He was, however, not destined to travel so far. The fatal blow had been struck. The population of his diocese was attached to him, and would have willingly attempted to rescue him; but the cardinal made no resistance; he followed Northumberland like a condemned man marching to his execution. On the way, he was attacked by a violent indisposition, and was compelled to stay for a fortnight at the residence of the Earl of Shrewsbury. When he resumed his journey, he was so weak that it was found necessary to support him upon his mule. He arrived in the evening at Leicester Abbey; on entering this refuge he said to the abbot, "My father, I have come to lay my bones among you." The monks carried him to his bed; he was never to rise from it again. Swoon followed upon swoon; his servants, who were passionately devoted to him, saw that he was dying; they summoned Kingston, the Lieutenant of the Tower, who was entrusted with his keeping, and whom Wolsey had asked for. "Remember me humbly to his Majesty," said the cardinal in a feeble voice; "beg him, in my name, to retrace in his recollection what has passed between him and me from the beginning, particularly with regard to Queen Catharine, and let him say himself whether I have offended him or not. He is a prince of royal heart and marvellous courage, for rather than renounce the smallest part of his will, he would risk one half of his kingdom. I have often begged him upon my knees, for three hours, to forego his resolution; but I have not been able to succeed therein. And I will tell you, Master Kingston, that if I had served God as diligently as I have served my king, He would not have abandoned me in my old age; it is my just reward; I have not considered my duties towards God, but only my duty towards my prince." Shortly after these words, which were to be repeated a hundred and fifty years later by Colbert, dying in the service of Louis XIV., Cardinal Wolsey expired, on the 29th of November, 1529, in his sixtieth year, and was buried without pomp, at midnight, in the Chapel of Our Lady, in the same monastery.
Cavendish, the chamberlain of the cardinal, who had been present during his last moments, himself came to announce to the king the death of his master. Henry was at Hampton Court, a magnificent palace built by Wolsey, who had offered it to the king. He was shooting with a bow when the messenger presented himself before him: a momentary emotion appeared upon his countenance, then he added quickly, "I know that the cardinal had hidden in a certain place the sum of fifteen hundred pounds; do you know it?" The sum had been consigned to a priest, whom Cavendish indicated. The king caused the assertion to be repeated. "Hold your tongue about that," he said, "it is a matter between you and me; three keep a secret easily when two are cut off: if my cap knew what I think, I would cast it into the fire. If I hear a word of this spoken I shall know who has revealed it." The king sent the chamberlain away with some praises for his fidelity towards his old master. The conscience of the sovereign acquitted him, no doubt, of all excess of kindness towards his old servant.
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Henry VIII.
The fall of Wolsey was mainly due to the ascendancy of Anne Boleyn, the first victim, and the precursor of many other ruined fortunes, that were to spring from the guilty passions of Henry VIII. The new ministers that surrounded him were the great noblemen who had overthrown the cardinal; the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk and Sir Thomas Boleyn, now become Viscount Rochford, and subsequently Earl of Wiltshire. Sir Thomas More had with regret accepted the onerous duties of chancellor, perhaps in the hope of serving the public welfare, perhaps through a weakness which he was to pay dearly for. All questions then resolved themselves into that of the divorce of Catherine of Aragon; all politics turned upon this pivot. The king had consulted all the universities of Europe, the theologians and lawyers; Oxford and Cambridge had taken sides, and opinions were there keenly discussed from each point of view; but the king had gained ground among the prelates; his agents were skilful and numerous. Cranmer, formerly a tutor in a wealthy family, now a chaplain to Henry VIII., had recently published a learned treatise in favour of the divorce, insisting that the word of God alone should decide the question without any appeal to the Pope, and maintaining that the Bible, interpreted by the Fathers of the Church, interdicted marriage with the widow of a brother. The opinion of the two English universities in favour of the divorce was obtained. The Italian universities, Bologna, Padua, Ferrara, declared themselves for King Henry; it was a question of money. The Germans had still more fear of the Emperor than taste for English gold; they were all opposed to the divorce—the Protestant theologians were as outspoken as the Catholics. "It were better that the King of England should have two wives than be divorced from Catherine to marry another," said Luther. The Pope published, in the month of March, 1530, a brief, which formally forbade the King of England to conclude a second marriage, under pain of excommunication. A few days later, the Earl of Wiltshire presented himself at Bologna, where the Pope and the Emperor were at that time; people were shocked to see the father of Anne Boleyn employed in this mission. "Let your colleagues speak, my lord," said Charles V. to him, "for you are a party to this matter." The assurance of the earl, and his offers of money, completed the exasperation of the Emperor. "I will not sell the honour of my good aunt Catherine!" he exclaimed angrily. The embassy retired without having obtained anything, and the Earl of Wiltshire was compelled to confine his intrigues to the French universities, from which he contrived to secure several favourable opinions. But of what use were all the decisions of the faculties when the Pope refused his assent?
This assent was of supreme importance, for the time had come when the bonds which held the crown of England to Rome were about to be broken abruptly for bad and shameful reasons, but not without a certain assent from the mass of the people. None among the prelates who surrounded the king had dared to advise him to brave the will of the Pope; Cranmer himself, who had secretly married the daughter of a German pastor, was too timid to break his lance in the face of the court of Rome; it was a servant of Wolsey, who had become a servant of the king, Thomas Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith at Putney, a man as bold as he was corrupt and skilful, who struck the great blow and opened up to Henry VIII. the path in which he was henceforth to walk. The king was troubled by the obstinate resistance of the Pope; he had hoped to obtain the divorce without great difficulty; he hesitated, and a rumour of the disgrace of Anne Boleyn was already circulated among the courtiers, when Cromwell approached his royal master. "The embarrassments of your Grace arise from the timidity of your ministers," he said; and he explained that with the favourable opinions of all the universities, and the assent of the English Parliament, which it was not difficult, to procure, it was easy to proceed without troubling the Pope. "The king could even," he added, "follow the example of the German princes, who had shaken off the yoke of the court of Rome, and declare himself purely and simply the head of the Church of England. The clergy thus depending solely upon the king, he would become the absolute master of his kingdom, instead of being only half king."
This bold conception was designed to please King Henry VIII.; his vanity, his taste for power, and his avidity alike found satisfaction in it. Neither his conscience (such as it was), nor his convictions ever belonged to the new faith. Internally and by doctrine he remained a Catholic, but his policy and interest, like his passion impelled him in another direction; he accomplished in his country a religious reform—governmental as well as liberal, aristocratic and popular—the effects of which were immense and profoundly advantageous to England; but he accomplished all this without religious faith and without general principles, for the sake of his personal desires and with selfish aim. It was to God, through the hands of Henry VIII., that England owed this great step in her history; she has no obligation to be grateful to the despotic and corrupt monarch who severed his connexion with Rome in order to repudiate his wife and to dispose of the ecclesiastical benefices at his pleasure.
The door, however, had been opened, and Parliament, being at once convoked, received a communication detailing all the proceedings of the king for the purpose of surrounding himself with learned authorities upon the question of the legitimacy of his marriage. At the same time the clergy were assembled. Very uneasy at a royal act which involved them all in a common disgrace as guilty of having seconded and supported Cardinal Wolsey, by admitting his authority as legate—an authority which had been confirmed by Henry himself—the prelates, accustomed to the demands of the king, immediately offered a hundred thousand pounds sterling in order to appease his anger. Henry VIII. accepted the offering, but announced that he would grant the pardon only on condition of a vote of the ecclesiastical convention which should recognize him as "the protector and supreme head of the Church and the clergy of England." Three days were occupied in discussion; the opposition was powerful and numerous, but timidity gained the ascendant; there was a disposition to admit the supremacy of the king, with this reservation: Quantum per legem Christi liceat (as much as it is permitted by the law of Christ).
"I will have neither tantum nor quantam," replied the king, when Cromwell came to tell him how matters stood; "return to them, and let the vote be given without quantums or tantums." The reservation was, however, maintained, and the king consoled himself with his hundred thousand pounds sterling, augmented by a small gift of the clergy of the north.
After the prorogation of Parliament Henry VIII. endeavoured to intimidate Catherine, and to compel her to accept the decision of four prelates and four lay peers. She steadily refused; being transferred from Greenwich to Windsor, and from Windsor to Hertfordshire, she was at length sent to Ampthill, where she fixed her residence. "To whatever place I may be made to go, I remain the legitimate wife of the king," she said. In the main the nation was of her opinion, and no one was more convinced of it than the chancellor. Sir Thomas More; weary of serving as an instrument of a policy of which he disapproved, but which he could not modify, he asked permission to retire, and on the 16th of May, 1532, he returned peaceably to his mansion at Chelsea, delivered of a burden which had weighed him down, and free to devote himself to the learned studies which constituted the charm of his life.
The Pope had made some overtures of reconciliation; but as the first condition was the dismissal of Lady Anne, and the recall of queen Catherine, they necessarily remained without result. The brief which excommunicated at the same time the king and Anne Boleyn, was signed on the 15th of November, but without being immediately promulgated, Henry VIII. had drawn closer his alliance with Francis I. during an interview which they had at Calais, and the King of France had undertaken to intercede with the Pope for his ally; but Anne Boleyn had not waited so long to seal her victory. On the 25th of January, 1533, one of the chaplains of the king, Dr. Lee, was summoned to celebrate mass in a small chamber in Whitehall Palace; there he found the king, Anne Boleyn, two noblemen, and a lady. Henry commanded the astonished prelate to celebrate his marriage. It is related that the chaplain hesitated; but the king asserted that he had in his closet the authorization of the Pope. The ceremony being completed, the party dispersed in silence; the court of France alone was informed of the marriage, which Henry promised to keep secret until the month of May, in order to give time to Francis I. to use his influence with the Pope.
Meanwhile the Parliament, under the influence of Cromwell, had suppressed the "annats" or first-fruits, a considerable portion of the revenues paid to the Pope in Catholic countries; the authority of the clergy in convocation had been abolished and conferred upon the crown; Cranmer, with strange inconsistency, had recently accepted the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury, not only of the king, but of the Pope, who had signed, on the 22nd of February, 1533, the bull which confirmed his election, and had sent him the pallium. The prelate had therefore made an oath of obedience to the pontiff which he counted upon violating, since he had been raised to this dignity with another object. The question of the divorce immediately took another flight; Parliament being assembled, voted the "Statute of Appeals," forbidding all recourse and appeal to Rome. At the same time, and by another act, the title of Queen of England was withdrawn from Catherine, who henceforth was to be called the Dowager Princess of Wales, in the character of widow of Prince Arthur. A court of the bishops was convoked on the 8th of May, at Dunstable, near Ampthill, where Catherine resided; she was called upon to appear there; but it was carefully concealed from her that the judgement was to be definitive. The queen did not appear, and was declared contumacious; during a fortnight the summons was repeated, then, on the 23rd of May, Cranmer solemnly declared the nullity of the marriage. On the 28th of May, he proclaimed the union already contracted between King Henry VIII. and the Lady Anne Boleyn, who was crowned at Westminster, with great pomp, on the 1st of June. The task was accomplished and the king had secured his wishes; he had worked unceasingly for this object during six years past.
The consequences were not long in manifesting themselves; on the 11th of June, the Pope annulled the sentence of Cranmer, and published the excommunication of Henry and Anne, not without contriving another possibility of reconciliation; the decree was only to be definitive in the month of September; in the interval an interview was being prepared between Clement VII. and Francis I. at Marseilles. But the conduct of Henry VIII. was hesitating and inconsistent; the English ambassadors admitted to the conference at Marseilles, had no power to negotiate. Francis I. demanded that the question of the divorce should be again laid before a consistory, from which the Imperialist cardinals should be excluded; but an emissary of the king of England, Bonner, who arrived on the day upon which the term fixed by Clement expired, solemnly appealed from the Pope to a general council. The negotiations were interrupted, and the interview had no other result than the fatal treaty of marriage between the Duke of Orleans, the son of the King of France, and Catherine of Medicis, the niece of the Pope. Being renewed for a moment at the instance of Francis I., but by a new turn of the wishes of King Henry, the relations were definitively broken off on the 23rd of May, 1534, by the solemn declaration of the Sacred College assembled in consistory, loudly affirming the validity of the marriage of Henry VIII. with Catherine of Aragon. The king was requested to recall to his court his legitimate wife. The daughter of Anne Boleyn, she who was one day to be Queen Elizabeth, was already six months old; she had been born on the 7th of September, to the great disappointment of her father, who upon the prophecies of all the astrologers had hoped for a son.
While the Pope was hurling from the Vatican his spiritual thunders, and before the news could have arrived in London, Parliament had completed the severing of the bonds which for so long a time had connected England with the court of Rome. All payments as well as all appeals to the Pope were interdicted; the king was recognized as the Supreme Head of the Church, he alone being entrusted to bestow the bishoprics or to decide ecclesiastical questions. The royal assent was given on the 30th of March to these acts, as well as to that which excluded from the succession to the throne, the Princess Mary, the daughter of Catharine of Aragon, as illegitimate, in favour of the children of Queen Anne. All the subjects of the crown of the age of discretion were to take the oath in favour of the new order of things; every word, deed, or pamphlet against the second marriage was placed among acts of high treason.
All these precautions and prohibitions did not prevent public opinion from being favourable to the repudiated wife. Two monks of the order of the Observants even dared to reprimand the king publicly; the popular movement encouraged the revelations of a young prophetess, Elizabeth Barton, who was called the "Holy maid of Kent," and who had hitherto predicted future events without danger to her person or her friends. She had numerous partisans, dupes or intriguers, and her rhapsodies soon bore upon State matters. She had been much opposed to the divorce, declaring that if the king should repudiate Catharine, he would die within seven months a shameful death, and would be replaced upon the throne by the Princess Mary. The prophecies were printed and published; Elizabeth Barton and a certain number of her partisans were arrested and compelled to confess their imposture, on a Sunday in November, 1533, at St. Paul's Cross. Since then they had remained in prison: but on the 25th of April, 1534, by order of Parliament, the holy maid of Kent, her confessor, and five other persons compromised in her cause, were executed and quartered at Tyburn. "I was but a poor woman without knowledge," said Elizabeth Barton while proceeding to execution, "but people persuaded me that I spoke through the Holy Ghost, which drew me into vanity and confusion of mind, for my ruin and that of the persons who are going to suffer with me."
These obscure victims did not suffice for the absolute power and despotic tyranny of Henry VIII. Everything had bent before his will, and the isolated opposition which he encountered in two illustrious persons astonished as much as it exasperated him. Sir Thomas More, formerly chancellor of England, and Fisher, bishop of Rochester, were called upon to take the oath of allegiance to the children born and to be born of Queen Anne. Neither had any objection to the political part of the oath; they willingly recognized the Princess Elizabeth as heiress to the the throne, to the exclusion of Mary; but neither one nor the other could consent to declare unlawful the marriage of Catharine of Aragon, nor to legitimatize that of Anne Boleyn. Both refused the oath, explaining their reasons with more or less tact and humility, and both were sent to the Tower. Fisher was seventy-five years of age; he was ill; he was denied medical assistance and clothing. Sir Thomas More was not alone in the world like the old prelate; his daughter, mistress Margaret Roper, ministered to his wants, while all classes of society, rich or poor, humble or great, frightened at the fate which awaited the two prisoners, unhesitatingly made the required oath, as modified by the king, and rendered more than ever adverse to the previous instructions of the clergy. At the same time, and as though for compensation, Henry VIII. caused the trial of "those people who are vulgarly called heretics," sending to the stake with indifference the Lollards, Lutherans, and Anabaptists, melancholy witnesses of the royal orthodoxy. Some monks who had refused to take the oath of supremacy were executed and quartered at Tyburn. Acts of Parliament succeeded each other, tending to make the king a kind of lay Pope, whose office it was to define and prosecute heresies, and assigning to the crown all the revenues formally collected by the court of Rome, while entrusting to the royal wisdom the care of foundling and supporting the ecclesiastical government which should seem suitable to him. Amidst the general adulation, Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher were shortly to suffer for their courageous resistance.
The old prelate was accused of having "maliciously and treasonably affirmed that in spiritual matters the king could not be the Head of the Church." The new Pope, Paul III., had recently sent him a cardinal's hat. "Ah!" cried Henry, angrily, "I will take care that he shall not have a head to wear it," and the bishop, being condemned as a traitor, was beheaded on the 22nd of June, 1535. His head was placed upon London Bridge, turned in the direction of the diocese where he left so many to regret his loss, and his body, being first exposed to the sight of the people, was thrown without a coffin into an obscure grave. The trial of Sir Thomas More, more prolonged, produced the same result. Often timid, sometimes inconsistent in his conduct, More had arrived at a point at which a man of honour, and a Christian no longer listens to aught but to the voice of his conscience. The long months of his captivity had ruined his health, whitened his hair, and bent his form; but his soul remained firm, and his eloquence before the servile tribunal appointed to try him still caused the docile instrument of the king to shudder. More had been deprived of all his books; the means of writing had been taken from him; his farewell to his daughter was traced with a piece of charcoal upon a paper which he had secretly procured; but before losing his pen, he had written this touching proof of gentle firmness: "I am the faithful subject of the king, and every day his interceder. I pray for his Majesty, for his, and for all the kingdom. I do no wrong, I say no wrong, I think no wrong; if that is not sufficient to preserve the life of a man, I have no wish to live. I have been dying since I came to this place; I have several times been at the point of death; and thanks be to our Lord, I did not regret it, but rather I grieved to see my suffering abate. Thus my poor body is at the mercy of the king. Might it please God that my death should do him some good!" Before the council, More replied to offers of pardon by the assurance that he had done nothing against the marriage with Anne Boleyn. Although he disapproved of the step he had never spoken of it but to the king himself; he had even contented himself with preserving silence upon the new title of the king as Supreme Head of the Church; now silence did not constitute treason. His accusers desired to produce witnesses to the contrary, but they failed in their undertaking, and the judges were compelled to declare silence to be treason. More, was condemned. He no longer persevered in silence, and loudly declared that the new oath of supremacy was unlawful. He was led from the hall with the edge of the axe turned towards him; his son threw himself in his path, to ask for his blessing. On approaching the Tower, he perceived his well-beloved daughter, Margaret Roper; she opened up a passage for herself between the guards, and threw herself upon his neck, weeping. Twice she retraced her steps, and could not possibly be driven from that loved father whose head she afterwards carried away from the coffin. The bitterness of death had passed for Sir Thomas More after this separation; upon the scaffold he appeared to have regained something of that caustic gaiety which had formerly placed him in favour with the king. When he learnt that Henry VIII., had commuted the horrible sentence of traitors into the penalty of decapitation, he smiled sweetly. "May God preserve all my friends from royal favours," he exclaimed. He tottered upon the steps of the scaffold. "Assist me to ascend, Master Lieutenant," he said, "I shall easily descend without aid." He was not permitted to speak to those present. "I die a faithful subject and a true Catholic," he said simply; then thrusting aside his beard, he said to the executioner, "My beard has not committed any treason." His head fell on the 6th of July, 1535, to the indignation of all Europe. "I learn that your master has put to death his faithful servant, his good and wise councillor, Sir Thomas More," said the emperor to Sir Thomas Elliot, the English ambassador. "I have not heard it, sire," replied Elliot. "It is true, nevertheless," replied Charles V., "and let me tell you that if we had been master of such a servant, of whose merit we have had experience for so many years past, we would rather have lost our best city than so worthy a councillor."
The King of France was both grieved and shocked. The pens of the greatest writers of the time celebrated the virtues of More; Erasmus with whom he had been connected, has related the life and death of his friend; but no one has more eloquently celebrated the virtues of the former chancellor of England, no one has better exposed to public contempt the cruelty of his persecutor than a relative of Henry VIII. himself, Reginald Pole, grandson of the Duke of Clarence, educated partly at the expense of the crown, so much had the king been charmed by the intelligence and talents of his cousin. But Pole had a conscience as intractable as that of Sir Thomas More; he refused to support the cause of the divorce, and thus voluntarily renounced the ecclesiastical dignities which the king intended for him. He had retired into the north of Italy, and it was from there that he made all Europe familiar with the infamy of the murder of Sir Thomas More, while at the same time he published his great work upon The Union of the Church, in which he freely unveiled the base conduct and ignoble motives of Henry VIII. No attack more profoundly exasperated the tyrant, henceforth carried away by the dangerous intoxication of absolute power.
Indignation was nowhere more violent than at Rome, and the councillors of the Pope urged him to issue a bull summoning Henry VIII. to appear at Rome within ninety days, in person or by deputies. If he should fail to respond to this appeal, he was declared to have forfeited his crown; his children by Anne Boleyn, and the children of his children, were incapable of succeeding; his subjects were relieved of their oaths of allegiance, and were to take arms against him; all priests were to quit his dominions: treaties of alliance with foreign princes were dissolved, and all monarchs called upon to fight against him, until he should have submitted to the Church. The bull being drawn up, the Pope did not consider the time opportune for sending it forth, and the thunderbolt still slept in the arsenal of the Vatican; but its terms were known in England, which increased the exasperation of the king. Henry VIII. opened up negotiations with the Protestant princes of Germany, endeavouring to draw the King of France and the young King of Scotland into the same alliances. The functions of Supreme Head of the Church involved Henry VIII., in so much business, that he created a commission specially entrusted to provide for it; at the head of this new council he placed the secretary of state, Cromwell, to the secret indignation of the clergy, who were little accustomed to see themselves governed by a layman; but the Vicar-General, as he called himself, taking, in this capacity, precedence of all the great noblemen of the kingdom, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, did not falter in the accomplishment of his duties, for the day had come for executing his promises and for filling the coffers of the king. No one knew better than Cromwell the needs of the royal treasury, for he was Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as Vicar-General in the Church. A great number of monks had refused the oath of supremacy; this opportunity was seized upon in order to decide upon the reform of all the monasteries. Complaints were made of the morals of the monks, of their avidity; Cromwell organized a series of domiciliary visits, intended, it was said, to discover all abuses; servants, neighbours, and enemies of the religious houses were interrogated; an absolute renunciation of the authority of the Pope was demanded of the monks; finally, an inventory of the riches of each house was made, and the commissaries retired, carrying on their tablets the condemnation of the monastery. Many abbots and priors, in alarm, offered considerable sums in the hope of purchasing exemption from ruin; the money was taken, but the names were not effaced from the fatal list. The vicar-general had expected to see many monks anxious to re-enter the world, but seven small monasteries alone voluntarily opened their gates. The report prepared by Parliament especially condemned the houses of little importance, and those of which the abbots did not take rank among the peers of the kingdom; it was there, it was said, that the disorder was intolerable. The twenty-seven abbots of the great religious houses, did not defend their brothers who were threatened. All seemed smitten with stupor; some superiors prudently resigned before the crash; the royal commissioners continued their work, and when Parliament voted the bill proposed by Cromwell, three hundred and eighty religious houses found themselves included in the act which gave to the king and his descendants all the monasteries of which the net revenue did not exceed two-hundred pounds sterling, to dispose of them according to his good pleasure, upon the one condition, that those he should endow, should maintain an honest residence there, and cultivate every year the extent of land tilled by the monks. A revenue of thirty-two thousand pounds sterling was thus assigned to the crown; the money and plate of the suppressed monasteries were valued at more than a hundred thousand pounds sterling. After this last proof of submission, Parliament, which had modified the succession to the throne, voted the separation of England from the Holy See, and doubled the prerogatives, found itself dissolved at the end of six years of servile existence, without having even secured the good graces of the king, for the House of Commons had hesitated for some time to pronounce the suppression of the monasteries. It is related that the king sent for the principal leaders, warning them that he would have either the law or their heads; the bill was then voted. Commissioners were entrusted to proceed with the suppression of the monasteries; a hundred obtained compromises, and, crippled and impoverished, were founded afresh by letters patent of Henry VIII.; the others were invaded by the royal commissioners; monks under twenty-four years of age were sent into the world to earn their livelihood: the others were divided into two classes; those who elected for a monastic existence were dispersed in the great monasteries; it was promised that occupation should be found for the others. The nuns were abandoned to their own resources; the royal charity allowed only a secular gown when they were driven from their retreats and cast into a world of which they were ignorant. The first act of the drama had been played; the turn of the great houses had yet to come.
While this violent and arbitrary work was being accomplished, under a specious veil of reform, Queen Catherine was dying in her retirement. She had obstinately refused to leave England, notwithstanding the entreaties of the emperor; she would do nothing which would be prejudicial to the interests of her daughter, whose rehabilitation she still hoped for. She had also refused, for the same reason, to accept the title of Princess of Wales, which degraded her as a woman. She lived a sad and lonely life, separated from her daughter, who might, it was said, become imbued with her principles. Even the approach of death could not obtain for her the favour of seeing her again. The last words of the unhappy queen were, however, words of forgiveness to that cruel husband who had afflicted her with so many evils. "I forgive you all," she said, "and I ask God to do likewise; I recommend our daughter Mary to you, begging you to be a good father to her, as I have always desired. I vow to you that my eyes long for you beyond all things." It is said that the king shed a tear upon this touching message, and that he entrusted the Spanish ambassador to assure the dying queen of his affection; but Catherine had already breathed her last. She died on the 8th of January, 1536, and was interred with honour, at Peterborough. Her husband went into mourning, but Anne Boleyn appeared before the court in a yellow silk gown. "Now I am queen," she said on learning the death of her whom she had outraged and overcome.
The day of retribution, however, was approaching; the same passions which had raised her to the throne in defiance of all laws, human and divine, were about to hurl her from it. Henry had already cast his eyes upon Jane Seymour, a maid of honour of Anne Boleyn, as Anne had formerly been the maid of honour of Catherine. She was the daughter of a Wiltshire gentleman; was beautiful, amiable, and of great gentleness of character. It is related that the queen perceived the great familiarity which already existed between Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour and the grief which she experienced therefrom was so violent that she brought into the world, prematurely, a still-born child; it was a son, and the vexation of the king was no less violent than his disappointment. Anne now felt that she was ruined; the king left her suddenly amidst a grand fete which she gave in Greenwich Park, and returned to London. On the morrow, the 2nd of May, she was arrested at Greenwich as she was sailing down the river; she was accused of adultery and immediately taken to the Tower. At the first word of accusation against her Anne fell upon her knees, exclaiming aloud, "Lord, my God, help me, as I am innocent of this crime!" Her brother. Lord Rochford, three noblemen of the king's household and a musician were imprisoned at the same time.
Grief and anxiety appeared to have impaired the reason of the unhappy Anne; at times she would appeal for Divine mercy, at others, amidst outbursts of laughter, mingled with tears, she would exclaim, "Why am I here? My mother will die of grief; I shall perish without obtaining justice." The Lieutenant of the Tower assured her that justice was administered to the poorest of the subjects of the king; Anne laughed bitterly; she knew better than any one else what royal justice was worth.
She had been conducted to the same apartment in which she had formerly slept on the eve of her coronation, when the king and his courtiers were equally eager to do her honour; women had been placed around her, charged to listen to all her words; being excited by the misfortune which had befallen her, Anne spoke a great deal; all that she said was reported to the king, and that contributed to her ruin. She was accused of the most degrading corruption of morals and conduct; in vain did she defend herself; the lightness of her manners, the familiar tone which she had learnt, it was said, at the court of France, attested against her more than all the depositions and interrogatories of the trial. On the 6th of May, she wrote a touching letter to the king, the authenticity of which has been contested, perhaps without reason, reminding him of the affection which he had manifested towards her, protesting her innocence, and demanding a lawful trial.
"But if you have already determined of me, and that not only my death but an infamous slander must bring you the joying of your desired happiness, then I desire of God that He will pardon your great sin herein, and likewise my enemies the instruments thereof; and that He will not call you to a straight account for your unprincely and cruel usage of me at His general judgment-seat, where both you and myself must shortly appear, and in whose judgment, I doubt not (whatsoever the world may think of me), mine innocence shall be openly known and sufficiently cleared. My last and only request shall be that myself may only bear the burden of your grace's displeasure, and that it may not touch the innocent souls of those poor gentlemen who, as I understand, are likewise in straight imprisonment for my sake. If ever I have found favour in your sight—if ever the name of Anne Bullen have been pleasing in your ears—then let me obtain this request; and so I will leave to trouble your grace any further, with mine earnest prayer to the Trinity to have your Grace in His good keeping and to direct you in all your actions. From my doleful prison in the Tower, your loyal and faithful wife,
"Ann Bulen."
In vain did Anne demand justice for herself and mercy for her companions in misfortune; she had been condemned beforehand, and her dishonour was the price of her condemnation. Within four months Henry had received the forgiveness of his two wives; one the irreproachable victim of his guilty passions; the other, who had been his accomplice, and who was suffering for her crime the most terrible reverses. The documents of the proceedings are no longer in existence, and it is now impossible to determine the question of the guilt of the unhappy Anne; she was condemned and died because the king her husband desired to marry Jane Seymour; that is what appears clearly from the facts transmitted to us by history. On the 15th of May, the sentence upon the queen was pronounced; her brother, Lord Rochford, and the four other accused persons, had been condemned since the 13th of May. A crowning affliction awaited Anne Boleyn before her supreme agony: Cranmer was compelled to declare the nullity of the marriage which he himself had formerly supported, and the Princess Elizabeth was stigmatized with illegitimacy like her sister Mary. The day on which the archbishop in agony of soul thus yielded tremblingly to the royal will, the accomplices or companions of the unhappy queen suffered their punishment on Tower Hill. The musician Smeaton was hanged; Lord Rochford and the three noblemen were beheaded; all had constantly protested their innocence, with the exception of the musician, who failed however to purchase his life by his confessions or falsehoods.
On the 19th of May, in the morning, less than three weeks after the day on which she had reigned triumphant over the festivities at Greenwich, Anne Boleyn was led out upon the Tower Green. The spectators were crowded together in the narrow space. Anne had, on the previous evening, entrusted one of the women among her attendants to go on her behalf and kneel before the Princess Mary, to beg her forgiveness. She walked courageously to her death. "I have a little neck," she said to the Lieutenant of the Tower; "it is said that the executioner is skillful; he will not have much trouble." She said a few words to those who came to see her die, without bitterness towards her judges, and full of affection and respect for the king who sent her to the scaffold. "Christ have mercy on my soul! Jesus receive my soul!" she repeated on placing her beautiful head up on the block. Three years had elapsed since Henry had married Anne Boleyn, moving heaven and earth to place her upon the throne, when a blow from the axe of the executioner ended her life on Tower Green. The king waited impatiently for the signal which was to announce to him the execution of the sentence. "It is done," he exclaimed, on hearing the cannon; "that is an end of the matter. Unleash the dogs, and let us follow the stag!" He returned gaily in the evening from Epping Forest, and on the morrow morning married Jane Seymour. He had not rendered to the unhappy Anne the honour which his conscience had compelled him to pay to the virtuous Catherine: no mourning garments saddened the court of the new queen. Henry VIII. was clad in white on the day of his marriage, and on the 29th of May, Jane appeared at the court decked with the royal ornaments, but she did not obtain the favour of solemnly receiving the crown; after Anne Boleyn, none of the wives of King Henry was deemed worthy of that ceremony. The Princess Mary had been received into favour by her father, not without having reluctantly signed a humiliating letter; she obtained a suitable establishment, and even appears to have been entrusted with the care of her sister, the little Princess Elizabeth. Not content with assuring the succession to the children of Jane Seymour, the king caused an act to be passed by Parliament which authorized him to dispose of his crown according to his own good will and pleasure. This exorbitant measure was destined to favour the Duke of Richmond, an illegitimate son of the king, eighteen years of age, whom he passionately loved. The young duke died before the act had received the royal sanction, and the king to his great grief, found himself deprived of male children, and with two daughters whom he had himself branded with the stigma of illegitimacy.
Meanwhile the dissolution of the monasteries had inundated the country with the poor people whom they had formerly relieved; the disaffection was great, especially in the northern counties, which were particularly attached to the old faith, from which the king was separating himself more and more. The irritation, however, was not exclusively concentrated in the lower classes; the great noblemen and gentlemen, former patrons of the monasteries, considered that the property of which they had been deprived should be returned to the families which had formerly bestowed it upon them, rather, than to the royal treasury; but it was the people of Lincolnshire who first set the example of insurrection. The king sent some forces against the insurgents, under the orders of the Duke of Suffolk. The latter found the insurrection so serious, that he determined to try negotiations. The Men of Lincoln presented six requests, complaining particularly of the sudden destruction of the monasteries, so prejudicial, they said, to the poor of the entire country; of the excessive taxes, of the vesting of the annats and tithes in the crown, and of the agitation which certain bishops, designated by their names, had brought about in the Church of Christ by altering the faith. Upon which they prayed the king to dismiss the treacherous counsellors who thought of nothing but enriching themselves at the expense of the poor people.
Time had been gained by listening to the grievances of the insurgents. Discord began to penetrate into their ranks; the king was enabled, without danger, to reply to them with the haughtiness which was natural to him when his supreme will was opposed. He rejected all the requests of the insurgents, demanding that a hundred of the more important among them should be delivered to him, in order that he might make an example of them. No fighting had taken place; a sufficiently large number of the insurgents still remained united; a second letter from the king commanded them to lay down their arms in the market-place at Lincoln, if they did not wish to bring down a terrible vengeance upon their wives and children. Before the rebels of Lincolnshire had returned home, about the 30th of October, a violent insurrection had broken out on the other side of the Trent, and this movement was spreading over the whole of Yorkshire, as well as in Durham, Northumberland, Westmoreland and Lancashire; while the fifteen hostages of the insurgents of Lincolnshire were being executed, as well as some inhabitants of the environs of London, accused of having countenanced them, the rebels of the north wanted but a chief in order to stir up a veritable civil war. They marched in the name of God, they said, for the love of Jesus Christ, of the faith and the Holy Church, to the destruction of the heretics; they assumed the name of Pilgrims of Grace, and carried a crucifix upon their standard; nearly all obeyed the orders of a gentleman of Yorkshire, Robert Aske, who was wanting neither in ability nor character. The Duke of Norfolk was entrusted to march against him; the Duke of Suffolk and the Earl of Shrewsbury watched over other positions; the towns of Hull, York, and Pontefract had opened their gates to the Pilgrims of Grace before the arrival of the royal troops, and a certain number of gentlemen had joined them, when the Duke of Norfolk checked their progress before Doncaster. Negotiations were entered into at the outset as in Lincolnshire; the demands of the insurgents were almost the same, though more precise and detailed. They demanded the destruction of the heresies of Wycliffe, Huss, Luther and Melancthon, the restitution of the Pope to the religious supremacy, the rehabilitation of the Princess Mary, and the re-establishment of Parliament in all its ancient privileges. The king treated with contempt such of these requests as he deigned to answer. "You are very bold," he said, "to think that after having reigned so long I do not know better than you what laws are agreeable to the commoners. The affairs of the Church do not concern you, and it is strange that you should prefer to see some few villains fatten in the monasteries, rather than allow your prince to have them, in discharge of all the expenses which he has undertaken in order to defend you." Henry promised no other concession but the pardon of the rebels, with the exception of the ten leaders, who were to be delivered up to him immediately. The insurgents rejected without hesitation the offers of the royal clemency, and the Duke of Norfolk, who was not sufficiently powerful to fight, found himself compelled to retreat to the southern bank of the Trent, fortifying and defending all the passes in his rear. Time was being lost; the winter was approaching, the temperature and the suspension of agricultural labour were counted upon for dispersing the insurgents.