CHAPTER FIVE

THE BREAK WITH ROME

CRANMER’S IDEA OF AN APPEAL TO THE UNIVERSITIES ABOUT HENRY’S marriage to Catherine had proved a great success, and the young lecturer was rewarded with an appointment as Ambassador to the Emperor. Even the University of Bologna in the Papal States declared that the King was right and that the Pope could not set aside so fundamental a law. Many others concurred: Paris, Toulouse, Orleans, Padua, Ferrara, Pavia, Oxford, and Cambridge. The King had known all along that he was right, and here, it seemed, was final proof. He determined to mark his displeasure with the Pope by some striking measure against the power of the Church of England. Why, he asked, was the right of sanctuary allowed to obstruct the King’s justice? Why were parsons permitted to live far away from their parishes and hold more than one living while underpaid substitutes did the work for the absentees? Why did Italians enjoy the revenues of English bishoprics? Why were the clergy demanding fees for probate on wills and gifts on the death of every parishioner? The King would ask his learned Commons to propose reforms.

Some years earlier, in 1515, a celebrated case had shaken the Church in England. A London merchant tailor, Richard Hunne, had stood out against Church fees, and the dispute had expanded into a bold challenge to ecclesiastical authority. As a result Hunne was arrested, and imprisoned by the clergy in the Lollards’ Tower, where he was subsequently found hanged. Was it suicide or murder? Opposition in Parliament and the City grew in volume, and reached up to the Bishop of London himself. But these early rumblings of a Reformation had been silenced by the then immovable power of Wolsey. Now the Commons eagerly resumed their interrupted task. A committee was formed of all the lawyers in the House, and they drafted the necessary Bills in record time. The House of Lords, where the bishops and abbots still had more votes than the lay peers, agreed to the Bills reforming sanctuaries and abolishing mortuary fees, which affected the lower clergy only, but when the Probate Bill came up to the Lords the Archbishop of Canterbury “in especial,” and all the other bishops in general, both frowned and grunted. Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, a representative of the old school, warned the Lords that religious innovation would bring social revolution in its train. He pointed to the national Czech revolt led by John Huss.

“My lords,” he said, “you see daily what Bills come here from the Commons house, and all is for the destruction of the Church. For God’s sake see what a realm the kingdom of Bohemia was; and when the Church went down, then fell the glory of the kingdom. Now with the Commons is nothing but down with the Church, and all this meseemeth is for lack of faith only.”

The Commons soon heard of this bold speech, and Members pointed out the implication of the last words—that laws the Commons made were laws made by pagans and heathen people and not worthy to be kept. They formed a deputation of thirty leading Members, headed by the Speaker, and went off to complain to the King. Henry summoned the offending bishops and asked Fisher to explain. Fisher shuffled. He had only meant, he declared, that the Bohemians lacked faith, not the Commons. With this interpretation the other bishops agreed. “But this bland excuse,” we are told, “pleased the Commons nothing at all.” Sharp exchanges took place before the Probate Bill could be forced through the Lords, and rancour grew. Thus from the outset the Reformation House of Commons acquired a corporate spirit, and during its long life, longer than any previous Parliament, eagerly pursued any measure which promised revenge against the bishops for what it deemed their evasion and duplicity over the Probate Bill. Hostility to the Episcopate smouldered, and marked the Commons for more than a hundred years.

The King was already delighted with what they had done, and went about telling everybody, including the Imperial Ambassador. “We have issued orders,” he said, “for the reform of the clergy in our kingdom. We have already clipped their claws considerably by taking away from them several taxes imposed by their own excessive authority on our subjects. We are now about to undertake the Annates [the first year’s income which the bishops paid to Rome on consecration] and prevent ecclesiastics from holding more than one benefice.” But he made it clear at once that he remained fully orthodox in matters of doctrine, that he was merely adhering to the principle of Colet and other leading divines whom he had known in his youth, that men could be Catholic though critical of Papal institutions. “If Luther,” he declared, “had confined himself to denouncing the vices, abuses, and errors of the clergy, instead of attacking the sacraments of the Church and other divine institutions, we should all have followed him and written in his favour.” After this blunt though reasoned statement the negotiations in Rome for annulling the King’s marriage encountered even greater obstacles. But Henry all his life was only spurred by opposition, and he determined to show he was in earnest.

During December 1530 the Attorney-General charged the whole body of the clergy with breaking the fourteenth-century Statutes of Præmunire and Provisors which had been passed to limit the powers of the Pope. This they had done by acquiescing in Wolsey’s many high-handed actions in his role as Papal Legate. Henry, after defeating the bishops in the matter of probate by enlisting the support of Parliament, knew that Convocation would not defy him. When the Papal Nuncio intervened to stiffen them against the King all the clergy present were astonished and scandalised. Without allowing him even to open his mouth they begged him to leave them in peace, since they had not the King’s leave to speak with him. In return for a pardon for contravening Præmunire and Provisors the King extracted large sums from Convocation, £100,000 from the province of Canterbury and £19,000 from York, which was much more than at first they were prepared to pay. After further negotiation he also obtained a new title. On February 7, 1531, the clergy acknowledged that the King was “their especial Protector, one and supreme lord, and, as far as the law of Christ allows, even supreme head.”

Parliament, which had been prorogued from month to month since the great doings about probate in 1529, was now recalled to hear and disseminate the royal view on the divorce. Lord Chancellor More came down to the House and said, “There are some who say that the King is pursuing a divorce out of love for some lady, and not out of any scruple of conscience; but this is not true,” and he read out the opinions of twelve foreign universities and showed a hundred “books” drawn up by doctors of strange regions, all agreeing that the King’s marriage was unlawful. Then the Lord Chancellor said,

“Now you of this Commons house may report in your counties what you have seen and heard, and then all men shall openly perceive that the King hath not attempted this matter of will or pleasure, as some strangers report, but only for the discharge of his conscience and surety of the succession of his realm.”

Throughout these proceedings Queen Catherine remained at Court. The King, although he rode and talked openly with Anne, left Catherine in charge of his personal wardrobe, including supervision of the laundry and the making of his linen. When he required clothes he continued to apply to Catherine, not Anne. Anne was furiously jealous, but for months the King refused to abandon his old routine. A new attempt was then made by the Boleyn party to persuade Catherine to renounce her rights. On June 1, 1531, she was waited on by Norfolk, Suffolk, and Gardiner, Anne’s father, now Earl of Wiltshire, Northumberland, and several others. As before she refused to renounce anything. Finally, about the middle of July, Anne took the King on a long hunting expedition, away from Windsor Castle, longer than any they had ever made together. Catherine waited, day after day, until a month had gone by, but still there was no news of the King’s return. At last the messenger came: the King would come back. But his Majesty did not wish to see the Queen; she was commanded to retire instantly to Wolsey’s former palace at Moor, in Hertfordshire. Henceforward she and her daughter Mary were banished from Court.

The winter of 1531-32 was marked by the tensest crisis of Henry’s reign. A form of excommunication, or even interdict, had been drafted in Rome, ordering the King to cast off his concubine Anne within fifteen days, only the penalties being left blank. The shadow of Papal wrath hung over England. At Court Christmas was kept with great solemnity. “All men,” states a chronicler, “said there was no music in that Christmas, because the Queen and ladies were absent.” But, as in the dark days in the early part of the reign, after the failure of the Bordeaux expedition, the King pursued his inflexible course to the end. Opposition merely confirmed him in his plans. The Annates Bill of which he had boasted to the Imperial Ambassador was drafted as a fighting measure, in case the worst occurred. It armed the King for a greater struggle with the Papacy than had preceded Magna Carta. If the Court of Rome, its preamble ran, endeavoured to wield excommunication, interdict, or process compulsory in England, then all manner of sacraments and divine service should continue to be administered, and the interdict should not by any prelate or minister be executed or divulged. If any one named by the King to a bishopric were restrained by Bulls from Rome from accepting office he should be consecrated by the Archbishop, or anyone named to an Archbishopric. And the Annates, a mainstay of the Papal finances, were limited to 5 per cent of their former amount.

This was the most difficult Bill which Henry ever had to steer through Parliament. He was obliged to go down to the House of Lords himself at least three times, and even then seemed likely to fail, until he thought of an entirely new expedient—the first public division of the House. “He thought of a plan that those among the Members who wished for the King’s welfare and the prosperity of the kingdom (as they call it) should stand on one side of the House and those who opposed the measure on the other. For fear of the King’s indignation a number of them went over,” and with considerable amendment the Bill was passed.

The next step was to make the clergy submit to the royal supremacy. Henry got the Commons to prepare a document called the Supplication against the Ordinaries, directed against the authority of Church courts. “Ordinaries” was the legal term for bishops and their deputies who enjoyed rights of jurisdiction. Although Convocation was truculent at first, making submission only in vague and ambiguous terms, Henry refused to compromise, and at the third attempt they agreed to articles of his own, making him effective master of the Church in England. On the very afternoon these articles were submitted for the royal consent, May 16, 1532, Sir Thomas More resigned the Lord Chancellorship as a protest against royal supremacy in spiritual affairs. He had tried to serve his sovereign faithfully in everything; now he saw that Henry’s courses must inevitably conflict with his own conscientious beliefs.

Thus the English Reformation was a slow process. An opportunist King measured his steps as he went, until England was wholly independent of administration from Rome. Wolsey had done much to prepare the way. He had supported the Papacy during some of its most critical years, and in return had been allowed to exercise wide and sweeping powers which were usually reserved to the Pope himself or to one of his visiting legates. England therefore was more accustomed than any other province of Christendom to Papal jurisdiction being vested in one of its own priests, and this made it easier to transfer it to the Crown. Wolsey had also brought Papal authority in his own person nearer to men’s lives than it had ever been, and this unsought familiarity bred dislike. The death in August of old Archbishop Warham, principal opponent of the King’s divorce, opened further possibilities and problems. Henry did not hasten to appoint a successor. He had to consider how far he could go. If there were a struggle could any of his bishops be trusted to forget the oath which they had sworn to the Pope at their consecration? Would there be a rebellion? Would the Emperor, Queen Catherine’s nephew, invade England from the Low Countries? Could the King rely on French neutrality?

In order to weigh these factors at first hand the King went over to Boulogne with only a few friends, including Anne Boleyn, for personal discussion with Francis I. He returned reassured. Confident that he could carry through even the most startling appointment to Canterbury, he recalled Cranmer from his embassy. Cranmer had been married twice, the second time in Germany after ordination, in the new German fashion for priests, to the niece of a well-known Lutheran. Since the marriage of priests was still illegal in England, Cranmer’s wife went ahead in disguise. Cranmer himself took leave of the Emperor at Mantua on November 1 ^st, 1532, and left the following day, arriving in London in the middle of December.

A week later he was offered the Archbishopric of Canterbury. He accepted. Henceforward, until Henry died, Cranmer’s wife was always hidden, and if she accompanied him was obliged, according to popular repute, to travel with the luggage in a vast chest specially constructed to conceal her.

A month later Henry secretly married Anne Boleyn. Historians have never discovered for certain who performed the ceremony, or where. Cranmer himself was not the priest. Both he and the Imperial Ambassador reported subsequently that the marriage had taken place in January 1533. Undoubtedly, in the eyes of the Roman Catholic world, Henry VIII committed bigamy, for he had been married nearly twenty-five years to Catherine of Aragon, and his marriage had not yet been annulled in Rome, or even in England, by any court or any public act. He simply assumed he had never been legally married at all, and left the lawyers and clergy to put the matter right afterwards.

Cranmer became Archbishop in the traditional manner. At the King’s request Bulls had been obtained from Rome by threatening the Papacy with a rigorous application of the act of Annates. Cranmer swore to obey the Pope with the usual oath, though reservations were made before and afterwards, and he was consecrated with the full ceremonial. This was important: the man who was to carry through the ecclesiastical revolution had thus been accepted by the Pope and endowed with full authority. Two days afterwards however a Bill was introduced into Parliament vesting in the Archbishop of Canterbury the power, formerly possessed by the Pope, to hear and determine all appeals from the ecclesiastical courts in England. Future attempts to use any foreign process would involve the drastic penalties of Præmunire. The judgments of the English courts were not to be affected by any Papal verdict or by excommunication, and any priest who refused to celebrate divine service or administer the sacraments was made liable to imprisonment. This momentous Bill, the work of Thomas Cromwell, which abolished what still remained of Papal authority in England, passed through Parliament in due course, and became known as the Act of Appeals. The following month Henry himself wrote a letter describing his position as “King and Sovereign, recognising no superior in earth but only God, and not subject to the laws of any earthly creature.” The breach between England and Rome was complete.

Having established his supremacy, Henry proceeded to exploit it. In March 1533 Convocation was asked two questions: Was it against the Law of God, and not open to dispensation by the Pope, for a man to marry his brother’s wife, he being dead without issue, but having consummated the marriage? Answer by the prelates and clergy present: Yes. By Bishop Fisher of Rochester: No. Was Prince Arthur’s marriage with Queen Catherine consummated? Answer by the clergy: Yes. By the Bishop: No. Thereupon the Bishop was arrested and committed to the Tower. About ten days later the Duke of Norfolk with royal commissioners waited on Queen Catherine at Ampthill. Every sort of reason was advanced why she should renounce her title voluntarily. She was blocking the succession. Her daughter would not be accepted by the country as Queen, and England might be plunged in chaos if she continued her unreasonable obstruction. If she resigned a great position would still be open to her. She refused to resign. Then she was informed of the decisions of Convocation. Steps would be taken to deprive her of the rank of Queen, to which she was no longer entitled. She declared her determination to resist. But the Commissioners had still another announcement to make. Catherine was in any case Queen no longer, for the King was already married to Anne Boleyn.

Thus Henry’s secret marriage became known. A fortnight later Cranmer opened a court at Dunstable, and set a proctor to Ampthill citing Catherine to appear. She refused. In her absence the Archbishop pronounced judgment. Catherine’s marriage with Henry had existed in fact but not in law; it was void from the beginning; and five days afterwards the marriage with Anne was declared valid. Queen Anne Boleyn was crowned on June 1 in Westminster Abbey.

The following month it became clear that the new Queen was expecting a child. As the confinement approached Henry remained with her at Greenwich, and took the greatest care she should not be disturbed. Much bad news came in from across the seas and frontiers, but on such occasions Henry rode out into the country and met the Council in the open, to prevent the Queen from conjecturing the gravity of the situation, or perhaps to avoid the plague. A magnificent and valuable bed, which had lain in the Treasury since it had formed part of a French nobleman’s ransom, was brought forth, and in it on September 7, 1533, the future Queen Elizabeth was born.

Although bonfires were lighted there was no rejoicing in Henry’s heart. A male heir had been his desire. After he had defied the whole world, perhaps committed bigamy, and risked deposition by the Pope and invasion, here was only a second daughter. “Do you wish to see your little daughter?” the old nurse asked, according to one account. “My daughter, my daughter!” replied the King in a passion. “You old devil, you witch, don’t dare to speak to me!” He galloped at once away from Greenwich, away from Anne, and in three days had reached Wolf Hall, in Wiltshire, the residence of a worthy old courtier, Sir John Seymour, who had a clever son in the diplomatic 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 prayer¹ 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, should 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 upstream 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 Palace, when the Duke of Richmond, the King’s bastard son, came as usual to say goodnight 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 under the presidency of the Duke of Norfolk, named Lord High Steward of England for the occasion. The Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas Audley, who as a commoner by birth was not entitled to judge a Queen, sat next to the Duke to give legal advice. The Lord Mayor and a deputation of aldermen attended, with members of the public, by the King’s command, in the well of the hall. The Queen was brought in by Sir Edmund Walsingham, the Lieutenant of the Tower, to listen to the indictment by the Attorney-General. She was charged with being unfaithful to the King; promising to marry Norris after the King was dead; giving Norris poisoned lockets for the purpose of poisoning Catherine and Mary; and other offences, including incest with her brother. The Queen denied the charges vigorously, and replied to each one in detail. The peers retired, and soon returned with a verdict of guilty. Norfolk pronounced sentence: the Queen was to be burnt or beheaded, at the King’s pleasure.

Anne received the sentence with calm and courage. She declared that if the King would allow it she would like to be beheaded like the French nobility, with a sword, and not, like the English nobility, with an axe. Her wish was granted; but no executioner could be found in the King’s dominions to carry out the sentence with a sword, and it was found necessary to postpone the execution from Thursday to Friday while an expert was borrowed from St. Omer, in the Emperor’s dominions. During Thursday night she slept little. Distant hammering could be heard from the courtyard of the Tower, as a low scaffold, about five feet high, was erected for the execution. In the morning the public were admitted to the courtyard; and the Lord Chancellor entered soon afterwards with Henry’s son, the Duke of Richmond, Cromwell, and the Lord Mayor and aldermen.

On May 19, 1536, the headsman was already waiting, leaning on his heavy two-handed sword, when the Constable of the Tower appeared, followed by Anne in a beautiful night robe of heavy grey damask trimmed with fur, showing a crimson kirtle beneath. She had chosen this garment in order to leave her neck bare. A large sum had been given to her to distribute in alms among the crowd. “I am not here,” she said to them simply, “to preach to you, but to die. Pray for the King, for he is a good man and has treated me as well as could be. I do not accuse anyone of causing my death, neither the judges nor anyone else, for I am condemned by the law of the land and die willingly.” Then she took off her pearl-covered headdress, revealing that her hair had been carefully bound up to avoid impeding the executioner.

“Pray for me,” she said, and knelt down while one of the ladies-in-waiting bandaged her eyes. Before there was time to say a Paternoster she bowed her head, murmuring in a low voice, “God have pity on my soul.” “God have mercy on my soul,” she repeated, as the executioner stepped forward and slowly took his aim. Then the great blade hissed through the air, and with a single stroke his work was done.

As soon as the execution was known Henry appeared in yellow, with a feather in his cap, and ten days later was privately married to Jane Seymour at York Place. Jane proved to be the submissive wife for whom Henry had always longed. Anne had been too dominating and too impulsive. “When that woman desires anything,” one of the ambassadors had written of Anne two years before her execution, “there is no one who dares oppose her, or could do so if he dared, not even the King himself. They say that he is incredibly subject to her, so that when he does not wish her to do what she wishes she does it in spite of him and pretends to fly into a terrible rage.” Jane was the opposite, gentle though proud; and Henry spent a happy eighteen months with her. She was the only Queen whom Henry regretted and mourned, and when she died, still aged only twenty-two, immediately after the birth of her first child, the future Edward VI, Henry had her buried with royal honours in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor. He himself lies near her.