Martin A. S. Hume

“ The writers of the time, following the lead of Henry and his courtiers, never mentioned their grief for the Queen without promptly suggesting that it was more than counterbalanced by their joy at the birth of her son, who from his first appearance in the world was hailed as a paragon of beauty and perfection. Thanksgivings for the boon of a male heir to the King blended their sounds of jubilation with the droning of the masses for the [Pg 308] mother’s soul, and the flare of the bonfires died down into the flickering tapers that dimly lit the funerals. ”

“ Unless Aragon could check the French expansion across the Alps its own power in the Mediterranean would be dwarfed, its vast hopes must be abandoned, and it must settle down to the inglorious life of a petty State, hemmed in on all sides by more powerful neighbours. But although too weak to vanquish France alone, a King of Aragon who could dispose of the resources of greater Castile might hope, in spite of French opposition, to dominate a united Italy, and thence look towards the illimitable east. ”

“ I regard Henry himself not as the far-seeing statesman he is so often depicted for us, sternly resolved from the first to free his country from the yoke of Rome, and pressing forward through a lifetime with his eyes firmly fixed upon the goal of England’s religious freedom; but rather as a weak, vain, boastful man, the plaything of his passions, which were artfully made use of by rival parties to forward religious and political ends in the struggle of giants that ended in the Reformation. ”

“ He knew that Katharine, disappointed, glum, and austere, had lost the charm by which women rule men, and the plan, that for many months he had been slowly and stealthily devising, was boldly brought out to light of day. Divorce was easy, and it would finally isolate the Emperor if Katharine were set aside. The Pope would do anything for his liberators: why not dissolve the unfruitful marriage, and give to England a new French consort in the person of either the widowed Margaret Duchess of Alençon, or of Princess Renée? ”

“ Henry might punish her, she said, or even her daughter, “Yet neither for that, nor a thousand deaths, would she consent to damn her soul or that of her husband the King.” [106] The King, beside himself with rage, could do no more than warn Katharine’s household that they must all treat their mistress as Princess of Wales, or suffer the penalty. As for Katharine, no punishment short of death could move her; and Cromwell himself, in admiration at her answer, said that “nature had injured her in not making her a man, for she would have surpassed in fame all the heroes of history.” ”

“ The conquest of Granada, the unification of Spain, the greed, the cruelty, the lying, the treachery, the political marriages of all his children, and the fires of the Inquisition, were all means to the end for which he fought.
But fate was unkind to him. The discovery of America diverted Castilian energy from Aragonese objects, and death stepped in and made grim sport of all his marriage jugglery. Before he died, beaten and broken-hearted, he knew that the little realm of his fathers, instead of using the strength of others for its aims, would itself be used for objects which concerned it not. ”

“ Again Norfolk became alarmed, and a disclosure of the intrigue gave an excuse for Wolsey’s arrest. It was the last blow, and the heart of the proud Cardinal broke on his way south to prison, leaving Henry with no strong councillor but the fair-faced woman with the tight mouth who sat in his wife’s place. She was brave; “as fierce as a lioness,” the Emperor’s ambassador wrote, and would “rather see the Queen hanged than recognise her as her mistress”; but the party behind her was a divided one, and the greatest powers in Europe were united against her. ”

“ Henry and Anne had gone with a great train on a hunting tour through the midlands in July; but only a few days after starting they suddenly returned to London. The quidnuncs whispered that the people on the way had clamoured so loudly that the Queen might be recalled to Court, and had so grossly insulted Anne, that the royal party had been driven back in disgust; and though there was no doubt some ground for the assertion, the real reason for the return was that the interview between Henry and the French king, so long secretly in negotiation, had at last been settled. ”

“ This is not the place to tell how the nobles of Castile found to their dismay that in Ferdinand and Isabel they had raised a King Stork instead of King Log to the throne, and how the Queen, strong as a man, subtle as a woman, crushed and chicaned her realms into order and obedience. The aims of Ferdinand and his father in effecting the union of Aragon and Castile by marriage went far beyond the Peninsula in which they lived. For ages Aragon had found its ambitions checked by the consolidation of France. ”

“ Wolsey was despatched post-haste to greet the imperial visitor and invite him to land; and Charles, surrounded by a gorgeous suite of lords and ladies, with the black eagle of Austria on cloth of gold fluttering over and around him, was conducted to Dover Castle, where before dawn next morning, the 27th May, Henry arrived and welcomed his nephew. There was no mistaking the cordiality of the English cheers that rang in peals from Dover to Canterbury and through the ancient city, as the two monarchs rode side by side in gorgeous array. ”

“ Jane had for some months lived in the strictest quietude, and prayers and masses for her safe delivery were offered in the churches for weeks before. In September she had travelled slowly to Hampton Court, and on the 12th October 1537 a healthy son was born to her and Henry. The joy of the King was great beyond words. The gross sensualist, old beyond his years, had in vain hoped through all his sturdy youth for a boy, who, beyond reproach, might bear his regal name. He had flouted Christendom and defied the greatest powers on earth in order to marry a woman who might bear him a man child. ”

“ Then came the English merchants, the Corporation of London, the knights and gentlemen who had been bidden from the country to do honour to their new Queen, the gentlemen pensioners, the halberdiers, and, around the tent, the nobler courtiers and Queen’s household, all brave in velvet and gold chains. [201] Behind the ranks of gentlemen and servitors there was ample room and verge enough upon the wide heath for the multitudes who came to gape and cheer King Harry’s new wife; more than a little perplexed in many cases as to the minimum amount of enthusiasm which would be accepted as seemly. ”

“ Henry himself, who was always fond of children, was desperately anxious for a son; and when, on New Year’s Day 1511, the looked-for heir was born at Richmond, the King’s unrestrained rejoicing again took his favourite form of sumptuous entertainments, after he had ridden to the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham in Norfolk to give thanks for the favour vouchsafed to him. Once again Westminster glittered with cloth of gold and gems and velvet. ”

“ On the Thursday following the feast was continued at Westminster with greater magnificence than ever. In a splendid tribune extending from Westminster Hall right across what is now Parliament Square sat Katharine with all the royal family and the Court, whilst the citizens crowded the stands on the other side of the great space reserved for the tilters. Invention was exhausted by the greater nobles in the contrivances by which they sought to make their respective entries effective. ”

“ Far from growing weaker, however, Henry’s passion grew as Anne’s virtue became more rigid. She had not always been so austere, for gossip had already been busy with her good name. Percy and Sir Thomas Wyatt had both been her lovers, and with either or both of them she had in some way compromised herself. ”

“ Before the breath was out of Henry VII., Ferdinand’s letters were speeding to London to make all things smooth. There would be no opposition now to Ferdinand’s ratification of his Flemish grandson’s marriage with Henry’s sister Mary. The clever old Aragonese knew there was still plenty of time to stop that later; and certainly young Henry could not interfere in Castile, as his father might have done, on the strength of Mary Tudor’s betrothal. So all went merry as a marriage bell. ”

“ It all sounds very gay, though somewhat silly, as we read the endless catalogues of bedizenment, of tilts and races, feasting, dancing, and music that delighted Henry and his friends; but before Katharine there ever hovered the spectre of her childlessness, and Henry, after the ceremonial gaiety and overdone gallantry to his wife, would too frequently put spurs to his courser and gallop off to New Hall in Essex, where Lady Tailebois lived. ”

“ During her few months of incomplete wedlock with the King, Anne had felt uneasily the strange anomaly of her position. She accompanied Henry in his daily life at bed and board, and shared with him the various festivities held in celebration of the marriage; the last of which was a splendid tournament given by the bachelor courtiers at Durham House on May-day. She had studied English diligently, and tried to please her husband in a hundred well-meant but ungainly ways. She had by her jovial manner and real kindness of heart become very popular with those around her ”

“ Henry, enfeebled as he was by disease and obesity, was determined to turn to his personal glory the victory he anticipated for his arms. His own courtiers dared not remonstrate with him; and, although Katharine prayed him to have regard for his safety, he brushed aside her remonstrances as becoming womanly fears for a dearly loved husband. Charles knew that if the King himself crossed the Channel the English army would not be at the imperial bidding. Envoys were consequently sent from Flanders to pray Henry, for his health’s sake, not to risk the hardships of a sea voyage and a campaign. ”

“ Nobles, clergy, and people were almost universally on her side: Anne was cordially hated, and had no friends but the few religious reformers who hoped by her means to force the King ever further away from the Papacy; and yet the Queen continued to appeal to Rome and the Emperor, against whom English patriotic feeling might be raised by Anne’s few friends. The unwisdom of thus linking Katharine’s cause with threats of foreign aggression, whilst England itself was favourable to her, was seen when the Nuncio presented to Henry a half-hearted exhortation to take his lawful wife back. ”

“ Ferdinand’s ambition had o’erleaped itself, and the possession of Flanders by the King of Castile had made England’s friendship more than ever necessary thenceforward, for France was opposed to Spain now, not in Italy alone, but on long conterminous frontiers in the north, south, and east as well.
Henry VIII. at the age of eighteen was well fitting to succeed his father. All contemporary observers agree that his grace and personal beauty as a youth were as remarkable as his quickness of intellect and his true Tudor desire to stand well in the eyes of his people. ”

“ In vain Puebla told his master that when once the Princess arrived all England would be at his bidding, assured him of Henry’s good faith, and his own ability as a diplomatist. Ferdinand always found some fresh subject to be wrangled over: the style to be given to the King of England, the number of servants to come in the train of Katharine, Henry desiring that they should be few and Ferdinand many, and one of the demands of the English king was, “that the ladies who came from Spain with the Princess should all be beautiful, or at least none of them should be ugly.” ”

“ Thus the English Catholic reaction that had been symbolised by the repudiation of Anne of Cleves, and the marriage with Katharine Howard, was triumphantly producing the results which Henry and Gardiner had intended. The excommunicated King, the man who had flung aside his proud Spanish wife and bade defiance to the vicegerent of Christ, was to be flattered and sought in alliance by the head of the house of Aragon and the appointed champion of Roman orthodoxy. He was to come back into the fold unrepentant, with no submission or reparation made, a good Catholic, but his own Pope. ”

“ It is true the bishops make oath to your Majesty; but they make another to the Pope immediately afterwards which absolves them from it. Sire, you are but half a king, and we are but half your subjects. Your kingdom is a two-headed monster: will you bear such an anomaly any longer? Frederick and other German princes have cast off the yoke of Rome. Do likewise; become once more king, govern your kingdom in concert with your lords and commons. ”

“ For a wife and locum tenens to write thus in such circumstances to a supremely vain man like Henry, whose martial ambition was still unassuaged, was to invite his jealousy and dislike. His people saw, as he with all his boastfulness cannot fail to have done, that Flodden was the real English victory, not Therouenne, and that Katharine and Surrey, not Henry, were the heroes. ”

“ For a whole week the struggle went on, every device and threat being employed to break down the Queen’s resistance. She was as hard as adamant. All the servants who remained but the Spaniards, who spoke no English, had to swear not to treat her as Queen, and she said she would treat them as gaolers. On the sixth day of Suffolk’s stay at Buckden, pack animals were got ready, and preparations made for removing the establishment to Fotheringay. But they still had to reckon with Katharine. Locking herself in her chamber, she carried on a colloquy with her oppressors through a chink in the wall. ”

“ Norfolk, at the end of his not very extensive mental resources, could only wish that both Katharine and Anne were dead and the King married to some one else. The Pope was ready to do anything that did not offend the Emperor to bring about peace; and when, under pressure from Henry and Norfolk, the English prelates and peers, including Wolsey and Warham, signed a petition to the Pope saying that Henry’s marriage should be dissolved, or they must seek a remedy for themselves in the English Parliament, Clement was almost inclined to give way; for schism in England he dreaded before all things. ”

“ She sat at table in Katharine’s place, and even took precedence of the Duchess of Norfolk and ladies of the highest rank. This was all very well in its way, but it did not satisfy Anne. To be Queen in name as well as in fact was the object for which she was striving, and anything less galled her. The Pope was now hand in glove with the Emperor, and could not afford to waver on Henry’s side, whilst Charles was more determined than ever to prevent the close alliance between England and France that the marriage and a Boleyn predominance seemed to forebode. ”

“ Henry and Cromwell had good reason to fear foreign machinations to their detriment. The Emperor and Francis were in ominous negotiations; for the King of France could not afford to break with the Papacy, the rising of Kildare in Ireland was known to have the sympathy, if not the aid, of Spain, and it was felt throughout Christendom that the Emperor must, sooner or later, give force to the Papal sentence against England to avoid the utter loss of prestige which would follow if the ban of Rome was after all seen to be utterly innocuous. ”

“ He was always the clement, just man whose unsuspecting goodness of heart had been abused by others, and who tried to find distraction and to forget the evil done him. On the very night of the day that Anne was arrested the Duke of Richmond, Henry’s son, now a grown youth, went, as was his custom, into his father’s room at Whitehall to bid him good night and ask his blessing. ”

“ If the question of religious reform had not complicated the situation and Henry had married a Catholic princess of one of the great royal houses, as Wolsey intended, instead of a mere upstart like Anne Boleyn, there would probably have been little difficulty about the divorce from Katharine: and the first hint of the repudiation of a wife who could give the King no heir, for the sake of his marrying another princess who might do so, and at the same time consolidate a new international combination, would doubtless be considered by those who made it as quite an ordinary political move. ”

“ Isabel sought salve for her conscience in this respect by repeating Doña Elvira Manuel’s assurance that Katharine still remained intact; her marriage with Arthur not having been consummated. To lure Henry into an armed alliance against France once more, the old bait of the recovery of Normandy and Guienne was dangled before him. But the King of England played with a firmer hand now. He knew his worth as a balancing factor, his accumulated treasure made him powerful, and he held all the cards in his hand ”

“ The defences of the kingdom on the coast and towards Scotland were rapidly made ready to resist attack from abroad, which indeed looked imminent; and when the noble and conservative party had been sufficiently cowed by the sight of the blood of the highest of its members, when the reign of terror over the land had made all men so dumb and fearsome that none dared say him nay, Cromwell felt himself strong enough to endeavour to draw England into the league of Protestant princes and defy the Catholic world. The position for Henry personally was an extraordinary one. ”