Cranmer was not the only person among the evangelicals with whom Anne Boleyn entertained relations. From the first day she had seen Latimer, the Christian simplicity and apostolic manners of the reformer had touched her. When she heard him preach, she was delighted. The enthusiasm for that bold Christian preacher was universal. 'It is as impossible,' said his hearers, 'for us to receive into our minds all the treasures of eloquence and knowledge which fall from his lips, as it would be for a little river to contain the waters of the ocean in its bed.' From the period (1535) when Latimer preached the Lent Sermons before the king, he was one of the most regular instruments of the queen's active charity.
A still more decided reformer had a high esteem for Anne Boleyn: this was Tyndale. No one, in his opinion, had declared with so much decision as the queen in favor of the New Testament and its circulation in English. Wishing, accordingly, to show his gratitude and respect, Tyndale presented her with a unique copy of his translation, printed in beautiful type on vellum, illuminated and bound in blue morocco, with these words in large red letters: Anne Regina Angliæ (Anne, queen of England).[271] This remarkable volume, now preserved in the library of the British Museum, is a monument of the veneration of the prisoner of Vilvorde for Anne Boleyn. A manuscript manual of devotion for the use of this princess has also been preserved: she used to present copies of it to her maids of honor. We see in it the value she attached to the Holy Scriptures: 'Give us, O Father of Mercies,' we read, 'the greatest of all gifts Thou hast ever conferred on man—the knowledge of Thy holy will, and the glad tidings of our salvation. Roman tyranny had long hidden it from us under Latin letters; but now it is promulgated, published, and freely circulated.'[272]
=PARKER'S CHRISTIAN CHARACTER.=
Anne having in 1535 lost Dr. Betts, one of her almoners, looked out for a man devoted to the Gospel to take his place, for she loved to be surrounded by the most pious persons in England. She cast her eyes upon Matthew Parker, a native of Norwich, professor at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and a man who for two years had been preaching the truth with fervor. Parker loved retirement and obscurity; accordingly, when he received on the Wednesday following Palm Sunday two letters summoning him to court 'because the queen wished to see him,'[273] he was amazed and confounded. At first he wanted to refuse so brilliant a call; but Latimer wrote to him: 'Show yourself to the world; hide yourself no longer; do good, whilst you have the opportunity. We know what you can do; let not your will be less than your power.'[274] Parker went to London, and in a short time his knowledge, piety, and prudence gained the entire esteem of the queen. That modest, intelligent, active man was just the person Anne wanted, and she took pleasure thenceforward in bestowing on him marks of her consideration. He himself tells us that if, in the course of his duties, he was called upon to receive friends at his table, the queen, eking out his narrow means, would send him a hare or a fawn taken in her parks.[275] Parker was from this time one of those employed by Anne to distribute her benevolence. He had hardly arrived at court, when he presented to the queen one W. Bill, a very young and very poor man, but by no means wanting in talent. Anne, rich in discernment, placed him in the number of students whom she was preparing for the ministry: he afterwards became dean of Westminster. Parker, who began his career with Anne, was to finish it with Elizabeth. When he was deprived of all his offices by Queen Mary in 1554, he exclaimed: 'Now that I am stripped of everything, I live in God's presence, and am full of joy in my conscience. In this charming leisure I find greater pleasures than those supplied by the busy and perilous life I led at the court.' Forced to hide himself, often to flee by night, to escape the pursuit of his persecutors, the peace which he enjoyed was never troubled. He looked upon trials as the privilege of the child of God. All of a sudden a strange and unexpected calamity befell him. The daughter of Anne Boleyn, having ascended the throne, desired to have her mother's chaplain for archbishop of Canterbury and primate of all England. 'I kneel before your Majesty,' he said to Queen Elizabeth, 'and pray you not to burden me with an office which requires a man of much more talent, knowledge, virtue, and experience than I possess.' A second letter from Chancellor Bacon repeated the summons. Then the unhappy Parker exclaimed in the depth of his sorrow: 'Alas! alas! Lord God! for what times hast Thou preserved me![276] I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. O Lord! strengthen me by Thy mighty Spirit!' Parker was at the head of the Church of England for sixteen years, and dignified the elevated seat on which he had been constrained to sit. Such were the men whom Anne Boleyn gathered round her.
We should be mistaken, however, if we represented the young queen as a bigot, living like Catherine in the practices of a rigid austerity. It appears even doubtful whether she knew by experience that inner, spiritual, and living Christianity which was found in Latimer, Tyndale, Cranmer, and Parker. She was a virtuous wife, a good protestant, attached to the Bible, opposed to the pope, fond of good works, esteeming men of God more than courtiers: but she had not renounced the world and its pomps. A woman of the world, upright, religious, loving to do good, a class of which there is always a large number, she was unacquainted with the pious aspirations of a soul that lives in communion with God. Even her position as queen and wife of Henry VIII. may have hindered her from advancing in the path of a Christian life. She thought it possible to love God without renouncing the enjoyments of the age, and looked upon worldly things as an innocent recreation. Desiring to keep her husband's heart, she endeavored to please him by cheerful conversation, by organizing pleasure parties of which she was the life, and by receiving all his courtiers gracefully. Placed on a slippery soil and watched by prejudiced eyes, she may occasionally have let fall some imprudent expression. Her sprightliness and gaiety, her amiable freedom were in strong contrast with the graver and stiffer formalities of the English ladies. Latimer, who saw her closely, sometimes admonished her respectfully, when he was alone with her, and the grateful Anne would exclaim unaffectedly: 'You do me so much good![277] Pray never pass over a single fault.'
=THE TRUTH ABOUT ANNE BOLEYN.=
It is not from the writings of the pamphleteers that we must learn to know Anne Boleyn. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, opposite parties, in their extreme excitement, have painted her at one time in colors too dark, at another in colors too flattering. We must in this matter especially listen to men whose testimony is sanctioned by universal respect. There are not many princesses in history who have enjoyed, like Anne, the esteem of the most elevated minds—of Cranmer and Latimer, of Tyndale and Parker, and other Christians, less illustrious, perhaps, but not less respectable. In the eyes of the papal partisans, however, she had committed an unpardonable crime: she had separated England from the papacy; and accordingly their savage hatred has known no bounds, and they have never ceased to blacken her memory with their vile calumnies. Of all the misdeeds that history can commit, the greatest consists in representing the innocent as if they were guilty. It is wholesale calumny for the use not only of the present generation but for generations to come. Many writers have forged and still forge base imputations against the reformers Luther, Calvin, and others. Anne Boleyn has had her full share of slander in this huge conspiracy of falsehood.[278]
The grandeur with which Anne was surrounded, had opened her heart to the tenderest sympathies. To be the joy of her husband and the delight of her relations, to protect the friends of the Gospel and to be loved by England—these were for some time the dreams of her young imagination. But ere long the crown of St. Edward pressed heavily on her forehead. The members of her own family became her enemies. Her uncle, the proud duke of Norfolk, the chief along with Gardiner of the ultramontane party, was animated by a secret hatred against the young woman who was the support of the evangelical party. Her father, the earl of Wiltshire, imagining he saw that the king was not flattered at being his son-in-law, had quitted London, regretting a union which his ambition had so much desired. Lady Rocheford, wife of Anne's brother, a woman of despicable character, whose former perfidies the queen had pardoned, and whom she had attached to the court, repaid this generous magnanimity by secretly plotting the ruin of a sister-in-law whose elevation had filled her with jealousy. At length, one of those who ate her bread and received favors from her, was about to show her ingratitude to the unfortunate queen.
Among her ladies of honor was Jane Seymour, who united all the attractions of youth and beauty, and whose disposition held a certain mean between the severe gravity of Queen Catherine and the fascinating sprightliness of Queen Anne. Constancy in affection was not a feature of Henry's character; his heart was easily inflamed; his eye rested on the youthful Jane Seymour, and no sooner had he become sensible of her graces, than the charms of Anne Boleyn, which had formerly captivated him, became unendurable. The genial gaiety of the queen fatigued him; the accomplishments which are ordinarily the means of pleasing, gave him umbrage; the zeal she manifested for Protestantism alienated him. Anne's enemies, especially the duke of Norfolk and Lady Rocheford, observed this, and resolved to take advantage of it to ruin the woman who overshadowed them.
=ANNE'S CHARACTER AND MANNERS.=