Chapter XVII

QUEEN CATHERINE DESCENDS FROM THE THRONE, AND QUEEN ANNE BOLEYN ASCENDS
IT.
(NOVEMBER 1532 TO JULY 1553.)

Cranmer was on the archiepiscopal throne: if Anne Boleyn were now to take her seat on the royal throne by the side of Henry, it was the pope’s opinion that everything would be lost. Clement recurred once more to his favorite suggestion of bigamy, already advised by him in 1528 and 1530. True, this suggestion could not be acceptable either to Henry or to Charles V., but that made it all the better in the eyes of the pontiff: he would then have the appearance of assenting to the king’s plans without running the least risk of seeing them realized. ‘Rather than do what his Majesty asks,’ he said to one of the English envoys, ‘I would prefer granting him the necessary dispensation to have two wives: that would be a smaller scandal.’[258]

[Sidenote: Tenacity Of The Pope.]

The tenacity with which the pope advised Henry again and again to commit the crime of bigamy has not prevented the most illustrious advocates of catholicism from exclaiming that ‘to have two wives at once is a mystery of iniquity, of which there is no example in Christendom.’[259] A singular assertion after a cardinal and then a pope had on several occasions advised what they called ‘a mystery of iniquity.’ Again, for the third time, the king refused a remedy that was worse than the disease.

The pope wished at any price to prevent Rome from losing England; and turning to the other side, he resolved to try to gain over Charles V. and prevail upon him not to oppose the divorce. In order to succeed, Clement determined to undertake a journey to Bologna in the worst season of the year. He started on the 18th of November with six cardinals and a certain number of attendants, and took twenty days to reach that city by way of Perugia. Most of his officers had done everything to dissuade him from this painful expedition, but in vain. The rain fell in torrents; the rivers were swollen and unfordable; the roads muddy and broken up; the mules sank of fatigue one after another; the couriers who preceded him solicited the pope to travel on foot: and at last his Holiness’s favorite mule broke its leg. It mattered not: he must oppose the Reformation of England: the poor pontiff, already sick, had but this one idea. But the discomforts of the journey increased; the pope often arrived at inns where there was no bed, and had to sleep among the straw.[260] At last he reached Bologna on the 7th of December, but in such a plight that, notwithstanding his love for ceremonies, he entered the city furtively.

Another disappointment awaited him. The Cardinal of Ancona died, the most influential member of the Sacred College, and on whom Clement relied to gain over the emperor, who greatly respected him. But this did not cool the pontiff’s zeal: ‘I am thoroughly decided to please the king in this great matter,’[261] he said to Henry’s envoys, and added: ‘To have universal concord between all the princes of Christendom, I would give a joint of my hand.’[262] In fact Clement set to work and went so far as to tell Charles that, according to the theologians, the pope had no right to grant a dispensation for a marriage between brother and sister; but the emperor was immovable. The pope then proposed a truce of three or four years between Henry, Francis, and Charles, during which he would convoke a general council, to whom he would remit the whole affair. Francis informed Henry that all this was nothing but a trick.[263]

[Sidenote: Henry Marries Anne Boleyn.]

The king, convinced that the pope was trifling with him, no longer hesitated to follow the course which the interests of his people and his own happiness seemed to point out. He determined that Anne Boleyn should be his wife and Queen of England also. It was now that, according to the second hypothesis, the marriage took place. Cranmer states in a letter written on the 17th of June, 1533, that he did not perform the ceremony, that he did not hear of it until a fortnight after, and that it was celebrated ‘much about Saint Paul’s day last[264] (25th of January, 1533). Which date must we accept: this, or the 15th of November, given by Hall, Hollinshed, Burnet, and others? Cranmer’s language is not precise enough to settle the question.

Whatever may have been the date of the marriage—November or January—it became the universal topic of conversation in the beginning of 1533; people did not speak of it publicly, but in private, some attacking and others defending it. If the members of the Romish party circulated ridiculous stories and outrageous calumnies against Anne, the members of the national party replied that the purity of her life, her moderation, her chastity, her mildness, her discretion, her noble and exalted parentage, her pleasing manners, and (they added somewhat later) her fitness to give a successor to the crown of England, made her worthy of the royal favor.[265] Men may have gone too far in their reproaches as well as in their eulogies.

This important step on the part of Henry VIII. was accompanied with an explosion of murmurs against Clement VII. ‘The pope,’ he said, ‘wanders from the path of the Redeemer, who was obedient in this world to princes. What! must a prince submit to the arrogance of a human being whom God has put under him? Must a king humble himself before that man above whom he stands by the will of God? No! that would be a perversion of the order God has established.’ This is what Henry represented to Francis through Lord Rochford;[266] but the words did not touch the King of France, for the emperor was just then making several concessions to him, and the evangelicals of Paris were annoying him. From that hour the cordial feeling between the two monarchs gradually decreased. England turned her eyes more and more towards the Gospel, and France towards Rome. Just at the time when Anne Boleyn was about to reign in the palaces of Whitehall and Windsor, Catherine de Medicis was entering those of St. Germain and Fontainebleau. The contrast between the two nations became daily more distinct and striking: England was advancing towards liberty, and France towards the dragonnades.

[Sidenote: Brief Of Excommunication.]

The divorce between Rome and Whitehall soon became manifest. A brief of Clement VII. posted in February on the doors of all the churches in Flanders, in the states of the king’s enemy, and as near to England as possible, attracted a great number of readers.[267] ‘What shall we do?’ said the pontiff to Henry. ‘Shall we neglect thy soul’s safety?... We exhort thee, our son, under pain of excommunication, to restore Queen Catherine to the royal honors which are due to her, to cohabit with her, and to cease to associate publicly with Anne; and that within a month from the day on which this brief shall be presented to thee. Otherwise, when the said term shall have elapsed, we pronounce thee and the said Anne to be _ipso facto_ excommunicate, and command all men to shun and avoid your presence.’[268] It would appear that this document, demanded by the imperialists, had been posted throughout Flanders without the pope’s knowledge.[269]

A copy was immediately forwarded to the king by his agents. He was surprised and agitated, but believed at last that it was forged by his enemies.[270] How could he imagine that the pope, just at the very time he was showing the king especial marks of his affection,[271] would (even conditionally) have anathematized and isolated him in the midst of his people? Henry sent a copy of the document to Benet, his agent at Rome, and desired him to ascertain carefully whether it did really proceed from the pope or not.

Benet presented the document to Clement as a paper forwarded to him by his friends in Flanders. The latter was ‘ashamed and in great perplexity,’ wrote the envoy.[272] He then read it again more attentively, stopped at certain passages, and seemed as if he were choking. Having come to the end, he expressed his surprise, and pretended that the copy differed from the original. ‘There is one mistake in particular which almost chokes the pope every time it is mentioned,’ wrote Benet to Cromwell. This mistake was the including of Queen Anne Boleyn in the censure, without giving her previous warning, which (they said) was contrary to all the commandments of God. Accordingly Dr. Benet received orders to bring up this mistake frequently in his audiences with the pope; and he did not fail to do so. At this moment, in which he was about to lose England, the pope was more uneasy at having committed an error of form with regard to Anne Boleyn than with having struck the monarch of a powerful kingdom with an interdict. There is, besides, no doubt that he dictated the unhappy phrase himself.

Benet and his friends took advantage of the pope’s vexation, and even increased it: they communicated the brief to the dignitaries of the Church in Clement’s household, and the latter acknowledged that the document must be offensive to his Majesty of England, and that ‘the pope was much to blame.’[273] Benet transmitted the pontiff’s _errata_ to the king, but it was too late: the blow had taken effect. The indignant Henry was about to proceed ostentatiously to the very acts which Rome threatened with her thunders.

Whilst the pope was hesitating, England firmly pursued her emancipation. Parliament met on the 4th of February, and the boldest language was uttered. ‘The people of England, in accord with their king,’ said eloquent speakers, ‘have the right to decide supremely on all things both temporal and spiritual;[274] and certainly the English possess intelligence enough for that. And yet, in spite of the prohibitions issued by so many of our princes, we see bulls arriving every moment from Rome to regulate wills, marriages, divorces—everything, in short. We propose that henceforward these matters be decided solely before the national tribunals.’ The law passed. Appeals, instead of being made to Rome, were to be made in the first instance to the bishop, then to the archbishop, and, if the king was interested in the cause, to the Upper Chamber of the ecclesiastical Convocation.

The king took immediate advantage of this law to inquire of Convocation whether the pope could authorize a man to marry his brother’s widow. Out of sixty-six present, and one hundred and ninety-seven who voted by proxy, there were only nineteen in the Upper House who voted against the king. The opposition was stronger in the Lower House; but even this agreed with the other house in declaring that Pope Julius II. had exceeded his authority in giving Henry a dispensation, and that the marriage, was consequently null from the very first.

[Sidenote: Cranmer’s Letter.]

Nothing remained now but to proceed to the divorce. On the 11th of April, two days before Easter, Cranmer, as archbishop, wrote a letter to the king, in which he set forth, that desiring to fill the office of Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘according to the laws of God and Holy Church, for the relief of the grievances and infirmities of the people, God’s subjects and yours in spiritual causes,’[275] he prayed his Majesty’s favor for that office.[276] Cranmer did not decline the royal intervention, but he avoided confounding spiritual with temporal affairs.[277]

Henry, who was doubtless waiting impatiently for this letter, was alarmed as he read the words ‘according to the laws of God and Holy Church.’ God and the Church.... Well! but what of the king and the royal supremacy? The primate seemed to assert the right of acting _proprio motu_, and, while asking the king’s favor, to be doing a simple act of courtesy.... Did the Church of England claim to take the pontiff’s place and station, and leave the king aside?... That was not what Henry meant. Tired of the pretensions of the Pope of Rome, would he suffer a pope on a small scale at his side? He intended to be master in his own kingdom—master of everything. The letter must be modified, and this Henry intimated to Cranmer.

That day or the next after the one on which this letter had been written there was a great festival at court in honor of Anne Boleyn. ‘Queen Anne that evening went in state to her closet openly as queen,’ says Hall. It was probably during this festival that the king, taking the prelate aside, desired him to suppress the unwelcome passage. The idea suggested by an eminent historian, that Cranmer sent both the letters together to Henry that he might choose which he would prefer, seems to me inadmissible. Cranmer, as it would appear, submitted, waiting for better days. On returning to Lambeth, he recopied his letter, omitting the words which had been pointed out. Not content with asking the king’s _favor_, he desired his _license_, his authorization to proceed. He dated his second letter the same day, and sent it to his master, who was satisfied with it.[278]

This alone did not satisfy Henry: in his reply to the archbishop, he marked still more strongly his intention not to have in England a primate independent of the crown: ‘Ye, therefore, duly recognizing that it becometh you not, being our subject, to enterprise any part of your said office _without our license obtained so to do_.... In consideration of these things, albeit we, being your king and sovereign, do recognize no superior upon earth but only God; yet, because ye be under us, by God’s calling and ours, the most principal minister of our spiritual jurisdiction, we will not refuse your humble request.’

This language was clear. Henry VIII. did not, however, claim the arbitrary authority to which the pope pretended: human and divine laws were to be the supreme rule in England; but he, the king, was to be their chief interpreter. Cranmer must understand that. ‘To these laws we, as a Christian king,’ wrote Henry, ‘have always heretofore submitted, and shall ever most obediently submit ourselves.’ The ecclesiastical system which Henry VIII. established in England in 1533 was not a free Church in a free State, and there is no reason to be surprised at it.

Cranmer, having received the royal license, set out for Mortloke manor to prepare the act which, for six years, had kept England and the continent in suspense. Taking the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester and some lawyers with him, he proceeded quietly and without ostentation to the priory of Dunstable, five miles from Ampthill, where Queen Catherine was staying. He wished to avoid the notoriety of a trial held in London.

[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical Court.]

The ecclesiastical court being duly formed, Henry and Catherine were summoned to appear before it on the 10th of May. The king was present by attorney; but the queen replied: ‘My cause is before the pope; I accept no other judge.’ A fresh summons was immediately made out for the 12th of May, and, as the queen appeared neither in person nor by any of her servants, she was pronounced contumacious,[279] and the trial went forward. The king was informed every night of each day’s proceedings, and he was often in great anxiety. Some unexpected event, an appeal from Catherine, the sudden intervention of the pope or of the emperor might stop everything. His courtiers were on the watch for news. Anne said nothing, but her heart beat quick; and the ambitious Cromwell, whose fortunes depended on the success of the matter, was sometimes in great alarm. Cranmer rested on the declarations of Scripture, and showed much equity and uprightness during the trial.[280] ‘I have willingly injured no human being,’ he said. But he knew the queen had numerous partisans; they would conjure her, perhaps, to appear before her judges. There would then be a great stir, and the voice of the people would be heard.[281] The archbishop could hardly restrain his emotion as he thought of this. He must indeed expect an inflexible resistance on the part of the queen; but, in the midst of all the agitation around her, she alone remained calm and resolute. Her hand had grasped the pope’s robe, and nothing could make her let it go. ‘I am the king’s lawful wife,’ she repeated; ‘I am Queen of England. My daughter is the king’s child: I place her in her father’s hands.’

On Wednesday the 23d of May, the primate, attended by all the archiepiscopal court, proceeded to the church of St. Peter’s priory at Dunstable, in order to deliver the final judgment of divorce. A few persons attracted by curiosity were present; but, although Dunstable was near Ampthill, all of Catherine’s household kept themselves respectfully aloof from an act which was to deal their mistress such a grievous blow. The primate, after reciting the decisions of the several universities, provincial councils, and other premises, continued: ‘Therefore we, Thomas, archbishop, primate, and legate, having first called upon the name of Christ, and having God altogether before our eyes, do pronounce and declare that the marriage between our sovereign lord King Henry and the most serene Lady Catherine, widow of his brother, having been contracted contrary to the law of God, is null and void; and therefore we sentence that it is not lawful for the said most illustrious Prince Henry and the said most serene Lady Catherine to remain in the said pretended marriage.’[282] The act, drawn up very carefully by two notaries, was immediately sent to the king.

The divorce was pronounced, and Henry was free. Many persons gave way to feelings of alarm: they thought that all Europe would combine against England. ‘The pope will excommunicate the English,’ said some; ‘and then the emperor will destroy them.’ But, on the other hand, the majority of the nation desired to have done with a subject which had been agitating their minds during the last seven years. England, getting out of a labyrinth from which she had never expected to find an issue, began to breathe again.

Catherine’s marriage was declared to be null: it only remained now to recognize Anne Boleyn’s. On the 28th of May, an archiepiscopal court held at Lambeth, in the primate’s palace, officially declared that Henry and Anne had been lawfully wedded, and the king had now no thought but how to seal his union by the pomp of a coronation. It would certainly have been preferable had the new queen taken her seat quietly on the throne; but slanderous reports made it necessary for the king to present his wife to the people in all the splendor of royalty.

[Sidenote: Anne Presented To The People.]

At three o’clock in the afternoon of Thursday before Whitsuntide, a magnificent procession started from Greenwich. Fifty barges, adorned with rich banners, conveyed the representatives of the different city companies, and the metropolis joyfully hailed a union that promised to inaugurate a future of light and faith: it was almost a religious festival. On the banner of the Fishmongers was the inscription, _All worship belongs to God alone_; on that of the Haberdashers, _My trust is in God only_; on that of the Grocers, _God gives grace_; and on that of the Goldsmiths, _To God alone be all the glory_. The city of London thus asserted, in the presence of the immense crowd, the principles of the Reformation. The lord mayor’s barge immediately preceded the galley, all hung with cloth of gold, in which Anne was seated. Near it floated another gay barge, on which a little mountain was contrived, planted with red and white roses, in the midst of which sat a number of young maidens singing to the accompaniment of sweet music. A hundred richly ornamented barques, carrying the nobility of England, brought up the magnificent procession, and a countless number of boats and skiffs covered the river. The moment Anne set her foot on shore at the Tower, a thousand trumpets sounded points of triumph, and all the guns of the fortress fired such a peal as had seldom been heard before.[283]

Henry, who liked the sound of cannon, met Anne at the gate and kissed her, and the new queen entered in triumph that vast fortress from which, three years later, she was to issue, by order of the same prince, to mount, an innocent victim, the cruel scaffold. She smiled courteously on all around; and yet, seized with a sudden emotion, she sometimes trembled, as if, instead of the joyous flowers on which she trod with light and graceful foot, she saw a deep gulf yawning beneath her.

The king and queen passed the whole of the next day (Friday) at the Tower. On Saturday Anne left it for Westminster.[284] The streets were gay with banners, and the houses were hung with velvet and cloth of gold. All the orders of the State and Church, the ambassadors of France and Venice, and the officers of the court, opened the procession. The queen was carried in a magnificent litter covered with white cloth shot with gold, her head, which she held modestly inclined, being encircled with a wreath of precious stones. The people who crowded the streets were full of enthusiasm, and seemed to triumph more than she did herself.

The next day, Whit-Sunday, she proceeded for the coronation to the ancient abbey of Westminster, where the bishops and the court had been summoned to meet her. She took her seat in a rich chair, whence she presently descended to the high altar and knelt down. After the prescribed prayers she rose, and the archbishop placed the crown of St. Edward upon her head. She then took the sacrament and retired; the Earl of Wiltshire, her father, trembling with emotion, took her right hand ... he was at the pinnacle of happiness, and yet he was uneasy. Alas! a caprice of the man who had raised his daughter to the throne might be sufficient to hurl her from it! Anne herself, in the midst of all these pomps, greater than any ever seen before at the coronation of an English queen, could not entirely forget the princess whose place she had now taken. Might not she be rejected in her turn?... In such a thought there was enough to make her shudder.

[Sidenote: Feelings Of The New Queen.]

Anne did not find in her marriage with Henry the happiness she had dreamt, and a cloud was often seen passing across those features once so radiant. The idol to which this young woman had sacrificed everything—the splendor of a throne—did not satisfy her longings for happiness: she looked within herself, and found once more, as queen, that attraction towards the doctrine of the Gospel which she had felt in the society of Margaret of Valois, and which, amid her ambitious pursuits, had been almost extinguished in her heart. She discovered that for those who have everything, as well as for those who have nothing, there is only one single good—God himself. She did not probably give herself up entirely to Him, for her best impressions were often fugitive; but she took advantage of her power to assist those who she knew were devoted to the Gospel. She petitioned for the pardon of John Lambert, who was still in prison, and that faithful confessor of Jesus Christ settled in London, where he began to teach children Latin and Greek, without however neglecting the defence of truth.[285]

Two women had for some time attracted the eyes of all England—the one who was ascending the throne, and the other who was descending from it. Nothing awakens the sympathy of generous souls more than misfortune, and particularly innocence in misfortune; and accordingly Catherine’s fate will always excite a lively interest, even in the ranks of protestantism. We must not forget, however, that Catherine’s cause was that of the old times and of the Roman papacy, and that Anne’s cause was identified with that light, liberty, and new life which have distinguished modern times. It is true, Catherine died in disgrace, but in peace, surrounded by her women, her officers, her faithful servants; while the youthful Anne, separated from her friends, alone on a scaffold, praying God to bless the prince who put her to death, had her head cruelly cut off by the hangman’s sword. If on the one side there was innocence and divorce, on the other there was innocence and martyrdom.

The king, who had informed Catherine through Lord Mountjoy of the archiepiscopal sentence, officially communicated his divorce and marriage to the various crowned heads of Europe, and particularly to the King of France, the emperor, and the pope. The latter on the 11th of July annulled the sentence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, declared the king’s marriage with Anne Boleyn unlawful, and threatened to excommunicate both, unless they separated before the end of September. Henry angrily commanded his theologians to demonstrate that the bull was a nullity, recalled his ambassador, the Duke of Norfolk, and said that the moment was come for all monarchs and all Christian people to withdraw from under the yoke of the Bishop of Rome. ‘The pope and his cardinals,’ he wrote to Francis I., ‘pretend to have princes, who are free persons, at their beck and commandment. Sire, you and I and all the princes of Christendom must unite for the preservation of our rights, liberties, and privileges; we must alienate the greatest part of Christendom from the see of Rome.’[286]

But Henry had scholastic prejudices, which made him fall into the strangest contradictions. While he was employing his diplomacy to isolate the pope, he still prayed him to declare the nullity of his marriage with Catherine.[287] It is not at the court of this prince that we must look for the real Reformation: we must go in search of it elsewhere.

Footnote 258:

‘Multo, minus scandalosum fuisset, dispensare cum Majestate vestra
super duabus uxoribus.’—Record Office MS.

Footnote 259:

Bossuet, _Hist. des Variations_, liv. vi.

Footnote 260:

‘Compelled to lie in the straw.’—_State Papers_ (Henry VIII.), part
vii. p. 394.

Footnote 261:

‘Utterly resolve to do pleasure to your Highness.’—Benet to Henry
VIII., _State Papers_, pp. 401, 402.

Footnote 262:

‘He would it had cost him a joint of his hand.’—Ibid.

Footnote 263:

‘Your Grace should give no credence thereto, for it is but
dissimulation.—Ibid. p. 422.

Footnote 264:

Cranmer, _Remains_, p. 246.

Footnote 265:

‘The purity of her life, her constant virginity.’—Burnet, _Records_,
iii. p. 64; see, also, Wyatt, _Memoirs of Anne Boleyn_, p. 437.

Footnote 266:

Henry’s instructions to the Earl of Rochford are written in French,
probably that they might be shown to Francis.—_State papers_, vii. pp.
429-431.

Footnote 267:

_State Papers_, vii. p. 421. A note mentions that the document cannot
be found. It is evidently the brief given by Le Grand, _Preuves du
Divorce_, p. 558.

Footnote 268:

‘Te et ipsam Annam, excommunicationis pœna, innodatos declaramus.’—Le
Grand, _Preuves_, p. 567.

Footnote 269:

‘Granted by the pope at the suits of the imperials.’—_State Papers_,
vii. p. 454.

Footnote 270:

‘He can hardly believe it to be true rather than to be
counterfeited.’—Ibid. p. 421.

Footnote 271:

‘In derogation both of justice and the affection lately shown by his
Holiness unto us.’—Ibid.

Footnote 272:

Ibid.

Footnote 273:

_State Papers_, vii. p. 454.

Footnote 274:

Statute against appeals, 24 Henry VIII. cap. 12; Collyers, _Ch.
History_, ii.

Footnote 275:

Wilkins, _Concilia Mag. Britanniæ_, iii. pp. 756-759. Rymer, Fœdera,
vi. p. 179.

Footnote 276:

_State Papers_ (Henry VIII.), i. p. 390.

Footnote 277:

‘Your sufferance and grants.’—_State Papers_ (Henry VIII.), i. p. 390.

Footnote 278:

The two letters are in the State Paper Office; they are in Cranmer’s
handwriting, and appear to have been read, both of them, by the king.
Our hypothesis touching these letters differs from that of Mr. Froude
(_Hist. England_, i. p. 440). _State Papers_ (Henry VIII.), i. pp.
390, 391.

Footnote 279:

‘Vere et manifeste contumacem.’—_State Papers_ (Henry VIII.) i. p.
394.

Footnote 280:

‘My lord of Canterbury handleth himself very uprightly.’—Ibid. p. 395.

Footnote 281:

‘A great bruit and voice of the people.’—Cranmer, _Remains_, p. 342.

Footnote 282:

‘Non licere in eodem prætenso matrimonio remanere.’—Wilkins,
_Concilia_, iii. p. 759; Rymer, _Fœdera_, vi. p. 182.

Footnote 283:

Cranmer, _Remains_, p. 245.

Footnote 284:

Mr. Froude says that Anne went to the Tower on the 19th of May, and
that she quitted it for Westminster on the 31st, so that she resided
there for eleven days (_History of England_, i. pp. 450, 451). That
appears hardly probable, and is in contradiction to Cranmer’s
narrative, where we read: ‘Her grace came to the Tower on Thursday at
night.... Friday all day the king and queen tarried there.... The next
day, which was Saturday, the knights rid before the queen’s grace
towards Westminster.’—_Letters_, p. 245.

Footnote 285:

‘Lambert delivered ... by the coming of Queen Anne.’—Foxe, _Acts_, v.
p. 225.

Footnote 286:

‘To the clear alienation of a great part of Christendom from that
see.’—_State Papers_, vii. p. 477.

Footnote 287:

‘That the matrimony was and is naught.’—Ibid. p. 498.