Chapter XI: Trial and Death of Anne Boleyn (1)

The first act of the great drama appeared to have closed. No further changes were for the present in contemplation. The church was reëstablished under its altered constitution; and the parliament had been dissolved under the impression that it would be unnecessary to summon another for an indefinite time.[536] Within four weeks of the dissolution, writs were issued for a fresh election, under the pressure of a misfortune which is alike calamitous, under whatever aspect we regard it; and which blotted the Reformation with a black and frightful stain. The guilt must rest where it is due; but under any hypothesis, guilt there was, dark, mysterious, and most miserable.

[Sidenote: Death of Queen Catherine.]

[Sidenote: January 7. Her last letter to Henry.]

The fate of Queen Catherine had by this time completed itself. She had taken her leave of a world which she had small cause to thank for the entertainment which it had provided for her; and she died, as she had lived, resolute, haughty, and unbending. In the preceding October (1535) she was in bad health; her house, she imagined, disagreed with her, and at her own desire she was removed to Kimbolton. But there were no symptoms of immediate danger. She revived under the change, and was in better spirits than she had shown for many previous months, especially after she heard of the new pope's resolution to maintain her cause. "Much resort of people came daily to her."[537] The vexatious dispute upon her title had been dropped, from an inability to press it; and it seemed as if life had become at least endurable to her, if it never could be more. But the repose was but the stillness of evening as night is hastening down. The royal officers of the household were not admitted into her presence; the queen lived wholly among her own friends and her own people; she sank unperceived; and so effectually had she withdrawn from the observation of those whom she desired to exclude, that the king was left to learn from the Spanish ambassador that she was at the point of death, before her chamberlain was aware that she was more than indisposed.[538] In the last week of December Henry learnt that she was in danger. On the 2d of January the ambassador went down from London to Kimbolton, and spent the day with her.[539] On the 5th, Sir Edmund Bedingfield wrote that she was very ill, and that the issue was doubtful. On the morning of the 7th she received the last sacrament, and at two o'clock on that day she died.[540] On her deathbed she dictated the following letter of farewell to him whom she still called, her most dear lord and husband.

"The hour of my death now approaching, I cannot choose but, out of the love I bear you, advise you of your soul's health, which you ought to prefer before all considerations of the world or flesh whatsoever; for which yet you have cast me into many calamities, and yourself into many troubles. But I forgive you all, and pray God to do so likewise. For the rest I commend unto you Mary our daughter, beseeching you to be a good father to her, as I have heretofore desired. I must entreat you also to respect my maids, and give them in marriage, which is not much, they being but three; and to all my other servants a year's pay besides their due, lest otherwise they should be unprovided for. Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things. Farewell."[541]

This letter reached Henry with the intimation that she was gone. He was much affected, and is said to have shed tears.[542]

[Sidenote: She is buried at Peterborough, and the See of Peterborough is founded as a memorial of her.]

The court was ordered into mourning--a command which Anne Boleyn distinguished herself by imperfectly obeying.[543] Catherine was buried at Peterborough, with the estate of Princess Royal;[544] and shortly after, on the foundation of the new bishoprics, the See of Peterborough was established in her memory. We may welcome, however late, these acts of tardy respect.[545] Henry, in the few last years, had grown wiser in the ways of women; and had learnt to prize more deeply the austerity of virtue, even in its unloveliest aspect.

[Sidenote: Fall of Anne Boleyn.]

The death of Catherine was followed, four months later, by the tragedy which I have now to relate. The ground on which I am about to tread is so critical, and the issues at stake affect so deeply the honour of many of our most eminent English statesmen, that I must be pardoned if I cannot here step boldly out with a flowing narrative, but must pick my way slowly as I can: and I, on my part, must ask my readers to move slowly also, and be content to allow their judgment, for a few pages, to remain in suspense.

And first, I have to say that, as with all the great events of Henry's reign, so especially with this, we must trust to no evidence which is not strictly contemporary. During periods of revolution, years do the work of centuries in colouring actions and disturbing forms; and events are transferred swiftly from the deliberation of the judgment to the precipitate arrogance of party spirit. When the great powers of Europe were united against Elizabeth, and when Elizabeth's own character was vilely and wantonly assailed, the Catholic writers dipped their pens in the stains which blotted her mother's name; and, more careless of truth than even theological passion can excuse, they poured out over both alike a stream of indiscriminate calumny. On the other hand, as Elizabeth's lordly nature was the pride of all true-hearted Englishmen, so the Reformers laboured to reflect her virtues backwards. Like the Catholics, they linked the daughter with the parent; and became no less extravagant in their panegyrics than their antagonists in their gratuitous invective. But the Anne Boleyn, as she appears in contemporary letters, is not the Anne Boleyn of Foxe, or Wyatt, or the other champions of Protestantism, who saw in her the counterpart of her child. These writers, though living so near to the events which they described, yet were divided from the preceding generation by an impassable gulf. They were surrounded with the heat and flame of a controversy, in which public and private questions were wrapped inseparably together; and the more closely we scrutinize their narratives, the graver occasion there appears for doing so.

[Sidenote: Rules to be observed in judging this question.]

While, therefore, in following out this miserable subject, I decline so much as to entertain the stories of Sanders, who has represented Queen Anne as steeped in profligacy from her childhood, so I may not any more accept those late memorials of her saintliness, which are alike unsupported by the evidence of those who knew her. If Protestant legends are admitted as of authority, the Catholic legends must enter with them, and we shall only deepen the confusion. I cannot follow Burnet, in reporting out of Meteren a version of Anne Boleyn's trial, unknown in England. The subject is one on which rhetoric and rumour are alike unprofitable. We must confine ourselves to accounts written at the time by persons to whom not the outline of the facts only was known, but the circumstances which surrounded them; by persons who had seen the evidence upon the alleged offences, which, though now lost irrecoverably, can be proved to have once existed.

[Sidenote: Difficulty of ascertaining Anne Boleyn's early character.]

We are unable, as I early observed, to form any trustworthy judgment of Anne Boleyn before her marriage. Her education had been in the worst school in Europe. On her return from the French court to England, we have seen her entangled in an unintelligible connexion with Lord Percy; and if the account sent to the Emperor was true, she was Lord Percy's actual wife; and her conduct was so criminal as to make any after-charges against her credible.[546]

If the Protestants, again, found in her a friend and supporter, she was capable, as Wolsey experienced, of inveterate hatred; and although among the Reformers she had a reputation for generosity, which is widely confirmed,[547] yet it was exercised always in the direction in which her interests pointed; and kindness of feeling is not incompatible, happily, with seriously melancholy faults.

[Sidenote: Cranmer's evidence in her favour.]

[Sidenote: Early coolness between her and Henry.]

The strongest general evidence in her favour is that of Cranmer, who must have known her intimately, and who, at the crisis of her life, declared that he "never had better opinion in woman than he had in her."[548] Yet there had been circumstances in her conduct, as by her own after confessions was amply evident, which justified Sir Thomas More in foretelling a stormy end to her splendour;[549] and her relations with the king, whether the fault rested with him, or rested with her, grew rapidly cool when she was his wife. In 1534, perhaps sooner, both she herself, her brother, and her relations had made themselves odious by their insolence; her over-bearing manners had caused a decline in the king's affection for her; and on one side it was reported that he was likely to return to Catherine,[550] on the other that he had transferred his attention to some other lady, and that the court encouraged his inconstancy to separate him from Anne's influence.[551] D'Inteville confirms the account of a new love affair, particularising nothing, but saying merely that Anne was falling out of favour; and that the person alluded to as taking her place was Jane Seymour, appears from a letter written after Anne's execution, by the Regent Mary to the Emperor of Austria, and from the letter written (supposing it genuine) by Anne herself to the king before her trial.[552]

On the other hand, it is equally clear that whether provoked or not by infidelity on the part of Henry, her own conduct had been singularly questionable. We know very little, but waiving for the present the exposures at her trial, we know, by her own confession, that arrogance and vanity had not been her only faults, and that she had permitted the gentlemen who were the supposed partners of her guilt, to speak to her of their passion for herself.[553]

In January, 1535, Henry's mind had been filled with "doubts and strange suspicions" about his wife. There had been a misunderstanding, in which she had implored the intercession of Francis I.[554]

[Sidenote: The probable cause of that coolness.]

[Sidenote: The antecedent probabilities amount to nothing.]

In February, 1536, she miscarried, with a dead boy, which later rumour dwelt on as the cause of Henry's displeasure. But conversations such as those which she described with her supposed paramours, lay bare far deeper wounds of domestic unhappiness; and assure us, that if we could look behind the scenes, we should see there estrangements, quarrels, jealousies, the thousand dreary incidents that, if we knew them, would break the suddenness with which at present the catastrophe bursts upon us. It is the want of preparation, the blank ignorance in which we are left of the daily life and daily occurrences of the court, which places us at such disadvantage for recovering the truth. We are unable to form any estimate whatever of those antecedent likelihoods which, in the events of our own ordinary lives, guide our judgment so imperceptibly, yet so surely. Henry is said to have been inconstant, but those who most suspected Henry's motives charge Anne at the same time with a long notorious profligacy.[555] We cannot say what is probable or what is improbable; except, indeed, that the guilt or every person is improbable antecedent to evidence; and in the present instance, since, either on the side of the queen or of the king, there was and must have been most terrible guilt, these opposite presumptions neutralize each other.

[Sidenote: April. Secret investigation by a committee of the privy council.]

[Sidenote: April 27. Writs issued for a parliament.]

[Sidenote: Thursday, April 27; arrest of Sir William Brereton; and on Sunday, April 30, of Mark Smeton.]

[Sidenote: May 1. Tournament at Greenwich.]

[Sidenote: The king goes to London.]

To proceed with the story. Towards the middle of April, 1536, certain members of the privy council were engaged secretly in receiving evidence which implicated the queen in adultery. Nothing is known of the quarter from which the information came which led to the inquiry.[556] Something, however, there was to call for inquiry, or something there was thought to be; and on the 24th of April the case was considered sufficiently complete to make necessary a public trial. On that day an order was issued for a special commission. The members of the tribunal were selected with a care proportioned to the solemnity of the occasion.[557] It was composed of the lord chancellor, the first noblemen of the realm, and of the judges. The investigation had, however, been conducted so far with profound secrecy; and the object for which it was to assemble was unknown even to Cranmer, himself a member of the privy council.[558] With the same mysterious silence on the cause of so unexpected a measure, the writs were issued for a general election, and parliament was required to assemble as soon as possible.[559] On Thursday, the 27th, the first arrest was made. Sir William Brereton,[560] a gentleman of the king's household, was sent suddenly to the Tower; and on the Sunday after, Mark Smeton, of whom we know only that he was a musician high in favour at the court, apparently a spoilt favourite of royal bounty.[561] The day following was the 1st of May. It was the day on which the annual festival was held at Greenwich, and the queen appeared, as usual, with her husband and the court at the tournament. Lord Rochfort, the queen's brother, and Sir Henry Norris, both of them implicated in the fatal charge, were defender and challenger. The tilting had commenced, when the king rose suddenly with signs of disturbance in his manner, left the court, and rode off with a small company to London. Rumour, which delights in dramatic explanations of great occurrences, has discovered that a handkerchief dropped by the queen, and caught by Norris, roused Henry's jealousy; and that his after conduct was the result of a momentary anger. The incidents of the preceding week are a sufficient reply to this romantic story. The mine was already laid, the match was ready for the fire.

[Sidenote: Tuesday, May 2; arrest of the queen. The privy council sit at Greenwich.]

[Sidenote: She declares her innocence.]

[Sidenote: Norris, Weston, and Smeton examined.]

The king did not return: he passed the night in London, and Anne remained at Greenwich. On the morning of Tuesday the privy council assembled in the palace under the presidency of the Duke of Norfolk, and she was summoned to appear before it. The Duke of Norfolk, her uncle, was anxious, as Burnet insinuates, on political grounds that his niece should be made away with. Such accusations are easily brought, especially when unsupported by evidence. She was unpopular from her manner. The London merchants looked on her with no favour as having caused a breach in the alliance with Flanders, and the duke was an imperialist and at heart a friend of Queen Catherine; but he had grown old in the service of the state with an unblemished reputation; and he felt too keenly the disgrace which Anne's conduct had brought upon her family, to have contrived a scheme for her removal at once so awkward and so ignominious.[562] On her examination, she declared herself innocent; the details of what passed are unknown; only she told Sir William Kingston that she was cruelly handled at Greenwich with the king's council; "and that the Duke of Norfolk, in answer to her defence, had said, 'Tut, tut, tut,' shaking his head three or four times."[563] The other prisoners were then examined; not Brereton, it would seem, but Smeton, who must have been brought down from the Tower, and Sir Henry Norris, and Sir Francis Weston, two young courtiers, who had both of them been the trusted friends of the king. Each day the shadow was stretching further. The worst was yet to come.

[Sidenote: May 2. Tuesday. Smeton confesses, and Norris, who afterwards, however, withdraws from what he has said.]

On being first questioned, these three made general admissions, but denied resolutely that any actual offence had been committed. On being pressed further and cross-examined, Smeton confessed to actual adultery.[564] Norris hesitated: being pressed, however, by Sir William Fitzwilliam to speak the truth, he also made a similar acknowledgment, although he afterwards withdrew from what he had said.[565] Weston persisted in declaring himself innocent. The result was unsatisfactory, and it was thought that it would "much touch the king's honour" if the guilt of the accused was not proved more clearly. "Only Mark," Sir Edward Baynton said, would confess "of any actual thing"[566]; although he had no doubt "the other two" were "as fully culpable as ever was he." They were, however, for the present, recommitted to the Tower; whither also in the afternoon the council conducted the queen, and left her in the custody of Sir William Kingston.

[Sidenote: The queen, in the afternoon, is taken to the Tower.]

[Sidenote: She protests her innocence, and begs to have the sacrament in her closet.]

She was brought up the river; the same river along which she sailed in splendour only three short years before. She landed at the same Tower Stairs; and, as it to complete the bitter misery of the change, she was taken "to her own lodgings in which she lay at her coronation." She had feared that she was to go to a dungeon. When Kingston told her that these rooms had been prepared for her, "It is too good for me," she said, "Jesu have mercy on me;" "and kneeled down, weeping a great space; and in the same sorrow fell into a great laughing."[567] She then begged that she might have the sacrament in the closet by her chamber, that she might pray for mercy, declaring "that she was free from the company of man as for sin," and was "the king's true wedded wife."

She was aware that the other prisoners were in the Tower, or, at least, that Smeton, Weston, and Norris were there. Whether she knew at that time of the further dreadful accusation which was hanging over her, does not appear; but she asked anxiously for her brother; and, if she had suspected anything, her fears must have been confirmed by Kingston's evasive replies. It is so painful to dwell upon the words and actions of a poor woman in her moments of misery, that Kingston may describe his conversation with her in his own words. Lord Rochfort had returned to London at liberty; he seems to have been arrested the same Tuesday afternoon. "I pray you," she said, "to tell me where my Lord Rochfort is?"--"I told her," Kingston wrote, that "I saw him afore dinner, in the court." "Oh, where is my sweet brother?" she went on. "I said I left him at York-place;" and so I did. "I hear say," said she, "that I should be accused with three men; and I can say no more but nay, without I should open my body,"--and therewith she opened her gown, saying, "Oh, Norris, hast thou accused me? Thou art in the Tower with me, and thou and I shall die together. And, Mark, thou art here too. Oh, my mother, thou wilt die for sorrow." And much she lamented my Lady of Worcester, for because her child did not stir in her body. And my wife said, "What should be the cause?" She said, "For the sorrow she took for me." And then she said, "Mr. Kingston, shall I die without justice?" And I said, "The poorest subject the king hath, had justice;" and therewith she laughed.[568]

[Sidenote: Lady Boleyn and three other ladies sent to attend upon her.]

Lady Boleyn, her aunt, had been sent for, with a Mrs. Cousins, and two other ladies, selected by the king.[569] They were ordered to attend upon the queen, but to observe a strict silence; and to hold no communication with her, except in the presence of Lady Kingston. This regulation, it was found, could not be insisted on. Lady Boleyn and Mrs. Cousins slept in the queen's room, and conversation could not be prevented. Mrs. Cousins undertook, on her part, to inform Kingston if anything was said which "it was meet that he should know."[570]

[Sidenote: Wednesday, May 3. Reported conversation of the queen with Norris,]

[Sidenote: And with Sir Francis Weston.]

In compliance with this promise, she told him, the next morning, that the queen had been speaking to her about Norris. On the preceding Sunday, she said that Norris had offered to "swear for the queen, that she was a good woman."--"But how," asked Mrs. Cousins, very naturally, "how came any such things to be spoken of at all?"--"Marry," the queen said, "I bade him do so: for I asked him why he went not through with his marriage; and he made answer, that he would tarry a time. Then, I said, You look for dead men's shoes; for if aught came to the king but good, you would look to have me.[571] And he said, if he should have any such thought, he would his head were off. And then she said she could undo him, if she would. And therewith they fell out." "But she said she more feared Weston; for on Whitsun Tuesday last, Weston told her that Norris came more unto her chamber for her than for Mage."[572] Afterwards, "The queen spake of Weston, that she had spoken to him, because he did love her kinswoman, Mrs. Skelton, and that she said he loved not his wife; and he made answer to her again, that he loved one in her house better than them both. She asked him who is that? to which he answered, that it is yourself. 'And then,' she said, 'she defied him.'"[573]

So passed Wednesday at the Tower. Let us feel our very utmost commiseration for this unhappy woman; if she was guilty, it is the more reason that we should pity her; but I am obliged to say, that conversations of this kind, admitted by herself, disentitle her to plead her character in answer to the charges against her. Young men do not speak of love to young and beautiful married women, still less to ladies of so high rank, unless something more than levity has encouraged them; and although to have permitted such language is no proof of guilt, yet it is a proof of the absence of innocence.

[Sidenote: The news reaches Cranmer. He is ordered to Lambeth till he hears further.]

Meanwhile, on the Tuesday morning, a rumour of the queen's arrest was rife in London; and the news for the first time reached the ears of Cranmer. The archbishop was absent from home, but in the course of the day he received an order, through Cromwell, to repair to his palace, and remain there till he heard further. With what thoughts he obeyed this command may be gathered from the letter which, on the following morning, he wrote to Henry. The fortunes of the Reformation had been so closely linked to those of the queen, that he trembled for the consequences to the church of the king's too just indignation. If the barren womb of Catherine had seemed a judgment against the first marriage, the shameful issue of the second might be regarded too probably as a witness against that and against every act which had been connected with it. Full of these forebodings, yet not too wholly occupied with them to forget the unhappy queen, he addressed the king, early on Wednesday, in the following language:--

[Sidenote: He writes to the king. He implores Henry to bear his misfortune like a man,]

[Sidenote: And to accept submissively the trial which God has sent upon him.]

"Please it your most noble Grace to be advertised, that at your Grace's commandment, by Mr. Secretary's letter, written in your Grace's name, I came to Lambeth yesterday, and there I do remain to know your Grace's further pleasure. And forasmuch as without your Grace's commandment, I dare not, contrary to the contents of the said letter, presume to come unto your Grace's presence; nevertheless, of my most bounden duty, I can do no less than most humbly to desire your Grace, by your great wisdom, and by the assistance of God's help, somewhat to suppress the deep sorrows of your Grace's heart, and to take all adversities of God's hands both patiently and thankfully. I cannot deny but your Grace hath good cause many ways of lamentable heaviness; and also, that in the wrongful estimation of the world, your Grace's honour of every part is so highly touched (whether the things that commonly be spoken of be true or not), that I remember not that ever Almighty God sent unto your Grace any like occasion to try your Grace's constancy throughout, whether your Highness can be content to take of God's hands as well things displeasant as pleasant. And if He find in your most noble heart such an obedience unto his will, that your Grace, without murmuration and over-much heaviness, do accept all adversities, not less thanking Him than when all things succeed after your Grace's will and pleasure, then I suppose your Grace did never thing more acceptable unto Him since your first governance of this your realm. And moreover, your Grace shall give unto Him occasion to multiply and increase his graces and benefits unto your Highness, as He did unto his most faithful servant Job; unto whom, after his great calamities and heaviness, for his obedient heart and willing acceptation of God's scourge and rod, addidit Dominus cuncta duplicia. And if it be true that is openly reported of the Queen's Grace, if men had a right estimation of things, they should not esteem any part of your Grace's honour to be touched thereby; but her honour to be clean disparaged. And I am in such perplexity, that my mind is clean amazed; for I never had better opinion in woman than I had in her; which maketh me to think that she should not be culpable. And again, I think your Highness would not have gone so far, except she had been surely culpable.

[Sidenote: Of the queen's guilt, he knows not what to believe.]

[Sidenote: He will pray that she may be found innocent.]

[Sidenote: But if she be guilty, let her be punished with all extremity, for the dishonour which she has brought upon the gospel.]

[Sidenote: He trusts that the king will still continue to favour the gospel, however, as before.]

"Now I think that your Grace best knoweth that, next unto your Grace, I was most bound unto her of all creatures living. Wherefore, I most humbly beseech your Grace to suffer me in that which both God's law, nature, and also her kindness bindeth me unto: that is, that I may with your Grace's favour wish and pray for her that she may declare herself inculpable and innocent. And if she be found culpable, considering your Grace's goodness to her, and from what condition your Grace of your only mere goodness took her, and set the crown upon her head, I repute him not your Grace's faithful servant and subject, nor true unto the realm, that would not desire the offence without mercy to be punished, to the example of all other. And as I loved her not a little for the love which I judged her to bear towards God and his gospel; so if she be proved culpable, there is not one that loveth God and his gospel that will ever favour her, but must hate her above all other; and the more they favour the gospel, the more they will hate her; for there never was creature in our time that so much slandered the gospel. And God hath sent her this punishment for that she feignedly hath professed his gospel in her mouth, and not in heart and deed. And though she hath offended so that she hath deserved never to be reconciled to your Grace's favour, yet Almighty God hath manifoldly declared his goodness towards your Grace, and never offended you. But your Grace, I am sure, acknowledgeth that you have offended Him. Wherefore, I trust that your Grace will bear no less entire favour unto the truth of the gospel than you did before; forasmuch as your Grace's favour to the gospel was not led by affection unto her, but by zeal unto the truth. And thus I beseech Almighty God, whose gospel he hath ordained your Grace to be defender of, ever to preserve your Grace from all evil, and give you at the end the promise of his gospel. From Lambeth, the third of May."

[Sidenote: He is sent for to the Star Chamber.]

[Sidenote: The postscript of his letter.]

The letter was written; it was not, however, sent upon the instant; and in the course of the morning the archbishop was requested to meet the Lord Chancellor, Lord Oxford, Lord Sussex, and the Lord Chamberlain, in the Star Chamber. He went, and on his return to Lambeth he added a few words in a postscript. In the interview from which he had at the moment returned, those noblemen, he said, had declared unto him such things as his Grace's pleasure was they should make him privy unto; for the which he was most bounden unto his Grace. "What communications we had together," he added, "I doubt not but they will make the true report thereof unto your Grace. _I am exceedingly sorry that such faults can be proved by the queen, as I heard of their relation._"[574]

If we may believe, as I suppose we may, that Cranmer was a man of sound understanding, and of not less than ordinary probity, this letter is of the greatest value; it shows the impression which was made upon a sensible person by the first rumours of the discovery; it shows also the archbishop's opinion of the king's character, with the effect upon his own mind of the evidence which the chancellor, at the king's command, had laid before him.

[Sidenote: Friday, May 5. Henry writes to the queen with a promise of pardon if she will confess.]

[Sidenote: She persists in maintaining her innocence,]

[Sidenote: Being satisfied that there was no witness of her guilt.]

We return to the prisoners in the Tower. Mark Smeton, who had confessed his guilt, was ironed.[575] The other gentlemen, not in consideration of their silence, but of their rank, were treated more leniently. To the queen, with an object which may be variously interpreted, Henry wrote the Friday succeeding her arrest, holding out hopes of forgiveness if she would be honest and open with him. Persons who assume that the whole transaction was the scheme of a wicked husband to dispose of a wife of whom he was weary, will believe that he was practising upon her terror to obtain his freedom by a lighter crime than murder. Those who consider that he possessed the ordinary qualities of humanity, and that he was really convinced of her guilt, may explain his offer as the result of natural feeling. But in whatever motive his conduct originated, it was ineffectual. Anne, either knowing that she was innocent, or trusting that her guilt could not be proved, trusting, as Sir Edmund Baynton thought, to the constancy of Weston and Norris,[576] declined to confess anything. "_If any man accuse me_," she said to Kingston, "_I can but say nay, and they can bring no witness_."[577] Instead of acknowledging any guilt in herself, she perhaps retaliated upon the king in the celebrated letter which has been thought a proof both of her own innocence, and of the conspiracy by which she was destroyed.[578] This letter also, although at once so well known and of so dubious authority, it is fair to give entire.

[Sidenote: Saturday, May 6. Her letter to the king.]

"Sir,--Your Grace's displeasure and my imprisonment are things so strange unto me, as what to write, or what to excuse, I am altogether ignorant. Whereas you send unto me (willing [me] to confess a truth, and to obtain your favour) by such an one whom you know to be mine antient professed enemy, I no sooner conceived this message by him, than I rightly conceived your meaning; and if, as you say, confessing a truth indeed may procure my safety, I shall with all willingness and duty perform your command.

[Sidenote: Never prince had more loyal wife.]

[Sidenote: She, however, always looked for what now she finds.]

"But let not your Grace ever imagine that your poor wife will ever be brought to acknowledge a fault where not so much as a thought thereof proceeded. And to speak a truth, never prince had wife more loyal in all duty, and in all true affection, than you have ever found in Anne Boleyn; with which name and place I could willingly have contented myself, if God and your Grace's pleasure had been so pleased. Neither did I at any time so far forget myself in my exaltation or received queenship, but that I always looked for such an alteration as now I find: for the ground of my preferment being on no surer foundation than your Grace's fancy, the least alteration I knew was fit and sufficient to draw that fancy to some other subject. You have chosen me from a low estate to be your queen and companion, far beyond my desert or desire. If then you found me worthy of such honour, good your Grace, let not any light fancy or bad counsel of mine enemies withdraw your princely favour from me; neither let that stain, that unworthy stain, of a disloyal heart towards your good Grace, ever cast so foul a blot on your most dutiful wife, and the infant princess, your daughter.

[Sidenote: She begs for a fair trial,]

[Sidenote: And if she is condemned, Henry may lawfully follow his new fancy.]

"Try me, good king, but let me have a lawful trial; and let not my sworn enemies sit as my accusers and my judges; yea, let me receive an open trial, for my truth shall fear no open shame. Then shall you see either mine innocency cleared, your suspicions and conscience satisfied, the ignominy and slander of the world stopped, or my guilt openly declared; so that, whatsoever God or you may determine of me, your Grace may be freed from an open censure; and mine offence being so lawfully proved, your Grace is at liberty, both before God and man, not only to execute worthy punishment on me, as an unlawful wife, but to follow your affection already settled on that party for whose sake I am now as I am, whose name I could some good while since have pointed unto; your Grace not being ignorant of my suspicion therein.

[Sidenote: If her fate is already decided, she prays God will pardon his great sin,]

"But if you have already determined of me; and that not only my death, but an infamous slander, must bring you the enjoying of your desired happiness; then I desire of God that he will pardon your great sin therein, and likewise my enemies the instruments thereof; and that He will not call you to a strict 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.

[Sidenote: And also that her own death may suffice, and the poor gentlemen be spared.]

"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 strait imprisonment for my sake. If ever I have found favour in your sight, if ever the name of Anne Boleyn hath been pleasing in your ears, then let me obtain this request; and I will so leave to trouble your Grace any further; with mine earnest prayers 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, this 6th of May. Your most loyal and ever faithful wife,

ANNE BOLEYN."[579]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: A second requisition to confess from the king, and a second refusal.]

[Sidenote: The tone of the queen's answers not what it ought to have been, even on her own showing.]

This letter is most affecting; and although it is better calculated to plead the queen's cause with posterity than with the king, whom it could only exasperate, yet if it is genuine it tells (so far as such a composition can tell at all) powerfully in her favour. On the same page of the manuscript, carrying the same authority, and subject to the same doubt, is a fragment of another letter, supposed to have been written subsequently, and therefore in answer to a second invitation to confess. In this she replied again, that she could confess no more than she had already spoken; that she might conceal nothing from the king, to whom she did acknowledge herself so much bound for so many favours; for raising her first from a mean woman to be a marchioness; next to be his queen; and now, seeing he could bestow no further honours upon her on earth, for purposing by martyrdom to make her a saint in heaven.[580] This answer also was unwise in point of worldly prudence; and I am obliged showing to add, that the tone which was assumed, both in this and in her first letter, was unbecoming (even if she was innocent of actual sin) in a wife who, on her own showing, was so gravely to blame. It is to be remembered that she had betrayed from the first the king's confidence; and, as she knew at the moment at which she was writing, she had never been legally married to him.

[Sidenote: Her wild words in the Tower.]

Her spirits meanwhile had something rallied, though still violently fluctuating. "One hour," wrote Kingston,[581] "she is determined to die, and the next hour much contrary to that." Sometimes she talked in a wild, wandering way, wondering whether any one made the prisoners' beds, with other of those light trifles which women's minds dwell upon so strangely, when strained beyond their strength. "There would be no rain," she said, "till she was out of the Tower; and if she died, they would see the greatest punishment for her that ever came to England." "And then," she added, "I shall be a saint in heaven, for I have done many good deeds in my days; but I think it much unkindness in the king to put such about me as I never loved."[582] Kingston was a hard chronicler, too convinced of the queen's guilt to feel compassion for her; and yet these rambling fancies are as touching as Ophelia's; and, unlike hers, are no creation of a poet's imagination, but words once truly uttered by a poor human being in her hour of agony. Yet they proved nothing. And if her wanderings seem to breathe of innocence, they are yet compatible with the absence of it. We must remind ourselves that two of the prisoners had already confessed both their own guilt and hers.

[Sidenote: Preparations for the trial. Necessity of entering into offensive details.]

The queen demanded a trial; it was not necessary to ask for it. Both she and her supposed accomplices were tried with a scrupulousness without a parallel, so far as I am aware, in the criminal records of the time. The substance of the proceedings is preserved in an official summary;[583] and distressing as it is to read of such sad matters, the importance of arriving at a fair judgment must excuse the details which will be entered into. The crime was alike hideous, whether it was the crime of the queen or of Henry; we may not attempt to hide from ourselves the full deformity of it.

On the 24th of April, then, a special commission was appointed, to try certain persons for offences committed at London, at Hampton Court, and at the palace at Greenwich. The offences in question having been committed in Middlesex and in Kent, bills were first to be returned by the grand juries of both counties.

[Sidenote: The names of the commissioners appointed to try the queen's accomplices.]

[Sidenote: The queen and her brother to be tried by the House of Lords.]

Men are apt to pass vaguely over the words "a commission" or "a jury," regarding them rather as mechanical abstractions than as bodies of responsible men. I shall therefore give the list of the persons who, in these or any other capacities, were engaged upon the trials. The special commission consisted of Sir Thomas Audeley, the lord chancellor; the Duke of Norfolk, uncle of the queen and of Lord Rochfort; the Duke of Suffolk, the king's brother-in-law; the Earl of Wiltshire, the queen's father; the Earls of Oxford, Westmoreland, and Sussex; Lord Sandys; Thomas Cromwell; Sir William Fitzwilliam the Lord High Admiral, an old man whose career had been of the most distinguished brilliancy; Sir William Paulet, lord treasurer, afterwards Marquis of Winchester; and, finally, the nine judges of the Courts of Westminster, Sir John Fitzjames, Sir John Baldewyn, Sir Richard Lister, Sir John Porte, Sir John Spelman, Sir Walter Luke, Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, Sir Thomas Englefield, and Sir William Shelley. The duty of this tribunal was to try the four commoners accused of adultery with the queen. She herself, with her brother, would be tried by the House of Lords. Of the seven peers, three were her own nearest connexions; the remaining commissioners were those who, individually and professionally, might have been considered competent for the conduct of the cause above all other persons in the realm. Antecedently to experience, we should not have expected that a commission so constituted would have lent itself to a conspiracy; and if foul play had been intended, we should have looked to see some baser instruments selected for so iniquitous a purpose.

[Sidenote: Wednesday, May 10. True bill found by the grand jury of Middlesex.]

In the middle of the second week in May, the grand juries had completed their work. On the 10th, a true bill was found at Westminster, by the oaths of Giles Heron, Esq.; Roger More, Esq.; Richard Awnsham, Esq.; Thomas Byllyngton, Esq.; Gregory Lovel, Esq.; John Worsop, Esq.; William Goddard, gentleman; William Blakwall, gentleman; John Wylford, gentleman; William Berd, gentleman; Henry Hubbylthorne, gentleman; William Huning, gentleman; Robert Walys, gentleman; John Englond, gentleman; Henry Lodysman, gentleman; and John Averey, gentleman.

[Sidenote: Thursday, May 11. True bill found by the grand jury of Kent.]

On the 11th a true bill was found at Deptford by the oaths of Sir Richard Clement, Sir William Fynche, Sir Edward Boughton, Anthony St. Leger, Esq.;[584] John Cromer, Esq.; John Fogg, Esq.; Thomas Wylleford, Esq.; John Norton, Esq.; Humphrey Style, Esq.; Robert Fisher, gentleman; Thomas Sybbell, gentleman; John Lovelace, gentleman; Walter Harrington, gentleman; Edmund Page, gentleman; Thomas Fereby, gentleman; and Lionel Ansty, gentleman.

I am thus particular in recording the names of these jurors, before I relate the indictment which was found by them, because, if that indictment was unjust, it stamps their memory with eternal infamy; and with the judges, the commissioners, the privy council, the king, with every living person who was a party, active or passive, to so enormous a calumny, they must be remembered with shame for ever.

[Sidenote: The indictment.]

The indictment, then, found by the grand jury of Middlesex was to the following effect:[585]

"1. That the Lady Anne, Queen of England, having been the wife of the king for the space of three years and more, she, the said Lady Anne, contemning the marriage so solemnized between her and the king, and bearing malice in her heart against the king, and following her frail and carnal lust, did falsely and traitorously procure, by means of indecent language, gifts, and other acts therein stated, divers of the king's daily and familiar servants to be her adulterers and concubines; so that several of the king's servants, by the said queen's most vile provocation and invitation, became given and inclined to the said queen.

"2. That the queen [on the] 6th of October, 25 Hen. VIII. [1533], at Westminster, by words, &c., procured and incited one Henry Norris, Esq., one of the gentlemen of the king's privy chamber, to have illicit intercourse with her; and that the act was committed at Westminster, 12th October, 25 Hen. VIII.

"3. That the queen, 2nd of November, 27 Hen. VIII. [1535], by the means therein stated, procured and incited George Boleyn, knight, Lord Rochfort, her own natural brother, to have illicit intercourse with her; and that the act was committed 5th of November in the same year, at Westminster, against the commands of Almighty God, and all laws human and divine.

"4. That the queen, 3rd December, 25 Hen. VIII., procured and incited William Brereton, Esq., one of the gentlemen of the king's privy chamber, to have illicit intercourse with her; and that the act was committed at Hampton Court, 25th December, 25 Hen. VIII.

"5. That the queen, 8th of May, 26 Hen. VIII., procured and incited Francis Weston, one of the gentlemen of the king's privy chamber, to have illicit intercourse with her; and that the act was committed at Westminster, 20th May, 26 Hen. VIII.

"6. That the queen, 12th of April, 26 Hen. VIII., procured and incited Mark Smeton, Esq., one of the grometers of the king's chamber, to have illicit intercourse with her; and that the act was committed at Westminster, 26th April, 26 Henry VIII.

"7. Furthermore, that the said George, Lord Rochfort, Henry Norris, William Brereton, Sir Francis Weston, and Mark Smeton, being thus inflamed by carnal love of the queen, and having become very jealous of each other, did, in order to secure her affections, satisfy her inordinate desires; and that the queen was equally jealous of the Lord Rochfort and other the before-mentioned traitors; and she would not allow them to show any familiarity with any other woman, without her exceeding displeasure and indignation; and that on the 27th day of November, 27 Hen. VIII., and other days, at Westminster, she gave them gifts and great rewards, to inveigle them to her will.

"8. Furthermore, that the queen, and other the said traitors, jointly and severally, 31st of October, 27 Hen. VIII., and at various times before and after, compassed and imagined the king's death; and that the queen had frequently promised to marry some one of the traitors, whenever the king should depart this life, affirming she never would love the king in her heart.

"9. Furthermore, that the king, having within a short time before become acquainted with the before-mentioned crimes, vices, and treasons, had been so grieved that certain harms and dangers had happened to his royal body."[586]

[Sidenote: The improbability of the queen's guilt and the improbability of a conspiracy against her increase in the same ratio.]

[Sidenote: There is no room for the hypothesis of mistake.]

[Sidenote: The parallel of Leontes suggested, but not admissible.]

I suppose that persons who have made up their minds conclusively, and are resolved to abide by the popular verdict of English historians, will turn with disgust from these hideous charges; seeming, as they do, to overstep all ordinary bounds of credibility. On one side or the other there was indeed no common guilt. The colours deepen at every step. But it is to be remembered that if the improbability of crimes so revolting is becoming greater, the opposite improbability increases with equal strength--that English noblemen and gentlemen could have made themselves a party to the invention of the story. For invention is unfortunately the only word; would indeed that any other were admissible! The discovery of the indictment disposes at once of Burnet's legend, that the queen was condemned on hearsay evidence; or that her guilt was conjectured from an exaggerated report of foolish conversations. It cuts off all hope, too, of possible mistake. I have heard the name Leontes mentioned as a parallel to Henry; and if the question lay only between the king and his wife, we would gladly welcome the alternative. Charity would persuade us that a husband had been madly blind, sooner far than that a queen had been madly wicked. But this road for escape is closed. The mistake of Leontes was transparent to every eye but his own. The charges against Anne Boleyn were presented by two grand juries before the highest judicial tribunal in the realm. There was nothing vague, nothing conjectural. The detail was given of acts and conversations stretching over a period of two years and more; and either there was evidence for these things, or there was none. If there was evidence, it must have been close, elaborate, and minute; if there was none, these judges, these juries and noblemen, were the accomplices of the king in a murder perhaps the most revolting which was ever committed.

[Sidenote: The difficulty in the way of supposing the accusations forged.]

It may be thought that the evidence was pieced together in the secrets of the cabinet; that the juries found their bills on a case presented to them by the council. This would transfer the infamy to a higher stage; but if we try to imagine how the council proceeded in such a business, we shall not find it an easy task. The council, at least, could not have been deceived. The evidence, whatever it was, must have been examined by them; and though we stretch our belief in the complacency of statesmen to the furthest limit of credulity, can we believe that Cromwell would have invented that dark indictment,--Cromwell who was, and who remained till his death, the dearest friend of Latimer? Or the Duke of Norfolk, the veteran who had won his spurs at Flodden? Or the Duke of Suffolk and Sir William Fitzwilliam, the Wellington and the Nelson of the sixteenth century? Scarcely among the picked scoundrels of Newgate could men be found for such work; and shall we believe it of men like these? It is to me impossible. Yet, if it was done at all, it was done by those four ministers.

[Sidenote: To what purpose the multiplication of offences, and the number of offenders?]

Even if we could believe that they forged the accusations, yet they would at least limit the dimensions of them. The most audacious villain will not extend his crimes beyond what he requires for his object; and if the king desired only to rid himself of his wife, to what purpose the multiplication of offenders, and the long list of acts or guilt, when a single offence with the one accomplice who was ready to abide by a confession would have sufficed? The four gentlemen gratuitously, on this hypothesis, entangled in the indictment, were nobly connected: one of them, Lord Rochfort, was himself a peer; they had lived, all four, several years at the court, and were personally known to every member of the council. Are we to suppose that evidence was invented with no imaginable purpose, for wanton and needless murders?--that the council risked the success of their scheme, by multiplying charges which only increased difficulty of proof, and provoked the interference of the powerful relations of the accused?[587]

Such are the difficulties in which, at this early stage of the transaction, we are already implicated. They will not diminish as we proceed.

[Sidenote: Friday, May 12. The court opens.]

[Sidenote: The four commoners are brought to the bar.]

[Sidenote: A petty jury return a verdict of guilty.]

Friday, the 12th of May, was fixed for the opening of the court. On that day, a petty jury was returned at Westminster, for the trial of Sir Henry Norris, Sir Francis Weston, Sir William Brereton, and Mark Smeton. The commission sat,--the Earl of Wiltshire sitting with them,[588]--and the four prisoners were brought to the bar. On their arraignment, Mark Smeton, we are told, pleaded guilty of adultery with the queen; not guilty of the other charges. Norris, Weston, and Brereton severally pleaded not guilty. Verdict, guilty. The king's sergeant and attorney pray judgment. Judgment upon Smeton, Norris, Weston, and Brereton as usual in cases of high treason. This is all which the record contains. The nature of the evidence is not mentioned. But again there was a jury; and if we have not the evidence which convinced that jury, we have the evidence that they were, or professed to be, convinced.

[Sidenote: The Duke of Norfolk is named Lord High Steward.]