III CHAP in the position she occupied; the King's learned men were learned heretics; the opinions of the A.D. 1533 Universities had been obtained by force and bribery: and, finally, she acknowledged no other judge now than the Pope, to whom she had appealed. Then Arguments the commissioners used all the arguments they could persuade think of,-obedience to the King, her own advan used to her Her last queenly words tage, that of the Princess Mary, threats of public exposure, and taunts of vanity,-to induce her to lay aside the title of Queen: but all their arguments were unavailing, the ill-used lady having one answer to each that she was the King's wife, and that until the Pope made her otherwise she would maintain her right and title. She afterwards desired to see the report which they had prepared to send to the Privy Council, and finding they had written of her as the Princess-Dowager, she dashed out the name wherever it occurred, the marks of her pen being still to be seen on the document." Her last words of righteous anger are recorded in the same document : "I would rather," she said "be a poor beggar's wife, and be sure of heaven, than queen of all the world, and stand in doubt thereof by reason of my own consent. I stick not so for vain glory but because I know myself the king's true wife, and while you call me the king's subject, I was his subject while he took me for his wife. But if he take me not for his wife, I came not into this realm for merchandize, nor to be married to any merchant; nor do I continue in the same but as his lawful wife, and not as a subject to live under his dominion otherwise. I have always demeaned myself well and truly towards the king-and if it can proved that either in writing to the pope or any other, I have either stirred or procured 9 It is in the British Museum Library: Cotton. MS. Otho. x. p. 199, and is printed in the State Papers. See i. 397 and 402. III A.D. 1533 anything against his Grace, or have been the means to any CHAP person to make any motion which might be prejudicial to his Grace or to his realm, I am content to suffer for it. I have done England little good, and I should be sorry to do it any harm. But if I should agree to your motions and persuasions, I should slander myself, and confess to have been the king's harlot these twenty-four years. The cause, I cannot tell by what subtle means, has been determined here within the king's realms, before a man of his making, the Bishop of Canterbury, no person indifferent I think in that behalf; and for the indifference of the place, I think the place had been more indifferent to have been judged in hell; for no truth can be suffered here whereas the devils themselves I suppose do tremble to see the truth in this cause so sore oppressed." of Queen This pathetic and womanly speech may be regarded Character as marking the close of Queen Catherine's public Catherine career: a dignified close, consistent with the public life of one over whom neither truth nor slander ever cast the shadow of a personal or political crime. She was a true king's wife; never stepping beyond the boundaries of her position to influence her husband, yet always maintaining the dignity of his crown. Her virtues have been universally allowed, even by those partisan writers who have been unable to see the living force and truth of her piety. There are few English wives who will not consider that the latter years of her life were such as almost to entitle her to the rank of a confessor; and few English gentlemen who will not remember with pain and shame the treatment which she received.1 It is due to the memory of the great Lord Mountjoy, who was thus so painfully mixed up with the Queen's sufferings, to add that he resented the indignities thrust upon her almost as keenly as she did herself. There is on record a N most manly and honourable letter CHAP leyn's life There is not much to record of the life of Anne Boleyn during the three years which followed the A.D. 1533 fulfilment of her ambition. She appears to have Anne Bo- accepted her position, before marriage and after maras Queen riage, without being pained by any womanly thoughts in respect to herself or to the Queen whom she had supplanted. Her daughter Elizabeth was born on the 7th of September, 1533; and after that she gave no further promise of an heir for more than two years; but she is said to have borne a dead son prematurely in February 1536, very soon after the death of Catherine. During the years of her married life she was not on happy terms with the King, there being great jealousy, apparently well founded, on both sides. In her last letter to the King, written from the Tower, she told him that she had long observed his passion for her maid of honour, Jane Seymour; and in her last conversation with Sir William Kingston she said sufficient to give colour of great probability to the charges of unfaithfulness brought against her by the King. If either ever enjoyed happiness in their intercourse with each other marriage seems to have taken off the edge of the enjoyment on both sides. Death of The health of Queen Catherine gave way finally Catherine in the autumn of 1535. She then removed from Queen III Ampthill to Kimbolton, and in the beginning of CHAP January she wrote her last touching letter to her husband as follows: A. D. 1535-6 her hus "My most dear Lord, King, and Husband, The hour of my Her last death now approaching I cannot choose but, out of the love words to I bear you, advise you of your soul's health, which you ought band 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."* It was not only the same hand, but the same heart as that which had addressed him in her letters as "My Henry," in the happy days of their early married life, twenty years before. She died on January 7, 1536, being fifty-two years of age. Boleyn's mourning The Court went into mourning for her as the Princess-Dowager, and she was buried in the south aisle of the nave of Peterborough Abbey. When Anne the Court dressed in violet, Anne Boleyn dressed in yellow, and this has generally been construed as a refusal to wear mourning. But yellow was the colour for royal mourning at the court of France, and though there may have been something of evasion in her conduct, it must be remembered that the new Queen had worn this colour, and perhaps this only, on previous occasions when she was in the service of the French Queen at the time of the King's 5 Herbert's Henry VIII., p. 188. CHAP death. The King is said to have shed tears—and III not without reason-when he heard of Catherine's A.D. 1536 death. Anne Boleyn's alleged adultery Four months later Anne herself followed Catherine to the grave but there were no tears shed for her, no funereal pomp at her burial, no mourning worn as a tribute of respect to her memory. The King's doubts about her conduct began to reach their climax at the very time when his first and faithful wife departed from her troubles; and his inclination-one can hardly call it affection-towards Jane Seymour was working the same alienation from Anne that had in her own case caused his alienation from Catherine. The Privy Council investigated the evidence of Anne's adultery which was laid before them, and on April 24th an order was issued for a commission (including her father, the Earl of Wiltshire) which was to bring her, and her supposed accomplices-for her loose manners had implicated her with five-to trial. On May 2d she was arrested; on the 11th Her trial she was indicted by the grand jury on five separate demnation charges of adultery (the first occasion named being on the 6th of October, 1533, a month after the birth of Queen Elizabeth), and on the 12th four of her accomplices were found guilty by an ordinary jury. She herself and her brother, Lord Rochford, were tried by twenty-seven peers on the 15th, found guilty, and condemned. The sentence passed upon her was that she should be burned or beheaded, as should please the King: it pleased him that she should be beheaded. Before she died, Anne con and con It is a strange coincidence that she was beheaded according to French custom, and by a French executioner, the headsman of Calais, with a sword instead of an axe, |