Wives of Henry the Eighth and the Parts They Played in History — A Fleeting Triumph - Political Intrigue and the Betrayal of Anne - Part 1

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.