Wives of Henry the Eighth and the Parts They Played in History — A Fleeting Triumph - Political Intrigue and the Betrayal of Anne - Part 2

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 Angouleme, 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 Sa 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 (Dona 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 Sa, 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 Sa 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.