History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth Volume II Part 44

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 n.o.bles 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 princ.i.p.als 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 const.i.tution; 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 t.i.tle 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 amba.s.sador 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 amba.s.sador 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sailed, the Catholic writers dipped their pens in the stains which blotted her mother's name; and, more careless of truth than even theological pa.s.sion 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 impa.s.sable 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 circ.u.mstances 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.]