Chapter IV: Via Dolorosa (2)

In 1534, Mary’s position was momentarily alleviated by the influence of a friend at court, a young lady, who had for the time being taken the King’s roving fancy,[136] and who sent the Princess word to be of good cheer, and that her troubles would sooner come to an end than she supposed, and that when the opportunity occurred, she would show herself Mary’s true and devoted servant.[137] Anne was furiously jealous, and intrigued with her sister-in-law, Lady Rochford, to have the young woman removed from court. But Henry discovered the plot, and banished Lady Rochford. The new favourite’s influence was remarked to increase daily, while Anne’s diminished, “which,” said Chapuys, “has already abated a good deal of her insolence”. Cromwell told him that he had received a charge from the King, that Mary should be well treated, and that if he found those about her did not do their duty, he was to have them punished, and that henceforth he should not have much difficulty in getting due respect paid to her, considering Henry’s paternal affection.

However, Anne’s influence although diminished still had periods of revival, and Mary was made to suffer for every sign of returning affection which her father manifested towards her in his moments of reaction.

“As to the King being dissatisfied with the Lady,” said Chapuys, “it is true he sometimes shows it, but as I have written before, they are lovers’ quarrels, and not much weight is to be attached to them, unless the love of the King for the young lady of whom I wrote to you should grow warm, and continue some time; of which it is impossible to form a judgment, considering the changeableness of this King. I have learned from the Master of the Horse, that when the Lady began to complain of the said young lady, because she did not do, either in word or deed, the reverence she expected, the King went away from her very angry, complaining of her importunity.”

Describing an interview with Cromwell, Chapuys again wrote to the Emperor on the 17th April. He continues:—

“He (Cromwell) then replied to me, as he had several times told me, that it was the Princess, who created the difficulty, and troubled matters, and that if it pleased God—he did not dare to say more, but it was quite clear what he wished. I again spoke about placing her with the Queen, her mother, but it was of no use; and on my saying that if any illness overtook her, where she is, evil might befall, before she received succour, he only answered that it was no question of illness, and that she was not likely to fall into it. But he was a bad prophet; and yesterday morning I sent him two of my servants, booted and spurred, who had just returned from the Princess in great haste (they had seen her the day before yesterday) to inform him that she had had a relapse, and desire that he would notify the King, to send thither the physician and servants he might think necessary. This he promised to do; but I fear he will not do it, or that even if he does, the King will make no account of it. Ill as the Princess is, she does not cease to think if there be any means of escaping; and on this subject she had a long conversation with one of my men, begging me most urgently to think over the matter, otherwise she considered herself lost, knowing that they wanted only to kill her. She has not had leisure to visit the neighbourhood, nor to devise means how she could get away, night or day. And because I see the thing is difficult, I keep her in hope of a speedy remedy by some other means, and endeavour to remove her suspicion that foul play is intended against her. Cromwell has always given me to understand that he is much devoted to the Princess; nevertheless, I have found no evidence of it except words.... Your Majesty may consider how the good Princess is placed.”[138]

Soon afterwards the scheme was abandoned, on account of the difficulties in the way, and on the 25th April, Chapuys was able to report that Mary was well again:—

“The Princess, thank God, has recovered. The King at my request sent her his physician, lending his own horses, for want of which, among other reasons the said physician had excused himself. But when the King told him that it concerned his honour, especially, seeing that he had promised to send him whenever the Queen’s physician should be there, all excuses ceased. He had only made them indeed, not for want of good will to serve the Princess, but to avoid the suspicion, in which he was held by the King and his lady, of too much devotion to her, and also to give occasion for the Princess being near the Queen, and under the care of her physician; and the said physician is of the King’s Chamber with the great people and those of the Council. He understands many things. He told the Queen’s physician that there were only two ways to remedy the affairs of the Queen and the Princess, and of all the realm. The first was, if God should visit this King with some little illness. Then besides that of himself he might come to a better mind, he would also take patiently the remonstrances made to him. The other way would be to try force, of which he says, the King and those about him are wonderfully afraid.”

Chapuys then informed the Emperor that “the said physician” had told him, that if the Emperor would make war, the right time had come, and that he knew for certain “of a score of the principal lords of England, and more than a hundred knights, who were quite ready to employ their persons, goods, friends and dependants, if they had the smallest assistance from your Majesty, and that as aforesaid, the time is most favourable, because the people are every day more dissatisfied at the taxation, for the levying of which, they are beginning to depute commissioners to enquire the value of every one’s goods, and assess them accordingly”.[139] All over the country prevailed a discontent, which not daring to break out into open rebellion took refuge in seditious words, and a sullen, almost threatening attitude. People were constantly arrested for speeches, such as: “It was a pity that the King was not buried in his swaddling clothes,” and “It was to be hoped that the Lady Anne would be brought full low,” and “We shall have no merry world till we have a new change,” etc.[140] But in spite of these mutterings, Henry inspired more terror even than hatred. The butchery of the Carthusian monks for refusing the oath of supremacy was followed quickly by the trial and execution of More and Fisher. Katharine and Mary were in a desperate position. Cromwell asked Chapuys what evil or danger would arise from the death of the Princess, even if it did excite the indignation of the people, and what cause the Emperor would have to be offended by it.[141]

Nevertheless, Henry was scarcely less to be pitied than his victims. The nation needed little encouragement to revolt. His treatment of the Queen and Princess, though not the whole cause of the disaffection, was a large factor in the rebellious temper of the people. But if to please them he showed Mary a little kindness, Anne left him no peace. He was, it is true, beginning to weary of his fetters, and sometimes inquired anxiously whether Anne too might not be divorced. Not, replied his otherwise complaisant advisers, unless he took back Katharine,[142] and he was not prepared for such a humiliation in the eyes of Europe. It would look, forsooth, as if he submitted after all to the Pope’s decree, and all that he had done with a high hand would have to be undone. There was no alternative but to carry out the policy he had determined upon, but his embarrassment was not lessened when Francis, through the French Admiral, demanded Mary’s hand for the Duke of Angoulême. Clearly, Henry had not succeeded in convincing the world, or even his one friend, the French King, that Katharine was not his wife, or in getting him to take Anne’s queenship seriously. The subject of Mary’s betrothal to the Duke of Orleans had been tacitly dropped since the divorce. It was no longer a part of Henry’s plan to marry his elder daughter honourably, or to allow her to leave the kingdom, and at first he pretended to regard the Admiral’s commission as a joke. The Duke of Angoulême, he said, had much better marry the true Princess, Elizabeth, and so the matter rested; but Francis would not take Henry’s line with regard to Mary. When in the autumn of 1535 he sent ambassadors to England for the purpose of drawing the King into a war with the Emperor, they were charged to interview her, and find out how she felt disposed to a marriage with the Dauphin. Mary had, in fact, not forgotten that she had been affianced to him as a baby, and would have welcomed any suitable proposal that would have freed her from the perils of her actual lot. At that time she was at Eltham with Elizabeth, into whose presence the French envoys were ushered. To their annoyance they were not even allowed to see Mary, who had orders to remain in her room while they were in the house, and to prevent any possible communication between them and her, the windows of her apartment were bolted. She had inquired of Chapuys whether she was to obey or not, and as he had advised submission, she amused herself while the ambassadors were with Elizabeth, by playing on the virginals.[143]

During the whole of 1535, Mary was in imminent danger. Anne constantly urged the King to treat her as he had treated Cardinal Fisher, saying that it was she who caused all his troubles, and as for herself she declared of the Princess, “She is my death and I am hers; so I will take care that she shall not laugh at me after my death”.[144] Anne could no longer be mistaken as to the decline of her power, and expressions such as the above are indicative that the general terror had reached the former favourite. The atmosphere was heavy with death, and she knew that all depended for her on the feeble hope that she might shortly give birth to a son. Henry himself was not free from the uneasiness which he so well knew how to inspire in others. Tyrant that he was, he saw danger where no danger lurked, and was strangely enough misinformed as to the Emperor’s ability to declare war. In the intervals of disgust which he felt for Anne, he was ready to stave off the invasion of which he lived in abject fear, by surrounding Mary with a little more circumstance; but with the revival of his expectations of a son, he allowed himself to be goaded into fury by her opposition, declaring that his worst troubles came from his own flesh and blood.

On the 6th November, Chapuys wrote:—

“The Marchioness of Exeter has sent to inform me that the King has lately said to some of his most confidential councillors, that he would no longer remain in the trouble, fear and suspense he had so long endured, on account of the Queen and Princess, and that they should see, at the coming Parliament, to get him released therefrom, swearing most obstinately that he would wait no longer. The Marchioness declares this is as true as the Gospel, and begs me to inform your Majesty, and pray you to have pity upon the ladies, and for the honour of God and the bond of kin to find a remedy.”

And again on the 21st:—

“The personage who informed me of what I wrote to your Majesty on the 6th, about the Queen and the Princess, _viz._, that the King meant to have them despatched at this next Parliament, came yesterday into this city in disguise, to confirm what she had sent to me to say, and conjure me to warn your Majesty, and beg you most earnestly to see to a remedy. She added that the King, seeing some of those to whom he used this language shed tears, said that tears and wry faces were of no avail, because, even if he lost his crown, he would not forbear to carry his purpose into effect. These are things too monstrous to be believed; but considering what has passed, and goes on daily—the long continuance of these menaces—and, moreover, that the Concubine, who long ago conspired the death of the said ladies, and thinks of nothing but getting rid of them, is the person who governs everything, and whom the King is unable to contradict, the matter is very dangerous. The King would fain, as I have already written, make his Parliament participators, even authors, of such crimes, in order that, losing all hope of the clemency of your Majesty, the whole people should be the more determined to defend themselves when necessary.”[145]

To Granvelle he expressed himself thus:—

“The person before mentioned (the Marchioness of Exeter) has sent to say, that four or five days ago the King, talking about the Princess, said that he should provide, that soon she would not want any company, and that she would be an example to show that no one ought to disobey the laws, and that he meant to fulfil what had been foretold of him—that is, that at the beginning of his reign he would be gentle as a lamb, and at the end worse than a lion. He said also that he would despatch those at the Tower, and some who were not there.”[146]

In the meantime, one of Henry’s victims was nearing the end of her trials, and reached it even before the meeting of Parliament that was to pass sentence of death upon her. In the autumn of 1535 Katharine had what appeared to be a slight illness, from which she seemed to be recovering, when at Christmas she suddenly grew worse, and sent to Chapuys, begging him to come to her without delay. He had no great difficulty in obtaining the necessary permission, although his repeated requests to see Mary, and for her to visit her mother, had been utterly disregarded. He found the Queen suffering from extreme emaciation, and from sickness. She was unable to retain any nourishment whatever; but her condition improved during the few days that Chapuys remained with her, and she was able to converse with him, and listen to him for about two hours each day. She also slept better during that time than she had done before, so that her physician pronounced her out of danger. Chapuys, “not to abuse the licence” the King had given him, left Kimbolton, where Katharine was then residing, on the 5th January, but rode slowly, in case a messenger should be sent after him with the news that she was worse, in which event he had promised to return to her. On his arrival in London, on the 9th, he sent to ask Cromwell for an audience with the King. In replying to this request, Cromwell sent word that the Queen had died little more than forty-eight hours after his leaving her, and that the news of her death had reached the court on the preceding Friday. The suddenness of her end, and the circumstances immediately following it, caused so much suspicion, that at the time there was hardly any one who did not firmly believe that she had been poisoned. The account of what passed was thus communicated to the Emperor by Chapuys:—

“The Queen died two hours after midday, and eight hours afterwards, she was opened, by command of those who had charge of it, on the part of the King, and no one was allowed to be present, not even her confessor or physician, but only the candlemaker of the house, and one servant and a ‘compagnon,’ who opened her; and although it was not their business, yet they have often done such a duty, at least the principal, who on coming out, told the Bishop of Llandaff, her confessor, but in great secrecy, as a thing which would cost his life, that he had found the body and all the internal organs as sound as possible, except the heart, which was quite black and hideous, and even after he had washed it three times, it did not change colour. He divided it through the middle, and found the interior of the same colour, which also would not change on being washed, and also some black, round thing which clung closely to the outside of the heart. On my man asking the physician if she had died of poison, he replied that the thing was too evident, by what has been said to the bishop, her confessor, and if that had not been disclosed, the thing was sufficiently clear from the report and circumstance of the illness.

“You could not conceive the joy that the king and those who favour the concubinage have shown at the death of the good Queen, especially the Earl of Wiltshire and his son, who said it was a pity the Princess did not keep company with her. The King, on the Saturday he heard the news, exclaimed: ‘God be praised that we are free from all suspicion of war,’ and that the time had come that he would manage the French better than he had done hitherto, because they would do now whatever he wanted, from a fear lest he should ally himself again with your Majesty, seeing that the cause which disturbed your friendship was gone. On the following Sunday, the King was clad all over in yellow, from top to toe, except the white feather he had in his bonnet; and the little Bastard was conducted to Mass with trumpets and other great triumphs. After dinner, the King entered the room in which the ladies danced, and there did several things, like one transported with joy. At last he sent for the little Bastard, and carrying her in his arms, he showed her first to one and then to another. He has done the like on other days since, and has run some courses at Greenwich.[147]

“This,” added Chapuys, “has been the most cruel news that could come to me, especially as I fear the good Princess will die of grief, or that the Concubine will hasten what she has long threatened to do, _viz._, to kill her, and it is to be feared that there is little help for it. I will do my best to comfort her, in which a letter from your Majesty would help greatly.”

Luther, writing about this time to Caspar Müller, says: “The Queen of England is said to be dead, and her daughter mortally ill; but she has lost her cause all over the world except with us poor beggars of divines at Wittenberg, who would gladly have maintained her in her queenly dignity; in which case she ought to have lived”.[148]

Katharine was buried with no more ceremony than befitted a Princess Dowager, some said with much less, in Peterborough Cathedral, where her remains still lie.

It was intended to have kept her mother’s death a secret from Mary for some time, but by a mistake the news was brought to her four days after the event. To Chapuys’ letter of condolence she answered, that following his advice, “she would show such courage and constancy as he advised her, but that in any case she would prepare herself to die”.

“She has written to me,” said the ambassador, “since she heard the death of the Queen more frequently than she did before, and this I think to testify the good heart and constancy to which I continually exhort her, in which certainly she shows great sense and incomparable virtue and patience, to bear so becomingly the death of such a mother, to whom she bore as much love as any daughter did to her mother, who was her chief refuge in her troubles.”

These events took place at the beginning of 1536, and Shakespeare, who with his collaborators wrote his play of “King Henry VIII.” at the end of the same century, had not only Holinshed’s _Chronicle_, and other records to guide him, but a mass of still floating tradition. He had grown to middle age, surrounded by persons who were in their prime when Mary’s and her mother’s troubles were in the mouths of all. He knew of, and described Chapuys’ visit to the dying Queen, and recorded in the following words, part of the contents of a letter sent by her to her husband:—

... I have commended to his goodness
The model of our chaste loves, his young daughter,—
The dews of heaven fall thick in blessings on her!—
Beseeching him to give her virtuous breeding,
(She is young, and of a noble modest nature;
I hope she will deserve well;) and a little
To love her for her mother’s sake, that loved him,
Heaven knows how dearly.[149]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 111: Chapuys to Charles V., 3rd Nov. 1533, Vienna Archives.]

[Footnote 112: Gairdner, _Cal._, vi., 1528.]

[Footnote 113: Chapuys to Charles V., 23rd Dec. 1533, Vienna Archives. Gairdner, _Cal._, vi., 1558.]

[Footnote 114: Gairdner, _Cal._, vi., 1558.]

[Footnote 115: Gairdner, _Cal._, vii., 83, 17th Jan. 1534.]

[Footnote 116: Gairdner, _Cal._, vii., 171.]

[Footnote 117: Gairdner, _Cal._, vii., 214.]

[Footnote 118: The Count of Cifuentes, Charles’s ambassador in Rome.]

[Footnote 119: Gairdner, _Cal._, vii., 225. Granvelle Papers, 11, 90.]

[Footnote 120: Gairdner, _Cal._, vii., 296, 7th March 1534.]

[Footnote 121: _Ibid._, 871, 23rd June 1534.]

[Footnote 122: The Emperor’s sister.]

[Footnote 123: Gairdner, _Cal._, vii., 1507, 5th Dec. 1534.]

[Footnote 124: Gairdner, _Cal._, vii., 232.]

[Footnote 125: Gairdner, _Cal._, vii., 530.]

[Footnote 126: Gairdner, _Cal._, vii., 662.]

[Footnote 127: Gairdner, _Cal._, vii., 1095.]

[Footnote 128: Probably a mistake for “the More”.]

[Footnote 129: Chapuys to Charles V., 24th Oct. 1534, Vienna Archives. Gairdner, _Cal._, vii., 1297.]

[Footnote 130: Gairdner, _Cal._, vii., 1193.]

[Footnote 131: Original, in Spanish, in Record Office. Gairdner, _Cal._, vii., 1126.]

[Footnote 132: Original, in Spanish, in Record Office. Gairdner, _Cal._, viii., 200.]

[Footnote 133: Gairdner, _Cal._, viii., 189.]

[Footnote 134: Gairdner, _Cal._, viii., 501.]

[Footnote 135: Page 81.]

[Footnote 136: Not Jane Seymour.]

[Footnote 137: Chapuys to Charles V., Vienna Archives, P.C., 229, 1, fol. 139.]

[Footnote 138: Gairdner, _Cal._, viii., 556.]

[Footnote 139: Gairdner, _Cal._, viii., 590.]

[Footnote 140: Indictments of the 28th April 1535, Record Office.]

[Footnote 141: Gairdner, _Cal._, viii., 429.]

[Footnote 142: _Anne Boleyn_, vol. ii., p. 55 note. In the reference given there is a mistake in the year. It should be 1535, not 1536, when Katharine was dead.]

[Footnote 143: The Bishop of Tarbes to the Bailly of Troyes, Camusat, 21. Gayangos, _Cal._, vol. v., pt. i., p. 551.]

[Footnote 144: Ortiz to the Empress, 22nd Nov. 1535, Add. MS. 28,588, 47, Brit. Mus.]

[Footnote 145: Gairdner, _Cal._, ix., 776, 861.]

[Footnote 146: _Ibid._, ix., 862.]

[Footnote 147: Gairdner, _Cal._, x., 141. Hall, who was always unwilling to admit anything to Henry’s discredit, says that it was Anne who dressed herself in yellow at the news of Katharine’s death.]

[Footnote 148: Luther’s _Briefe_, vol. iv., p. 667.]

[Footnote 149: Act iv., scene ii.]