At length the archbishop was admitted. He did as the king had bidden him: and when he saw that none of his statements or reasons were of any avail with the council, he presented the king's ring, appealing at the same time to his Majesty. Hereupon, the whole council was struck with astonishment;[393] and the earl of Bedford, who was not one of Gardiner's party, with a solemn oath exclaimed: 'When you first began this matter, my lords, I told you what would come of it. Do you think that the king will suffer this man's finger to ache? Much more, I warrant you, will he defend his life against brabbling varlets. You do but cumber yourselves to hear tales and fables against him.' The members of the council immediately rose and carried the king's ring to him, thus surrendering the matter, according to the usage of the time, into his hands.
AN APPROACHING CHANGE.
When they had all come into the presence of the king, he said to them with a severe countenance: 'Ah, my lords, I thought I had had wiser men of my council than now I find you. What discretion was this in you, thus to make the primate of the realm, and one of you in office, to wait at the council-chamber door amongst serving men?... You had no such commission of me so to handle him. I was content that you should try him as a councillor, and not as a mean subject. But now I well perceive that things be done against him maliciously; and if some of you might have had your minds, you would have tried him to the uttermost. But I do you all to wit, and protest, that if a prince may be beholding unto his subject' (and here Henry laid his hand solemnly upon his breast), 'by the faith I owe to God, I take this man here, my lord of Canterbury, to be of all other a most faithful subject unto us, and one to whom we are much beholding.' The Catholic members of the council were disconcerted, confused, and unable to make any answer. One or two of them, however, took courage, made excuses, and assured the king that their object in trying the primate was to clear him of the calumnies of the world, and not to proceed against him maliciously. The king, who was not to be imposed upon by these hypocritical assertions, said: 'Well, well, my lords, take him and well use him, as he is worthy to be, and make no more ado.' All the lords then went up to Cranmer, and took him by the hand as if they had been his dearest friends. The archbishop, who was of a conciliatory disposition, forgave them. But the king sent to prison for a certain time some of the archbishop's accusers; and he sent a message to Sir J. Gostwick, to the effect that he was a wicked varlet, and that unless he made his apologies to the metropolitan, he would make of him an example which should be a warning to all false accusers. These facts are creditable to Henry VIII. It was doubtless his aim to keep a certain middle course; and like many other despots he had happy intervals. There were other evidences of this fact. Four great Bibles appeared with his sanction in 1541; two of them bearing the name of Tonstall, the other two that of Cranmer.[394] Moreover, a sudden change was approaching which was to alter the whole course of things.
At the end of August, 1541, Henry went to York,[395] for the purpose of holding an interview with his nephew, the king of Scotland, whom he was anxious to persuade to declare himself independent of the pope. Henry made magnificent preparations for his reception; but Cardinal Beatoun prevented the young prince from going. This excited the bitterest discontent in Henry's mind, and became afterwards the cause of a breach. The queen, who accompanied him, endeavored to divert him from his vexation; and the king, more and more pleased with his marriage, after his return to London, made public thanksgiving on All Saints' Day (October 24), that God had given him so amiable and excellent a wife, and even requested the bishop of Lincoln to join in his commendations of her. This excessive satisfaction was ere long to be interrupted.[396]
DISCLOSURES ABOUT THE QUEEN.
During the king's journey, one John Lascelles, who had a married sister living in the county of Sussex, paid her a visit. This woman had formerly been in the service of the old duchess of Norfolk, grandmother to the queen, and by whom Catherine had been brought up. In the course of conversation the brother and sister talked about this young lady, whom the sister had known well, and who had now become wife to the king. The brother, ambitious for his sister's advancement, said to her: 'You ought to ask the queen to place you among her attendants.' 'I shall certainly not do so,' she answered; 'I can not think of the queen but with sadness.' 'Why?' 'She is so frivolous in character and in life.' 'How so?' Then the woman related that Catherine had had improper intercourse with one of the officers of the ducal house of Norfolk, named Francis Derham; and that she had been very familiar with another whose name was Mannock. Lascelles perceived the importance of these statements; and as he could not take upon himself the responsibility of concealing them, he determined to report them to the archbishop. The communication greatly embarrassed Cranmer. If he should keep the matter secret and it should afterwards become known, he would be ruined. Nor would he less certainly be ruined if he should divulge it, and then no proof be forthcoming. But what chiefly weighed upon his mind was the thought of the agitation which would be excited. To think of another wife of the king executed at the Tower! To think of his prince, his country, and perhaps also the work which was in process of accomplishment in England, becoming the objects of ridicule and perhaps of abhorrence! As he was unwilling to assume alone the responsibility imposed by so grave a communication, he opened his mind on the subject to the lord chancellor and to other members of the privy council, to whom the king had entrusted the despatch of business during his absence. 'They were greatly troubled and inquieted.'[397] After having well weighed the reasons for and against, they came to the conclusion that, as this matter mainly concerned the king, Cranmer should inform him of it. This was a hard task to undertake; and the archbishop, who was deeply affected, durst not venture to make viva voce so frightful a communication. He therefore put down in writing the report which had been made to him, and had it laid before the king. The latter was terribly shocked; but as he tenderly loved his wife and had a high opinion of her virtue, he said that it was a calumny. However, he privately assembled in his cabinet the lord privy seal, the lord admiral, Sir Antony Brown, and Sir Thomas Wriothesley, a friend of the duke of Norfolk, who had taken a leading part in the divorce of Anne of Cleves, and laid the case before them, declaring at the same time that he did not believe in it. These lords privately examined Lascelles and his sister, who persisted in their depositions; next Mannock and Derham, who asserted the truth of their statements; the latter, moreover, mentioning three of the duchess of Norfolk's women who likewise had knowledge of the facts. The members of the council made their report to the king, who, pierced with grief, remained silent for some time. At length he burst into tears, and commanded the duke of Norfolk, the queen's uncle, the archbishop of Canterbury, the high chamberlain, and the bishop of Winchester, who had promoted the marriage, to go to Catherine and examine her. At first she denied every thing. But when Cranmer was sent to her, on the evening of the first inquisition, the words of the primate, his admonitions, the reports which he made to her, which proved that her conduct was perfectly well known, convinced her of the uselessness of her denials, and she then made full confession, and even added some strange details. It does not appear that the queen felt it her duty to confess her offences to God, but she resolved at least to confess them to men. While making her confession she was in a state of so great agitation that the archbishop was in dread every moment of her losing her reason. He thought, according to her confessions, that she had been seduced by the infamous Derham, with the privity even of his own wife. The household of the duchess-dowager of Norfolk appears to have been very disorderly. Cranmer wrote down or caused to be written this confession, and Catherine signed it.[398] He had scarcely left the unhappy woman, when she fell into a state of raving delirium.
THE QUEEN'S FRENZY.
The king was thrown into great excitement by the news of Catherine's confession of the reality of his misfortune. The very intensity of his love served to increase his trouble and his wrath; but, for all this, some feeling of pity remained in his heart. 'Return to her,' he said to Cranmer, 'and first make use of the strongest expressions to give her a sense of the greatness of her offences; secondly, state to her what the law provides in such cases, and what she must suffer for her crime; and lastly express to her my feelings of pity and forgiveness.' Cranmer returned to Catherine and found her in a fit of passion so violent that he never remembered—so he wrote to the king—seeing any creature in such a state. The keepers told him that this vehement rage had continued from his departure from her.[399] 'It would have pitied,' said the good archbishop, 'any man's heart in the world to have looked upon her.' Indeed, she was almost in a frenzy; she was not without strength, but her strength was that of a frantic person. The archbishop had had too much experience in the cure of souls, to adopt the order prescribed by the king. He saw that if he spoke first to her of the crime and its punishment, he might throw her into some dangerous ecstasy, from which she could not be rescued. He therefore began with the last part of the royal message, and told the queen that his majesty's mercy extended to her, and that he had compassion on her misfortune. Catherine hereupon lifted up her hands, became quiet, and gave utterance to the humblest thanksgivings to the king who showed her so much mercy. She became more self-possessed; continuing, however, to sob and weep. But 'after a little pausing, she suddenly fell into a new rage, much worse than she was before.'[400]
Cranmer, desirous of delivering her from this frightful delirium, said to her: 'Some new fantasy has come into your head, madam; pray open it to me.' After a time, when her passion subsided and she was capable of speech, she wept freely and said: 'Alas, my lord, that I am alive! The fear of death grieved me not so much before, as doth now the remembrance of the king's goodness. For when I remember how gracious and loving a prince I had, I can not but sorrow; but this sudden mercy, and more than I could have looked for, showed unto me so unworthy at this time, maketh mine offences to appear before mine eyes much more heinous than they did before; and the more I consider the greatness of his mercy, the more I do sorrow in my heart that I should so misorder myself against his majesty.' The fact that the compassion of the king touched Catherine more than the fear of a trial and of death, seemed to indicate a state of mind less wayward than one might have expected. But in vain Cranmer said to her every thing calculated to pacify her; she remained for a long time 'in a great pang;' and even fell soon into another frightful passion. At length, in the afternoon she came gradually to herself, and was in a quiet state till night. Cranmer, during this interval of relief, had 'good communications with her.' He rejoiced at having brought her into some quiet. She told him that there had been a marriage contract between her and Derham, only verbal indeed, she said; but that nevertheless, though never announced and acknowledged, it had been consummated. She added that she had acted under compulsion of that man.[401] At six o'clock, she had another fit of frenzy. 'Ah,' she said afterwards to Cranmer, 'when the clock struck, I remembered the time when Master Heneage was wont to bring me knowledge of his Grace.' In consequence of Cranmer's report, Henry commanded that the queen should be conducted to Sion House, where two apartments were to be assigned to her and attendants nominated by the king.[402]
Charges against Catherine were accumulating. She had taken into her service, as queen, the wretched Derham and, employing him as secretary, had often admitted him into her private apartments; and this the council regarded as evidence of adultery.[403] She had also again attached to herself one of the women implicated in her first irregularities. At length it was proved that another gentleman, one Culpeper, a kinsman of her mother, had been introduced, in the king's absence on a journey, into the queen's private apartments by Lady Rochford, at a suspicious hour and under circumstances which usually indicate crime. Culpeper confessed it.