 1507, Henry frankly told Katharine that he considered himself no longer bound by her marriage treaty, since her dowry was overdue, and all the poor Princess could do was to weep and pray her father to fulfil his part of the compact by paying the rest of her portion, whilst she, serving as Ferdinand’s ambassador, tried to retain Henry’s good graces by her hopeful assurances about the marriage of the latter with Juana.

In all Katharine’s lamentations of her own sufferings and privation, she never forgot to bewail the misery of her servants. Whilst she herself, she said, had been worse treated than any woman in England, her five women servants, all she had retained, had never received a farthing since their arrival in England six years before, and had spent everything they possessed. Katharine at this time of trial (August 1507) was living alone at Ewelme, whilst Henry was hunting at various seats in the midlands. At length the King made some stay at Woodstock, where Katharine saw him. With suspicious alacrity he consented to a further postponement of the overdue dowry; and showed himself more eager than ever to marry Juana, no matter how mad she might be. Katharine was quite acute enough to understand his motives, and wrote to her father that so long as the money due of her dowry remained unpaid the King considered himself free, so far as regarded her marriage with the Prince of Wales. “Mine is always the worst part,” she wrote. “The King of England prides himself upon his magnanimity in waiting so long for the payment.... His words are kind but his deeds are as bad as ever.” She bitterly complained that Puebla himself was doing his utmost to frustrate her marriage in the interests of the King of England; and it is clear to see in her passionate letter to her father (4th October 1507) that she half distrusted even him, as she had been told that he was listening to overtures from the King of France for a marriage between Juana and a French prince. She failed in this to understand the political position fully. If Juana had married a Frenchman it is certain that Henry would have been only too eager to complete the marriage of his son with Katharine. But she was evidently in fear that, unless Henry was allowed to marry her sister, evil might befall her. Speaking of the marriage she says: “I bait him with this ... and his words and professions have changed for the better, although his acts remain the same.... They fancy that I have no more in me than what outwardly appears, or that I shall not be able to fathom his (Puebla’s) design.” Under stress of her circumstances Katharine was developing rapidly. She was no longer a girl dependent upon others. Doña Elvira had gone for good; Puebla she hated and distrusted as much as she did Henry; and there was no one by her to whom she could look for help. Her position was a terribly difficult one, pitted alone, as she was, against the most unscrupulous politicians in Europe, in whose hands she knew she was only one of the pieces in a game. Juana was still carrying about with her the unburied corpse of her husband, and falling into paroxysms of fury when a second marriage was suggested to her; and yet Katharine considered it necessary to keep up the pretence to Henry that his suit was prospering. She knew that though the Archduchess Margaret had firmly refused to tempt providence again by a third marriage with the King of England, the boy sovereign of Castile and Flanders, the Archduke Charles, had been securely betrothed to golden-haired little Mary Tudor, Henry’s younger daughter; and that the close alliance thus sealed was as dangerous to her father King Ferdinand’s interests as to her own. And yet she was either forced, or forced herself, to paint Henry, who was still treating her vilely, in the brightest colours as a chivalrous, virtuous gentleman, really and desperately in love with poor crazy Juana. Katharine’s letters to her sister on behalf of Henry’s suit are nauseous, in view of the circumstances as we know them; and show that the Princess of Wales was already prepared to sacrifice every human feeling to political expediency.

This miserable position could not continue indefinitely, for the extension of time for the payment of the dowry was fast running out. Juana was more intractable than ever. Katharine, in rage and despair at the contumely with which she was treated, insisted at length that her father should send an ambassador to England, who could speak as the mouthpiece of a great sovereign rather than like a fawning menial of Henry as Puebla was. The new ambassador was Gomez de Fuensalida, Knight Commander of Haro and Membrilla, a man as haughty as Puebla had been servile, and he went far beyond even Katharine’s desires in his plain speaking to Henry and his ministers. Ferdinand, indeed, by this time had once more gained the upper hand in Europe, and could afford to speak his mind. Henry was no longer so vigorous or so bold as he had been, and his desire to grasp everything whilst risking nothing had enabled his rivals to form a great coalition from which he was excluded—the League of Cambrai. Fuensalida offended Henry almost as soon as he arrived, and was roughly refused permission to enter the English Court. He could only storm, as he did, to Henry’s ministers that unless the Princess of Wales was at once sent home to Spain with her dowry, King Ferdinand and his allies would wreak vengeance upon England. But Henry knew that with such a hostage as Katharine in his hands he was safe from attack, and held the Princess in defiance of it all. But he was already a waning force. Whilst Fuensalida had no good word for the King, he, like all other Spanish agents, turned to the rising sun and sang persistently the praises of the Prince of Wales. His gigantic stature and sturdy limbs, his fair skin and golden hair, his manliness, his prudence, and his wisdom were their constant theme: and even Katharine, unhappy as she was, with her marriage still in the balance, seems to have liked and admired the gallant youth whom she was allowed to see so seldom.

It has become so much the fashion to speak of Katharine not only as an unfortunate woman, but as a blameless saint in all her relations, that an historian who regards her as a fallible and even in many respects a blameworthy woman, who was to a large extent the cause of her own troubles, must be content to differ from the majority of his predecessors. We have already seen, by the earnest attempts she made to drag her afflicted sister into marriage with a man whom she herself considered false, cruel, and unscrupulous, that Katharine was no better than those around her in moral principle: the passion and animosity shown in her letters to her father about Puebla, Fuensalida, and others whom she distrusted, show her to have been anything but a meek martyr. She was, indeed, at this time (1508-9) a self-willed, ambitious girl of strong passion, impatient of control, domineering and proud. Her position in England had been a humiliating and a hateful one for years. She was the sport of the selfish ambitions of others, which she herself was unable to control; surrounded by people whom she disliked and suspected, lonely and unhappy; it is not wonderful that when Henry VII. was gradually sinking to his grave, and her marriage with his son was still in doubt, this ardent Southern young woman in her prime should be tempted to cast to the wind considerations of dignity and prudence for the sake of her love for a man.

She was friendless in a foreign land; and when her father was in Naples in 1506, she wrote to him praying him to send her a Spanish confessor to solace her. Before he could do so she informed him (April 1507) that she had obtained a very good Spanish confessor for herself. This was a young, lusty, dissolute Franciscan monk called Diego Fernandez, who then became a member of Katharine’s household. When the new outspoken ambassador, Fuensalida, arrived in England in the autumn of 1508, he, of course, had frequent conference with the Princess, and could not for long shut his eyes to the state of affairs in her establishment. He first sounded the alarm cautiously to Ferdinand in a letter of 4th March 1509. He had hoped against hope, he said, that the marriage of Katharine and Prince Henry might be effected soon; and the scandal might remedy itself without his worrying Ferdinand about it. But he must speak out now, for he has been silent too long. It is high time, he says, that some person of sufficient authority in the confidence of Ferdinand should be put in charge of Katharine’s household and command respect: “for at present the Princess’s house is governed by a young friar, whom her Highness has taken for her confessor, though he is, in my opinion, and that of others, utterly unworthy of such a position. He makes the Princess commit many errors; and as she is so good and conscientious, this confessor makes a mortal sin of everything that does not please him, and so causes her to commit many faults.” The ambassador continues that he dare not write all he would because the bearer (a servant of Katharine’s) is being sent by those who wish to injure him; but he begs the King to interrogate the man who takes the letter as to what had been going on in the Princess’s house in the last two months. “The root of all the trouble is this young friar, who is flighty, and vain, and extremely scandalous. He has spoken to the Princess very roughly about the King of England; and because I told the Princess something of what I thought of this friar, and he learnt it, he has disgraced me with her worse than if I had been a traitor.... That your Highness may judge what sort of person he is, I will repeat exactly without exaggeration the very words he used to me. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘that they have been telling you evil tales of me.’ ‘I can assure you, father,’ I replied, ‘that no one has said anything about you to me.’ ‘I know,’ he replied; ‘the same person who told you told me himself.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘any one can bear false witness, and I swear by the Holy Body that, so far as I can recollect, nothing has been said to me about you.’ ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘there are scandal-mongers in this house who have defamed me, and not with the lowest either, but with the highest, and that is no disgrace to me. If it were not for contradicting them I should be gone already.’” Proud Fuensalida tells the King that it was only with the greatest difficulty he kept his hands off the insolent priest at this. “His constant presence with the Princess and amongst her women is shocking the King of England and his Court dreadfully;” and then the ambassador hints strongly that Henry is only allowing the scandal to go on, so as to furnish him with a good excuse for still keeping Katharine’s marriage in abeyance.

With this letter to Spain went another from Katharine to her father, railing bitterly against the ambassador. She can no longer endure her troubles, and a settlement of some sort must be arrived at. The King of England treats her worse than ever since his daughter Mary was betrothed to the young Archduke Charles, sovereign of Castile and Flanders. She had sold everything she possessed for food and raiment; and only a few days before she wrote, Henry had again told her that he was not bound to feed her servants. Her own people, she says, are insolent and turn against her; but what afflicts her most is that she is too poor to maintain fittingly her confessor, “the best that ever woman had.” It is plain to see that the whole household was in rebellion against the confessor who had captured Katharine’s heart, and that the ambassador was on the side of the household. The Princess and Fuensalida had quarrelled about it, and she wished that the ambassador should be reproved. With vehement passion she begged her father that the confessor might not be taken away from her. “I implore your Highness to prevent him from leaving me; and to write to the King of England that you have ordered this Father to stay with me; and beg him for your sake to have him well treated and humoured. Tell the prelates also that you wish him to stay here. The greatest comfort in my trouble is the consolation he gives me. Almost in despair I send this servant to implore you not to forget that I am still your daughter, and how much I have suffered for your sake.... Do not let me perish like this, but write at once deciding what is to be done. Otherwise in my present state I am afraid I may do something that neither the King of England nor your Highness could prevent, unless you send for me and let me pass the few remaining days of my life in God’s service.”

That the Princess’s household and the ambassador were shocked at the insolent familiarity of the licentious young priest with their mistress, and that she herself perfectly understood that the suspicions and rumours were against her honour, is clear. On one occasion Henry VII. had asked Katharine and his daughter Mary to go to Richmond, to meet him. When the two princesses were dressed and ready to set out on their journey from Hampton Court to Richmond, the confessor entered the room and told Katharine she was not to go that day as she had been unwell. The Princess protested that she was then quite well and able to bear the short journey. “I tell you,” replied Father Diego, “that, on pain of mortal sin, you shall not go to-day;” and so Princess Mary set out alone, leaving Katharine with the young priest of notorious evil life and a few inferior servants. When the next day she was allowed to go to Richmond, accompanied amongst others by the priest, King Henry took not the slightest notice of her, and for the next few weeks refused to speak to her. The ambassador even confessed to Ferdinand that, since he had witnessed what was going on in the Princess’s household, he acquitted Henry of most of the blame for his treatment of his Spanish daughter-in-law. Whilst the Princess was in the direst distress, her household in want of food, and she obliged to sell her gowns to send messengers to her father, she went to the length of pawning the plate that formed part of her dowry to “satisfy the follies of the friar.”

Deaf to all remonstrances both from King Henry and her own old servants, Katharine obstinately had her way, and the chances of her marriage in England grew smaller and smaller. It is not to be supposed that the ambassador would have dared to say so much as he did to the lady’s own father if he had not taken the gravest view of Katharine’s conduct and its probable political result. But his hints to Ferdinand’s ministers were much stronger still. “The Princess,” he said, “was guilty of things a thousand times worse” than those he had mentioned; and the “parables” that he had written to the King might be made clear by the examination of Katharine’s own servant, who carried her letters. “The devil take me,” he continues, “if I can see anything in this friar for her to be so fond of him; for he has neither learning, nor good looks, nor breeding, nor capacity, nor authority; but if he takes it into his head to preach a new gospel, they have to believe it.”[18] By two letters still extant, written by Friar Diego himself, we see that the ambassador in no wise exaggerated his coarseness and indelicacy, and it is almost incredible that Katharine, an experienced and disillusioned woman of nearly twenty-four, can have been ready to jeopardise everything political and personal, and face the opposition of the world, for the sake alone of the spiritual comfort to be derived from the ministrations of such a man. How far, if at all, the connection was actually immoral we shall probably never know, but the case as it stands shows Katharine to have been passionate, self-willed, and utterly tactless. Even after her marriage with young Henry Friar Diego retained his ascendency over her for several years, and ruled her with a rod of iron until he was publicly convicted of fornication, and deprived of his office as Chancellor of the Queen. We shall have later to consider the question of his relationship with Katharine after her marriage; but it is almost certain that the ostentatious intimacy of the pair during the last months of Henry VII. had reduced Katharine’s chance of marriage with the Prince of Wales almost to vanishing point, when the death of the King suddenly changed the political position and rendered it necessary that the powerful coalition of which Ferdinand was the head should be conciliated by England.

Henry VII. died at Richmond on the 22nd April 1509, making a better and more generous end than could have been expected from his life. He, like his rival Ferdinand, had been avaricious by deliberate policy; and his avarice was largely instrumental in founding England’s coming greatness, for the overflowing coffers he left to his son lent force to the new position assumed by England as the balancing power, courted by both the great continental rivals. Ferdinand’s ambition had o’erleaped itself, and the possession of Flanders by the King of Castile had made England’s friendship more than ever necessary thenceforward, for France was opposed to Spain now, not in Italy alone, but on long conterminous frontiers in the north, south, and east as well.

Henry VIII. at the age of eighteen was well fitting to succeed his father. All contemporary observers agree that his grace and personal beauty as a youth were as remarkable as his quickness of intellect and his true Tudor desire to stand well in the eyes of his people. Fully aware of the power his father’s wealth gave him politically, he was determined to share no part of the onus for the oppression with which the wealth had been collected; and on the day following his father’s death, before himself retiring to mourning reclusion in the Tower of London, the unpopular financial instruments of Henry VII., Empson and Dudley and others, were laid by the heels to sate the vengeance of the people. The Spanish match for the young king was by far more popular in England than any other; and the alacrity of Henry himself and his ministers to carry it into effect without further delay, now that his father with his personal ambitions and enmities was dead, was also indicative of his desire to begin his reign by pleasing his subjects.

The death of Henry VII. had indeed cleared away many obstacles. Ferdinand had profoundly distrusted him. His evident desire to obtain control of Castile, either by his marriage with Juana or by that of his daughter Mary with the nine-year-old Archduke Charles, had finally hardened Ferdinand’s heart against him, whilst Henry’s fear and suspicion of Ferdinand had, as we have seen, effectually stood in the way of the completion of Katharine’s marriage. With young Henry as king affairs stood differently. Even before his father’s death Ferdinand had taken pains to assure him of his love, and had treated him as a sovereign over the dying old king’s head. Before the breath was out of Henry VII., Ferdinand’s letters were speeding to London to make all things smooth. There would be no opposition now to Ferdinand’s ratification of his Flemish grandson’s marriage with Henry’s sister Mary. The clever old Aragonese knew there was still plenty of time to stop that later; and certainly young Henry could not interfere in Castile, as his father might have done, on the strength of Mary Tudor’s betrothal. So all went merry as a marriage bell. Ferdinand, for once in his life, was liberal with his money. He implored his daughter to make no unpleasantness or complaint, and to raise no question that might obstruct her marriage. The ambassador, Fuensalida, was warned that if the bickering between himself and the Princess, or between the confessor and the household, was allowed to interfere with the match, disgrace and ruin should be his lot, and Katharine was admonished that she must be civil to Fuensalida, and to the Italian banker who was to pay the balance of her dowry. The King of Aragon need have had no anxiety. Young Henry and his councillors were as eager for the popular marriage as he was, and dreaded the idea of disgorging the 100,000 crowns dowry already paid and the English settlements upon Katharine. On the 6th May, accordingly, three days before the body of Henry VII. was borne in gloomy pomp to its last resting-place at Westminster, Katharine wrote to her delighted father that her marriage with Henry was finally settled.

CHAPTER III

1509-1527

KATHARINE THE QUEEN—A POLITICAL MARRIAGE AND A PERSONAL DIVORCE

“Long live King Henry VIII.!” cried Garter King of Arms in French as the great officers of state broke their staves of office and cast them into the open grave of the first Tudor king. Through England, like the blast of a trumpet, the cry was echoed from the hearts of a whole people, full of hope that the niggardliness and suspicion which for years had stood between the sovereign and his people were at last banished. The young king, expansive and hearty in manner, handsome and strong as a pagan god in person, was well calculated to captivate the love of the crowd. His prodigious personal vanity, which led him to delight in sumptuous raiment and gorgeous shows; the state and ceremony with which he surrounded himself and his skill in manly exercises, were all points in his favour with a pleasure-yearning populace which had been squeezed of its substance without seeing any return for it: whilst his ardent admiration for the learning which had during his lifetime become the fashion made grave scholars lose their judgment and write like flattering slaves about the youth of eighteen who now became unquestioned King of England and master of his father’s hoarded treasures.

As we shall see in the course of this history, Henry was but a whited sepulchre. Young, light-hearted, with every one about him praising him as a paragon, and his smallest whim indulged as a divine command, there was no incitement for the exhibition of the baser qualities that underlay the big, popular manner, the flamboyant patriotism, and, it must be added, the real ability which appealed alike to the gentle and simple over whom he was called to rule. Like many men of his peculiar physique, he was never a strong man morally, and his will grew weaker as his body increased in gross flabbiness. The obstinate self-assertion and violence that impressed most observers as strength, hid behind them a spirit that forever needed direction and support from a stronger soul. So long as he was allowed in appearance to have his own way and his policy was showy, he was, as one of his wisest ministers said in his last days, the easiest man in the world to manage. His sensuality, which was all his own, and his personal vanity, were the qualities by means of which one able councillor after another used him for the ends they had in view, until the bridle chafed him, and his temporary master was made to feel the vengeance of a weak despot who discovers that he has been ruled instead of ruling. In Henry’s personal character as sketched above we shall be able to find the key of the tremendous political events that made his reign the most important in our annals; and we shall see that his successive marriages were the outcome of subtle intrigues in which representatives of various parties took advantage of the King’s vanity and lasciviousness to promote their own political or religious views. That the emancipation of England from Rome was the ultimate result cannot fairly be placed to Henry’s personal credit. If he could have had his own way without breaking with the Papacy he would have preferred to maintain the connection; but the Reformation was in the air, and craftier brains than Henry’s led the King step by step by his ruling passions until he had gone too far to retreat. To what extent his various matrimonial adventures served these intrigues we shall see in the course of this book.

That Henry’s marriage with Katharine soon after his accession was politically expedient has been shown in the aforegoing pages; and the King’s Council were strongly in favour of it, with the exception of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor Warham, who was more purely ecclesiastical than his colleagues, and appears to have had doubts as to the canonical validity of the union. As we have seen, the Pope had given a dispensation for the marriage years before, in terms that covered the case of the union with Arthur having been duly consummated, though Katharine strenuously denied that it had been, or that she knew how the dispensation was worded. The Spanish confessor also appears to have suggested to Fuensalida some doubts as to the propriety of the marriage, but King Ferdinand promptly put his veto upon any such scruples. Had not the Pope given his dispensation? he asked; and did not the peace of England and Spain depend upon the marriage? The sin would be not the marriage, but the failure to effect it after the pledges that had been given. So the few doubters were silenced; young Henry himself, all eager for his marriage, was not one of them, nor was Katharine, for to her the match was a triumph for which she had worked and suffered for years: and on the 11th June 1509 the pair were married privately by Warham at Henry’s palace of Greenwich.

Rarely in its long history has London seen so brave a pageant as the bride and bridegroom’s triumphal passage through the city on Saturday the 21st June from the Tower to Westminster for their coronation. Rich tapestries, and hangings of cloth of gold, decked the streets through which they passed. The city companies lined the way from Gracechurch Street to Bread Street, where the Lord Mayor and the senior guild stood in bright array, whilst the goldsmiths’ shops in Chepe had each to adorn it a figure of the Holy Virgin in white with many wax tapers around it. The Queen rode in a litter of white and gold tissue drawn by two snowy palfreys, she herself being garbed in white satin and gold, with a dazzling coronet of precious stones upon her head, from which fell almost to her feet her dark russet hair. She was twenty-four years of age, and in the full flush of womanhood; her regular classical features and fair skin bore yet the curves of gracious youth; and there need be no doubt of the sincerity of the ardent affection for her borne by the pink and white young giant who rode before her, a dazzling vision of crimson velvet, cloth of gold, and flashing precious stones. “God save your Grace,” was the cry that rattled like platoon firing along the crowded ways, as the splendid cavalcade passed on.

The next day, Sunday, 24th June, the pair were crowned in the Abbey with all the tedious pomp of the times. Then the Gargantuan feast in Westminster Hall, of which the chronicler spares us no detail, and the endless jousts and devices, in which roses and pomegranates, castles and leopards jostled each other in endless magnificence, until a mere catalogue of the splendour grows meaningless. The death of the King’s wise old grandmother, the Countess of Richmond, interrupted for a time the round of festivities; but Henry was too new to the unchecked indulgence of his taste for splendour and pleasure to abandon them easily, and his English councillors, as well as the watchful Spanish agents, began before many weeks were over to hint gravely that the young king was neglecting his business. Katharine appears to have entered fully into the life of pleasure led by her husband. Writing to her father on the 29th July, she is enthusiastic in her praise. “We are all so happy,” she says; “our time passes in continual feasting.” But in her case, at least, we see that mixed with the frivolous pleasure there was the personal triumph of the politician who had succeeded. “One of the principal reasons why I love my husband the King, is because he is so true a son to your Majesty. I have obeyed your orders and have acted as your ambassador. My husband places himself entirely in your hands. This country of England is truly your own now, and is tranquil and deeply loyal to the King and to me.” What more could wife or stateswoman ask? Katharine had her reward. Henry was hers and England was at the bidding of Ferdinand, and her sufferings had not been in vain. Henry, for his part, was, if we are to believe his letters to his father-in-law, as much enamoured of his wife as she was satisfied with him.[19]

And so, amidst magnificent shows, and what seems to our taste puerile trifling, the pair began their married life highly contented with each other and the world. The inevitable black shadows were to come later. In reality they were an entirely ill-matched couple, even apart from the six years’ disparity in their ages. Henry, a bluff bully, a coward morally, and also perhaps physically,[20] a liar, who deceived himself as well as others, in order to keep up appearances in his favour, he was just the man that a clever, tactful woman could have managed perfectly, beginning early in his life as Katharine did. Katharine, for all her goodness of heart and exalted piety, was, as we have seen, none too scrupulous herself; and if her ability and dexterity had been equal to her opportunities she might have kept Henry in bondage for life. But, even before her growing age and fading charms had made her distasteful to her husband, her lack of prudence and management towards him had caused him to turn to others for the guidance that she might still have exercised.

The first rift of which we hear came less than a year after the marriage. Friar Diego, who was now Katharine’s chancellor, wrote an extraordinary letter to King Ferdinand in May 1510, telling him of a miscarriage that Katharine had had at the end of January; the affair he says having been so secret that no one knew it but the King, two Spanish women, the physician, and himself; and the details he furnishes show him to have been as ignorant as he was impudent. Incidentally, however, he says: “Her Highness is very healthy and the most beautiful creature in the world, with the greatest gaiety and contentment that ever was. The King adores her, and her Highness him.” But with this letter to the King went another to his secretary, Almazan, from the new Spanish ambassador, Carroz, who complains bitterly that the friar monopolises the Queen entirely, and prevents his access to her. He then proceeds to tell of Henry and Katharine’s first matrimonial tiff. The two married sisters of the Duke of Buckingham were at Court, one being a close friend of Katharine whilst the other was said to be carrying on an intrigue with the King through his favourite, Sir William Compton. This lady’s family, and especially her brother the Duke, who had a violent altercation with Compton, and her sister the Queen’s friend, shocked at the scandal, carried her away to a convent in the country. In revenge for this the King sent the Queen’s favourite away, and quarrelled with Katharine. Carroz was all for counselling prudence and diplomacy to the Queen; but he complains that Friar Diego was advising her badly and putting her on bad terms with her husband.

Many false alarms, mostly, it would seem, set afloat by the meddling friar, and dwelt upon by him in his letters with quite unbecoming minuteness, kept the Court agog as to the possibility of an heir to the crown being born. Henry himself, who was always fond of children, was desperately anxious for a son; and when, on New Year’s Day 1511, the looked-for heir was born at Richmond, the King’s unrestrained rejoicing again took his favourite form of sumptuous entertainments, after he had ridden to the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham in Norfolk to give thanks for the favour vouchsafed to him. Once again Westminster glittered with cloth of gold and gems and velvet. Once again courtiers came to the lists disguised as hermits, to kneel before Katharine, and then to cast off their gowns and stand in full panoply before her, craving for leave to tilt in her honour. Once again fairy bowers of gold and artificial flowers sheltered sylvan beauties richly bedizened, the King and his favourites standing by in purple satin garments with the solid gold initials of himself and his wife sewn upon them. Whilst the dazzling company was dancing the “scenery” was rolled back. It came too near the crowd of lieges at the end of the hall, and pilfering fingers began to pluck the golden ornaments from the bowers. Emboldened by their immunity for this, people broke the bounds, swarmed into the central space, and in the twinkling of an eye all the lords and ladies, even the King himself, found themselves stripped of their finery to their very shirts, the golden letters and precious tissues intended as presents for fine ladies being plunder now in grimy hands that turned them doubtless to better account. Henry in his bluff fashion made the best of it, and called the booty largesse. Little recked he, if the tiny heir whose existence fed his vanity throve. But the babe died soon after this costly celebration of his birth.

During the ascendency that the anticipated coming of a son gave to Katharine, Ferdinand was able to beguile Henry into an offensive league against France, by using the same bait that had so often served a similar purpose with Henry VII.; namely, the reconquest for England of Guienne and Normandy. Spain, the Empire, the Papacy, and England formed a coalition that boded ill for the French cause in Italy. As usual the showy but barren part fell to Henry. Ferdinand promised him soldiers to conquer Normandy, but they never came. All Ferdinand wanted was to keep as many Frenchmen as possible from his own battle-grounds, and he found plenty of opportunities for evading all his pledges. Henry was flattered to the top of his bent. The Pope sent him the blessed golden rose, and saluted him as head of the Italian league; and the young king, fired with martial ardour, allowed himself to be dragged into war by his wife’s connections, in opposition to the opinion of the wiser heads in his Council. A war with France involved hostilities with Scotland, but Henry was, in the autumn of 1512, cajoled into depleting his realm of troops and sending an army to Spain to attack France over the Pyrenees, whilst another force under Poynings went to help the allies against the Duke of Gueldres. The former host under the Marquis of Dorset was kept idle by its commander because it was found that Ferdinand really required them to reduce the Spanish kingdom of Navarre, and after months of inactivity and much mortality from sickness, they returned ingloriously home to England. This was Henry’s first experience of armed alliances, but he learned nothing by experience, and to the end of his life the results of such coalitions to him were always the same.

But his ambition was still unappeased, and in June 1513 he in person led his army across the Channel to conquer France. His conduct in the campaign was puerile in its vanity and folly, and ended lamely with the capture of two (to him) unimportant fortresses in the north, Therouenne and Tournai, and the panic flight of the French at the Battle of the Spurs or Guingate. Our business with this foolish and fruitless campaign, in which Henry was every one’s tool, is confined to the part that Katharine played at the time. On the King’s ostentatious departure from Dover he left Katharine regent of the realm, with the Earl of Surrey—afterwards Duke of Norfolk—to command the army in the north. Katharine, we are told, rode back from Dover to London full of dolour for her lord’s departure; but we see her in her element during the subsequent months of her regency. Bold and spirited, and it must be added utterly tactless, she revelled in the independent domination which she enjoyed. James IV. of Scotland had threatened that an English invasion of France would be followed by his own invasion of England. “Let him do it in God’s name,” shouted Henry; and Katharine when the threat was made good delivered a splendid oration in English to the officers who were going north to fight the Scots. “Remember,” she said, “that the Lord smiled upon those who stood in defence of their own. Remember that the English courage excels that of all other nations upon earth.”[21] Her letters to Wolsey, who accompanied Henry as almoner, or rather secretary, are full of courage, and as full of womanly anxiety for her husband. “She was troubled,” she wrote, “to learn that the King was so near the siege of Therouenne,” until Wolsey’s letter assured her of the heed he takes to avoid all manner of dangers. “With his life and health nothing can come amiss with him, without them I see no manner of good thing that shall fall after it.” But her tactlessness even in this letter shows clearly when she boasts that the King in France is not so busy with war as she is in England against the Scots. “My heart is very good of it, and I am horribly busy making standards, banners, and badges.”[22] After congratulating Henry effusively upon the capture of Therouenne and his meeting with the Emperor, Katharine herself set forth with reinforcements towards Scotland, but before she had travelled a hundred miles (to Woburn) she met the couriers galloping south to bring her the great news of Surrey’s victory at Flodden Field. Turning aside to thank Our Lady of Walsingham for the destruction of the Scottish power, Katharine on the way sent the jubilant news to Henry. James IV. in his defeat had been left dead upon the field, clad in his check surcoat, and a fragment of this coat soaked with blood the Queen sent to her husband in France, with a heartless gibe at his dead brother-in-law. We are told that in another of her letters first giving the news of Flodden, and referring to Henry’s capture of the Duke of Longueville at Therouenne, she vaingloriously compared her victory with his.[23] “It was no great thing for one armed man to take another, but she was sending three captured by a woman; if he (Henry) sent her a captive Duke she would send him a prisoner king.” For a wife and locum tenens to write thus in such circumstances to a supremely vain man like Henry, whose martial ambition was still unassuaged, was to invite his jealousy and dislike. His people saw, as he with all his boastfulness cannot fail to have done, that Flodden was the real English victory, not Therouenne, and that Katharine and Surrey, not Henry, were the heroes. Such knowledge was gall and wormwood to the King; and especially when the smoke of battle had blown away, and he saw how he had been “sold” by his wife’s relations, who kept the fruit of victory whilst he was put off with the shell.

From that time Katharine’s influence over her husband weakened, though with occasional intermission, and he looked for guidance to a subtler mind than hers. With Henry to France had gone Thomas Wolsey, one of the clergy of the royal chapel, recently appointed almoner by the patronage of Fox, Bishop of Winchester, Henry’s leading councillor in foreign affairs. The English nobles, strong as they still were territorially, could not be trusted with the guidance of affairs by a comparatively new dynasty depending upon parliament and the towns for its power; and an official class, raised at the will of the sovereign, had been created by Henry VII., to be used as ministers and administrators. Such a class, dependent entirely upon the crown, were certain to be distasteful to the noble families, and the rivalry between these two governing elements provided the germ of party divisions which subsequently hardened into the English constitutional tradition: the officials usually being favourable to the strengthening of the royal prerogative, and the nobles desiring to maintain the check which the armed power of feudalism had formerly exercised. For reasons which will be obvious, the choice of both Henry VII. and his son of their diplomatists and ministers fell to a great extent upon clergymen; and Wolsey’s brilliant talents and facile adaptiveness during his close attendance upon Henry in France captivated his master, who needed for a minister and guide one that could never become a rival either in the field or the ladies’ chamber, where the King most desired distinction.

Henry came home in October 1513, bitterly enraged against Katharine’s kin, and ripe for the close alliance with France which the prisoner Duke of Longueville soon managed to bring about. What mattered it that lovely young Mary Tudor was sacrificed in marriage to the decrepit old King Louis XII., notwithstanding her previous solemn betrothal to Katharine’s nephew, young Charles of Austria, and her secret love for Henry’s bosom friend, Sir Charles Brandon? Princesses were but pieces in the great political game, and must perforce take the rough with the smooth. Henry, in any case, could thus show to the Spaniard that he could defy him by a French connection. It must have been with a sad heart that Katharine took part in the triumphal doings that celebrated the peace directed against her father. The French agents, then in London, in describing her say that she was lively and gracious, quite the opposite of her gloomy sister: and doubtless she did her best to appear so, for she was proud and schooled to disappointment; but with the exception of the fact that she was again with child, all around her looked black. Her husband openly taunted her with her father’s ill faith; Henry was carrying on now an open intrigue with Lady Tailebois, whom he had brought from Calais with him; Ferdinand the Catholic at last was slowly dying, all his dreams and hopes frustrated; and on the 13th August 1514, in the palace of Greenwich, Katharine’s dear friend and sister-in-law, Mary Tudor, was married by proxy to Louis XII. Katharine, led by the Duke of Longueville, attended the festivity. She was dressed in ash-coloured satin, covered with raised gold embroidery, costly chains and necklaces of gems covered her neck and bust, and a coif trimmed with precious stones was on her head.[24] The King at the ball in the evening charmed every one by his graceful dancing, and the scene was so gay that the grave Venetian ambassador says that had it not been for his age and office he would have cast off his gown and have footed it with the rest.

But already sinister whispers were rife, and we may be sure they were not unknown to Katharine. She had been married five years, and no child of hers had lived; and, though she was again pregnant, it was said that the Pope would be asked to authorise Henry to put her aside, and to marry a French bride. Had not his new French brother-in-law done the like years ago?[25] To what extent this idea had really entered Henry’s head at the time it is difficult to say; but courtiers and diplomatists have keen eyes, and they must have known which way the wind was blowing before they talked thus. In October 1514 Katharine was borne slowly in a litter to Dover, with the great concourse that went to speed Mary Tudor on her loveless two months’ marriage; and a few weeks afterwards Katharine gave birth prematurely to a dead child. Once more the hopes of Henry were dashed, and though Peter Martyr ascribed the misfortune to Henry’s unkindness, the superstitious time-servers of the King, and those in favour of the French alliance, began to hint that Katharine’s offspring was accursed, and that to get an heir the King must take another wife. The doings at Court were still as brilliant and as frivolous as ever; the King’s great delight being in adopting some magnificent, and, of course, perfectly transparent disguise in masque or ball, and then to disclose himself when every one, the Queen included, was supposed to be lost in wonder at the grace and agility of the pretended unknown. Those who take pleasure in the details of such puerility may be referred to Hall’s Chronicle for them: we here have more to do with the hearts beneath the finery, than with the trappings themselves.

That Katharine was striving desperately at this time to retain her influence over her husband, and her popularity in England, is certain from the letter of Ferdinand’s ambassador (6th December 1514). He complains that on the recommendation of Friar Diego Katharine had thrown over her father’s interests in order to keep the love of Henry and his people. The Castilian interest and the Manuels have captured her, wrote the ambassador, and if Ferdinand did not promptly “put a bridle on this colt” (i.e. Henry) and bring Katharine to her bearings as her father’s daughter, England would be for ever lost to Aragon.[26] There is no doubt that at this time Katharine felt that her only chance of keeping her footing was to please Henry, and “forget Spain,” as Friar Diego advised her to do.

When the King of France died on New Year’s Day, 1515, and his young widow—Katharine’s friend, Mary Tudor—clandestinely married her lover, Charles Brandon, Katharine’s efforts to reconcile her husband to the peccant pair are evidence, if no other existed, that Henry’s anger was more assumed than real, and that his vanity was pleased by the submissive prayers for his forgiveness. As no doubt the Queen, and Wolsey, who had joined his efforts with hers, foresaw, not only were Mary and Brandon pardoned, but taken into high favour. At the public marriage of Mary and Brandon at Greenwich at Easter 1515 more tournaments, masques and balls, enabled the King to show off his gallantry and agility in competition with his new brother-in-law; and on the subsequent May Day at Shooter’s Hill, Katharine and Mary, who were inseparable, took part in elaborate and costly al fresco entertainments in which Robin Hood, several pagan deities, and the various attributes of spring, were paraded for their delectation. It all sounds very gay, though somewhat silly, as we read the endless catalogues of bedizenment, of tilts and races, feasting, dancing, and music that delighted Henry and his friends; but before Katharine there ever hovered the spectre of her childlessness, and Henry, after the ceremonial gaiety and overdone gallantry to his wife, would too frequently put spurs to his courser and gallop off to New Hall in Essex, where Lady Tailebois lived.

A gleam of hope and happiness came to her late in 1515 when she was again expecting to become a mother. By liberal gifts—“the greatest presents ever brought to England,” said Henry himself—and by flattery unlimited, Ferdinand, almost on his death-bed, managed to “bridle” his son-in-law, to borrow a large sum of money from him and draw him anew into a coalition against France. But the hope was soon dashed; King Ferdinand died almost simultaneously with the birth of a girl-child to his daughter Katharine. It is true the babe was like to live, but a son, not a daughter, was what Henry wanted. Yet he put the best face on the matter publicly. The Venetian ambassador purposely delayed his congratulations, because the child was of the wrong sex; and when finally he coldly offered them, he pointedly told the King that they would have been much more hearty if the child had been a son. “We are both young,” replied Henry. “If it is a daughter this time, by the grace of God sons will follow.” The desire of the King for a male heir was perfectly natural. No Queen had reigned independently over England; and for the perpetuation of a new dynasty like the Tudors the succession in the male line was of the highest importance. In addition to this, Henry was above all things proud of his manliness, and he looked upon the absence of a son as in some sort reflecting a humiliation upon him.

Katharine’s health had never been robust; and at the age of thirty-three, after four confinements, she had lost her bloom. Disappointment and suffering, added to her constitutional weakness, was telling upon her, and her influence grew daily smaller. The gorgeous shows and frivolous amusements in which her husband so much delighted palled upon her, and she now took little pains to feign enjoyment in them, giving up much of her time to religious exercises, fasting rigidly twice a week and saints’ days throughout the year, in addition to the Lenten observances, and wearing beneath her silks and satins a rough Franciscan nun’s gown of serge. As in the case of so many of her kindred, mystical devotion was weaving its grey web about her, and saintliness of the peculiar Spanish type was covering her as with a garment. Henry, on the contrary, was a full-blooded young man of twenty-eight, with a physique like that of a butcher, held by no earthly control or check upon his appetites, overflowing with vitality and the joy of life; and it is not to be wondered at that he found his disillusioned and consciously saintly wife a somewhat uncomfortable companion.

The death of Louis XII., Maximilian, and Ferdinand, and the peaceful accession of young Charles to the throne of Spain and the prospective imperial crown, entirely altered the political aspect of Europe. Francis I. needed peace in the first years of his reign; and to Charles it was also desirable, in order that his rule over turbulent Spain could be firmly established and his imperial succession secured. All the English ministers and councillors were heavily bribed by France, Wolsey himself was strongly in favour of the French connection, and everybody entered into a conspiracy to flatter Henry. The natural result was a league first of England and France, and subsequently a general peace to which all the principal Christian potentates subscribed, and men thought that the millennium had come. Katharine’s international importance had disappeared with the death of her father and the accession of Charles to the throne of Aragon as well as to that of Castile. Wolsey was now Henry’s sole adviser in matters of state and managed his master dexterously, whilst endeavouring not entirely to offend the Queen. Glimpses of his harmonious relations with Katharine at this time (1516-1520) are numerous. At the splendid christening of the Princess Mary, Wolsey was one of the sponsors, and he was “gossip” with Katharine at the baptism of Mary Tudor Duchess of Suffolk’s son.

Nor can the Queen’s famous action after the evil May Day (1517) have been opposed or discountenanced by the Cardinal. The universal peace had brought to London hosts of foreigners, especially Frenchmen, and the alien question was acute. Wolsey, whose sudden rise and insolence had deeply angered the nobles, had, as principal promoter of the unpopular peace with France, to bear a full share of the detestation in which his friends the aliens were held. Late in April there were rumours that a general attack upon foreigners by the younger citizens would be made, and at Wolsey’s instance the civic authorities ordered that all the Londoners should keep indoors. Some lads in Chepe disregarded the command, and the Alderman of the Ward attempted to arrest one of them. Then rose the cry of “’Prentices and Clubs! Death to the Cardinal!” and forth there poured from lane and alley riotous youngsters by the hundred, to wreak vengeance on the insolent foreigners who took the bread out of worthy Englishmen’s mouths. Sack and pillage reigned for a few hours, but the guard quelled the boys with blood, the King rode hastily from Richmond, the Lieutenant of the Tower dropped a few casual cannon-balls into the city, and before sunset all was quiet. The gibbets rose at the street corners and a bloody vengeance fell upon the rioters. Dozens were hanged, drawn, and quartered with atrocious cruelty; and under the ruthless Duke of Norfolk four hundred more were condemned to death for treason to the King, who, it was bitterly said in London, loved outlanders better than his own folk. It is unlikely that Henry really meant to plunge all his capital in mourning by hanging the flower of its youth, but he loved, for vanity’s sake, that his clemency should be publicly sought, and to act the part of a deity in restoring to life those legally dead. In any case, Katharine’s spontaneous and determined intercession for the ’prentice lads would take no denial, and she pleaded with effect. Her intercession, nevertheless, could hardly have been so successful as it was if Wolsey had been opposed to it; and the subsequent comedy in the great Hall at Westminster on the 22nd May was doubtless planned to afford Henry an opportunity of appearing in his favourite character. Seated upon a canopied throne high upon a daïs of brocade, surrounded by his prelates and nobles and with Wolsey by his side, Henry frowned in crimson velvet whilst the “poore younglings and olde false knaves” trooped in, a sorry procession, stripped to their shirts, with halters around their necks. Wolsey in stern words rebuked their crime, and scolded the Lord Mayor and Aldermen for their laxity; ending by saying they all deserved to hang. “Mercy! gracious lord, mercy!” cried the terrified boys and their distracted mothers behind; and the Cardinal and the peers knelt before the throne to beg the life of the offenders, which the King granted, and with a great shout of joy halters were stripped from many a callow neck, and cast into the rafters of the Hall for very joy. But all men knew, and the mothers too, that Wolsey’s intercession was only make-believe, and that what they saw was but the ceremonial act of grace. The Queen they thanked in their hearts and not the haughty Cardinal, for the King had pardoned the ’prentices privately days before, when Katharine and her two sisters-in-law, the widowed Queens of France and Scotland, had knelt before the King in unfeigned tears, and had clamoured for the lives of the Londoners. To the day of the Queen’s unhappy death this debt was never forgotten by the citizens, who loved her faithfully to the end far better than any of her successors.

The sweating sickness in the autumn of 1517 sent Henry and his wife as far away from contagion as possible, for sickness always frightened the big bully into a panic. During his absence from London, Wolsey was busy negotiating a still closer alliance with France, by the marriage of the baby Princess Mary to the newly born Dauphin. It can hardly have been the match that Katharine would have chosen for her cherished only child, but she was a cypher by the side of Wolsey now, and made no open move against it at the time. Early in the spring of 1518 the plague broke out again, and Henry in dire fear started upon a progress in the midlands. Richard Pace, who accompanied him, wrote to Wolsey on the 12th April telling him as a secret that the Queen was again pregnant. “I pray God heartily,” he continued, “that it may be a prince to the surety and universal comfort of the realm;” and he begs the Cardinal to write a kind letter to the Queen. In June the glad tidings were further confirmed, as likely to result in “an event most earnestly desired by the whole kingdom.” Still dodging the contagion, the King almost fled from one place to another, and when at Woodstock in July Henry himself wrote a letter to Wolsey which tells in every line how anxious he was that the coming event should be the fulfilment of his ardent hope. Katharine had awaited him at Woodstock, and he had been rejoiced at the confident hope she gave him. He tells Wolsey the news formally, and says that he will remove the Queen as little and as quietly as may be to avoid risk. Soon all the diplomatists were speculating at the great things that would happen when the looked-for prince was born; and it was probably the confident hope that this time Henry would not be disappointed, that made possible the success of Wolsey’s policy and the marriage of the Princess Mary with the infant Dauphin. Of Wolsey’s magnificent feasts that accompanied the ratification of peace and the betrothal on the 5th October, feasts more splendid, says the Venetian ambassador, than ever were given by Caligula or Cleopatra, no account can be given here. It was Wolsey’s great triumph, and he surpassed all the records of luxury in England in its celebration. The sweet little bride dressed in cloth of gold stood before the thrones upon which her father and mother sat in the great Hall of Greenwich, and then, carried in the arms of a prelate, was held up whilst the Cardinal slipped the diamond wedding-ring upon her finger and blessed her nuptials with the baby bridegroom. That the heir of France should marry the heiress of England was a danger to the balance of Europe, and especially a blow to Spain. It was, moreover, not a match which England could regard with equanimity; for a French King Consort would have been repugnant to the whole nation, and Henry could never have meant to conclude the marriage finally, unless the expected heir was born. But alas! for human hopes. On the night of 10th November 1518, Katharine was delivered of a daughter, “to the vexation of as many as knew it,” and King and nation mourned together, now that, after all, a Frenchman might reign over England.

To Katharine this last disappointment was bitter indeed. Her husband, wounded and irritated, first in his pride, and now in his national interests, avoided her; her own country and kin had lost the English tie that meant so much to them, and she herself, in poor health and waning attractions, could only mourn her misfortunes, and cling more closely than ever to her one darling child, Mary, for the new undesired infant girl had died as soon as it was born. The ceaseless round of masking, mummery, and dancing, which so much captivated Henry, went on without abatement, and Katharine perforce had to take her part in it; but all the King’s tenderness was now shown not to his wife but to his little daughter, whom he carried about in his arms and praised inordinately.[27] So frivolous and familiar indeed had Henry’s behaviour grown that his Council took fright, and, under the thin veil of complaints against the behaviour of his boon companions, Carew, Peachy, Wingfield, and Brian, who were banished from Court, they took Henry himself seriously to task. The four French hostages, held for the payment of the war indemnity, were also feasted and entertained so familiarly by Henry, under Wolsey’s influence, as to cause deep discontent to the lieges, who had always looked upon France as an enemy, and knew that the unpopular Cardinal’s overwhelming display was paid for by French bribes. At one such entertainment Katharine was made to act as hostess at her dower-house of Havering in Essex, where, in the summer of 1519, we are told that, “for their welcomyng she purveyed all thynges in the most liberalist manner; and especially she made to the Kyng suche a sumpteous banket that he thanked her hartely, and the strangers gave it great praise.” Later in the same year Katharine was present at a grand series of entertainments given by the King in the splendid new manor-house which he had built for Lady Tailebois, who had just rejoiced him by giving birth to a son. We have no record of Katharine’s thoughts as she took part here in the tedious foolery so minutely described by Hall. She plucked off the masks, we are told, of eight disguised dancers in long dominos of blue satin and gold, “who danced with the ladies sadly, and communed not with them after the fashion of maskers.” Of course the masqueraders were the Duke of Suffolk (Brandon) and other great nobles, as the poor Queen must well have known; but when she thought that all this mummery was to entertain Frenchmen, and the house in which it passed was devoted to the use of Henry’s mistress, she must have covered her own heart with a more impenetrable mask than those of Suffolk and his companions, if her face was attuned to the gay sights and sounds around her.

KATHARINE OF ARAGON

From a portrait by Holbein in the National Portrait Gallery

Katharine had now almost ceased to strive for the objects to which her life had been sacrificed, namely, the binding together of England and Spain to the detriment of France. Wolsey had believed that his own interests would be better served by a close French alliance, and he had had his way. Henry himself was but the vainglorious figure in the international pageant; the motive power was the Cardinal. But a greater than Wolsey, Charles of Austria and Spain, though he was as yet only a lad of nineteen, had appeared upon the scene, and soon was to make his power felt throughout the world. Wolsey’s close union with France and the marriage of the Princess Mary with the Dauphin had been meant as a blow to Spain, to lead if possible to the election of Henry to the imperial crown, in succession to Maximilian, instead of the latter’s grandson Charles. If the King of England were made Emperor, the way of the Cardinal of York to the throne of St. Peter was clear. Henry was flattered at the idea, and was ready to follow his minister anywhere to gain such a showy prize. But quite early in the struggle it was seen that the unpopular French alliance which had already cost England the surrender of the King’s conquests in the war was powerless to bring about the result desired. Francis I., as vain and turbulent as Henry, and perhaps more able, was bidding high for the Empire himself. His success in the election would have been disastrous both to Spain and England, and yet the French alliance was too dear to Wolsey to be easily relinquished, and Francis was assured that all the interest of his dear brother of England should be cast in his favour, whilst, with much more truth, the Spanish candidate was plied with good wishes for his success, and underhand attempts were made at the same time to gain the electors for the King of England.[28] Wolsey hoped thus to win in any case; and up to a certain point he did so; for he gave to Charles the encouragement he needed for the masterly move which soon after revolutionised political relations.

Charles at this time (1519), young as he was, had already developed his marvellous mental and physical powers. Patient and self-centred, with all his Aragonese grandfather’s subtlety, he possessed infinitely greater boldness and width of view. He knew well that the seven prince electors who chose the Emperor might, like other men, be bought, if enough money could be found. To provide it and give to him the dominant power of the world, he was ready to crush the ancient liberties of Castile, to squeeze his Italian and Flemish dominions of their last obtainable ducat, for he knew that his success in the election would dazzle his subjects until they forgot what they had paid for it. And so it happened. Where Francis bribed in hundreds Charles bribed in thousands, and England in the conflict of money-bags and great territorial interests hardly counted at all. When Charles was elected Emperor in June 1519, Henry professed himself delighted; but it meant that the universal peace that had been proclaimed with such a flourish of trumpets only three years before was already tottering, and that England must soon make a choice as to which of the two great rivals should be her friend, and which her enemy.

Francis nursed his wrath to keep it warm, and did his best to retain Henry and Wolsey on his side. Bribes and pensions flowed freely from France upon English councillors, the inviolable love of Henry and Francis, alike in gallantry and age, was insisted upon again and again; the three-year-old Princess Mary was referred to always as Dauphiness and future Queen of France, though when the little Dauphin was spoken of as future King of England, Henry’s subjects pulled a wry face and cursed all Frenchmen. A meeting between the two allies, which for its splendour should surpass all other regal displays, was constantly urged by the French hostages in England by order of Francis, as a means of showing to the world that he could count upon Henry. To the latter the meeting was agreeable as a tribute to his power, and as a satisfaction to his love of show, and to Wolsey it was useful as enhancing his sale value in the eyes of two lavish bidders. To Charles, who shared none of the frivolous tastes of his rival sovereigns, it only appealed as a design against him to be forestalled and defeated. When, therefore, the preparations for the Field of the Cloth of Gold were in full swing early in the year 1520, Charles, by a brilliant though risky move such as his father Philip would have loved, took the first step to win England to his side in the now inevitable struggle for supremacy between the Empire and France. Whilst he was still wrangling with his indignant Castilian parliament in March, Charles sent envoys to England to propose a friendly meeting with Henry whilst on his way by sea from Spain to Flanders. It was Katharine’s chance and she made the most of it. She had suffered long and patiently whilst the French friendship was paramount; but if God would vouchsafe her the boon of seeing her nephew in England it would, she said to his envoys, be the measure of her desires. Wolsey, too, smiled upon the suggestion, for failing Francis the new Emperor in time might help him to the Papacy. So, with all secrecy, a solemn treaty was signed on the 11th April 1520, settling, down to the smallest details, the reception of Charles by Henry and Katharine at Sandwich and Canterbury, on his voyage or else at a subsequent meeting of the monarchs between Calais and Gravelines.

It was late in May when news came from the west that the Spanish fleet was sailing up the Channel;[29] and Henry was riding towards the sea from London ostensibly to embark for France when he learnt that the Emperor’s ships were becalmed off Dover. Wolsey was despatched post-haste to greet the imperial visitor and invite him to land; and Charles, surrounded by a gorgeous suite of lords and ladies, with the black eagle of Austria on cloth of gold fluttering over and around him, was conducted to Dover Castle, where before dawn next morning, the 27th May, Henry arrived and welcomed his nephew. There was no mistaking the cordiality of the English cheers that rang in peals from Dover to Canterbury and through the ancient city, as the two monarchs rode side by side in gorgeous array. They meant, as clearly as tone could speak, that the enemy of France and Queen Katharine’s nephew was the friend for the English people, whatever the Cardinal of York might think. To Katharine it was a period of rejoicing, and her thoughts were high as she welcomed her sister’s son; the sallow young man with yellow hair, already in title the greatest monarch in the world, though beset with difficulties. By her stood beautiful Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk, twice married since she had, as a child, been betrothed under such heavy guarantees to Charles himself; and, holding her mother’s hand, was the other Mary Tudor, a prim, quaint little maid of four, with big brown eyes. Already great plans for her filled her mother’s brain. True, she was betrothed to the Dauphin; but what if the hateful French match fell through, and the Emperor, he of her own kin, were to seal a national alliance by marrying the daughter of England? Charles feasted for four days at Canterbury, and then went on his way amidst loving plaudits to his ships at Sandwich; but before he sailed he whispered that to Wolsey which made the Cardinal his servant; for the Emperor, suzerain of Italy and King of Naples, Sicily, and Spain, might do more than a King of France in future towards making a Pope.

By the time that Henry and Francis met early in June on the ever-memorable field between Ardres and Guisnes, the riot of splendour which surrounded the sovereigns and Wolsey, though it dazzled the crowd and left its mark upon history as a pageant, was known to the principal actors of the scene to be but hollow mockery. The glittering baubles that the two kings loved, the courtly dallying, the pompous ceremony, the masques and devices to symbolise eternal amity, were not more evanescent than the love they were supposed to perpetuate. Katharine went through her ceremonial part of the show as a duty, and graciously received the visit of Francis in the wonderful flimsy palace of wood, drapery, and glass at Guisnes; but her heart was across the Flemish frontier a few miles away, where her nephew awaited the coming of the King of England to greet him as his kinsman and future ally. Gravelines was a poor place, but Charles had other ways of influencing people than by piling up gewgaws before them. A single day of rough, hearty feasting was an agreeable relief to Henry after the glittering insincerity of Guisnes; and the four days following, in which Charles was entertained at Calais as the guest of Henry and Katharine, made up in prodigality for the coarseness of the Flemish fare;[30] whilst Wolsey, who was already posing as the arbitrator between all Christian potentates, was secured to the side of the Emperor in future by a grant of the bulk of the income from two Spanish bishoprics, Badajoz and Palencia.

Already the two great rivals were bidding against each other for allies, and Charles, though his resources were less concentrated than those of Francis, could promise most. Leo X. for his own territorial ambition, and in fear of Luther, rallied to the side of the Emperor, the German princes seconded their suzerain, and the great struggle for the supremacy of Christendom began in March 1521. England by treaty was bound to assist France, but this did not suit Wolsey or Henry in their new mood, and the Cardinal pressed his arbitration on the combatants. Francis reluctantly consented to negotiate; but minds were aflame with a subject that added fierceness to the political rivalry between Charles and Francis. The young Emperor, when he had met the German princes at Worms (April 1521), had thrown down the gage to Luther, and thenceforward it was war to the knife between the old faith and the new spirit. Henry, we may be certain to the delight of Katharine, violently attacked Luther in his famous book, and was flattered by the fulsome praises of the Pope and the Emperor. In the circumstances Wolsey’s voyage to Calais for the furtherance of arbitration was turned into one to conclude an armed alliance with Charles and the Pope. The Cardinal, who had bent all others to his will, was himself bent by the Emperor; and the arbitrator between two monarchs became the servant of one. By the treaty signed at Bruges by Wolsey for Henry, Charles contracted an engagement to marry his little cousin, Princess Mary, and to visit England for a formal betrothal in the following year.

How completely Wolsey had at this time surrendered himself to the Emperor, is evident from Katharine’s new attitude towards him. During his period of French sympathy she had been, as we have seen, practically alienated from state affairs, but now in Henry’s letters to Wolsey her name is frequently mentioned and her advice was evidently welcome.[31] During his absence in Flanders, for instance, Wolsey received a letter from Henry, in which the King says: “The Queen, my wife, hath desired me to make her most hearty recommendation unto you, as to him that she loveth very well; and both she and I would fain know when you would repair unto us.” Great news came that the Emperor and his allies were brilliantly successful in the war, but in the midst of victory the great Medici, Pope Leo X., though still a man in his prime, died. There is no doubt that a secret promise had been made by Charles to Wolsey of his support in case a vacancy in the Papacy arose, but no one had dreamed of its occurring so quickly,[32] and Charles found his hand forced. He needed for his purpose a far more pliable instrument in the pontifical chair than the haughty Cardinal of York. So, whilst pretending to work strenuously to promote Wolsey’s elevation, and thus to gain the goodwill of Henry and his minister, he took care secretly that some humbler candidate, such as the one ultimately chosen by the Conclave, his old schoolmaster, Cardinal Adrian, should be the new Pope. Wolsey was somewhat sulky at the result of the election, and thenceforward looked with more distrust on the imperial connection; but, withal, he put as good a face on the matter as possible; and when, at the end of May 1522, he again welcomed the Emperor in Henry’s name as he set foot on English soil at Dover, the Cardinal, though watchful, was still favourable to the alliance. This visit of the young Emperor was the most splendid royal sojourn ever made in England; and Henry revelled in the ceremonies wherein he was the host of the greatest monarch upon earth.

Charles came with a train of a thousand horse and two thousand courtiers; and to feed and house such a multitude, the guilds of London, and even the principal citizens, were obliged to make return of all their spare beds and stocks of provisions in order to provide for the strangers. The journey of the monarchs was a triumphal progress from Dover through Canterbury, Sittingbourne, and Rochester to Gravesend. On the downs between Dover and Canterbury, Henry and a great train of nobles was to have met his nephew; but the more to do him honour the King rode into Dover itself, and with pride showed his visitor his new great ship the Harry Grace à Dieu, and the rest of the English fleet; whereupon, “the Emperor and his lords much praised the making of the ships, and especially the artillery: they said they had never seen ships so armed.” From Gravesend the gallant company rowed in the royal barges amidst salvoes of guns to Greenwich. There at the hall door of the palace stood Katharine surrounded by her ladies, and holding her tiny daughter by the hand. Sinking upon one knee the Emperor craved his aunt’s blessing, which was given, and thenceforward for five weeks the feasting and glorious shows went on without intermission.

On the second day after the arrival at Greenwich, whilst Henry was arming for a joust, a courier, all travel-stained and weary, demanded prompt audience, to hand the King a letter from his ambassador in France. The King read the despatch with knitted brows, and, turning to his friend Sir William Compton, said: “Go and tell the Emperor I have news for him.” When Charles came the letter was handed to him, and it must have rejoiced his heart as he read it. Francis bade defiance to the King of England, and thenceforward Henry and the Emperor were allies in arms against a common enemy. Glittering pageants followed in London and Windsor, where Charles sat as Knight of the Garter under triumphant Henry’s presidency; masques and dances, banquets and hunting, delighted the host and surprised the guests with the unrestrained lavishness of the welcome;[33] but we may be certain that what chiefly interested Katharine and her nephew was not this costly trifling, but the eternal friendship between England and Spain solemnly sworn upon the sacrament in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, by the Emperor and Henry, and the binding alliance between them in peace and war, cemented by the pledge that Charles should marry his cousin Mary Tudor and no one else in the world. It was Katharine’s final and greatest triumph, and the shadows fell thick and fast thereafter.

Henry promptly took his usual showy and unprofitable part in the war. Only a few weeks after the Emperor bade his new ally farewell, an English force invaded Picardy, and the Earl of Surrey’s fleet threatened all French shipping in the Channel. Coerced by the King of England too, Venice deserted France and joined forces with the allies; the new Pope and the Italian princes did the same, and the Emperor’s arms carried all before them in Italy. Henry was kept faithful to his ally by the vain hope of a dismemberment of France, in which he should be the principal gainer; the Pope Clement VII., the ambitious Medici, who succeeded Adrian in September 1523, hungered for fresh territory which Charles alone could give him; the rebel De Bourbon, the greatest soldier of France, was fighting against his own king; and in February 1525 the crushing blow of Pavia fell, and Francis, “all lost except honour,” was a prisoner in the hands of his enemy, who looking over Christendom saw none to say him nay but the bold monk at Wittemberg.

Three years of costly war for interests not primarily their own had already disillusioned the English people. By methods more violent and tyrannical than ever had been adopted by any previous king, Henry had wrung from parliament supplies so oppressive and extortionate for the purposes of the war as to disgust and incense the whole country. Wolsey, too, had been for the second time beguiled about the Papacy he coveted, and knew now that he could not trust the Emperor to serve any interests but his own. The French collapse at Pavia, moreover, and pity for the captive Francis languishing at Madrid, had caused in England and elsewhere a reaction in his favour. Henry himself was, as was his wont, violently angry at the cynical way in which his own hopes in France were shelved by Charles; and the Pope, alarmed now at the Emperor’s unchecked dominion in Italy, and the insufficient share of the spoil offered to him, also began to look askance at his ally. So, notwithstanding the official rejoicings in England when the news of Pavia came, and the revived plan of Henry and Wolsey to join Bourbon in his intention to dismember France, with or without the aid of Charles, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Warham, correctly interpreted the prevailing opinion in England in his letter to Wolsey (quoted by Hallam), saying that the people had “more cause to weep than to rejoice” at the French defeat. The renewed extortionate demands for money aroused in England discontent so dangerous as to reach rebellion against the King’s officers.[34] Risings in Kent and the eastern counties, and the outspoken remonstrances of the leaders of the middle and working classes at length convinced Wolsey, and through him the King, that a change of policy was inevitable. England once more had been made the cat’s-paw of Spain; and now, with an empty exchequer and a profoundly discontented people, was obliged again to shift its balance to the side which promised the best hopes for peace, and to redress the equilibrium in Europe upon which the English power depended. France was still rich in resources, and was made to pay or rather promise the vast sum of two million crowns in instalments, and an annuity of a hundred thousand a year to the King for England’s friendship, whilst Francis was forced to abandon all his claims on Italy and Burgundy (January 1526), and marry the Emperor’s sister Leonora, before he was permitted to return to France, at peace once more. It is true that every party to the treaties endeavoured to evade the fulfilment of his pledges; but that was the custom of the times. The point that interests us here is that the new policy now actively pursued by Wolsey of close friendship with France, necessarily meant the ruin of Katharine, unless she was dexterous and adaptable enough either to reverse the policy or openly espouse it. Unfortunately she did neither. She was now forty-one years of age, and had ceased for nearly two years to cohabit with her husband. Her health was bad; she had grown stout, and her comeliness had departed; all hopes of her giving to the King the son and heir for whom he so ardently craved had quite vanished, and with them much of her personal hold upon her husband. To her alarm and chagrin, Henry, as if in despair of being succeeded by a legitimate heir, in 1525, before signing the new alliance with France, had created his dearly loved natural son, Henry Fitzroy, a duke under the royal title of Duke of Richmond, which had been borne by his father; and Katharine, not without reason, feared the King’s intention to depose her daughter, the betrothed of the Emperor, in favour of an English bastard. We have in previous pages noticed the peculiar absence of tact and flexibility in Katharine’s character; and Wolsey’s ostentatious French leanings after 1525 were met by the Queen with open opposition and acrimonious reproach, instead of by temporising wiliness. The Emperor’s off-hand treatment of his betrothed bride, Mary Tudor, further embittered Katharine, who was thus surrounded on every side by disillusionment and disappointment. Charles sent commissioners to England just before the battle of Pavia to demand, amongst other unamiable requirements, the prompt sending of Mary, who was only nine years old, to Flanders with an increased dowry. This was no part of the agreement, and was, as no doubt Charles foresaw and desired, certain to be refused. The envoys received from Henry and Katharine, and more emphatically from Wolsey, a negative answer to the request,[35] Mary being, as they said, the greatest treasure they had, for whom no hostages would be sufficient.[36] Katharine would not let her nephew slip out of his engagement without a struggle. Mary herself was made soon after to send a fine emerald to her betrothed with a grand message to the effect that when they came together she would be able to know (i.e. by the clearness or otherwise of the gem) “whether his Majesty do keep himself as continent and chaste as, with God’s grace, she will.” As at this time the Emperor was a man of twenty-five, whilst his bride had not reached ten years, the cases were hardly parallel; and within three months (in July 1525) Charles had betrothed himself to his cousin of Portugal. The treaty that had been so solemnly sworn to on the high altar at Windsor only three years before, had thus become so much waste-paper, and Katharine’s best hopes for her child and herself were finally defeated. A still greater trial for her followed; for whilst Wolsey was drawing nearer and nearer to France, and the King himself was becoming more distant from his wife every day, the little Princess was taken from the loving care of her mother, and sent to reside in her principality of Wales.[37] Thenceforward the life of Katharine was a painful martyrdom without one break in the monotony of misfortune.

Katharine appears never to have been unduly jealous of Henry’s various mistresses. She, one of the proudest princesses in Christendom, probably considered them quite beneath her notice, and as usual adjuncts to a sovereign’s establishment. Henry, moreover, was far from being a generous or complaisant lover; and allowed his lady favourites no great social and political power, such as that wielded by the mistresses of Francis I. Lady Tailebois (Eleanor Blount) made no figure at Court, and Mary Boleyn, the wife of William Carey, a quite undistinguished courtier, who had been Henry’s mistress from about 1521,[38] was always impecunious and sometimes disreputable, though her greedy father reaped a rich harvest from his daughter’s attractions. Katharine evidently troubled herself very little about such infidelity on the part of her husband, and certainly Wolsey had no objection. The real anxiety of the Queen arose from Henry’s ardent desire for a legitimate son, which she could not hope to give him; and Wolsey, with his eyes constantly fixed on the Papacy, decided to make political capital and influence for himself by binding France and England so close together both dynastically and politically as to have both kings at his bidding before the next Pope was elected. The first idea was the betrothal of the jilted Princess Mary of ten to the middle-aged widower who sat upon the throne of France. An embassy came to London from the Queen Regent of France, whilst Francis was still a prisoner in Madrid in 1525, to smooth the way for a closer intimacy. Special instructions were given to the ambassador to dwell upon the complete recovery of Francis from his illness, and to make the most of the Emperor’s unfaithfulness to his English betrothed for the purpose of marrying the richly dowered Portuguese. Francis eventually regained his liberty on hard conditions that included his marriage with Charles’s widowed sister Leonora, Queen Dowager of Portugal; and his sons were to remain in Spain as hostages for his fulfilment of the terms. But from the first Francis intended to violate the treaty of Madrid, wherever possible; and early in 1527 a stately train of French nobles, headed by De Grammont, Bishop of Tarbes, came with a formal demand for the hand of young Mary Tudor for the already much-married Francis. Again the palace of Greenwich was a blaze of splendour for the third nuptials of the little princess; and the elaborate mummery that Henry loved was re-enacted.[39] On the journeys to and from their lodgings in Merchant Taylors’ Hall, the Bishop of Tarbes and Viscount de Turenne heard nothing but muttered curses, saw nothing but frowning faces of the London people; for Mary was in the eyes of Henry’s subjects the heiress of England, and they would have, said they, no Frenchman to reign over them when their own king should die.[40] Katharine took little part in the betrothal festivities, for she was a mere shadow now. Her little daughter was made to show off her accomplishments to the Frenchmen, speaking to them in French and Latin, playing on the harpsichord, and dancing with the Viscount de Turenne, whilst the poor Queen looked sadly on. Stiff with gems and cloth of gold, the girl, appearing, we are told, “like an angel,” gravely played her part to her proud father’s delight, and the Bishop of Tarbes took back with him to his master enthusiastic praises of this “pearl of the world,” the backward little girl of eleven, who was destined, as Francis said, to be the “cornerstone of the new covenant” between France and England, either by her marriage with himself, or, failing that, with his second son, the Duke of Orleans, which in every respect would have been a most suitable match.

No sooner had the treaty of betrothal been signed than there came (2nd June 1527) the tremendous news that the Emperor’s troops under Bourbon had entered and sacked Rome with ruthless fury, and that Pope Clement was a prisoner in the castle of St. Angelo, clamouring for aid from all Christian princes against his impious assailants. All those kings who looked with distrust upon the rapidly growing power of Charles drew closer together. When the news came, Wolsey was in France on his embassy of surpassing magnificence, whilst public discontent in England at what was considered his warlike policy was already swelling into fierce denunciations against him, his pride, his greed, and his French proclivities. English people cared little for the troubles of the Italian Pope; or indeed for anything else, so long as they were allowed to live and trade in peace; and they knew full well that war with the Emperor would mean the closing of the rich Flemish and Spanish markets to them, as well as the seizure of their ships and goods. But to Wolsey’s ambition the imprisonment of Clement VII. seemed to open a prospect of unlimited power. If Francis and Henry were closely allied, with the support of the Papacy behind them, Wolsey might be commissioned to exercise the Papal authority until he relieved the Pontiff from duress, and in due course might succeed to the chair of St. Peter. So, deaf to the murmuring of the English people, he pressed on; his goal being to bind France and England closely together that he might use them both.

The marriage treaty of Mary with the Duke of Orleans, instead of with his father, was agreed upon by Francis and the Cardinal at Amiens in August 1527. But Wolsey knew that the marriage of the children could not be completed for some years yet, and he was impatient to forge an immediately effective bond. Francis had a sister and a sister-in-law of full age, either of whom might marry Henry. But Katharine stood in the way, and she was the personification of the imperial connection. Wolsey had no scruples: he knew how earnestly his master wished for a son to inherit his realm, and how weak of will that master was if only he kept up the appearance of omnipotence. He knew that Katharine, disappointed, glum, and austere, had lost the charm by which women rule men, and the plan, that for many months he had been slowly and stealthily devising, was boldly brought out to light of day. Divorce was easy, and it would finally isolate the Emperor if Katharine were set aside. The Pope would do anything for his liberators: why not dissolve the unfruitful marriage, and give to England a new French consort in the person of either the widowed Margaret Duchess of Alençon, or of Princess Renée? It is true that the former indignantly refused the suggestion, and dynastic reasons prevented Francis from favouring that of a marriage of Renée of France and Brittany with the King of England; but women, and indeed men, were for Wolsey but puppets to be moved, not creatures to be consulted, and the Cardinal went back to England exultant, and hopeful that, at last, he would compass his aspiration, and make himself ruler of the princes of Christendom. Never was hope more fallacious or fortune’s irony more bitter. With a strong master Wolsey would have won; with a flabby sensualist as his stalking-horse he was bound to lose, unless he remained always at his side. The Cardinal’s absence in France was the turning-point of his fortunes; whilst he was glorying abroad, his enemies at home dealt him a death-blow through a woman.

At exactly what period, or by whom, the idea of divorcing Katharine at this time had been broached to Henry, it is difficult to say; but it was no unpardonable or uncommon thing for monarchs, for reasons of dynastic expediency, to put aside their wedded wives. Popes, usually in a hurry to enrich their families, could be bribed or coerced; and the interests of the individual, even of a queen-consort, were as nothing in comparison of those of the State, as represented by the sovereign. If the question of religious reform had not complicated the situation and Henry had married a Catholic princess of one of the great royal houses, as Wolsey intended, instead of a mere upstart like Anne Boleyn, there would probably have been little difficulty about the divorce from Katharine: and the first hint of the repudiation of a wife who could give the King no heir, for the sake of his marrying another princess who might do so, and at the same time consolidate a new international combination, would doubtless be considered by those who made it as quite an ordinary political move.

It is probable that the Bishop of Tarbes, when he was in England in the spring of 1527 for the betrothal of Mary, conferred with Wolsey as to the possibility of Henry’s marriage to a French princess, which of course would involve the repudiation of Katharine. In any case the King and Wolsey—whether truly or not—asserted that the Bishop had first started the question of the validity of Henry’s marriage with his wife, with special reference to the legitimacy of the Princess Mary, who was to be betrothed to Francis I. or his son. It may be accepted as certain, however, that the matter had been secretly fermenting ever since Wolsey began to shift the centre of gravity from the Emperor towards France. Katharine may have suspected it, though as yet no word reached her. But she was angry at the intimate hobnobbing with France, at her daughter’s betrothal to the enemy of her house, and at the elevation of Henry’s bastard son to a royal dukedom. She was deeply incensed, too, at her alienation from State affairs, and had formed around her a cabal of Wolsey’s enemies, for the most part members of the older nobility traditionally in favour of the Spanish alliance and against France, in order, if possible, to obstruct the Cardinal’s policy.[41]

The King, no doubt fully aware of Wolsey’s plan, was as usual willing to wound, but yet afraid to strike; not caring how much wrong he did if he could only gloze it over to appear right and save his own responsibility before the world. The first formal step, which was taken in April 1527, was carefully devised with this end. Henry, representing that his conscience was assailed by doubts, secretly consulted certain of his councillors as to the legality of his union with his deceased brother’s widow. It is true that he had lived with her for eighteen years, and that any impediment to the marriage on the ground of affinity had been dispensed with to the satisfaction of all parties at the time by the Pope’s bull. But trifles such as these could never stand in the way of so tender a conscience as that of Henry Tudor, or so overpowering an ambition as that of his minister. The councillors—most of those chosen were of course French partisans—thought the case was very doubtful, and were favourable to an inquiry.

On the 17th May 1527, Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, who, it will be recollected, had always been against the marriage; with Wolsey, Stephen Gardiner, and certain doctors-of-law, held a private sitting at the York House, Westminster, at which the King had been cited to appear and answer the charge of having lived in incest with his sister-in-law. The Court was adjourned twice, to the 20th and 31st May, during which time the sham pleadings for and against the King were carefully directed to the desired end. But before the first sitting was well over the plot got wind and reached Katharine. The Queen and the imperial connection were popular, Wolsey and the French were feared and detested. The old nobility and the populace were on the Queen’s side; the mere rumour of what was intended by the prelates at York House set people growling ominously, and the friends of the Spanish-Flemish alliance became threateningly active. The King and Wolsey saw that for a decree of nullity to be pronounced by Warham and Wolsey alone, after a secret inquiry at which the Queen was not represented, would be too scandalous and dangerous in the state of public feeling, and an attempt was made to get the bishops generally to decide, in answer to a leading question, that such a marriage as that of the King and Katharine was incestuous. But the bishops were faithful sons of the Papacy, and most of them shied at the idea of ignoring the Pope’s bull allowing the marriage. Henry had also learnt during the proceedings of the sacking of Rome and the imprisonment of Clement, which was another obstacle to his desires, for though the Pope would doubtless have been quite ready to oblige his English and French friends to the detriment of the Emperor when he was free, it was out of the question that he should do so now that he and his dominions were at the mercy of the imperial troops.

The King seems to have had an idea that he might by his personal persuasion bring his unaccommodating wife to a more reasonable frame of mind. He and Wolsey had been intensely annoyed that she had learnt so promptly of the plot against her, but since some spy had told her, it was as well, thought Henry, that she should see things in their proper light. With a sanctimonious face he saw her on the 22nd June 1527, and told her how deeply his conscience was touched at the idea that they had been living in mortal sin for so many years. In future, he said, he must abstain from her company, and requested that she would remove far away from Court. She was a haughty princess—no angel in temper, notwithstanding her devout piety; and she gave Henry the vigorous answer that might have been expected. They were man and wife, as they had always been, she said, with the full sanction of the Church and the world, and she would stay where she was, strong in her rights as an honest woman and a queen. It was not Henry’s way to face a strong opponent, unless he had some one else to support him and bear the brunt of the fight, and, in accordance with his character, he whined that he never meant any harm: he only wished to discover the truth, to set at rest the scruples raised by the Bishop of Tarbes. All would be for the best, he assured his angry wife; but pray keep the matter secret.[42]

Henry did not love to be thwarted, and Wolsey, busy making ready for his ostentatious voyage to France, had to bear as best he might his master’s ill-humour. The famous ecclesiastical lawyer, Sampson, had told the Cardinal that the marriage with Arthur had never been consummated; and consequently that, even apart from the Pope’s dispensation, the present union was unimpeachable. The Queen would fight the matter to the end, he said; and though Wolsey did his best to answer Sampson’s arguments, he was obliged to transmit them to the King, and recommend him to handle his wife gently; “until it was shown what the Pope and Francis would do.” Henry acted on the advice, as we have seen, but Wolsey was scolded by the King as if he himself had advanced Sampson’s arguments instead of answering them. Katharine did not content herself with sitting down and weeping. She despatched her faithful Spanish chamberlain, Francisco Felipe, on a pretended voyage to a sick mother in Spain, in order that he might beg the aid of the Emperor to prevent the injustice intended against the Queen; and Wolsey’s spies made every effort to catch the man, and lay him by the heels.[43] She sent to her confessor, Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, begging for his counsel, he being one of the bishops who held that her marriage was valid; she “desired,” said Wolsey to the King, “counsel, as well of strangers as of English,” and generally showed a spirit the very opposite of that of the patient Griselda in similar circumstances. How entirely upset were the King and Wolsey by the unexpected force of the opposition is seen in the Cardinal’s letter to his master a day or two after he had left London at the beginning of July to proceed on his French embassy. Writing from Faversham, he relates how he had met Archbishop Warham, and had told him in dismay that the Queen had discovered their plan, and how irritated she was; and how the King, as arranged with Wolsey, had tried to pacify and reassure her. To Wolsey’s delight, Warham persisted that, whether the Queen liked it or not, “truth and law must prevail.” On his way through Rochester, Wolsey tackled Fisher, who was known to favour the Queen. He admitted under Wolsey’s pressure that she had sent to him, though he pretended not to know why, and “greatly blamed the Queen, and thought that if he might speak to her he might bring her to submission.” But Wolsey considered this would be dangerous, and bade the bishop stay where he was. And so, with the iniquitous plot temporarily shelved by the unforeseen opposition, personal and political, Wolsey and his great train, more splendid than that of any king, went on his way to Dover, and to Amiens, whilst in his absence that happened in England which in due time brought all his dignity and pride to dust and ashes.

CHAPTER IV

1527-1530

KATHARINE AND ANNE—THE DIVORCE

Enough has been said in the aforegoing pages to show that Henry was no more a model of marital fidelity than other contemporary monarchs. It was not to be expected that he should be. The marriages of such men were usually prompted by political reasons alone; and for the indulgence of affairs of the heart kings were forced to look elsewhere than towards the princesses they had taken in fulfilment of treaties. Mary, the younger daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn and wife of William Carey, was the King’s mistress for some years after her marriage in 1521, with the result that her father had received many rich grants from the crown; and in 1525 was created Lord Rochford. As treasurer of the household Lord Rochford was much at Court, and his relationship with the Howards, St. Legers, and other great families through his marriage with Lady Elizabeth, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, naturally allied him with the party of nobles whose traditions ran counter to those of the bureaucrats in Henry’s Council. His elder daughter Anne, who was born early in 1503, probably at Hever Castle in Kent,[44] had been carefully educated in the learning and accomplishments considered necessary for a lady of birth at Court, and she accompanied Mary Tudor to France in 1514 for her fleeting marriage with the valetudinarian Louis XII., related in an earlier chapter.[45] On Queen Mary’s return to England a few months afterwards with her second husband, Charles Brandon, the youthful Anne Boleyn remained to complete her courtly education in France, under the care of the new Queen of France, Claude, first wife of Francis I.

When the alliance of the Emperor and England was negotiated in 1521, and war with France threatened, Anne was recalled home; and in 1522 began her life in the English Court and with her family in their various residences. Her six years in the gay Court of Francis I. during her most impressionable age, had made her in manner more French than English. She can never have been beautiful. Her face was long and thin, her chin pointed, and her mouth hypocritically prim; but her eyes were dark and very fine, her brows arched and high, and her complexion dazzling. Above all, she was supremely vain and fond of admiration. Similar qualities to these might have been, and doubtless were, possessed by a dozen other high-born ladies at Henry’s Court; but circumstances, partly political and partly personal, gave to them in Anne’s case a national importance that produced enduring consequences upon the world. We have already glanced at the mixture of tedious masquerading, hunting, and amorous intrigue which formed the principal occupations of the ladies and gentlemen who surrounded Henry and Katharine in their daily life; and from her arrival in England, Anne appears to have entered to the full into the enjoyment of such pastimes. There was some negotiation for her marriage, even before she arrived in England, with Sir Piers Butler, an Irish cousin of hers, but it fell through on the question of settlements, and in 1526, when she was already about twenty-three, she took matters in her own hands, and captivated an extremely eligible suitor, in the person of a silly, flighty young noble, Henry Percy, eldest son and heir to the Earl of Northumberland.

Percy was one of the Court butterflies who attached themselves to Wolsey’s household, and when angrily taken to task by the Cardinal for flirting with Anne, notwithstanding his previous formal betrothal to another lady, the daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, the young man said that, as he loved Anne best, he would rather marry her. The Cardinal did not mince words with his follower, but Percy stood stoutly to his choice, and the Earl of Northumberland was hastily summoned to London to exercise his authority over his recalcitrant son. Cavendish[46] gives an amusing account of the interview between them, at which he was present. The Earl seems to have screwed up his courage by a generous draught of wine when he left Wolsey’s presence to await his son in the hall of York House. When the youth did come in, the scolding he got was vituperative in its violence, with the result that Percy was reluctantly forced to abandon the sweetheart to whom he had plighted his troth. Wolsey’s interference in their love affair deeply angered both Anne and her sweetheart. Percy was a poor creature, and could do Wolsey little harm; but Anne did not forget, swearing “that if ever it lay in her power she would do the Cardinal some displeasure, which indeed she afterwards did.”[47]

The reason for Wolsey’s strong opposition to a match which appeared a perfectly fitting one for both the lovers, is not far to seek. Cavendish himself gives us the clue when he says that when the King first heard that Anne had become engaged to Percy, “he was much moved thereat, for he had a private affection for her himself which was not yet discovered to any”: and the faithful usher in telling the story excuses Wolsey by saying that “he did nothing but what the King commanded.” This affair marks the beginning of Henry’s infatuation for Anne. There was no reason for Wolsey to object to a flirtation between the girl and her royal admirer; indeed the devotion of the King to a new mistress would doubtless make him the more ready to consent to contract another entirely political marriage, if he could get rid of Katharine; and the Cardinal smiled complaisantly at the prospect that all was going well for his plans. Anne, for the look of the thing, was sent away from Court for a short time after the Percy affair had been broken off; but before many weeks were over she was back again as one of Katharine’s maids of honour, and the King’s admiration for her was evident to all observers.[48]

It is more than questionable whether up to this time (1526) Anne ever dreamed of becoming Henry’s wife; but in any case she was too clever to let herself go cheaply. She knew well the difference in the positions held by the King’s mistresses in the French Court and that which had been occupied by her sister and Lady Tailebois in England, and she coyly held her royal lover at arm’s length, with the idea of enhancing her value at last. Henry, as we have seen, was utterly tired of, and estranged from, Katharine; and his new flame, with her natural ability and acquired French arts, flattered and pleased his vanity better than any woman had done before. It is quite probable that she began to aim secretly at the higher prize in the spring of 1527, when the idea of the divorce from Katharine had taken shape in the King’s mind under the sedulous prompting of Wolsey for his personal and political ends; but if such was the case she was careful not to show her hand prematurely. Her only hope of winning such a game was to keep imperious Henry in a fever of love, whilst declining all his illicit advances. It was a difficult and a dangerous thing to do, for her quarry might break away at any moment, whereas if such a word as marriage between the King and her reached the ears of the cardinal, she and her family would inevitably be destroyed.

Such was the condition of affairs when Wolsey started for France in July 1527. He went, determined to leave no stone unturned to set Henry free from Katharine. He knew that there was no time to be lost, for the letters from Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in London, and Katharine’s messenger Felipe, were on their way to tell the story to the Emperor in Spain; and Clement VII., a prisoner in the hands of the imperialists, would not dare to dissolve the marriage after Charles had had time to command him not to do so. It was a stiff race who should get to the Pope first. Wolsey’s alternative plan in the circumstances was a clever one. It was to send to Rome the Bishop of Worcester (the Italian Ghinucci), Henry’s ambassador in Spain, then on his way home, to obtain, with the support of the cardinals of French sympathies, a “general faculty” from Clement VII. for Wolsey to exercise all the Papal functions during the Pope’s captivity: “by which, without informing the Pope of your (i.e. Henry’s) purpose, I may delegate such judges as the Queen will not refuse; and if she does the cognisance of the cause shall be devolved upon me, and by a clause to be inserted in the general commission no appeal be allowed from my decision to the Pope.”[49]

How unscrupulous Wolsey and Henry were in the matter is seen in a letter dated shortly before the above was written, in which Wolsey says to Ghinucci (Bishop of Worcester) and Dr. Lee, Henry’s ambassador with the Emperor, that “a rumour has, somehow or other, sprung up in England that proceedings are being taken for a divorce between the King and the Queen, which is entirely without foundation, yet not altogether causeless, for there has been some discussion about the Papal dispensation; not with any view to a divorce, but to satisfy the French, who raised the objection on proposing a marriage between the Princess (Mary Tudor) and their sovereign. The proceedings which took place on this dispute gave rise to the rumour, and reached the ears of the Queen, who expressed some resentment but was satisfied after explanation; and no suspicion exists, except, perchance, the Queen may have communicated with the Emperor.”[50] Charles had, indeed, heard the whole story, as far as Katharine knew it, from the lips of Felipe before this was written, and was not to be put off with such smooth lies. He wrote indignantly to his ambassador Mendoza in London, directing him to see Henry and point out to him, in diplomatic language veiling many a threat, the danger, as well as the turpitude, of repudiating his lawful wife with no valid excuse; and more vigorously still he let the Pope know that there must be no underhand work to his detriment or that of his family. Whilst the arrogant Cardinal of York was thus playing for his own hand first, and for Henry secondly, in France, his jealous enemies in England might put their heads together and plot against him undeterred by the paralysing fear of his frown. His pride and insolence, as well as his French political leanings, had caused the populace to hate him; the commercial classes, who suffered most by the wars with their best customers, the Flemings and Spaniards, were strongly opposed to him; whilst the territorial and noble party, which had usually been friendly with Katharine, and were traditionally against bureaucratic or ecclesiastical ministers of the crown, suffered with impatience the galling yoke of the Ipswich butcher’s son, who drove them as he listed.

Anne was in the circumstances a more powerful ally for them than Katharine. She was the niece of the Duke of Norfolk, the leader of the party of nobles, and her ambition would make her an apt and eager instrument. The infatuation of the King for her grew more violent as she repelled his advances,[51] and, doubtless at the prompting of Wolsey’s foes, it soon began to be whispered that if Henry could get rid of his wife he might marry his English favourite. Before the Cardinal had been in France a month, Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, first sounded the new note of alarm to the Emperor, by telling him that Anne might become the King’s wife. It is hardly possible that no hint of the danger can have reached Wolsey, but if it did he was confident of his power over his master when he should return to England. Unfortunately for him his ideas for the King’s divorce were hampered by the plans for his own advancement; and the proposals he wrote to Henry were all founded on the idea of exerting international pressure, either for the liberation of the Pope, or to obtain from the Pontiff the decree of divorce. It was evident that this process must be a slow one, and Anne as well as Henry was in a hurry. Unlike Charles, who, though he was falsity itself to his rivals, never deceived his own ministers, Henry constantly showed the moral cowardice of his character by misleading those who were supposed to direct his policy, and at this juncture he conceived a plan of his own which promised more rapidity than that of Wolsey.[52] Without informing Wolsey of the real object of his mission, old Dr. Knight, the King’s confidential secretary, was sent to endeavour to see the Pope in St. Angelo, and by personal appeal from the King persuade him to grant a dispensation for Henry’s marriage either before his marriage with Katharine was dissolved formally (constante matrimonio), or else, if that was refused, a dispensation to marry after the declaration had been made nullifying the previous union (soluto matrimonio); but in either case the strange demand was to be made that the dispensation was to cover the case of the bride and bridegroom being connected within the prohibited degrees of affinity.[53]

Knight saw Wolsey on his way through France and hoodwinked him as to his true mission by means of a bogus set of instructions, though the Cardinal was evidently suspicious and ill at ease. This was on the 12th September 1527, and less than a fortnight later Wolsey hurried homeward. When he had set forth from England three months before he seemed to hold the King in the hollow of his hand. Private audience for him was always ready, and all doors flew open at his bidding. But when he appeared on the 30th September at the palace of Richmond, and sent one of his gentlemen to inquire of the King where he would receive him, Anne sat in the great hall by Henry’s side, as was usual now. Before the King could answer the question of Wolsey’s messenger, the favourite, with a petulance that Katharine would have considered undignified, snapped, “Where else should the Cardinal come but where the King is?” For the King to receive his ministers at private audience in a hall full of people was quite opposed to the usual etiquette of Henry’s Court, and Wolsey’s man still stood awaiting the King’s reply. But it only came in the form of a nod that confirmed the favourite’s decision. This must have struck the proud Cardinal to the heart, and when he entered the hall and bowed before his sovereign, who was toying now with his lady-love, and joking with his favourites, the minister must have known that his empire over Henry had for the time vanished. He was clever and crafty: he had often conquered difficulties before, and was not dismayed now that a young woman had supplanted him, for he still held confidence in himself. So he made no sign of annoyance, but he promptly tried to checkmate Knight’s mission when he heard of it, whilst pretending approval of the King’s attachment to Anne. The latter was deceived. She could not help seeing that with Wolsey’s help she would attain her object infinitely more easily than without it, and she in her turn smiled upon the Cardinal, though her final success would have boded ill for him, as he well knew.

His plan, doubtless, was to let the divorce question drag on as long as possible, in the hope that Henry would tire of his new flame. First he persuaded the King to send fresh instructions to Knight, on the ground that the Pope would certainly not give him a dispensation to commit bigamy in order that he might marry Anne, and that it would be easier to obtain from the Pontiff a decree leaving the validity of the marriage with Katharine to the decision of the Legates in England, Wolsey and another Cardinal. Henry having once loosened the bridle, did not entirely return to his submission to Wolsey. Like most weak men, he found it easier to rebel against the absent than against those who faced him; but he was not, if he and Anne could prevent it, again going to put his neck under the Cardinal’s yoke completely, and in a secret letter to Knight he ordered him to ask Clement for a dispensation couched in the curious terms already referred to, allowing him to marry again, even within the degrees of affinity, as soon as the union with Katharine was dissolved. Knight had found it impossible to get near the Pope in Rome, for the imperialists had been fully forewarned by this time; but at length Clement was partially released and went to Orvieto in December, whither Knight followed him before the new instructions came from England. Knight was no match for the subtle churchmen. Clement dared not, moreover, mortally offend the Emperor, whose men-at-arms still held Rome; and the dispensation that Knight sent so triumphantly to England giving the Legate’s Court in London power to decide the validity of the King’s marriage, had a clause slipped into it which destroyed its efficacy, because it left the final decision to the Pontiff after all.

It may be asked, if Henry believed, as he now pretended, that his first marriage had never been legal in consequence of Katharine being his brother’s widow, why he needed a Papal dispensation to break it. The Papal brief that had been previously given allowing the marriage, was asserted by Henry’s ecclesiastical friends to be ultra vires in England, because marriage with a brother’s widow was prohibited under the common law of the land, with which the Pope could not dispense. But the matter was complicated with all manner of side issues: the legitimacy of the Princess Mary, the susceptibilities of the powerful confederation that obeyed the Emperor, the sentiment of the English people, and, above all, the invariable desire of Henry to appear a saint whilst he acted like a sinner and to avoid personal responsibility; and so Henry still strove with the ostensible, but none too hearty, aid of Wolsey, to gain from the Pope the nullification of a marriage which he said was no marriage at all. Wolsey’s position had become a most delicate and dangerous one. As soon as the Emperor learned of Anne’s rise, he had written to Mendoza (30th September 1527), saying that the Cardinal must be bought at any price. All his arrears of pension (45,000 ducats) were to be paid, 6000 ducats a year more from a Spanish bishopric were to be granted, and a Milanese marquisate was to be conferred upon him with a revenue of 15,000 ducats a year, if he would only serve the Emperor’s interests. But he dared not do it quickly or openly, dearly as he loved money, for Anne was watchful and Henry suspicious of him. His only hope was that the King’s infatuation for this long-faced woman with the prude’s mouth and the blazing eyes might pall. Then his chance would come again.

Far from growing weaker, however, Henry’s passion grew as Anne’s virtue became more rigid. She had not always been so austere, for gossip had already been busy with her good name. Percy and Sir Thomas Wyatt had both been her lovers, and with either or both of them she had in some way compromised herself.[54] But she played her game cleverly, for the stake was a big one, and her fascination must have been great. She was often away from Court, feigning to prefer the rural delights of Hever to the splendours of Greenwich or Richmond, or offended at the significant tittle-tattle about herself and the King. She was thus absent when in July 1527 Wolsey had gone to France, but took care to keep herself in Henry’s memory by sending him a splendid jewel of gold and diamonds representing a damsel in a boat on a troubled sea. The lovesick King replied in the first of those extraordinary love-letters of his which have so often been printed. “Henceforward,” he says, “my heart shall be devoted to you only. I wish my body also could be. God can do it if He pleases, to whom I pray once a day that it may be, and hope at length to be heard:” and he signs Escripte de la main du secretaire, que en cœur, corps, et volonté, est vostre loiall et plus assuré serviteure, H. (autre cœur ne cherche) R. Soon afterwards, when Wolsey was well on his way, the King writes to his lady-love again. “The time seems so long since I heard of your good health and of you that I send the bearer to be better ascertained of your health and your purpose: for since my last parting from you I have been told you have quite abandoned the intention of coming to Court, either with your mother or otherwise. If so I cannot wonder sufficiently; for I have committed no offence against you, and it is very little return for the great love I bear you to deny me the presence of the woman I esteem most of all the world. If you love me, as I hope you do, our separation should be painful to you. I trust your absence is not wilful; for if so I can but lament my ill fortune and by degrees abate my great folly.”[55] This was the tone to bring Anne to her lover again, and before many days were over they were together, and in Wolsey’s absence the marriage rumours spread apace.

The fiasco of Knight’s mission had convinced Henry and Anne that they must proceed through the ordinary diplomatic channels and with the aid of Wolsey in their future approaches to the Pope; and early in 1528 Stephen Gardiner and Edward Fox, two ecclesiastics attached to the Cardinal, were despatched on a fresh mission to Orvieto to urge Clement to grant to Wolsey and another Legate power to pronounce finally on the validity of Henry’s marriage. The Pope was to be plied with sanctimonious assurances that no carnal love for Anne prompted Henry’s desire to marry her, as the Pope had been informed, but solely her “approved excellent, virtuous qualities—the purity of her life, her constant virginity, her maidenly and womanly pudicity, her soberness, her chasteness, meekness, humility, wisdom, descent right noble and high through royal blood,[56] education in all good and laudable qualities and manners, apparent aptness to procreation of children, with her other infinite good qualities.” Gardiner and Fox on their way to Dover called at Hever, and showed to Anne this panegyric penned by Wolsey[57] upon her, and thenceforward for a time all went trippingly.

Gardiner was a far different negotiator from Knight, and was able, though with infinite difficulty, to induce Clement to grant the new bull demanded, relegating the cause finally to the Legatine Court in London. The Pope would have preferred that Wolsey should have sat alone as Legate, but Wolsey was so unpopular in England, and the war into which he had again dragged the country against the Emperor was so detested,[58] whilst Queen Katharine had so many sympathisers, that it was considered necessary that a foreign Legate should add his authority to that of Wolsey to do the evil deed. Campeggio, who had been in England before, and was a pensioner of Henry as Bishop of Hereford, was the Cardinal selected by Wolsey; and at last Clement consented to send him. Every one concerned appears to have endeavoured to avoid responsibility for what they knew was a shabby business. The Pope, crafty and shifty, was in a most difficult position, and blew hot and cold. The first commission given to Gardiner and Fox, which was received with such delight by Anne and Henry when Fox brought it to London in April 1528, was found on examination still to leave the question open to Papal veto. It is true that it gave permission to the Legates to pronounce for the King, but the responsibility for the ruling was left to them, and their decision might be impugned. When, at the urgent demand of Gardiner, the Pope with many tears gave a decretal laying down that the King’s marriage with Katharine was bad by canon law if the facts were as represented, he gave secret orders to the Legate Campeggio that the decretal was to be burnt and not to be acted upon.

Whilst the Pope was thus between the devil and the deep sea, trying to please the Emperor on the one hand and the Kings of France and England on the other, and deceiving both, the influence of Anne over her royal lover grew stronger every day. Wolsey was in the toils and he knew it. When Charles had answered the English declaration of war (January 1528), it was the Cardinal’s rapacity, pride, and ambition against which he thundered as the cause of the strife and of the insult offered to the imperial house. To the Emperor the Cardinal could not again turn. Henry, moreover, was no longer the obedient tool he had been before Anne was by his side to stiffen his courage; and Wolsey knew that, notwithstanding the favourite’s feline civilities and feigned dependence upon him, it would be the turn of his enemies to rule when once she became the King’s wedded wife. He was, indeed, hoist with his own petard. The divorce had been mainly promoted, if not originated, by him, and the divorce in the present circumstances would crush him. But he had pledged himself too deeply to draw back openly; and he still had to smile upon those who were planning his ruin, and himself urge forward the policy by which it was to be effected.

In the meanwhile Katharine stood firm, living under the same roof as her husband, sitting at the same table with him with a serene countenance in public, and to all appearance unchanged in her relations to him. But though her pride stood her in good stead she was perplexed and lonely. Henry’s intention to divorce her, and his infatuation for Anne, were of course public property, and the courtiers turned to the coming constellation, whatever the common people might do. Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, withdrew from Court in the spring after the declaration of war, and the Queen’s isolation was then complete. To the Spanish Latinist in Flanders, J. Luis Vives, and to Erasmus, she wrote asking for counsel in her perplexity, but decorous epistles in stilted Latin advising resignation and Christian fortitude was all she got from either.[59] Her nephew the Emperor had urged her, in any case, to refuse to recognise the authority of any tribunal in England to judge her case, and had done what he could to frighten the Pope against acceding to Henry’s wishes. But even he was not implacable, if his political ends were served in any arrangement that might be made; and at this time he evidently hoped, as did the Pope most fervently, that as a last resource Katharine would help everybody out of the trouble by giving up the struggle and taking the veil. Her personal desire would doubtless have been to adopt this course, for the world had lost its savour, but she was a daughter of Isabel the Catholic, and tame surrender was not in her line. Her married life with Henry she knew was at an end;[60] but her daughter was now growing into girlhood, and her legitimacy and heirship to the English crown she would only surrender with her own life. So to all smooth suggestions that she should make things pleasant all round by acquiescing in the King’s view of their marriage, she was scornfully irresponsive.

Through the plague-scourged summer of 1528 Henry and Anne waited impatiently for the coming of the Legate Campeggio. He was old and gouty, hampered with a mission which he dreaded; for he could not hope to reconcile the irreconcilable, and the Pope had quietly given him the hint that he need not hurry. Clement was, indeed, in a greater fix than ever. He had been made to promise by the Emperor that the case should not be decided in England, and yet he had been forced into giving the dispensation and decretal not only allowing it to be decided there in favour of Henry, but had despatched Campeggio to pronounce judgment. He had, however, at the same time assured the Emperor that means should be found to prevent the finality of any decision in England until the Emperor had approved of it, and Campeggio was instructed accordingly. The Spaniards thought that the English Cardinal would do his best to second the efforts of the Pope without appearing to do so, and there is no doubt that they were right, for Wolsey was now (the summer of 1528) really alarmed at the engine he had set in motion and could not stop. Katharine knew that the Legate was on his way, and that the Pope had, in appearance, granted all of Henry’s demands; but she did not know, or could not understand, the political forces that were operating in her favour, which made the Pope defraud the King of England, and turned her erstwhile mortal enemy Wolsey into her secret friend. Tact and ready adaptability might still have helped Katharine. The party of nobles under Norfolk, it is true, had deserted her; but Wolsey and the bureaucrats were still a power to be reckoned with, and the middle classes and the populace were all in favour of the Queen and the imperial alliance. If these elements had been cleverly combined they might have conquered, for Henry was always a coward and would have bent to the stronger force. But Katharine was a bad hand at changing sides, and Wolsey dared not openly do so.

For a few days in the summer of 1528, whilst Campeggio was still lingering on the Continent, it looked as if a mightier power than any of them might settle the question for once and all. Henry and Anne were at Greenwich when the plague broke out in London. In June one of Anne’s attendants fell ill of the malady, and Henry in a panic sent his favourite to Hever, whilst he hurried from place to place in Hertfordshire. The plague followed him. Sir Francis Poyns, Sir William Compton, William Carey, and other members of his Court died in the course of the epidemic, and the dread news soon reached Henry that Anne and her father were both stricken at Hever Castle. Henry had written daily to her whilst they had been separated. “Since your last letter, mine own darling,” he wrote a few days after she left, “Walter Welsh, Master Brown, Thomas Care, Grion of Brereton, and John Coke the apothecary have fallen of the sweat in this house.... By the mercy of God the rest of us be yet well, and I trust shall pass it, either not to have it, or at least as easily as the rest have done.” Later he wrote: “The uneasiness my doubts about your health gave me, disturbed and alarmed me exceedingly; and I should not have had any quiet without hearing certain tidings. But now, since you have felt as yet nothing, I hope, and am assured, that it will spare you, as I hope it is doing with us. For when we were at Waltham two ushers, two valets, and your brother, master-treasurer, fell ill, but are now quite well; and since we have returned to our house at Hunsdon we have been perfectly well, and have not now one sick person, God be praised. I think if you would retire from Surrey, as we did, you would escape all danger. There is another thing may comfort you, which is, in truth, that in this distemper few or no women have been taken ill, and no person of our Court has died.[61] For which reason I beg you, my entirely beloved, not to frighten yourself, nor be too uneasy at our absence, for wherever I am, I am yours: and yet we must sometimes submit to our misfortunes; for whoever will struggle against fate is generally but so much the further from gaining his end. Wherefore, comfort yourself and take courage, and avoid the pestilence as much as you can; for I hope shortly to make you sing la renvoyé. No more at present from lack of time, but that I wish you in my arms that I might a little dispel your unreasonable thoughts. Written by the hand of him who is, and always will be, yours.”

When the news of Anne’s illness reached him he despatched one of his physicians post haste with the following letter to his favourite: “There came to me suddenly in the night the most afflicting news that could have arrived. The first, to hear the sickness of my mistress, whom I esteem more than all the world, and whose health I desire as I do my own, so that I would gladly bear half your illness to make you well; the second, the fear that I have of being still longer harassed by my enemy—your absence—much longer ... who is, so far as I can judge, determined to spite me more, because I pray God to rid me of this troublesome tormentor; the third, because the physician in whom I have most confidence is absent at the very time when he might be of the most service to me, for I should hope by his means to obtain one of my chiefest joys on earth—that is, the care of my mistress. Yet, for want of him, I send you my second, and hope that he will soon make you well. I shall then love him more than ever. I beseech you to be guided by his advice, and I hope soon to see you again, which will be to me a greater comfort than all the precious jewels in the world.” In a few days Anne was out of danger, and the hopes and fears aroused by her illness gave place to the old intrigues again.

A few weeks later Anne was with her lover at Ampthill, hoping and praying daily for the coming of the gouty Legate, who was slowly being carried through France to the coast. Wolsey had to be very humble now, for Anne had shown her ability to make Henry brave him, and the King rebuked him publicly at her bidding,[62] but until Campeggio came and the fateful decision was given that would make Anne a Queen, both she and Henry diplomatically alternated cajolery with the humbling process towards the Cardinal. Anne’s well-known letter with Henry’s postscript, so earnestly asking Wolsey for news of Campeggio, is written in most affectionate terms, Anne saying, amongst other pretty things, that she “loves him next unto the King’s grace, above all creatures living.” But the object of her wheedling was only to gain news of the speedy coming of the Legate. The King’s postscript to this letter is characteristic of him. “The writer of this letter would not cease till she had caused me likewise to set my hand, desiring you, though it be short, to take it in good part. I assure you that there is neither of us but greatly desireth to see you, and are joyous to hear that you have escaped the plague so well; trusting the fury thereof to be passed, especially with them that keepeth good diet, as I trust you do. The not hearing of the Legate’s arrival in France causeth us somewhat to muse: notwithstanding, we trust, by your diligence and vigilance, with the assistance of Almighty God, shortly to be eased out of that trouble.”[63]

Campeggio was nearly four months on his way, urged forward everywhere by English agents and letters, held back everywhere by the Pope’s fears and his own ailments; but at last, one joyful day in the middle of September, Henry could write to his lady-love at Hever: “The Legate which we most desire arrived at Paris on Sunday last past, so that I trust next Monday to hear of his arrival at Calais: and then I trust within a while after to enjoy that which I have so long longed for, to God’s pleasure and both our comfort. No more to you at present, mine own darling, for lack of time, but that I would you were in mine arms, or I in yours, for I think it long since I kissed you.” Henry had to wait longer than in his lover-like eagerness he had expected; it was fully a fortnight before he had news of Campeggio’s arrival at Dover. Great preparations had been made to entertain the Papal Legate splendidly in London, and on his way thither; but he was suffering and sorry, and begged to be saved the fatigue of a public reception. So ill was he that, rather than face the streets of London on the day he was expected, he lodged for the night at the Duke of Suffolk’s house on the Surrey side of London bridge, and the next day, 8th October, was quietly carried in the Duke’s barge across the river to the Bishop of Bath’s palace beyond Temple Bar, where he was to lodge. There he remained ill in bed, until the King’s impatience would brook no further delay; and on the 12th he was carried, sick as he was, and sorely against his will, in a crimson velvet chair for his first audience.

In the great hall of the palace of Bridewell, hard by Blackfriars, Henry sat in a chair of state, with Wolsey and Campeggio on his right hand, whilst one of the Legate’s train delivered a fulsome Latin oration, setting forth the iniquitous outrages perpetrated by the imperialists upon the Vicar of Christ, and the love and gratitude of the Pontiff for his dearest son Henry for his aid and sympathy. The one thing apparently that the Pope desired was to please his benefactor, the King of England. When the public ceremony was over, Henry took Campeggio and Wolsey into a private room; and the day following the King came secretly to Campeggio’s lodging, and for four long hours plied the suffering churchman with arguments and authorities which would justify the divorce. Up to this time Campeggio had fondly imagined that he might, with the Papal authority, persuade Henry to abandon his object. But this interview undeceived him. He found the King, as he says, better versed in the matter “than a great theologian or jurist”; and Campeggio opined at last that “if an angel descended from heaven he would be unable to persuade him” that the marriage was valid. When, however, Campeggio suggested that the Queen might be induced to enter a convent, Henry was delighted. If they would only prevail upon her to do that she should have everything she demanded: the title of Queen and all her dowry, revenue, and belongings; the Princess Mary should be acknowledged heiress to the crown, failing legitimate male issue to the King, and all should be done to Katharine’s liking. Accordingly, the next day, 14th October, Campeggio and Wolsey took boat and went to try their luck with the Queen, after seeing the King for the third time. Beginning with a long sanctimonious rigmarole, Campeggio pressed her to take a “course which would give general satisfaction and greatly benefit herself”; and Wolsey, on his knees, and in English, seconded his colleague’s advice. Katharine was cold and collected. She was, she said, a foreigner in England without skilled advice, and she declined at present to say anything. She had asked the King to assign councillors to aid her, and when she had consulted them she would see the Legates again.

As day broke across the Thames on the 25th October, Campeggio lay awake in bed at Bath House, suffering the tortures of gout, and perturbed at the difficult position in which he was placed, when Wolsey was announced, having come from York Place in his barge. When the Cardinal entered the room he told his Italian colleague that the King had appointed Archbishop Warham, Bishop Fisher, and others, to be councillors for the Queen, and that the Queen had obtained her husband’s permission to come to Campeggio and confess that morning. At nine o’clock Katharine came unobserved to Bath House by water, and was closeted for long with the Italian Cardinal. What she told him was under the sacred seal of the confessional, but she prayed that the Pope might in strict secrecy be informed of certain of the particulars arising out of her statements. She reviewed the whole of her life from the day of her arrival in England, and solemnly swore on her conscience that she had only slept with young Arthur seven nights, é che da lui restó intacta é incorrupta;[64] and this assertion, as far as it goes, we may accept as the truth, seeing the solemn circumstances under which it was made. But when Campeggio again urged Katharine to get them all out of their difficulty by retiring to a convent and letting the King have his way, she almost vehemently declared that “she would die as she had lived, a wife, as God had made her.” “Let a sentence be given,” she said, “and if it be against me I shall be free to do as I like, even as my husband will.” “But neither the whole realm, nor, on the other hand, the greatest punishment, even being torn limb from limb, shall alter me in this, and if after death I were to return to life, I would die again, and yet again, rather than I would give way.” Against such firmness as this the poor, flaccid old churchman could do nothing but hold up his hands and sigh at the idea of any one being so obstinate.

A day or two afterwards Wolsey and Campeggio saw the Queen again formally. She was on this occasion attended by her advisers, and once more heard, coldly and irresponsively, the appeals to her prudence, her worldly wisdom, her love for her daughter, and every other feeling that could lead her to cut the gordian knot that baffled them all. “She would do nothing to her soul’s damnation or against God’s law,” she said, as she dismissed them. Whether it was at this interview, or, as it seems to me more likely, the previous one that she broke out in violent invective against Wolsey for his enmity towards the Emperor, we know not, but the storm of bitter words she poured upon him for his pride, his falsity, his ambition, and his greed; her taunts at his intrigues to get the Papacy, and her burning scorn that her marriage, unquestioned for twenty years, should be doubted now,[65] must have finally convinced both Wolsey and Campeggio that if Henry was firm Katharine was firmer still. Campeggio was in a pitiable state of mind, imploring the Pope by every post to tell him what to do. He and Wolsey at one time conceived the horrible idea of marrying the Princess Mary to her half brother, the Duke of Richmond, as a solution of the succession difficulty, and the Pope appears to have been inclined to allow it;[66] but it was soon admitted that the course proposed would not forward, but rather retard, the King’s second marriage, and that was the main object sought.

At length Wolsey ruefully understood that conciliation was impossible; and, pressed as he was by the King, was forced to insist with Campeggio that the cause must be judicially decided without further delay. Illness, prayerful attempts to bring one side or the other to reason, and many other excuses for procrastination were tried, but at length Campeggio had to confess to his colleague that the Pope’s decretal, laying down the law in the case in Henry’s favour, was only a show document not to be used, or to leave his possession for a moment; and, moreover, that no final judgment could be given by him that was not submitted to the Pope’s confirmation. Wolsey was aghast, and wrote in rage and indignation to the English agent with the Pope denouncing this bad faith.[67] “I see ruin, infamy, and subversion of the whole dignity and estimation of the Apostolic See if this course be persisted in. You see in what dangerous times we are. If the Pope will consider the gravity of this cause, and how much the safety of the nation depends upon it, he will see that the course he now pursues will drive the King to adopt those remedies that are so injurious to the Pope, and are frequently instilled into the King’s mind. Without the Pope’s compliance I cannot bear up against the storm; and when I reflect upon the conduct of his Holiness I cannot but fear lest the common enemy of souls, seeing the King’s determination, inspires the Pope with his present fears and reluctance, which will alienate all the faith and devotion from the Apostolic See.... It is useless for Campeggio to think of reviving the marriage. If he did it would lead to worse consequences. Let him therefore proceed to sentence. Prostrate at the feet of his Holiness I most urgently beg of him to set aside all delays.”

This cry, wrung evidently from Wolsey’s heart at the knowledge of his own danger, is the first articulate expression of the tremendous religious issue that might depend upon the conduct of the various parties in the divorce proceedings. The fire lit by Luther a few years previously had spread apace in Germany, and had reached England. All Christendom would soon have to range itself in two divisions, cutting athwart old national affinities and alliances. Charles had defied Luther at the outset; and the traditions of his Spanish house made him, the most powerful monarch in Europe, the champion of orthodoxy. But his relations with the Papacy, as we have seen, had not been uniformly cordial. To him the Pope was a little Italian prince whilst he was a great one, and he was jealous of the slightest interference of Rome with the Spanish Church. His position in Germany, moreover, as suzerain of the princes of the Empire, some of whom already leant to Lutheranism, complicated the situation: so that it was not yet absolutely certain that Charles would finally stake everything upon the unification of the Christian Church by force, on the lines of strict Papal authority.

On the other hand, both Francis and Henry had for political reasons strongly supported the Pope in his greatest distress, and their religion was certainly no less faithful than that of the Emperor. It was inevitable that, whichever side Charles took in the coming religious struggle, would not for political reasons commend itself to Francis, and vice versa; and everything depended upon the weight which Henry might cast into one scale or the other. His national traditions and personal inclination would lead him to side with Charles, but at the crucial moment, when the first grain had to be dropped into the balance, he found himself bound by Wolsey’s policy to Francis, and at issue with the Emperor, owing to the relationship of the latter to Katharine. Wolsey felt, in the letter quoted above, that the Pope’s shilly-shally, in order not to offend the Emperor, would drive the impatient King of England to flout, and perhaps break with, the Papacy, and events proved that the Cardinal was right in his fears. We shall see later how the rift widened, but here the first fine crevice is visible.

Henry, prompted by Anne and his vanity, intended to have his way at whatever cost. Katharine could give him no son: he would marry a woman who could do so, and one that he loved far better than he ever loved his wife. In ordinary circumstances there need have been no great difficulty about the divorce, nor would there have been in this case, but for the peculiar political and religious situation of Europe at the time, and but for Katharine’s unbending rigidity of character. She might have made her own terms if she had consented to the conciliatory suggestions of the churchmen. The legality of her marriage would have been declared, her daughter recognised as heiress presumptive, her own great revenues would have been left to her, and her title of Queen respected.[68] She was not even to be asked to immure herself in a convent, or to take any conventual vow but that of chastity, if she would only consent to a divorce on the ground of her desire to devote herself to religion.[69] As Campeggio repeated a dozen times, the only thing she would be asked to surrender was conjugal relations with the King, that had ceased for years, and in no case would be renewed. Much as we may admire her firmness, it is impossible to avoid seeing that the course recommended to her was that which would have best served, not only her own interest and happiness, but also those of her daughter, of her religion, and of the good relations between Henry and the Emperor that she had so much at heart.

Henry, on his side, was determined to allow nothing to stand in his way, whilst keeping up his appearance of impeccability. Legal and ecclesiastical authorities in England and France were besought to give their sanction to his view that no Pope had the power of dispensation for a marriage with a deceased brother’s widow; and the English clergy were assured that the King only sought an impartial authoritative decision for the relief of his own conscience. The attitude of the English people gave him some uneasiness; for, like all his house, he loved popularity. “The common people, being ignorant,” we are told, “and others that favoured the Queen, talked largely, and said that for his own pleasure the King would have another wife, and had sent for this Legate to be divorced from the Queen, with many foolish words; inasmuch as, whosoever spake against the marriage was of the common people abhorred and reproved.”[70] The feeling indeed in favour of Katharine was so outspoken and general that the King took the unusual course of assembling the nobles, judges, and so many of the people as could enter, in the great hall of Bridewell, on Sunday afternoon, the 8th November, to endeavour personally to justify himself in the eyes of his subjects.

As usual with him, his great aim was by sanctimonious protestations to make himself appear a pure-souled altruist, and to throw upon others the responsibility for his actions. He painted in dismal colours the dangers to his subjects of a disputed succession on his death. “And, although it hath pleased Almighty God to send us a fair daughter by a noble woman and me begotten, to our great joy and comfort, yet it hath been told us by divers great clerks that neither she is our lawful daughter, nor her mother our lawful wife, and that we live together abominably and detestably in open adultery.” He swore, almost blasphemously, that for the relief of his conscience he only sought authoritatively to know the truth as to the validity of his marriage, and that Campeggio had come as an impartial judge to decide it. If Katharine was adjudged to be his wife nothing would be more pleasant or acceptable to him, and he praised her to the skies, as a noble lady against whom no words could be spoken.[71] The measure of his sincerity is seen when we compare this hypocritical harangue with the letters now before us to and from his envoys in Rome, by which it is evident that the last thing he desired was an impartial judgment, or indeed any judgment, but one that would set him free to marry again. One of the most extraordinary means employed to influence Katharine soon after this appears to have been another visit to her of Wolsey and Campeggio. They were to say that the King had intelligence of a conspiracy against him and Wolsey by her friends and the Emperor’s English partisans; and they warned her that if anything of the sort occurred she would be to blame. They were then to complain of her bearing towards the King, “who was now persuaded by her behaviour that she did not love him.” “She encouraged ladies and gentlemen to dance and make merry,” for instance, whereas “she had better tell them to pray for a good end of the matter at issue.” “She shows no pensiveness of countenance, nor in her apparel nor behaviour. She shows herself too much to the people, rejoicing greatly in their exclamations and ill obloquy; and, by beckoning with her head and smiling, which she has not been accustomed to do in times past, rather encouraged them in doing so.” For all this and many other things the King does not consider it fitting to be in her company, or to let the Princess be with her. The acme of hypocrisy was reached in the assurance the Legates were then to give the Queen, that if she would behave well and go into a convent, the King neither could, nor would, marry another wife in her lifetime; and she could come out to the world again if the sentence were in her favour. Let her go, they said, and submit to the King on her knees, and he would be good to her, but otherwise he would be more angry than ever.[72] Scornful silence was the Queen’s reply.

After this Katharine lived lonely and depressed at Greenwich, frequently closeted with Bishop Fisher and others of her councillors, whilst Henry was strengthening his case with the opinions of jurists, and by attempts to influence Campeggio. To Greenwich he went, accompanied by Anne and a brilliant Court, to show the Italian Cardinal how bounteously a Christmas could be spent in England. Campeggio’s son was knighted and regaled with costly presents, and all that bribes (the Bishopric of Durham, &c.) and flattery might do was done to influence the Legate favourably; but throughout the gay doings, jousts and tourneys, banquets and maskings, “the Queen showed to them no manner of countenance, and made no great joy of nothing, her mind was so troubled.”[73] Well might it be, poor soul, for Anne was by the King’s side, pert and insolent, surrounded by a growing party of Wolsey’s enemies, who cared little for Pope or Emperor, and who waited impatiently for the time when Anne should rule the King alone, and they, through her, should rule England. Katharine, in good truth, was in everybody’s way, for even her nephew could not afford to quarrel with England for her sake, and her death or disappearance would have made a reconciliation easy, especially if Wolsey, the friend of France, fell also.

“Anne,” we are told by the French ambassador, “was lodged in a fine apartment close to that of the King, and greater court was now paid to her every day than has been paid to the Queen for a long time. I see that they mean to accustom the people by degrees to endure her, so that when the great blow comes it may not be, thought strange. But the people remain quite hardened (against her), and I think they would do more if they had more power.”

Thus the months passed, the Pope being plied by alternate threats and hopes, both by English and Spanish agents, until he was nearly beside himself, Wolsey almost frantically professing his desire to forward the King’s object, and Campeggio temporising and trying to find a means of conciliation which would leave the King free. Katharine herself remained immovable. She had asked for and obtained from the Emperor a copy of the Papal brief authorising her marriage with Henry, but the King’s advocates questioned its authenticity,[74] and even her own advisers urged her to obey her husband’s request that she should demand of the Emperor the original document. Constrained by her sworn pledge to write nothing to the Emperor without the King’s knowledge, she sent the letter dictated to her, urgently praying her nephew to send the original brief to England. The letter was carried to Spain by her young English confessor, Thomas Abel, whom she did not entirely trust, and sent with him her Spanish usher, Montoya; but they had verbal instructions from their mistress to pray the Emperor to disregard her written request, and refuse to part with the brief, and to exert all his influence to have the case decided in Rome.[75] By this it will be seen that Katharine was fully a match in duplicity for those against whom she was pitted. She never wavered from first to last in her determination to refuse to acknowledge the sentence of any court sitting in England on her case, and to resist all attempts to induce her to withdraw voluntarily from her conjugal position and enter a nunnery. Henry, and especially Anne, in the meanwhile, were growing impatient at all this calculated delay, and began to throw the blame upon Wolsey. “The young lady used very rude words to him,” wrote Du Bellay on the 25th January, and “the Duke of Norfolk and his party already began to talk big.”[76] A few days afterwards Mendoza, in a letter to the Emperor, spoke even more strongly. “The young lady that is the cause of all this disorder, finding her marriage delayed, that she thought herself so sure of, entertains great suspicion that Wolsey puts impediments in her way, from a belief that if she were Queen his power would decline. In this suspicion she is joined by her father and the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, who have combined to overthrow the Cardinal.” “The King is so hot upon it (the divorce) that there is nothing he does not promise to gain his end.... Campeggio has done nothing for the Queen as yet but to press her to enter religion.”[77]

Henry at length determined that he would wait no longer. His four agents in Rome had almost driven the Pope to distraction with their importunities. Gardiner had gone to the length of threatening Clement with the secession of England from the Papacy, and Anne’s cousin, Henry’s boon companion Brian, deploring the Pope’s obstinacy in a letter from Rome to the King, was bold enough to say: “I hope I shall not die until your Grace has been able to requite the Pope, and Popes, and not be fed with their flattering words.” But in spite of it all, Clement would only palliate and temporise, and finally refused to give any fresh instructions to the Legates or help the King’s cause by any new act. To Campeggio he wrote angrily, telling him, for God’s sake, to procrastinate the matter in England somehow, and not throw upon his shoulders in Rome the responsibility of giving judgment; whilst Campeggio, though professing a desire to please Henry in everything—in the hope of getting the promised rich See of Durham, his enemies said—was equally determined not to go an inch beyond the Pope’s written instructions, or to assume responsibility for the final decision. The churchmen indeed were shuffling and lying all round, for the position was threatening, with Lutheranism daily becoming bolder and the Emperor growing ever more peremptory, now that he had become reconciled to the Pope.

By the end of May Henry had had enough of dallying, especially as rumours came from Rome that the Pope might revoke the commission of the Legates; and the great hall of the Monastery of Blackfriars was made ready for the sittings of the Legatine Court. On a raised daïs were two chairs of state, covered with cloth of gold, and on the right side of the daïs a throne and canopy for the King, confronted by another for the Queen. The first sittings of the Legates were formal, and the King and Queen were summoned to appear before the tribunal on the 18th June 1529. Early in the morning of the day appointed the hall was full to overflowing with bishops, clerics, and councillors, and upon the crowd there fell the hush of those who consciously look upon a great drama of real life. After the Bishops of Bath and Lincoln had testified that citations to the King and Queen had been delivered, and other formal statements had been taken, an usher stood forth and cried: “Henry, King of England, appear.” But Henry was at Greenwich, five miles away, and in his stead there answered the ecclesiastical lawyer, Dr. Sampson. Then “Katharine, Queen of England” rang out, and into the hall there swept the procession of the Queen, herself rustling in stiff black garments, with four bishops, amongst them Fisher of Rochester, and a great train of ladies. Standing before the throne erected for her, she made a low obeisance to the Legates; and then, in formal terms, protested against the competence of the tribunal to judge her case, consisting, as it did, of those dependent upon one of the parties, and unable to give an impartial judgment. She appealed from the Legates to the Sovereign Pontiff, who, without fear or favour of man, would decide according to divine and human law. Then with another low obeisance Katharine turned her back upon the Court, and returned to the adjoining palace of Bridewell.

On the following Monday, the 21st, the Court again sat to give judgment upon her protest, which Campeggio would have liked to accept and so to relieve him of his difficulty but for the pressure put upon him by Wolsey and the Court. To the call of his name Henry on this occasion answered in person from his throne, “Here,” whilst the Queen contented herself by an inclination of the head. When the Legates had rejected her protest, the King rose, and in one of his sanctimonious speeches once more averred his admiration and affection for his wife, and swore that his fear of living sinfully was the sole cause of his having raised the question of the validity of his marriage. When his speech had ended Katharine rose. Between them the clerks and assessors sat at a large table, so that she had to make the whole circuit of the hall to approach the King. As she came to the foot of his throne she knelt before him for a last appeal to his better feelings. In broken English, and with tears coursing down her cheeks, she spoke of their long married life together, of the little daughter they both loved so well, of her obedience and devotion to him, and finally called him and God to witness that her marriage with his brother had been one in name only. Then, rising, she bowed low to the man who was still her husband, and swept from the room. When she reached the door, Henry, realising that all Christendom would cry out against him if she was judged in her absence, bade the usher summon her back, but she turned to the Welsh courtier, Griffin Richards, upon whose arm she leaned, saying: “Go on, it is no matter; this is no impartial Court to me,” and thus, by an act of defiance, bade Henry do his worst. Like other things she did, it was brave, even heroic in the circumstances, but it was unwise from every point of view.

It would be profitless to follow step by step the further proceedings, which Campeggio and Wolsey, at least, must have known were hollow. The Court sat from week to week, and Henry grew more angry as each sitting ended fruitlessly, the main question at issue now being the consummation or non-consummation of the first marriage; until, at the end of July, Campeggio demanded a vacation till October, in accordance with the rule in Roman Courts.[78] Whilst this new delay was being impatiently borne, the revocation of the powers of the Legates, so long desired by Campeggio, came from Rome, and Henry saw that the churchmen had cheated him after all. His rage knew no bounds; and the Cardinal’s enemies, led by Anne and her kinsmen, cleverly served now by the new man Stephen Gardiner, fanned the flame against Wolsey. He might still, however, be of some use; and though in deadly fear he was not openly disgraced yet. One day the King sent for him to Bridewell during the recess, and was closeted with him for an hour. In his barge afterwards on his way home Wolsey sat perturbed and unhappy with the Bishop of Carlisle. “It is a very hot day,” said the latter. “Yes,” replied the unhappy man, “if you had been as well chafed as I have been in the last hour you would say it was hot.” Wolsey in his distress went straight to bed when he arrived at York Place, but before he had lain two hours Anne’s father came to his bedside to order him in the name of the King to accompany Campeggio to Bridewell, to make another attempt to move the Queen. He had to obey, and, calling at Bath House for Campeggio on his way, they sought audience of Katharine. They found her cool and serene—indeed she seems rather to have overplayed the part. She came to meet them with a skein of silk around her neck. “I am sorry to keep you waiting,” she said; “I was working with my ladies.” To Wolsey’s request for a private audience she replied that he might speak before her people, she had no secrets with him; and when he began to speak in Latin she bade him use English. Throughout she was cool and stately, and, as may be supposed, the visit was as fruitless as others had been.

Wolsey was not quite done with even yet. He might still act as Legate alone, if the Pope’s decretal deciding the law of the case in favour of Henry could be obtained from Campeggio, who had held it so tightly by the Pope’s command. So when Campeggio was painfully carried into Northamptonshire in September to take leave of the King, Wolsey was ordered to accompany him. Henry thought it politic to receive them without open sign of displeasure, and sent the Italian Cardinal on his way with presents and smooth words. Wolsey escorted him a few miles on his road from Grafton, where the King was staying, to Towcester; but when next day the Cardinal returned to Grafton alone he found the King’s door shut against him, and Norreys brought him an order that he was to return to London. It was a blow that struck at his heart, and he went sadly with the shadow of impending ruin upon him, never to set eyes on his master more. Before his final fall there was still one thing he might do, and he was given a few days’ reprieve that he might do it. The Pope had pledged himself in writing not to withdraw the Legates’ commission, and although he had done so the original commission might still be alleged as authority for Wolsey to act alone, if only the Papal decretal could be found. Campeggio’s privileged character was consequently ignored, and all his baggage ransacked in the hope of finding the document before he left English soil. Alas! as an eye-witness tells us, all that the packs contained were “old hosen, old coates, and such vile stuff as no honest man would carry,” for the decretal had been committed to the flames months before by the Pope’s orders; and the outraged old Italian Legate, with his undignified belongings, crossed the Channel and so passes out of our history.

Anne had so far triumphed by the coalition of Wolsey’s enemies. Her own hatred of him was more jealous and personal than political; for she and her paternal family were decidedly French in their sympathies, and Wolsey, at all events in the latest stages, had striven his utmost to help forward her marriage with the King. The older nobility, led by Norfolk, who had deserted Katharine their former ally, in order to use Anne for their rival’s ruin, had deeper and longer-standing motives for their hate of the Cardinal. Although most of them now were heavily bribed and pensioned by France, their traditions were always towards the Imperial and Spanish alliance, and against bureaucratic ministers. There was yet another element that had joined Anne’s party in order to overthrow Wolsey. It consisted of those who from patriotic sentiment resented the galling supremacy of a foreign prince over the English Church, and cast their eyes towards Germany, where the process of emancipation from the Papacy was in full swing. The party in England was not a large one, and hardly concerned itself yet with fine points of doctrine. It was more an expression of the new-born English pride and independence than the religious revolt it was to become later; and the fit mouthpiece of the feeling was bluff Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, who had publicly insulted the Legates in the hall at Blackfriars.

It is obvious that a party consisting of so many factions would lose its cohesion when its main object was attained with the fall of Wolsey. The latter had bent before the storm, and at once surrendered all his plunder to the King and to Anne’s relatives, which secured his personal immunity for a time, whilst he watched for the divisions amongst his opponents that might give him his chance again. Anne’s uncle, Norfolk, aristocratic and conservative, took the lead in the new government, to the annoyance of the Duke of Suffolk, who occupied a secondary place, for which his lack of political ability alone qualified him. Sir Thomas More became Chancellor, and between him and Anne there was no great love lost, whilst Anne’s father, now Earl of Wiltshire, became Lord Privy Seal, and her brother, Lord Rochford, was sent as English ambassador to France. With such a government as this—of which Anne was the real head[79]—no very distinct line of policy could be expected. The Parliament, which was summoned on Wolsey’s fall, was kept busy legalising the enrichment of Anne at the expense of the Cardinal, and in clamorous complaints of the abuses committed by the clergy, but when foreign affairs had to be dealt with the voice of the government was a divided one. Anne and her paternal family were still in favour of France; but the Emperor and the Pope were close friends now, and it was felt necessary by the King and Norfolk to attempt to reconcile them to the divorce, if possible, by a new political arrangement. For this purpose Anne’s father travelled to Bologna, where Charles and Clement were staying together, and urged the case of his master. The only result was a contemptuous refusal from the Emperor to consider any proposal for facilitating his aunt’s repudiation; and the serving of Wiltshire, as Henry’s representative, with a formal citation of the King of England to appear in person or by proxy before the Papal Court in Rome entrusted with the decision of the divorce case. This latter result drove Henry and Anne into a fury, and strengthened their discontent against the churchmen, whilst it considerably decreased the King’s confidence in Wiltshire’s ability. It was too late now to recall Wolsey, although the French government did what was possible to soften the King’s rigour against him; but Henry longed to be able again to command the consummate ability and experience of his greatest minister, and early in the year 1530 Henry himself became a party to an intrigue for the Cardinal’s partial rehabilitation. Anne, when she thought Wolsey was dying, was persuaded to send him a token and a kind message; but when, later, she learnt that an interview between the King and him was in contemplation, she took fright; and Norfolk, who at least was at one with her in her jealousy of the fallen minister, ordered the latter to go to his diocese of York, and not to approach within five miles of the King.

Anne’s position in the King’s household was now a most extraordinary one. She had visited the fine palace, York Place, which Wolsey had conveyed to the King at Westminster; and with the glee of a child enjoying a new toy, had inspected and appraised the splendours it contained. In future it was to be the royal residence, and she was its mistress. She sat at table in Katharine’s place, and even took precedence of the Duchess of Norfolk and ladies of the highest rank. This was all very well in its way, but it did not satisfy Anne. To be Queen in name as well as in fact was the object for which she was striving, and anything less galled her. The Pope was now hand in glove with the Emperor, and could not afford to waver on Henry’s side, whilst Charles was more determined than ever to prevent the close alliance between England and France that the marriage and a Boleyn predominance seemed to forebode. The natural effect of this was, of course, to drive Henry more than ever into the arms of France, and though Wolsey had owed his unpopularity largely to his French sympathies, he had never truckled so slavishly to Francis as Henry was now obliged to do, in order to obtain his support for the divorce, which he despaired of obtaining from the Pope without French pressure. The Papal Court was divided, then and always, into French and Spanish factions, and in North Italy French and Spanish agents perpetually tried to outwit each other. Throughout the Continent, wherever the influence of France extended, pressure was exerted to obtain legal opinions favourable to Henry’s contention. Bribes, as lavish as they were barefaced, were offered to jurists for decisions confirming the view that marriage with a deceased brother’s widow was invalid in fact, and incapable of dispensation. The French Universities were influenced until some sort of irregular dictum, afterwards formally repudiated, was obtained in favour of Henry, and in Italy French and Spanish intrigue were busy at work, the one extorting from lawyers support to the English view, the other by threats and bribes preventing its being given. This, however, was a slow process, and of doubtful efficacy after all; because, whilst the final decision on the divorce lay with the Pope, the opinions of jurists and Universities, even if they had been generally favourable to Henry, instead of the reverse, could have had ultimately no authoritative effect.

Henry began to grow restive by the end of 1530. All his life he had seemed to have his own way in everything, and here he found himself and his most ardent wishes unceremoniously set aside, as if of no account. Other kings had obtained divorces easily enough from Rome: why not he? The answer that would naturally occur to him was that his affairs were being ineptly managed by his ministers, and he again yearned for Wolsey. The Cardinal had in the meanwhile plucked up some of his old spirit at York, and was still in close communication with the French, and even with the Emperor’s ambassador. Again Norfolk became alarmed, and a disclosure of the intrigue gave an excuse for Wolsey’s arrest. It was the last blow, and the heart of the proud Cardinal broke on his way south to prison, leaving Henry with no strong councillor but the fair-faced woman with the tight mouth who sat in his wife’s place. She was brave; “as fierce as a lioness,” the Emperor’s ambassador wrote, and would “rather see the Queen hanged than recognise her as her mistress”; but the party behind her was a divided one, and the greatest powers in Europe were united against her. There was only one way in which she might win, and that was by linking her cause with that of successful opposition to the Papacy. The Pope was a small Italian prince now slavishly subservient to the Emperor: Luther had defied a greater Sovereign Pontiff than he; why should Clement, a degenerate scion of the mercantile Medicis, dare to dictate to England and her King?

CHAPTER V

1530-1534

HENRY’S DEFIANCE—THE VICTORY OF ANNE

The deadlock with regard to the validity of the marriage could not continue indefinitely, for the legitimacy of the Princess Mary having been called into question, the matter now vitally touched the succession to the English crown. Katharine was immovable. She would neither retire to a convent nor accept a decision from an English tribunal, and, through her proctor in Rome, she passionately pressed for a decision there in her favour. Norfolk, at the end of his not very extensive mental resources, could only wish that both Katharine and Anne were dead and the King married to some one else. The Pope was ready to do anything that did not offend the Emperor to bring about peace; and when, under pressure from Henry and Norfolk, the English prelates and peers, including Wolsey and Warham, signed a petition to the Pope saying that Henry’s marriage should be dissolved, or they must seek a remedy for themselves in the English Parliament, Clement was almost inclined to give way; for schism in England he dreaded before all things. But Charles’s troops were in Rome and his agents for ever bullying the wretched Pope, and the latter was obliged to reply finally to the English peers with a rebuke. There were those both in England and abroad who urged Henry to marry Anne at once, and depend upon the recognition of the fait accompli by means of negotiation afterwards, but this did not satisfy either the King or the favourite. Every interview between the King and the Nuncio grew more bitter than the previous one. No English cause, swore Henry, should be tried outside his realm where he was master; and if the Pope insisted in giving judgment for the Queen, as he had promised the Emperor to do, the English Parliament should deal with the matter in spite of Rome.

The first ecclesiastical thunderclap came in October 1530, when Henry published a proclamation reminding the lieges of the old law of England that forbade the Pope from exercising direct jurisdiction in the realm by Bull or Brief. No one could understand at the time what was meant, but when the Nuncio in perturbation went and asked Norfolk and Suffolk the reason of so strange a proclamation at such a time, they replied roughly, that they “cared nothing for Popes in England ... the King was Emperor and Pope too in his own realm.” Later, Henry told the Nuncio that the Pope had outraged convention by summoning him before a foreign tribunal, and should now be taught that no usurpation of power would be allowed in England. The Parliament was called, said Henry, to restrain the encroachment of the clergy generally, and unless the Pope met his wishes promptly a blow would be struck at all clerical pretensions. The reply of the Pope was another brief forbidding Henry’s second marriage, and threatening Parliaments and Bishops in England if they dared to meddle in the matter. The question was thus rapidly drifting into an international one on religious lines, which involved either the submission of Henry or schism from the Church. The position of the English clergy was an especially difficult one. They naturally resented any curtailment of the privileges of their order, though they dared not speak too loudly, for they owed the enjoyment of their temporalities to the King. But they were all sons of the Church, looking to Rome for spiritual authority, and were in mortal dread of the advance of the new spirit of religious freedom aroused in Germany. The method of bridling them adopted by Henry was as clever as it was unscrupulous. The Bull giving to Wolsey independent power to judge the matrimonial cause in England as Legate, had been, as will be recollected, demanded by the King and recognised by him, as it had been, of course, by the clergy; but in January 1531, when Parliament and Convocation met, the English clergy found themselves laid under Premunire by the King for having recognised the Legatine Bull; and were told that as subjects of the crown, and not of the Pope, they had thus rendered themselves liable to the punishment for treason. The unfortunate clergy were panic-stricken at this new move, and looked in vain to Rome for support against their own King; but Rome, as usual, was trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and could only wail at the obstinacy both of Henry and Katharine.

In the previous sitting of Parliament in 1529, severe laws had been passed against the laxity and extortion of the English ecclesiastics, notwithstanding the violent indignation of Fisher of Rochester; but what was now demanded of them as a condition of their pardon for recognising the Bull was practically to repudiate the authority of the Pope over them, and to recognise the King of England as supreme head of the Church, in addition to paying the tremendous fine of a hundred thousand pounds. They were in utter consternation, and they struggled hard; but the alternative to submission was ruin, and the majority gave way. The die was cast: Henry was Pope and King in one, and could settle his own cause in his own way. When the English clergy had thus been brought to heel, Henry’s opponents saw that they had driven him too far, and were aghast at his unexpected exhibition of strength, a strength, be it noted, not his own, as will be explained later; and somewhat moderated their tone. But the King of England snapped his fingers now at threats of excommunication, and cared nothing, he said, for any decision from Rome. The Emperor dared not go to war with England about Katharine, for the French were busily drawing towards the Pope, whose niece, Katharine de Medici, was to be betrothed to the son of Francis; and the imperial agents in Rome ceased to insist so pertinaciously upon a decision of the matrimonial suit.

Katharine alone clamoured unceasingly that her “hell upon earth” should be ended by a decision in her favour from the Sovereign Pontiff. Her friends in England were many, for the old party of nobles were rallying again to her side, even Norfolk was secretly in her favour, or at least against the King’s marriage with his niece Anne, and Henry’s new bold step against the Papacy, taken under bureaucratic influence, had aroused much fear and jealousy amongst prelates like Fisher and jurists like More, as well as amongst the aristocratic party in the country. Desperate efforts were made to prevent the need for further action in defiance of the Papacy by the decision of the matrimonial suit by the English Parliament; and early in June 1531 Henry and his Council decided to put fresh pressure upon Katharine to get her to consent to a suspension of the proceedings in Rome, and to the relegation of the case to a tribunal in some neutral territory. Katharine at Greenwich had secret knowledge of the intention, and she can hardly have been so surprised as she pretended to be when, as she was about to retire to rest, at nine o’clock at night, to learn that the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk, and some thirty other nobles and prelates, sought audience of her. Norfolk spoke first, and in the King’s name complained bitterly of the slight put upon him by the Pope’s citation. He urged the Queen, for the sake of England, for the memory of the political services of Henry to her kin, and his past kindness to her, to meet his wishes and consent to a neutral tribunal judging between them. Katharine was, as usual, cool and contemptuous. No one was more sorry than she for the King’s annoyance, though she had not been the cause of it; but there was only one judge in the world competent to deal with the case. “His Holiness, who keeps the place, and has the power, of God upon earth, and is the image of eternal truth.” As for recognising her husband as supreme head of the Church, that she would never do. When Dr. Lee spoke harshly, telling her that she knew that, her first marriage having been consummated, her second was never legal, she vehemently denied the fact, and told him angrily to go to Rome and argue. He would find there others than a lone woman to answer him. Dr. Sampson then took up the parable and reproached her for her determination to have the case settled so quickly; and she replied to him that if he had passed such bitter days as she had, he would be in a hurry too. Dr. Stokesley was dealt with similarly by the Queen; and she then proudly protested at being thus baited late at night by a crowd of men; she, “a poor woman without friends or counsel.” Norfolk reminded her that the King had appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Durham, and the Bishop of Rochester to advise her. “Pretty councillors they are,” she replied. “If I ask for Canterbury’s advice he tells me he will have nothing to do with it, and for ever repeats ira principis mors est. The Bishop of Durham dares to say nothing because he is the King’s subject, and Rochester only tells me to keep a good heart and hope for the best.”

Katharine knew it not, but many of those before her were really her friends. Gardiner, now first Secretary, looked with fear upon the Lutheran innovations, Guilford the Controller, Lord Talbot, and even Norfolk wished her well, and feared the advent of Anne; and Guilford, less prudent than the rest, spoke so frankly that the favourite heard of his words. She broke out in furious invective against him before his face. “When I am Queen of England,” she cried, “you will soon lose your office.” “You need not wait so long,” he replied, as he went straightway to deliver his seals to the King. Henry told him he ought not to mind an angry woman’s talk, and was loath to accept his resignation; but the Controller insisted, and another rankling enemy was raised up to Anne. The favour she enjoyed had fairly turned her head, and her insolence, even to those who in any case had a right to her respect, had made her thoroughly detested. The Duke of Suffolk, enemy of the Papacy as he was, and the King’s brother-in-law, was as anxious now as Talbot, Guilford, and Fitzwilliam to avert the marriage with Anne, who was setting all the Court by the ears. Katharine’s attitude made matters worse. She still lived under the same roof as the King, though he rarely saw her except on public occasions, and her haughty replies to all his emissaries, and her constant threats of what the Emperor might do, irritated Henry beyond endurance under the taunts of Anne. The latter was bitterly jealous also of the young Princess Mary, of whom Henry was fond; and by many spiteful, petty acts of persecution, the girl’s life was made unhappy. Once when Henry praised his daughter in Anne’s presence, the latter broke out into violent abuse of her, and on another occasion, when Katharine begged to be allowed to visit the Princess, Henry told her roughly that she could go away as soon as she liked, and stop away. But Katharine stood her ground. She would not leave her husband, she said, even for her daughter, until she was forced to do so. Henry’s patience was nearly tired out between Anne’s constant importunities and Katharine’s dignified immobility; and leaving his wife and daughter at Windsor, he went off on a hunting progress with Anne, in the hope that he might soon be relieved of the presence of Katharine altogether. Public feeling was indignantly in favour of the Queen; and it was no uncommon thing for people to waylay the King, whilst he was hunting, with entreaties that he would live with his wife again; and wherever Anne went the women loudly cried shame upon her.

In his distraction Henry was at a loss what to do. He always wanted to appear in the right, and he dared not imprison or openly ill-treat Katharine, for his own people favoured her, and all Europe would have joined in condemning him; yet it was clear that even Windsor Castle was not, in future, big enough for both Queen and favourite at the same time, and positive orders at length were sent to Katharine, in the autumn of 1531, to take up her residence at More in Hertfordshire, in a house formerly belonging to Wolsey.[80] She obeyed with a heavy heart, for it meant parting—and for ever—with her daughter, who was sent to live at Richmond, and was strictly forbidden to communicate with her mother. Katharine said she would have preferred to have been sent to the Tower, to being consigned to a place so unfit for her as More, with its foul ways and ruinous surroundings, but nothing broke her spirit or humbled her pride. Her household was still regal in its extent, for we are told by an Italian visitor to her that “thirty maids of honour stood around her table when she dined, and there were fifty who performed its service: her household consisting of about two hundred persons in all.” But her state was a mockery now; for Lady Anne, she knew, was with her husband, loudly boasting that within three or four months she would be a queen, and already playing the part insolently. The Privy Purse expenses of the period show how openly Anne was acknowledged as being Henry’s actual consort. Not only did she accompany the King everywhere on his excursions and progresses, and partake of the receptions offered to him by local authorities and nobles,[81] but large sums of money were paid out of the King’s treasury for the gorgeous garb in which she loved to appear. Purple velvet at half a guinea a yard, costly furs and linen, bows and arrows, liveries for her servants, and all sorts of fine gear were bought for Anne. The Lord Mayor of London, in June 1530, sent her a present of cherries, and the bearer got a reward of 6s. 8d. Soon after Anne’s greyhounds killed a cow, and the Privy Purse had to pay the damage, 10s. In November, 19¾ yards of crimson satin at 15s. a yard had to be paid for to make Lady Anne a robe, and £8, 8s. for budge skins was paid soon afterwards. When Christmas came and card-playing was in season, my Lady Anne must have playing money, £20 all in groats; and when she lost, as she did pretty heavily, her losings had to be paid by the treasurer, though her winnings she kept for herself. No less than a hundred pounds was given to her as a New Year’s gift in 1531. A few weeks afterwards, a farm at Greenwich was bought for her for £66; and her writing-desk had to be adorned with latten and gold at a great cost. As the year 1531 advanced and Katharine’s cause became more desperate, the extravagance of her rival grew; and when in the autumn of that year the Queen was finally banished from Court, Anne’s bills for dressmaker’s finery amounted to extravagant proportions.

The position was rendered the more bitter for Katharine when she recognised that the Pope, in a fright now at Henry’s defiance, was trying to meet him half way, and was listening to the suggestion of referring the question to a tribunal at Cambray or elsewhere; whilst the Emperor himself was only anxious to get the cause settled somehow without an open affront to his house or necessary cause for quarrel with Henry.[82] And yet, withal, the divorce did not seem to make headway in England itself. As we have seen, the common people were strongly against it: the clergy, trembling, as well they might, for their privileges between the Pope and the King, were naturally as a body in favour of the ecclesiastical view; and many of Henry and Anne’s clerical instruments, such as Dr. Bennet in Rome and Dr. Sampson at Vienna, were secretly working against the cause they were supposed to be aiding: even some of the new prelates, such as Gardiner of Winchester and Stokesley of London, grew less active advocates when they understood that upon them and their order would fall ultimately the responsibility of declaring invalid a marriage which the Church and the Pope had sanctioned. Much stronger still even was the dislike to the King’s marriage on the part of the older nobility, whose enmity to Wolsey had first made the marriage appear practicable. They had sided with Anne to overthrow Wolsey; but the obstinate determination of the King to rid himself of his wife and marry his favourite, had brought forward new clerical and bureaucratic ministers whose proceedings and advice alarmed the aristocracy much more than anything Wolsey had done. If Katharine had been tactful, or even an able politician, she had the materials at hand to form a combination in favour of herself and her daughter, before which Henry, coward as he was, would have quailed. But she lacked the qualities necessary for a leader: she irritated the King without frightening him, and instead of conciliating the nobles who really sympathised with her, though they were forced to do the King’s bidding, she snubbed them haughtily and drove them from her.

Anne flattered and pleased the King, but it was hardly her mind that moved him to defy the powerful Papacy, or sustained him in his fight with his own clergy. From the first we have seen him leaning upon some adviser who would relieve him from responsibility whilst giving him all the honour for success. He desired the divorce above all things; but, as usual, he wanted to shelter himself behind other authority than his own. When in 1529 he had been seeking learned opinions to influence the Pope, chance had thrown the two ecclesiastics who were his instruments, Fox and Gardiner, into contact with a learned theologian and Reader in Divinity at Cambridge University. Thomas Cranmer had studied and lived much. He was a widower, and Fellow of Magdalene, Cambridge, of forty years of age; and although in orders and a Doctor of Divinity, his tastes were rather those of a learned country gentleman than of an ecclesiastic in monkish times. In conversation with Fox and Gardiner, this high authority on theology expressed the opinion that instead of enduring the delays of the ecclesiastical courts, the question of the legality of the King’s marriage should be decided by divines from the words of the Scriptures themselves. The idea seemed a good one, and Henry jumped at it. In an interview soon afterwards he ordered Cranmer to put his arguments into a book, and placed him in the household of Anne’s father, the Earl of Wiltshire, to facilitate the writing of it. The religious movement in Germany had found many echoes in England, and doubtless Cranmer conscientiously objected to Papal control. Certain it is that, fortified as he was by the encouragement of Anne and her father, his book was a persuasive one, and greatly pleased the King, who sent it to the Pope and others. Nor did Cranmer’s activity stay there. He entered into disputation everywhere, with the object of gaining theological recruits for the King’s side, and wrote a powerful refutation of Reginald Pole’s book in favour of Katharine. The King thought so highly of Cranmer’s controversial ability that he sent him with Lee, Stokesley, and other theologians to Rome, Paris, and elsewhere on the Continent, to forward the divorce, and from Rome he was commissioned as English Ambassador with the Emperor.

Whilst Cranmer was thus fighting the King’s battle abroad, another instrument came to Henry’s hand for use in England. On the disgrace of Wolsey, his secretary, Thomas Cromwell, was recommended to Henry by friends. The King disliked him, and at first refused to see him; but consented to do so when it was hinted that Cromwell was the sort of man who would serve him well in what he had at heart. The hint was a well-founded one; for Thomas Cromwell was as ambitious and unscrupulous as his master had been; strong, bold, and fortunately unhampered by ecclesiastical orders. When Henry received him in the gardens at Whitehall, Cromwell spoke as no priest, and few laymen, would have dared to do: for, apart from the divorce question, there was to be no dallying with heresy if Henry could help it, and the fires of Smithfield burning doubters were already beginning to blaze under the influence of Sir Thomas More. “Sire,” said Cromwell to the King, “the Pope refuses you a divorce ... why wait for his consent? Every Englishman is master in his own house, and why should not you be so in England? Ought a foreign prelate to share your power with you? It is true the bishops make oath to your Majesty; but they make another to the Pope immediately afterwards which absolves them from it. Sire, you are but half a king, and we are but half your subjects. Your kingdom is a two-headed monster: will you bear such an anomaly any longer? Frederick and other German princes have cast off the yoke of Rome. Do likewise; become once more king, govern your kingdom in concert with your lords and commons.”[83]

With much more of such talk Cromwell flattered the King, who probably hardly knew whether to punish or reward such unheard-of boldness; but when Cromwell, prepared for the emergency, took from his pocket a copy of the prelates’ oath to the Pope, Henry’s indignation bore all before it, and Cromwell’s fortune was made. He at once obtained a seat in Parliament (1529), and took the lead in the anti-clerical measures which culminated in the emancipation of the English clergy from the Papacy, and their submission to the King. Gardiner, ambitious and able as he was, was yet an ecclesiastic, and looked grimly upon such a religious policy as that into which Henry was being towed by his infatuation for Anne; but Cromwell was always ready with authorities and flattery to stiffen the King’s resolve, and thenceforward, until his fall before a combination of nobles, his was the strong spirit to which Henry clung.

It will be seen that the influences against the King’s marriage with Anne were very powerful, since it had become evident that the object could only be attained by the separation of England from the Papal communion; a step too bold and too much smacking of Lutheranism to commend itself to any but the few who might benefit by the change. The greatest danger seemed that by her isolation England might enable the two great Catholic powers to combine against her, in which case Henry’s ruin was certain; and, eager as he was to divorce Katharine in England and marry Anne, the King dared not do so until he had secured at least the neutrality of France. As usual, he had to pay heavily for it. Dr. Fox, Henry’s most able and zealous foreign minister, was again sent to France, and an alliance was negotiated in the spring of 1532, by which Henry bound himself to join Francis against the Emperor in case of attack, and Francis undertook to support Henry if any attempt was made by Charles to avenge his aunt. Anne was once more jubilant and hopeful; for her cause was now linked with a national alliance which had a certain party of adherents in the English Court, and an imperial attack upon England in the interests of Katharine was rendered unlikely. But, withal, the opposition in England itself had to be overcome, for Henry was ever a stickler for correctness in form, and wanted the divorce to have an appearance of defensible legality. The bishops in Parliament were sounded, but it was soon evident that they as a body would not fly in the face of the Papacy and the Catholic interests, even to please the King. Timid, tired old Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was approached with a suggestion that he, as Primate, might convene a quorum of prelates favourable to Henry, who would approve of the entire repudiation of the Papal authority in England, and themselves pronounce the King’s divorce. But Warham was already hastening to the grave, and flatly refused to stain his last hours by spiritual revolt. Despairing of the English churchman, Henry then turned to the lay peers and commons, and, through Norfolk, asked them to decide that the matrimonial cause was one that should be dealt with by a lay tribunal; but Norfolk’s advocacy was but half-hearted, and the peers refused to make the declaration demanded.[84]

The fact is clear that England was not yet prepared to defy spiritual authority to satisfy the King’s caprice; and Anne was nearly beside herself with rage. She, indeed, was for braving everybody and getting married at once, divorce or no divorce. Why lose so much time? the French ambassador asked. If the King wanted to marry again let him do as King Louis did, and marry of his own motion.[85] The advice pleased both Henry and his lady-love, but Norfolk and Anne’s father were strongly opposed to so dangerous and irregular a step, and incurred the furious displeasure of Anne for daring to thwart her. Every one, she said, even her own kinsmen, were against her,[86] and she was not far wrong, for with the exception of Cranmer in Germany and Cromwell, no one cared to risk the popular anger by promoting the match. Above all, Warham stood firm. The continued attacks of the King at Cromwell’s suggestion against the privileges of the clergy hardened the old Archbishop’s heart, and it was evident that he as Primate would never now annul the King’s marriage and defy the authority of Rome. The opposition of Lord Chancellor More and of the new Bishop of Winchester, Gardiner, to Cromwell’s anti-clerical proposals in Parliament angered the King, and convinced him that with his present instruments it would be as difficult for him to obtain a divorce in legal form in England as in Rome itself. More was made to feel that his position was an impossible one, and retired when Parliament was prorogued in May; and Gardiner had a convenient attack of gout, which kept him away from Court until the King found he could not conduct foreign affairs without him and brought him back.

In the meanwhile Katharine neglected the opportunities offered to her of combining all these powerful elements in her favour. Nobles, clergy, and people were almost universally on her side: Anne was cordially hated, and had no friends but the few religious reformers who hoped by her means to force the King ever further away from the Papacy; and yet the Queen continued to appeal to Rome and the Emperor, against whom English patriotic feeling might be raised by Anne’s few friends. The unwisdom of thus linking Katharine’s cause with threats of foreign aggression, whilst England itself was favourable to her, was seen when the Nuncio presented to Henry a half-hearted exhortation to take his lawful wife back. Henry fulminated against the foreigner who dared to interfere between him and his wife; and, very far from alarming him, the Pope’s timid action only proved the impotence of Rome to harm him. But the results fell upon the misguided Katharine, who had instigated the step. She was sent from the More to Ampthill, a house belonging to one of her few episcopal enemies.

All through the summer of 1532 the coming and going of French agents to England puzzled the Queen and her foreign friends; but suddenly, late in July, the truth came out. Henry and Anne had gone with a great train on a hunting tour through the midlands in July; but only a few days after starting they suddenly returned to London. The quidnuncs whispered that the people on the way had clamoured so loudly that the Queen might be recalled to Court, and had so grossly insulted Anne, that the royal party had been driven back in disgust; and though there was no doubt some ground for the assertion, the real reason for the return was that the interview between Henry and the French king, so long secretly in negotiation, had at last been settled. To enlist Francis personally on the side of the divorce, and against the clerical influence, was good policy; for the Emperor could not afford to quarrel both with France and England for his aunt, and especially as the meeting arranged between Francis and the Pope at Nice for the betrothal of the Duke of Orleans with Katharine de Medici was already in contemplation, and threatened the Emperor with a combination of France, England, and perhaps the Papacy, which would be powerful enough to defy him. The policy was Cromwell’s, who had inherited from his master, Wolsey, a leaning for the French alliance; but Norfolk and the rest of Henry’s advisers were heavily bribed by France, and were on this occasion not inimical. The people at large, as usual, looked askance at the French connection. They dreaded, above all things, a war with Spain and Flanders, and recollected with apprehension the fruitless and foolish waste in splendour on the last occasion of the monarchs of France and England meeting. An attempt was made to provide that the preparations should be less costly and elaborate than those for the Field of the Cloth of Gold, but Henry could not forego the splendour that he loved, and a suite of 3000 or 4000 people were warned to accompany the King across the Channel to Boulogne and Calais.

ANNE BOLEYN

From a portrait by Lucas Cornelisz in the National Portrait Gallery

For the interview to have its full value in the eyes of Henry and his mistress, the latter must be present at the festival, and be recognised by the French royal family as being of their own caste. Francis was not scrupulous, but this was difficult to arrange. His own second wife was the Emperor’s sister, and she, of course, would not consent to meet “the concubine”; nor would any other of the French princesses, if they could avoid it; but, although the French at first gave out that no ladies would be present, Anne began to get her fine clothes ready and enlist her train of ladies as soon as the interview between the kings was arranged. So confident was she now of success that she foretold to one of her friends that she would be married whilst in France. To add to her elation, in the midst of the preparations Archbishop Warham died, and the chief ecclesiastical obstacle to the divorce in England disappeared. Some obedient churchman as Primate would soon manage to enlist a sufficient number of his fellows to give to his court an appearance of authority, and the Church of England would ratify the King’s release.

The effects of Warham’s death (23rd August 1532) were seen immediately. There is every probability that up to that time Anne had successfully held her royal lover at arm’s length; but with Cranmer, or another such as he, at Lambeth her triumph was only a matter of the few weeks necessary to carry out the formalities; and by the end of the month of August 1532 she probably became the King’s mistress. This alone would explain the extraordinary proceedings when, on the 1st September, she was created Marchioness of Pembroke in her own right. It was Sunday morning before Mass at Windsor, where the new French alliance was to be ratified, that the King and his nobles and the French ambassador met in the great presence chamber and Anne knelt to receive the coronet and robe of her rank, the first peeress ever created in her own right in England: precedence being given to her before the two other English marchionesses, both ladies of the blood royal. Everything that could add prestige to the ceremony was done. Anne herself was dressed in regal crimson velvet and ermine; splendid presents were made to her by the enamoured King, fit more for a sovereign’s consort than his mistress; a thousand pounds a year and lands were settled upon her, and her rank and property were to descend to the issue male of her body. But the cloven hoof is shown by the omission from the patent of the usual legitimacy clause. Even if, after all, the cup of queendom was dashed from her lips untasted, she had made not a bad bargain for herself. Her short triumph, indeed, was rapidly coming. She had fought strenuously for it for many years; and now most of the legal bars against her had fallen. But, withal, there was bitterness still in her chalice. The people scowled upon her no less now that she was a marchioness than before, and the great ladies who were ordered to attend the King’s “cousin” into France did their service but sourly: whilst Francis had to be conciliated with all sorts of important concessions before he could be got to welcome “the lady” into his realm. When, at last, he consented, “because she would have gone in any case; for the King cannot be an hour without her,” Francis did it gallantly, and with good grace, for, after all, Anne was just then the strongest prop in England of the French alliance.

Katharine, from afar off, watched these proceedings with scornful resentment. Henry had no chivalry, no generosity, and saved his repudiated wife no humiliation that he could deal her in reward for her obstinacy. He had piled rich gifts upon Anne, but her greed for costly gewgaws was insatiable; and when the preparations for her visit to France were afoot she coveted the Queen’s jewels. Henry’s sister, the Duchess of Suffolk, Queen Dowager of France, had been made to surrender her valuables to the King’s favourite; but when Henry sent a message to his wife bidding her give up her jewels, the proud princess blazed out in indignant anger at the insult. “Tell the King,” she said, “that I cannot send them to him; for when lately, according to the custom of this realm, I presented him with a New Year’s gift, he warned me to send him no such presents for the future. Besides, it is offensive and insulting to me, and would weigh upon my conscience, if I were led to give up my jewels for such a base purpose as that of decking out a person who is a reproach to Christendom, and is bringing scandal and disgrace upon the King, through his taking her to such a meeting as this in France. But still, if the King commands me and sends specially for them himself, I will give him my jewels.” Such an answer as this proves clearly the lack of practical wisdom in the poor woman. She might have resisted, or she might have surrendered with a good grace; but to irritate and annoy the weak bully, without gaining her point, was worse than useless. Anne’s talk about marrying the King in France angered Katharine beyond measure; but the favourite’s ambition grew as her prospect brightened, and when it was settled that Cranmer was to be recalled from Germany and made Primate, Anne said that she had changed her mind. “Even if the King wished to marry her there (in France) she would not consent to it. She will have it take place here in England, where other queens have usually been married and crowned.”[87]

Through Kent, avoiding as they might the plague-stricken towns, the King and his lady-love, with a great royal train, rode to Dover early in October 1532. At Calais, Henry’s own town, Anne was received almost with regal honours; but when Henry went forth to greet Francis upon French soil near Boulogne, and to be sumptuously entertained, it was seen that, though the French armed men were threateningly numerous, there were no ladies to keep in countenance the English “concubine” and the proud dames who did her service. Blazing in gems, the two kings met with much courtly ceremony and hollow professions of affection. Banqueting, speech-making, and posturing in splendid raiment occupied five days at Boulogne, the while the “Lady Marquis” ate her heart out at Calais in petulant disappointment; though she made as brave a show as she could to the Frenchmen when they came to return Henry’s visit. The chronicler excels himself in the description of the lavish magnificence of the welcome of Francis at Calais,[88] and tells us that, after a bounteous supper on the night of Sunday 27th October, at which the two kings and their retinues sat down, “The Marchioness of Pembroke with seven other ladies in masking apparel of strange fashion, made of cloth of gold compassed with crimson tinsel satin, covered with cloth of silver, lying loose and knit with gold laces,” tripped in, and each masked lady chose a partner, Anne, of course, taking the French king. In the course of the dance Henry plucked the masks from the ladies’ faces, and debonair Francis, in courtly fashion, conversed with his fair partner. One of the worst storms in the memory of man delayed the English king’s return from Calais till the 13th November; but when at length the Te Deum for his safe home-coming was sung at St. Paul’s, Anne knew that the King of France had undertaken to frighten the Pope into inactivity by talk of the danger of schism in England, and that Cranmer was hurrying across Europe on his way from Italy to London, to become Primate of the Church of England.

The plot projected was a clever one, but it was still needful to handle it very delicately. Cranmer during his residence in Germany and Italy had been zealous in winning favourable opinions for Henry’s contention, and his foregathering with Lutheran divines had strengthened his reforming opinions. He had, indeed, proceeded to the dangerous length of going through a form of marriage secretly with a young lady belonging to a Lutheran family. His leanings cannot have been quite unknown to the ever-watchful spies of the Pope and the Emperor, though Cranmer had done his best to hoodwink them, and to some extent had succeeded. But to ask the Pope to issue the Bulls confirming such a man in the Primacy of England was at least a risky proceeding, and Henry had to dissemble. In January, Katharine fondly thought that her husband was softening towards her, for he released her chaplain Abell, who had been imprisoned for publicly speaking in her favour. She fancied, poor soul, that “perhaps God had touched his heart, and that he was about to acknowledge his error.” Chapuys attributed Henry’s new gentleness to his begrudging the cost of two queenly establishments. But seen from this distance of time, it was clearly caused by a desire to disarm the suspicion of the Pope and the Emperor, who were again to meet at Bologna, until the Bulls confirming Cranmer’s appointment to the Archbishopric had been issued. Henry went out of his way to be amiable to the imperial ambassador Chapuys, whilst he beguiled the Nuncio with the pretended proposal for reconciliation by means of a decision on the divorce to be given by two Cardinal Legates, appointed by the Pope, and sitting in neutral territory. In vain Chapuys warned the Emperor that Cranmer could not be trusted; but Henry’s diplomatic signs of grace prevailed, and the Pope, dreading to drive England further into schism, confirmed Cranmer’s election as Archbishop of Canterbury (March 1533).

It was high time; for under a suave exterior both Henry and Anne were in a fever of impatience. At the very time that Queen Katharine thought that her husband had repented, Anne conveyed to him the news that she was with child. It was necessary for their plans that the offspring should be born in wedlock, and yet no public marriage was possible, or the eyes of the Papal party would be opened before the Bulls confirming Cranmer’s elevation were issued. Sometime late in January 1533, therefore, a secret marriage was performed at Greenwich, probably by the reforming Franciscan Friar, George Brown,[89] and Anne became Henry’s second wife, whilst Katharine was still undivorced. The secret was well kept for a time, and the Nuncio, Baron di Burgo, was fooled to the top of his bent by flatteries and hopes of bribes. He even sat in state on Henry’s right hand, the French ambassador being on the left, at the opening of Parliament, probably with the idea of convincing the trembling English clergy that the King and the Pope were working together. In any case, the close association of the Nuncio with Henry and his ministers aroused the fears of Katharine anew, and she broke out in denunciations of the Pope’s supineness in thus leaving her without aid for three and a half years, and now entertaining, as she said, a suggestion that would cause her to be declared the King’s concubine, and her daughter a bastard.[90] In vain Chapuys, the only man of his party who saw through the device, prayed that Cranmer’s Bulls should not be sent from Rome, that the sentence in Katharine’s favour should no longer be delayed. It was already too late. The pride of Anne and her father at the secret marriage could not much longer be kept under. In the middle of February, whilst dining in her own apartment, she said that “she was now as sure that she should be married to the King, as she was of her own death”; and the Earl of Wiltshire told the aged kinsman of Henry, the Earl of Rutland, a staunch adherent of Katharine, that “the King was determined not to be so considerate as he had been, but would marry the Marchioness of Pembroke at once, by the authority of Parliament.”[91] Anne’s condition, indeed, could not continue to be concealed, and whispers of it reached the Queen at Ampthill. By March the rumour was rife at Court that the marriage had taken place—a rumour which it is plain that Anne’s friends took no pains to deny, and Cranmer positively encouraged.[92]

Cromwell, in the meanwhile, grew in power and boldness with the success of his machinations. The Chancellorship, vacant by More’s resignation, was filled by Cromwell’s friend Audley, and every post that fell vacant or could be vacated was occupied by known opponents of the clergy. The country and Parliament were even yet not ready to go so far as Cromwell in his policy of emancipation from Rome in spiritual affairs; and only by the most illegal pressure both in the two Houses and in Convocation was the declaration condemning the validity of the King’s marriage with Katharine at last obtained. Armed with these declarations and the Bulls from Rome confirming Cranmer’s appointment, Henry was ready in April to cast away the mask, and the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk were sent to tell Katharine at Ampthill “that she need not trouble any more about the King, for he had taken another wife, and that in future she must abandon the title of Queen, and be called Duchess; though she should be left in possession of her property.”[93] Chapuys was indignant, and urged the Emperor to make war upon England in revenge for the insult to his house. “The moment this accursed Anne gets her foot firmly in the stirrup she will do the Queen all the harm she can, and the Princess also, which is what the Queen fears most.... She (Anne) has lately boasted that she will make the Princess one of her maids, which will not give her too much to eat; or will marry her to some varlet.” But the Emperor had cares and dangers that his ambassador in England knew not of, and he dared not avenge his aunt by the invasion of England.

A long and fruitless war of words was waged between Henry and Chapuys when the news of the secret marriage became known; the talk turning upon the eternal question of the consummation of Katharine’s first marriage. Chapuys reminded the King that on several occasions he (Henry) had confessed that his wife had been intact by Arthur. “Ah!” replied Henry, “I only said that in fun. A man when he is frolicking and dining says a good many things that are not true. Now, I think I have satisfied you.... What else do you want to know?”[94] A day or two after this, on Easter Eve, Anne went to Mass in truly royal state, loaded with diamonds and other precious stones, and dressed in a gorgeous suit of tissue; the train being borne by her cousin, the daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, betrothed to the King’s illegitimate son, the Duke of Richmond. She was followed by a greater suite and treated with more ceremony than had formerly attended Katharine, and, to the astonishment of the people, was prayed for thenceforward in the Church services at Court as Queen.[95] In London the attitude of the people grew threatening, and the Lord Mayor was taken to task by the King, who ordered that proclamation should be made forbidding any unfavourable reference to the King’s second marriage. But the fire of indignation glowed fiercely beneath the surface, for everywhere the cause of Katharine was bound up, as it seemed, with the old faith in which all had been born, with the security of commerce with England’s best customers, and with the rights of anointed royalty, as against low-born insolence.

No humiliation was spared to Katharine. Her daughter was forbidden to hold any communication with her, her household was reduced to the meagre proportions of a private establishment, her scutcheon was taken down from Westminster Hall, and her cognisance from her barge, and, as a crowning indignity, she was summoned to appear before the Primate’s court at Dunstable, a summons which, at the prompting of Chapuys, she entirely disregarded. Up to this time she had stood firm in her determination to maintain an attitude of loyalty to the King and to her adopted country; but, as she grew more bitter at her rival’s triumph, and the flowing tide of religious change rose at her feet, she listened to plans for bringing a remedy for her ills by a subversion of Henry’s regime. But she was a poor conspirator, and considerations of safety for her daughter, and her want of tact in uniting the English elements in her favour, always paralysed her.[96]

In the meanwhile the preparations for the public recognition and coronation of Anne went on. The new Queen tried her best to captivate the Londoners, but without success; and only with difficulty could the contributions be obtained for the coming festivities when the new Queen passed through the city. On the 10th May Katharine was declared contumacious by the Primate’s court, and on the 23rd May Cranmer pronounced the King’s first marriage to have been void from the first.[97] This was followed by a pronouncement to the effect that the second marriage, that with Anne, was legal, and nothing now stood in the way of the final fruition of so much labour and intrigue, pregnant with such tremendous results to England. On the 29th May 1533 the first scene of the pageant was enacted with the State progress by water from Greenwich to the Tower.[98] No effort had been spared by Henry to make the occasion a brilliant one. We are told that the whole river from the point of departure to that of arrival was covered with beautifully bedizened boats; guns roared forth their salutations at Greenwich, and from the crowd of ships that lay in the stream. Flags and feux de joie could be bought; courtiers’, guilds’, and nobles’ barges could be commanded, but the hearty cheers of the lieges could not be got for all King Harry’s power, as the new Queen, in the old Queen’s barge, was borne to the frowning fortress which so soon was to be her own place of martyrdom.[99]

On Sunday, 31st May 1533, the procession through the crowded city sallied from the Tower betimes in the morning. Englishmen and foreigners, except Spaniards only, had been forced to pay heavily for the splendour of the day; and the trade guilds and aldermen, brave in furred gowns and gold chains, stood from one device to another in the streets, as the glittering show went by. The French element did its best to add gaiety to the occasion, and the merchants of France established in London rode at the head of the procession in purple velvet embroidered with Anne’s device. Then came the nobles and courtiers and all the squires and gentlemen whom the King had brought from their granges and manor-houses to do honour to their new Queen. Anne herself was seated in an open litter of white satin covered by a golden canopy. She was dressed in a surcoat and mantle of white tissue trimmed with ermine, and wore a robe of crimson brocade stiff with gems. Her hair, which was very fine, hung over her shoulders surmounted by a coif and a coronet of diamonds, whilst around her neck was hung a necklace of great pearls, and upon her breast reposed a splendid jewel of precious stones. “And as she passed through the city she kept turning her face from one side to the other to greet the people, but, strange to see it was, that there were hardly ten persons who greeted her with ‘God save your Grace,’ as they used to do when the sainted Queen Katharine went by.”[100]

Lowering brows, and whispered curses of “Nan Bullen” from the citizens’ wives followed the new Queen on her way; for to them she stood for war against the Emperor in the behoof of France, for harassed trade and lean larders, and, above all, for defiance of the religious principles that most of them held sacred; and they hated the long fair face with which, or with love philtres, she had bewitched the King. The very pageants ostensibly raised in her honour contrived in several cases to embody a subtle insult. At the Gracechurch corner of Fenchurch Street, where the Hanse merchants had erected a “merveilous connyng pageaunt,” representing Mount Parnassus, with the fountain of Helicon spouting racked Rhenish wine all day, the Queen’s litter was stayed a space to listen to the Muses playing “swete instrumentes,” and to read the “epigrams” in her praise that were hung around the mount. But Anne looked aloft to where Apollo sat, and saw that the imperial eagle was blazoned in the place of honour, whilst the much-derided bogus arms of the Boleyns lurked in humble guise below;[101] and for many a day thenceforward she was claiming vengeance against the Easterlings for the slight put upon her. As each triumphal device was passed, children dressed as angels, or muses, were made to sing or recite conceited phrases of dithyrambic flattery to the heroine of the hour. There was no grace or virtue of which she was not the true exemplar. Through Leadenhall and Cornhill and so to Chepe, between lines of liveried citizens, Anne’s show progressed. At the cross on Cheapside the Mayor and corporation awaited the Queen; and the Recorder, “Master Baker,” with many courtly compliments, handed her the city’s gift of a thousand marks in a purse of gold, “which she thankfully received.” That she did so was noted with sneering contempt by Katharine’s friends. “As soon as she received the purse of money she placed it by her side in the litter: and thus she showed that she was a person of low descent. For there stood by her at the time the captain of the King’s guard, with his men and twelve lacqueys; and when the sainted Queen had passed by for her coronation, she handed the money to the captain of the guard to be divided amongst the halberdiers and lacqueys. Anne did not do so, but kept them for herself.”[102] St. Paul’s and Ludgate, Fleet Street and Temple Bar, all offered their official adulation, whilst the staring people stood by dumb. Westminster Hall, into which Anne’s litter was borne for the feast, was richly hung with arras and “newly glazed.” A regal throne with a canopy was set on high for Anne, and a great sideboard of gold plate testified to the King’s generosity to his new wife. But after she had changed her garments and was welcomed with open arms by Henry at his new palace of Westminster, her disappointment broke out. “How like you the look of the city, sweetheart?” asked the King. “Sir,” she replied, “the city itself was well enow; but I saw many caps on heads and heard but few tongues.”[103]

The next day, Sunday, Anne was crowned by Cranmer with full ceremony in Westminster Abbey, and for days thereafter banqueting, tilting, and the usual roystering went on; and the great-granddaughter of Alderman Boleyn felt that at last she was Queen indeed. Henry, too, had had his way, and again could hope that a son born in wedlock might perpetuate the name of Tudor on the throne of England. But he was in deadly fear, for the prospect was black all around him. Public indignation in England grew apace[104] at the religious changes and at the prospect of war; but what most aroused Henry’s alarm was the sudden coldness of France, and the probability of a great Catholic coalition against him. Norfolk and Lord Rochford with a stately train had gone to join in the interview between Francis and the Pope, in the hope that the joint presence of France and England might force Clement to recognise accomplished facts in order to avoid the secession of England from the Church. Although it suited Francis to promote the antagonism between Henry and the Emperor by keeping the divorce proceedings dragging on in Rome, it did not suit him for England to defy the Papacy by means of Cranmer’s sentence, and so to change the balance of power in Europe by driving Henry into permanent union with German Protestants whilst Francis was forced to side with the Emperor on religious grounds. So long as Henry remained undivorced and unmarried anything might happen. He might sate of his mistress and tire of the struggle against Rome, or be driven by fear of war to take a conciliatory course, and in any of these cases he must needs pay for France’s aid; but now that his divorce and remarriage were as valid as a duly authorised Archbishop could make them, the utility of Anne as an aid to French foreign policy disappeared. The actual marriage therefore deprived her of the sympathies of the French party in the English Court, which had hitherto sided with her, and the effects were immediately seen in the attitude of Francis.

Before Norfolk could reach the south of France news came to him that the Pope, coerced by the Emperor, had issued a brief declaring all of Henry’s proceedings in England to be nullified and he and his abettors excommunicated, unless of his own accord he restored things to their former condition before September.[105] It was plain, therefore, that any attempt at the coming interview to reconcile Clement with Henry’s action would be fruitless. Norfolk found Francis also much cooler than before, and sent back his nephew Rochford post haste to England to beg the King’s instructions. He arrived at Court in early August, at a time when Henry’s perplexity was at its height. He had learnt of the determination of Francis to greet the Pope and carry through the marriage between the Duke of Orleans and Katharine de Medici, whether the King of England’s demands were satisfied by Clement or not. He now knew that the dreaded sentence of excommunication pended over him and his instruments. If he had been left to his own weakness he would probably have given way, or at least have sought compromise. If Norfolk had been at his elbow, the old aristocratic English party might also have stayed the King’s hand. But Cromwell, bold and astute, and Anne, with the powerful lever of her unborn child, which might be a son, knew well that they had gone too far to return, and that defiance of the Papacy was the only road open to them. Already at the end of June Henry had gone as far as to threaten an appeal from the Pope to the General Council of the Church, the meeting of which was then being discussed; but now that he knew that Francis was failing him, and the Pope had finally cast down the gage, he took the next great step which led to England’s separation from Rome. Norfolk was recalled, and Gardiner accredited to Francis only with a watching brief during the Papal interview at Nice, whilst Henry’s ambassadors in Rome were recalled, and English agents were sent to Germany to seek alliances with the German Protestant princes. When, therefore, Norfolk arrived in England, he found that in his two months’ absence Cromwell had steered the ship of state further away than ever from the traditional policy of the English conservatives; namely, one of balance between the two great Catholic powers; and that England was isolated, but for the doubtful friendship of those vassal princes of the Empire who professed the dreaded new heresy. Thenceforward the ruin of Anne and Cromwell was one of the main objects of Norfolk and the noble party.

The treatment meted out to Katharine during the same time followed a similar impulse. Chapuys had been informed that, the King having now taken a legal wife, Katharine could no longer be called Queen, but Princess Dowager of Wales, and that her regal household could not be kept up; and on the 3rd July Katharine’s principal officers were ordered to convey a similar message to her personally. The message was roughly worded. It could only be arrogance and vainglory, she was told, that made her retain or usurp the title of Queen. She was much mistaken if she imagined that her husband would ever live with her again, and by her obstinate contumacy she would cause wars and bloodshed, as well as danger to herself and her daughter, as both would be made to feel the King’s displeasure. The Queen’s answer, as might have been expected, was as firm as usual. She was the King’s legitimate wife, and no reward or fear in the world would ever make her abandon her right to the title she bore. It was not vainglory that moved her, for to be the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabel was a greater honour than to be a Queen. Henry might punish her, she said, or even her daughter, “Yet neither for that, nor a thousand deaths, would she consent to damn her soul or that of her husband the King.”[106] The King, beside himself with rage, could do no more than warn Katharine’s household that they must all treat their mistress as Princess of Wales, or suffer the penalty. As for Katharine, no punishment short of death could move her; and Cromwell himself, in admiration at her answer, said that “nature had injured her in not making her a man, for she would have surpassed in fame all the heroes of history.”[107]

When a few days after this Katharine was removed to Buckden, crowds followed her with tears and blessings along the road, even as they had followed the Princess Mary shortly before, “as if she were God Almighty,” as Anne said. In defiance of Henry’s threats, “God save the Queen” rang high and clear wherever she went, and the people, “wishing her joy, comfort, and all manner of prosperity, and mishap to her enemies, begged her with tears to let them serve her; for they were all ready to die for her sake.”[108] Anne’s spite at such demonstrations was characteristic. Katharine possessed a very rich and gorgeous length of stuff, which she had brought from Spain to serve as a christening robe if she should have a son and heir. Anne’s time was drawing near, and she would not be content until the King had demanded of his wife the Spanish material to serve as a robe for the Prince of Wales, which he was confident would be born to Anne. “God forbid,” replied Katharine, “that I should ever give help or countenance in a case so horrible and abominable as this!” and the indignity of forcible searching of her chests for the stuff at least was not insisted upon then.

Anne’s own position was hardly a happy one; her one hope being that the coming child would be a son, as the King was assured by astrologers that it would be. For amorous Henry was already tiring somewhat of her, and even Cromwell’s tone was less confident than before. Early in August, Henry left her at Greenwich to go to Windsor alone, for the first time since they had been together. Sometime in July she had insisted upon a very sumptuous bed, which had formed part of a French royal ransom, being taken out of the treasure-room for the birth of the expected heir. It is well, sneered Chapuys, in the first days of September, that she got it betimes, “otherwise she would not have it now, for she has been for some time past very jealous of the King; and, with good cause, spoke about it in words that he did not like. He told her that she must wink at such things, and put up with them, as her betters had done before her. He could at any time cast her down as easily as he had raised her.” Frequent bickerings of this sort went on during the last weeks of Anne’s pregnancy; but on Sunday, 7th September, the day that was to heal all differences came. Henry had defied the greatest power in the world, had acted basely and brutally to his legal wife, and had incurred the reprobation of his own people for the sake of having a son, and on the fateful day mentioned a fair girl baby was born to Anne at Greenwich.

The official rejoicings were held, but beneath the surface every one knew that a tragedy lurked,[109] for unless a son was born to Anne her doom was sealed. Henry had asserted his mastership in his own realm and had defied Christendom. He had found that his subjects, however sulkily, had accepted his action without open revolt; and that Charles, notwithstanding the insult to his house, was still speaking softly through his ambassadors. If a great princess like Katharine could thus be repudiated without disaster to his realm, it would indeed be easy for him to cast away “that noughty pake, Nan Bullen,” if she failed to satisfy his desire for a son. But in the meanwhile it was necessary for him to secure, so far as he could, the succession of his new daughter, since Cranmer’s decision had rendered Mary, Princess of Wales, of whom her father had been so proud, illegitimate. Accordingly, immediately after the child Elizabeth was christened, heralds proclaimed in the King’s name that Princess Mary was thenceforward to lose her title and pre-eminence, the badge upon her servants’ coats being replaced by the arms of the King, and the baby Lady Elizabeth was to be recognised as the King’s only legitimate heir and Princess of Wales. In vain the imperial ambassador protested and talked to Cromwell of possible war, in which England might be ruined, which Cromwell admitted but reminded him that the Emperor would not benefit thereby; in vain Katharine from her retirement at Buckden urged Chapuys and the Emperor to patronise Reginald Pole as a possible threat to Henry; in vain Princess Mary herself, in diplomatic language, told her father that he might give her what title he liked, but that she herself would never admit her illegitimacy or her mother’s repudiation; in vain Bishop Fisher and Chapuys counselled the invasion of England and the overturn of Henry: Cromwell knew that there was no drawing back for him, and that the struggle must go on now to the bitter end.

Anne with the birth of her daughter became more insolent and exacting than ever. Nothing would satisfy her but the open degradation of Katharine and her daughter, and Henry in this respect seems to have had no spark of generous or gentlemanly feeling. Irritated by what he considered the disobedience of his wife and child, and doubtless also by their constant recourse for support and advice to the Emperor’s ambassador against him, he dismissed Mary’s household and ordered her to go to Hatfield and serve as maid the Princess Elizabeth. Mary was ready with her written protest, which Chapuys had drafted for her, but, having made it, decided to submit; and was borne to Hatfield in scornful dudgeon, to serve “the bastard” of three months old. When she arrived the Duke of Suffolk asked her if she would go and pay her respects to “the Princess.” “I know of no other princess but myself,” replied Mary. “The daughter of Lady Pembroke has no right to such a title. But,” added she, “as the King acknowledges her I may call her sister, as I call the Duke of Richmond brother.” Mary was the true daughter of her proud mother, and bluff Charles Brandon got many a tart answer from her before he gave her up in despair to perform a similar mission to her mother at Buckden.

Katharine had never changed her tone. Knowing Henry’s weakness, she had always pressed for the final Papal decision in her favour, which she insisted would bring her husband to his knees, as it doubtless would have done if he had stood alone. For a time the Pope and the King of France endeavoured to find a via media which should save appearances, for Charles would not bind himself to carry out by force the Papal deposition of Henry, which Clement wanted. But Katharine would have no compromise, nor did it suit Cromwell or Anne, though the former was apparently anxious to avoid offending the Emperor. Parliament, moreover, was summoned for the 15th January 1534, to give the sanction of the nation to Henry’s final defiance of Rome; and persistence in the path to which the King’s desire for a son and his love for Anne had dragged England, was now the only course open to him. Suffolk and a deputation of councillors were consequently sent once more with an ultimatum to Katharine. Accompanied by a large armed force to intimidate the Queen and the people who surrounded her, the deputation saw her on the 18th December; and Suffolk demanded that she should recognise Cranmer’s decision and abandon her appeal to Rome; whilst her household and herself were to take the oath of allegiance to the King in the new form provided. The alternative was that she should be deprived of her servants and be removed to Fotheringay or Somersame, seated in the midst of pestilential marshes.[110] Suffolk was rough in his manner, and made short work of the English household, nearly all of whom were dismissed and replaced by others; but he found Katharine the same hard woman as ever. Considering all the King had done for her and hers, he said, it was disgraceful that she should worry him as she had done for years, putting him to vast expense in embassies to Rome and elsewhere, and keeping him in turmoil with his neighbours. Surely she had grown tired of her obstinacy by this time, and would abandon her appeal to Rome. If she did so the King would do anything for her; but if not he would clip her wings and effectually punish her. As a beginning, he said, they were going to remove her to Fotheringay. Katharine had heard such talk many times before, though less rudely worded; and she replied in the usual tone. She looked to the Pope alone, and cared nothing for the Archbishop of Canterbury. As for going to Fotheringay, that she would not do. The King might work his will; but unless she was dragged thither by main force she would not go, or she would be guilty of suicide, so unhealthy was the place. Some of the members of the household were recalcitrant, and the two priests, Abell and Barker, were sent to the Tower. The aged Spanish Bishop of Llandaff, Jorge de Ateca, the Queen’s confessor, was also warned that he must go, and De la Sá, her apothecary, and a physician, both Spaniards; but at her earnest prayers they were allowed to remain pending an appeal.[111] The Queen’s women attendants were also told they must depart, but upon Katharine saying that she would not undress or go to bed unless she had proper help, two of them were allowed to stay. For a whole week the struggle went on, every device and threat being employed to break down the Queen’s resistance. She was as hard as adamant. All the servants who remained but the Spaniards, who spoke no English, had to swear not to treat her as Queen, and she said she would treat them as gaolers. On the sixth day of Suffolk’s stay at Buckden, pack animals were got ready, and preparations made for removing the establishment to Fotheringay. But they still had to reckon with Katharine. Locking herself in her chamber, she carried on a colloquy with her oppressors through a chink in the wall. “If you wish to take me,” she declared, “you must break down my door;” but, though the country gentlemen around had been summoned to the aid of the King’s commissioners, and the latter were well armed, such was the ferment and indignation in the neighbourhood—and indeed throughout the country—that violence was felt to be unwise, and Katharine was left in such peace as she might enjoy.[112] Well might Suffolk write, as he did, to Norfolk: “We find here the most obstinate woman that may be; inasmuch as we think surely there is no other remedy than to convey her by force to Somersame. Concerning this we have nothing in our instructions; we pray your good lordship that we may have knowledge of the King’s pleasure.” All this petty persecution was, of course, laid at the door of Anne by Katharine’s friends and the Catholic majority; for Cromwell was clever in avoiding his share of the responsibility. “The lady,” they said, “would never be satisfied until both the Queen and her daughter had been done to death, either by poison or otherwise; and Katharine was warned to take care to fasten securely the door of her chamber at night, and to have the room searched before she retired.[113]

In the meantime England and France were drifting further apart. If Henry finally decided to brave the Papal excommunication, Francis dared not make common cause with him. The Bishop of Paris (Du Bellay) once more came over, and endeavoured to find a way out of the maze. Anne, whom he had befriended before, received him effusively, kissing him on the cheek and exerting all her witchery upon him; but it was soon found that he brought an ultimatum from his King; and when Henry began to bully him and abuse Francis for deserting him, the bishop cowed him with a threat of immediate war. The compromise finally arrived at was that if the Pope before the following Easter (1534) would withdraw his sentence against Henry, England would remain within the pale of the Church. Otherwise the measure drafted for presentation to Parliament entirely throwing off the Papal supremacy would be proceeded with. This was the parting of the ways, and the decision was left to Clement VII.

Parliament opened on the 15th January, perhaps the most fateful assembly that ever met at Westminster. The country, as we have seen, was indignant at the treatment of Katharine and her daughter, but the instinct of loyalty to the King was strong, and there was no powerful centre around which revolt might crystallise. The clergy especially—even those who, like Stokesley, Fox, and Gardiner, were Henry’s instruments—dreaded the great changes that portended; and an attempt to influence Parliament by a declaration of the clergy in Convocation against the King’s first marriage, failed, notwithstanding the flagrant violence with which signatures were sought. With difficulty, even though the nobles known to favour Katharine were not summoned, a bill granting a dowry to the Queen as Dowager Princess of Wales was passed; but the House of Commons, trembling for the English property in the imperial dominions, threw it out. The prospect for a time looked black for the great ecclesiastical changes that were contemplated, and the hopes of Katharine’s friends rose again.

The Bishop of Paris in the meanwhile had contrived to frighten Clement and his Cardinals, by his threatening talk of English schism and the universal spread of dissent, into an insincere and half-hearted acquiescence in a compromise that would submit the question of a divorce to a tribunal of two Cardinals sitting at Cambray to save appearances, and deciding in favour of Henry. When the French ambassador Castillon came to Henry with this news (early in March 1534) the King had experienced the difficulty of bringing Parliament and Convocation to his views; and, again, if left to himself, he would probably have yielded. But Anne and Cromwell, and indeed Cranmer, were now in the same boat; and any wavering on the part of the King would have meant ruin to them all. They did their best to stiffen Henry, but he was nearly inclined to give way behind their backs; and after the French ambassador had left the Council unsuccessful, Henry had a long secret talk with him in the garden, in which he assured him that he would not have anything done hastily against the Holy See.

But whilst the rash and turbulent Bishop of Paris was hectoring Clement at Rome and sending unjustifiably encouraging messages to England, circumstances on both sides were working against the compromise which the French desired so much. Cromwell and Anne were panic-stricken at the idea of reopening the question of the marriage before any Papal tribunal, and kept up Henry’s resentment against the Pope. Henry’s pride also was wounded by a suggestion of the French that, as a return for Clement’s pliability, Alexander de Medici, Duke of Florence, might marry the Princess Mary. Cromwell’s diplomatic management of the Parliamentary opposition and the consequent passage of the bill abolishing the remittance of Peter’s pence to Rome, also encouraged Henry to think that he might have his own way after all; and the chances of his making further concessions to the Pope again diminished. A similar process was going on in Rome. Whilst Clement was smilingly listening to talk of reconciliation for the sake of keeping England under his authority, he well knew that Henry could only be moved by fear; and all the thunderbolts of the Church were being secretly forged to launch upon the King of England.

On the 23rd March 1534 the consistory of Cardinals sat, the French Cardinals being absent; and the final judgment on the validity of Henry’s marriage with Katharine was given by the head of the Church. The cause which had stirred Europe for five years was settled beyond appeal so far as the Roman Church could settle it. Katharine was Henry’s lawful wife, and Anne Boleyn was proclaimed by the Church to be his concubine. Almost on the very day that the gage was thus thrown down by the Pope, Henry had taken similar action on his own account. In the previous sitting of Parliament the King had been practically acknowledged as head of the Church in his own dominions; and now all appeals and payments to the Pope were forbidden, and the bishops of England were entirely exempt from his spiritual jurisdiction and control. To complete the emancipation of the country from the Papacy, on the 23rd March 1534 a bill (the Act of Succession) was read for the third time, confirming the legality of the marriage of Henry and Anne, and settling the succession to the crown upon their issue to the exclusion of the Princess Mary. Cranmer’s divorce decision was thus ratified by statute; and any person questioning in word or print the legitimacy of Elizabeth’s birth was adjudged guilty of high treason. Every subject of the King, moreover, was to take oath to maintain this statute on pain of death. The consummation was reached: for good or for evil England was free from Rome, and the fair woman for whose sake the momentous change had been wrought, sat planning schemes of vengeance against the two proud princesses, mother and daughter, who still refused to bow the neck to her whom they proclaimed the usurper of their rights.

CHAPTER VI

1534-1536

A FLEETING TRIUMPH—POLITICAL INTRIGUE AND THE BETRAYAL OF ANNE

In the previous pages we have witnessed the process by which a vain, arrogant man, naturally lustful and held by no moral or material restraint, had been drawn into a position which, when he took the first step that led to it, he could not have contemplated. In ordinary circumstances there would have been no insuperable difficulty in his obtaining a divorce, and he probably expected little. The divorce, however, in this case involved the question of a change in the national alliance and a shifting of the weight of England to the side of France; and the Emperor by his power over the Pope had been able to frustrate the design, not entirely on account of his family connection with Katharine, but rather as a question of international policy. The dependent position of the Pope had effectually stood in the way of the compromise always sought by France, and the resistance to his will had made Henry the more determined to assert himself, with the natural result that the dispute had developed into religious schism. There is a school of historians which credits Henry personally with the far-reaching design of shaking off the ecclesiastical control of Rome in order to augment the national greatness; but there seems to me little evidence to support the view. When once the King had bearded the Papacy, rather than retrace the steps he had taken and confess himself wrong, it was natural that many of his subjects who conscientiously leant towards greater freedom in religion than Rome would allow, were prepared to carry the lesson further, as the German Lutherans had done, but I can find no reason to believe that Henry desired to initiate any change of system in the direction of freedom: his aim being, as he himself said, simply to make himself Pope as well as King within his own realm. Even that position, as we have seen in the aforegoing chapters, was only reached gradually under the incentive of opposition, and by the aid of stouter hearts and clearer brains than his own: and if Henry could have had his way about the marriage, as he conceivably might have done on many occasions during the struggle by a very slight change in the circumstances, there would have been, so far as he personally was concerned, no Reformation in England at the time.

One of the most curious phases in the process here described is the deterioration notable in Henry’s character as the ecclesiastical and moral restraints that influenced him were gradually cast aside. We have seen him as a kind and courteous husband, not more immoral than other men of his age and station; a father whose love for his children was intense; and a cultured gentleman of a headstrong but not unlovable character. Resistance to his will had touched his pride and hardened his heart, until at the period which we have now reached (1534) we see him capable of brutal and insulting treatment of his wife and elder daughter, of which any gentleman would be ashamed. On the other hand, the attitude of Katharine and Mary was exactly that best calculated to drive to fury a conceited, overbearing man, loving his supreme power as Henry did. It was, of course, heroic and noble of the two ladies to stand upon their undoubted rights as they did; but if Katharine by adopting a religious life had consented to a divorce, the decree of nullity would not have been pronounced; her own position would have been recognised, her daughter’s legitimacy saved, and the separation from Rome at least deferred, if not prevented. There was no such deterioration in Anne’s character as in that of Henry; for it was bad from the first, and consistently remained so. Her ambition was the noblest trait in her nature; and she served it with a petty personal malignity against those who seemed to stand in her way that goes far to deprive her of the pity that otherwise would go out to her in her own martyrdom at the hands of the fleshly tyrant whose evil nature she had been so greatly instrumental in developing.

It was undoubtedly to Anne’s prompting that the ungenerous treatment of the Princess Mary was due, a treatment that aroused the indignation even of those to whom its execution was entrusted. Henry was deeply attached to his daughter, but it touched his pride for her to refuse to submit without protest to his behest. When Norfolk told him of the attitude of the Princess on her being taken to Hatfield to attend upon Elizabeth, he decided to bring his parental authority to bear upon her personally, and decided to see her. But Anne, “considering the easiness or rather levity of the King, and that the great beauty and goodness of the Princess might overcome his displeasure with her, and, moved by her virtues and his fatherly pity for her, be induced to treat her better and restore her title to her, sent Cromwell and other messengers posting after the King to prevent him, at any cost, from seeing or speaking to the Princess.”[114] When Henry arrived at Hatfield and saw his baby daughter Elizabeth, the elder Princess begged to be allowed to salute him. The request was not granted; but when the King mounted his horse in the courtyard Mary stood upon a terrace above to see him. The King was informed of her presence, or saw her by chance; and, as she caught his eye, she threw herself upon her knees in an attitude of prayer, whereupon the father touched his bonnet, and bowed low and kindly to the daughter he was wronging so bitterly. He explained afterwards that he avoided speaking to her as she was so obstinate with him, “thanks to her Spanish blood.” When the French ambassador mentioned her kindly, during the conversation, he noted that Henry’s eyes filled with tears, and that he could not refrain from praising her.[115] But for Anne’s jealousy for her own offspring, it is probable that Mary’s legitimacy would have been established by Act of Parliament; as Cromwell at this time was certainly in favour of it: but Anne was ever on the watch, especially to arouse Henry’s anger by hinting that Mary was looking to foreigners for counsel, as indeed she was. It was this latter element in which danger principally lurked. Katharine naturally appealed to her kin for support; and all through her trouble it was this fact, joined with her firm refusal to acknowledge Henry’s supreme power, that steeled her husband’s heart. But for the King’s own daughter and undoubted born subject to act in the same way made her, what her mother never had been, a dangerous centre around which the disaffected elements might gather. The old nobility, as we have seen, were against Anne: and Henry quite understood the peril of having in his own family a person who commanded the sympathies of the strongest foreign powers in Europe, as well as the most influential elements in England. He angrily told the Marquis of Exeter that it was only confidence in the Emperor that made Mary so obstinate; but that he was not afraid of the Emperor, and would bring the girl to her senses: and he then went on to threaten Exeter himself if he dared to communicate with her. The same course was soon afterwards taken with Norfolk, who as well as his wife was forbidden to see the Princess, although he certainly had shown no desire to extend much leniency to her.

The treatment of Katharine was even more atrocious, though in her case it was probably more the King’s irritated pride than his fears that was the incentive. When the wretched Elizabeth Barton, the Nun of Kent, was prosecuted for her crazy prophecies against the King every possible effort was made to connect the unfortunate Queen with her, though unsuccessfully, and the attempt to force Katharine to take the oath prescribed by the new Act of Succession against herself and her daughter was obviously a piece of persecution and insult.[116] The Commission sent to Buckden to extort the new oath of allegiance to Henry, and to Anne as Queen, consisted of Dr. Lee, the Archbishop of York, Dr. Tunstall, Bishop of Durham; and the Bishop of Chester; and the scene as described by one of the Spanish servants is most curious. When the demand was made that she should take the oath of allegiance to Anne as Queen, Katharine with fine scorn replied, “Hold thy peace, bishop: speak to me no more. These are the wiles of the devil. I am Queen, and Queen will I die: by right the King can have no other wife, and let this be your answer.”[117] Assembling her household, she addressed them, and told them they could not without sin swear allegiance to the King and Anne in a form that would deny the supreme spiritual authority of the Pope: and taking counsel with her Spanish chamberlain, Francisco Felipe, they settled between them that the Spaniards should answer interrogatories in Spanish in such a way that by a slight mispronunciation their answer could be interpreted, “I acknowledge that the King has made himself head of the Church” (se ha hecho cabeza de la iglesia), whereas the Commissioners would take it as meaning “that the King be created head of the Church” (sea hecho cabeza de la iglesia); and on the following morning the wily chamberlain and his countrymen saved appearances and their consciences at the same time by a pun. But when the formal oath of allegiance to Anne was demanded, Felipe, speaking for the rest, replied, “I have taken one oath of allegiance to my lady Queen Katharine. She still lives, and during her life I know no other Queen in this realm.” Lee then threatened them with punishment for refusal, and a bold Burgundian lackey, Bastian,[118] burst out with, “Let the King banish us, but let him not order us to be perjurers.” The bishop in a rage told him to begone at once; and, nothing loath, Bastian knelt at his mistress’s feet and bade her farewell; taking horse at once to ride to the coast. Katharine in tears remonstrated with Lee for dismissing her servant without reference to her; and the bishop, now that his anger was calmed, sent messengers to fetch Bastian back; which they did not do until he had reached London.[119]

This fresh indignity aroused Katharine’s friends both in England and abroad. The Emperor had already remonstrated with the English ambassador on the reported cruel treatment of the Queen and her daughter, and Henry now endeavoured to justify himself in a long letter (June 1534). As for the Queen, he said, she was being treated “in everything to the best that can be devised, whom we do order and entertain as we think most expedient, and as to us seemeth prudent. And the like also of our daughter the Lady Mary: for we think it not meet that any person should prescribe unto us how we should order our own daughter, we being her natural father.” He expressed himself greatly hurt that the Emperor should think him capable of acting unkindly, notwithstanding that the Lady Katharine “hath very disobediently behaved herself towards us, as well in contemning and setting at naught our laws and statutes, as in many other ways.” Just lately, he continues, he had sent three bishops to exhort her, “in most loving fashion,” to obey the law; and “she hath in most ungodly, obstinate, and inobedient wise, wilfully resisted, set at naught and contemned our laws and ordinances: so if we would administer to her any rigour or extremity she were undoubtedly within the extreme danger of our laws.”

The blast of persecution swept over the land. The oaths demanded by the new statutes were stubbornly resisted by many. Fisher and More, as learned and noble as any men in the land, were sent to the Tower (April 1534) to be entrapped and done to death a year later. Throughout the country the Commissioners with plenary powers were sent to administer the new oaths, and those citizens who cavilled at taking them were treated as traitors to the King. But all this did not satisfy Anne whilst Katharine and Mary remained recalcitrant and unpunished for the same offence. Henry was in dire fear, however, of some action of the Emperor in enforcement of the Papal excommunication against him and his kingdom, which according to the Catholic law he had forfeited by the Pope’s ban. Francis, willing as he was to oppose the Emperor, dared not expose his own kingdom to excommunication by siding with Henry, and the latter was statesman enough to see, as indeed was Cromwell, that extreme measures against Mary would turn all Christendom against him, and probably prove the last unbearable infliction that would drive his own people to aid a foreign invasion. So, although Anne sneered at the King’s weakness, as she called it, and eagerly anticipated his projected visit to Francis, during which she would remain Regent in England, and be able to wreak her wicked will on the young Princess, the King, held by political fear, and probably, too, by some fatherly regard, refused to be nagged by his wife into the murder of his daughter, and even relinquished the meeting with Francis rather than leave England with Anne in power.

In the meanwhile Katharine’s health grew worse. Henry told the French ambassador in January, soon after Suffolk’s attempt to administer the first oath to her, that “she was dropsical and could not live long”: and his enemies were ready with the suggestion—which was probably unfounded—that she was being poisoned. She shut herself up in her own chamber, and refused to eat the food prepared by the new servants; what little food she took being cooked in her own room by her one maid. Early in the summer (May) she was removed from Buckden to Kimbolton Castle, within the miasmic influence of the fens, and there was no attempt to conceal the desire on the part of the King and those who had brought him to this pass that Katharine should die, for by that means alone, it seemed, could foreign intervention and civil war be averted. Katharine herself was, as we have seen, full of suspicion. In March Chapuys reported that she had sent a man to London to procure some old wine for her, as she refused to drink the wine provided for her use. “They were trying,” he said, “to give her artificial dropsy.” Two months later, just after the stormy scene when Lee and Tunstall had endeavoured to extort from the Queen the oath to the new Act of Succession, Chapuys in hot indignation suddenly appeared at Richmond, where the King was, to protest against such treatment. Henry was intensely annoyed and offended, and refused to see the ambassador. He was master, he said, in his own realm; and it was no good coming to him with such remonstrances. No wonder that Chapuys concluded, “Everybody fears some ill turn will be done to the Queen, seeing the rudeness to which she is daily subjected, both in deeds and words; especially as the concubine has said that she will not cease till she has got rid of her; and as the prophecies say that one Queen of England is to be burnt, she hopes it will be Katharine.”[120]

Early in June Katharine urged strongly that Chapuys should travel to Kimbolton to see her, alleging the bad condition of her health as a reason. The King and Cromwell believed that her true object in desiring an interview was to devise plans with her nephew’s ambassador for obtaining the enforcement of the papal censure,[121] which would have meant the subversion of Henry’s power; and for weeks Chapuys begged for permission to see her in vain. “Ladies were not to be trusted,” Cromwell told him; whilst fresh Commissioners were sent, one after the other, to extort, by force if necessary, the oath of Katharine’s lady attendants to the Act of Succession, much to the Queen’s distress.[122] At length, tired of waiting, the ambassador told Cromwell that he was determined to start at once; which he did two days later, on the 16th July. With a train of sixty horsemen, his own household and Spaniards resident in England, he rode through London towards the eastern counties, ostensibly on a religious pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham. Riding through the leafy lanes of Hertfordshire in the full summer tide, solaced by music, minstrelsy, and the quaint antics of Chapuys’ fool, the party were surprised on the second day of their journey to see gallop past them on the road Stephen Vaughan, one of the King’s officers who spoke Spanish; and later, when they had arrived within a few miles of Kimbolton, they were met by the same man, accompanied this time by a humble servitor of Katharine, bringing to the pilgrims wine and provisions in abundance, but also the ill news that the King had ordered that Chapuys was to be forbidden access to the Queen. The ambassador was exceedingly indignant. He did not wish to offend the King, he said, but, having come so far and being now in the immediate neighbourhood, he would not return unsuccessful without an effort to obtain a more authoritative decision. Early the next morning one of Katharine’s old officers came to Chapuys and repeated the prohibition, begging him not even to pass through the village, lest the King should take it ill. Other messages passed, but all to the same effect. Poor Katharine herself sent secret word that she was as thankful for Chapuys’ journey as if it had been successful, and hinted that it would be a consolation to her if some of her countrymen could at least approach the castle. Needless to say that the Spaniards gathered beneath the walls of the castle and chatted gallantly across the moat to the ladies upon the terraces, and some indeed, including the jester, are asserted to have found their way inside the castle, where they were regaled heartily, and the fool played some of the usual tricks of his motley.[123] Chapuys, in high dudgeon, returned by another road to London without attempting to complete his pilgrimage to Walsingham, secretly spied upon as he was, the whole way, by the King’s envoy, Vaughan. “Tell Cromwell,” he said to the latter, as he discovered himself on the outskirts of London, “that I should have judged it more honourable if the King and he had informed me of his intention before I left London, so that all the world should not have been acquainted with a proceeding which I refrain from characterising. But the Queen,” he continued, “nevertheless had cause to thank him (Cromwell) since the rudeness shown to her would now be so patent that it could not well be denied.”

Henry and Cromwell had good reason to fear foreign machinations to their detriment. The Emperor and Francis were in ominous negotiations; for the King of France could not afford to break with the Papacy, the rising of Kildare in Ireland was known to have the sympathy, if not the aid, of Spain, and it was felt throughout Christendom that the Emperor must, sooner or later, give force to the Papal sentence against England to avoid the utter loss of prestige which would follow if the ban of Rome was after all seen to be utterly innocuous. A sympathetic English lord told Chapuys secretly that Cromwell had ridiculed the idea of the Emperor’s attacking England; for his subjects would not put up with the consequent loss of trade. But if he did, continued Cromwell, “the death of Katharine and Mary would put an end to all the trouble.” Chapuys told his informant, for Cromwell’s behoof, that if any harm was done to either of the ladies the Emperor would have the greater cause for quarrel.

In the autumn Mary fell seriously ill. She had been obliged to follow “the bastard,” Elizabeth, against her will, for ever intriguing cleverly to avoid humiliation to herself. But the long struggle against such odds broke down her health, and Henry, who, in his heart of hearts, could hardly condemn his daughter’s stubbornness, so like his own, softened to the extent of his sending his favourite physician, Dr. Butts, to visit her. A greater concession was to allow Katharine’s two medical men to attend the Princess; and permission was given to Katharine herself to see her, but under conditions which rendered the concession nugatory. The Queen wrote a pathetic letter in Spanish to Cromwell, praying that Mary might be permitted to come and stay with her. “It will half cure her,” she urged. As a small boon, Henry had consented that the sick girl should be sent to a house at no great distance from Kimbolton. “Alas!” urged Katharine, “if it be only a mile away, I cannot visit her. I beseech that she be allowed to come to where I am. I will answer for her security with my life.” But Cromwell or his master was full of suspicion of imperial plots for the escape of Mary to foreign soil, and Katharine’s maternal prayer remained unheard.

The unhappy mother tried again soon afterwards to obtain access to her sick daughter by means of Chapuys. She besought for charity’s sake that the King would allow her to tend Mary with her own hands. “You shall also tell his Highness that there is no need for any other person but myself to nurse her: I will put her in my own bed where I sleep, and will watch her when needful.” When Chapuys saw the King with this pathetic message Henry was less arrogant than usual. “He wished to do his best for his daughter’s health; but he must be careful of his own honour and interests, which would be jeopardised if Mary were conveyed abroad, or if she escaped, as she easily might do if she were with her mother; for he had some suspicion that the Emperor had a design to get her away.” Henry threw all the blame for Mary’s obstinacy upon Katharine, who he knew was in close and constant touch with his opponents: and the fear he expressed that the Emperor and his friends in England would try to spirit Mary across the sea to Flanders, where, indeed, she might have been made a thorn in her father’s side, were perfectly well founded, and these plans were at the time the gravest peril that threatened Henry and England.[124]

Cruel, therefore, as his action towards his daughter may seem, it was really prompted by pressing considerations of his own safety. Apart from this desire to keep Mary away from foreign influence working against him through her mother, Henry exhibited frequent signs of tenderness towards his elder daughter, much to Anne’s dismay. In May 1534, for instance, he sent her a gentle message to the effect that he hoped she would obey him, and that in such case her position would be preserved. But the girl was proud and, not unnaturally, resentful, and sent back a haughty answer to what she thought was an attempt to entrap her. To her foreign friends she said that she believed her father meant to poison her, but that she cared little. She was sure of going to heaven, and was only sorry for her mother.

In the meanwhile Anne’s influence over the King was weakening. She saw the gathering clouds from all parts of Christendom ready to launch their lightning upon her head, and ruin upon England for her sake; and her temper, never good, became intolerable. Henry, having had his way, was now face to face with the threatening consequences, and could ill brook snappish petulance from the woman for whom he had brought himself to brave the world. As usual with weak men, he pitied himself sincerely, and looked around for comfort, finding none from Anne. Francis, eldest son of the Church and most Christian King, was far from being the genial ally he once had been, now that Henry was excommunicate; the German Protestant princes even stood apart and rejected Henry’s approaches for an alliance to the detriment of their own suzerain;[125] and, worst of all, the English lords of the North, Hussey, Dacre, and the rest of them, were in close conspiracy with the imperialists for an armed rising aided from abroad; which, if successful, would make short work of Henry and his anti-Papal policy.[126] In return for all this danger, the King could only look at the cross, discontented woman by his side, who apparently was as incapable of bearing him a son as Katharine had been. For some months in the spring of 1534 Anne had endeavoured to retain her hold upon him by saying that she was again with child, and during the royal progress in the midland counties in the summer Henry was more attentive than he had been to the woman he still hoped might bear him a son, although her shrewish temper sorely tried him and all around her. At length, however, the truth had to be told, and Henry’s hopes fled, and his eyes again turned elsewhere for solace.

Anne knew that her position was unstable, and her husband’s open flirtation with a lady of the Court drove her to fury. Presuming upon her former influence, she imperiously attempted to have her new rival removed from the proximity of the King. Henry flared up at this, and let Anne know, as brutally as language could put it, that the days of his complaisance with her were over, and that he regretted having done so much for her sake. Who the King’s new lady-love was is not certain. Chapuys calls her “a very beautiful and adroit young lady, for whom his love is daily increasing, whilst the credit and insolence of the concubine (i.e. Anne) decreases.” That the new favourite was supported by the aristocratic party that opposed Anne and the religious changes is evident from Chapuys’ remark that “there is some good hope that if this love of the King’s continues the affairs of the Queen (Katharine) and the Princess will prosper, for the young lady is greatly attached to them.” Anne and her family struggled to keep their footing, but when Henry had once plucked up courage to shake off the trammels, he had all a weak man’s violence and obstinacy in following his new course. One of Princess Mary’s household came to tell Chapuys in October that “the King had turned Lady Rochford (Anne’s sister-in-law) out of the Court because she had conspired with the concubine by hook or by crook to get rid of the young lady.” The rise of the new favourite immediately changed the attitude of the courtiers towards Mary. “On Wednesday before leaving the More she (Mary) was visited by all the ladies and gentlemen, regardless of the annoyance of Anne. The day before yesterday (October 22nd) the Princess was at Richmond with the brat (garse, i.e. Elizabeth), and the lady (Anne) came to see her daughter accompanied by the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk and others, all of whom went and saluted the Princess (Mary) with some of the ladies; which was quite a new thing.”

The death of Pope Clement and the advent of Cardinal Farnese as Paul III., known to be not too well affected towards the Emperor, seemed at this time to offer a chance of the reconciliation of England with the Papacy: and the aristocratic party in Henry’s counsels hoped, now that the King had grown tired of his second wife, that they might influence him by a fresh appeal to his sensuality. France also took a hand in the game in its new aspect, the aim being to obtain the hand of Mary for the Dauphin, to whom, it will be recollected, she had been betrothed as a child, with the legitimisation of the Princess and the return of Henry to the fold of the Church with a French alliance. This would, of course, have involved the repudiation of Anne, with the probable final result of a French domination of England after the King’s death. The Admiral of France, Chabot de Brion, came to England late in the autumn to forward some such arrangement as that described, and incidentally to keep alive Henry’s distrust of the Emperor, whilst threatening him that the Dauphin would marry a Spanish princess if the King of England held aloof. But, though Anne’s influence over her husband was gone, Cromwell, the strong spirit, was still by his side; and reconciliation with the Papacy in any form would have meant ruin to him and the growing interests that he represented.

Even if Henry had now been inclined to yield to the Papacy, of which there is no evidence, Cromwell had gone too far to recede; and when Parliament met in November the Act of Supremacy was passed, giving the force of statute law to the independence of the Church of England. Chabot de Brion’s mission was therefore doomed to failure from the first, and the envoy took no pains to conceal his resentment towards Anne, the origin of all the trouble that dislocated the European balance of power. There was much hollow feasting and insincere professions of friendship between the two kings, but it was clear now to the Frenchmen that, with Anne or without her, Henry would bow his neck no more to the Papacy; and it was to the Princess Mary that the Catholic elements looked for a future restoration of the old state of things. A grand ball was given at Court in Chabot’s honour the day before he left London, and the dignified French envoy sat in a seat of state by the side of Anne, looking at the dancing. Suddenly, without apparent reason, she burst into a violent fit of laughter. The Admiral of France, already in no very amiable mood, frowned angrily, and, turning to her, said, “Are you laughing at me, madam, or what?” After she had laughed to her heart’s content, she excused herself to him by saying that she was laughing because the King had told her that he was going to fetch the Admiral’s secretary to be introduced to her, and on the way the King had met a lady who had made him forget everything else.

Though Henry would not submit to the Papacy at the charming of Francis, he was loath to forego the French alliance, and proposed a marriage between the younger French prince, the Duke of Angoulême, and Elizabeth; and this was under discussion during the early months of 1535. But it is clear that, although the daughter of the second marriage was to be held legitimate, Anne was to gain no accession of strength by the new alliance, for the French flouted her almost openly, and Henry was already contemplating a divorce from her. We are told by Chapuys that he only desisted from the idea when a councillor told him that “if he separated from ‘the concubine’ he would have to recognise the validity of his first marriage, and, worst of all, submit to the Pope.”[127] Who the councillor was that gave this advice is not stated; but we may fairly assume that it was Cromwell, who soon found a shorter, and, for him, a safer way of ridding his master of a wife who had tired him and could bear him no son. A French alliance, with a possible reconciliation with Rome in some form, would not have suited Cromwell; for it would have meant a triumph for the aristocratic party at Henry’s Court, and the overthrow of the men who had led Henry to defy the Papacy.

If the aristocratic party could influence Henry by means of the nameless “new young lady,” the Boleyns and reformers could fight with the same weapons, and early in February 1535 we find Chapuys writing, “The young lady formerly in this King’s good graces is so no longer, and has been succeeded by a cousin-german of the concubine, the daughter of the present governess of the Princess.”[128] This new mistress, whilst her little reign lasted, worked well for Anne and Cromwell, but in the meantime the conspiracy amongst the nobles grew and strengthened. Throughout the upper classes in the country a feeling of deep resentment was felt at the treatment of Mary, and there was hardly a nobleman, except Anne’s father and brother, who was not pledged to take up arms in her cause and against the religious changes.[129] Cromwell’s answer to the disaffection, of which he was quite cognisant, was the closer keeping than ever of the royal ladies, with threats of their death if they were the cause of a revolt, and the stern enforcement of the oath prescribed by the Act of Supremacy. The martyrdom of the London Carthusians for refusing to take the oath of supremacy, and shortly afterwards the sacrifice of the venerable Bishop Fisher, Sir Thomas More and Katharine’s priest Abel, and the renewed severity towards her favourite confessor, Friar Forest,[130] soon also to be martyred with atrocious cruelty, shocked and horrified England, and aroused the strongest reprobation in France and Rome, as well as in the dominions of the Emperor; destroying for a time all hope of a French alliance, and any lingering chance of a reconciliation with Rome during Henry’s life. All Catholic aspirations both at home and abroad centred for the next year or so in the Princess Mary, and her father’s friendship was shunned even by Francis, except upon impossible conditions. Henry’s throne, indeed, was tottering. His country was riddled with disaffection and dislike of his proceedings. The new Pope had forged the final thunderbolt of Rome, enjoining all Christian potentates to execute the sentence of the Church, though as yet the fiat was held back at the instance of the Emperor. The dread of war and the general unrest arising from this state of things had well-nigh destroyed the English oversea trade; the harvest was a bad one, and food was dear. Ecclesiastics throughout the country were whispering to their flocks curses of Nan Bullen, for whose sake the Church of Christ was being split in twain and its ministers persecuted.[131] Anne, it is true, was now quite a secondary personage as a political factor, but upon her unpopular head was heaped the blame for everything. The wretched woman, fully conscious that she was the general scapegoat, could only pray for a son, whose advent might save her at the eleventh hour; for failing him she knew that she was doomed.

In the meanwhile the struggle was breaking Katharine’s heart. For seven years she had fought as hard against her fate as an outraged woman could. She had seen that her rights, her happiness, were only a small stake in the great game of European politics. To her it seemed but righteous that her nephew the Emperor should, at any cost, rise in indignant wrath and avenge the insult put upon his proud line, and upon the Papacy whose earthly champion he was, by crushing the forces that had wrought the wrong. But Charles was held back by all sorts of considerations arising from his political position. Francis was for ever on the look-out for a weak spot in the imperial armour; the German Protestant princes, although quite out of sympathy with Henry’s matrimonial vagaries, would look askance at a crusade to enforce the Pope’s executorial decree against England, the French and moderate influence in the College of Cardinals was strong, and Charles could not afford by too aggressive an action against Henry to drive Francis and the cardinals into closer union against imperial aims, especially in the Mediterranean and Italy, where, owing to the vacancy in the duchy of Milan, they now mainly centred. So Katharine clamoured in vain to those whose sacred duty she thought it was to vindicate her honour and the faith. Both she, and her daughter at her instigation, wrote burning letters to the Pope and the imperial agents, urging, beseeching, exhorting the Catholic powers to activity against their oppressor. Henry and Cromwell knew all this, and recognising the dire danger that sooner or later Katharine’s prayer to a united Christendom might launch upon England an avalanche of ruin, strove as best they might to avert such a catastrophe. Every courier who went to the Emperor from England carried alarmist rumours that Katharine and Mary were to be put out of the way; and the ladies, in a true spirit of martyrdom, awaited without flinching the hour of their sacrifice. Cromwell himself darkly hinted that the only way out of the maze of difficulty and peril was the death of Katharine; and in this he was apparently right. But at this distance of time it seems evident that much of the threatening talk, both of the King’s friends and those of the Catholic Church in England, was intended, on the one hand to drive Katharine and her daughter into submission, and prevent them from continuing their appeals for foreign aid, and on the other to move the Emperor to action against Henry. So, in the welter of political interests, Katharine wept and raged fruitlessly. The Papal decree directing the execution of the deprivation of Henry, though signed by the Pope, was still held back; for Charles could not afford to invade England himself, and was determined to give no excuse for Francis to do so.

Though there is no known ground for the then prevailing belief that Henry was aiding nature in hastening the death of his first wife, the long unequal combat against invincible circumstances was doing its work upon a constitution never robust; and by the late autumn of 1535 the stout-hearted daughter of Isabel the Catholic was known to be sick beyond surgery. In December 1535 Chapuys had business with Cromwell, and during the course of their conversation the latter told him that he had just sent a messenger to inform the King of Katharine’s serious illness. This was the first that Chapuys had heard of it, and he at once requested leave to go and see her, to which Cromwell replied that he might send a servant to inquire as to her condition, but that the King must be consulted before he (Chapuys) himself could be allowed to see her. As Chapuys was leaving Whitehall a letter was brought to him from Katharine’s physician, saying that the Queen’s illness was not serious, and would pass off; so that unless later unfavourable news was sent Chapuys need not press for leave to see her. Two days afterwards a letter reached him from Katharine herself, enclosing one to the Emperor. She wrote in the deepest depression, praying again, and for the hundredth time, in words that, as Chapuys says, “would move a stone to compassion,” that prompt action should be taken on behalf of herself and her daughter before the Parliament could do them to death and consummate the apostasy of England. It was her last heart-broken cry for help, and like all those that had preceded it during the seven bitter years of Katharine’s penance, it was unheard amidst the din of great national interests that was ringing through Europe.

It was during the feast of Christmas 1535, which Henry passed at Eltham, that news came to Chapuys from Dr. De la Sá that Katharine had relapsed and was in grave peril. The ambassador was to see the King on other business in a day or two, in any case, but this news caused him to beg Cromwell to obtain for him instant leave to go to the Queen. There would be no difficulty about it, the secretary replied, but Chapuys must see the King first at Greenwich, whither he would go to meet him. The ambassador found Henry in the tiltyard all amiability. With a good deal of overdone cordiality, the King walked up and down the lists arm in arm with Chapuys, the while he reverted to the proposal of a new friendship and alliance with the Emperor.[132] The French, he said, were up to their old pranks, especially since the Duke of Milan had died, but he should at last be forced into an intimate alliance with them, unless the Emperor would let bygones be bygones, and make friends with him. Chapuys was cool and non-committal. He feared, he said, that it was only a device to make the French jealous, and after much word-bandying between them, the ambassador flatly asked Henry what he wanted the Emperor to do. “I want him,” replied the King, “not only to cease to support Madam Katharine and my daughter, but also to get the Papal sentence in Madam’s favour revoked.” To this Chapuys replied that he saw no good reason for doing either, and had no authority to discuss the point raised; and, as a parting shot, Henry told him that Katharine could not live long, and when she died the Emperor would have no need to follow the matter up. When Chapuys had taken his leave, the Duke of Suffolk came after him and brought him back to the King, who told him that news had just reached him that Katharine was dying—Chapuys might go and see her, but he would hardly find her alive; her death, moreover, would do away with all cause for dissension between the Emperor and himself. A request that the Princess Mary might be allowed to see her dying mother was at first met with a flat refusal, and after Chapuys’ remonstrance by a temporising evasion which was as bad, so that Mary saw her mother no more in life.

Chapuys instantly took horse and sped to London, and then northward to Kimbolton, anxious to reach the Queen before she breathed her last, for he was told that for days the patient had eaten and drank nothing, and slept hardly at all. It took Chapuys two days of hard travel over the miry roads before he reached Kimbolton on the morning of the 2nd January 1536.[133] He found that the Queen’s dearest friend, Lady Willoughby (Doña Maria de Sarmiento), had preceded him by a day and was with her mistress. She had prayed in vain for license to come before, and even now Katharine’s stern guardian, Bedingfield, asked in vain to see Lady Willoughby’s permit, which she probably had not got. She had come in great agitation and fear, for, according to her own account, she had fallen from her horse, and had suffered other adventures on her way, but she braved everything to receive the last sigh of the Queen, whose girlhood’s friend she had been. Bedingfield looked askance at the arrival of “these folks”; and at Chapuys’ first interview with Katharine he, the chamberlain, and Vaughan who understood Spanish, were present, and listened to all that was said. It was a consolation, said the Queen, that if she could not recover she might die in the presence of her nephew’s ambassador and not unprepared. He tried to cheer her with encouraging promises that the King would let her be removed to another house, and would accede to other requests made in her favour; but Katharine only smiled sadly, and bade him rest after his long journey. She saw the ambassador again alone later in the day, and spoke at length with him, as she did on each day of the four that he stayed, her principal discourse being of the misfortune that had overtaken England by reason of the long delay of the Emperor in enforcing justice to her.[134]

After four days’ stay of Chapuys, Katharine seemed better, and the apothecary, De la Sá, gave it as his opinion that she was out of immediate danger. She even laughed a little at the antics of Chapuys’ fool, who was called in to amuse her; and, reassured by the apparent improvement, the ambassador started on his leisurely return to London.[135] On the second day after his departure, soon after midnight, the Queen asked if it was near day, and repeated the question several times at short intervals afterwards. When at length the watchers asked her the reason for her impatience for the dawn, she replied that it was because she wished to hear Mass and receive the Holy Sacrament. The aged Dominican Bishop of Llandaff (Jorge de Ateca) volunteered to celebrate at four o’clock in the morning, but Katharine refused, and quoted the Latin authorities to prove that it should not be done before dawn. With the first struggling of the grey light of morning the offices of the Church for the dying were solemnly performed, whilst Katharine prayed fervently for herself, for England, and for the man who had so cruelly wronged her. When all was done but the administration of extreme unction, she bade her physician write a short memorandum of a few gifts she craved for her faithful servants; for she knew, and said, that by the law of England a married woman could make no valid will. The testament is in the form of a supplication to Henry, and is remarkable as the dictation of a woman within a few hours of her death. Each of her servants is remembered: a hundred pounds to her principal Spanish lady, Blanche de Vargas, “twenty pounds to Mistress Darrel for her marriage”; his wages and forty pounds were to be paid to Francisco Felipe, the Groom of the Chambers, twenty pounds to each of the three lackeys, including the Burgundian Bastian, and like bequests, one by one, to each of the little household. Not even the sum she owed for a gown was forgotten. For her daughter she craved her furs and the gold chain and cross she had brought from Spain, all that was left of her treasures after Anne’s greed had been satisfied;[136] and for the Convent of Observant Franciscans, where she begged for sepulture, “my gowns which he (the King) holdeth.” It is a sad little document, compliance with which was for the most part meanly evaded by Henry; even Francisco Felipe “getting nothing and returning poor to his own country.”

Thus, dignified and saintly, at the second hour after midday on the 8th January 1536, Katharine of Aragon died unconquered as she had lived; a great lady to the last, sacrificed in death, as she had been in life, to the opportunism of high politics. “In manus tuas Domine commendo spiritum meum,” she murmured with her last breath. From man she had received no mercy, and she turned to a gentler Judge with confidence and hope. As usual in such cases as hers, the people about her whispered of poison; and when the body was hastily cered and lapped in lead, “by the candlemaker of the house, a servant and one companion,” not even the Queen’s physician was allowed to be present. But the despised “candlemaker,” who really seems to have been a skilled embalmer, secretly told the Bishop of Llandaff, who waited at the door, that all the body was sound “except the heart, which was black and hideous,” with a black excrescence “which clung closely to the outside”; on which report Dr. De la Sá unhesitatingly opined that his mistress had died of poison.[137]

The news, the joyous news, sped quickly to Greenwich; and within four-and-twenty hours, on Saturday, 9th January, Henry heard with exultation that the incubus was raised from his shoulders. “God be praised,” was his first exclamation, “we are free from all suspicion of war.” Now, he continued, he would be able to manage the French better. They would be obliged to dance to his tune, for fear he should join the Emperor, which would be easy now that the cause for disagreement had gone. Thus, heartlessly, and haggling meanly over his wife’s little bequests, even that to her daughter, Henry greeted the death of the woman he once had seemed to love. He snivelled a little when he read the affecting letter to him that she had dictated in her last hour;[138] but the word went forth that on the next day, Sunday, the Court should be at its gayest; and Henry and Anne, in gala garb of yellow finery, went to Mass with their child in full state to the sound of trumpets. After dinner the King could not restrain his joy even within the bounds of decency. Entering the hall in which the ladies were dancing, he pirouetted about in the exuberance of his heart, and then, calling for his fair little daughter Elizabeth, he proudly carried her in his arms from one courtier to another to be petted and praised. There was only one drop of gall in the cup for the Boleyns, and they made no secret of it, namely, that the Princess Mary had not gone to accompany her mother. If Anne had only known it, her last chance of keeping at the King’s side as his wife was the survival of Katharine; and lamentation instead of rejoicing should have been her greeting of the news of her rival’s death. Henry, in fact, was tired of Anne already, and the cabal of nobles against her and the religious system she represented was stronger than ever; but the repudiation of his second wife on any excuse during the life of the first would have necessitated the return of Katharine as the King’s lawful spouse, with all the consequences that such a change would entail, and this Henry’s pride, as well as his inclinations, would never permit. Now that Katharine was dead, Anne was doomed to speedy ruin by one instrumentality or another, and before many weeks the cruel truth came home to her.

Katharine was buried not in such a convent as she had wished, for Henry said there was not one in England, but in Peterborough Cathedral, within fifteen miles of Kimbolton. The honours paid to her corpse were those of a Dowager Princess of Wales, but the country folk who bordered the miry tracks through which the procession ploughed paid to the dead Katharine in her funeral litter the honours they had paid her in her life. Parliament, far away in London, might order them to swear allegiance to Nan Bullen as Queen, and to her daughter as heiress of England; King Harry on his throne might threaten them, as he did, with stake and gibbet if they dared to disobey; but, though they bowed the head and mumbled such oaths as were dictated to them, Katharine to them had always been Queen Consort of England, and Mary her daughter was no bastard, but true Princess of Wales, whatever King and Parliament might say.

All people and all interests were, as if instinctively, shrinking away from Anne.[139] Her uncle Norfolk had quarrelled with her and retired from Court; the French were now almost as inimical as the imperialists; and even the time-serving courtiers turned from the waning favourite. She was no longer young, and her ill temper and many anxieties had marred her good looks. Her gaiety and lightness of manner had to a great extent fled; and sedate occupations, reading, needlework, charity, and devotion occupied most of her time. “Oh for a son!” was all the unhappy woman could sigh in her misery; for that, she knew, was the only thing that could save her, now that Katharine was dead and Anne might be repudiated by her husband without the need for taking back his first discarded wife.[140] Hope existed again that the prayed-for son might come into the world, and at the first prospect of it Anne made an attempt to utilise the influence it gave her by cajoling or crushing Mary into submission to the King’s will. The girl was desolate at her mother’s death; but she had her mother’s proud spirit, and her answers to Anne’s approaches were as cold and haughty as before. “The concubine (writes Chapuys, 21st January 1536) has thrown out the first bait to the Princess, telling her by her aunt (Lady Shelton) that if she will discontinue her obstinacy, and obey her father like a good girl, she (Anne) will be the best friend in the world to her, and like another mother will try to obtain for her all she wants. If she will come to Court she shall be exempt from carrying her (Anne’s) train and shall always walk by her side.” But obedience meant that Mary should recognise Cranmer’s sentence against her mother, the repudiation of the Papal authority and her own illegitimacy, and she refused the olive branch held out to her. Then Anne changed her tone, and wrote to her aunt a letter to be put into Mary’s way, threatening the Princess. In her former approaches, she said, she had only desired to save Mary out of charity. It was no affair of hers: she did not care; but when she had the son she expected the King would show no mercy to his rebellious daughter. But Mary remained unmoved. She knew that all Catholic Europe looked upon her now as the sole heiress of England, and that the Emperor was busy planning her escape, in order that she might, from the safe refuge of his dominions, be used as the main instrument for the submission of England to the Papacy and the destruction of Henry’s rule. For things had turned out somewhat differently in this respect from what the King had expected. The death of Katharine, very far from making the armed intervention of Charles in England more improbable, had brought it sensibly nearer, for the great war-storm that had long been looming between the French and Spaniards in Italy was now about to burst. Francis could no longer afford to alienate the Papacy by even pretending to a friendship with the excommunicated Henry, whilst England might be paralysed, and all chance of a diversion against imperial arms in favour of France averted, by the slight aid and subsidy by the Emperor of a Catholic rising in England against Henry and Anne.

On the 29th January 1536 Anne’s last hope was crushed. In the fourth month of her pregnancy she had a miscarriage, which she attributed passionately to her love for the King and her pain at seeing him flirting with another woman. Henry showed his rage and disappointment brutally, as was now his wont. He had hardly spoken to Anne for weeks before; and when he visited her at her bedside he said that it was quite evident that God meant to deny him heirs male by her. “When you get up,” he growled in answer to the poor woman’s complaints, as he left her, “I will talk to you.” The lady of whom Anne was jealous was probably the same that had attracted the King at the ball given to the Admiral of France two months previously, and had made him, as Anne hysterically complained, “forget everything else.” This lady was Mistress Jane Seymour, a daughter of Sir John Seymour of Wolf Hall, Wilts. She was at the time just over twenty-five years of age, and had been at Court for some time as a maid of honour to Katharine, and afterwards to Anne. During the King’s progress in the autumn of 1535, he had visited Wolf Hall, where the daughter of the house had attracted his admiring attention, apparently for the first time. Jane is described as possessing no great beauty, being somewhat colourless as to complexion; but her demeanour was sweet and gracious; and the King’s admiration for her at once marked her out as a fit instrument for the conservative party of nobles at Court to use against Anne and the political and religious policy which she represented. Apparently Jane had no ability, and none was needed in the circumstances. Chapuys, moreover, suggests with unnecessary spite that in morals she was no better than she should have been, on the unconvincing grounds that “being an Englishwoman, and having been so long at Court, whether she would not hold it a sin to be still a maid.” Her supposed unchastity, indeed, is represented as being an attraction to Henry: “for he may marry her on condition that she is a maid, and when he wants a divorce there will be plenty of witnesses ready to testify that she was not.” This, however, is mere detraction by a man who firmly believed that the cruelly wronged Katharine whose cause he served had just been murdered by Henry’s orders. That Jane had no strength of character is plain, and throughout her short reign she was merely an instrument by which politicians sought to turn the King’s passion for her to their own ends.

The Seymours were a family of good descent, allied with some of the great historic houses, and Jane’s two brothers, Edward and Thomas, were already handsome and notable figures at Henry’s Court: the elder, Sir Edward Seymour, especially, having accompanied the showy visits of the Duke of Suffolk, Cardinal Wolsey, and the King himself to France. So far as can be ascertained, however, the brothers, prompt as they were to profit by their sister’s elevation, were no parties to the political intrigue of which Jane was probably the unconscious tool. She was carefully indoctrinated by Anne’s enemies, especially Sir Nicholas Carew, how she was to behave. She must, above all, profess great devotion and friendship to the Princess Mary, to assume a mien of rigid virtue and high principles which would be likely to pique a sensual man like Henry without gratifying his passion except by marriage. Many of the enemies of the French connection, which included the great majority of the nation, looked with hope towards the King’s new infatuation as a means of luring back England to the comity of Catholic nations and friendship with the Emperor; though there was still a section, especially in the north of England, which believed that their best interests would be served by an open rebellion in the interests of Mary, supported from Flanders by her cousin the Emperor. All this was, of course, well known to Cromwell. He had been one of the first to counsel defiance of the Pope, but throughout he had been anxious to avoid an open quarrel with the Emperor, or to pledge England too closely to French interests; and now that even the French had turned against Anne, Cromwell saw that, unless he himself was to be dragged down when she fell, he must put the break hard down upon the religious policy that he had initiated, and make common cause with Anne’s enemies.

In a secret conference that he held with Chapuys at the Austin Friars, which in future was to be his own mansion, Cromwell proposed a new alliance between England and the Emperor, which would necessarily have to be accompanied by some compromise with the Pope and the recognition of Mary’s legitimacy.[141] He assured the imperial ambassador that Norfolk, Suffolk, and the rest of the nobles formerly attached to France were of the same opinion as himself, and tried earnestly to convince his interlocutor that he had no sympathy with Anne, whom he was ready to throw overboard to save himself. When Charles received this news from his ambassador, he took a somewhat tortuous but characteristic course. He was willing to a great extent to let bygones be bygones, and to forget the sufferings, and perhaps the murder, of his aunt Katharine, if Henry would come to terms with the Papacy and legitimise the Princess Mary; but, curiously enough, he preferred that Anne should remain at Henry’s side, instead of being repudiated. Her marriage, he reasoned, was obviously invalid, and any children she might have by Henry would consequently be unable to interfere with Mary’s rights to the succession: whereas if Henry were to divorce Anne and contract a legal marriage, any son born to him would disinherit Mary. To this extent was Charles ready to descend if he could obtain English help and money in the coming war; and Cromwell, at all events, was anxious to go quite as far to meet him. He now showed ostentatious respect to the Princess Mary, restoring to her the little gold cross that had been her mother’s, and of which she had been cruelly deprived, condemned openly the continued execution of his own policy of spoliation of the monasteries, and quarrelled both with Anne and the only man now in the same boat with her, Archbishop Cranmer, who trembled in his shoes at the ruin he saw impending upon his patroness, ready at any moment to turn his coat, but ignorant of how to do it; for Cranmer, however able a casuist he might be, possessed little statesmanship and less courage.

Lady Exeter was the go-between who brought the imperial ambassador into the conspiracy to oust Anne. The time was seen to be ripening. Henry was already talking in secret about “his having been seduced into the marriage with Anne by sorcery, and consequently that he considered it to be null, which was clearly seen by God’s denying a son. He thought he should be quite justified in taking another wife,”[142] and Jane Seymour’s company seemed daily more necessary to his comfort.

Sir Edward Seymour was made a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber early in March; and a fortnight later the Marchioness of Exeter reported to her friend Chapuys that the King, who was at Whitehall, had sent a loving letter, and a purse of gold, to his new lady-love.[143] The latter had been carefully schooled as to the wise course to pursue, and played prudery to perfection. She kissed the royal letter fervently without opening it; and then, throwing herself upon her knees, besought the messenger to pray the King in her name to consider that she was a gentlewoman of fair and honourable lineage and without reproach. “She had nothing in the world but her honour, which for a thousand deaths she would not wound. If the King deigned to make her a present of money she prayed that it might be when she made an honourable marriage.”[144] According to Lady Exeter’s report, this answer inflamed even more the King’s love for Jane. “She had behaved herself in the matter very modestly,” he said; “and in order to let it be seen that his intentions and affection were honourable, he intended in future only to speak to her in the presence of some of her relatives.” Cromwell, moreover, was turned out of a convenient apartment to which secret access could be obtained from the King’s quarters, in order that Sir Edward Seymour, now Viscount Beauchamp, and his wife should be lodged there, and facility thus given for the King’s virtuous billing and cooing with Jane, whilst saving the proprieties.

When it was too late, even Anne attempted to desert her own political party and to rally to the side of the Emperor, whether because she understood the indulgent way in which the latter now regarded her union with Henry, or whether from mere desperation at the ruin impending, it is not easy to say. But the conspiracy for her destruction had already gone too far when the Emperor’s diplomatic instructions came to his ambassador.[145] It was understood now at Court that the King intended somehow to get rid of his doubtful wife and marry another woman, and Cromwell, with a hypocritical smile behind his hand, whispered to Chapuys that though the King might divorce Anne he would live more virtuously in future. When the imperial ambassador with his master’s friendly replies to Henry’s advances saw the King at Greenwich on the 18th April 1536 the Court was all smiles for him, and Anne desperately clutched at the chance of making friends with him. Chapuys was cool, and declined to go and salute her, as he was invited to do. He was ready, as he said, to hold a candle to the devil, or a hundred of them, if his master’s interests would thereby be served; but he knew that Anne was doomed, and notwithstanding his master’s permission he made no attempt to conciliate her. All the courtiers were watching to see how he would treat her on this the first occasion that they had met since Katharine’s death. As Anne passed into the chapel to high Mass she looked eagerly around to greet her enemy. Where was he? In the chapel, she knew, and to sit close by her side; but he was nowhere to be seen. He was, in fact, standing behind the open door by which she entered; but, determined not to be balked, she turned completely round and made him a profound courtesy, which, as he was bound to do, he returned. In Anne’s rooms afterwards, where the King and the other ambassadors dined, Chapuys was not present, much to the “concubine’s” chagrin; but the Princess Mary and her friends in the conspiracy were suspicious and jealous even of the bow that had been exchanged under such adverse circumstances in the chapel. Anne at dinner coarsely abused the King of France, and strove her utmost to lead people to think that she, too, was hand in glove with the imperialists, as her enemies were, whilst Henry was graciousness itself to Chapuys, until he came to close quarters and heard that the Emperor was determined to drive a hard bargain, and force his English uncle to eat a large piece of humble pie before he could be taken to his bosom again. Then Henry hectored and vaunted like the bully that he was, and upon Cromwell fell his ill humour, for having, as Henry thought, been too pliant with the imperialists; and for the next week Cromwell was ill and in disgrace.

Submission to the Pope to the extent that Charles demanded was almost impossible now, both in consequence of Henry’s own vanity, and because the vast revenues and estates of the monasteries had in many cases replenished the King’s exchequer, or had endowed his nobles and favourites, Catholics though many of them were. A surrender of these estates and revenues would have been resisted, even if such had been possible, to the death, by those who had profited by the spoliation; and unless the Pope and the Emperor were willing to forget much, the hope of reconciling England with the Church was an impossible dream.[146] The great nobles who had battened upon the spoils, especially Norfolk, themselves took fright at the Emperor’s uncompromising demands, and tried to play off France against Charles, during Cromwell’s short disgrace. The Secretary saw that if the friends of France once more obtained the control over Henry’s fickle mind, the revolutionary section of the Catholic party in favour of Mary and the imperial connection would carry all before them, and that in the flood of change Cromwell and all his works would certainly be swept away. If Anne could be got rid of, and the King married to Mistress Seymour, jointly with the adoption of a moderate policy of compromise with Rome and the Emperor, all might be well, and Cromwell might retain the helm, but either an uncompromising persistence in the open Protestant defiance with probably a French alliance against the Emperor, or, on the other hand, an armed Catholic revolution in England, subsidised from Flanders, would have been inevitable ruin to Cromwell.

Anne, then, must be destroyed at any cost, and the King be won to the side of the man who would devise a means of doing it. But how? A repudiation or formal divorce on the ground of invalidity would, of course, have been easy; but it would have been too scandalous. It would also have convicted the King of levity, and above all have bastardised his second daughter, leaving him with no child that the law of the realm regarded as legitimate. Henry himself, as we have seen, talked about his having been drawn into the marriage by sorcery, and ardently desired to get rid of his wife. His intercourse with Jane Seymour, who was being cleverly coached by Anne’s enemies and Mary’s friends, plainly indicated that marriage was intended; but it was the intriguing brain of Cromwell that devised the only satisfactory way in which the King’s caprice and his own interests could be served in the treatment of Anne. Appearances must, at any cost, be saved for Henry. He must not appear to blame, whatever happened. Cromwell must be able, for his own safety, to drag down Anne’s family and friends at the same time that she was ruined, and the affair must be so managed that some sort of reconciliation could be patched up with the Emperor, whilst Norfolk and the French adherents were thrust into the background. Cromwell pondered well on the problem as he lay in bed, sick with annoyance at Henry’s rough answer to the Emperor’s terms, and thus he hit upon the scheme that alone would serve the aims he had in view.[147]

The idea gave him health and boldness again, and just as Henry under Norfolk’s influence was smiling upon the French ambassador, Cromwell appeared once more before his master after his five days’ absence. What passed at their interview can only be guessed by the light of the events that followed. It is quite possible that Cromwell did not tell the King of his designs against Anne, but only that he had discovered a practice of treason against him. But whether the actual words were pronounced or not, Henry must have understood, before he signed and gave to Cromwell the secret instrument demanded of him, that evil was intended to the woman of whom he had grown tired. It was a patent dated the 24th April, appointing the Lord Chancellor Audley and a number of nobles, including the Duke of Norfolk and Anne’s father, the Earl of Wiltshire, together with the judges, a Commission to inquire into any intended treasonable action, no matter by whom committed, and to hold a special Court to try the persons accused. With this instrument in his pocket, Cromwell held at will the lives of those whom he sought to destroy. Anne, as we have seen, had loved and courted the admiration of men, even as her daughter Elizabeth afterwards did to an extent that bordered upon mania. Her manners were free and somewhat hysterical, and her reputation before marriage had been more than doubtful, but the stern Act of Succession, which in 1534 made it treason to question the legitimacy of Anne’s daughter, barred all accusation against her except in respect to actions after Elizabeth’s birth.

Cromwell was well served by spies, even in Anne’s chamber; for her star was visibly paling, and people feared her vengeance little; and not many days passed before the Secretary had in his hand testimony enough to strike his first blow. It was little enough according to our present notions of evidence, and at another time would have passed unnoticed. A young fellow of humble origin, named Mark Smeaton, had by Anne’s influence been appointed one of Henry’s grooms of the chamber in consequence of his skill as a lute player. Anne herself, who was a fine musician and composer, delighted in listening to Mark’s performances; and doubtless, as was her wont, she challenged his admiration because he was a man. A contemporary who repeated the tattle of the Court[148] says that she had fallen in love with the lute player, and had told him so; and that she had aroused the jealousy of her rival admirers, Norreys, Brereton, and others, by her lavish gifts and open favour to Mark Smeaton. According to this story, she endeavoured to appease the former by renewed flirting with them, and to silence Mark’s discontent by large gifts of money. Others of her courtiers, especially Sir Thomas Percy, indignant that an upstart like Mark should be treated better than themselves, insulted and picked quarrels with the musician; and it is evident that Anne, at the very time that Cromwell was spreading his nets for her, was hard put to it to keep the peace between a number of idle, jealous young men whose admiration she had sought for pastime.

On the 29th April, Mark Smeaton was standing sulkily in the deep embrasure of a window in Anne’s chamber in the palace of Greenwich. The Queen asked him why he was so out of humour. He replied that it was nothing that mattered. She evidently knew the real reason for his gloom, for she reminded him that he could not expect her to speak to him as if he were a nobleman. “No, no!” said Mark, “a look sufficeth for me, and so fare you well.”[149] Sir Thomas Percy seems to have heard this little speech, and have conveyed it, with many hints of Mark’s sudden prosperity, to Cromwell. “It is hardly three months since Mark came to Court, and though he has only a hundred pounds a year from the King, and has received no more than a third, he has just bought three horses that have cost him 500 ducats, as well as very rich arms and fine liveries for his servants for the May-day ridings, such as no gentleman at Court has been able to buy, and many are wondering where he gets the money.”[150] Mark Smeaton was a safe quarry, for he had no influential friends, and it suited Cromwell’s turn to begin with him to build up his case against Anne.

There was to be a May-day jousting in the tilt-yard at Greenwich, at which Anne’s brother, Lord Rochford, was the challenger, and Sir Henry Norreys was the principal defender. Early in the morning of the day, Cromwell, who of course took no part in such shows, went to London, and asked Smeaton to accompany him and dine,[151] returning in the afternoon to Greenwich in time for the ridings. Mark accepted the invitation, and was taken ostensibly for dinner to a house at Stepney, that probably being a convenient half-way place between Greenwich and Westminster by water. No sooner had the unsuspecting youth entered the chamber than he saw the trap into which he had fallen. Six armed men closed around him, and Cromwell’s face grew grave, as the Secretary warned the terrified lad to confess where he obtained so much money. Smeaton prevaricated, and “then two stout young fellows were called, and the Secretary asked for a rope and a cudgel. The rope, which was filled with knots, was put around Mark’s head and twisted with the cudgel until Mark cried, ‘Sir Secretary, no more! I will tell the truth. The Queen gave me the money.’”[152] Then, bit by bit, by threats of torture, some sort of confession incriminating Anne was wrung out of the poor wretch: though exactly what he confessed is not on record. Later, when the affair was made public, the quidnuncs of London could tell the most private details of his adultery with the Queen;[153] for Cromwell took care that such gossip should be well circulated.

Whatever confession was extorted from Smeaton, it implicated not only himself but the various gentlemen who shared with him the Queen’s smiles, and was quite sufficient for Cromwell’s purpose. Hurrying the unfortunate musician to the Tower in the strictest secrecy, Cromwell sent his nephew Richard post haste to Greenwich with a letter divulging Smeaton’s story to the King. Richard Cromwell arrived at the tiltyard as the tournament was in progress, the King and Anne witnessing the bouts from a glazed gallery. Several versions of what then happened are given; but the most probable is that as soon as Henry had glanced at the contents of the letter and knew that Cromwell had succeeded, he abruptly rose and left the sports; starting almost immediately afterwards for London without the knowledge of Anne. With him went a great favourite of his, Sir Henry Norreys, Keeper of the Privy Purse, who was engaged to be married to Madge Shelton, Anne’s cousin, who had at one time been put forward by the Boleyn interest as the King’s mistress. Norreys had, no doubt, flirted platonically with the Queen, who had openly bidden for his admiration, but there is not an atom of evidence that their connection was a guilty one.[154] On the way to London the King taxed him with undue familiarity with Anne. Horror-stricken, Norreys could only protest his innocence, and resist all the temptations held out to him to make a clean breast of the Queen’s immorality. One of the party of Anne’s enemies, Sir William Fitzwilliam, was also in attendance on the King; and to him was given the order to convey Norreys to the Tower. After the King’s departure from Greenwich, Anne learnt that he had gone without a word of farewell, and that Smeaton was absent from the joust, detained in London.

The poor woman’s heart must have sunk with fear, for the portents of her doom were all around her. She could not cry for mercy to the flabby coward her husband, who, as usual, slunk from bearing the responsibility of his own acts, and ran away from the danger of personal appeal from those whom he wronged. Late at night the dread news was whispered to her that Smeaton and Norreys were both in the Tower; and early in the morning she herself was summoned to appear before a quorum of the Royal Commissioners, presided over by her uncle and enemy, the Duke of Norfolk. She was rudely told that she was accused of committing adultery with Smeaton and Norreys, both of whom had confessed. She cried and protested in vain that it was untrue. She was told to hold her peace, and was placed under arrest until her barge was ready and the tide served to bear her up stream to the Tower. With her went a large guard of halberdiers and the Duke of Norfolk. Thinking that she was being carried to her husband at Westminster, she was composed and tranquil on the way; but when she found that the Traitors’ Gate of the Tower was her destination, her presence of mind deserted her. Sir William Kingston, one of the chief conspirators in Mary’s favour, and governor of the fortress, stood upon the steps under the gloomy archway to receive her, and in sign of custody took her by the arm as she ascended. “I was received with greater ceremony the last time I entered here,” she cried indignantly; and as the heavy gates clanged behind her and the portcullis dropped, she fell upon her knees and burst into a storm of hysterical tears. Kingston and his wife did their best to tranquillise her; but her passionate protestations of innocence made no impression upon them.

Her brother, Lord Rochford, had, unknown to her, been a few hours before lodged in the same fortress on the hideous and utterly unsupported charge of incest with his sister; and Cromwell’s drag-net was cast awide to bring in all those whose names were connected, however loosely, with that of the Queen by her servants, all of whom were tumbling over each other in their haste to denounce their fallen mistress. Sir Thomas Weston and William Brereton, with both of whom Anne had been fond of bandying questionable compliments, were arrested on the 4th May; and on the 5th Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet, and a great friend of the King, was put under guard on similar accusations. With regard to Wyatt there seems to have been no doubt, as has been shown in an earlier chapter, that some love passages had passed between him and Anne before her marriage; and there is contemporary assertion to support the belief that their connection had not been an innocent one;[155] but the case against him was finally dropped and he was again taken into Henry’s favour; a proof that there was no evidence of any guilt on his part since Anne was Queen. He is asserted to have begged Henry not to contract the marriage, and subsequently to have reminded him that he had done so, confessing after her arrest that Anne had been his mistress before she married the King.

The wretched woman babbled hysterically without cessation in her chamber in the Tower; all her distraught ravings being carefully noted and repeated by the ladies, mostly her personal enemies, who watched her night and day; artful leading questions being put to her to tempt her to talk the more. She was imprudent in her speech at the best of times, but now, in a condition of acute hysteria, she served the interests of her enemies to the full, dragging into her discourse the names of the gentlemen who were accused and repeating their risky conversations with her, which were now twisted to their worst meaning.[156] At one time she would only desire death; then she would make merry with a good dinner or supper, chatting and jesting, only to break down into hysterical laughter and tears in the midst of her merriment. Anon she would affect to believe that her husband was but trying her constancy, and pleaded with all her heart to be allowed to see him again.[157] But he, once having broken the shackles, was gaily amusing himself in gallant guise with Mistress Seymour, who was lodged, for appearance’ sake, in the house of her mentor, Sir Nicholas Carew, a few miles from London, but within easy reach of a horseman. Anne in her sober moments must have known that she was doomed. She hoped much from Cranmer, almost the only friend of hers not now in prison; but Cranmer, however strong in counsel, was a weak reed in combat; and hastened to save himself at the cost of the woman upon whose shoulders he had climbed to greatness. The day after Anne’s arrest, Cranmer wrote to the King “a letter of consolation; yet wisely making no apology for her, but acknowledging how divers of the lords had told him of certain of her faults, which, he said, he was sorry to hear, and concluded desiring that the King would continue his love to the gospel, lest it should be thought that it was for her sake only that he had favoured it.”[158] Before he had time to despatch the letter, the timorous archbishop was summoned across the river to Westminster to answer certain disquieting questions of the Commissioners, who informed him of the evidence against the Queen; and in growing alarm for himself and his cause, he hurried back to Lambeth without uttering a word in favour of the accused, whose guilt he accepted without question.

Thenceforward Anne’s enemies worked their way unchecked, even her father being silenced by fear for himself. For Cromwell’s safety it was necessary that none of the accused should escape who later might do him injury; and now that he and his imperialistic policy had been buttressed by the “discovery” of Anne’s infidelity, not even the nobles of the French faction dared to oppose it by seeming to side with the unhappy woman. The Secretary did his work thoroughly. The indictments were laid before the grand juries of Middlesex and Kent, as the offences were asserted to have been committed over a long period both at Greenwich and Whitehall or Hampton Court. To the charges against Anne of adultery with Smeaton, who it was asserted had confessed, Norreys, Weston, Brereton, and Lord Rochford, was added that of having conspired with them to kill the King. There was not an atom of evidence worth the name to support any of the charges except the doubtful confession of Smeaton, wrung from him by torture; and it is certain that at the period in question the death of Henry would have been fatal to the interests of Anne. But a State prosecution in the then condition of the law almost invariably meant a condemnation of the accused; and when Smeaton, Weston, Norreys, and Brereton were arraigned in Westminster Hall on the 12th May, their doom was practically sealed before the trial. Smeaton simply pleaded guilty of adultery only, and prayed for mercy: the rest of the accused strenuously denied their guilt on the whole of the charges; but all were condemned to the terrible death awarded to traitors, though on what detailed evidence, if any, does not now appear.[159] Every effort was made to tempt Norreys to confess, but he replied that he would rather die a thousand deaths than confess a lie, for he verily believed the Queen innocent.[160]

In the meanwhile Anne in the Tower continued her strange behaviour, at times arrogantly claiming all her royal prerogatives, at times reduced to hysterical self-abasement and despair. On the 15th May she and her brother were brought to the great hall of the Tower before a large panel of peers under the presidency of the Duke of Norfolk. All that could add ignominy to the accused was done. The lieges were crowded into the space behind barriers at the end of the hall, the city fathers under the Lord Mayor were bidden to attend, and with bated breath the subjects saw the woman they had always scorned publicly branded as an incestuous adulteress. The charges, as usual at the time, were made in a way and upon grounds that now would not be permitted in any court of justice. Scraps of overheard conversation with Norreys and others were twisted into sinister significance, allegations unsupported, and not included in the indictment, were dragged in to prejudice the accused; and loose statements incapable of proof or disproof were liberally introduced for the same purpose. The charge of incest with Rochford depended entirely upon the assertion that he once remained in his sister’s room a long time; and in his case also loose gossip was alleged as a proof of crime: that Anne had said that the King was impotent,[161] that Rochford had thrown doubts upon the King being the father of Anne’s child, and similar hearsay ribaldry. Both Anne and her brother defended themselves, unaided, with ability and dignity. They pointed out the absence of evidence against them, and the inherent improbability of the charges. But it was of no avail, for her death had already been settled between Henry and Cromwell: and the Duke of Norfolk, with his sinister squint, condemned his niece, Anne Queen of England, to be burnt or beheaded at the King’s pleasure; and Viscount Rochford to a similar death. Both denied their guilt after sentence, but acknowledged, as was the custom of the time, that they deserved death, this being the only way in which mercy might be gained, so far as forfeiture of property was concerned.

Anne had been cordially hated by the people. Her rise had meant the destruction of the ancient religious foundations, the shaking of the ecclesiastical bases of English society; but the sense of justice was not dead, and the procedure at the trial shocked the public conscience. Already men and women murmured that the King’s goings on with Mistress Seymour whilst his wife was under trial for adultery were a scandal, and Anne in her death had more friends than in her life. On all sides in London now, from the Lord Mayor downwards, it was said that Anne had been condemned, not because she was guilty, but because the King was tired of her: at all events, wrote Chapuys to Granvelle, there was surely never a man who wore the horns so gaily as he.[162] On the 17th May the five condemned men were led to their death upon Tower Hill, all of them, including Smeaton, being beheaded.[163] As usual in such cases, they acknowledged general guilt, but not one (except perhaps Smeaton) admitted the particular crimes for which they died, for their kin might have suffered in property, if not in person, if the King’s justice had been too strongly impugned.

Anne, in alternate hope and despair, still remained in the Tower, but mostly longing for the rapid death she felt in her heart must come. Little knew she, however, why her sacrifice was deferred yet from day to day. In one of her excited, nervous outbursts she had cried that, no matter what they did, no one could prevent her from dying Queen of England. She had reckoned without Henry’s meanness, Cromwell’s cunning, and Cranmer’s suppleness. Her death warrant had been signed by the King on the 16th May, and Cranmer was sent to receive her last confession. The coming of the archbishop—her archbishop, as she called him—gave her fresh hope. She was not to be killed after all, but to be banished, and Cranmer was to bring her the good news. Alas! poor soul, she little knew her Cranmer even yet. He had been primed by Cromwell for a very different purpose, that of worming out of Anne some admission that would give him a pretext for pronouncing her marriage with the King invalid from the first. The task was a repulsive one for the Primate, whose act alone had made the marriage possible; but Cranmer was—Cranmer. The position was a complicated one. Henry, as he invariably did, wished to save his face and seem in the right before the world, consequently he could not confess that he had been mistaken in the divorce from Katharine, and get rid of Anne’s marriage in that way, nor did he wish to restore Mary to the position of heiress to the crown. What he needed Cranmer’s help for was to render Elizabeth also illegitimate, but still his daughter, in order that any child he might have by Jane Seymour, or failing that, his natural son, the Duke of Richmond, might be acknowledged his successor.