Poor Catherine of Aragon died at Kimbolton on the 8th of January, 1536, after writing a letter to the king, which it is said extracted one tear from the sovereign's heart—a circumstance which must have raised hopes at the time, that the process of extracting blood from a stone might not be found impossible.
The year 1536 was marked by a voyage of discovery under the patronage of the king, for the purpose of sending some emigrants on a wild-goose chase to the north-west coast of America. Thirty of the adventurers were gentlemen from the Temple and Chancery Lane, who, thinking anything better than nothing, had probably dashed their wigs to the ground, and thrown themselves on the mercy of that motion of course which the sea was certain to supply them with. It is said, though we know not with how much truth, that the learned wanderers being short of provisions, made each other their prey—a result to be expected when clients were not accessible. It is added that none of the party returned but a learned gentleman of the name of Ruts, who was so changed that his father and mother did not know him until he pointed to a wart which had not been washed away by the water.
Henry continued his hostility to the pope, absurdly declaring that he would not be bullied, and in defiance of the papal see caused Anne Boleyn, who is said to have exulted over the death of Catherine, to drain the cup of sorrow, or rather to lap it up: for she one day found Jane Seymour, a maid of honour, sitting on the knee of Henry. It was in vain that the monarch and his new favourite endeavoured to laugh the matter off as a mere lapsus, for Anne declared that the king must have begun to nurse a new passion.
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As they who are convicted of a fault themselves are anxious to pick holes in the conduct of others, Henry having been proved to see more in Seymour than became him as a married man, commenced harbouring suspicions against Anne Boleyn. On May-day, 1536, there had been a royal party at Greenwich—in fact, a regular fair—when suddenly, in the midst of the sports, Henry started up exceedingly indignant at something he had witnessed. The queen did the same, and her husband pretended that he had seen her either winking at one Norris, a groom, or clown to the ring, in which the jousts were going forward, or making signals to Mark Smeaton, a musician in the clerical orchestra. Several persons were seized at once, and sent to the Tower, including poor Smeaton, the member of the band who was accused of acting in concert with men of higher note, to whom he was charged with playing second fiddle.
Poor Anne was taken to the Tower, where a number of scandalous old women were sent about her to talk her into admissions against herself, and to talk her out of anything that they could manage to extract from her simplicity. She wrote what may justly be called "a very pretty letter" to the king, dated the 6th of May, 1536; but if any answer was received it must have come from Echo, who is the general respondent to all communications which receive no attention from the parties to whom they are directed. On the 12th of the same month Norris, Weston, Brereton, and Smeaton were tried and executed, all denying their guilt but the musician, who changed his key note a little before he died, and modulated off from a fortissimo declaration of innocence to a most pianissimo confession. There is every reason to believe that this composition of Smeaton was a piece of thorough base, which is only to be accounted for on the score of treachery.
On the 15th of May, a building as trumpery as the charge against her having been knocked together in the Tower, Anne Boleyn was brought up for trial before a court of twenty-six barons, one of whom was her own father, while her uncle the Duke of Norfolk sat as president. It would be imagined that a jury comprising two relatives would have given a positive advantage to Anne; but her uncle being a rogue, and her father a fool, the former was too venal, and the latter too timid, to be of any use to her. She pleaded her own cause with such earnestness, that everyone who heard how she had acquitted herself, thought that her judges must have acquitted her. They, however, found her guilty, to the intense bewilderment of the Lord Mayor, who had heard her defence, and could only go about exclaiming, "Well, I never! did you ever?" for the remainder of his existence.