Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth. Lucy Aikin
was moved to tears on reading the tender and pious letter addressed to him by the dying hand of Catherine; and he marked by several small but expressive acts, the respect, or rather the compunction, with which the recollection of her could not fail to inspire him. Anne Boleyn paid to the memory of the princess-dowager of Wales—such was the title now given to Catherine—the unmeaning compliment of putting on yellow mourning; the color assigned to queens by the fashion of France: but neither humanity nor discretion restrained her from open demonstrations of the satisfaction afforded her by the melancholy event.
Short was her unfeeling triumph. She brought into the world a few days afterwards, a dead son; and this second disappointment of his hopes completed that disgust to his queen which satiety, and perhaps also a growing passion for another object, was already beginning to produce in the mind of the king.
It is traditionally related, that at Jane Seymour's first coming to court, the queen, espying a jewel hung round her neck, wished to look at it; and struck with the young lady's reluctance to submit it to her inspection, snatched it from her with violence, when she found it to contain the king's picture, presented by himself to the wearer. From this day she dated her own decline in the affections of her husband, and the ascendancy of her rival. However this might be, it is certain that the king about this time began to regard the conduct of his once idolized Anne Boleyn with an altered eye. That easy gaiety of manner which he had once remarked with delight, as an indication of the innocence of her heart and the artlessness of her disposition, was now beheld by him as a culpable levity which offended his pride and alarmed his jealousy. His impetuous temper, with which "once to suspect was once to be resolved," disdained to investigate proofs or to fathom motives; a pretext alone was wanting to his rising fury, and this he was not long in finding.
On May-day, then observed at court as a high festival, solemn justs were held at Greenwich, before the king and queen, in which viscount Rochford, the queen's brother, was chief challenger, and Henry Norris principal defender. In the midst of the entertainment, the king suddenly rose and quitted the place in anger; but on what particular provocation is not certainly known. Saunders the Jesuit, the great calumniator of Anne Boleyn, says that it was on seeing his consort drop her handkerchief, which Norris picked up and wiped his face with. The queen immediately retired, and the next day was committed to custody. Her earnest entreaties to be permitted to see the king were disregarded, and she was sent to the Tower on a charge of treason and adultery.
Lord Rochford, Norris, one Smeton a musician, and Brereton and another gentleman of the bed-chamber, were likewise apprehended, and brought to trial on the accusation of criminal intercourse with the queen. They were all convicted; but from the few particulars which have come down to us, it seems to be justly inferred, that the evidence produced against some at least of these unhappy gentlemen, was slight and inconclusive. Lord Rochford is universally believed to have fallen a victim to the atrocious perjuries of his wife, who was very improperly admitted as a witness against him, and whose infamous conduct was afterwards fully brought to light. No absolute criminality appears to have been proved against Weston and Brereton; but Smeton confessed the fact. Norris died much more generously: he protested that he would rather perish a thousand times than accuse an innocent person; that he believed the queen to be perfectly guiltless; he, at least, could accuse her of nothing; and in this declaration he persisted to the last. His expressions, if truly reported, seem to imply that he might have saved himself by criminating the queen: but besides the extreme improbability that the king would have shown or promised any mercy to such a delinquent, we know in fact that the confession of Smeton did not obtain for him even a reprieve: it is therefore absurd to represent Norris as having died in vindication of the honor of the queen; and the favor afterwards shown to his son by Elizabeth, had probably little connexion with any tenderness for the memory of her mother, a sentiment which she certainly exhibited in no other circumstance.
The trial and condemnation of the queen followed. The process was conducted with that open disregard of the first principles of justice and equity then universal in all cases of high treason: no counsel were assigned her, no witnesses confronted with her, and it does not appear that she was even informed of Smeton's confession: but whether, after all, she died innocent, is a problem which there now exist no means of solving, and which it is somewhat foreign from the purpose of this work to discuss.
One part of this subject, however, on account of the intimate relation which it bears to the history of Elizabeth, and the influence which it may be presumed to have exercised in the formation of her character, must be treated somewhat at large.
The common law of England, by an anomaly truly barbarous, denounced, against females only, who should be found guilty of high treason, the punishment of burning. By menaces of putting into execution this horrible sentence, instead of commuting it for decapitation, Anne Boleyn was induced to acknowledge some legal impediment to her marriage with the king; and on this confession alone, Cranmer, with his usual subserviency, gratified his royal master by pronouncing that union null and void, and its offspring illegitimate.
What this impediment, real or pretended, might be, we only learn from a public declaration made immediately afterwards by the earl of Northumberland, stating, that whereas it had been pretended, that a precontract had subsisted between himself and the late queen, he has declared upon oath before the lords of the council, and taken the sacrament upon it, that no such contract had ever passed between them. In explanation of this protest, the noble historian of Henry VIII.1 furnishes us with the following particulars. That the earl of Northumberland, when lord Percy, had made proposals of marriage to Anne Boleyn, which she had accepted, being yet a stranger to the passion of the king; that Henry, unable to bear the idea of losing her, but averse as yet to a declaration of his sentiments, employed Wolsey to dissuade the father of lord Percy from giving his consent to their union, in which he succeeded; the earl of Northumberland probably becoming aware how deeply the personal feelings of the king were concerned: that lord Percy, however, refused to give up the lady, alleging in the first instance that he had gone too far to recede with honor; but was afterwards compelled by his father to form another matrimonial connexion. It should appear by this statement, that some engagement had in fact subsisted between Northumberland and Anne; but there is no necessity for supposing it to have been a contract of that solemn nature which, according to the law as it then stood, would have rendered null the subsequent marriage of either party. The protestation of the earl was confirmed by the most solemn sanctions; which there is no ground for supposing him capable of violating, especially as on this occasion, so far from gaining any advantage by it, he was likely to give high offence to the king. If then, as appears most probable, the confession by which Anne Boleyn disinherited and illegitimatised her daughter was false; a perjury so wicked and cowardly must brand her memory with everlasting infamy:—even should the contrary have been the fact, the transaction does her little honor; in either case it affords ample justification to that daughter in leaving, as she did, her remains without a monument and her conduct without an apology.
The precarious and equivocal condition to which the little Elizabeth was reduced by the divorce and death of her mother, will be best illustrated by the following extracts of a letter addressed soon after the event, by lady Bryan her governess, to lord Cromwel. It may at the same time amuse the modern reader to remark the minute details on which, in that day, the first minister of state was expected to bestow his personal attention.
"…My lord, when your lordship was last here, it pleased you to say, that I should not mistrust the king's grace, nor your lordship. Which word was more comfort to me than I can write, as God knoweth. And now it boldeneth me to show you my poor mind. My lord, when my lady Mary's grace was born, it pleased the king's grace to [appoint] me lady mistress, and made me a baroness. And so I have been to the children his grace have had since.
"Now, so it is, my lady Elizabeth is put from that degree she was afore; and what degree she is at now, I know not but by hearsay. Therefore I know not how to order her, nor myself, nor none of hers that I have the rule of; that is, her women and her grooms. Beseeching you to be good lord to my lady and to all hers; and that she may have some rayment. For she hath neither gown, nor kirtle, nor petticoat, nor no manner of linen, nor foresmocks, nor kerchiefs, nor sleeves, nor rails, nor body-stitchets, nor mufflers, nor biggins. All these, her grace's mostake2,
Lord Herbert of Chirbury.
This is a word which I am utterly unable to explain; but it is thus printed in Strype's "Memorials," whence the letter is copied.