Читать книгу The Nine Days' Queen, Lady Jane Grey, and Her Times - Richard Davey - Страница 9

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It was in the latter years of Henry VIII’s reign that Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, conceived his scheme for the reconciliation of England and England’s monarch with the Roman Pontiff. Although a less astute intriguer than his powerful opponent Cranmer, Gardiner, who was apt to lose his temper and blurt out things best kept to himself, was a man of marked ability, one of whom his crafty master made frequent use, playing him off against the Archbishop, and so retaining the balance of power in his own jealous hands. Cranmer was at this period using his influence with Henry to abolish the use of Latin in the Mass, preparatory to the eventual introduction of the Book of Common Prayer and the early and total abrogation of the Eucharistic Service in the Roman sense. Yet the wily Churchman knew right well that so long as the King lived there was but faint hope of this change. For His Majesty clung to the doctrine of Transubstantiation closer than to any other tenet; not so much on account of his faith—did he believe anything?—as because, in the days of his youth, he had indited a work in defence of the Catholic doctrine of the Sacraments, which, so his clergy had averred, proved him wiser than Solomon himself, and which Pope Leo X had favourably compared with the writings of St. Augustine and Gregory the Great, rewarding the royal author with that title of “Defender of the Faith” which is still a cherished appanage of British royalty. Henry had even made belief in the Sacrament of the Altar a principal Article amongst the famous Six, any denial of which was punishable with death. Yet, if the King had searched Cranmer’s study at Lambeth at the very moment when that wily prelate was professing to accept his beliefs from his King, as submissively as though the monarch had possessed the infallible powers of his own Maker, he might have laid his hand on a bulky correspondence between the Primate and every Lutheran and Calvinistic leader in Germany and Switzerland—with Calvin, Bullinger, Œcolampadius, Osiander, Dryander, Bucer, and the rest. Gardiner, on his side, was in communication with Cardinal Pole, Charles V, the Pope, and the entire papal party at home and abroad. This duel between the papal leader and the Reformers, then, was the true basis of all political undertakings at this momentous crisis. The rival parties were really preparing themselves for the departure of the dying King, and aimed at controlling the inevitable Protectorate, necessitated by the minority of his successor, a lad of nine summers. Had Gardiner, the Howards, and the Catholic party won the day, history would have had little, perhaps nothing, to record concerning Lady Jane Grey. Her name, like that of her accomplished friend Lady Jane Seymour, daughter of Lord Hertford, would have been lost, buried in the spent sands of the past.

The decline of the King’s health began in the summer of 1541–2, when he was attacked by a dangerous tertian fever, from which, thanks to his powerful constitution, he partially recovered.

At the time of his marriage with Anne of Cleves he was again in poor health, and during the proceedings for the King’s divorce from his Dutch consort, Cranmer laid great stress on the fact that although she had shared his chamber for six months, the bride was still to all intents and purposes unwed. At the siege of Boulogne, as we have seen, Henry was terribly altered, and the French ballad-writers jested about le cercle de fer, which, they averred, kept his ungainly carcass together. Queen Katherine was probably espoused rather as a skilful nurse than as a wife, in the ordinary acceptance of the term, and a most assiduous attendant she proved, kneeling for hours at a time rubbing his swelled legs and dressing his many ulcers. It would be unjust to the Queen’s memory to attribute this wifely devotion to none but selfish motives. But her contemporaries shrewdly guessed that, while fulfilling her wifely duty, she did not fail to work in her own interest, and that of her friends, with her own peculiar skill and tact. She certainly wished to be appointed Regent during Edward’s minority, and would gladly have excluded the Howards, Wriothesley, Gardiner, Rich, and the whole Catholic element from the King’s sick-room, while doing all she could to strengthen the hand of the Seymours, maternal uncles of the future King, who were intent on ruling his kingdom for him on strictly anti-papal lines. In the spring of the year 1546 the King had a bad relapse, and day by day the grey shadows of approaching death deepened on that broad and bloated countenance. He would not have the grim word mentioned in his presence, and any courtier who appeared before him dressed in mourning55—even for the nearest kin—was driven in fury from his sight. None the less, he realised that he had not many months to live. It was imperative, therefore, if any reconciliation with Rome was to be effected before the new reign began, that no time should be lost, and that some sharp and decisive blow should overthrow the influence of the Queen, now the chief intermediary between her sick spouse, Cranmer, and the Seymours. But Katherine, in spite of the notoriety of her intimate friendship with Sir Thomas Seymour, was far too clever to give her enemies any chance of blasting, or even smirching, her reputation. With respect to her religious opinions, which were distinctly heterodox, she was less guarded, however, and her enemies had good reason to believe that if they could convince the King, beyond any doubt, that she was in correspondence with those whom he was pleased to term “heretics,” she would never be able to weather the storm her treachery must inevitably raise in the King’s resentful breast.

Henry, whose brain remained astonishingly active, notwithstanding his infirmities, had never been so irritable and ferocious as during the last few months of his life. He was like a half-dead rattlesnake, which may recover life and spring afresh upon its prey at any moment. Never were the fires at Smithfield so active as in 1546. Early in this year six poor wretches were sent to the stake—three Catholics; the other three, Reformers. To demonstrate the impartiality of their merciless judge they were all chained together. People scarcely knew what they must believe or what disbelieve, to escape execution. The King’s informers were always at work, spying upon the sayings and doings of people in every rank of life; and the wonder is that the Queen and her ladies were not caught in some imprudent admission or other, and convicted. At last, however, in the early spring of 1546, an incident occurred which brought Katherine’s foes their longed-for chance of effecting her downfall.

Anne Askew, second daughter of Sir William Askew, or Ayscough, of South Kelsy, Lincolnshire, was born at Stallingbrough, near Grimsby, in 1521. When about fifteen years of age, she was married, without her consent, to Mr. Thomas Kyme, a Lincolnshire squire and neighbour, who had been previously “contracted” to her elder sister. During her early wedded life Mrs. Kyme appears to have been happy enough, and became the mother of two children. She presently occupied herself in studying the newly translated Scriptures, and shortly after imagined she had a divine mission to preach the gospel and correct what she deemed the theological errors of her neighbours, especially on the subject of the Lord’s Supper, concerning which she held Genevan views.

After a few years of discomfort, Mr. Kyme, who, according to the latest researches, entertained contrary religious opinions to those of his wife, began to complain of the scanty enjoyment he derived from her society. She was perpetually “gadding up and down the country, a-gospelling and a-gossiping, instead of looking after her children.” Anne is described as a handsome and daring young woman with a good deal of native wit and ability, and was evidently the prototype of not a few ladies of our own time, who prefer public life and controversy to domestic duty and retirement. She even took upon herself to read and comment on the New Testament in the nave of Lincoln Cathedral, where she was often to be found surrounded by an interested or amused group of priests and people. This state of things no Dean or Chapter could be expected to endure, and one fine day Mrs. Kyme found herself forcibly ejected from the sacred edifice. After this incident, she must have had some unusual disagreement with her husband, for her relations persuaded her to leave the town, and she travelled to London, where she soon made herself conspicuous as a preacher of the new learning, and secured several distinguished converts. She lodged in a house near the Temple, and one of her neighbours, Mr. Wadloe, a hot Catholic, who began by deriding her behaviour, ended by admiring her “godliness”; to use his own expression—“At mydnyght when I and others applye ourselves to sleape, or do worse, Mrs. Askew” (she had resumed her maiden name), “begins to pray, and ceaseth not in many howers after,” doubtless to the edification of such of her neighbours as suffered from insomnia.

By dint of perseverance, and also, it may be, through her connections, Anne Askew formed the acquaintance of several great ladies of the Court, and is said to have obtained, through the offices of the Duchess of Suffolk, an interview with the Queen, to whom, in the presence of her ladies, notably Lady Tyrwhitt, Lady Lane, Lady Denny, and the little Lady Jane Grey,56 she offered some copies of Tyndale’s version of the New Testament, and certain tracts arguing against Transubstantiation, which were subsequently found in the Queen’s own closet and in the possession of the King’s “Suffolk nieces.”

It was in March 1545 that Mrs. Askew was first arrested on a charge of heresy and taken to Sadler’s Hall, where she was denounced to the civil authorities and taken before the Lord Mayor, who in the course of his examination questioned her as to the probable changes in a consecrated wafer after a “mowse” had swallowed it, whereupon she “made no answer but smiled,” and was committed to the Counter. That much-abused man, Bishop Bonner, appears to have taken an interest in her case, and endeavoured to save her from an awful fate. He granted her a private interview and drew up a form of recantation which she signed in the following ambiguous terms: “I, Anne Askew, do believe all manner of things contained in the Catholic Church and not otherwise.” On this, Bonner, whose patience had been severely tried—for Anne was very sharp-tongued and uncompromising—waxed wroth, and taking her by the shoulders, pushed her out of the chamber. Her next friend was Dr. Weston, afterwards Bishop of Westminster, who got her liberated on her own security; and for some months we hear no more about her, except that she was busy preaching and distributing her tracts secretly. On 10th May 1546 both Mr. and Mrs. Kyme received a summons to present themselves within a specified time before the Privy Council, then sitting at Greenwich, and they accordingly appeared on the 19th of the following June before the Chancellor of the Augmentations, Sir Richard Rich, the Bishops of Durham and Winchester and a number of other noblemen and gentlemen, and were put through a severe cross-examination.57 Anne, we learn, received this summons in London, but her husband came to town on purpose to attend. Kyme got off with a caution, on his promise to return forthwith to Lincoln, and remain there. His wife, in open court, declared she would never again recognise him as her husband. He went back to Lincoln, and we lose sight of him. All we know is that he died, where he is buried, at Friskne in 1591.

Anne Askew was eventually arraigned before the King’s Justices at Guildhall for speaking against the Sacrament of the Altar, contrary to the Statute of the Six Articles. This time she appeared with two other “heretics,” one of them that singular personage Dr. Nicholas Shaxton, ex-Bishop of Salisbury, whose pupil she is said to have been. Shaxton, a Norfolk man by birth, was one of the Commission appointed by Gardiner in connection with the divorce of Katherine of Aragon, and during the proceedings he so favoured the King’s view that he eventually became almoner to Anne Boleyn and Bishop of Salisbury. At a later date he preached Zwinglian doctrines concerning the Eucharist, got himself into serious difficulties with Archbishop Cranmer, and was forced to relinquish his see. After a time he became a notorious “gospeller,” and was finally arrested with Anne Askew and a man named Christopher White. The lady and White were both sent to Newgate; but the former recanted, and so escaped a fiery ordeal. Shaxton did the same, obtained his pardon, and was actually ordered to visit Anne in prison, and persuade her to follow his example. But, weak woman though she was, Anne was made of sterner stuff than the ex-prelate. “It were better for you you had not been born than do that which you have done,” cried she; and, crestfallen, her former friend and tutor left her presence. Her condemnation followed immediately afterwards. It was presently noticed that Anne enjoyed more creature comforts in prison than the customs of Newgate allowed. She explained the matter by saying that “her maid went abroad into the streets and made moan to the prentices and they did send her money!” But her persecutors refused to believe this story, and so one afternoon, not long before her martyrdom, she was conveyed to the Tower, taken to the torture chamber, and there racked in the presence of Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, Sir Richard Rich, Sir John Barker, and Sir Anthony Knyvett, Constable of the Tower. Hitherto no one had been tortured in England for conscience’ sake, this terrible resource being solely employed to extract information from persons suspected of treasonable practices. Wriothesley, exasperated at his failure to elicit direct information or satisfactory answers from his victim, turned the screws himself, after Knyvett had refused to order her to be further tormented by the official executioner. Sir Richard Rich lent his hand to the Chancellor in this merciless task, and so, to use poor Anne’s own words, she “was nigh dead.”58

Dr. Lingard and other historians have cast doubt upon the veracity of this horrible story, but the scene is described by Anne herself in her “Narrative,” dictated a few days before her death, and published at Marburg, in the Duchy of Hesse, in 1547, with a long running commentary by John Bale, afterwards Bishop of Ossory. In his Three Conversions of England, the Jesuit, Father Parsons, who had access to much information and evidence long since destroyed or lost, not only confirms the truth of the torture episode, but adds that it was ordered by the King himself, who, hearing of the intercourse between his Queen and Anne, “caused her to be apprehended and put to the rack, to know the truth thereof. And by her confession he learned so much of Queen Katherine, as he had purposed to burn her also, if he had lived.” Parsons goes on to say that “the King’s sickness and death, shortly ensuing, was the chief cause of her escape.” Mrs. Askew bravely endured the most horrible torments rather than betray her friends’ trust, and only yielded so far as to admit that whilst in prison she had received ten shillings, delivered by a man in a blue livery. She thought the money had been sent her by the Countess of Hertford, but was not sure. She had a further sum of eight shillings at the hand of a footman in a purple livery, and believed it was a gift from Lady Denny. Questioned if she knew Lady Fitzwilliam, the Duchess of Suffolk, Lady Sussex, or any other great ladies of the Court, she evasively answered that she “knew nothing about them that could be proved.” She does not seem to have been questioned point-blank as to whether she had ever had any direct dealings with the Queen. Wriothesley may have thought he had already obtained sufficient information for his purpose. However that may have been, the stout-hearted lady was sent back to Newgate, there to spend her last three days of life, which she occupied in writing and dictating the “Narrative” to be found among Dr. Bale’s writings.59

On the eve of her execution Anne Askew and three men who had been condemned for heresy at the same time as herself were visited in the little parlour at Newgate by George Throckmorton and his brother, who were kinsmen of the Queen—a rather suspicious circumstance. They were cautioned in time, and thus escaped being arrested on a charge of heresy, which might have proved fatal to themselves and their royal cousin. John Louthe, the Reformer, who has left us an account of the meeting, also came, at great risk to himself, to encourage the unfortunate Anne. Mrs. Askew, with an “Angel’s countenance and a smiling face,” talked “merrily” with her unhappy companions, John Laselles, who had been a gentleman in attendance upon the King, and is supposed to have been the individual who betrayed the secrets of Katherine Howard; Nicholas Bolenian, a priest from Shropshire; and John Adams, a tailor. They talked on religious subjects until it was time to separate. The next day, 16th July, Mrs. Askew and her three fellow-prisoners were taken from Newgate to Smithfield. So dislocated were the poor lady’s limbs that she had to be carried to her doom in a chair. Cranmer, seeking to throw the full odium of the horrible business on Gardiner, kept much in the background in the whole matter of Anne Askew. He did not attend the ecclesiastical commission which condemned her to the stake; but for all that his signature is affixed to her death-warrant. Six years later, another martyr, Joan Bocher, one of the last of his many victims, reminded the Archbishop that he had martyred her friend Anne Askew for teaching more or less the same doctrines he now preached himself.

In the 1563 edition of Foxe’s Martyrs there is a most curious engraving, probably after an original drawing, representing the burning of Anne Askew and her companions. The spectators are kept back by a ring fence within which we see the stake, and a quaint pulpit, from which Dr. Nicholas Shaxton, duly restored to grace, preached a sermon, supporting the very dogma for denying which he had been prosecuted but a few days previously. Anne is shown dressed in white; one side of the pyre is entirely devoted to her, while the three men, apparently naked to the waist, are bound together, on the side opposite the pulpit. The concourse of people appears enormous; the mob seems to seethe round the scaffold, loll out of the surrounding windows, and even swarm on the opposite roofs. On a raised bench, under a canopy, sit Wriothesley, Rich, the Dukes of Norfolk, Surrey, “Swearing Russell,” and the Lord Mayor. These worthies, it appears, were sorely perturbed by a rumour that there was an unusual amount of gunpowder on the spot, and were very much afraid of a dangerous explosion. Their terrors were swiftly allayed when Bedford informed the company that the explosive in question was merely a number of small bags of gunpowder concealed about the persons of the victims with the object of shortening their sufferings.

At the very last moment Mrs. Askew was offered a pardon on condition that she recanted and gave up the names of her high-born friends. She refused: the Lord Mayor shouted Fiat justitia, and the faggots were lighted. Presently the fire crackled. A quick succession of explosions followed, the smoke concealing the wretched victims from sight. When the flames and smoke died down only the charred and blackened remains of four human beings could be descried. Clouds had been gathering; a peal of thunder rolled, and heavy drops of rain soon dispersed the throng. The show was over, and the home-returning spectators chatted as they went, blaming or praising the deed, according to their individual view. The horror of it does not seem to have affected them much, although among the Reformers and the better classes of all creeds expressions of hearty indignation were not lacking. But the masses were accustomed to such sights of horror, and so, indeed, were our own immediate forbears, until public executions ceased and the death sentence was carried out in the courtyards of the prisons. We have indeed progressed in these matters since 1546 and even since 1868.

A few days after the burning of the unfortunate Lincolnshire lady, Foxe tells us, Wriothesley, Gardiner, and Rich waited on the King, and so persuaded him that Anne had made damaging revelations concerning the Queen’s intercourse with heretics that Henry “proposed to burn her also.” His Majesty, in his rage, actually signed a warrant for the arrest of his offending Consort and handed it to Wriothesley. That worthy let the paper drop in a corridor or gallery close to the Queen’s apartment. One of her servants picked it up and carried it to Her Majesty, who was so terrified by its contents that she fell into violent hysterics. Her apartments were close to the King’s, and Henry, overhearing the outcry, and probably disturbed by the noise, sent to inquire what was amiss. The Queen’s physician, Wendy, informed the messenger that Her Majesty was dangerously ill, and her sickness, to his reckoning, caused by sudden and extreme distress of mind. Whereupon the King sent word that she was not to trouble herself further, as no ill was intended to her. Greatly comforted by this reassuring message, Katherine presently felt herself sufficiently recovered to receive a visit from her husband, who, at great personal inconvenience, caused himself to be conveyed into her apartment in his chair. Nothing could have been better calculated to revive the drooping spirits of the scared Consort than the sight of her august spouse in a good humour. The following evening she was well enough to return the King’s visit. She was accompanied by the Lady Tyrwhitt, her sister the Lady Herbert, by the King’s niece the Lady Jane Grey, and by the Lady Lane, who bore the candles before Her Majesty. The King welcomed the Queen and her company very courteously, and, bidding her be seated, in a cheerful tone entered into a controversial conversation with her. He possibly wished to “draw” his Consort upon certain theological questions; but she shrewdly observed that “since God had appointed him Supreme Head of the Church it was not for her to teach him theology, but to learn it from him.” “Not so, by St. Mary,” said the King, “you are become a doctor, Kate, to instruct us, and not to be instructed of us, as oftentimes we have seen.” “Indeed, indeed, Sire,” quoth the Queen, “if your Majesty so conceive, my meaning has been mistaken, for I have always held it preposterous for a woman to instruct her lord.” “If,” she continued, “I have occasionally ventured to differ with your Highness on religious matters, it was partly to obtain information, and also to pass away the pain and weariness of your present infirmity with arguments that interested you.” “And is it so, sweetheart?” replied His Majesty, “then we are perfect friends,” and thereupon he kissed her and gave her leave to depart.

The day appointed by her foes for the Queen’s arrest chanced to be fine and the sun shone brightly. The King sent for her to take the early air with him on the garden terrace overlooking the Thames. Katherine came, attended as before by her sister, the Lady Herbert, the Lady Lane, the Lady Tyrwhitt, and the little Lady Jane Grey. They had not been long walking up and down in the sunshine before the Lord Chancellor, with forty of the guard, entered the garden, expecting to carry off the Queen to the Tower—for no intimation of the change in the King’s intentions had reached him. Henry received his minister with a burst of furious invective. Bidding the Queen and her ladies stand apart, he called up Wriothesley and cast every evil name he could think of at him, commanding him, finally, to “avaunt from his presence and never show his face again till he was summoned.” Wriothesley, crestfallen and humbled, was about to withdraw, when the Queen advanced and interceded for him: “Poor soul, poor soul!” quoth the King; “thou little knowest, Kate, how ill he deserveth this grace at thy hands. On my hand, sweetheart, he hath been to thee a very knave!” So the disappointed minister departed, and Henry walked up and down the terrace again, leaning on his Queen and followed by her escort of ladies. Although Wriothesley’s part in this tragi-comedy seems to have been overlooked, the King is said never to have forgiven Gardiner his share in the matter. A little later, notwithstanding the royal prohibition, both conspirators presented themselves with their colleagues. The King forthwith reminded Wriothesley in his most forcible manner that he had ordered him never to show his face again, and above all never, on any pretext whatever, to bring “that beast Gardiner” along with him. “My Lord of Winchester,” replied the cunning Wriothesley, “has come to wait upon your Highness with an offer of benevolence from his clergy.” The King being as usual in great need of money, began to listen more benignly, allowed Gardiner to present the address, and finally accepted the bribe.60 But he took no further notice of the Bishop, and is said to have struck his name off the list of his executors within the next few days. He also cancelled that of Thirlby, Bishop of Westminster, because, said he, “he is too much under the influence of Gardiner.”61 Queen Katherine may have had a hand in this affair, and after the revelation of the treachery which would fain have destroyed her she very likely took the opportunity of letting the King know more concerning the machinations of Gardiner and Wriothesley than was good for their credit or likely to serve their influence.

The details of this formidable but abortive plot against Katherine Parr rest mainly on the authority of Foxe. But it must be remembered, by those inclined to doubt the “Martyrologist,” that at this time he had attained his thirtieth year, he was in touch with most of the personages named, and was consequently in a position to obtain the information which he wove into his famous narrative—not, we admit, without considerable embellishment and exaggeration, introduced to suit the taste of his readers—from living witnesses. Foxe also made liberal use of Paget’s statement during the proceedings for Gardiner’s deprivation, which took place early in Edward’s reign. All the Elizabethan and Jacobean historians of Henry VIII—Herbert, Parsons, Holinshed, Strype, Speed, Oldmixon, and others—reproduce the story with slight emendations and additions from Foxe. No direct confirmation of it is to be found indeed in the State Papers, but this is not surprising, for such matters were not usually set down in writing. Nevertheless, it is hinted at.62 Nor do the Ambassadors seem to have known anything about it. Father Parsons, who, like Foxe, obtained much of his information at first hand, introduces the incident in his Three Conversions of England, a book written to refute some of Foxe’s errors, and adds that although Foxe lays “all the cause of the Queen’s trouble upon Bishop Gardiner and others, and though the King did kindly and lovingly pardon her, the truth is that the King’s sickness and death were the chief causes of her escape, for had the King found her guilty he would have commanded her also to be burned.”

Speed, possibly mistaking Lady Lane for Lady Jane, introduces the King’s little niece on this occasion, not only as a witness of the reconciliation of the royal couple, but in the character of a candle-bearer before the Queen. Jane Grey, being a Princess of the Blood, could never have been in attendance upon the Queen, and she was too small a child to be laden with a pair of heavy branch candlesticks. Lady Lane, on the other hand, was certainly in the Queen’s Household at this particular juncture. She was Her Majesty’s cousin-german, being the daughter of her uncle, Lord Parr of Horton, and wife of Sir Ralph Lane of Orlingby, Nottinghamshire. Still, since the fact of her being present is mentioned by so many almost contemporary writers, we may conclude that Lady Jane was a witness of the dramatic scenes that took place between King Henry and his terrified Consort, and may herself, in after life, have narrated the incident to some friend of Foxe or immediate forbear of Parson’s informant. Gardiner’s disgrace does not seem to have been quite as complete as Foxe has been pleased to represent it, and he was in close enough contact with those in power to be selected as chief celebrant at the King’s Requiem.

That the King was completely reconciled to his wife is proved by the conspicuous part he assigned her in the splendid series of festivities in honour of the French Envoy, who arrived in August, when the Court had removed to Hampton Court. Not only was her apartment refurnished with sumptuous tapestries, but her wardrobe was renewed, and the King presented her with a quantity of magnificent jewellery, which, after his death, gave rise to considerable misunderstanding and trouble.

These festivities in honour of Monsieur d’Annebault, Francis I’s special Envoy, were the last flicker of the pageantry of Henry VIII’s reign, and revived for a week something of the brilliance of the Court of England in the great days of Wolsey. For the first and only time, Prince Edward, as heir-apparent, played a conspicuous part. On Monday, 23rd August, the boy-prince rode out towards London to meet the Ambassador, attended by the Archbishop of York and the Earls of Hertford and Huntingdon, and by a retinue of “five hundred and forty persons in velvet coats, and the Prince’s liveries wore sleeves of cloth of gold, and half the coats embroidered also with gold, and there were the number of eight hundred, royally apparelled.” D’Annebault, who came to ratify the peace recently concluded between the sovereigns of France and England, was accompanied by a suite of two hundred gentlemen, who were all lodged at the King’s expense and entertained in the most hospitable manner. His Majesty was not well enough to receive the Ambassador on his arrival, but he received him in audience on the following day, after which monarch and Ambassador proceeded to the Chapel Royal, where, during Mass, they solemnly received the Host together.63 Then followed six days of banqueting, hunting, and merry-making, masques, and mummeries, “with divers and sundry changes, inasmuch that the torch-bearers were clothed with gold cloth, and such like honourable entertainments, it were much to utter and hard to believe.” On these occasions the Marchioness of Dorset and her daughter, the Lady Jane Grey, were present, and Prince Edward danced with his little cousin, who also tripped it with young Lord Edward Seymour, the Lord Hertford’s eldest boy. When the Ambassador took his leave, Henry made him a present of silver plate to the value of £1200. After his departure the dying King seems to have led a very quiet life at Hampton Court and Whitehall. The end was visibly approaching. His feet and hands were abnormally swollen; dropsy had set in, and he was probably also suffering from an internal tumour. Even his most fervent admirers were obliged to confess that in appearance, at least, he had assumed somewhat of the aspect of a monster; but music still charmed the suffering monarch, and the last Household Books of his reign contain various items of payments to musicians and madrigal singers.

Note.—Dr. Gairdner makes the following comments on this subject in his Preface to vol. 21, part i. of the Calendar of State Papers for 1546 (published in 1908): “But one word may be permitted here about that dreadful incident, the racking in the Tower. It took place after her (Anne’s) condemnation, the object being to elicit from her information about persons at the Court who it was suspected had been her allies in promoting heresy. Besides others whose names are given, against whom she positively refused to utter a word, she was probably expected to accuse Queen Katherine Parr herself; for Parsons (Three Conversions of England, ii. 493) is no doubt perfectly correct in saying that the well-known incident related by Foxe, about this Queen, when she stood in real danger from a charge of heresy, was connected with the affair of Anne Askew. But Parsons is certainly wrong in saying that the King would have burned Katherine Parr also if he had lived. For though her heretical propensities were no secret, she survived the King, and he himself for fully six months survived Anne Askew. More probably the Queen was saved by Anne’s refusal to commit anyone except herself.”