CHAPTER IV.

HENRY VIII. (CONTINUED.)

1535-1538.

Visitation of convents.-Death of queen Catherine.-Trial and execution of queen Anne.-Risings of the peasantry.-Death of queen Jane.-Suppression of the monasteries.-Reginald Pole.

WHEN intelligence of the deaths of More and Fisher reached Rome, the indignation of the pope and cardinals was boundless; and on the 30th of August a "terrible thundering bull," as it is termed by Father Paul, was prepared. By this, if Henry did not retrace his steps, he and all his abettors were cited to appear at Rome within ninety days, under pain of excommunication; he was to be dethroned, his subjects released from their allegiance, his kingdom placed under interdict; the issue of Anne was declared illegitimate; all commerce with foreign states was forbidden, and all treaties with them annulled; the clergy were ordered to depart the kingdom, the nobility to take arms against their king! Such is the spirit of popery; it fosters rebellion, it commands bloodshed and carnage, sooner than yield even one of its impious pretensions. Henry took due precautions to prevent the bull from getting into his dominions; he drew more closely the bonds of alliance with France, and he entered into relations with the German Protestants*, whose leading divines he invited over to England. The vacant dioceses of Salisbury, Worcester, St. Asaph, Hereford, and Rochester, were respectively conferred on Shaxton, Latimer, Barlow, Fox the almoner, and Hilsey, superior of the Black Friars in London,-all professors of the new opinions.

The monks and friars, who saw their own ruin in the new state of things, were strongly opposed to the separa

They were so named from having “protested" against the decree of the Diet at Spire, in 1529, forbidding innovation in religion.

tion from Rome, and both secretly and openly excited the people against the changes. The suppression of at least a large number of their convents,-a measure of which Wolsey, with the pope's permission, had already given the example,―was resolved on. The king, as head of the church, appointed Cromwell his vicar-general for the visitation of the religious corporations, with power to nominate his deputies; and in October the visitors, armed with most ample inquisitorial powers, set out on their mission. They found, as was to be expected, feuds and factions and disorders of every kind, and in several the grossest immorality, lewdness and debauchery, while pious frauds and false relics beguiled the credulity of the people. At the same time, many, especially the larger abbeys, were quite free from all gross irregularities. Some, terrified by a consciousness of guilt, made a voluntary surrender of their revenues; that of Langden, whose superior the visitor had, we are told, caught in bed with a young woman, setting the example. In all the convents of both sexes the inmates under the age of four-and-twenty were set at liberty, if they desired it, of which permission many victims of avarice and family pride took advantage; for here, as wherever monachism prevails, the younger children of a family were compelled to take the vows, in order that the fortune of the eldest son might not be diminished. The report of the visitors was soon after published, and the crimes of the religious were exposed, with no doubt some exaggeration*; a feeling was thus excited against them, and when parliament met (Feb. 1536) an act was passed

* "Criminibus religiosorum partim detectis partim confictis," says Sanders with more impartiality than one might have expected.

It is probable that the nunneries were much purer than the convents of the other sex. Yet even they were not immaculate. The following curious passage occurs in one of Henry's letters to Anne Boleyn, written probably in 1528 (Hearn's Avesbury, p. 357.): "As touching the matter of Wilton, my lord cardinal hath had the nuns before him and examined them, Mr. Bell being present, which hath certified me that for a truth that she hath confessed herself (which we would have had abbess), to have had two children by two

1535.]

DEATH OF QUEEN CATHERINE.

35

for suppressing all monasteries possessing less than 2007. a year, and giving their property and estates to the king. The number suppressed was three hundred and seventysix; their annual income was 32,000l., and their property was valued at 100,000l. The universities also were visited, and the course of study in them was changed.

On the 8th of January, 1536, queen Catherine breathed her last at Kimbolton, in Huntingdonshire, in the fiftieth year of her age. A little before her death she dictated a letter to the king, styling him " her most dear lord, king and husband," advising him to attend to his spiritual concerns, assuring him of her forgiveness, commending their daughter to his care, and making a few trifling requests. She thus concluded: "Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes have desired you above all things." Henry was

moved even to tears with this last proof of the affection of one whom he once had loved, and whom he had never ceased to esteem. He gave orders that her funeral should be suited to her birth, but he would not permit her to be buried, as she desired, in a convent of the Observants : the ashes of the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabel repose at Peterborough. Her character remains the object of respect to all parties as that of an upright, pious and virtuous matron, with the single drawback, in the estimation of the unprejudiced, that she persisted to her death in the assertion of a falsehood.

It could not be expected that queen Anne should feel much grief at the death of one whom she must have regarded as a rival, but she might have abstained from an

sundry priests, and furder since hath been kept by a servant of the lord Broke that was, and that not long ago."

Still however we think that the following description of nunneries quoted by Hallam (Mid. Ages, iii.) from Clemangis, a French theologian of the fifteenth century, would not apply to those of England :-"Quid aliud sunt hoc tempore puellarum monasteria nisi quædam, non dico Dei sanctuaria, sed Veneris execranda prostibula, sed lascivorum et impudicorum juvenum ad libidines explendas receptacula? ut idem sit hodie puellam velare quod et publice ad scortandum exponere."

indecent expression of joy*. How short-sighted are mortals! She probably deemed her state now secure, yet she was standing on the brink of the precipice over which she was to be ere long precipitated.

On the 29th of January Anne was delivered of a stillborn male child, for which misfortune Henry is said to have reproached her brutally. She had in fact lost his capricious affections, which, as in her own case, had been transferred to one of her attendants, Jane, the daughter of sir John Seymour; and as it was a peculiarity in the character of this tyrant to marry instead of trying to seduce the women to whom he took a fancy, he was now on the look-out for a pretext to divorce his queen. Anne, who was aware of his passion for her maid, had reproached him with it on more than one occasion. The king's desire to frame a plausible charge against her was well known at court; the sprightliness of the queen's temper bordered on levity, some little matters which resulted from it were reported to him with exaggeration, and by him greedily received. A commission was issued (Apr. 25) to several noblemen and judges, among whom was her own father, to investigate the affair. On May-day there was a tiltingmatch at Greenwich before the king and queen, in which her brother lord Rochfort, and Norris groom of the stole, were principal actors. In the midst of it something occurred which disturbed the king+; he rose abruptly, quitted the gallery, and set out with a few attendants for Westminster. The queen also rose and retired to her apartments, where she remained in great anxiety. Next day she entered her barge and was proceeding to Westminster; on the river she was met by her uncle the duke of Norfolk, and some other lords of the council, and con

"Anne Boleyn wore yellow for the mourning of Catherine of Aragon." (Halle, Sanders.)

+ The story of her dropping her handkerchief, and Norris taking it up and wiping his face with it, is told by Sanders, and is probably one of his lies. Lingard quotes it without naming his authority.

1536.]

TRIAL OF QUEEN ANNE.

37

ducted to the Tower on a charge of adultery and treason. She asserted her innocence in the strongest terms. At the gate of that fatal fortress she fell on her knees and said, "O Lord, help me, as I am guiltless of this whereof I am accused!" When the lords were gone, she said to the lieutenant, "Mr. Kingston, shall I go into a dungeon?" "No, madam," said he, "you shall go into your lodging that you lay in at your coronation." "It is too good for me," she replied; "Jesu, have mercy on me!" and she knelt down and wept, and then burst into laughter, the usual effect of hysterics, for such appears to have been the effect of her sudden misfortunes on her frame. Her aunt lady Boleyn, and Mrs. Cousins, with both of whom she was on ill terms, lay in the room with her, with directions to draw her into discourse and to report all that she said.

Cranmer had been directed by the king to come to Lambeth, but not to approach the court. His constitutional timidity did not prevent him from making an effort for his lovely and unhappy patroness, and on the 6th he wrote a persuasive letter to Henry. On that same day Anne herself wrote to her hard-hearted lord that beautiful letter which is still extant, every line of which breathes the consciousness of innocence and the purity of virtue*; but justice or mercy had now no room in the heart of Henry.

At the same time with the queen were arrested her brother lord Rochfort, and Norris, with sir Francis Weston and William Brereton, gentlemen of the privy chamber, and Mark Smeaton, a musician, who had been made a groom of the chamber for his musical talents. On the 10th an indictment was found by the grand jury at Westminster against the queen and them for high treason, as by a forced interpretation of the statute 25 Edw. III. the adultery with which they were all charged was made out

* Lingard denies the genuineness of this letter. Has he read or does he despise the arguments of Mackintosh (ii. 194. 364.) in its favour?