[Sidenote: The laity only see their way clearly.]

[Sidenote: Unwisdom of the Protestant bishops.]

In this great transaction, it is well to observe that the laity alone saw their way clearly. The majority of the bishops, writhing under the inhibitions, looked on in sullen acquiescence, submitting in a forced conformity, and believing, not without cause, that a tide which flowed so hotly would before long turn and ebb back again. Among the Reforming clergy there was neither union nor prudence; and the Protestants, in the sudden sunshine, were becoming unmanageable and extravagant. On the bench there were but four prelates who were on the moving side,—Cranmer, Latimer, Shaxton, and Barlow,[528]—and among these Cranmer only approved the policy of the government. Shaxton was an arrogant braggart, and Barlow a feeble enthusiast. Shaxton, who had flinched from the stake when Bilney was burnt, Shaxton, who subsequently relapsed under Mary, and became himself a Romanist persecutor, was now strutting in his new authority, and punishing, suspending, and inhibiting in behalf of Protestant doctrines which were not yet tolerated by the law.[529] Barlow had been openly preaching that purgatory was a delusion; that a layman might be a bishop; that where two or three, it might be, "cobblers or weavers," "were in company in the name of God, there was the church of God."[530] Such ill-judged precipitancy was of darker omen to the Reformation than papal excommunications or imperial menaces, and would soon be dearly paid for in fresh martyr-fires. Latimer, too, notwithstanding his clear perception and gallant heart, looked with bitterness on the confiscation of establishments which his mind had pictured to him as garrisoned with a Reforming army, as nurseries of apostles of the truth. Like most fiery-natured men, he was ill-pleased to see the stream flowing in a channel other than that which he had marked for it; and the state of his feeling, and the state of the English world, with all its confused imaginings, in these months, is described with some distinctness in a letter written by a London curate to the Mayor of Plymouth, on the 13th of March, 1535-36, while the bill for the suppression of the abbeys was in progress through parliament.

[Sidenote: Letter of a London curate to the Mayor of Plymouth.]

[Sidenote: Vision of the Trinity by Dr. Crewkhorne.]

"Right Worshipful,—On the morrow after that Master Hawkins departed from hence, I, having nothing to do, as an idler went to Lambeth to the bishop's palace, to see what news; and I took a wherry at Paul's Wharf, wherein also was already a doctor named Crewkhorne, which was sent for to come to the Bishop of Canterbury. And he, before the three Bishops of Canterbury, Worcester, and Salisbury, confessed that he was rapt into heaven, where he saw the Trinity sitting in a pall or mantle or cope of blew colour; and from the middle upward they were three bodies, and from the middle downward were they closed all three into one body. And he spake with Our Lady, and she took him by the hand, and bade him serve her as he had done in time past; and bade him preach abroad that she would be honoured at Ipswich and Willesdon as she hath been in old times.

[Sidenote: March 13.]

"On Tuesday in Ember week, the Bishop of Rochester[531] came to Crutched Friars, and inhibited a doctor and three or four more to near confession; and so in Cardmaker and other places. Then the Bishop of London's apparitor came and railed on the other bishops, and said that he, nor no such as he, shall have jurisdiction within his Lord's precincts. Then was the Bishop of London sent for to make answer; but he was sick and might not come. On Friday, the clergy sat on it in Convocation House a long time, and left off till another day; and in the meantime, all men that have taken loss or wrong at his hands, must bring in their bills, and shall have recompence.

[Sidenote: Latimer preaches at Paul's Cross, and is disrespectful to persons in authority.]

"On Sunday last, the Bishop of Worcester preached at Paul's Cross, and he said that bishops, abbots, priors, parsons, canons, resident priests, and all, were strong thieves; yea, dukes, lords, and all. The king, quoth he, made a marvellous good act of parliament, that certain men should sow every of them two acres of hemp; but it were all too little, even if so much more, to hang the thieves that be in England. Bishops, abbots, with such others, should not have so many servants, nor so many dishes; but to go to their first foundation; and keep hospitality to feed the needy people—not jolly fellows, with golden chains and velvet gowns; ne let these not once come into houses of religion for repast. Let them call knave bishop, knave abbot, knave prior, yet feed none of them all, nor their horses, nor their dogs. Also, to eat flesh and white meat in Lent, so it be done without hurting weak consciences, and without sedition; and likewise on Fridays and all days.

[Sidenote: What Cranmer will do with the unpreaching friars.]

"The Bishop of Canterbury saith that the King's Grace is at full point for friars and chauntry priests, that they shall away all, saving them that can preach. Then one said to the bishop, that they had good trust that they should serve forth their life-times; and he said they should serve it out at a cart, then, for any other service they should have by that."

The concluding paragraph of this letter is of still greater interest. It refers to the famous Vagrant Act, of which I have spoken in the first chapter of this work.[532]

[Sidenote: The Vagrant Act the first fruits of the suppression.]

"On Saturday in the Ember week, the King's Grace came in among the burgesses of the parliament, and delivered them a bill, and bade them look upon it, and weigh it in conscience; for he would not, he said, have them pass either it or any other thing because his Grace giveth in the bill; but they to see if it be for the commonweal of his subjects, and have an eye thitherwards; and on Wednesday next he will be there again to hear their minds. There shall be a proviso made for the poor people. The gaols shall be rid; the faulty shall die; and the others shall be rid by proclamation or by jury, and shall be set at liberty, and pay no fees. Sturdy beggars and such prisoners as cannot be set at work, shall be set at work at the king's charge; some at Dover, and some at places where the water hath broken over the lands. Then, if they fall to idleness, the idler shall be had before a justice of the peace, and his fault written. If he be taken idle again in another place, he shall be known where his dwelling is; and so at the second mention he shall be burned in the hand; and if he fail the third time, he shall die for it."[533]

[Sidenote: The penal clauses of this statute.]

The king, as it appeared, had now the means at his disposal to find work for the unemployed; and the lands bequeathed for the benefit of the poor were reapplied, under altered forms, to their real intention. The antithesis which we sometimes hear between the charity of the monasteries—which relieved poverty for the love of God—and the worldly harshness of a poor-law, will not endure inspection. The monasteries, which had been the support of "valiant beggary," had long before transferred to the nation the maintenance of the impotent and the deserving; and the resumption of an abused trust was no more than the natural consequence of their dishonesty. I have already discussed[534] the penal clauses of this act, and I need not enter again upon that much-questioned subject. Never, however, at any period, were the labouring classes in England more generously protected than in the reign of Henry VIII.; never did any government strain the power of legislation more resolutely in their favour; and, I suppose, they would not themselves object to the reenactment of Henry's penalties against dishonesty, if they might have with them the shelter of Henry's laws.

[Sidenote: Payment of firstfruits remitted to the Universities.]

The session was drawing to an end. At the close of it, the government gave one more proof of their goodwill toward any portion of the church establishment which showed signs of being alive. Duns Scotus being disposed of in Bocardo, the idle residents being driven away, or compelled to employ themselves, and the professors' lectures having recovered their energy, there were hopes of good from Oxford and Cambridge; and the king conceded for them what the pope had never conceded, when the power rested with the See of Rome: he remitted formally by statute the tenths and firstfruits, which the colleges had paid in common with all other church corporations. "His Majesty is conscious," says the act which was passed on this occasion,[535] that the enforcing of the payment of firstfruits against the universities, "may prejudice learning, and cause the students to give their minds to other things, which might not be acceptable to God;" and "he has conceived such hearty love and tender affection to the continuance of honest and virtuous living, and of the arts and sciences (wherewith it hath pleased Almighty God abundantly to endow his Highness), as that his Grace cannot compare the same to any law, constitution, or statute; nor tolerate any such ordinance, though the commodity and benefit thereof should never so much redound to his own profit or pleasure, if it may hinder the advancement and setting forth of the lively word of God, wherewith his people must be fed; or if it may imperil the knowledge of such other good letters as in Christian realms is expedient to be learned. He has therefore,—(for that the students should the more gladly bend their wits to the attaining of learning, and, before all things, the learning of the wholesome doctrines of Almighty God, and the three tongues, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, which be requisite for the understanding of Scripture,)—thought it convenient" to exonerate the universities from the payment of firstfruits for ever.

[Sidenote: April 4. Dissolution of the parliament, and summary of its labours.]

So closed the first great parliament of the Reformation, which was now dissolved. The Lower House is known to us only as an abstraction. The debates are lost; and the details of its proceedings are visible only in faint transient gleams. We have an epitome of two sessions in the Lords' Journals; but even this partial assistance fails us with the Commons; and the Lords in this matter were a body of secondary moment. The Lords had ceased to be the leaders of the English people; they existed as an ornament rather than a power; and under the direction of the council they followed as the stream drew them, when individually, if they had so dared, they would have chosen a far other course. The work was done by the Commons; by them the first move was made; by them and the king the campaign was carried through to victory. And this one body of men, dim as they now seem to us, who assembled on the wreck of the administration of Wolsey, had commenced and had concluded a revolution which had reversed the foundations of the State. They found England in dependency upon a foreign power; they left it a free nation. They found it under the despotism of a church establishment saturated with disease; and they had bound the hands of that establishment; they had laid it down under the knife, and carved away its putrid members; and stripping off its Nessus robe of splendour and power, they had awakened in it some forced remembrance of its higher calling. The elements of a far deeper change were seething; a change, not in the disposition of outward authority, but in the beliefs and convictions which touched the life of the soul. This was yet to come; and the work so far was but the initial step or prelude leading up to the more solemn struggle. Yet where the enemy who is to be conquered is strong, not in vital force, but in the prestige of authority, and in the enchanted defences of superstition, those truly win the battle who strike the first blow, who deprive the idol of its terrors by daring to defy it.

NOTES:

[480] The English archbishops were embarrassed by the statutes of provisors in applying for plenary powers to Rome. If they accepted commissions they accepted them at their peril, and were compelled to caution in their manner of proceeding.

[481] 27 Hen. VIII. cap. 28. The statute says that many visitations had been made in the two hundred years preceding the Reformation, but had failed wholly of success.

[482] To enter "religion" was the technical expression for taking the vows.

[483] A summary of the condition of the Religious Houses, in the Cotton Library, Cleopatra, E 4; MS. Letters of the Visitors, in the same collection; three volumes of the correspondence of Richard Layton with Cromwell, in the State Paper Office; and the reports of the Visitations of 1489 and 1511, in the Registers of Archbishops Morton and Warham. For printed authorities, see Suppression of the Monasteries, published by the Camden Society; Strype's Memorials, Vol. I., Appendix; Fuller's Ecclesiastical History; and Wilkins's Concilia, Vol. III.

[484] At Tewkesbury, where there was an abbot and thirty-two monks, I find payment made to a hundred and forty-four servants in livery, who were wholly engaged in the service of the abbey.—Particulars relating to the Dissolution of the Monasteries, section 5: Burnet's Collectanea, p. 86.

[485] See the Directions to the Visitors: Burnet's Collectanea, p, 74.

[486] See, for instance, Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 86.

[487] "In a parliament held at Leicester, in 1414, the priories alien in England were given to the king; all their possessions to remain to the king and to his heirs for ever. And these priories were suppressed, to the number of more than a hundred houses."—Stow's Chronicle, p. 345.

[488] The commission is in Morton's Register, MS., Lambeth Library.

[489] Morton's Register, MS., Lambeth.

[490] Warham's Register, MS., Lambeth.

[491] Ibid.

[492] See Injunctions to the Clergy: Foxe, Vol. V. p. 165.

[493] Burnet's Collectanea, p. 74.

[494] Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials, Vol. I., Appendix, p. 214.

[495] Legh to Cromwell, Sept. 24th: Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials, Vol. I., Appendix, p. 216.—Cotton. MS. Cleopatra, E 4, fol. 225.

[496] 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 13.

[497] Ibid.

[498] That is, the exhibitioners sent up to the university from the monasteries.

[499] Strype, Memorials, Vol. I. p. 323. Leyton to Cromwell: Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 71, et seq.

[500] Id quod meis oculis vidi, Leyton writes: Ibid.

[501] Leyton to Cromwell: Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 71, et seq.

[502] Leyton to Cromwell: Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 48. Let it not be thought that the papal party were worse than the other. The second confessor, if anything the more profligate of the two, gave his services to the king.

[503] The prior is an holy man, and hath but six children; and but one daughter married yet of the goods of the monastery. His sons be tall men, waiting upon him.—Leyton to Cromwell: Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 58.

[504] I leave this passage as it stands. The acquittal of the papal courts of actual complicity becomes, however, increasingly difficult to me. I discovered among the MSS. in the Rolls House a list of eighteen clergy and laymen in one diocese who had, or professed to have dispensations to keep concubines.—Note to Second Edition.

[505] Leyton to Cromwell: Suppression of the Monasteries, pp. 75, 76.

[506] Leyton to Cromwell: Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 91.

[507] Leyton and Legh to Cromwell: Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 100.

[508] Christopher Levyns to Cromwell: Ibid. p. 90. But in this instance I doubt the truth of the charge.

[509] Sir Piers Dutton to the Lord Chancellor: Ellis, third series. Vol. III. p. 42.

[510] Legh to Cromwell: Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 82. The last words are curious, as implying that Cromwell, who is always supposed to have urged upon the king the dissolution of the abbeys and the marriage of the clergy, at this time inclined the other way.

[511] Richard Beerley to Cromwell: Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 132.

[512] These rules must be remembered. The impossibility of enforcing obedience to them was the cause of the ultimate resolution to break up the system.

[513] At one time fairs and markets were held in churchyards.—Stat. Wynton., 13 Ed. I. cap. 6.

[514] A General Injunctions to be given on the King's Highness's behalf, in all Monasteries and other houses of whatsoever order or religion they be: Burnet's Collectanea, p. 77.

[515] 27 & 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 24

[516] Ibid. cap. 20.

[517] Ibid. cap. 9.

[518] Strype's Memorials, Vol. I. p. 387; Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 114.

[519] When their enormities were first read in the parliament house, they were so great and abominable that there was nothing but "Down with them!"—Latimer's Sermons, p. 123.

[520] 27 Hen. VIII. cap. 28.

[521] Many letters from country gentlemen to this effect are in the collection made by Sir Henry Ellis.

[522] Latimer at first even objected to monks leaving their profession. Speaking of racking Scripture, he says, "I myself have been one of them that hath racked it; and the text, 'He that putteth his hand to the plough and looketh back,' I have believed and expounded against religious persons that would forsake their order, and would go out of their cloyster."—Sermons, p. 60. We find him entreating Cromwell to prevent the suppression of Great Malvern, and begging that it may be allowed to remain,—"Not in monkery, but any other ways as should seem good to the King's Majesty, as to maintain teaching, preaching, study, with praying and good housekeeping."—Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 149. Late in his life, under Edw. VI., he alluded bitterly to the decay of education, and the misuse of the appropriated abbey lands.—Sermons, p. 291.

[523] "This is my consideration; for having experience, both in times past and also in our days, how the sect of prebendaries have not only spent their time in much idleness, and their substance in superfluous belly cheer, I think it not to be a convenient state or degree to be maintained and established: considering that commonly a prebendary is neither a learner nor teacher, but a good viander."—Cranmer to Cromwell, on the New Foundation at Canterbury: Burnet's Collectanea, p. 498.

[524] 27 Hen. VIII. cap. 28.

[525] Either to be held under the Crown itself for purposes of State, or to be granted out as fiefs among the nobles and gentlemen of England, under such conditions as should secure the discharge of those duties which by the laws were attached to landed tenures.

[526] The monks generally were allowed from four to eight pounds a-year being the income of an ordinary parish priest. The principals in many cases had from seventy to eighty pounds a-year.

[527] Burnet's Collectanea, p. 80.

[528] In the autumn of 1535 Latimer had been made Bishop of Worcester, Shaxton of Salisbury, and Barlow of St. David's.

[529] Strype's Memorials, Vol. I., Appendix, p. 222; Burnet's Collectanea, p. 92.

[530] Strype's Memorials, Vol. I., Appendix, p. 273.

[531] John Hilsey.

[532] 27 Hen. VIII. cap. 25.

[533] Letter of Thomas Dorset to the Mayor of Plymouth: Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 36.

[534] Vol. I. chap. 1.

[535] 27 Hen. VIII. cap. 42.



CHAPTER XI

TRIAL AND DEATH OF ANNE BOLEYN.

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

[Sidenote: Death of Queen Catherine.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Fall of Anne Boleyn.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Early coolness between her and Henry.]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: The probable cause of that coolness.]

[Sidenote: The antecedent probabilities amount to nothing.]

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: May 1. Tournament at Greenwich.]

[Sidenote: The king goes to London.]

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

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

[Sidenote: She declares her innocence.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: And with Sir Francis Weston.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: The postscript of his letter.]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: She persists in maintaining her innocence,]

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Never prince had more loyal wife.]

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

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

[Sidenote: She begs for a fair trial,]

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

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

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

"But if you have already determined of me; and that not only my death, but an infamous slander, must bring you the enjoying of your desired happiness; then I desire of God that he will pardon your great sin therein, and likewise my enemies the instruments thereof; and that He will not call you to a strict account for your unprincely and cruel usage of me, at his general judgment-seat, where both you and myself must shortly appear; and in whose judgment, I doubt not, whatsoever the world may think of me, mine innocence shall be openly known and sufficiently cleared.

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

"My last and only request shall be, that myself may only bear the burden of your Grace's displeasure, and that it may not touch the innocent souls of those poor gentlemen who, as I understand, are likewise in strait imprisonment for my sake. If ever I have found favour in your sight, if ever the name of Anne Boleyn hath been pleasing in your ears, then let me obtain this request; and I will so leave to trouble your Grace any further; with mine earnest prayers to the Trinity, to have your Grace in his good keeping, and to direct you in all your actions. From my doleful prison in the Tower, this 6th of May. Your most loyal and ever faithful wife,

ANNE BOLEYN."[579]

* * * * *

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Her wild words in the Tower.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: The indictment.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The queen and her brother were to be tried on the following Monday. Their crime was not adultery only, but was coloured with the deeper stain of incest. On the Friday, while the other prisoners were at the bar, "Letters patent were addressed to Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, Treasurer and Earl Marshal of England, setting forth that the Lady Anne, Queen of England, and Sir George Boleyn, knight, Lord Rochfort, had been indicted of certain capital crimes; and that the king, considering that justice was a most excellent virtue, and pleasing to the Most Highest; and inasmuch as the office of High Steward of England, whose presence for the administration of the law in this case is required, was vacant, the king therefore appointed the said duke Lord High Steward of England, with full powers to receive the indictments found against Queen Anne and the Lord Rochfort, and calling them before him, for the purpose of hearing and examining them, and compelling them to answer thereto." The duke was to collect also "such and so many lords, peers, and magnates of the kingdom of England, peers of the said Queen Anne and Lord Rochfort, by whom the truth could be better known; and the truth being known, to give judgment according to the laws and customs of England, and to give sentence and judgment, and to direct execution, with the other usual powers."[589] As a certain number only of the peers were summoned, it may be imagined that some fraud was practised in the selection, and that those only were admitted whose subserviency could be relied upon. I will therefore give the names as before.

[Sidenote: List of peers summoned to try the queen and her brother.]

The two English Dukes, of Norfolk and Suffolk.[590] The one English Marquis, of Exeter. The Earls of Arundel, Oxford, Northumberland (the queen's early lover), Westmoreland, Derby, Worcester, Rutland, Sussex, and Huntingdon all the earls in the peerage except four—those of Shrewsbury, Essex, Cumberland, and Wiltshire. Why the first three were omitted I do not know. Lord Wiltshire had already fulfilled his share of the miserable duty; he was not compelled to play the part of Brutus, and condemn, in person, his two children. The remaining peers were the Lords Audeley, De la Ware, Montague, Morley, Dacre, Cobham, Maltravers, Powis, Mounteagle, Clinton, Sandys, Windsor, Wentworth, Burgh, and Mordaunt: twenty-seven in all: men hitherto of unblemished honour—the noblest blood in the realm.

[Sidenote: Monday, May 15. Account of the trial in the Baga de Secretis.]

These noblemen assembled in the Tower on the 15th of May. The queen was brought before them; and the record in the Baga de Secretis relates the proceeding as follows:—

"Before the Lord High Steward at the Tower, Anne, Queen of England, comes in the custody of Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower, and is brought to the bar. Being arraigned of the before-mentioned treasons, she pleads not guilty, and puts herself upon her peers; whereupon the Duke of Suffolk, Marquis of Exeter, and others the before-mentioned earls and barons, peers of the said queen, being charged by the said Lord High Steward to say the truth, and afterwards being examined severally by the Lord High Steward, from the lowest peer to the highest, each of them severally saith that she is guilty.

[Sidenote: The queen is found guilty, and sentenced to be burned or beheaded at the king's pleasure.]

"Judgment—that the queen be taken by the said Constable back to the king's prison within the Tower; and then, as the king shall command, be brought to the green within the said Tower, and there burned or beheaded, as shall please the king."[591]

In such cold lines is the story of this tragedy unrolling itself to its close. The course which it followed, however, was less hard in the actual life; and men's hearts, even in those stern times, could beat with human emotions. The Duke of Norfolk was in tears as he passed sentence.[592] The Earl of Northumberland "was obliged by a sudden illness to leave the court."[593] The sight of the woman whom he had once loved, and to whom he was perhaps married, in that dreadful position, had been more than he could bear; and the remainder of the work of the day went forward without him.

[Sidenote: Lord Rochfort found guilty also.]

The queen withdrew. Her brother took his place at the bar. Like Anne, he declared himself innocent. Like Anne, he was found guilty, and sentenced to die.[594]

We can form no estimate of the evidence; for we do not know what it was. We cannot especially accuse the form of the trial; for it was the form which was always observed. But the fact remains to us, that these twenty-seven peers, who were not ignorant, as we are, but were fully acquainted with the grounds of the prosecution, did deliberately, after hearing the queen's defence, pronounce against her a unanimous verdict. If there was foul play, they had advantages infinitely greater than any to which we can pretend for detecting it. The Boleyns were unpopular, and Anne herself was obnoxious to the imperialists and Catholics; but all parties, Catholic and Protestant alike, united in the sentence.

[Sidenote: The popular interpretation is not credible.]

Looking at the case, then, as it now stands, we have the report for some time current, that the queen was out of favour, and that the king's affection was turned in another direction,—a report, be it observed, which had arisen before the catastrophe, and was not, therefore, an afterthought, or legend; we have also the antecedent improbability, which is very great, that a lady in the queen's position could have been guilty of the offences with which the indictment charges her. We have also the improbability, which is great, that the king, now forty-four years old, who in his earlier years had been distinguished for the absence of those vices in which contemporary princes indulged themselves, in wanton weariness of a woman for whom he had revolutionized the kingdom, and quarrelled with half Christendom, suddenly resolved to murder her; that, instead of resorting to poison, or to the less obtrusive methods of criminality, he invented, and persuaded his council to assist him in inventing, a series of accusations which reflected dishonour on himself, and which involved the gratuitous death of five persons with whom he had no quarrel, who were attached to his court and person. To maintain these accusations, he would have to overawe into an active participation in his crime, judges, juries, peers, the dearest relations of those whom he was destroying, and this with no standing army, no praetorians or janissaries at his back, with no force but the yeomen of the guard, who could be scattered by a rising of the apprentices. He had gone out of his way, moreover, to call a parliament; and the summons had been so hasty that no time was left to control the elections; while again to fail was ruin; and the generation of Englishmen to whom we owe the Reformation were not so wholly lost to all principles of honour, that Henry could have counted beforehand upon success in so desperate a scheme with that absolute certainty without which he would scarcely have risked the experiment. I think that there is some improbability here. Unlikely as it is that queens should disgrace themselves, history contains unfortunately more than one instance that it is not impossible. That queens in that very age were capable of profligacy was proved, but a few years later, by the confessions of Catherine Howard. I believe history will be ransacked vainly to find a parallel for conduct at once so dastardly, so audacious, and so foolishly wicked as that which the popular hypothesis attributes to Henry VIII.

[Sidenote: The facts in favour of the queen.]

[Sidenote: The facts against her.]

This is a fair statement of the probabilities; not, I believe, exaggerated on either side. Turning to the positive facts which are known to us, we have amongst those which make for the queen her own denial of her guilt; her supposed letter to the king, which wears the complexion of innocence; the assertions of three out of the five other persons who were accused, up to the moment of their execution; and the sympathizing story of a Flemish gentleman who believed her innocent, and who says that many other people in England believed the same. On the other side, we have the judicial verdict of more than seventy noblemen and gentlemen,[595] no one of whom had any interest in the deaths of the accused, and some of whom had interests the most tender in their acquittal; we have the assent of the judges who sat on the commission, and who passed sentence, after full opportunities of examination, with all the evidence before their eyes; the partial confession of one of the prisoners, though afterwards withdrawn; and the complete confession of another, maintained till the end, and not withdrawn upon the scaffold. Mr. Hallam must pardon me for saying that this is not a matter in which doubt is unpermitted.

[Sidenote: Wednesday, May 17. The execution of the five gentlemen.]

A brief interval only was allowed between the judgment and the final close. On Wednesday, the 17th, the five gentlemen were taken to execution. Smeton was hanged; the others were beheaded. Smeton and Brereton acknowledged the justice of their sentence. Brereton said that if he had to die a thousand deaths, he deserved them all; and Brereton was the only one of the five whose guilt at the time was doubted.[596] Norris died silent; Weston, with a few general lamentations on the wickedness of his past life. None denied the crime for which they suffered; all but one were considered by the spectators to have confessed. Rochfort had shown some feeling while in the Tower. Kingston on one occasion found him weeping bitterly. The day of the trial he sent a petition to the king, to what effect I do not learn; and on the Tuesday he begged to see Cromwell, having something on his conscience, as he said, which he wished to tell him.[597] His desire, however, does not seem to have been complied with; he spoke sorrowfully on the scaffold of the shame which he had brought upon the gospel, and died with words which appeared to the spectators, if not a confession, yet something very nearly resembling it, "This said lord," wrote a spectator to the court at Brussels, "made a good Catholic address to the people. He said that he had not come there to preach to them, but rather to serve as a mirror and an example. He acknowledged the crimes which he had committed against God, and against the king his sovereign; there was no occasion for him, he said, to repeat the cause for which he was condemned; they would have little pleasure in hearing him tell it. He prayed God, and he prayed the king, to pardon his offences; and all others whom he might have injured he also prayed to forgive him as heartily as he forgave every one. He bade his hearers avoid the vanities of the world, and the flatteries of the court which had brought him to the shameful end which had overtaken him. Had he obeyed the lessons of that gospel which he had so often read, he said he should not have fallen so far; it was worth more to be a good doer than a good reader. Finally, he forgave those who had adjudged him to die, and he desired them to pray God for his soul."[598]