Part 8 (1/2)

But he who had most to lose and most to fear was Cromwell. It was he who had drawn and driven his master into the Protestant friends.h.i.+p against the Emperor and the Pope, of which the marriage was to be the pledge, and he had repeated eagerly for months the inflated praises of Anne's beauty sent by his agents and friends in order to pique Henry to the union. He knew that vigilant enemies of himself and his policy were around him, watching for their opportunity, Norfolk and the older n.o.bles, the Pope's bishops, and, above all, able, ambitious Stephen Gardiner, now sulking at Winchester, determined to supplant him if he could. When, on Friday the 2nd January, Henry entered his working closet at Greenwich after his water journey from Rochester, Cromwell asked him ”how he liked the Lady Anne.”

The King answered gloomily, ”Nothing so well as she was spoken of,” adding that if he had known before as much as he knew then, she should never have come within his realm. In the grievous self-pity usual with him in his perplexity, he turned to Cromwell, the man hitherto so fertile in expedients, and wailed, ”What is the remedy?”[200] Cromwell, for once at a loss, could only express his grief, and say he knew of none. In very truth it was too late now to stop the state reception; for preparations had been ordered for such a pageant as had rarely been seen in England.

Cromwell had intended it for his own triumph, and as marking the completeness of his victory over his opponents. Once more ambition o'erleaped itself, and the day that was to establish Cromwell's supremacy sealed his doom.

What Anne thought of the situation is not on record. She had seen little of the world, outside the coa.r.s.e boorishness of a petty low-German court; she was neither educated nor naturally refined, and she probably looked upon the lumpishness of her lover as an ordinary thing. In any case, she bated none of her state and apparent contentment, as she rode gorgeously bedight with her great train towards Greenwich. At the foot of Shooter's Hill there had been erected an imposing pavilion of cloth of gold, and divers other tents warmed with fires of perfumed wood; and here a company of ladies awaited the coming of the Queen on Sat.u.r.day, 3rd January 1540. A broad way was cleared from the pavilion, across Woolwich Common and Blackheath, for over two miles, to the gates of Greenwich Park; and the merchants and Corporation of London joined with the King's retinue in lining each side of this long lane. Cromwell had recently gained the goodwill of foreigners settled in London by granting them exemption from special taxation for a term of years, and he had claimed, as some return, that they should make the most of this day of triumph. Accordingly, the German merchants of the Steelyard, the Venetians, the Spaniards, the French, and the rest of them, donned new velvet coats and jaunty crimson caps with white feathers, each master with a smartly clad servant behind him, and so stood each side of the way to do honour to the bride at the Greenwich end of the route. 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 n.o.bler 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 mult.i.tudes 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. Cromwell himself marshalled the ranks on either side, ”running up and down with a staff in his hand, for all the world as if he had been a running postman,” as an eye-witness tells us.

It was midday before the Queen's procession rode down Shooter's Hill to the tents, where she was met by her official household and greeted with a long Latin oration which she did not understand, whilst she sat in her chariot. Then heartily kissing the great ladies sent to welcome her, she alighted and entered the tent to rest and warm herself over the perfumed fires, and to don even more magnificent raiment than that she wore. When she was ready for her bridegroom's coming she must have been a blaze of magnificence. She wore a wide skirt of cloth of gold with a raised pattern in bullion and no train, and her head was covered first with a close cap and then a round cap covered with pearls and fronted with black velvet; whilst her bodice was one glittering ma.s.s of precious stones. When swift messengers brought news that the King was coming, Anne mounted at the door of the tent a beautiful white palfrey; and surrounded by her servitors, each bearing upon his golden coat the black lion of Cleves, and followed by her train, she set forth to meet her husband.

Henry, unwieldy and lame as he was with a running ulcer in the leg, was as vain and fond of pomp as ever, and outdid his bride in splendour. His coat was of purple velvet cut like a frock, embroidered all over with a flat gold pattern interlined with narrow gold braid, and with gold lace laid crosswise over it all. A velvet overcoat surmounted the gorgeous garment, lined also with gold tissue, the sleeves and breast held together with great b.u.t.tons of diamonds, rubies, and pearls. His sword and belt were covered with emeralds, and his bonnet and under-cap were ”so rich in jewels that few men could value them”; whilst across his shoulders he wore a baldrick, composed of precious stones and pearls, that was the wonder of all beholders. The fat giant thus bedizened bestrode a great war-horse to match, and almost equally magnificent; and, preceded by heralds and trumpeters, followed by the great officers, the royal household and the bishops, and accompanied by the Duke Philip of Bavaria, just betrothed to the Princess Mary, Henry rode through the long lane of his velvet-clad admirers to meet Anne, hard by the cross upon Blackheath. When she approached him, he doffed his jewelled bonnet and bowed low; and then embraced her, whilst she, with every appearance of delight and duty, expressed her pleasure at meeting him. Thus, together, with their great cavalcades united, over five thousand hors.e.m.e.n strong, they rode in the waning light of a midwinter afternoon to Greenwich; and, as one who saw it but knew not the tragedy that lurked behind the splendour, exclaimed, ”Oh!

what a sight was this to see, so goodly a Prince and so n.o.ble a King to ride with so fair a lady of so goodly a stature, and so womanly a countenance, and especial of so good qualities. I think that no creature could see them but his heart rejoiced.”[202]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _ANNE OF CLEVES_

_From a portrait by a German artist in St. John's College, Oxford_]

There was one heart, at all events, that did not rejoice, and that was Henry's. He went heavily through the ceremony of welcoming home his bride in the great hall at Greenwich, and then led her to her chamber; but no sooner had he got quit of her, than retiring to his own room he summoned Cromwell. ”Well!” he said, ”is it not as I told you? Say what they will, she is nothing like so fair as she was reported to be. She is well and seemly, but nothing else.” Cromwell, confused, could only mumble something about her having a queenly manner. But Henry wanted a way out of his bargain rather than reconciliation to it; and he ordered Cromwell to summon the Council at once--Norfolk, Suffolk, Cromwell, Cranmer, Fitzwilliam, and Tunstal--to consider the prior engagement made between Anne and the Duke of Lorraine's son.[203] The question had already been discussed and disposed of, and the revival of it thus at the eleventh hour shows how desperate Henry was. The Council a.s.sembled immediately, and summoned the German envoys who had negotiated the marriage and were now in attendance on Anne. The poor men were thunderstruck at the point of an impediment to the marriage being raised then, and begged to be allowed to think the matter over till the next morning, Sunday. When they met the Council again in the morning, they could only protest that the prior covenant had only been a betrothal, which had never taken effect, and had been formally annulled. If there was any question about it, however, they offered to remain as prisoners in England until the original deed of revocation was sent from Cleves.

When this answer was carried to Henry he broke out angrily that he was not being well treated, and upbraided Cromwell for not finding a loophole for escape. He did not wish to marry the woman, he said. ”If she had not come so far, and such great preparations made, and for fear of making a ruffle in the world--of driving her brother into the hands of the Emperor and the French King--he never would marry her.” Cromwell was apparently afraid to encourage him in the idea of repudiation, and said nothing; and after dinner the King again summoned the Council to his presence. To them he bitterly complained of having been deceived. Would the lady, he asked, make a formal protestation before notaries that she was free from all contracts? Of course she would, and did, as soon as she was asked; but Henry's idea in demanding this is evident. If she had refused it would give a pretext for delay, but if she did as desired, and by any quibble the prior engagement was found to be valid, her protestation to the contrary would be good grounds for a divorce. But still Henry would much rather not have married her at all. ”Oh! is there no other remedy?” he asked despairingly on Monday, after Anne had made her protestation. ”Must I needs against my will put my neck into the yoke?” Cromwell could give him no comfort, and left him gloomy at the prospect of going through the ceremony on the morrow. On Tuesday morning, when he was apparelled for the wedding, as usual in a blaze of magnificence of crimson satin and cloth of gold, Cromwell entered his chamber on business. ”My lord,” said Henry, ”if it were not to satisfy the world and my realm, I would not do what I must do this day for any earthly thing.” But withal he went through it as best he might, though with heavy heart and gloomy countenance, and the unfortunate bride, we are told, was remarked to be ”demure and sad,” as well she might be, when her husband and Cranmer placed upon her finger the wedding-ring with the ominous inscription, ”G.o.d send me well to keep.”

Early the next morning Cromwell entered the King's chamber between hope and fear, and found Henry frowning and sulky. ”How does your Grace like the Queen?” he asked. Henry grumblingly, and not quite relevantly, replied that he, Cromwell, was not everybody; and then he broke out, ”Surely, my lord, as you know, I liked her not well before, but now I like her much worse.” With an incredible grossness, and want of common decency, he then went into certain details of his wife's physical qualities that had disgusted him and turned him against her. He did not believe, from certain peculiarities that he described, that she was a maid, he said; but so far as he was concerned, he was so ”struck to the heart” that he had left her as good a maid as he had found her.[204] Nor was the King more reticent with others. He was free with his details to the gentlemen of his chamber, Denny, Heneage, and others, as to the signs which it pleased him to consider suspicious as touching his wife's previous virtue, and protested that he never could, or would, consummate the marriage; though he professed later that for months after the wedding he did his best to overcome his repugnance, and lived constantly in contact with his wife.

But he never lost sight of the hope of getting free. If he did not find means soon to do so, he said, he should have no more issue. His conscience told him--that tender conscience of his--that Anne was not his legal wife; and he turned to Cromwell for a remedy, and found none: for Cromwell knew that the breaking up of the Protestant union, upon which he had staked his future, would inevitably mean now the rise of his rivals and his own ruin.

He fought stoutly for his position, though Norfolk and Gardiner were often now at the King's ear. His henchman, Dr. Barnes, who had gone to Germany as envoy during the marriage negotiations, was a Protestant, and in a sermon on justification by faith he violently attacked Gardiner. The latter, in spite of Cromwell and Cranmer, secured from the King an order that Barnes should humbly and publicly recant. He did so at Easter at the Spital, but at once repeated the offence, and he and two other clergymen who thought like him were burnt for heresy. Men began to shake their heads and look grave now as they spoke of Cromwell and Cranmer; but the Secretary stood st.u.r.dily, and in May seemed as if he would turn the tables upon his enemies. Once, indeed, he threatened the Duke of Norfolk roughly with the King's displeasure, and at the opening of Parliament he took the lead as usual, expressing the King's sorrow at the religious bitterness in the country, and demanding large supplies for the purposes of national defence.

But, though still apparently as powerful as ever, and more than ever overbearing, he dared not yet propose to the King a way out of the matrimonial tangle. Going home to Austin Friars from the sitting of Parliament on the 7th June, he told his new colleague, Wriothesley, that the thing that princ.i.p.ally troubled him was that the King did not like the Queen, and that his marriage had never been consummated. Wriothesley, whose sympathies were then Catholic, suggested that ”some way might be devised for the relief of the King.” ”Ah!” sighed Cromwell, who knew what such a remedy would mean to him, ”but it is a great matter.” The next day Wriothesley returned to the subject, and begged Cromwell to devise some means of relief for the King: ”for if he remained in this grief and trouble they should all smart for it some day.” ”Yes,” replied Cromwell, ”it is true; but it is a great matter.” ”Marry!” exclaimed Wriothesley, out of patience, ”I grant that, but let a remedy be searched for.” But Cromwell had no remedy yet but one that would ruin himself, and that he dared not propose, so he shook his head sadly and changed the subject.[205]

The repudiation of Anne was, as Cromwell said, a far greater matter than at first sight appeared. The plan to draw into one confederation for the objects of England the German Protestants, the King of Denmark, and the Duke of Cleves, whose seizure of Guelderland had brought him in opposition to the Emperor, was the most threatening that had faced Charles for years.

His own city of Ghent was in open revolt, and Francis after all was but a fickle ally. If once more the French King turned from him and made friends with the Turk and the Lutherans, then indeed would the imperial power have cause to tremble and Henry to rejoice. Cromwell had striven hard to cement the Protestant combination; but again and again he had been thwarted by his rivals. The pa.s.sage of the Six Articles against his wish, although the execution of the Act was suspended at Cromwell's instance, had caused the gravest distrust on the part of Hans Frederick and the Landgrave of Hesse; and if Henry were encouraged to repudiate his German wife, not only would her brother--already in negotiation with the imperial agents for the invest.i.ture of Gueldres, and his marriage with the Emperor's niece, the d.u.c.h.ess of Milan--be at once driven into opposition to England, but Hans Frederick and Hesse would also abandon Henry to the tender mercies of his enemies.

The only way to avoid such a disaster following upon the repudiation of Anne was first to drive a wedge of distrust between Charles and Francis, now in close confederacy. In January the Emperor had surprised the world by his boldness in traversing France to his Flemish dominions. He was feasted splendidly by Francis, and escaped unbetrayed; but during his stay in France desperate attempts were made by Wyatt, Henry's amba.s.sador with Charles, Bonner, the amba.s.sador in France, and by the Duke of Norfolk, who went in February on a special mission, to sow discord between the allied sovereigns, and not without some degree of success. Charles during his stay in France was badgered by Wyatt into saying some hasty words, which were deliberately twisted by Norfolk into a menace to France and England alike. Francis was reminded with irritating iteration that Charles had plenty of smiles and soft words for his French friends, but avoided keeping his promises about the cession of Milan or anything else. So in France those who were in favour of the imperial alliance, the Montmorencies and the Queen, declined in their hold over Francis, and their opponents, the Birons, the Queen of Navarre, Francis' sister, and the d.u.c.h.ess of Etampes, his mistress, planned with Henry's agents for an understanding with England. This, as may be supposed, was not primarily Cromwell's policy, but that of Norfolk and his friends, because its success would inevitably mean the conciliation of the German princes and Cleves by the Emperor, and the break-up of the Protestant confederacy and England, by which Cromwell must now stand or fall.

As early as April, Marillac, the French amba.s.sador in England, foretold the great change that was coming. The arrest of Barnes, Garrard, and Jerome, for anti-Catholic teaching, and the persecutions everywhere for those who offended ever so slightly in the same way, presaged Cromwell's fall. ”Cranmer and Cromwell,” writes Marillac, ”do not know where they are. Within a few days there will be seen in this country a great change in many things, which this King begins to make in his ministers, recalling those he had disgraced, and degrading those he had raised. Cromwell is tottering: for all those now recalled were dismissed at his request, and bear him no little grudge--amongst others, the Bishops of Winchester (_i.e._ Gardiner), Durham, and Bath, men of great learning and experience, who are now summoned to the Privy Council. It is said that Tunstal (_i.e._ Durham) will be Vicar-General, and Bath Privy Seal, which are Cromwell's princ.i.p.al offices.... If he holds his own (_i.e._ Cromwell), it will only be because of his close a.s.siduity in business, though he is very rude in his demeanour. He does nothing without consulting the King, and is desirous of doing justice, especially to foreigners.”

This was somewhat premature, but it gives a good idea of the process that was going on. There is no doubt that Cromwell believed in his ability to keep his footing politically; for he was anything but rigid in his principles, and if the friends.h.i.+p with France initiated by his rivals had, as it showed signs of doing, developed into an alliance that would enable Henry both to dismiss his fears of the Emperor and throw over the Protestants, he would probably have accepted the situation, and have proposed a means for Henry to get rid of his distasteful wife. But this opportunism did not suit his opponents in Henry's Council. They wanted to get rid of the man quite as much as they did his policy; for his insolence had stung them to the quick, great n.o.bles as most of them were, and he the son of a blacksmith. Some other means, therefore, than a mere change of policy was necessary to dislodge the strong man who guided the King.

Parliament had met on the 12th April, and it was managed with Cromwell's usual boldness and success.[206] As if to mark that his great ability was still paramount, he was made Earl of Ess.e.x and Great Chamberlain of England in the following week.

But the struggle in the Council, and around the King, continued unabated.

Henry was warned by Cromwell's enemies of the danger of allowing religious freedom to be carried too far, and of thus giving the Catholic powers an excuse for executing the Pope's decree of deprivation against him. He was reminded that the Emperor and Francis were still friends, that the latter was suspiciously preparing for war, and that Henry's brother-in-law the Duke of Cleves' quarrel with the Emperor might drag England into war for the sake of a beggarly German dukedom of no importance or value to her. On the other hand, Cromwell would point out to Henry the disobedience and insolence of the Catholics who questioned his spiritual supremacy, and cause Churchmen who advocated a reconciliation with Rome to be imprisoned.

Clearly such a position could not continue indefinitely, and Norfolk antic.i.p.ated Cromwell by playing the final trump card--that of arousing Henry's personal fears. The word treason and a hint that anything could be intended against his person always brought Henry to heel. What the exact accusation against Cromwell was no one knows, though it was whispered at the time that the n.o.bles had told Henry that Cromwell had ama.s.sed great stores of money and arms, and maintained a vast number of dependants (1500 men, it was a.s.serted, wore his livery), with a sinister object; some said to marry the Princess Mary and make himself King; and that he had received a great bribe from the Duke of Cleves and the Protestants to bring about the marriage of Anne. Others said that he had boasted that he was to receive a crown abroad from a foreign potentate (_i.e._, the Emperor), and that he had talked of defending the new doctrines at the sword's point.[207] No such accusations, however, are on official record; and there is no doubt that the real reason for his arrest was the animosity of the aristocratic and Catholic party against him, acting upon the King's fears and his desire to get rid of Anne of Cleves.

On the 9th June Parliament was still sitting, discussing the religious question with a view to the settlement of some uniform doctrine. The Lords of the Council left the Chamber to go across to Whitehall to dinner before midday; and as they wended their way across the great courtyard of Westminster a high wind carried away Cromwell's flat cap from his head. It was the custom when one gentleman was even accidentally uncovered for those who were with him also to doff their bonnets. But, as an attendant ran and recovered Cromwell's flying headgear on that occasion, the haughty minister looked grimly round and saw all his colleagues, once so humble, holding their own caps upon their heads. ”A high wind indeed must this be,” sneered Cromwell, ”to blow my cap off, and for you to need hold yours on.” He must have known that ill foreboded; for during dinner no one spoke to him. The meal finished, Cromwell went to the Council Chamber with the rest, and, as was his custom, stood at a window apart to hear appeals and applications to him, and when these were disposed of he turned to the table to take his usual seat with the rest. On this occasion Norfolk stopped him, and told him that it was not meet that traitors should sit amongst loyal gentlemen. ”I am no traitor!” shouted Cromwell, das.h.i.+ng his cap upon the ground; but the captain of the guard was at the door, and still protesting the wretched man was hurried to the Water Gate and rowed swiftly to the Tower, surrounded by halberdiers, Norfolk as he left the Council Chamber tearing off the fallen minister's badge of the Garter as a last stroke of ignominy.

Cromwell knew he was doomed, for by the iniquitous Act that he himself had forged for the ruin of others, he might be attainted and condemned legally without his presence or defence. ”Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!” he wrote to the King in his agony; but for him there was as little mercy as he had shown to others. His death was a foregone conclusion, for Henry's fears had been aroused: but Cromwell had to be kept alive long enough for him to furnish such information as would provide a plausible pretext for the repudiation of Anne. He was ready to do all that was asked of him--to swear to anything the King wished. He testified that he knew the marriage had never been consummated, and never would be; that the King was dissatisfied from the first, and had complained that the evidence of the nullification of the prior contract with the heir of Lorraine was insufficient; that the King had never given full consent to the marriage, but had gone through the ceremony under compulsion of circ.u.mstances, and with mental reservation. When all this was sworn to, Cromwell's hold upon the world was done. Upon evidence now unknown he was condemned for treason and heresy without being heard in his own defence, and on the 28th July 1540 he stood, a sorry figure, upon the scaffold in the Tower. He had been a sinner, he confessed, and had travailed after the things of this world; but he fervently avowed that he was a good Catholic and no heretic, and had harboured no thought of evil towards his sovereign. But protestations availed not; and his head, the cleverest head in England, was pitiably hacked off by a bungling headsman. Before that happened, the repudiation of Anne of Cleves was complete, and a revival of the aristocratic and Catholic influence in England was an accomplished fact.

CHAPTER VIII

1540-1542