The New World (Complete Edition). Winston Churchill
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service and a pretty daughter, a former Maid of Honour to Queen Catherine. Jane Seymour was about twenty-five, and although she was attractive no one considered her a great beauty. “Her skin,” reported the Imperial Ambassador, “is so whitish that it may be called rather pale. She is not very clever, and is said to be rather arrogant.” But she was gay, and generally liked, and Henry fell in love with her. After the birth of Elizabeth criticism of the King and his ecclesiastical measures could no longer be stifled. If the choice was between two princesses, men said, then why not choose Mary, the legitimate one? But the King would have none of this argument. An Act was passed vesting the succession in Elizabeth. In March 1534 every person of legal age, male or female, throughout the kingdom was forced to swear allegiance to this Act and renounce allegiance to all foreign authority in England. The clergy were prohibited from preaching unless specially licensed; a Bidding prayer 3 was prescribed for use in all churches, containing the words, “Henry VIII being immediately next unto God, the only and supreme head of this Catholic Church of England, and Anne his wife, and Elizabeth daughter and heir to them both, our Princess.” To publish or pronounce maliciously by express words that the King was a tyrant or heretic was made high treason. As the brutality of the reign increased many hundreds were to be hanged, disembowelled, and quartered on these grounds.
Fisher and Sir Thomas More, who both refused the oath, were confined in the Tower for many months. At his trial More offered a brilliant defence, but the King’s former trust in him had now turned into vengeful dislike. Under royal pressure the judges pronounced him guilty of treason. While Fisher was in the Tower the Pope created seven cardinals, of whom one was “John, Bishop of Rochester, kept in prison by the King of England”. Directly Henry heard the news he declared in anger several times that he would send Fisher’s head to Rome for the Cardinal’s hat. Fisher was executed in June 1535 and More in July. For their fate the King must bear the chief responsibility; it is a black stain on his record. Shortly afterwards Henry was excommunicated and in theory deprived of his throne by the Pope. The resistance of More and Fisher to the royal supremacy in Church government was a noble and heroic stand. They realised the defects of the existing Catholic system, but they hated and feared the aggressive nationalism which was destroying the unity of Christendom. They saw that the break with Rome carried with it the threat of a despotism freed from every fetter. More stood forth as the defender of all that was finest in the medieval outlook. He represents to history its universality, its belief in spiritual values, and its instinctive sense of other-worldliness. Henry VIII with cruel axe decapitated not only a wise and gifted counsellor, but a system which, though it had failed to live up to its ideals in practice, had for long furnished mankind with its brightest dreams. The King was still paying court to Jane Seymour when it became known that Anne was expecting another baby. But this time Henry refused to have anything to do with her. She was haggard and ill and had lost her freshness. Rumours were current at Court that he had only spoken to her ten times in three months, although formerly he could hardly bear to be separated from her for an hour. Anne became distracted with anxiety, and was obsessed with fears of a rising against her and the infant Elizabeth in favour of Catherine and Mary. Without consulting the King or his Council, she sent messages to Mary through her governess, making all sorts of promises if Mary would swear to the Act of Succession and renounce her claim to the throne. Promises were followed by threats; but Mary refused to give way. One day, after an unfavourable report from the governess, Anne was found in a tempest of tears. Soon afterwards her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, strode into the room and told her that Henry had had a serious accident out hunting. In her grief and alarm she nearly fainted. Five days later she miscarried.
The King, instead of pitying her, gave way to an uncontrollable outburst of rage. He visited her, repeating over and over again, “I see that God does not mean me to have male children.” As he turned to leave he added angrily that he would speak to her again as soon as she was better. Anne replied that it was not her fault she had failed to bear another child. She had been frightened when she heard of the King’s fall; besides, she loved him so passionately, with so much more fervour than Catherine, that it broke her heart when she saw that he gave his love to others. At this allusion to Jane the King left the room in a towering passion, and refused for days to see her. Jane Seymour was installed at Greenwich. Through her serving-man, who had been taken into the pay of the Imperial Ambassador, we have a story of the royal courtship.
One day the King sent a page down from London with a purse full of gold and a letter in his own handwriting. Jane kissed the letter, but returned it to the page unopened. Then, falling on her knees, she said, “I pray you beseech the King to understand by my prudence that I am a gentlewoman of good and honourable family, without reproach, and have no greater treasure in the world than my honour, which I would not harm for a thousand deaths. If the King should wish to make me a present of money, I beg him to do so when God shall send me a husband to marry.” The King was greatly pleased. She had, he said, displayed high virtue, and to prove that his intentions were wholly worthy of her he promised not to speak to her in future except in the presence of her relations.
In January 1536 Queen Catherine died. If the King was minded to marry again he could now repudiate Queen Anne without raising awkward questions about his earlier union. It was already rumoured by the Seymour party that in her intense desire for an heir Queen Anne had been unfaithful to the King soon after the birth of Elizabeth, with several lovers. If proved, this offence was capital. The Queen had accordingly been watched, and one Sunday two young courtiers, Henry Norris and Sir Francis Weston, were seen to enter the Queen’s room, and were, it was said, overheard making love to her. Next day a parchment was laid before the King empowering a strong panel of counsellors and judges, headed by the Lord Chancellor, or any four of them, to investigate and try every kind of treason. The King signed. On Tuesday the Council sat all day and late into the night, but as yet there was not sufficient evidence. The following Sunday a certain Smeaton, a gentleman of the King’s chamber, who played with great skill on the lute, was arrested as the Queen’s lover. Smeaton subsequently under torture confessed to the charge. On Monday Norris was among the challengers at the May Day tournament at Greenwich, and as the King rode to London after the jousting he called Norris to his side and told him what was suspected. Although Norris denied everything he also was arrested and taken to the Tower.
That night Anne learned that Smeaton and Norris were in the Tower. The following morning she was requested to come before the Council. Although her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, presided at the examination, no Queen of England, Anne complained afterwards, could have been treated with such brutality. At the conclusion of the proceedings she was placed under arrest, and kept under guard until the tide turned to take her up-river to the Tower. So quickly had the news spread that large crowds collected along the river-bank, and were in time to watch her barge rowing rapidly up-stream with a detachment of the guard, her uncle Norfolk, and the two Chamberlains, Lord Oxford and Lord Sandys, on board. At the Traitor’s Gate she was handed over to the Constable of the Tower, Sir William Kingston. The same evening, at York Place, when the Duke of Richmond, the King’s bastard son, came as usual to say good-night to his father, the King burst into tears. “By God’s great mercy”, he said, “you and your sister Mary have escaped the hands of that damned poisonous strumpet. She was plotting to poison you both.” Henry tried to forget his shame and disgrace in a ceaseless round of feasting. “His Majesty”, wrote the Imperial Ambassador, who however may well be suspected of malicious bias, “has been gayer since the arrest than ever before. He is going out to dinner here, there, and everywhere with the ladies. Sometimes he returns along the river after midnight to the sound of many instruments or the voices of the singers of his chamber, who do their utmost to interpret his delight at being rid of that thin old woman.” (In fact she was aged twenty-nine.) “He went to dinner recently with the Bishop of Carlisle and some ladies, and next day the Bishop told me that he had behaved with almost desperate gaiety.”
On Friday morning the special commissioners of treason appointed the previous week, including Anne Boleyn’s father, the Earl of Wiltshire, and the entire bench of judges except one, formed the court for the trial of Anne’s lovers. A special jury consisting of twelve knights had been summoned, and found the prisoners guilty. They were sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, but execution was deferred until after the trial of the Queen. This opened the following Monday in the Great Hall of the Tower. Twenty-six peers—half the existing peerage—sat on a raised dais