It was over;—over at last; yet so over, that the conclusion could but appear to the losing party a fresh injustice. To those who were concerned in bringing it to pass, to the king himself, to the nation, to Europe, to every one who heard of it at the time, it must have appeared, as it appears now to us who read the story of it, if a necessity, yet a most unwelcome and unsatisfying one. That the king remained uneasy is evident from the efforts which he continued to make, or which he allowed to be made, notwithstanding the brief of the 23rd of December, to gain the sanction of the pope. That the nation was uneasy, we should not require the evidence of history to tell us. "There was much murmuring in England," says Hall, "and it was thought by the unwise that the Bishop of Rome would curse all Englishmen; that the emperor and he would destroy all the people." And those who had no such fears, and whose judgment in the main approved of what had been done, were scandalised at the presentation to them at the instant of the publication of the divorce, of a new queen, four months advanced in pregnancy. This also was a misfortune which had arisen out of the chain of duplicities, a fresh accident swelling a complication which was already sufficiently entangled. It had been occasioned by steps which at the moment at which they were ventured, prudence seemed to justify; but we the more regret it, because, in comparison with the interests which were at issue, the few months of additional delay were infinitely unimportant.

Nevertheless, we have reason to be thankful that the thing, well or ill, was over; seven years of endurance were enough for the English nation, and may be supposed to have gained even for Henry a character for patience. In some way, too, it is needless to say, the thing must have ended. The life of none of us is long enough to allow us to squander so large a section of it struggling in the meshes of a law-suit; and although there may be a difference of opinion on the wisdom of having first entered upon ground of such a kind, few thinking persons can suggest any other method in which either the nation or the king could have extricated themselves. Meanwhile, it was resolved that such spots and blemishes as hung about the transaction should be forgotten in the splendour of the coronation. If there was scandal in the condition of the queen, yet under another aspect that condition was matter of congratulation to a people so eager for an heir; and Henry may have thought that the sight for the first time in public of so beautiful a creature, surrounded by the most magnificent pageant which London had witnessed since the unknown day on which the first stone of it was laid, and bearing in her bosom the long-hoped-for inheritor of the English crown, might induce a chivalrous nation to forget what it was the interest of no loyal subject to remember longer, and to offer her an English welcome to the throne.

In anticipation of the timely close of the proceedings at Dunstable, notice had been given in the city early in May, that preparations should be made for the coronation on the first of the following month. Queen Anne was at Greenwich, but, according to custom, the few preceding days were to be spent at the Tower; and on the 19th of May, she was conducted thither in state by the lord mayor and the city companies, with one of those splendid exhibitions upon the water which in the days when the silver Thames deserved its name, and the sun could shine down upon it out of the blue summer sky, were spectacles scarcely rivalled in gorgeousness by the world-famous wedding of the Adriatic. The river was crowded with boats, the banks and the ships in the pool swarmed with people; and fifty great barges formed the procession, all blazing with gold and banners. The queen herself was in her own barge, close to that of the lord mayor; and in keeping with the fantastic genius of the time, she was preceded up the water by "a foyst or wafter full or ordnance, in which was a great dragon continually moving and casting wildfire, and round about the foyst stood terrible monsters and wild men, casting fire and making hideous noise."⁴³⁴ So, with trumpets blowing, cannon pealing, the Tower guns answering the guns of the ships, in a blaze of fireworks and splendour, Anne Boleyn was borne along to the great archway of the Tower, where the king was waiting on the stairs to receive her.

And now let us suppose eleven days to have elapsed, the welcome news to have arrived at length from Dunstable, and the fair summer morning of life dawning in treacherous beauty after the long night of expectation. No bridal ceremonial had been possible; the marriage had been huddled over like a stolen love-match, and the marriage feast had been eaten in vexation and disappointment. These past mortifications were to be atoned for by a coronation pageant which the art and the wealth of the richest city in Europe should be poured out in the most lavish profusion to adorn.

On the morning of the 31st of May, the families of the London citizens were stirring early in all houses. From Temple Bar to the Tower, the streets were fresh strewed with gravel, the footpaths were railed off along the whole distance, and occupied on one side by the guilds, their workmen, and apprentices, on the other by the city constables and officials in their gaudy uniforms, "with their staves in hand for to cause the people to keep good room and order."⁴³⁵ Cornhill and Gracechurch Street had dressed their fronts in scarlet and crimson, in arras and tapestry, and the rich carpet-work from Persia and the East. Cheapside, to outshine her rivals, was draped even more splendidly in cloth of gold, and tissue, and velvet. The sheriffs were pacing up and down on their great Flemish horses, hung with liveries, and all the windows were thronged with ladies crowding to see the procession pass. At length the Tower guns opened, the grim gates rolled back, and under the archway in the bright May sunshine, the long column began slowly to defile. Two states only permitted their representatives to grace the scene with their presence—Venice and France. It was, perhaps, to make the most of this isolated countenance, that the French ambassador's train formed the van of the cavalcade. Twelve French knights came riding foremost in surcoats of blue velvet with sleeves of yellow silk, their horses trapped in blue, with white crosses powdered on their hangings. After them followed a troop of English gentlemen, two and two, and then the Knights of the Bath, "in gowns of violet, with hoods purfled with miniver like doctors." Next, perhaps at a little interval, the abbots passed on, mitred in their robes; the barons followed in crimson velvet, the bishops then, and then the earls and marquises, the dresses of each order increasing in elaborate gorgeousness. All these rode on in pairs. Then came alone Audeley, lord-chancellor, and behind him the Venetian ambassador and the Archbishop of York; the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Du Bellay, Bishop of Bayonne and of Paris, not now with bugle and hunting-frock, but solemn with stole and crozier. Next, the lord mayor, with the city mace in hand, the Garter in his coat of arms; and then Lord William Howard—Belted Will Howard, of the Scottish Border, Marshal of England. The officers of the queen's household succeeded the marshal in scarlet and gold, and the van of the procession was closed by the Duke of Suffolk, as high constable, with his silver wand. It is no easy matter to picture to ourselves the blazing trail of splendour which in such a pageant must have drawn along the London streets,—those streets which now we know so black and smoke-grimed, themselves then radiant with masses of colour, gold, and crimson, and violet. Yet there it was, and there the sun could shine upon it, and tens of thousands of eyes were gazing on the scene out of the crowded lattices.

Glorious as the spectacle was, perhaps however, it passed unheeded. Those eyes were watching all for another object, which now drew near. In an open space behind the constable there was seen approaching "a white chariot," drawn by two palfreys in white damask which swept the ground, a golden canopy borne above it making music with silver bells: and in the chariot sat the observed of all observers, the beautiful occasion of all this glittering homage; fortune's plaything of the hour, the Queen of England—queen at last—borne along upon the waves of this sea of glory, breathing the perfumed incense of greatness which she had risked her fair name, her delicacy, her honour, her self-respect, to win; and she had won it.

There she sate, dressed in white tissue robes, her fair hair flowing loose over her shoulders, and her temples circled with a light coronet of gold and diamonds—most beautiful—loveliest—most favoured perhaps, as she seemed at that hour, of all England's daughters. Alas! "within the hollow round" of that coronet—

Fatal gift of greatness! so dangerous ever! so more than dangerous in those tremendous times when the fountains are broken loose of the great deeps of thought; and nations are in the throes of revolution;—when ancient order and law and tradition are splitting in the social earthquake; and as the opposing forces wrestle to and fro, those unhappy ones who stand out above the crowd become the symbols of the struggle, and fall the victims of its alternating fortunes. And what if into an unsteady heart and brain, intoxicated with splendour, the outward chaos should find its way, converting the poor silly soul into an image of the same confusion,—if conscience should be deposed from her high place, and the Pandora box be broken loose of passions and sensualities and follies; and at length there be nothing left of all which man or woman ought to value, save hope of God's forgiveness.

Three short years have yet to pass, and again, on a summer morning, Queen Anne Boleyn will leave the Tower of London—not radiant then with beauty on a gay errand of coronation, but a poor wandering ghost, on a sad tragic errand, from which she will never more return, passing away out of an earth where she may stay no longer, into a presence where, nevertheless, we know that all is well—for all of us—and therefore for her.

But let us not cloud her shortlived sunshine with the shadow of the future. She went on in her loveliness, the peeresses following in their carriages, with the royal guard in their rear. In Fenchurch Street she was met by the children of the city schools; and at the corner of Gracechurch Street a masterpiece had been prepared of the pseudo-classic art, then so fashionable, by the merchants of the Styll Yard. A Mount Parnassus had been constructed, and a Helicon fountain upon it playing into a basin with four jets of Rhenish wine. On the top of the mountain sat Apollo with Calliope at his feet, and on either side the remaining Muses, holding lutes or harps, and singing each of them some "posy" or epigram in praise of the queen, which was presented, after it had been sung, written in letters of gold.

From Gracechurch Street, the procession passed to Leadenhall, where there was a spectacle in better taste, of the old English Catholic kind, quaint perhaps and forced, but truly and even beautifully emblematic. There was again a "little mountain," which was hung with red and white roses; a gold ring was placed on the summit, on which, as the queen appeared, a white falcon was made to "descend as out of the sky"—"and then incontinent came down an angel with great melody, and set a close crown of gold upon the falcon's head; and in the same pageant sat Saint Anne with all her issue beneath her; and Mary Cleophas with her four children, of the which children one made a goodly oration to the queen, of the fruitfulness of St. Anne, trusting that like fruit should come of her."⁴³⁶

With such "pretty conceits," at that time the honest tokens of an English welcome, the new queen was received by the citizens of London. These scenes must be multiplied by the number of the streets, where some fresh fancy met her at every turn. To preserve the festivities from flagging, every fountain and conduit within the walls ran all day with wine; the bells of every steeple were ringing; children lay in wait with song, and ladies with posies, in which all the resources of fantastic extravagance were exhausted; and thus in an unbroken triumph—and to outward appearance received with the warmest affection—she passed under Temple Bar, down the Strand by Charing Cross to Westminster Hall. The king was not with her throughout the day; nor did he intend to be with her in any part of the ceremony. She was to reign without a rival, the undisputed sovereign of the hour.

Saturday being passed in showing herself to the people, she retired for the night to "the king's manour house at Westminster," where she slept. On the following morning, between eight and nine o'clock, she returned to the hall, where the lord mayor, the city council, and the peers were again assembled, and took her place on the high dais at the top of the stairs under the cloth of state; while the bishops, the abbots, and the monks of the abbey formed in the area. A railed way had been laid with carpets across Palace Yard and the Sanctuary to the abbey gates, and when all was ready, preceded by the peers in their robes of parliament, the Knights of the Garter in the dress of the order, she swept out under her canopy, the bishops and the monks "solemnly singing." The train was borne by the old Duchess of Norfolk her aunt, the Bishops of London and Winchester on either side "bearing up the lappets of her robe." The Earl of Oxford carried the crown on its cushion immediately before her. She was dressed in purple velvet furred with ermine, her hair escaping loose, as she usually wore it, under a wreath of diamonds.

On entering the abbey, she was led to the coronation chair Where she sat while the train fell into their places, and the preliminaries, of the ceremonial were despatched. Then she was conducted up to the high altar, and anointed Queen of England, and she received from the hands of Cranmer, fresh come in haste from Dunstable, with the last words of his sentence upon Catherine scarcely silent upon his lips, the golden sceptre, and St. Edward's crown.

Did any twinge of remorse, any pang of painful recollection, pierce at that moment the incense of glory which she was inhaling? Did any vision flit across her of a sad mourning figure which once had stood where she was standing, now desolate, neglected, sinking into the darkening twilight of a life cut short by sorrow? Who can tell? At such a time, that figure would have weighed heavily upon a noble mind, and a wise mind would have been taught by the thought of it, that although life be fleeting as a dream, it is long enough to experience strange vicissitudes of fortune. But Anne Boleyn was not noble and was not wise,—too probably she felt nothing but the delicious, all-absorbing, all-intoxicating present, and if that plain, suffering face presented itself to her memory at all, we may fear that it was rather as a foil to her own surpassing loveliness. Two years later, she was able to exult over Catherine's death; she is not likely to have thought of her with gentler feelings in the first glow and flush of triumph.

We may now leave these scenes. They concluded in the usual English style, with a banquet in the great hall, and with all outward signs of enjoyment and pleasure. There must have been but few persons present however who did not feel that the sunshine of such a day might not last for ever, and that over so dubious a marriage no Englishman could exult with more than half a heart. It is foolish to blame lightly actions which arise in the midst of circumstances which are and can be but imperfectly known; and there may have been political reasons which made so much pomp desirable. Anne Boleyn had been the subject of public conversation for seven years, and Henry, no doubt, desired to present his jewel to them in the rarest and choicest setting. Yet to our eyes, seeing, perhaps, by the light of what followed, a more modest introduction would have appeared more suited to the doubtful nature of her position.

At any rate we escape from this scene of splendour very gladly as from something unseasonable. It would have been well for Henry VIII. if he had lived in a world in which women could have been dispensed with; so ill, in all his relations with them, he succeeded. With men he could speak the right word, he could do the right thing; with women he seemed to be under a fatal necessity of mistake.

It was now necessary, however, after this public step, to communicate in form to the emperor the divorce and the new marriage. The king was assured of the rectitude of the motives on which he had himself acted, and he knew at the same time that he had challenged the hostility of the papal world. Yet he did not desire a quarrel if there were means of avoiding it; and more than once he had shown respect for the opposition which he had met with from Charles, as dictated by honourable care for the interests of his kinswoman. He therefore, in the truest language which will be met with in the whole long series of the correspondence, composed a despatch for his ambassador at Brussels, and expressed himself in a tone of honest sorrow for the injury which he had been compelled to commit. Neither the coercion which the emperor had exerted over the pope, nor his intrigues with his subjects in Ireland and England, could deprive the nephew of Catherine of his right to a courteous explanation; and Henry directed Doctor Nicholas Hawkins in making his communication "to use only gentle words;" to express a hope that Charles would not think only of his own honour, but would remember public justice; and that a friendship of long standing, which the interests of the subjects of both countries were concerned so strongly in maintaining, might not be broken. The instructions are too interesting to pass over with a general description. After stating the grounds on which Henry had proceeded, and which Charles thoroughly understood, Hawkins was directed to continue thus:—

"The King of England is not ignorant what respect is due unto the world. How much he hath laboured and travailed therein he hath sufficiently declared and showed in his acts and proceedings. If he had contemned the order and process of the world, or the friendship and amity of your Majesty, he needed not to have sent so often to the pope and to you both, nor continued and spent his time in delays. He might have done what he has done now, had it so liked him, with as little difficulty as now, if without such respect he would have followed his pleasure."

The minister was then to touch the pope's behaviour and Henry's forbearance, and after that to say:—

"Going forward in that way his Highness saw that he could come to no conclusion; and he was therefore compelled to step right forth out of the maze, and so to quiet himself at last. And is it not time to have an end in seven years? It is not to be asked nor questioned whether the matter hath been determined after the common fashion, but whether it hath in it common justice, truth, and equity. For observation of the common order, his Grace hath done what lay in him. Enforced by necessity he hath found the true order which he hath in substance followed with effect, and hath done as becometh him. He doubteth not but your Majesty, remembering his cause from the beginning hitherto, will of yourself consider and think, that among mortal men nothing should be immortal; and suits must once have an end, si possis recte, si non quocunque modo. If his Highness cannot as he would, then must he do as he may; and he that hath a journey to be perfected must, if he cannot go one way, essay another. For his matter with the pope, he shall deal with him apart. Your Majesty he taketh for his friend, and as to a friend he openeth these matters to you, trusting to find your Majesty no less friendly than he hath done heretofore."⁴³⁷

If courtesy obliged Henry to express a confidence in the stability of the relations between himself and Charles, which it was impossible that he could have felt, yet in other respects this letter has the most pleasant merit of honesty. Hawkins was so much overcome by "the sweetness of it," that "he nothing doubted if that the emperor read the same, by God's grace he should be utterly persuaded;" and although in this expectation he was a little over sanguine, as in calmer moments he would have acknowledged, yet plain speech is never without its value; and Charles himself after he had tried other expedients, and they had not succeeded with him, found it more prudent to acquiesce in what could no longer be altered, and to return to cordiality.

For the present he remained under the impression that by the great body of the English the divorce was looked upon with coldness and even with displeasure, that the king was supported only by the complacency of a few courtiers, and that the nation were prepared to compel him to undo the wrong which had been inflicted upon Catherine and the princess. So he was assured by the Spanish party in England; so all the disaffected assured him, who were perhaps themselves deceived. He had secured Ireland, and Scotland also in so far as James's promises could secure it;⁴³⁸ and he was not disposed to surrender for the present so promising a game till he had tried his strength and proved his weakness. He replied coldly to Hawkins, "That for the King of England's amity he would be glad thereof, so the said king would do works according. The matter was none of his; but the lady, whose rights had been violated, was his aunt and an orphan, and that he must see for her, and for her daughter his cousin."⁴³⁹

The scarcely ambiguous answer was something softened the following day; perhaps only, however, because it was too plain a betrayal of his intentions. He communicated at once with Catherine, and Henry speedily learnt the nature of the advice which he had given to her. After the coronation had passed off so splendidly, when no disturbance had risen, no voice had been raised for her or for her daughter, the poor queen's spirit for the moment had sunk; she had thought of leaving the country, and flying with the Princess Mary to Spain. The emperor sent to urge her to remain a little longer, guaranteeing her, if she could command her patience, an ample reparation for her injuries. Whatever might appear upon the surface, the new queen, he was assured, was little loved by the people, and "they were ready to join with any prince who would espouse her quarrel."⁴⁴⁰ All classes, he said, were agreed in one common feeling of displeasure. They were afraid of a change of religion; they were afraid of the wreck of their commerce; and the whole country was fast ripening towards insurrection. The points on which he relied as the occasion of the disaffection betrayed the sources of his information. He was in correspondence with the regular clergy through Peto at Antwerp, and through his Flemish subjects with merchants of London. Among both these classes, as well as among the White Rose nobles, he had powerful adherents; and it could not have been forgotten in the courts, either of London or Brussels, that within the memory of living men, a small band of exiles, equipped by a Duke of Burgundy, had landed at a Yorkshire village, and in a month had revolutionised the kingdom.

In the eyes of Charles there was no reason why an attempt which had succeeded once might not succeed again under circumstances seemingly of far fairer promise. The strength of a party of insurrection is a power which official statesmen never justly comprehend. It depends upon moral influences, which they are professionally incapable of appreciating. They are able complacently to ignore the existence of substantial disaffection though all society may be undermined; they can build their hopes, When it suits their convenience, on the idle trifling of superficial discontent. In the present instance there was some excuse for the mistake. That in England there really existed an active and organised opposition, prepared, when opportunity offered, to try the chances of rebellion, was no delusion of persons who measured facts by their desires; it was an ascertained peril of serious magnitude, which might be seriously calculated upon; and if the experiment was tried, reasonable men might fairly be divided in opinion on the result to be expected.

In the meantime the government had been obliged to follow up the coronation of the new queen by an act which the situation of the kingdom explained and excused; but which, if Catherine had been no more than a private person, would have been wanton cruelty. Among the people she still bore her royal title; but the name of queen, so long as she was permitted to retain it, was an allowed witness against the legality of the sentence at Dunstable. There could not be "two queens" in England,⁴⁴¹ and one or other must retire from the designation. A proclamation was therefore issued by the council, declaring, that in consequence of the final proofs that the Lady Catherine had never been lawfully married to the king, she was to bear thenceforward the title which she had received after the death of her first husband, and be called the Princess Dowager.

Harsh as this measure was, she had left no alternative to the government by which to escape the enforcement of it, by her refusal to consent to any form of compromise. If she was queen, Anne Boleyn was not queen. If she was queen, the Princess Mary remained the heir to the crown, and the expected offspring of Anne would be illegitimate. If the question had been merely of names, to have moved it would have been unworthy and wicked; but where respect for private feeling was incompatible with the steps which a nation felt necessary in order to secure itself against civil convulsions, private feeling was compelled not unjustly to submit to injury. Mary, though still a girl, had inherited both her father's will and her mother's obstinacy. She was in correspondence, as we have seen, with the Nun of Kent, and aware at least, if she was not further implicated in it, of a conspiracy to place her on the throne. Charles was engaged in the same designs; and it will not be pretended that Catherine was left without information of what was going forward, or that her own conduct was uninfluenced by policy. These intrigues it was positively necessary to stifle, and it was impossible to leave a pretext of which so powerful a use might be made in the hands of a party whose object was not only to secure to the princess her right to succeed her father, but to compel him by arms either to acknowledge it, or submit to be deposed.⁴⁴²

Our sympathies are naturally on the side of the weak and the unsuccessful. State considerations lose their force after the lapse of centuries, when no interests of our own are any longer in jeopardy; and we feel for the great sufferers of history only in their individual capacity, without recalling or caring for the political exigencies to which they were sacrificed. It is an error of disguised selfishness, the counterpart of the carelessness with which in our own age, when we are ourselves constituents of an interested public, we ignore what it is inconvenient to remember.

Thus, therefore, on one hot Midsummer Sunday in this year 1533, the people gathering to church in every parish through the English counties, read, nailed upon the doors, a paper signed Henry R., setting forth that the Lady Catherine of Spain, heretofore called Queen of England, was not to be called by that title any more, but was to be called Princess Dowager, and so to be held and esteemed. The proclamation, we may suppose, was read with varying comments; of the reception of it in the northern counties, the following information was forwarded to the crown. The Earl of Derby, lord-lieutenant of Yorkshire, wrote to inform the council that he had arrested a certain "lewd and naughty priest," James Harrison by name, on the charge of having spoken unfitting and slanderous words of his Highness and the Queen's Grace. He had taken the examinations of several witnesses, which he had sent with his letter, and which were to the following effect:—

Richard Clark deposeth that the said James Harrison reading the proclamation, said that Queen Catherine was queen, Nan Bullen should not be queen, nor the king should be no king but on his bearing.

William Dalton deposeth, that in his hearing the above-named James said, I will take none for queen but Queen Catherine—who the devil made Nan Bullen, that hoore, queen? I will never take her for queen—and he the said William answered, "Hold thy peace, thou wot'st not what thou sayest—but that thou art a priest I should punish thee, that others should take example."

Richard Sumner and John Clayton depose, that they came in company with the said James from Perbalt to Eccleston, when the said James did say, "This is a marvellous world—the king will put down the order of priests and destroy the Sacrament, but he cannot reign long, for York will be in London hastily."⁴⁴³

Here was the later growth of the spirit which we saw a few months previously in the monks of Furness. The mutterings of discontent had developed into plain open treason, confident of success, and scarcely caring to conceal itself—and Yorkshire was preparing for rebellion and "the Pilgrimage of Grace."

There is another quarter also into which we must follow the proclamation, and watch the effect of the royal order in a scene where it is well that we should for a few moments rest. Catherine was still at Ampthill, surrounded by her own attendants, who formed an inner circle, shielding her retirement against impertinent curiosity. She rarely or never allowed herself to be seen; Lord Mountjoy, with an official retinue, was in attendance in the house; but the occupation was not a pleasant one, and he was as willing to respect the queen's seclusion as she to remain secluded. Injunctions arrived however from the court at the end of June, which compelled him to request an interview; a deputation of the privy council had come down to inform the ex-queen of the orders of the government, and to desire that they might be put in force in her own family. Aware probably of the nature of the communication which was to be made to her, she refused repeatedly to admit them to her presence. At length, however, she nerved herself for the effort, and on the 3rd of July Mountjoy and the state commissioners were informed that she was ready to receive them.

As they entered her room she was lying on a sofa. She had a bad cough, and she had hurt her foot with a pin, and was unable to stand or walk. Her attendants were all present by her own desire; she was glad to see around her some sympathising human faces, to enable her to endure the cold hard eyes of the officials of the council.

She inquired whether the message was to be delivered in writing or by word of mouth.

They replied that they had brought with them instructions which they were to read, and that they were further charged with a message which was to be delivered verbally. She desired that they would read their written despatch. It was addressed to the Princess Dowager, and she at once excepted to the name. She was not Princess Dowager, she said, but queen, and the king's true wife. She came to the king a clear maid for any bodily knowledge of Prince Arthur; she had borne him lawful issue and no bastard, and therefore queen she was, and queen she would be while she lived.

The commissioners were prepared for the objection, and continued, without replying, to read. The paper contained a statement of worn-out unrealities; the old story of the judgment of the universities and the learned men, the sentence of convocation, and of the houses of parliament; and, finally, the fact of substantial importance, that the king, acting as he believed according to the laws of God, had married the Lady Anne Boleyn, who was now his lawful wife, and anointed Queen of England.

Oh yes, she answered when they had done, we know that, and "we know the authority by which it has been done—more by power than justice." The king's learned men were learned heretics; the honest learning was for her. As for the seals of the universities there were strange stories about the way in which they had been obtained. The universities and the parliament had done what the king bade them; and they had gone against their consciences in doing it; but it was of no importance to her—she was in the hands of the pope, who was God's vicar, and she acknowledged no other judge.

The commissioners informed her of the decision of the council that she was no longer to bear the title of queen. It stood, they said, neither with the laws of God nor man, nor with the king's honour, to have two queens named within the realm; and in fact, there was but one queen, the king's lawful wife, to whom he was now married.

She replied shortly that she was the king's lawful queen, and none other.

There was little hope in her manner that anything which could be said would move her; but her visitors were ordered to try her to the uttermost.

The king, they continued, was surprised that she could be so disobedient; and not only that she was disobedient herself, but that she allowed and encouraged her servants in the same conduct.

She was ready to obey the king; she answered, when she could do so without disobeying God; but she could not damn her soul even for him. Her servants, she said, must do the best they could; they were standing round her as she was speaking; and she turned to them with an apology, and a hope that they would pardon her. She would hinder her cause, she said; and put her soul in danger, if on their account she were to relinquish her name, and she could not do it.

The deputation next attempted her on her worldly side. If she would obey, they informed her that she would be allowed not only her jointure as Princess Dowager and her own private fortune, but all the settlements which had been made upon her on her marriage with the king.

She "passed not upon possessions, in regard of this matter," she replied. It touched her conscience, and no worldly considerations were of the slightest moment.

In disobeying the king, they said; seeing that she was none other than his subject, she might give cause for dissension and disturbance; and she might lose the favour of the people.

She "trusted not," she replied—she "never minded it, nor would she"—she "desired only to save her right; and if she should lose the favour of the people in defending that right, yet she trusted to go to heaven cum famâ et infamiâ."

Promises and persuasions being unavailing, they tried threats. She was told that if she persisted in so obstinate a course, the king would be obliged to make known to the world the offers which he had made to her, and the ill reception which they had met with—and then he would perhaps withdraw those offers, and conceive some evil opinions of high displeasure towards her.

She answered that there was no manner of offers neither of lands nor goods that she had respect unto in comparison of her cause—and as to the loss of the king's affection, she trusted to God, to whom she would daily pray for him.

The learned council might as well have reasoned with the winds; or threatened the waves of the sea. But they were not yet weary, and their next effort was as foolish as it was ungenerous. They suggested, "that if she did reserve the name of queen, it was thought that she would do it of a vain desire and appetite of glory; and further, she might be an occasion that the king would withdraw his love from her most dear daughter the Lady Princess, which should chiefly move her, if none other cause did."

They must have known little of Catherine, if they thought she could be influenced by childish vanity. It was for no vain glory that she cared, she answered proudly; she was the king's true wife, and her conscience forbade her to call herself otherwise; the princess was his true begotten child; and as God hath given her to them, so for her part she would render her again; neither for daughter, family, nor possessions, would she yield in her cause; and she made a solemn protestation, calling on every one present to bear witness to what she said, that the king's wife she was, and such she would take herself to be, and that she would never surrender the name of queen till the pope had decided that she must bear it no longer.

So ended the first interview. Catherine, before the commissioners left her, desired to have a copy of the proposals which they had brought, that she might translate and send them to Rome. They returned with them the next day, when she requested to see the report which they intended to send to the council of the preceding conversation. It was placed in her hands; and as she read it and found there the name of Princess Dowager, she took a pen and dashed out the words, the mark of which indignant ink-stroke may now be seen in the letter from which this account is taken.⁴⁴⁴ With the accuracy of the rest she appeared to be satisfied—only when she found again their poor suggestion that she was influenced by vanity, she broke out with a burst of passionate indignation.

"I would rather be a poor beggar's wife," she said, "and be sure of heaven, than queen of all the world, and stand in doubt thereof by reason of my own consent. I stick not so for vain glory, but because I know myself the king's true wife—and while you call me the king's subject, I was his subject while he took me for his wife. But if he take me not for his wife, I came not into this Realm as merchandise, nor to be married to any merchant; nor do I continue in the same but as his lawful wife, and not as a subject to live under his dominion otherwise. I have always demeaned myself well and truly towards the king—and if it can be proved that either in writing to the pope or any other, I have either stirred or procured anything against his Grace, or have been the means to any person to make any motion which might be prejudicial to his Grace or to his Realm, I am content to suffer for it. I have done England little good, and I should be sorry to do it any harm. But if I should agree to your motions and persuasions, I should slander myself, and confess to have been the king's harlot for twenty-four years. The cause, I cannot tell by what subtle means, has been determined here within the king's Realm, before a man of his own making, the Bishop of Canterbury, no person indifferent I think in that behalf; and for the indifference of the place, I think the place had been more indifferent to have been judged in hell; for no truth can be suffered here, whereas the devils themselves I suppose do tremble to see the truth in this cause so sore oppressed."⁴⁴⁵

Most noble, spirited, and like a queen. Yet she would never have been brought to this extremity, and she would have shown a truer nobleness, if four years before she could have yielded at the pope's entreaty on the first terms which were proposed to her. Those terms would have required no humiliating confessions; they would have involved no sentence on her marriage nor touched her daughter's legitimacy. She would have broken no law of God, nor seemed to break it. She was required only to forget her own interests; and she would not forget them, though all the world should be wrecked by her refusal. She denied that she was concerned in "motions prejudicial to the king or to the Realm," but she must have placed her own interpretation on the words, and would have considered excommunication and interdict a salutary discipline to the king and parliament. She knew that this sentence was imminent, that in its minor form it had already fallen; and she knew that her nephew and her friends in England were plotting to give effect to the decree. But we may pass over this. It is not for an English writer to dwell upon those faults of Catherine of Arragon, which English remorse has honourably insisted on forgetting. Her injuries, inevitable as they were, and forced upon her in great measure by her own wilfulness, remain among the saddest spots in the pages of our history.

One other brief incident remains to be noticed here, to bring up before the imagination the features of this momentous summer. It is contained in the postscript of a letter of Cranmer to Hawkins the ambassador in Germany; and the manner in which the story is told is no less suggestive than the story itself.

The immediate present, however awful its import, will ever seem common and familiar to those who live and breathe in the midst of it. In the days of the September massacre at Paris, the theatres were open as usual; men ate, and drank, and laughed, and cried, and went about their common work, unconscious that those days which were passing by them, so much like other days, would remain the dies nefasti, accursed in the memory of mankind for ever. Nothing is terrible, nothing is sublime in human things, so long as they are before our eyes. The great man has so much in common with men in general, the routine of daily life, in periods the most remarkable in history, contains so much that is unvarying, that it is only when time has done its work; and all which was unimportant has ceased to be remembered, that such men and such times stand out in their true significance. It might have been thought that to a person like Cranmer, the court at Dunstable, the coronation of the new queen, the past out of which these things had risen, and the future which they threatened to involve, would have seemed at least serious; and that engaged as he had been as a chief actor, in a matter which, if it had done nothing else, had broken the heart of a high-born lady whom once he had honoured as his queen, he would have been either silent about his exploits, or if he had spoken of them, would have spoken not without some show of emotion. We look for a symptom of feeling, but we do not find it. When the coronation festivities were concluded he wrote to his friend an account of what had been done by himself and others in the light gossiping tone of easiest content; as if he were describing the common incidents of a common day. It is disappointing, and not wholly to be approved of. Still less can we approve of the passage with which he concludes his letter.

"Other news we have none notable, but that one Frith, which was in the Tower in prison,⁴⁴⁶ was appointed by the King's Grace to be examined before me, my Lord of London, my Lord of Winchester, my Lord of Suffolk, my Lord Chancellor, and my Lord of Wiltshire; whose opinion was so notably erroneous that we could not dispatch him, but were fain to leave him to the determination of his ordinary, which is the Bishop of London. His said opinion is of such nature, that he thought it not necessary to be believed as an article of our faith that there is the very corporeal presence of Christ within the host and sacrament of the altar; and holdeth on this point much after the opinion of Œcolampadius.