[413] “Que le Roy n’estoit habille en cas de copuler avec femme, et qu’il n’avoit ni vertu ni puissance.” Historians, to make their narrative coherent, assume an intimate acquaintance with the motives for each man’s or woman’s actions. Facts may be difficult to ascertain, but motives, which cannot be ascertained at all unless when acknowledged, they are able to discern by intuition. They have satisfied themselves that the charges against Anne Boleyn were invented because the King wished to marry Jane Seymour. I pretend to no intuition myself. I do not profess to be wise beyond what I find written. In this instance I hazard a conjecture—a conjecture merely—which occurred to me long ago as an explanation of some of the disasters of Henry’s marriages, and which the words, alleged to have been used by Anne to Lady Rochford, tend, pro tanto, to confirm.
Henry was already showing signs of the disorder which eventually killed him. Infirmities in his constitution made it doubtful, both to others and to himself, whether healthy children, or any children at all, would in future be born to him. It is possible—I do not say more—that Anne, feeling that her own precarious position could only be made secure if she became the mother of a prince, had turned for assistance in despair at her disappointments to the gentlemen by whom she was surrounded. As an hypothesis, this is less intolerable than to suppose her another Messalina. In every instance of alleged offence the solicitation is said to have proceeded from herself, and to have been only yielded to after an interval of time.
[414] “Au grand despit de Cromwell et d’aucungs autres qui ne vouldroient en cest endroit s’engendroit suspicion qui pourroit prejudiquer à la lignée que le dict Roy pretend avoir.”—MSS. Vienna.
[415] Chapuys to Charles V., May 19, 1536.—MSS. Vienna; Spanish Calendar, vol. v. part 2, pp. 122 et seq. In one or two instances my translation will be found to differ slightly from that of Sr Gayangas.
[416] Chapuys to Charles V., May 19.—Spanish Calendar, vol. v. part 2, p. 128.
[417] History of England, vol. ii. p. 483.
[418] Wriothesley’s Chronicle (Camden Society’s Publications), vol. i. p. 39.
[419] Constantine’s Memorial.—Archæologia, vol. xxiii. pp. 63-66.
[420] Calendar, Foreign and Domestic, June 2, vol. x. p. 430.
[421] Ibid. p. 431.