426 THE KING AND HIS BRIDE. [1540. Southampton to come to supper with her, "and to bring some noble folks with me to sit with her, after the manner of her country. I showed her it was not the usage of our country so to do, and therefore besought her grace to pardon me of that, for I durst not consent thereunto." But again and again the princess repeated her request" for this one night;"-for "she was much desirous to see the manner and fashion of Englishmen sitting at their meat.” And so Anne of Cleves supped graciously with Southampton and eight other Englishmen. The earl begs for pardon if he had done amiss. Henry was perhaps not in the best humour at her freedom when he first met her, and was "marvellously astonished and abashed." Hans Holbein had been a flatterer. The king embraced her, but scarcely spoke twenty words, and did not offer the present he had prepared for her.* Sir Anthony Brown, the master of the horse, had gone before the king, and " was never so much dismayed in his life to see the lady so far unlike what was reported." + In the last month of his life, Cromwell was commanded by his master, on the peril of his soul, to write truly what he knew concerning the marriage with the princess of Cleves. What is fit to be repeated of this document is of curious interest. Anne was to be at Rochester on New Year's eve; and Henry declared to Cromwell that he would visit her privily, " to nourish love." The next day, at Greenwich, says Cromwell, "I demanded of your majesty, How ye liked the Lady Anne: your highness answered, as me thought, heavily, and not pleasantly-Nothing so well as she was spoken of; saying further, That if your highness had known as much before as ye then knew, she should not have come within this realm; saying, as by the way of lamentation, What remedy?" After Anne's public entry at Greenwich, the king called a Council; and the agents of the duke of Cleves were questioned about covenants, and touching a pre-contract of marriage with the duke of Lorraine's son and the princess. The deputies offered to remain prisoners till ample satisfaction was given upon both points. But when Cromwell informed the king of all the circumstances, "your grace," he says, "was very much displeased, saying, 'I am not well handled '-adding, 'If it were not that she is come so far into my realm, and the great preparations that my states and people have made for her; and for fear of making a ruffle in the world, that is to mean, to drive her brother into the hands of the emperor and the French king's hands,-being now together, I would never have married her.'" Anne was called upon to make a protestation that there was no pre-contract; which she readily made; and which Cromwell reported to Henry: "Whereunto your grace answered in effect these words, or much like, Is there none other remedy, but that I must needs, against my will, put my neck in the yoke ?'" There was no instant remedy; and the marriage ceremony was gone through. The king, whilst waiting for the bride in the presence chamber, said to Cromwell, "My lord, if it were not to satisfy the world and my realm, I would not do that I must do this day, for Modern history has its parallel scene. When George, prince of Wales, first met Caroline of Brunswick, lord Malmesbury says, "he embraced her, said barely one word, turned round, retired to a distant part of the apartment, and calling me to him said, 'Harris, I am not well; pray get me a glass of brandy.""-Malmesbury's Diaries, &c., vol. iii., p. 210. Strype," Ecclesiastical Memorials." Cromwell's Letter in Burnet, vol. i., p. 193. The same letter is given by Sir H. Ellis, with considerable variations. The original in the Cotton Library is much injured by fire. 1540.] THE MARRIAGE DECLARED INVALID. 427 none earthly thing." In this temper Henry sulked and lamented: he "should surely never have any more children for the comfort of this realm" if this marriage should continue. A second experiment of the Calais executioner's sword might have been dangerous with a foreign princess. There was a "remedy," of a less serious nature. Anne of Cleves made no resistance to a separation, with an adequate provision. She was a woman of judgment, and no doubt heartily despised the fastidious sensualist. A Convocation was called, exactly six months after the marriage, which was empowered to determine its validity. On the 4th of July Henry wrote to Pate, his ambassador at the emperor's court, to inform Charles that the Lords and Commons, "perceiving some doubts to be in our last marriage with the daughter of Cleves," and wishing "to draw a most perfect certainty of succession," had requested him to commit the examination of the marriage to the bishops and clergy of the realm. The cunning politician adds, that the ambassador was on no account to explain what were the "grounds and causes of this motion."* On the 10th of July the marriage was declared invalid; the chief pretence being a doubtful pre-contract; and the unblushing argument, "that the king having married her against his will, he had not given a pure inward and complete consent."+ Cromwell had gone to the block; and "Cranmer, whether overcome with these arguments, or rather with fear, for he knew it was contrived to send him quickly after Cromwell, consented with the rest." + Cromwell had gone to the block. On the 17th of April, 1540, the fortune of Cromwell seemed at its culminating point, for he was created earl of Essex. On the 12th of April a parliament had been assembled, which Cromwell had addressed as the king's vicegerent, and had declared that "there was nothing which the king so much desired as a firm union amongst all his subjects. The rashness and licentiousness of some, and the inveterate superstition and stiffness of others in the ancient corruptions, had raised great distinctions, to the sad regret of all good Christians. Some were called papists; others heretics; which bitterness of spirit seemed the more strange, since now the Holy Scriptures, by the king's great care of his people, were in all their hands in a language which they understood."§ In this parliament he carried a bill for a great subsidy to be raised upon the laity and the clergy. The promises that the necessities of the state should be provided for out of the spoil of the church, were violated without the slightest apology. The odium of this taxation was solely laid upon Cromwell. exorbitant demand "gained him an universal hatred amongst the people, and was one reason of his sudden fall after it." || The minister's work was done. He had carried through a great revolution with comparative success. He had impartially racked, beheaded, and gibbeted papist and heretic. His loose papers of "Remembrances " show that he kept as careful memoranda of business to be done, as the most careful scrivener. Take a few specimens The "Item, to remember all the jewels of all the monasteries in England, and specially for the cross at Paul's, of emeralds. * State Papers, vol. viii., p. 374. Ibid., p. 281. § Burnet, and Parliamentary History. Burnet, vol. i., p. 280. Lord Herbert. 428 FALL OF CROMWELL. [1540. "Item, the Abbot of Reading to be sent down to be tried and executed at Reading with his complices. "Item, the Abbot of Glaston to be tried at Glaston, and also to be executed there, with his complices. "Item, to see that the evidence be well sorted, and the evidence well drawn, against the said abbots and their complices. "Item, to remember specially the Lady of Sar [Salisbury]. "Item, what the king will have done with the Lady of Sarum. "Item, to send Gendon to the Tower to be racked. "Item, to appoint preachers to go throughout this realm to preach the gospel and true word of God."* Well might Cromwell, in his adversity, write to Henry, "I have meddled in so many matters under your highness, that I am not able to answer them all; but one thing I am well assured of, that wittingly and willingly I have not had will to offend your highness; but hard it is for me or any other, meddling as I have done, to live under your grace and your laws but we must daily offend." The sky began to grow dark for Cromwell, at the very instant when parliament was to be prorogued, after the subsidy had been carried. On the 9th of May, a letter comes from the king to his "right trusty and well-beloved cousin "-in which the sign manual was affixed by a stamp-most probably as a mark of displeasure. The old familiar words are no longer written; but "our pleasure and commandment is, that forthwith, and upon the receipt of these our letters, setting all other affairs apart, ye do repair unto Us, for the treaty of such great and weighty matters, as whereupon doth consist the surety of our person, the preservation of our honour, and the tranquillity and quietness of you, and all other our loving and faithful subjects." On the 10th of June, he was arrested by the duke of Norfolk, while at the council table. The divorce of Anne of Cleves had not yet been mooted. Had Cromwell imprudently pressed upon Henry to cleave to a Protestant queen? Had Norfolk as resolutely urged upon his master, who now hated heretics more than papists, to consider the charms of his niece, Catherine Howard, who would support him in resisting the "rashness and licentiousness" that had come upon the land? There is no solution of these questions, beyond the fact that Cromwell was attainted for treason and heresy, by act of parliament, on the 29th of June. He was charged to have been "the most corrupt traitor and deceiver of the king and the crown that had ever been known in his whole reign." It was alleged that "he, being also a heretic, had dispersed many erroneous books among the king's subjects, particularly some that were contrary to the belief of the sacrament; that when some complained to him of the new preachers-such as Barnes and others-he said that their preaching was good; and "that if the king would turn from it, yet he would not turn. And if the king did turn, and all his people with him, he would fight in the field in his own person, with his sword in his hand against him, and all others." Whatever crimes may be laid to the charge of Cromwell, no one can believe that he was the foolish braggart which these words imply. That he was an oppressor; that he received bribes; that he had made a great estate for himself by extortion, were no doubt true. Some of the public plunder * See the curious extracts from the Cotton MS. in Ellis, Second Series, vol. ii. p. 120. "and 1540.] HIS ATTAINDER. 429 stuck to his fingers. He made as free with the lands and moneys of the king's subjects, as he did with the wooden house in Throgmorton-street, belonging to old Stow's father, which house he wanted out of the way when he built his own mansion: and so moved it upon rollers twenty-two feet, and seized the land upon which it stood.* Cranmer said with truth, though not with firmness," that he thought no king of England had ever such a servant but if he was a traitor, he was glad it was discovered." Though Cromwell was unscrupulous in carrying out the cruel judgments of his master and his base parliaments, he knew in his own case what was the justice which an Englishman had a right to demand. In his last letter to Henry, from the Tower, he says that he had been informed by the honourable personages who came to him, that "mine offences being by honest and probable witness proved, I was by your honourable lords of the Upper House, and the worshipful and discreet Commons of your nether House, convicted and attainted. Gracious sovereign, when I heard them I said, as now 1 say, that I am a subject and born to obey laws, and know that the trial of all laws only consisteth in honest and profitable witness . . . . . Albeit, laws be laws." The principle of attainder, without hearing or confession, was not law. He perished by attainder; having in vain written to his remorseless "Survey of London,' Thom's edit. p. 67. 430 QUEEN CATHERINE HOWARD. [1540. master-who, however, sent him a little money while in prison-" Most gracious prince, I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy." The cry moved the heart of Henry for a moment; he dropt one tear. But the servant of twelve years was executed on the 28th of July. The divorce of Anne of Cleves had been completed four days before; and on the day when Cromwell was beheaded, king Henry married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard. Sandown Castle; one of the fortresses erected by Henry VIII. in apprehension of an invasion by allies of the Pope. |