Studies from Court and Cloister Part 3

After desiring her to accept favourably Henry's message, which, he says, much concerns the wealth of her son and her own repute, the cardinal urges her brother's hope that the "undeceivable spirit of G.o.d, which moved him to send to her, will effectually work." Amid the cares of his government he has never forgotten her, and he hopes she will turn to G.o.d's word, "the vyvely doctrine of Jesus Christ, the only ground of salvation" (1 Cor. 3). He reminds her of the divine ordinance of inseparable matrimony, first inst.i.tuted in Paradise, and hopes her Grace will perceive how she was seduced by flatterers to an unlawful divorce from "the right n.o.ble Earl of Angus," etc., upon untrue and insufficient grounds. Furthermore, "the shameless sentence sent from Rome" plainly showed how unlawfully it was handled, judgment being given against a party neither present in person nor by proxy. He urges her further, for the weal of her soul, and to avoid the inevitable d.a.m.nation threatened against "advoutrers," to reconcile herself with Angus as her true husband, or out of mere natural affection for her daughter, whose excellent beauty and pleasant behaviour, nothing less G.o.dly than goodly, furnished with virtuous and womanly demeanour, should soften her heart. That she should be reputed baseborn cannot be avoided, except the queen will relinquish the "advoutrous" company with him that is not, nor may not be, of right her husband.*

* Calig. B 6, 194.

The individual here mentioned was Harry Stuart, with whom Margaret had contracted a secret marriage, having by dint of perjury and a tissue of lies, obtained a declaration of invalidity against her union with Angus. She does not appear to have been in the least affected by Henry's hypocritical reasoning, but the manner in which her son received the news of her third marriage caused her some inconvenience.

In his displeasure, James sent Lord Erskine to besiege his mother and her new husband in Stirling Castle; but what promised to be a tragedy had a somewhat ridiculous end, for Margaret, in terror of what might follow, at once gave up her husband, who after a short imprisonment was allowed to escape. He promptly rejoined the queen, and James subsequently forgave him, and created him Lord Methven.

But not even when her son had come to his own did Margaret cease to plot and intrigue. Henry's suspicious character imperatively demanded that all that was going on in Scotland should be known without delay at the English court, and his sister was the only possible agent for the purpose. It does not appear that her treachery, now doubly odious, ever cost her the least qualm. The climax was, however, reached, when after persuading James to confide to her his private instructions to the Scottish amba.s.sador residing in London, she contrived that the information thus obtained should be in Henry's hands at the same moment that it reached its legitimate destination.

Fortunately for the affairs of Scotland, the treasonable correspondence was discovered; and Margaret narrowly escaped imprisonment. The immediate result was to put an end to the more friendly intercourse that had sprung up between the two countries, and to prevent a meeting between the two sovereigns, in process of negotiation.

At this interview, which was to have taken place at York, Henry hoped to convert his nephew to his own views regarding the Pope; and in order to pave the way to, a good understanding between them, he sent Barlow and Holcroft to Scotland with a lengthy doc.u.ment containing, with much fulsome flattery of James, all Henry's choice vocabulary of epithets hurled against the "Bishop of Rome."*

* Hamilton Papers--Instructions to Barlow and Holcroft, 3rd Oct. 1535, fol. 27.

Margaret, ignorant that her son had discovered her treachery, continued to urge him to proceed to York; but her eagerness only roused his suspicions that worse treason lay behind.

"The Queen, your Grace's sister," wrote Lord William Howard to Henry, "because she hath so earnestly solicited in the cause of meeting, is in high displeasure with the King, her son, he bearing her in hand that she received gifts of your Highness to betray him, with many other unkind and suspicious words."*

*State Papers, iv. 46; R.O.

Enough has been already seen of Margaret's methods to make it quite clear what her next step would be. Out of favour with James, she of course threw the whole brunt of her misfortune on Henry, for whose sake she had incurred so much danger and expense, having lived for the last six months at court for the sole purpose of advancing his affairs.* But Henry was beginning to weary of his sister's complaints and appeals for money. Besides, James would in future guard his secrets better, and Margaret almost cease to be useful as a spy. So she must not expect him to disburse notable sums, merely because she is his sister, and must henceforth learn to be content with the entirely sufficient provision made for her on her marriage with the King of Scots.**

* Add. MS. 32, 616, f. 87; B.M.

** State Papers, v. 56; R.O.

This was all the consolation he could afford her for some time to come, for besides his other reasons for disregarding the letters which she, nothing daunted by his silence, continued to send him, Henry was too much occupied with his own concerns to bestow much thought on a sister whose power of helping him was now small. It was the moment of Anne Boleyn's fall, and he was engrossed with the list of crimes of which he was about to accuse the unhappy woman.

On the subject of Margaret's various marriages, her brother had ever failed to manifest that sympathy which a similarity of tastes would seem to justify. He had a.s.sumed the tone of a moralist on her separation from Angus, and had treated Lord Methven in his letters with scant respect, and when in the course of time she began to be weary of her new spouse, and to complain of him with increasing bitterness, it was long before Henry could be roused to express any interest in the subject. At last, however, he found a convenient season for attending to her. She had written to inform him that whereas she did Lord Meffen (sic) the honour to take him as her husband, he had spent her lands and profits upon his own kin, and had brought her into debt, to the sum of 8000 marks Scots, and would give her no account of it. She trusted the king her son would treat her to his and her own honour; but if not, she had no refuge but in Henry, and she begged him not to suffer her to be wronged.

To this, Henry deigned to reply that he should be sorry if his good brother and nephew treated her otherwise than a son should treat his mother. As it appeared from certain evidence, she was well-handled, and had grown to much wealth and quiet; but according to other reports, quite the contrary, so that he was in doubt which to believe. "Also,"

he continues, "having heard at other times from you of your evil-treatment by your son and Lord m.u.f.fyn (sic), and as we are sending the bearer into those parts, on our business, we desire you to show him the points wherein you note yourself evil-handled, and whether you desire us to treat of them with your son, or only generally to recommend your condition." *

* State Papers, v. 63, 65.

Margaret had remained faithful to Lord Methven for about ten years, and it was not till 1537 that she thought of formally applying for a divorce, her chief plea being that be wasted her money, although she said she had "forty famous proofs" against him.*

* Hamilton Papers, 13th Oct. 1537, f. 105.

James was furious, and ordered that the divorce, whether obtained at the cost of more false oaths, or whether Margaret's so-called third husband really had a wife living when the union was contracted, should not be proclaimed in Scotland.

This const.i.tuted Margaret's famous grievance against James, his objection to her divorce being, his mother declared, the fear lest she should pa.s.s into England and remarry the Earl of Angus. "And this Harry Stuart, Lord of Methven, causes him to believe this of ME!" she exclaimed contemptuously.* One plea for getting rid of the now despised Harry Stuart is too amusing to be omitted. James was in France, whither he had gone to bring home his bride, the young and beautiful Magdalene, daughter of the French king, and Margaret thought to induce Henry to interest himself in her divorce through his jealousy of the French.

* State Papers, v. 119.

After begging him to send a special messenger to the king her son, to know his "utter mind," she says: "For now, dearest brother, your Grace I trust will consider that now the queen his wife is to come into this realm soon after Easter, as he hath sent word here, to make ready for the same, and that being, it will be great dishonour to him that I, his mother, having a just cause to part, can nought get a final end; and I trust your Grace will consider I may do your Grace and my son more honour to be without him (Lord Methven) than to have him, considering that he is but a sober man, and if the Queen that is to come, see me not entreated as I should be, she will think it an evil example." *

* Hamilton Papers, f. 109.

But all her efforts were fruitless; Henry could not be persuaded to take up her quarrel, and James was obdurate. His mother, however, then in her forty-ninth year, dispensed with legal formality altogether, and allied herself to a certain John Stuart, who, according to some, is identical with the adventurous Earl of Arran, so notorious in the reign of James VI.

A few more miserable years of petty intrigues, it being no longer in her power to carry on important ones, and Margaret came to the close of her faithless, undignified life. But before the end, a ray of sorrow for her mis-spent days brightened the hitherto unrelieved gloom of her career. Henry's messenger, sent after her death to gather up the details of her last moments, and above all, to find out whether she had made a will, wrote to the king as follows:--

"When she did perceive that death did approach, she did desire the friars that was her confessors, that they should sit on their knees before the King, and to beseech him that he would be good and gracious unto the Earl of Angwische, and did extremely lament and ask G.o.d mercy that she had offended unto the said Earl as she had."

The friars were also to plead with her son for the Lady Margaret Douglas, the daughter whom she had so remorselessly abandoned, and to beg him that she might have some of her mother's goods. And thus, making what reparation she could, with penitent words on her lips, Margaret Tudor pa.s.sed away.

II. NOR WIFE NOR WIDOW

The history of the first two marriages of Henry VIII. is of such vital importance, affecting as they did the whole course of religion in England, from the first whisperings of the divorce down to the present day, that it is not to be wondered at if the royal Bluebeard's subsequent matrimonial alliances have been considered negligible quant.i.ties. And yet, at least one of them was of extreme political, and even religious, importance, and was fraught with so much mystery that until the most recent investigations, the true inwardness of the matter has been totally misapprehended. The story of Anne of Cleves' portrait, and Henry's supposed disappointment when he saw the lady herself for the first time, is authentic in so far as it was exactly what the king chose to have circulated about his fourth marriage. But if it contained half the truth, it was the other half that really mattered.

After the fall of Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell had by his astute policy succeeded in bringing about a religious state of things in England that approached very nearly to Lutheranism. Taking advantage of Henry's pique and anger at the Pope's refusal to grant him a divorce from Katharine of Arragon, Cromwell set about widening the breach between England and Rome. After weakening the power of the bishops and lower clergy, he was able to force the oath of supremacy upon the nation, and having thus satisfied his master's pride and vanity, his next step was by the dissolution of the monasteries to pander to Henry's greed, while at the same time he filled his own pockets.

In pursuit of these ends he had covered the land with gibbets, and caused the n.o.blest heads in England to fall upon the block. He had branded the king's own daughter with the stigma of infamy, and to obtain her consent thereto had kept the axe suspended over her. He had been able to accomplish all this because thus far he had taken Henry's measure correctly, working upon his worst pa.s.sions, and suggesting ever fresh means of satisfying them. Then came a point at which his interests and those of the king diverged.

Cromwell was deeply pledged to the Lutheran cause, and his plan was to throw Henry into the arms of the Lutheran princes of Germany. He had already flooded the country with foreign heretics, using them as his tools to protestantise the Church in England.

Jane Seymour died in 1537, and Cromwell at once negotiated a marriage between Henry and Anne, daughter of the Duke of Cleves, Henry consenting for the reason that it behoved him to fortify himself by an alliance that would enable him to make a stand against a possible combination of forces between the Pope, the Emperor, and the French King. But at the very moment when Cromwell, believing himself to be at the point of realising all his desires, was pledging his master to marry Anne of Cleves, a reaction had set in which he so completely disregarded as to seem in utter ignorance of it.

Nothing annoyed Henry more than to be twitted with being a heretic, and whenever Henry was annoyed a blow might be expected. The loathed epithet was now very frequently used in reference to him by the emperor and others, and he was bent on showing Europe that he could be a very good Catholic without the Pope. It irritated him to think that Cromwell had laid him open to retort in this contention by a formal alliance with the Lutherans, who were undeniably heretics. It served his purpose very well to play them off against the emperor and even Francis I., but it was not his will to be bound irrevocably by any contract. When Cromwell thought to put the finis.h.i.+ng touch to his triumphant scheme, he only effected his own doom. He boasted to the Lutherans that he would soon bring England over to their forms of faith, and on this promise the match between Henry and Anne was concluded; but he failed to rouse the German princes to a contest with the emperor, which was all that Henry, apart from his minister's policy, had aimed at from the beginning. With Henry the whole scheme was tentative, and the proposed marriage but a detail of that scheme. When it fell through, he desired to turn his back upon Cleves and the rest of the German princes; moreover, he had no further need of Cromwell himself, who was rather in the way of his new plans, unless the minister could find a means to disentangle the imbroglio he had created with regard to Anne.

Like a child with a new toy, Henry was now engrossed in the fun of being Pope in his own dominions; and as Head of the Church of England whom it behoved to reprobate heresy in every shape and form, he conducted a trial against one John Nicholson, who, refusing to recant his heretical opinions, was burned at Smithfield. After this he felt confident of being as Catholic as the real Pope, and safe from opprobrium. He proceeded to bring forward deliberations in Parliament on the subject of religion, with the result that the famous Act of the Six Articles was pa.s.sed. This Act, nicknamed by the Lutherans "the whip with six cords," brought in a reaction in favour of the old religion, which lasted till Henry's death, but matters between England and Rome remained as they were.

Meanwhile, the lady Anne of Cleves had made her unwelcome appearance.

One of the most curious and indeed incomprehensible facts concerning Henry VIII., is the admiring awe and grovelling grat.i.tude with which he was adored by most of the women whom he had the privilege of ill-treating. After the year 1527, when he first conceived the desire of raising Anne Boleyn to the throne, and of divorcing Katharine, except for the short period during which he was married to Jane Seymour, there were always two rival claimants for his hand. Not only was Katharine ever generously ready to forget past insults if he would graciously extend his clemency towards her, and send Anne away, but every other woman with whom he came in contact, addressed him in words more suited to a divinity than to an earthly king. His daughter Mary, after having been spurned as the most degraded and abject creature of the realm, longed for nothing more ardently than "to attain the fruition of his most desired presence."

Although the personal appearance of Anne of Cleves did not bear out the exaggerated reports of the German agent Mont, who had told Henry that her beauty exceeded that of the d.u.c.h.ess of Milan "as the sun outs.h.i.+nes the silver moon," she was found on her arrival in England to be "tall, bright, and graceful," her liveliness making amends for any defect as to regularity of feature. Comparing her claim to beauty with that of the other wives of Henry VIII., it does not appear that she contrasted unfavourably with any, not even with Katharine Howard, who was very generally admired. The king himself observed to Cromwell that Anne was "well and seemly, and had a queenly manner," but that he found it difficult to converse with her as she knew no word of any language but German.

He had first met her privately at Rochester, and had dined with her, their public meeting taking place about half a mile from the foot of Shooter's Hill, where she rested in a gorgeous pavilion prepared for the occasion. Henry came marching through Greenwich Park with a brilliant escort, and the bride and bridegroom met full merrily. The king embraced the lady ceremoniously, and the chronicler Hall, some time afterwards, in describing their entry into Greenwich, breaks out into one of his eulogistic periods:

"O what a sight was this, to see so goodly a Prince and so n.o.ble a King to ride with so fair a lady, of so goodly a stature, and so womanly a countenance, and in especial of so good qualities. I think no creature could see them but his heart rejoiced!"

Nevertheless, Henry's moody question, "What remedy?" which obviously had its origin in no mere disappointment in the matter of Anne's beauty or power to charm, was calculated to strike terror into Cromwell's soul, the chancellor knowing full well that all this bravery was but an appearance, and that his great scheme of Lutheranising England to the greater glory of himself was irrevocably wrecked, and his own fate sealed. The king went on to say that if it were not that the lady had come so far, and for fear of making a ruffle in the world, and of driving her brother into the emperor's arms and those of the French king, he would not go through with the marriage ceremony.

As a forlorn hope of escape, the bride was asked to make a declaration that she was free from all precontracts, which she did without the least hesitation, and there was nothing to be done but for Henry "to put his head into the yoke," and to make an insignificant political alliance, which would thenceforth serve no political end. As a Catholic king, Head of the Church and Defender of the Faith, there was no room in his plans for a Lutheran queen. However, he no longer regarded the marriage tie as a knot that could not be undone at a pinch. Cranmer could be counted on to be pliable in that matter, and if Cromwell made difficulties, a sword was hanging over him that could be made to fall at any moment, and Henry knew that the death of the man who had been the terror of England for ten years would be hailed with enthusiasm by the whole nation. Henry's foreign policy had always been a non-committal one, and Cromwell's daring intrigues had carried his master further than he intended to go. As the chancellor could find no means of getting him out of the mess, he lost his life, and Anne of Cleves her barely a.s.sumed dignity.

The disgusting letters which Cromwell wrote from the Tower, in the hope that his tardy playing into the king's hands would obtain him a pardon, were of immense use to Henry in confusing the public mind as to the real reason for his repudiation of Anne, for he was anxious in breaking off from Protestant Germany not to turn the Duke of Cleves into an enemy. The want of decency and the unchivalrous sacrifice of Anne's honour and dignity are perhaps not surprising between such men as Henry and Cromwell, but it is startling to find the lady's brother swallowing the insult calmly. Nevertheless, Henry's diplomatic insight had correctly gauged the coa.r.s.ening effect of Luther's moral code on a mind that could see less offence in a stain of this kind than in a frank rupture of the marriage-treaty before Anne had been allowed to set foot in England. There is this, however, to be said, that the possession of the lady gave Henry a decided advantage over her brother.

A few weeks after the marriage, or what pa.s.sed for such, Anne was sent to Richmond on the pretext of being out of reach of the plague, but there was no talk at that time of any plague, and if there had been, Henry would certainly have gone away also, for no one feared the epidemic more than he. On her departure, a commission was appointed under the Great Seal to inquire into the validity of her marriage, and in an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time it was declared null, by reason of a pre-contract with the son of the Duke of Lorraine. Henry then endowed his ex-queen with lands to the value of 4000 pounds annually, with a house at Richmond, and another at Bletchingly.