The king’s jealousy first appeared openly in a tilting at Greenwich, where the queen happened to drop her handkerchief, an incident probably casual, but interpreted by him as an instance of gallantry to some of her paramours.[*] He immediately retired from the place; sent orders to confine her to her chamber; arrested Norris, Brereton, Weston, and Smeton, together with her brother Rocheford; and threw them into prison. The queen, astonished at these instances of his fury, thought that he meant only to try her; but finding him in earnest, she reflected on his obstinate, unrelenting spirit, and she prepared herself for that melancholy doom which was awaiting her. Next day, she was sent to the Tower; and on her way thither, she was informed of her supposed offences, of which she had hitherto been ignorant: she made earnest protestations of her innocence; and when she entered the prison, she fell on her knees, and prayed God so to help her, as she was not guilty of the crime imputed to her. Her surprise and confusion threw her into hysterical disorders; and in that situation she thought that the best proof of her innocence was to make an entire confession; and she revealed some indiscretions and levities, which her simplicity had equally betrayed her to commit and to avow. She owned that she had once rallied Norris on his delaying his marriage, and had told him that he probably expected her when she should be a widow: she had reproved Weston, she said, for his affection to a kinswoman of hers, and his indifference towards his wife; but he told her that she had mistaken the object of his affection, for it was herself; upon which she defied him.[*] She affirmed that Smeton had never been in her chamber but twice, when he played on the harpsichord; but she acknowledged that he had once had the boldness to tell her that a look sufficed him. The king, instead of being satisfied with the candor and sincerity of her confession, regarded these indiscretions only as preludes to greater and more criminal intimacies.
* Burnet, vol. i. p. 198.
** Strype, vol. i. p. 281.
Of all those multitudes whom the beneficence of the queen’s tamper had obliged during her prosperous fortune, no one durst interpose between her and the king’s fury; and the person whose advancement every breath had favored, and every countenance had smiled upon, was now left neglected and abandoned. Even her uncle, the duke of Norfolk, preferring the connections of party to the ties of blood, was become her most dangerous enemy; and all the retainers to the Catholic religion hoped that her death would terminate the king’s quarrel with Rome, and leave him again to his natural and early bent, which had inclined him to maintain the most intimate union with the apostolic see. Cranmer alone, of all the queen’s adherents, still retained his friendship for her; and, as far as the king’s impetuosity permitted him, he endeavored to moderate the violent prejudices entertained against her.
The queen herself wrote Henry a letter from the Tower, full of the most tender expostulations and of the warmest protestations of innocence. This letter had no influence on the unrelenting mind of Henry, who was determined to pave the way for his new marriage by the death of Anne Boleyn. Morris, Weston, Brereton, and Smeton, were tried; but no legal evidence was produced against them. The chief proof of their guilt consisted in a hearsay from one Lady Wingfield, who was dead. Smeton was prevailed on, by the vain hopes of life, to confess a criminal correspondence with the queen;[**] but even her enemies expected little advantage from this confession; for they never dared to confront him with her; and he was immediately executed; as were also Brereton and Weston. Norris had been much in the king’s favor, and an offer of life was made him, if he would confess his crime and accuse the queen; but he generously rejected the proposal, and said that in his conscience he believed her entirely guiltless: but for his part, he could accuse her of nothing, and he would rather die a thousand deaths than calumniate an innocent person.
* See note K, at the end of the volume.
** Burnet, vol. i. p. 202.
The queen and her brother were tried by a jury of peers consisting of the duke of Suffolk, the marquis of Exeter, the earl of Arundel, and twenty-three more: their uncle, the duke of Norfolk, presided as high steward. Upon what proof or pretence the crime of incest was imputed to them, is unknown: the chief evidence, it is said, amounted to no more than that Rocheford had been seen to lean on her bed before some company. Part of the charge against her was that she had affirmed to her minions, that the king never had her heart; and had said to each of them apart, that she loved him better than any person whatsoever; “which was to the slander of the issue begotten between the king and her.” By this strained interpretation, her guilt was brought under the statute of the twenty-fifth of this reign; in which it was declared criminal to throw any slander upon the king, queen, or their issue. Such palpable absurdities were at that time admitted; and they were regarded by the peers of England as a sufficient reason for sacrificing an innocent queen to the cruelty of their tyrant. Though unassisted by counsel, she defended herself with presence of mind; and the spectators could not forbear pronouncing her entirely innocent. Judgment, however, was given by the court, both against the queen and Lord Rocheford; and her verdict contained, that she should be burned or beheaded at the king’s pleasure. When this dreadful sentence was pronounced, she was not terrified, but lifting up her hands to heaven, said, “O Father! O Creator! thou who art the way, the truth, and the life, thou knowest that I have not deserved this fate;” and then turning to the judges, made the most pathetic declarations of her innocence.
Henry, not satisfied with this cruel vengeance, was resolved entirely to annul his marriage with Anne Boleyn, and to declare her issue illegitimate: he recalled to his memory, that a little after her appearance in the English court, some attachment had been acknowledged between her and the earl of Northumberland, then Lord Piercy; and he now questioned that nobleman with regard to these engagements. Northumberland took an oath before the two archbishops, that no contract or promise of marriage had ever passed between them: he received the sacrament upon it, before the duke of Norfolk and others of the privy council; and this solemn act he accompanied with the most solemn protestations of veracity.[*] The queen, however, was shaken by menaces of executing the sentence against her in its greatest rigor, and was prevailed on to confess in court some lawful impediment to her marriage with the king.[**] The afflicted primate, who sat as judge, thought himself obliged by this confession to pronounce the marriage null and invalid. Henry, in the transports of his fury, did not perceive that his proceedings were totally inconsistent, and that if her marriage were from the beginning invalid, she could not possibly be guilty of adultery.
* Herbert, p. 384*[**missing period]
** Heylin, p. 94.
The queen now prepared for suffering the death to which she was sentenced. She sent her last message to the king, and acknowledged the obligations which she owed him, in thus uniformly continuing his endeavors for her advancement: from a private gentlewoman, she said, he had first made her a marchioness, then a queen, and now, since he could raise her no higher in this world, he was sending her to be a saint in heaven. She then renewed the protestations of her innocence, and recommended her daughter to his care. Before the lieutenant of the Tower, and all who approached her, she made the like declarations; and continued to behave herself with her usual serenity, and even with cheerfulness. “The executioner,” she said to the lieutenant, “is, I hear, very expert; and my neck is very slender:” upon which she grasped it in her hand, and smiled. When brought, however, to the scaffold, she softened her tone a little with regard to her protestations of innocence. She probably reflected, that the obstinacy of Queen Catharine, and her opposition to the king’s will, had much alienated him from the lady Mary: her own maternal concern, therefore, for Elizabeth prevailed in these last moments over that indignation which the unjust sentence by which she suffered naturally excited in her. She said that she was come to die, as she was sentenced, by the law: she would accuse none, nor say any thing of the ground upon which she was judged. She prayed heartily for the king; called him a most merciful and gentle prince; and acknowledged that he had always been to her a good and gracious sovereign; and if any one should think proper to canvass her cause, she desired him to judge the best.[*] She was beheaded by the executioner of Calais, who was sent for as more expert than any in England. Her body was negligently thrown into a common chest of elm-tree, made to hold arrows, and was buried in the Tower.
* Burnet. vol. i. p. 205.