Chapter VI (1)

1534-1536

A FLEETING TRIUMPH--POLITICAL INTRIGUE AND THE BETRAYAL OF ANNE

In the previous pages we have witnessed the process by which a vain, arrogant man, naturally lustful and held by no moral or material restraint, had been drawn into a position which, when he took the first step that led to it, he could not have contemplated. In ordinary circumstances there would have been no insuperable difficulty in his obtaining a divorce, and he probably expected little. The divorce, however, in this case involved the question of a change in the national alliance and a shifting of the weight of England to the side of France; and the Emperor by his power over the Pope had been able to frustrate the design, not entirely on account of his family connection with Katharine, but rather as a question of international policy. The dependent position of the Pope had effectually stood in the way of the compromise always sought by France, and the resistance to his will had made Henry the more determined to assert himself, with the natural result that the dispute had developed into religious schism. There is a school of historians which credits Henry personally with the far-reaching design of shaking off the ecclesiastical control of Rome in order to augment the national greatness; but there seems to me little evidence to support the view. When once the King had bearded the Papacy, rather than retrace the steps he had taken and confess himself wrong, it was natural that many of his subjects who conscientiously leant towards greater freedom in religion than Rome would allow, were prepared to carry the lesson further, as the German Lutherans had done, but I can find no reason to believe that Henry desired to initiate any change of system in the direction of freedom: his aim being, as he himself said, simply to make himself Pope as well as King within his own realm. Even that position, as we have seen in the aforegoing chapters, was only reached gradually under the incentive of opposition, and by the aid of stouter hearts and clearer brains than his own: and if Henry could have had his way about the marriage, as he conceivably might have done on many occasions during the struggle by a very slight change in the circumstances, there would have been, so far as he personally was concerned, no Reformation in England at the time.

One of the most curious phases in the process here described is the deterioration notable in Henry's character as the ecclesiastical and moral restraints that influenced him were gradually cast aside. We have seen him as a kind and courteous husband, not more immoral than other men of his age and station; a father whose love for his children was intense; and a cultured gentleman of a headstrong but not unlovable character. Resistance to his will had touched his pride and hardened his heart, until at the period which we have now reached (1534) we see him capable of brutal and insulting treatment of his wife and elder daughter, of which any gentleman would be ashamed. On the other hand, the attitude of Katharine and Mary was exactly that best calculated to drive to fury a conceited, overbearing man, loving his supreme power as Henry did. It was, of course, heroic and noble of the two ladies to stand upon their undoubted rights as they did; but if Katharine by adopting a religious life had consented to a divorce, the decree of nullity would not have been pronounced; her own position would have been recognised, her daughter's legitimacy saved, and the separation from Rome at least deferred, if not prevented. There was no such deterioration in Anne's character as in that of Henry; for it was bad from the first, and consistently remained so. Her ambition was the noblest trait in her nature; and she served it with a petty personal malignity against those who seemed to stand in her way that goes far to deprive her of the pity that otherwise would go out to her in her own martyrdom at the hands of the fleshly tyrant whose evil nature she had been so greatly instrumental in developing.

It was undoubtedly to Anne's prompting that the ungenerous treatment of the Princess Mary was due, a treatment that aroused the indignation even of those to whom its execution was entrusted. Henry was deeply attached to his daughter, but it touched his pride for her to refuse to submit without protest to his behest. When Norfolk told him of the attitude of the Princess on her being taken to Hatfield to attend upon Elizabeth, he decided to bring his parental authority to bear upon her personally, and decided to see her. But Anne, "considering the easiness or rather levity of the King, and that the great beauty and goodness of the Princess might overcome his displeasure with her, and, moved by her virtues and his fatherly pity for her, be induced to treat her better and restore her title to her, sent Cromwell and other messengers posting after the King to prevent him, at any cost, from seeing or speaking to the Princess."[114] When Henry arrived at Hatfield and saw his baby daughter Elizabeth, the elder Princess begged to be allowed to salute him. The request was not granted; but when the King mounted his horse in the courtyard Mary stood upon a terrace above to see him. The King was informed of her presence, or saw her by chance; and, as she caught his eye, she threw herself upon her knees in an attitude of prayer, whereupon the father touched his bonnet, and bowed low and kindly to the daughter he was wronging so bitterly. He explained afterwards that he avoided speaking to her as she was so obstinate with him, "thanks to her Spanish blood." When the French ambassador mentioned her kindly, during the conversation, he noted that Henry's eyes filled with tears, and that he could not refrain from praising her.[115] But for Anne's jealousy for her own offspring, it is probable that Mary's legitimacy would have been established by Act of Parliament; as Cromwell at this time was certainly in favour of it: but Anne was ever on the watch, especially to arouse Henry's anger by hinting that Mary was looking to foreigners for counsel, as indeed she was. It was this latter element in which danger principally lurked. Katharine naturally appealed to her kin for support; and all through her trouble it was this fact, joined with her firm refusal to acknowledge Henry's supreme power, that steeled her husband's heart. But for the King's own daughter and undoubted born subject to act in the same way made her, what her mother never had been, a dangerous centre around which the disaffected elements might gather. The old nobility, as we have seen, were against Anne: and Henry quite understood the peril of having in his own family a person who commanded the sympathies of the strongest foreign powers in Europe, as well as the most influential elements in England. He angrily told the Marquis of Exeter that it was only confidence in the Emperor that made Mary so obstinate; but that he was not afraid of the Emperor, and would bring the girl to her senses: and he then went on to threaten Exeter himself if he dared to communicate with her. The same course was soon afterwards taken with Norfolk, who as well as his wife was forbidden to see the Princess, although he certainly had shown no desire to extend much leniency to her.

The treatment of Katharine was even more atrocious, though in her case it was probably more the King's irritated pride than his fears that was the incentive. When the wretched Elizabeth Barton, the Nun of Kent, was prosecuted for her crazy prophecies against the King every possible effort was made to connect the unfortunate Queen with her, though unsuccessfully, and the attempt to force Katharine to take the oath prescribed by the new Act of Succession against herself and her daughter was obviously a piece of persecution and insult.[116] The Commission sent to Buckden to extort the new oath of allegiance to Henry, and to Anne as Queen, consisted of Dr. Lee, the Archbishop of York, Dr. Tunstall, Bishop of Durham; and the Bishop of Chester; and the scene as described by one of the Spanish servants is most curious. When the demand was made that she should take the oath of allegiance to Anne as Queen, Katharine with fine scorn replied, "Hold thy peace, bishop: speak to me no more. These are the wiles of the devil. I am Queen, and Queen will I die: by right the King can have no other wife, and let this be your answer."[117] Assembling her household, she addressed them, and told them they could not without sin swear allegiance to the King and Anne in a form that would deny the supreme spiritual authority of the Pope: and taking counsel with her Spanish chamberlain, Francisco Felipe, they settled between them that the Spaniards should answer interrogatories in Spanish in such a way that by a slight mispronunciation their answer could be interpreted, "I acknowledge that the King has made himself head of the Church" (_se ha hecho cabeza de la iglesia_), whereas the Commissioners would take it as meaning "that the King be created head of the Church" (_sea hecho cabeza de la iglesia_); and on the following morning the wily chamberlain and his countrymen saved appearances and their consciences at the same time by a pun. But when the formal oath of allegiance to Anne was demanded, Felipe, speaking for the rest, replied, "I have taken one oath of allegiance to my lady Queen Katharine. She still lives, and during her life I know no other Queen in this realm." Lee then threatened them with punishment for refusal, and a bold Burgundian lackey, Bastian,[118] burst out with, "Let the King banish us, but let him not order us to be perjurers." The bishop in a rage told him to begone at once; and, nothing loath, Bastian knelt at his mistress's feet and bade her farewell; taking horse at once to ride to the coast. Katharine in tears remonstrated with Lee for dismissing her servant without reference to her; and the bishop, now that his anger was calmed, sent messengers to fetch Bastian back; which they did not do until he had reached London.[119]

This fresh indignity aroused Katharine's friends both in England and abroad. The Emperor had already remonstrated with the English ambassador on the reported cruel treatment of the Queen and her daughter, and Henry now endeavoured to justify himself in a long letter (June 1534). As for the Queen, he said, she was being treated "in everything to the best that can be devised, whom we do order and entertain as we think most expedient, and as to us seemeth prudent. And the like also of our daughter the Lady Mary: for we think it not meet that any person should prescribe unto us how we should order our own daughter, we being her natural father." He expressed himself greatly hurt that the Emperor should think him capable of acting unkindly, notwithstanding that the Lady Katharine "hath very disobediently behaved herself towards us, as well in contemning and setting at naught our laws and statutes, as in many other ways." Just lately, he continues, he had sent three bishops to exhort her, "in most loving fashion," to obey the law; and "she hath in most ungodly, obstinate, and inobedient wise, wilfully resisted, set at naught and contemned our laws and ordinances: so if we would administer to her any rigour or extremity she were undoubtedly within the extreme danger of our laws."

The blast of persecution swept over the land. The oaths demanded by the new statutes were stubbornly resisted by many. Fisher and More, as learned and noble as any men in the land, were sent to the Tower (April 1534) to be entrapped and done to death a year later. Throughout the country the Commissioners with plenary powers were sent to administer the new oaths, and those citizens who cavilled at taking them were treated as traitors to the King. But all this did not satisfy Anne whilst Katharine and Mary remained recalcitrant and unpunished for the same offence. Henry was in dire fear, however, of some action of the Emperor in enforcement of the Papal excommunication against him and his kingdom, which according to the Catholic law he had forfeited by the Pope's ban. Francis, willing as he was to oppose the Emperor, dared not expose his own kingdom to excommunication by siding with Henry, and the latter was statesman enough to see, as indeed was Cromwell, that extreme measures against Mary would turn all Christendom against him, and probably prove the last unbearable infliction that would drive his own people to aid a foreign invasion. So, although Anne sneered at the King's weakness, as she called it, and eagerly anticipated his projected visit to Francis, during which she would remain Regent in England, and be able to wreak her wicked will on the young Princess, the King, held by political fear, and probably, too, by some fatherly regard, refused to be nagged by his wife into the murder of his daughter, and even relinquished the meeting with Francis rather than leave England with Anne in power.

In the meanwhile Katharine's health grew worse. Henry told the French ambassador in January, soon after Suffolk's attempt to administer the first oath to her, that "she was dropsical and could not live long": and his enemies were ready with the suggestion--which was probably unfounded--that she was being poisoned. She shut herself up in her own chamber, and refused to eat the food prepared by the new servants; what little food she took being cooked in her own room by her one maid. Early in the summer (May) she was removed from Buckden to Kimbolton Castle, within the miasmic influence of the fens, and there was no attempt to conceal the desire on the part of the King and those who had brought him to this pass that Katharine should die, for by that means alone, it seemed, could foreign intervention and civil war be averted. Katharine herself was, as we have seen, full of suspicion. In March Chapuys reported that she had sent a man to London to procure some old wine for her, as she refused to drink the wine provided for her use. "They were trying," he said, "to give her artificial dropsy." Two months later, just after the stormy scene when Lee and Tunstall had endeavoured to extort from the Queen the oath to the new Act of Succession, Chapuys in hot indignation suddenly appeared at Richmond, where the King was, to protest against such treatment. Henry was intensely annoyed and offended, and refused to see the ambassador. He was master, he said, in his own realm; and it was no good coming to him with such remonstrances. No wonder that Chapuys concluded, "Everybody fears some ill turn will be done to the Queen, seeing the rudeness to which she is daily subjected, both in deeds and words; especially as the concubine has said that she will not cease till she has got rid of her; and as the prophecies say that one Queen of England is to be burnt, she hopes it will be Katharine."[120]

Early in June Katharine urged strongly that Chapuys should travel to Kimbolton to see her, alleging the bad condition of her health as a reason. The King and Cromwell believed that her true object in desiring an interview was to devise plans with her nephew's ambassador for obtaining the enforcement of the papal censure,[121] which would have meant the subversion of Henry's power; and for weeks Chapuys begged for permission to see her in vain. "Ladies were not to be trusted," Cromwell told him; whilst fresh Commissioners were sent, one after the other, to extort, by force if necessary, the oath of Katharine's lady attendants to the Act of Succession, much to the Queen's distress.[122] At length, tired of waiting, the ambassador told Cromwell that he was determined to start at once; which he did two days later, on the 16th July. With a train of sixty horsemen, his own household and Spaniards resident in England, he rode through London towards the eastern counties, ostensibly on a religious pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham. Riding through the leafy lanes of Hertfordshire in the full summer tide, solaced by music, minstrelsy, and the quaint antics of Chapuys' fool, the party were surprised on the second day of their journey to see gallop past them on the road Stephen Vaughan, one of the King's officers who spoke Spanish; and later, when they had arrived within a few miles of Kimbolton, they were met by the same man, accompanied this time by a humble servitor of Katharine, bringing to the pilgrims wine and provisions in abundance, but also the ill news that the King had ordered that Chapuys was to be forbidden access to the Queen. The ambassador was exceedingly indignant. He did not wish to offend the King, he said, but, having come so far and being now in the immediate neighbourhood, he would not return unsuccessful without an effort to obtain a more authoritative decision. Early the next morning one of Katharine's old officers came to Chapuys and repeated the prohibition, begging him not even to pass through the village, lest the King should take it ill. Other messages passed, but all to the same effect. Poor Katharine herself sent secret word that she was as thankful for Chapuys' journey as if it had been successful, and hinted that it would be a consolation to her if some of her countrymen could at least approach the castle. Needless to say that the Spaniards gathered beneath the walls of the castle and chatted gallantly across the moat to the ladies upon the terraces, and some indeed, including the jester, are asserted to have found their way inside the castle, where they were regaled heartily, and the fool played some of the usual tricks of his motley.[123] Chapuys, in high dudgeon, returned by another road to London without attempting to complete his pilgrimage to Walsingham, secretly spied upon as he was, the whole way, by the King's envoy, Vaughan. "Tell Cromwell," he said to the latter, as he discovered himself on the outskirts of London, "that I should have judged it more honourable if the King and he had informed me of his intention before I left London, so that all the world should not have been acquainted with a proceeding which I refrain from characterising. But the Queen," he continued, "nevertheless had cause to thank him (Cromwell) since the rudeness shown to her would now be so patent that it could not well be denied."

Henry and Cromwell had good reason to fear foreign machinations to their detriment. The Emperor and Francis were in ominous negotiations; for the King of France could not afford to break with the Papacy, the rising of Kildare in Ireland was known to have the sympathy, if not the aid, of Spain, and it was felt throughout Christendom that the Emperor must, sooner or later, give force to the Papal sentence against England to avoid the utter loss of prestige which would follow if the ban of Rome was after all seen to be utterly innocuous. A sympathetic English lord told Chapuys secretly that Cromwell had ridiculed the idea of the Emperor's attacking England; for his subjects would not put up with the consequent loss of trade. But if he did, continued Cromwell, "the death of Katharine and Mary would put an end to all the trouble." Chapuys told his informant, for Cromwell's behoof, that if any harm was done to either of the ladies the Emperor would have the greater cause for quarrel.

In the autumn Mary fell seriously ill. She had been obliged to follow "the bastard," Elizabeth, against her will, for ever intriguing cleverly to avoid humiliation to herself. But the long struggle against such odds broke down her health, and Henry, who, in his heart of hearts, could hardly condemn his daughter's stubbornness, so like his own, softened to the extent of his sending his favourite physician, Dr. Butts, to visit her. A greater concession was to allow Katharine's two medical men to attend the Princess; and permission was given to Katharine herself to see her, but under conditions which rendered the concession nugatory. The Queen wrote a pathetic letter in Spanish to Cromwell, praying that Mary might be permitted to come and stay with her. "It will half cure her," she urged. As a small boon, Henry had consented that the sick girl should be sent to a house at no great distance from Kimbolton. "Alas!" urged Katharine, "if it be only a mile away, I cannot visit her. I beseech that she be allowed to come to where I am. I will answer for her security with my life." But Cromwell or his master was full of suspicion of imperial plots for the escape of Mary to foreign soil, and Katharine's maternal prayer remained unheard.

The unhappy mother tried again soon afterwards to obtain access to her sick daughter by means of Chapuys. She besought for charity's sake that the King would allow her to tend Mary with her own hands. "You shall also tell his Highness that there is no need for any other person but myself to nurse her: I will put her in my own bed where I sleep, and will watch her when needful." When Chapuys saw the King with this pathetic message Henry was less arrogant than usual. "He wished to do his best for his daughter's health; but he must be careful of his own honour and interests, which would be jeopardised if Mary were conveyed abroad, or if she escaped, as she easily might do if she were with her mother; for he had some suspicion that the Emperor had a design to get her away." Henry threw all the blame for Mary's obstinacy upon Katharine, who he knew was in close and constant touch with his opponents: and the fear he expressed that the Emperor and his friends in England would try to spirit Mary across the sea to Flanders, where, indeed, she might have been made a thorn in her father's side, were perfectly well founded, and these plans were at the time the gravest peril that threatened Henry and England.[124]

Cruel, therefore, as his action towards his daughter may seem, it was really prompted by pressing considerations of his own safety. Apart from this desire to keep Mary away from foreign influence working against him through her mother, Henry exhibited frequent signs of tenderness towards his elder daughter, much to Anne's dismay. In May 1534, for instance, he sent her a gentle message to the effect that he hoped she would obey him, and that in such case her position would be preserved. But the girl was proud and, not unnaturally, resentful, and sent back a haughty answer to what she thought was an attempt to entrap her. To her foreign friends she said that she believed her father meant to poison her, but that she cared little. She was sure of going to heaven, and was only sorry for her mother.

In the meanwhile Anne's influence over the King was weakening. She saw the gathering clouds from all parts of Christendom ready to launch their lightning upon her head, and ruin upon England for her sake; and her temper, never good, became intolerable. Henry, having had his way, was now face to face with the threatening consequences, and could ill brook snappish petulance from the woman for whom he had brought himself to brave the world. As usual with weak men, he pitied himself sincerely, and looked around for comfort, finding none from Anne. Francis, eldest son of the Church and most Christian King, was far from being the genial ally he once had been, now that Henry was excommunicate; the German Protestant princes even stood apart and rejected Henry's approaches for an alliance to the detriment of their own suzerain;[125] and, worst of all, the English lords of the North, Hussey, Dacre, and the rest of them, were in close conspiracy with the imperialists for an armed rising aided from abroad; which, if successful, would make short work of Henry and his anti-Papal policy.[126] In return for all this danger, the King could only look at the cross, discontented woman by his side, who apparently was as incapable of bearing him a son as Katharine had been. For some months in the spring of 1534 Anne had endeavoured to retain her hold upon him by saying that she was again with child, and during the royal progress in the midland counties in the summer Henry was more attentive than he had been to the woman he still hoped might bear him a son, although her shrewish temper sorely tried him and all around her. At length, however, the truth had to be told, and Henry's hopes fled, and his eyes again turned elsewhere for solace.

Anne knew that her position was unstable, and her husband's open flirtation with a lady of the Court drove her to fury. Presuming upon her former influence, she imperiously attempted to have her new rival removed from the proximity of the King. Henry flared up at this, and let Anne know, as brutally as language could put it, that the days of his complaisance with her were over, and that he regretted having done so much for her sake. Who the King's new lady-love was is not certain. Chapuys calls her "a very beautiful and adroit young lady, for whom his love is daily increasing, whilst the credit and insolence of the concubine (_i.e._ Anne) decreases." That the new favourite was supported by the aristocratic party that opposed Anne and the religious changes is evident from Chapuys' remark that "there is some good hope that if this love of the King's continues the affairs of the Queen (Katharine) and the Princess will prosper, for the young lady is greatly attached to them." Anne and her family struggled to keep their footing, but when Henry had once plucked up courage to shake off the trammels, he had all a weak man's violence and obstinacy in following his new course. One of Princess Mary's household came to tell Chapuys in October that "the King had turned Lady Rochford (Anne's sister-in-law) out of the Court because she had conspired with the concubine by hook or by crook to get rid of the young lady." The rise of the new favourite immediately changed the attitude of the courtiers towards Mary. "On Wednesday before leaving the More she (Mary) was visited by all the ladies and gentlemen, regardless of the annoyance of Anne. The day before yesterday (October 22nd) the Princess was at Richmond with the brat (_garse, i.e._ Elizabeth), and the lady (Anne) came to see her daughter accompanied by the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk and others, all of whom went and saluted the Princess (Mary) with some of the ladies; which was quite a new thing."

The death of Pope Clement and the advent of Cardinal Farnese as Paul III., known to be not too well affected towards the Emperor, seemed at this time to offer a chance of the reconciliation of England with the Papacy: and the aristocratic party in Henry's counsels hoped, now that the King had grown tired of his second wife, that they might influence him by a fresh appeal to his sensuality. France also took a hand in the game in its new aspect, the aim being to obtain the hand of Mary for the Dauphin, to whom, it will be recollected, she had been betrothed as a child, with the legitimisation of the Princess and the return of Henry to the fold of the Church with a French alliance. This would, of course, have involved the repudiation of Anne, with the probable final result of a French domination of England after the King's death. The Admiral of France, Chabot de Brion, came to England late in the autumn to forward some such arrangement as that described, and incidentally to keep alive Henry's distrust of the Emperor, whilst threatening him that the Dauphin would marry a Spanish princess if the King of England held aloof. But, though Anne's influence over her husband was gone, Cromwell, the strong spirit, was still by his side; and reconciliation with the Papacy in any form would have meant ruin to him and the growing interests that he represented.

Even if Henry had now been inclined to yield to the Papacy, of which there is no evidence, Cromwell had gone too far to recede; and when Parliament met in November the Act of Supremacy was passed, giving the force of statute law to the independence of the Church of England. Chabot de Brion's mission was therefore doomed to failure from the first, and the envoy took no pains to conceal his resentment towards Anne, the origin of all the trouble that dislocated the European balance of power. There was much hollow feasting and insincere professions of friendship between the two kings, but it was clear now to the Frenchmen that, with Anne or without her, Henry would bow his neck no more to the Papacy; and it was to the Princess Mary that the Catholic elements looked for a future restoration of the old state of things. A grand ball was given at Court in Chabot's honour the day before he left London, and the dignified French envoy sat in a seat of state by the side of Anne, looking at the dancing. Suddenly, without apparent reason, she burst into a violent fit of laughter. The Admiral of France, already in no very amiable mood, frowned angrily, and, turning to her, said, "Are you laughing at me, madam, or what?" After she had laughed to her heart's content, she excused herself to him by saying that she was laughing because the King had told her that he was going to fetch the Admiral's secretary to be introduced to her, and on the way the King had met a lady who had made him forget everything else.

Though Henry would not submit to the Papacy at the charming of Francis, he was loath to forego the French alliance, and proposed a marriage between the younger French prince, the Duke of Angouleme, and Elizabeth; and this was under discussion during the early months of 1535. But it is clear that, although the daughter of the second marriage was to be held legitimate, Anne was to gain no accession of strength by the new alliance, for the French flouted her almost openly, and Henry was already contemplating a divorce from her. We are told by Chapuys that he only desisted from the idea when a councillor told him that "if he separated from 'the concubine' he would have to recognise the validity of his first marriage, and, worst of all, submit to the Pope."[127] Who the councillor was that gave this advice is not stated; but we may fairly assume that it was Cromwell, who soon found a shorter, and, for him, a safer way of ridding his master of a wife who had tired him and could bear him no son. A French alliance, with a possible reconciliation with Rome in some form, would not have suited Cromwell; for it would have meant a triumph for the aristocratic party at Henry's Court, and the overthrow of the men who had led Henry to defy the Papacy.

If the aristocratic party could influence Henry by means of the nameless "new young lady," the Boleyns and reformers could fight with the same weapons, and early in February 1535 we find Chapuys writing, "The young lady formerly in this King's good graces is so no longer, and has been succeeded by a cousin-german of the concubine, the daughter of the present governess of the Princess."[128] This new mistress, whilst her little reign lasted, worked well for Anne and Cromwell, but in the meantime the conspiracy amongst the nobles grew and strengthened. Throughout the upper classes in the country a feeling of deep resentment was felt at the treatment of Mary, and there was hardly a nobleman, except Anne's father and brother, who was not pledged to take up arms in her cause and against the religious changes.[129] Cromwell's answer to the disaffection, of which he was quite cognisant, was the closer keeping than ever of the royal ladies, with threats of their death if they were the cause of a revolt, and the stern enforcement of the oath prescribed by the Act of Supremacy. The martyrdom of the London Carthusians for refusing to take the oath of supremacy, and shortly afterwards the sacrifice of the venerable Bishop Fisher, Sir Thomas More and Katharine's priest Abel, and the renewed severity towards her favourite confessor, Friar Forest,[130] soon also to be martyred with atrocious cruelty, shocked and horrified England, and aroused the strongest reprobation in France and Rome, as well as in the dominions of the Emperor; destroying for a time all hope of a French alliance, and any lingering chance of a reconciliation with Rome during Henry's life. All Catholic aspirations both at home and abroad centred for the next year or so in the Princess Mary, and her father's friendship was shunned even by Francis, except upon impossible conditions. Henry's throne, indeed, was tottering. His country was riddled with disaffection and dislike of his proceedings. The new Pope had forged the final thunderbolt of Rome, enjoining all Christian potentates to execute the sentence of the Church, though as yet the fiat was held back at the instance of the Emperor. The dread of war and the general unrest arising from this state of things had well-nigh destroyed the English oversea trade; the harvest was a bad one, and food was dear. Ecclesiastics throughout the country were whispering to their flocks curses of Nan Bullen, for whose sake the Church of Christ was being split in twain and its ministers persecuted.[131] Anne, it is true, was now quite a secondary personage as a political factor, but upon her unpopular head was heaped the blame for everything. The wretched woman, fully conscious that she was the general scapegoat, could only pray for a son, whose advent might save her at the eleventh hour; for failing him she knew that she was doomed.

In the meanwhile the struggle was breaking Katharine's heart. For seven years she had fought as hard against her fate as an outraged woman could. She had seen that her rights, her happiness, were only a small stake in the great game of European politics. To her it seemed but righteous that her nephew the Emperor should, at any cost, rise in indignant wrath and avenge the insult put upon his proud line, and upon the Papacy whose earthly champion he was, by crushing the forces that had wrought the wrong. But Charles was held back by all sorts of considerations arising from his political position. Francis was for ever on the look-out for a weak spot in the imperial armour; the German Protestant princes, although quite out of sympathy with Henry's matrimonial vagaries, would look askance at a crusade to enforce the Pope's executorial decree against England, the French and moderate influence in the College of Cardinals was strong, and Charles could not afford by too aggressive an action against Henry to drive Francis and the cardinals into closer union against imperial aims, especially in the Mediterranean and Italy, where, owing to the vacancy in the duchy of Milan, they now mainly centred. So Katharine clamoured in vain to those whose sacred duty she thought it was to vindicate her honour and the faith. Both she, and her daughter at her instigation, wrote burning letters to the Pope and the imperial agents, urging, beseeching, exhorting the Catholic powers to activity against their oppressor. Henry and Cromwell knew all this, and recognising the dire danger that sooner or later Katharine's prayer to a united Christendom might launch upon England an avalanche of ruin, strove as best they might to avert such a catastrophe. Every courier who went to the Emperor from England carried alarmist rumours that Katharine and Mary were to be put out of the way; and the ladies, in a true spirit of martyrdom, awaited without flinching the hour of their sacrifice. Cromwell himself darkly hinted that the only way out of the maze of difficulty and peril was the death of Katharine; and in this he was apparently right. But at this distance of time it seems evident that much of the threatening talk, both of the King's friends and those of the Catholic Church in England, was intended, on the one hand to drive Katharine and her daughter into submission, and prevent them from continuing their appeals for foreign aid, and on the other to move the Emperor to action against Henry. So, in the welter of political interests, Katharine wept and raged fruitlessly. The Papal decree directing the execution of the deprivation of Henry, though signed by the Pope, was still held back; for Charles could not afford to invade England himself, and was determined to give no excuse for Francis to do so.

Though there is no known ground for the then prevailing belief that Henry was aiding nature in hastening the death of his first wife, the long unequal combat against invincible circumstances was doing its work upon a constitution never robust; and by the late autumn of 1535 the stout-hearted daughter of Isabel the Catholic was known to be sick beyond surgery. In December 1535 Chapuys had business with Cromwell, and during the course of their conversation the latter told him that he had just sent a messenger to inform the King of Katharine's serious illness. This was the first that Chapuys had heard of it, and he at once requested leave to go and see her, to which Cromwell replied that he might send a servant to inquire as to her condition, but that the King must be consulted before he (Chapuys) himself could be allowed to see her. As Chapuys was leaving Whitehall a letter was brought to him from Katharine's physician, saying that the Queen's illness was not serious, and would pass off; so that unless later unfavourable news was sent Chapuys need not press for leave to see her. Two days afterwards a letter reached him from Katharine herself, enclosing one to the Emperor. She wrote in the deepest depression, praying again, and for the hundredth time, in words that, as Chapuys says, "would move a stone to compassion," that prompt action should be taken on behalf of herself and her daughter before the Parliament could do them to death and consummate the apostasy of England. It was her last heart-broken cry for help, and like all those that had preceded it during the seven bitter years of Katharine's penance, it was unheard amidst the din of great national interests that was ringing through Europe.

It was during the feast of Christmas 1535, which Henry passed at Eltham, that news came to Chapuys from Dr. De la Sa that Katharine had relapsed and was in grave peril. The ambassador was to see the King on other business in a day or two, in any case, but this news caused him to beg Cromwell to obtain for him instant leave to go to the Queen. There would be no difficulty about it, the secretary replied, but Chapuys must see the King first at Greenwich, whither he would go to meet him. The ambassador found Henry in the tiltyard all amiability. With a good deal of overdone cordiality, the King walked up and down the lists arm in arm with Chapuys, the while he reverted to the proposal of a new friendship and alliance with the Emperor.[132] The French, he said, were up to their old pranks, especially since the Duke of Milan had died, but he should at last be forced into an intimate alliance with them, unless the Emperor would let bygones be bygones, and make friends with him. Chapuys was cool and non-committal. He feared, he said, that it was only a device to make the French jealous, and after much word-bandying between them, the ambassador flatly asked Henry what he wanted the Emperor to do. "I want him," replied the King, "not only to cease to support Madam Katharine and my daughter, but also to get the Papal sentence in Madam's favour revoked." To this Chapuys replied that he saw no good reason for doing either, and had no authority to discuss the point raised; and, as a parting shot, Henry told him that Katharine could not live long, and when she died the Emperor would have no need to follow the matter up. When Chapuys had taken his leave, the Duke of Suffolk came after him and brought him back to the King, who told him that news had just reached him that Katharine was dying--Chapuys might go and see her, but he would hardly find her alive; her death, moreover, would do away with all cause for dissension between the Emperor and himself. A request that the Princess Mary might be allowed to see her dying mother was at first met with a flat refusal, and after Chapuys' remonstrance by a temporising evasion which was as bad, so that Mary saw her mother no more in life.

Chapuys instantly took horse and sped to London, and then northward to Kimbolton, anxious to reach the Queen before she breathed her last, for he was told that for days the patient had eaten and drank nothing, and slept hardly at all. It took Chapuys two days of hard travel over the miry roads before he reached Kimbolton on the morning of the 2nd January 1536.[133] He found that the Queen's dearest friend, Lady Willoughby (Dona Maria de Sarmiento), had preceded him by a day and was with her mistress. She had prayed in vain for license to come before, and even now Katharine's stern guardian, Bedingfield, asked in vain to see Lady Willoughby's permit, which she probably had not got. She had come in great agitation and fear, for, according to her own account, she had fallen from her horse, and had suffered other adventures on her way, but she braved everything to receive the last sigh of the Queen, whose girlhood's friend she had been. Bedingfield looked askance at the arrival of "these folks"; and at Chapuys' first interview with Katharine he, the chamberlain, and Vaughan who understood Spanish, were present, and listened to all that was said. It was a consolation, said the Queen, that if she could not recover she might die in the presence of her nephew's ambassador and not unprepared. He tried to cheer her with encouraging promises that the King would let her be removed to another house, and would accede to other requests made in her favour; but Katharine only smiled sadly, and bade him rest after his long journey. She saw the ambassador again alone later in the day, and spoke at length with him, as she did on each day of the four that he stayed, her principal discourse being of the misfortune that had overtaken England by reason of the long delay of the Emperor in enforcing justice to her.[134]

After four days' stay of Chapuys, Katharine seemed better, and the apothecary, De la Sa, gave it as his opinion that she was out of immediate danger. She even laughed a little at the antics of Chapuys' fool, who was called in to amuse her; and, reassured by the apparent improvement, the ambassador started on his leisurely return to London.[135] On the second day after his departure, soon after midnight, the Queen asked if it was near day, and repeated the question several times at short intervals afterwards. When at length the watchers asked her the reason for her impatience for the dawn, she replied that it was because she wished to hear Mass and receive the Holy Sacrament. The aged Dominican Bishop of Llandaff (Jorge de Ateca) volunteered to celebrate at four o'clock in the morning, but Katharine refused, and quoted the Latin authorities to prove that it should not be done before dawn. With the first struggling of the grey light of morning the offices of the Church for the dying were solemnly performed, whilst Katharine prayed fervently for herself, for England, and for the man who had so cruelly wronged her. When all was done but the administration of extreme unction, she bade her physician write a short memorandum of a few gifts she craved for her faithful servants; for she knew, and said, that by the law of England a married woman could make no valid will. The testament is in the form of a supplication to Henry, and is remarkable as the dictation of a woman within a few hours of her death. Each of her servants is remembered: a hundred pounds to her principal Spanish lady, Blanche de Vargas, "twenty pounds to Mistress Darrel for her marriage"; his wages and forty pounds were to be paid to Francisco Felipe, the Groom of the Chambers, twenty pounds to each of the three lackeys, including the Burgundian Bastian, and like bequests, one by one, to each of the little household. Not even the sum she owed for a gown was forgotten. For her daughter she craved her furs and the gold chain and cross she had brought from Spain, all that was left of her treasures after Anne's greed had been satisfied;[136] and for the Convent of Observant Franciscans, where she begged for sepulture, "my gowns which he (the King) holdeth." It is a sad little document, compliance with which was for the most part meanly evaded by Henry; even Francisco Felipe "getting nothing and returning poor to his own country."

Thus, dignified and saintly, at the second hour after midday on the 8th January 1536, Katharine of Aragon died unconquered as she had lived; a great lady to the last, sacrificed in death, as she had been in life, to the opportunism of high politics. "_In manus tuas Domine commendo spiritum meum_," she murmured with her last breath. From man she had received no mercy, and she turned to a gentler Judge with confidence and hope. As usual in such cases as hers, the people about her whispered of poison; and when the body was hastily cered and lapped in lead, "by the candlemaker of the house, a servant and one companion," not even the Queen's physician was allowed to be present. But the despised "candlemaker," who really seems to have been a skilled embalmer, secretly told the Bishop of Llandaff, who waited at the door, that all the body was sound "except the heart, which was black and hideous," with a black excrescence "which clung closely to the outside"; on which report Dr. De la Sa unhesitatingly opined that his mistress had died of poison.[137]

The news, the joyous news, sped quickly to Greenwich; and within four-and-twenty hours, on Saturday, 9th January, Henry heard with exultation that the incubus was raised from his shoulders. "God be praised," was his first exclamation, "we are free from all suspicion of war." Now, he continued, he would be able to manage the French better. They would be obliged to dance to his tune, for fear he should join the Emperor, which would be easy now that the cause for disagreement had gone. Thus, heartlessly, and haggling meanly over his wife's little bequests, even that to her daughter, Henry greeted the death of the woman he once had seemed to love. He snivelled a little when he read the affecting letter to him that she had dictated in her last hour;[138] but the word went forth that on the next day, Sunday, the Court should be at its gayest; and Henry and Anne, in gala garb of yellow finery, went to Mass with their child in full state to the sound of trumpets. After dinner the King could not restrain his joy even within the bounds of decency. Entering the hall in which the ladies were dancing, he pirouetted about in the exuberance of his heart, and then, calling for his fair little daughter Elizabeth, he proudly carried her in his arms from one courtier to another to be petted and praised. There was only one drop of gall in the cup for the Boleyns, and they made no secret of it, namely, that the Princess Mary had not gone to accompany her mother. If Anne had only known it, her last chance of keeping at the King's side as his wife was the survival of Katharine; and lamentation instead of rejoicing should have been her greeting of the news of her rival's death. Henry, in fact, was tired of Anne already, and the cabal of nobles against her and the religious system she represented was stronger than ever; but the repudiation of his second wife on any excuse during the life of the first would have necessitated the return of Katharine as the King's lawful spouse, with all the consequences that such a change would entail, and this Henry's pride, as well as his inclinations, would never permit. Now that Katharine was dead, Anne was doomed to speedy ruin by one instrumentality or another, and before many weeks the cruel truth came home to her.

Katharine was buried not in such a convent as she had wished, for Henry said there was not one in England, but in Peterborough Cathedral, within fifteen miles of Kimbolton. The honours paid to her corpse were those of a Dowager Princess of Wales, but the country folk who bordered the miry tracks through which the procession ploughed paid to the dead Katharine in her funeral litter the honours they had paid her in her life. Parliament, far away in London, might order them to swear allegiance to Nan Bullen as Queen, and to her daughter as heiress of England; King Harry on his throne might threaten them, as he did, with stake and gibbet if they dared to disobey; but, though they bowed the head and mumbled such oaths as were dictated to them, Katharine to them had always been Queen Consort of England, and Mary her daughter was no bastard, but true Princess of Wales, whatever King and Parliament might say.