=ANNE'S EXECUTION.=
Everything was arranged so that the murder should be perpetrated without publicity and without disturbance. Kingston received orders to turn all strangers out of the Tower, and readily obeyed. About eleven in the forenoon of the 19th of May, the dukes of Suffolk and Richmond, the lord-chancellor, Cromwell, the lord-mayor with the sheriffs and aldermen, entered the Tower, and took their stations on the green, where the instrument of punishment had been erected. The executioner, whom Henry had summoned from Calais, was there with his axe and his attendants. A cannon, mounted on the walls, was to announce both to king and people that all was over. A little past noon Anne appeared, dressed in a robe of black damask, and attended by four of her maids of honor. She walked up to the block on which she was to lay her head. Her step was firm, her looks calm; all indicated the most complete resignation. She was then thirty years old, and 'never had she looked so beautiful before,'[346] says a French contemporary, then in London. Her eyes expressed a meek submission; a pleasing smile accompanied the look she turned on the spectators of this tragic scene.[347] But just when the executioners had made the last preparations, her emotion was so keen that she nearly fainted. Gradually she recovered her strength, and her faith in the Saviour filled her with courage and hope.
It is important to know what, in this last and solemn moment, were her sentiments towards the king. She had desired that Mary should be asked to forgive her wrongs: it was her duty, if she died a Christian, also to pardon Henry's faults. She must obey her Saviour, who said: 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you.' She had pardoned everything; but it was her duty to declare it before she died, and if she was humble, she would do so without affectation. Addressing those who had been her subjects and were then standing round her, she said: 'Good Christian people, I am not come here to justify myself; I leave my justification entirely to Christ, in whom I put my trust. I will accuse no man, nor speak anything of that whereof I am accused, as I know full well that aught that I could say in my defence doth not appertain unto you, and that I could draw no hope of life from the same. I come here only to die, according as I have been condemned. I commend my judges to the Lord's mercy. I pray God (and I beg you to do the same) to save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler or more merciful prince there never was. To me he was ever a good, gentle, and sovereign lord. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O Lord, have mercy upon me! To God I commit my soul!'[348]
Such are the simple words in which Anne gave utterance to the feelings of peace with which her heart was filled towards her husband, at the moment when he was robbing her of life. Had she said that she forgave him, she would have called up the memory of the king's crime, and would thus have appeared to claim the merit of her generous pardon. She did nothing of the sort. During one part of their wedded life, Henry had been a 'good lord' to her. She desired to recall the good only, and buried the evil in oblivion. She did so without any thought of self; for she knew that before the gracious words could reach the king's ears, the axe would have already fallen upon her, and it would be impossible for Henry to arrest the fatal blow.
This Christian discourse could not fail to make a deep impression on all who heard her. As they looked at the unfortunate queen, they felt the tenderest compassion and the sharpest pain.[349] The firmer her heart became, the weaker grew the spectators of the tragedy. Ere long they were unable to check the tears which the sufferer had the strength to restrain.[350] One of the ladies of the royal victim approached her to cover her eyes; but Anne refused, saying that she was not afraid of death, and gave her as a memorial of that hour, a little manuscript prayer-book that she had brought with her.
The queen then removed her white collar and took off her hood, that the action of the axe might not be impeded;[351] this head-dress formed a queue and hung down behind. Then falling on her knees, she remained a few moments silent and motionless, praying inwardly. On rising up, she approached the fatal block, and laid her head on it: 'O Christ, into thy hands I commit my soul!' she exclaimed. The headsman, disturbed by the mild expression of her face, hesitated a few seconds, but his courage returned. Anne cried out again: 'O Jesus, receive my soul!' At this instant the axe of the executioner flashed in the air and her head fell. A cry escaped from the lips of the spectators, 'as if they had received the blow upon their own necks.'[352] This is honorable to Anne's enemies, so that we may well believe the evidence. But immediately another sound was heard: the gunner, placed as a signal-man on the wall, had watched the different phases of the scene, holding a lighted match in his hand; scarcely had the head fallen, when he fired the gun, and the report, which was heard at a distance, bore to Henry the news of the crime which gave him Jane Seymour.[353] The ladies of queen Anne, though almost lifeless with terror, would not permit the noble remains of the mistress, whom they had loved so much, to be touched by rude hands; they gathered round the body, wrapped it in a white sheet, and carried it (almost fainting as they were) to an old elm chest, which had been brought out of the arsenal and had been used for storing arrows. This rough box was the last home assigned to her who had inhabited costly palaces: not so much as a coffin had been provided for her. The ladies placed in it Anne's head and body; 'the eyes and lips were observed to move,' says a document, as if her mouth was repeating the last words it had uttered. She was immediately buried in the Tower chapel.[354]
Thus died Anne Boleyn. If the violent passions of a prince and the meanness of his courtiers brought her to an untimely death, hatred and credulity have killed her a second time. But an infamous calumny, forged by dishonest individuals, ought to be sternly rejected by all sensible men. Not in vain did Anne, at the hour of death, place her cause in the hands of God, and we willingly believe that all enlightened men, without prejudice or partiality, among Roman-catholics as among others, turn with disgust from the vile falsehoods of malicious courtiers and the deceitful fables of the papist Sanders and his followers.
=HENRY'S INHUMANITY.=
On the morning of this day, Henry VIII. had dressed himself in white, as for a festival, and ordered a hunting-party. There was a great stir round the palace; huntsmen hurrying to and fro, dogs baying, horns sounding, nobles arriving. The troop was formed and they all set off for Epping Forest, where the sport began. At noon the hunters met to repose themselves under an oak which still bears the name of the King's Oak. Henry had taken his seat beneath it, surrounded by his suite and the dogs; he listened and seemed to be agitated. Suddenly a cannon shot resounded through the forest—it was the concerted signal—the queen's head had fallen. 'Ha, ha!' exclaimed the king, rising, 'the deed is done! uncouple the hounds and away.'[355] Horns and trumpets were sounded, and dogs and horses were soon in pursuit. The wretched prince, led away by his passions, forgot that there is a God to whom he would have to render an account not only of the execution in the Tower, but of the chase in the forest; and by these cruel acts, which should have shocked the hearts even of his courtiers, he branded himself with his own hands as a great criminal. The king and his court returned to the palace before nightfall.
At last Henry was free. He had desired Jane Seymour, and everything had been invented—adultery, incest—to break the bonds that united him to the queen. The proofs of Anne's crimes failing, the ferocious acts of the king were to supply their place. Could those who witnessed the cruelty of the husband venture to doubt the guilt of the wife? Henry had become inhuman that he might not appear faithless. Now that the object was obtained, it only remained to profit by his crime. His impatience to gratify his passions made him brave all propriety. The mournful death of his queen; the Christian words that she had uttered, kissing as it were the cruel hand that struck her—nothing softened that man's heart, and the very next day he married the youthful maid of honor. It would have been difficult to say in a more striking manner: 'This is why Anne Boleyn is no more!' When we see side by side the blood-stained block on which Anne had received her death-blow, and the brilliant altar before which Henry and Jane were united, we all understand the story.[356] The prince, at once voluptuous and cruel, liked to combine the most contrary objects in the same picture—crime and festivities, marriage and death, sensuality and hatred. He showed himself the most magnificent and most civilized monarch of Europe; but also the rival of those barbarous kings of savage hordes who take delight in cutting off the heads of those who have been their favorites and even the objects of their most passionate love. We must employ different standards in judging of the same person, when we regard him as a private and as a public individual. The Tudor prince, so guilty as a husband, father, and friend, did much good as a ruler for England. Louis XIV., as well as Henry VIII., had some of the characteristics of a great king; and his moral life was certainly not better than that of his prototype in England. He had as many, and even more mistresses than the predecessor of the Stuarts had wives; but the only advantage which the French monarch had over the English one, is that he knew how to get rid of them without cutting off their heads.