Persons and pictures from the histories of France and England from the Norman conquest to the fall of the Stuarts |
Henry the Eighth,
AND HIS WIVES.
1521. |
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 | Persons and pictures from the histories of France and England |  |
Henry the Eighth,
AND HIS WIVES.
1521.
In no character, perhaps, within the whole range of human
history, are the fatal and destructive influences of unlimited
power, a subservient ministry, and the opportunity of unbridled
gratification, on a mind naturally selfish and addicted to pleasure,
more clearly demonstrated than in that of the eighth
Henry of England.
When he ascended the throne of England, on the decease of
his father, Henry VII., the conqueror of Bosworth field—one of
the coldest, cruellest, and most avaricious princes who ever sate
on a throne—his accession was greeted with universal joy and
gratulation by all ranks and classes of society. Young, and of
singularly vigorous and handsome frame, with a fine countenance
and fresh complexion, a lively and spirited air, a perfect skill in
every manly and athletic exercise, a very considerable proficiency
in literature and the arts, Henry, at this time in his
eighteenth year, was as unlike as possible to the bloated, unwieldy,
peevish, and furious tyrant—with a face and a roar liker
to those of an old lion than to the features and voice of a man—
as we find him in later days, and as he is better known to most
people, and the admired and courted of all Europe. Yet such
he was in the earlier years of his reign; vehement, indeed, impetuous
and impulsive, addicted to pleasure and magnificence,
but graceful and gracious to his courtiers, and so popular
among the lower orders—to whom his bold, blunt, jovial manhood,
and his own manly skill in the lists, at tilt or tournament,
in the chase, and in the battle-field, had greatly endeared him—
that the memory of his after tyranny has been almost forgotten,
and he is, even to this day, rather a favorite of the lower orders,
especially in London, who still talk of the good old times of
Bluff King Harry, although those good old times were stained
with more blood, and blackened with more atrocity than any
previous or succeeding era.
The cause of this may, perhaps, in some degree be traced to
the fact that in the reign of Henry, as likewise in that of his
manly hearted daughter, Elizabeth, who is, like her father, to
this day a historic favorite, the executions on the scaffold and
at the stake, and the oppressions and exactions of all kinds fell
mainly on the upper orders—that it was noble, princely, and
royal blood, which flowed like water through the latter portion
of his reign; and that the humble and the lowly born were
treated, even when guilty of open rebellion, with unusual leniency
and tenderness. But still more, I believe it to be attributable
to the splendor and pomp of his court, to the comeliness
and magnificence of his person, which always influence the
minds of the vulgar, his jovial and hearty good humor—for,
when not thwarted and enraged by opposition, he was of a
joyous and even generous temper—and his success in all his
foreign enterprises, which could be enjoyed and appreciated by
all his subjects, while his severities and oppressions were uncared
for except by the few who suffered them.
His reign must ever be memorable for the great work of reformation
which was performed therein, owing in the first instance
to the passions entirely, and in no sort to the principles
of the king; and prosecuted to the end through his capricious
humors, and fury at all opposition to his will, not from any political
object or religious conviction. So closely, however, was
this suppression of the old monastic establishments, and this
secession of the church of England from that of Rome, connected
with the strange story of his conjugal relations, that I
shall touch on the facts incidentally in the order of their occurrence,
not treat them under a particular head.
And as the first step which led, through the passions of one
man, to the emancipation of millions from servitude to priest-craft,
and which, so far as we can judge, is the primary cause
of England's subsequent and present greatness, I come to the
first marriage of the youthful prince with the widow of his
elder brother Arthur, the Prince of Wales—Catharine the Infanta
of Arragon, fourth daughter of those famous sovereigns
Ferdinand and Isabella. Arthur having died within a few
months of the wedding without issue, Henry the VIIth, desirous
of maintaining his alliance with Spain, and unwilling to
restore the Infanta's dowry of 200,000 ducats, compelled Henry,
whom he created Prince of Wales on the occasion, to be contracted
to the Infanta. Henry, who was but twelve years of
age, while the princess was nineteen, made all the resistance of
which such a boy is capable; but the king persisting, and a dispensation
being obtained from the Pope, the espousals were
contracted between the parties in the year of our Lord 1502.
Seven years afterwards, when the prince was in his nineteenth
year, he succeeded to the throne, and by the advice of his
grandmother, the Countess of Richmond and Derby, he retained
as his cabinet the most eminent and least popular of his
he at length determined, though contrary as it would seem to
the opinion of the primate of England, and also to the dying
desire of Henry VII., who appears to have repented of the
measure, and urged his son to remonstrate against it; he at
length, I say, determined in spite of the great disparity of years
between, and her previous connexion with his own brother, to
marry the princess Catharine; and accordingly the marriage
was performed and consummated. Her well known virtues,
the modesty and sweetness of her temper and disposition, her
beauty, and the great affection which she bore to the king;
the greatness of her dowry; the advantages of the Spanish
alliance; the necessity of counterbalancing the power of
France; and the propriety of fulfilling the late king's contracts,
were the principal arguments adduced whereby to convince
the king. That they succeeded was probably from the
weight of the political, rather than the personal considerations;
for although Catharine was of fine person, engaging manner,
and rare excellence of character, both as a woman and a queen,
it is difficult to believe that passion or predilection could have
influenced a youth of Henry's sensual and sanguine temperament
towards one so much his senior, and otherwise so seriously
disqualified for his bed. Still, however, it must be admitted
that Henry lived with her, so far as can be ascertained, with
perfect tenderness and satisfaction for many years; that he
appointed her queen-regent of England during his absence in
France at the head of his army; that he carried her with him
into that kingdom, when he subsequently visited it in peace, to
hold with his superb and splendid rival, Francis the First, that
famous conference known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold;
that he created her only daughter Mary, Princess of Wales;
and that it was not until nearly eighteen years after their
Catharine, when he began to be alarmed by doubts of his
daughter's legitimacy, and fears of the Scottish succession after
his own demise—when last he was, as he asserted, tormented
by religious scruples on that head, that he resolved to abrogate
the marriage with the Infanta.
Even after he had resolved on this step, to which he was
urged by the advice of his confessor, the Bishop of Lincoln, by
the unanimous opinion of all the English prelates with the one
exception of Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, by the counsel of
Wolsey, and his own doctrinal studies of Thomas Aquinas—and
which was perhaps really expedient as a political measure for
securing the succession of the English throne—he still visited
her constantly, conducted himself towards her with all tenderness
and respect, and never hinted the slightest dissatisfaction
with her conduct and demeanor.
On the whole, I am disposed to regard the conduct of Henry
in regard to Catharine of Arragon with less decided reprobation
than almost any other action of his life; I think it justifiable
to believe, judging from Henry's known addiction to polemical
and theological studies, and his generally superstitious—
for in a man so cruel and immoral, they cannot be termed religious—tendencies,
that he was for once seriously sincere in his
scruples; and, moreover, though it were a late period at which
to discern the validity of such scruples, and a cold and hard
measure to repudiate a blameless wife after eighteen years of
undisturbed connexion, and to illegitimatize her innocent offspring,
those scruples were certainly valid, and the great probability
is that the marriage would have been declared invalid,
the princess Mary illegitimate, and that a civil war would have
ensued, after the death of Henry, at the cost of much blood
and treasure to England.
How far he was sincerely actuated by these views, it is now
of course impossible to decide; but it appears to be susceptible
of clear proof, that he had mooted the question of divorce
with Catharine of Arragon, before he had ever seen Anne Boleyn,
to his sudden passion for whom his conduct at this crisis
is often ascribed, and though that passion doubtless inflamed
his scruples, and spurred him to more vehement action, it is
certainly not fair to ascribe to it the origin of his intentions.
The truth seems to be, that he married Catharine in the first
instance, from what were supposed to be at the time sufficient
and satisfactory political reasons, but were afterwards discovered
to be the very reverse; that he had never any feelings towards
her stronger than calm and moderate regard; that the discovery
of the probable ill consequences of the marriage, combined
with the decay of her beauty, the increase of her years,
and certain diseases to which she was liable, awoke his scruples,
and perhaps excited some aversion to her person; and that to
these was added the last grain needed to turn the balance
against the queen, the violent and sudden passion created on
first sight of the beautiful Anne Boleyn.
The marriage of Henry with the queen had been consummated,
only in consequence of dispensation from the Pope; and,
in order to abrogate it, on the ground that it was incestuous
and therefore null and void, a papal bull was necessary; and
to this end, Clement, the ruling pontiff, was piled with seduetions
and cajoleries by Henry through his minister, the famous
Wolsey, while Charles the First, King of Spain and Emperor of
Germany, menaced him no less violently, in order to prevent a
divorce against his aunt, on grounds so disgraceful.
For a time, Clement appears to have wavered, and been in
truth inclined to the cause of Henry, and accordingly Cardinal
Campeggio was sent legate to England, and a commission
question in all its particulars.
They accordingly commenced their proceedings, by citing
the king and queen, both of whom presented themselves in
court, the former answering to his name; Catharine, however,
instead of answering, cast herself at the feet of the king, and
uttered a harangue of the most pathetic and affecting, and at
the same time of the most dignified and impressive character,
which should have moved to the strongest sympathy and even
doubt, if not to conviction, any hearts less obdurate than those
of Henry and the cardinals; after this, denying the jurisdiction
of the court, with a low reverence to the king, she departed
from the hall, and never would return to it. She was declared,
therefore, contumacious, and the legate proceeded to try the
case; Henry declaring on her withdrawal, that he had never
found cause to doubt her probity and honor, but that, on the
contrary, she had ever been a dutiful, affectionate, and virtuous
wife; and that his only scruples were those concerning the
legality of his espousals; from the charge of encouraging these
scruples, he, moreover, acquitted Cardinal Wolsey.
For some time, all things appeared to progress in the manner
most consonant to the King's wishes; but at the moment
when Henry was confidently looking for a sentence in his
favor, Campeggio prorogued the court on pretences wholly
frivolous, until the first of October, and returned to Rome,
when it was understood that he had burned the decretal bull
which had been intrusted to him.
At this time, or a little earlier, Anne Boleyn makes her
appearance on the court stage, having recently returned from
the court of France, a young lady of high birth—being descended
in the female line from the great houses of Norfolk,
Ormond, and Hasting—of excellent accomplishments, and most
fine picture of Holbein, which was recently in the collection at
Hampton Court, the palace of the great cardinal with whose
downfall Anne's rise was consentaneous. This was the period,
to use the beautiful words of an English poet,
And gospel-light first dawned from Boleyn's eyes;
concerned, however might have been passion, in this question.
His passion for Anne, therefore, hourly increasing, and her
virtues and modesty depriving him of all hopes otherwise than
through an honorable marriage, added to this, the discovery of
Clement's tergiversation and politic evasions being enforced upon
him by the evocation from Rome, he resolved to have recourse
to other methods than the papal court for the procurement of
a divorce; and, as a preliminary to these, he resolved on the
destruction of his former prized and most trusted minister
Wolsey. For above three years, the struggles of Henry to
obtain a divorce had now endured, and with their close he
regarded Wolsey in the most unfavorable light, though it was
probable that the cardinal had in truth served him to the best
of his ability. Anne, too, was hostile to him from a conviction
that he would oppose her marriage, and his ruin was decreed,
and no sooner decreed than consummated. He was dismissed
from all his offices. York Place, afterwards the royal palace
at Whitehall, his town residence, was confiscated to the royal
use, and all his rich furniture, plate, and personal property.
At times, indeed, half capriciously, the king would appear to
relent towards his ancient favorite, but in the end he was abandoned
to the hatred of his enemies, was arrested on a charge
of high treason, and it is probable escaped a death on the scaffold
his way from the North to stand his trial. His last words
were these—a memorable lesson to all those who put their trust
in princes—“Had I but served God as diligently as I served
the king, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs!”
He died, truly a great, but alas! not a wise man, nor good.
Rest his ashes! Ambition was the ignis fatuus which toled
him from his path, as since his time it has toled many a better
man, and will, it may be, on earth for ever.
In the meantime, having obtained opinions from all the French
and English, and several of the most distinguished of the Italian
universities, in his favor, as well as the advice of the English
bishops; having strengthened himself by an alliance, offensive
and defensive, with Francis the First of France; and being assured
of the support of his parliament, which at that period was a
mere tool of oppression in the king's right hand, by which he
invariably executed his most odious crimes and cruelties, he resolved
to withdraw his obedience from the court of Rome, and
privately celebrated his marriage with Anne Boleyn, whom he
had previously created Marchioness of Pembroke.
It now became necessary that the marriage should be declared,
in order to save the new queen's honor; accordingly he
avowed it publicly, and proceeded—rather late in the course of
things, one would say—to have the invalidity of his marriage
with Catharine declared.
Up to this period, Henry had treated Catharine with all distinction
and even regard, visiting her frequently and endeavoring
to persuade her to cease her opposition to his divorce; now,
however, finding her inflexible, he ceased to visit her, and allowed
her to choose any of his palaces which she would for her
abode. Ampthill, near Dunstable, was her choice, and in Dunstable
she was cited to show cause, before the court of Cranmer,
favor, why a divorce should not be pronounced against her.
Refusing to appear or plead, she was again declared “contumacious,”
and her marriage was annulled as invalid and unlawful.
A subsequent sentence ratified Henry's marriage with Anne
Boleyn; and that princess being shortly after brought to bed
of a daughter, Elizabeth, that mighty and man-hearted woman,
who afterwards swayed the sceptre with such puissance and renown,
Mary, Princess of Wales, was declared illegitimate, as
the issue of an unlawful marriage, and the daughter of Anne
created Princess of Wales in her stead.
From this period, for some time, Anne Boleyn's felicity was
the theme of every tongue; her ascendency over the king,
whose passion for her, it seems, increased rather than flagged
on possession, grew daily; and so anxious was Henry to efface
every trace of his former marriage, that he announced to the
unhappy Catharine that she was to be styled, thenceforth, only
the Princess Dowager of Wales, and endeavored by compulsory
measures, and menaces against her servants, to make her
acquiesce in that determination. For once, however, his iron
will was vanquished, for so long as she lived she admitted no
one to her presence, but with the wonted ceremonial; nor could
any threats deter her servants from waiting on her according to
her title and pretensions.
She died of a lingering illness, in her fiftieth year, at Kimbolton,
in Huntingdonshire, having written a little while before
her death a most tender and touching epistle to the king, styling
him her “most dear Lord and Husband;” recommending
to him his daughter, Mary, the sole pledge of their loves; and
craving his protection for her maids and servants, coneluding
with the words, “I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you
above all things.” Henry, it is said, was moved to tears, on
but it is also stated, though the narrator, Burnet, is a historian
of more prejudice and passion than veracity, that Queen Anne
rejoiced inhumanly and indecently at the demise of her rival.
I would fain disbelieve this; for the general conduct of Anne
Boleyn was ever gracious, gentle, mirthful, and compassionate.
Sprightly and light-hearted, and leaning perhaps too much to
a levity of manners which French usages sanctioned, but of
unspotted character, of a forgiving, generous, and caressing disposition,
loved in her life and regretted at her death, Anne Boleyn
had scarce the character that could exult over the cold
ashes of a rival—a rival whom she had vanquished in the tenderest
points, and mediately deprived of happiness, of dignity,
and, at the last, of life.
Thus Catharine departed; born to high fortunes and advanced
to higher, which she supported with equanimity and
adorned with majesty and virtue; doomed to calamity and
ruin, which she endured with magnanimity and patience; happier
in her decease than most of her successors, as she was
certainly superior to them all in elevation of character, in dignity
of demeanor, in the decencies of public, and the virtues of
domestic, life. As a queen she was good, as a private woman
great. Happy they who can so support prosperity, and surmount
adversity—of a truth, she proved herself, and that right
royally, equal to either fortune.
From the moment of Henry's union with Anne Boleyn, the
date of which we have outstripped a little, in the desire of completing
the sad tale of the fate of Catharine uninterrupted, his
whole character was strangely altered for the worse; and from
a rash, impulsive, passionate, and headstrong prince, violent in
his will, impatient of opposition, and selfish in the extreme, he
now became a barbarous, bloodthirsty tyrant; second, if second,
he imitated almost to the letter—upon romanists and protestants
alike, whosoever the first opposed his will.
This king had no religious principle in view in alienating
England from the dominion—temporal first, and then spiritual—
of the Bishop of Rome; but as his lust of beauty first tempted
him to resist Clement, so his lust of power and avarice of gold
led him to the suppression of the monasteries, the confiscation
of the church lands, and the appropriation to himself of all the
privileges and puissance of the Pope.
During six years, the king's struggles with the Council of
Rome had continued; and during these, above three of which
had been spent in a married state with Anne, his affections for
her constantly increased; nor is it wonderful that it should
have done so, for she was a creature of the rarest beauty—tall,
slender, and of perfect symmetry, with a skin of snow; large,
soft blue eyes, and dark auburn tresses; nor were her accomplishments
less remarkable than her personal charms.
Yet he had now triumphed over Rome; had violently grasped
all that he coveted of church property; had been disappointed
by the birth of a dead son; and last, not least, had seen and
loved Jane, daughter of Sir John Seymour—a young lady, lovely
as the day, and possessing, in addition to her charms, in which
she at least rivalled Queen Anne, the advantages of youth and
novelty. From that moment, Henry seems not only to have
ceased to love, but actually to have hated, Anne Boleyn; for,
in this odious and inhuman voluptuary, there were two singular
characteristics—first, that licentious as he was, furious in his
passion, and unrestrained in his will by any considerations
human or divine, he appears rarely or never to have had recourse
to gallantry or intrigue, or to have contemplated the possibility
of gratifying his passions except by marriage—and second,
a furious hatred, which could be satisfied only by the blood of
the once loved object.
Those only of his victim wives whom he had never loved, he
never hated; and therefore suffered to live on in sorrowful, dishonored
widowhood.
In his new passion for Jane Seymour, he was now set
on the death of Anne; and with him a resolution, once
adopted, tarried not long time short of its fulfilment. Whom
tyrants thirst to destroy, courtiers are soon found to accuse;
and the king having affected violent jealousy on the casual
dropping of the queen's handkerchief during a tournament
at Greenwich, charges of infidelity were preferred against
her; and she was cast into the tower, protesting her innocence
with tears and invocations on the Supreme witness of
all human hearts.
For her, in her utmost need, who had ever interceded for all
sufferers, consoled all sorrowers, gratified all petitions during
her prosperous hours, there was found no intercessor, no consoler,
no petitioner. Her own uncle, Norfolk, preferring the
ties of religious partisanship to those of blood, became her most
embittered enemy; and Cranmer alone, vainly for her, and in
the end fatally for himself, strove to divert Henry from his brutal
purpose. She was brought to trial before a jury of peers; and,
with her own brother, Lord Rochford—whose wife, a woman of
infamous character of whom we shall hear more anon, was convicted
of adultery and high treason—without one shadow of
evidence, all spectators present pronouncing her wholly innocent,
was sentenced to be burned alive or beheaded at the king's
pleasure. Thereupon, turning her hands and eyes to heaven,
“O Father!” she cried; “O Creator! who art the way, the
truth, and the life, thou knowest that I have not deserved this
innocence.
But innocence itself was powerless; and, Henry being determined
not only to destroy this lovely and virtuous being,
who had slept so softly in his bosom, but also to illegitimatize
her issue, she was induced, by terrors of the extreme sentence
of the stake, to admit that, in consequence of her prior attachment
to the Lord Piercy, a lawful impediment existed to her
marriage with the king; whereupon, most reluctantly, the
primate who presided, was compelled to declare the marriage
null, and Elizabeth illegitimate—a compliance with the tyrant's
will, which availed not in after days to save his own body from
the flames of persecution.
Reconducted to the Tower, she sent her last message to the
king, commending her daughter to his care, and again protesting
her innocence; to the directors of the Tower she almost
jested on her approaching fate; continued to the end
serene and tranquil; and, submitting herself resignedly to the
hands of the executioner of Calais, who had been imported as
more skilful than any in England, died at a single blow, which,
in her own words, sent her—it can scarce be doubted—“to be
a saint in heaven.”
On the morrow of her execution, Henry espoused Jane Seymour,
unable in the rage of his passion to give so much of delay
as even decency required, to the memory of one whom
his cruel and remorseless heart had once doubtless loved as well
as it was capable of loving anything.
Hoping, on the death of Anne Boleyn, to regain perhaps
her legitimacy, the Lady Mary now sought to be reconciled
with Henry; and, at length, after renouncing the hope, and
owning her own mother's marriage unlawful, she was in some
sort received into favor; but not for that would the old, inconsistent
grace with the new queen—a lady of sweet disposition and excellent
virtue—who sorrowed for the fate of the rival she had
unwillingly supplanted, and treated her orphan child with tenderness
almost maternal.
During the short ascendency of sweet Jane Seymour, the
king's temper was either softened by her charms, and gentle,
loving disposition, or diverted from his wonted cruelties by two
dangerous insurrections in the North, for no burnings or beheadings
sully the brief space of her pre-eminence over his affections.
But she died—as the ancients were wont to say “whom the
gods love, die”—young; nor survived Henry's short-lived love,
to endure his indifference or incur the doom which ever followed
his hatred. Within a year of her marriage, and two
days after the birth of her son Edward—created, when not yet
six days old, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, and Earl of
Chester—Jane Seymour passed into a better world; the best
perhaps, the most beautiful, and certainly the happiest, not least
so in the hour of her death, of Henry's queens. Yet though
he loved her, his joy for the birth of an heir wiped away his
grief for the death of a wife, almost before a tear was shed;
and it does not appear that her memory dwelt so much as an
hour in his cruel and callous heart.
As hitherto the king's marriages had been dictated by passion
and the preference for beauty, which he called affection,
his next was to be founded on political motives; and, after deliberating
long between the niece of the emperor, and the relatives
of Francis, he at length decided on marrying Ann of
Cleves, whose picture he had seen and admired, and by whose
hand he hoped to secure the support of the German princes,
in case of war arising with the catholic powers, who threatened
Pope.
In this union he was disappointed, and, at first sight of the
princess, who was in truth a coarse, overgrown, ill-natured woman,
without grace or accomplishments, and speaking no language
but Dutch, he conceived the most violent aversion to her,
swore that she was a “Great Flanders mare,” and that he
could never bear her the least affection.
He continued, however, for some time to treat her with civility;
and even affected still to place confidence in Cromwell,
who had advised the match; although he had probably already
determined on his ruin, as he had previously on that of Wolsey,
when he suspected him of opposing his divorce from Catharine.
A new flame, however, soon possessed him; for he saw, and
determined on raising to his throne, the exquisitely beautiful
Catharine Howard, niece of the Duke of Norfolk, Cromwell's
most deadly enemy, who used the influence of the lovely but
profligate girl to ruin the good minister, even as Anne Boleyn
had been used for the destruction of his great predecessor.
A bill of attainder was immediately issued against Cromwell,
and one of divorce against the queen. The former resulted in
the speedy execution of the minister; the latter in the no less
speedy abrogation of Anne's marriage, on the plea of her previous
contract with the Duke of Lorraine, added to Henry's
assertion that he had not given his inward consent to the union.
Anne, who was of an indifferent temper, exhibited no displeasure;
accepted of the king's adoption as his sister, of precedence
next to the king and his own daughters, with an annuity
of three thousand pounds; and having on these terms assented
to the divorce, lived and died in England, without manifesting
any signs of pride, except in refusing to return to her own
country after that affront.
Immediately thereafter, his marriage was consummated with
Catharine Howard; and so delighted was he with the charms
of her person, her voluptuous temperament, and her consummate
conversational powers and address, that he actually caused
thanks to be returned to heaven in his private chapel for the
felicity the conjugal state afforded him.
Hourly, however, did his cruelty and rage increase. Smithfield
continually glowed with the funereal pyre of victims, sentenced
to the flames without trial. To deny any articles of the
catholic faith was even more fatal to the protestants than to
assert the pope's supremacy to catholics. The stake and the
faggot for the former; for the latter the scaffold and the axe.
So that a foreigner, then in London, writing to a friend, asserted,
that “those in England who were against the Pope were burned,
and those who were for him were hanged.” Nor were the political
sufferers less numerous, though more noble than they
who fell for their faith; among the former was the venerable
Countess of Salisbury, the last of the great line of Plantagenet,
who refused to lay her head on the block, or submit, untried
of her peers, to an unjust sentence. She ran, to the last,
frantically about the scaffold, tossing her grey, dishevelled locks,
pursued by the executioner with his gory axe, slashing at her
neck with ineffective blows, till at length she was hewn down,
and decapitated. The last of a great royal line, she died bravely
and royally.
This marriage of Henry's—great as had been his gratification
in the early period of his intimacy with the youthful,
beautiful, and artful Kate, and vast as had been her influence
upon his mind, almost even tending towards a counter-revolution
in religious matters—was to produce to him, almost ere
its first year was ended, some of those evils and exactions which
his alliance had invariably worked on others.
Tidings were brought to Cranmer of anti-connubial dissoluteness
so enormous, of girlish infamy so hideous and disgusting
on the part of the queen—with almost undoubted proofs of infidelity
to the king—that he knew not what to do, seeing that
to conceal, or reveal it, seemed almost dangerous. On advising,
however, with the Chancellor and the Earl of Hertford, he disclosed
his information to the king, who, though he at first utterly
disbelieved it, and loudly expressed his disbelief, was soon
forced to give full credit to the proofs which poured in upon
him from every side. Her infamy, almost from her cradle upwards,
was incredible and unconcealed. The king, the old,
bloodthirsty, brutal tyrant, so deeply was his pride affected, remained
a long time speechless, and then—was it for the first
time since boyhood?—burst into tears of agony and fury uncontrollable.
She died, as she deserved to die, on the scaffold;
and her death, like her life, was bold, impudent, and shameless.
With her, perished under the axe the assistant and companion of
her crimes, the bad Lady Rochford, whose polluted evidence
had been held good against Anne Boleyn and her own husband,
the brother of her regal victim. And it is recorded, that men
were now more convinced than ever of Anne's innocence, by
this shameful catastrophe of the chief witness against her.
With her died, also, Manhoe, Derham, and Colepepper, manifestly
convicts of the crime; but many persons of high birth,
unjustly attained for misprision of treason in concealing the
criminality of their kinswoman, among whom was the old
Duchess of Norfolk, her grandmother, Lord William Howard,
her uncle, and his wife, the Countess of Bridgewater, and nine
others, were pardoned by the king, most unapt for pardon;
which may be held full evidence that their sentence was not
unjust only, but too flagrant for enforcement.
Henceforth, as if this injury to his pride had acted as the
him to fresh fury and carnage, he literally battened on the blood
of the good, the noble, and the great. Neither church could
now shield its professors from the stake, the scaffold, or the gallows;
no age or reverence of virtue, no tenderness of sex or
years, no gallantry or service of manhood could excite pity.
The realm was a-blaze with man-consuming hecatombs, afloat
with noble blood. Never before, never since, were there such
times in England. Never again may there be such.
Yet not even this affront could restrain Henry's amorous propensities;
and, in the year 1542, within two years (long space
for him to tarry) after that infamous discovery, he married
Catharine Parr, widow of the Earl of Neville, a woman no
longer in the flower of youth, nor beauteous; but virtuous, and
winning in her ways, and gifted with a shrewd tact to divine
and anticipate the humors, and thence to anticipate the wishes,
and avoid the anger of her tyrant.
Twice, in despite of all her caution, she was all but entangled
in the toils which had been destructive to her. Once, when
beautiful, brave Anne Ascue suffered herself to be dislocated on
the rack, so that she could not stand at the stake, but was burned
sitting in a chair, rather than implicate her queen in opinions
which both held in common, touching the real presence;
and again when, betrayed by the ardor and excitement of conversation,
she contended too eagerly in argument in behalf of
the reformed doctrines, against Henry himself, who, it must be
remembered, was no reformer, nor protestant, but as strong a
catholic as any; save that he wished himself to be both pope
and king, and to concentrate under one office and one title the
emoluments and powers of the two dignities.
The cleverness and womanly tact with which she extricated
herself from that dilemma, by flattering Henry's love of power
give us a high opinion of her talent and self-conduct, whatever
it may do of her sincerity. In such a case, however, sincerity
had been suicidal; and under such circumstances, if under any,
to be insincere may be palliated, if not pardoned.
Suffice it, that she regained the confidence of the old, bloated,
peevish tyrant's mind; heard him reproach the chancellor, who
came with forty pursuivants to arrest her, as a “knave, fool,
and beast;” and retained her hold upon his regard to the last,
in spite of the ill offices of Gardiner, and others of her enemies
and his sycophants.
But the end was now near at hand; for after within a few
days' time having executed the Earl of Surrey, the most accomplished
nobleman of the day, the patron of letters, the lover
of the fair Geraldine—at once, like the prince of Denmark, the
courtier, scholar, soldier—and condemned the father of his last
victim, Norfolk, to the axe, he died in the fifty-sixth year of his
age, and the thirty-eighth of his reign, the worst man and
worst king that ever sat upon an English, perhaps upon an
European throne, since the establishment of modern Europe.
He left a will, bequeathing the crown, first to Prince Edward,
then to the two princesses, in the line of seniority; thereafter,
failing issue, to the Marchioness of Dorset, the elder, and the
Countess of Cumberland, the younger daughter of his second
sister, the French queen; overlooking the posterity of his eldest
sister, the Queen of Scots, on account, it is probable, of her
religion—a will which bequeathed two reigns of bloodshed, and
anarchy or tyranny to England; the evil effects of which were
counteracted only by the iron will and manly wisdom of the
greatest, if not the best, of English queens—his own lion-hearted
daughter, by his first and most innocent victim—Elizabeth,
who to the energy, the courage, the spirit, and same touch
and all the truthfulness, though none of the sweetness, of her
mother, Anne Boleyn.
Verily! to look on these things, and others that occurred
then, and thereafter, even the Christian might be apt to say,
“Even on this earth there is retribution;” and to believe, with
Æschylus of old, that bloodshed begetteth bloodshed, and that,
of ancestral crime, crime is the offspring, unto the latest generation.
| Persons and pictures from the histories of France and England | |