Nevertheless, Henry was scarcely less to be pitied than his victims. The nation needed little encouragement to revolt. His treatment of the Queen and Princess, though not the whole cause of the disaffection, was a large factor in the rebellious temper of the people. But if to please them he showed Mary a little kindness, Anne left him no peace. He was, it is true, beginning to weary of his fetters, and sometimes inquired anxiously whether Anne too might not be divorced. Not, replied his otherwise complaisant advisers, unless he took back Katharine,[142] and he was not prepared for such a humiliation in the eyes of Europe. It would look, forsooth, as if he submitted after all to the Pope’s decree, and all that he had done with a high hand would have to be undone. There was no alternative but to carry out the policy he had determined upon, but his embarrassment was not lessened when Francis, through the French Admiral, demanded Mary’s hand for the Duke of Angoulême. Clearly, Henry had not succeeded in convincing the world, or even his one friend, the French King, that Katharine was not his wife, or in getting him to take Anne’s queenship seriously. The subject of Mary’s betrothal to the Duke of Orleans had been tacitly dropped since the divorce. It was no longer a part of Henry’s plan to marry his elder daughter honourably, or to allow her to leave the kingdom, and at first he pretended to regard the Admiral’s commission as a joke. The Duke of Angoulême, he said, had much better marry the true Princess, Elizabeth, and so the matter rested; but Francis would not take Henry’s line with regard to Mary. When in the autumn of 1535 he sent ambassadors to England for the purpose of drawing the King into a war with the Emperor, they were charged to interview her, and find out how she felt disposed to a marriage with the Dauphin. Mary had, in fact, not forgotten that she had been affianced to him as a baby, and would have welcomed any suitable proposal that would have freed her from the perils of her actual lot. At that time she was at Eltham with Elizabeth, into whose presence the French envoys were ushered. To their annoyance they were not even allowed to see Mary, who had orders to remain in her room while they were in the house, and to prevent any possible communication between them and her, the windows of her apartment were bolted. She had inquired of Chapuys whether she was to obey or not, and as he had advised submission, she amused herself while the ambassadors were with Elizabeth, by playing on the virginals.[143]
During the whole of 1535, Mary was in imminent danger. Anne constantly urged the King to treat her as he had treated Cardinal Fisher, saying that it was she who caused all his troubles, and as for herself she declared of the Princess, “She is my death and I am hers; so I will take care that she shall not laugh at me after my death”.[144] Anne could no longer be mistaken as to the decline of her power, and expressions such as the above are indicative that the general terror had reached the former favourite. The atmosphere was heavy with death, and she knew that all depended for her on the feeble hope that she might shortly give birth to a son. Henry himself was not free from the uneasiness which he so well knew how to inspire in others. Tyrant that he was, he saw danger where no danger lurked, and was strangely enough misinformed as to the Emperor’s ability to declare war. In the intervals of disgust which he felt for Anne, he was ready to stave off the invasion of which he lived in abject fear, by surrounding Mary with a little more circumstance; but with the revival of his expectations of a son, he allowed himself to be goaded into fury by her opposition, declaring that his worst troubles came from his own flesh and blood.
On the 6th November, Chapuys wrote:—
“The Marchioness of Exeter has sent to inform me that the King has lately said to some of his most confidential councillors, that he would no longer remain in the trouble, fear and suspense he had so long endured, on account of the Queen and Princess, and that they should see, at the coming Parliament, to get him released therefrom, swearing most obstinately that he would wait no longer. The Marchioness declares this is as true as the Gospel, and begs me to inform your Majesty, and pray you to have pity upon the ladies, and for the honour of God and the bond of kin to find a remedy.”
And again on the 21st:—
“The personage who informed me of what I wrote to your Majesty on the 6th, about the Queen and the Princess, viz., that the King meant to have them despatched at this next Parliament, came yesterday into this city in disguise, to confirm what she had sent to me to say, and conjure me to warn your Majesty, and beg you most earnestly to see to a remedy. She added that the King, seeing some of those to whom he used this language shed tears, said that tears and wry faces were of no avail, because, even if he lost his crown, he would not forbear to carry his purpose into effect. These are things too monstrous to be believed; but considering what has passed, and goes on daily—the long continuance of these menaces—and, moreover, that the Concubine, who long ago conspired the death of the said ladies, and thinks of nothing but getting rid of them, is the person who governs everything, and whom the King is unable to contradict, the matter is very dangerous. The King would fain, as I have already written, make his Parliament participators, even authors, of such crimes, in order that, losing all hope of the clemency of your Majesty, the whole people should be the more determined to defend themselves when necessary.”[145]
To Granvelle he expressed himself thus:—
“The person before mentioned (the Marchioness of Exeter) has sent to say, that four or five days ago the King, talking about the Princess, said that he should provide, that soon she would not want any company, and that she would be an example to show that no one ought to disobey the laws, and that he meant to fulfil what had been foretold of him—that is, that at the beginning of his reign he would be gentle as a lamb, and at the end worse than a lion. He said also that he would despatch those at the Tower, and some who were not there.”[146]
In the meantime, one of Henry’s victims was nearing the end of her trials, and reached it even before the meeting of Parliament that was to pass sentence of death upon her. In the autumn of 1535 Katharine had what appeared to be a slight illness, from which she seemed to be recovering, when at Christmas she suddenly grew worse, and sent to Chapuys, begging him to come to her without delay. He had no great difficulty in obtaining the necessary permission, although his repeated requests to see Mary, and for her to visit her mother, had been utterly disregarded. He found the Queen suffering from extreme emaciation, and from sickness. She was unable to retain any nourishment whatever; but her condition improved during the few days that Chapuys remained with her, and she was able to converse with him, and listen to him for about two hours each day. She also slept better during that time than she had done before, so that her physician pronounced her out of danger. Chapuys, “not to abuse the licence” the King had given him, left Kimbolton, where Katharine was then residing, on the 5th January, but rode slowly, in case a messenger should be sent after him with the news that she was worse, in which event he had promised to return to her. On his arrival in London, on the 9th, he sent to ask Cromwell for an audience with the King. In replying to this request, Cromwell sent word that the Queen had died little more than forty-eight hours after his leaving her, and that the news of her death had reached the court on the preceding Friday. The suddenness of her end, and the circumstances immediately following it, caused so much suspicion, that at the time there was hardly any one who did not firmly believe that she had been poisoned. The account of what passed was thus communicated to the Emperor by Chapuys:—