Among the other calumnies with which the memory of the unfortunate Queen Anne Boleyn has been aspersed by the enemies of the Reformation, it has been said—“that she had long carried on a criminal intercourse with Sir Thomas Wyatt the poet; who, we are told, had gone so far as to confess to the king that he had debauched her; and had urged this, in the first instance, as an argument to dissuade the king from marrying her.” The story requires no refutation; but Wyatt’s name having been called in question when Anne Boleyn’s conduct was scrutinized, gave the forgers of fabulous history an opportunity of engrafting their libellous inventions on slight circumstances, in order to give them something of the colour of probability. How far there was any foundation for these calumnies will now appear. The following interesting pages were written, it is presumed, by the grandson of the poet, George Wyatt, Esquire, sixth son and heir of Sir Thomas Wyatt the younger, who was beheaded for rebellion in the first year of the reign of Queen Mary. The writer died at the advanced age of eighty, at Boxley in Kent, in the year 1624, and seems to have meditated a complete exposure of such parts of Saunders’ Book on the Reformation as came within his own immediate knowledge. He was maternal uncle to Sir Roger Twysden, and in 1623 communicated to him part of his collections. A fragment of the Life of Cardinal Wolsey, by George Cavendish, was in the late Mr. Bindley’s library, to which we have already referred, at p. [120] of the present edition; prefixed to which was the following note by Sir Roger Twysden.— “I receaved this from my uncle Wyatt, Anno 1623, who beeing yonge had gathered many notes towching this lady, not without an intent to have opposed Saunders.” It is remarkable that this fragment from Wolsey’s Life has been twice printed as a piece of original and authentic cotemporary history, without suspicion of its being an extract from Cavendish;—the first time for private distribution, in 1808, and secondly by Dr. Nott, in his appendix to Wyatt’s Poems, in 1816.
The manuscript from which the present very interesting memoir is printed was purchased at the late Sir Peter Thompson’s sale. It is in the hand writing of the Rev. John Lewis, of the Isle of Thanet, the celebrated antiquary. It was printed in 1817 for a few noblemen and gentlemen, but twenty-seven copies only having been taken off, may be considered still to have almost the rarity of a manuscript.
SOME PARTICULARS OF THE LIFE OF QUEEN ANNE BOLEIGNE.
The peculiar means that I have had, more than others, to come to some more particular knowledge of such things as I intend to handle, ought to draw thus much from me; yet much more the request of him that hath been by authority set on work in this important business, both for the singular gifts of God in him, of wisdom, learning, integrity, and virtue; and also the encouragement I have had of late from the right reverend my Lord of Canterbury’s grace, to set down what understanding I have had of this matter, is both my warrant, and a bond the more upon my conscience, to hold me urged and constrained not to neglect such an opportunity of my service to the church, my prince, and country. Principally his desire was, and my purpose in satisfying it, to deliver what I knew, touching certain things that happened to the excellent lady, the Lady Anne Boleigne, about the time of her first coming to the court. Yet, considering I had some other knowledge of things that might be found serviceable no less than that, and also might give light and life to the faithful narration of this whole matter, I have supposed it would fall best, to deliver the same, as it were, under the description of her whole life; and this the more particularly and frankly, that, all things known, those that I understood were to visit it again might take what they should think most material for their use. And would to God I could give that grace and felicity of style unto it that the worthiness of the subject doth require, notwithstanding that in this regard I am the less carefull, for that it is to pass through their hands that can give it better vesture; and I shall the more turn my care to intend the sincere and faithful delivery of that which I have received from those that both were most likely to come to the most perfect knowledge hereof, and had least cause or, otherwise for themselves, could least give just reason of suspicion to any, either of mind, or partiality, or wit, to fayne or misreport any whit hereof. And, indeed, chiefly the relation of those things that I shall set down is come from two. One a lady[202], that first attended on her both before and after she was queen, with whose house and mine there was then kindred and strict alliance. The other also a lady of noble birth, living in those times, and well acquainted with the persons that most this concerneth, from whom I am myself descended. A little, therefore, repeating the matter more high, I will derive the discourse hereof from the very spring and fountains, whence may appear most clearly by what occasion and degrees the stream of this whole cause hath grown to such an ocean as it were of memorable effects through all our parts of Christendom, not by chance or wits of men so much as even by the apparent work of God, as I hope presently to make plain to all men.
The see of Rome having risen, in this our age, unto a full tide of all wickedness, had overflowed all these parts of the world with the floods of her evils, whereby was occasioned and had beginning the ebb of all her pomp, power, and glory, every particular devising, as if it had been by one consent and accord (so showing it the more apparently to come of God), to provide for the time to come against her so great inundation of mischiefs. Hereof, in England, Germany, Italy, and in many other places, sundry persons of singular learning and piety, one succeeding another, at divers times, opened their mouths as trumpets to call men to this work upon several occasions, all rising from the outrageous corruptions and foaming filth of that see. But chiefly and most notoriously, in the time of Henry the Eighth, of famous memory, this came to pass by the just judgment of God upon her, and his mercy upon us, where the same polity by which she had in custom, and then made herself most assured, to strengthen herself in giving to princes licence to unlawful contracts (esteeming thereby to tie them and their issue the more strongly to her); the bond of so evil counsel breaking suddenly, set at liberty the certain means of this great opposition against her after almost through all Europe. So little assurance especially have evil foundations of usurped authorities against the provoked judgments of God by sin, and general displeasure of man upon just conceived indignities.
There was, at this present, presented to the eye of the court the rare and admirable beauty of the fresh and young Lady Anne Boleigne, to be attending upon the queen. In this noble imp, the graces of nature graced by gracious education, seemed even at the first to have promised bliss unto her aftertimes. She was taken at that time to have a beauty not so whitely as clear and fresh above all we may esteem, which appeared much more excellent by her favour passing sweet and cheerful; and these, both also increased by her noble presence of shape and fashion, representing both mildness and majesty more than can be expressed. There was found, indeed, upon the side of her nail upon one of her fingers, some little show of a nail, which yet was so small, by the report of those that have seen her, as the workmaster seemed to leave it an occasion of greater grace to her hand, which, with the tip of one of her other fingers, might be and was usually by her hidden without any least blemish to it. Likewise there were said to be upon some parts of her body certain small moles incident to the clearest complexions. And certainly both these were none other than might more stain their writings with note of malice that have caught at such light motes in so bright beams of beauty, than in any part shadow it, as may right well appear by many arguments, but chiefly by the choice and exquisite judgments of many brave spirits that were esteemed to honour the honourable parts in her, even honoured of envy itself.
Amongst these, two were observed to be of principal mark. The one was Sir Thomas Wiat, the elder[203], the other was the king himself. The knight, in the beginning, coming to behold the sudden appearance of this new beauty, came to be holden and surprised somewhat with the sight thereof; after much more with her witty and graceful speech, his ear also had him chained unto her, so as finally his heart seemed to say, I could gladly yield to be tied for ever with the knot of her love, as somewhere in his verses hath been thought his meaning was to express[204]. She, on the other part, finding him to be then married, and in the knot to have been tied then ten years, rejected all his speech of love; but yet in such sort as whatsoever tended to regard of her honour, she showed not to scorn, for the general favour and good will she perceived all men to bare him, which might the rather occasion others to turn their looks to that which a man of his worth was brought to gaze at in her, as, indeed, after it happened. The king is held to have taken his first apprehension of this love after such time as upon the doubt in those treaties of marriage with his daughter Mary, first with the Spaniard, then with the French: by some of the learned of his own land he had vehemently in their public sermons, and in his confessions to his ghostly fathers, been prayed to forsake that his incestuous life by accompanying with his brother’s wife; and especially after he was moved by the cardinal, then in his greatest trust with the king, both for the better quietness of his conscience, and for more sure settling of the succession to more prosperous issue.
