The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 (221 page)

The queen herself wrote Henry a letter from the Tower, full of the most tender

expostulations, and of the warmest protestations of innocence.NOTE [J]
This letter had no influence on the unrelenting mind of Henry, who was determined to pave the PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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way for his new marriage by the death of Anne Boleyn. Norris, Weston, Brereton, and Smeton, were tried; but no legal evidence was produced against them. The chief proof of their guilt consisted in a hear-say from one lady Wingfield, who was dead. Smeton was prevailed on, by the vain hopes of life, to confess a criminal correspondence with

the queen;q
but even her enemies expected little advantage from this confession: For they never dared to confront him with her; and he was immediately executed; as were also Brereton and Weston. Norris had been much in the king’s favour; and an offer of life was made him, if he would confess his crime, and accuse the queen: But he generously rejected the proposal; and said, that in his conscience he believed her entirely guiltless: But, for his part, he could accuse her of nothing, and he would rather die a thousand deaths than calumniate an innocent person.

The queen and her brother were tried by a jury of peers,

Her trial: and

consisting of the duke of Suffolk, the marquis of Exeter, the earl execution.

of Arundel, and twenty-three more: Their uncle, the duke of Norfolk, presided as high steward. Upon what proof or pretence the crime of incest was imputed to them is unknown: The chief evidence, it is said, amounted to no more than that Rocheford had been seen to lean on her bed before some company. Part of the charge against her was, that she had affirmed to her minions, that the king never had her heart; and had said to each of them apart, that she loved him better than any person whatsoever:
Which was to the slander of the issue begotten between the king
and her.
By this strained interpretation, her guilt was brought under the statute of the 25th of this reign; in which it was declared criminal to throw any slander upon the king, queen, or their issue. Such palpable absurdities were, at that time, admitted; and they were regarded by the peers of England as a sufficient reason for sacrificing an innocent queen to the cruelty of their tyrant. Though unassisted by counsel, she defended herself with presence of mind; and the spectators could not forbear pronouncing her entirely innocent. Judgment, however, was given by the court, both against the queen and lord Rocheford; and her verdict contained, that she should be burned or beheaded at the king’s pleasure. When this dreadful sentence was pronounced, she was not terrified, but lifting up her hands to heaven, said, “O, Father!

O, Creator! thou who art the way, the truth, and the life, thou knowest that I have not deserved this fate.” And then turning to the judges, made the most pathetic declarations of her innocence.

Henry, not satisfied with this cruel vengeance, was resolved entirely to annul his marriage with Anne Boleyn, and to declare her issue illegitimate: He recalled to his memory, that, a little after her appearance in the English court, some attachment had been acknowledged between her and the earl of Northumberland, then lord Piercy; and he now questioned the nobleman with regard to these engagements.

Northumberland took an oath before the two archbishops, that no contract or promise of marriage had ever passed between them: He received the sacrament upon it, before the duke of Norfolk and others of the privy council; and this solemn act he accompanied with the most solemn protestations of veracity.
r
The queen, however, was shaken by menaces of executing the sentence against her in its greatest rigour, and was prevailed on to confess in court, some lawful impediments to her marriage

with the king.s
The afflicted primate, who sat as judge, thought himself obliged by this confession, to pronounce the marriage null and invalid. Henry, in the transports of PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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his fury, did not perceive that his proceedings were totally inconsistent, and that, if her marriage were, from the beginning, invalid, she could not possibly be guilty of adultery.

The queen now prepared for suffering the death to which she was sentenced. She sent her last message to the king, and acknowledged the obligations which she owed him, in thus uniformly continuing his endeavours for her advancement: From a private gentlewoman, she said, he had first made her a marchioness, then a queen, and now, since he could raise her no higher in this world, he was sending her to be a saint in heaven. She then renewed the protestations of her innocence, and recommended her daughter to his care. Before the lieutenant of the Tower, and all who approached her, she made the like declarations; and continued to behave herself with her usual serenity, and even with chearfulness. “The executioner,” she said to the lieutenant,

“is, I hear, very expert; and my neck is very slender.” Upon which she grasped it in her hand, and smiled. When brought, however, to the scaffold, she softened her tone a little with regard to her protestations of 19th May.

innocence. She probably reflected, that the obstinacy of queen Catherine, and her opposition to the king’s will, had much alienated him from the lady Mary: Her own maternal concern, therefore, for Elizabeth, prevailed in these last moments over that indignation, which the unjust sentence, by which she suffered, naturally excited in her. She said, that she was come to die, as she was sentenced, by the law: She would accuse none, nor say any thing of the ground upon which she was judged. She prayed heartily for the king; called him a most merciful and gentle prince; and acknowledged, that he had always been to her a good and gracious sovereign; and if any one should think proper to canvass her cause, she desired him to judge the best.
t

She was beheaded by the executioner of Calais, who was sent for as more expert than any in England. Her body was negligently thrown into a common chest of elm-tree, made to hold arrows; and was buried in the Tower.

The innocence of this unfortunate queen cannot reasonably be called in question.

Henry himself, in the violence of his rage, knew not whom to accuse as her lover; and though he imputed guilt to her brother, and four persons more, he was able to bring proof against none of them. The whole tenour of her conduct forbids us to ascribe to her an abandoned character, such as is implied in the king’s accusation: Had she been so lost to all prudence and sense of shame, she must have exposed herself to detection, and afforded her enemies some evidence against her. But the king made the most effectual apology for her, by marrying Jane Seymour the very day after her

execution.u
His impatience to gratify this new passion caused him to forget all regard to decency; and his cruel heart was not softened a moment by the bloody catastrophe of a person, who had so long been the object of his most tender affections.

The lady Mary thought the death of her step-mother a proper opportunity for reconciling herself to the king, who, besides other causes of disgust, had been offended with her, on account of the part which she had taken in her mother’s quarrel.

Her advances were not at first received; and Henry exacted from her some farther proofs of submission and obedience: He required this young princess, then about twenty years of age, to adopt his theological tenets; to acknowledge his supremacy; to renounce the pope; and to own her mother’s marriage to be unlawful and incestuous.

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These points were of hard digestion with the princess; but after some delays, and even refusals, she was at last prevailed on to write a letter to her father,
w
containing her assent to the articles required of her: Upon which she was received into favour. But notwithstanding the return of the king’s affection to the issue of his first marriage, he divested not himself of kindness towards the lady Elizabeth; and the new queen, who was blest with a singular sweetness of disposition, discovered strong proofs of attachment towards her.

The trial and conviction of queen Anne, and the subsequent 8th June. A

events, made it necessary for the king to summon a new

parliament.

parliament; and he here, in his speech, made a merit to his people, that, notwithstanding the misfortunes attending his two former marriages, he had been induced, for their good, to venture on a third. The speaker received this profession with suitable gratitude; and he took thence occasion to praise the king for his wonderful gifts of grace and nature: He compared him, for justice and prudence, to Solomon; for strength and fortitude to Sampson; and for beauty and comeliness to Absalom. The king very humbly replied, by the mouth of the chancellor, that he disavowed these praises; since, if he were really possessed of such endowments, they were the gift of Almighty God only. Henry found that the parliament was no less submissive in deeds than complaisant in their expressions, and that they would go the same lengths as the former in gratifying even his most lawless passions. His divorce from Anne Boleyn was ratified;
x
that queen, and all her accomplices, were attainted; the issue of both his former marriages were declared illegitimate, and it was even made treason to assert the legitimacy of either of them; to throw any slander upon the present king, queen, or their issue, was subjected to the same penalty; the crown was settled on the king’s issue by Jane Seymour, or any subsequent wife; and in case he should die without children, he was impowered, by his will or letters patent, to dispose of the crown: An enormous authority, especially when entrusted to a prince so violent and capricious in his humour. Whoever, being required, refused to answer upon oath to any article of this act of settlement, was declared to be guilty of treason, and by this clause a species of political inquisition was established in the kingdom, as well as the accusations of treason multiplied to an unreasonable degree. The king was also empowered to confer on any one, by his will or letters patent, any castles, honours, liberties, or franchises; words which might have been extended to the dismembering of the kingdom, by the erection of principalities and independant jursidictions. It was also, by another act, made treason to marry, without the king’s consent, any princess related in the first degree to the crown. This act was occasioned by the discovery of a design, formed by Thomas Howard, brother of the duke of Norfolk, to espouse the lady Margaret Douglas, niece to the king, by his sister the queen of Scots and the earl of Angus. Howard, as well as the young lady, was committed to the Tower. She recovered her liberty soon after; but he died in confinement. An act of attainder passed against him this session of parliament.

Another accession was likewise gained to the authority of the crown: The king or any of his successors was empowered to repeat or annul, by letters patent, whatever act of parliament had been passed before he was four and twenty years of age. Whoever maintained the authority of the bishop of Rome, by word or writ, or endeavoured in any manner to restore it in England, was subjected to the penalty of a premunire; that PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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is, his goods were forfeited, and he was put out of the protection of law. And any person who possessed any office, ecclesiastical or civil, or received any grant or charter from the crown, and yet refused to renounce the pope by oath, was declared to be guilty of treason. The renunciation prescribed runs in the style of
So help me God,

all saints, and the holy evangelists.y
The pope, hearing of Anne Boleyn’s disgrace and death, had hoped that the door was opened to a reconciliation, and had been making some advances to Henry: But this was the reception he met with. Henry was now become indifferent with regard to papal censures; and finding a great encrease of authority, as well as of revenue, to accrue from his quarrel with Rome, he was determined to persevere in his present measures. This parliament also, even more than any foregoing, convinced him how much he commanded the respect of his subjects, and what confidence he might repose in them. Though the elections had been made on a sudden, without any preparation or intrigue, the members discovered an unlimited attachment to his person and government.
z

The extreme complaisance of the convocation, which sat at the A convocation.

same time with the parliament, encouraged him in his resolution of breaking entirely with the court of Rome. There was secretly a great division of sentiments in the minds of this assembly; and as the zeal of the reformers had been augmented by some late successes, the resentment of the catholics was no less excited by their fears and losses: But the authority of the king kept every one submissive and silent; and the new-assumed prerogative, the supremacy, with whose limits no one was fully acquainted, restrained even the most furious movements of theological rancour. Cromwel presided as vicar-general; and though the catholic party expected, that, on the fall of queen Anne, his authority would receive a great shock, they were surprized to find him still maintain the same credit as before. With the vicar-general concurred Cranmer the primate, Latimer bishop of Worcester, Shaxton of Salisbury, Hilsey of Rochester, Fox of Hereford, Barlow of St. David’s. The opposite faction was headed by Lee archbishop of York, Stokesley bishop of London, Tonstal of Durham, Gardiner of Winchester, Longland of Lincoln, Sherbone of Chichester, Nix of Norwich, and Kite of Carlisle. The former party, by their opposition to the pope, seconded the king’s ambition and love of power: The latter party, by maintaining the ancient theological tenets, were more conformable to his speculative principles: And both of them had alternately the advantage of gaining on his humour, by which he was more governed than by either of these motives.