Part 3 (2/2)
KATHARINE
For purity and steadfastness of devotion and duty, Katharine stands unsurpa.s.sed in the history of the world, and Shakespeare has conceived no more pathetic figure than that of the patient Queen living in the midst of an unscrupulous Court.
Daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, she was betrothed at the age of five to Arthur, Henry VII.'s eldest son. Though known as the Princess of Wales, it was not till 1501, when only sixteen years old, that she was married to Prince Arthur. She had scarcely been married six months when Arthur died, at the early age of fifteen, and she was left a widow. Henry VII., in his desire to keep her marriage dower of 200,000 crowns, proposed a marriage between her and Arthur's brother. Katharine wrote to her father saying she had ”no inclination for a second marriage in England.” In spite of her remonstrances and the misgivings of the Pope, who had no wish to give the necessary dispensation for her to marry her deceased husband's brother, she was betrothed to Henry after two years of widowhood. But it was not till a few months after Henry VIII. came to the throne, five years later, that they were actually married. Henry was five years younger than Katharine, but their early married life appears to have been very happy.
She wrote to her father, ”Our time is ever pa.s.sed in continual feasts.”
The cruel field sports of the time the Queen never could take any delight in, and avoided them as much as possible. She was pious and ascetic and most proficient in needlework. Katharine had a number of children, all of whom died shortly after birth. It was this consideration in the first instance which weighed in Henry's mind in desiring a divorce. The first child to survive was Princess Mary, born in February, 1516. Henry expressed the hope that sons would follow. But Katharine had no further living children. Henry hoped against hope, and undertook, in the event of her having an heir, to lead a crusade against the Turks. Even this bribe to fortune proved unavailing. Henry's conscience, which was at best of the utilitarian sort, now began to suffer deep pangs, and in 1525, when Katharine was forty years old and he thirty-four, he gave up hope of the much-needed heir to the throne. The Queen herself thought her childlessness was ”a judgment of G.o.d, for that her former marriage was made in blood,” the innocent Earl of Warwick having been put to death owing to the demand of Ferdinand of Aragon.
The King began to indulge in the superst.i.tion that his marriage with a brother's widow was marked with the curse of Heaven. It is perhaps a strange coincidence that Anne Boleyn should have appeared on the scene at this moment. Katharine seems always to have regarded her rival with charity and pity. When one of her gentlewomen began to curse Anne as the cause of the Queen's misery, the Queen stopped her. ”Curse her not,” she said, ”but rather pray for her; for even now is the time fast coming when you shall have reason to pity her and lament her case.”
Undoubtedly Katharine's most notable quality was her dignity. Even her enemies regarded her with respect. She was always sustained by the greatness of her soul, her life of right doing and her feeling of being ”a Queen and daughter of a King.” Through all her bitter trials she went, a pathetic figure, untouched by calumny. If she had any faults they are certainly not recorded in history. Her farewell letter to the King would seem to be very characteristic of Katharine's beauty of character. She knew the hand of death was upon her. She had entreated the King, but Henry had refused her request for a last interview with her daughter Mary.
With this final cruelty fresh in her mind she still could write: ”My lord and dear husband,--I commend me unto you. The hour of my death draweth fast on, and my case being such, the tender love I owe you forceth me with a few words, to put you in remembrance of the health and safeguard of your soul, which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and tendering of your own body, for the which you have cast me into many miseries and yourself into many cares. For my part I do pardon you all, yea, I do wish and devoutly pray G.o.d that He will pardon you.”
ANNE BOLEYN
The estimation of the character of Anne Boleyn would seem to be as varied as the spelling of her name. She is believed to have been born in 1507.
The Boleyns or Bullens were a Norfolk family of French origin, but her mother was of n.o.ble blood, being daughter of the Earl of Ormonde, and so a descendant of Edward I. It is a curious fact that all of Henry's wives can trace their descent from this King. Of Anne's early life little is known save that she was sent as Maid of Honour to the French Queen Claude. She was probably about nineteen years old when she was recalled to the English Court and began her round of revels and love intrigues. Certainly she was a born leader of men; many have denied her actual beauty, but she had the greater quality of charm, the power of subjugating, the beckoning eye. An accomplished dancer, we read of her ”as leaping and jumping with infinite grace and agility.” ”She dressed with marvellous taste and devised new robes,” but of the ladies who copied her, we read that unfortunately ”none wore them with her gracefulness, in which she rivalled Venus.” Music, too, was added to her accomplishments, and Cavendish tells us how ”when she composed her hands to play and her voice to sing, it was joined with that sweetness of countenance that three harmonies concurred.”
It is difficult to speak with unalloyed admiration of Anne's virtue. At the most charitable computation, she was an outrageous flirt. It would seem that she was genuinely in love with Lord Percy, and that Wolsey was ordered by the then captivated and jealous King to put an end to their intrigue and their desire to marry. Anne is supposed never to have forgiven Wolsey for this, and by a dramatic irony it was her former lover, Percy, then become Earl of Northumberland, who was sent to arrest the fallen Cardinal at York. It is said that he treated Wolsey in a brutal manner, having his legs bound to the stirrup of his mule like a common criminal. When Henry, in his infatuation for the attractive Lady-in-Waiting to his Queen, as she was then, wished Wolsey to become the aider and abettor of his love affairs, Wolsey found himself placed in the double capacity of man of G.o.d and man of Kings. In these cases, G.o.d is apt to go to the wall--for the time being. But it was Wolsey's vain attempt to serve two masters that caused his fall, which the French Amba.s.sador attributed entirely to the ill offices of Anne Boleyn. This is another proof that courtiers should always keep on the right side of women.
Nothing could stop Henry's pa.s.sion for Anne, and she showed her wonderful cleverness in the way she kept his love alive for years, being first created Marchioness of Pembroke, and ultimately triumphing over every obstacle and gaining her wish of being his Queen. This phase of her character has been nicely touched by Shakespeare's own deft hand. She was crowned with unparalleled splendour on Whit Sunday of 1533. At the banquet held after the Coronation of Anne Boleyn, we read that two Countesses stood on either side of Anne's chair and often held a ”fine cloth before the Queen's face whenever she listed to spit.” ”And under the table went two gentlewomen, and sat at the Queen's feet during the dinner.” The courtier's life, like the burglar's does not appear to have been one of unmixed happiness.
In the same year she bore Henry a child, but to everyone's disappointment, it proved to be a girl, who was christened Elizabeth, and became the great Queen of England. Anne's triumph was pathetically brief. Her most important act was that of getting the publication of the Bible authorised in England. Two years after her coronation, Sir Thomas More, who had refused to swear fealty to the King's heir by Anne, who had been thrown into prison and was awaiting execution, asked ”How Queen Anne did?” ”There is nothing else but dancing and sporting,” was the answer. ”These dances of hers,” he said, ”will prove such dances that she will spurn our heads off like footb.a.l.l.s, but it will not be long ere her head dance the like dance.” In a year's time, this prophecy came true. Her Lady-in-Waiting, the beautiful Jane Seymour, stole the King from her who in her time had betrayed her royal mistress.
There are two versions with regard to her last feelings towards the King.
Lord Bacon writes that just before her execution she said: ”Commend me to his Majesty and tell him he hath ever been constant in his career of advancing me. From a private gentlewoman he made me a marchioness, from a marchioness a Queen; and now he hath left no higher degree of honour, he gives my innocency the crown of martyrdom.” This contains a fine sting of satire. Another chronicler gives us her words as follows: ”I pray G.o.d to save the King, and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler or more merciful prince was there never.” One cannot but think that this latter version of her dying words may have been edited by his Grace of Canterbury.
If it is difficult to reconcile Anne's heartlessness with her piety, it should be remembered that cruelty is often the twin-sister of religious fervour.
Whatever may have been her failings of character, whatever misfortunes she may have suffered during her life, Anne will ever live in history as one of the master mistresses of the world.
THE DIVORCE
As to the divorce, it will be well to clear away the enormous amount of argument, of vituperation and prevarication by which the whole question is obscured, and to seek by the magnet of common sense to find the needle of truth in this vast bundle of hay.
The situation was complicated. In those days it was generally supposed that no woman could succeed to the throne, and a male successor was regarded as a political necessity. Charles V., too, was plotting to depose Henry and to proclaim James V. as ruler of England, or Mary, who was to be married to an English n.o.ble for this purpose.
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