The life at Kimbolton was like the life at an ordinary well-appointed English country-house. The establishment was moderate, but the castle was in good condition and well-furnished; everything was provided which was required for personal comfort; the Queen had her own servants, her confessor, her physician, and two or three ladies-in-waiting; if she had not more state about her it was by her own choice, for, as has been seen, she had made her recognition as queen the condition of her accepting a more adequate establishment. Bodily hardships she had none to suffer, but she had a chronic disorder of long standing, which had been aggravated by the high-strung expectations of the last half-dozen years. Sir John Wallop, the English ambassador at Paris, had been always “her good servant;” Lady Wallop was her creatura and was passionately attached to her. From the Wallops the Nuncio at the French Court heard in the middle of December that she could not live more than six months. They had learnt the “secret” of her illness from her own physician, and their evident grief convinced him that they were speaking the truth. Francis also was aware of her condition; the end was known to be near, and it was thought in Court circles that when she was gone “the King would leave his present queen and return to the obedience of the Church.”[368]
The disorder from which Catherine was suffering had been mentioned by Cromwell to Chapuys. The Ambassador asked to be allowed to visit her. Cromwell said that he might send a servant at once to Kimbolton, to ascertain her condition, and that he would ask the King’s permission for himself to follow. The alarming symptoms passed off for the moment; she rallied from the attack, and on the 13th of December she was able to write to Ortiz, to tell him of the comfort and encouragement which she had received from his letters, and from the near prospect of the Pope’s action. In that alone lay the remedy for the sufferings of herself and her daughter and “all the good.” The Devil, she said, was but half-tied, and slackness would let him loose. She could not and dared not speak more clearly; Ortiz was a wise man, and would understand.[369]
On the same day she wrote her last letter to the Emperor. The handwriting, once bold and powerful, had grown feeble and tremulous, and the imperfectly legible lines convey only that she expected something to be done at the approaching parliament which would be a world’s scandal and her own and her daughter’s destruction.[370]
Finding herself a little better, she desired Chapuys to speak to Cromwell about change of air for her, and to ask for a supply of money to pay the servants’ wages. Money was a gratuitous difficulty: she had refused to take anything which was addressed to her as princess dowager, and the allowance was in arrears. She had some confidence in Cromwell, and Charles, too, believed, in spite of Chapuys’s stories, that Cromwell meant well to Catherine, and wished to help her. He wrote himself to Cromwell to say that his loyal service would not be forgotten.[371]
Chapuys heard no more from Kimbolton for a fortnight, and was hoping that the attack had gone off like those which had preceded it; on the 29th, however, there came a letter to him from the Spanish physician, saying that she was again very ill, and wished to see him. Chapuys went to Cromwell immediately. Cromwell assured him that no objection would be raised, but that, before he set out, the King desired to speak with him. He hurried to Greenwich, where the Court was staying, and found Henry more than usually gracious, but apparently absorbed in politics. He walked up and down the room with his arm around the Ambassador’s neck, complained that Charles had not written to him, and that he did not know what to look for at his hands. The French, he said, were making advances to him, and had become so pressing, since the death of the Duke of Milan, that he would be forced to listen to them, unless he could be satisfied of the Emperor’s intentions. He was not to be deluded into a position where he would lose the friendship of both of them. Francis was burning for war. For himself he meant honourably, and would be perfectly open with Chapuys: he was an Englishman, he did not say one thing when he meant another. Why had not the Emperor let him know distinctly whether he would treat with him or not?
Chapuys hinted a fear that he had been playing with the Emperor only to extort better terms from France. A war for Milan there might possibly be, but the Emperor after his African successes was stronger than he had ever been, and had nothing to fear.
All that might be very well, Henry said, but if he was to throw his sword into the scale the case might be different. Hitherto, however, he had rejected the French overtures, and did not mean to join France in an Italian campaign if the Emperor did not force him. As to the threats against himself, English commerce would of course suffer severely if the trade was stopped with the Low Countries, but he could make shift elsewhere; he did not conceal his suspicions that the Emperor meant him ill, or his opinion that he had been treated unfairly in the past.[372]
Chapuys enquired what he wished the Emperor to do. To abstain, the King replied, from encouraging the Princess and her mother in rebellion, and to require the revocation of the sentence which had been given on the divorce. The Emperor could not do that, Chapuys rejoined, even if he wished to do it. The King said he knew the Pope had called on the Emperor to execute the sentence; he did not believe, however, that Madame, as he called Catherine, had long to live, and, when she was gone, the Emperor would have no further excuse for interfering in English affairs. Chapuys replied that the Queen’s death would make no difference. The sentence had been a necessity. The King ended the conversation by telling him that he might go to see her, if he liked; but she was in extremis, and he would hardly find her alive. At the Princess’s request, Chapuys asked if she also might go to her mother. At first Henry refused, but said, after a moment, he would think about it, and added, as Chapuys afterwards recollected, a few words of kindness to Catherine herself.
Unfeeling and brutal, the world exclaims. More feeling may have been shown, perhaps, than Chapuys cared to note. But kings whose thrones are menaced with invasion and rebellion have not much leisure for personal emotions. Affection for Catherine Henry had none, however, and a pretence of it would have been affectation. She had harassed him for seven years; she had urged the Pope to take his crown from him; she had done her worst to stir his subjects into insurrection, and bring a Spanish fleet and army into English waters and upon English soil. Respect her courage he did, but love for her, if in such a marriage love had ever existed, must have long disappeared, and he did not make a show of a regret which it was impossible for him to feel. He perhaps considered that he had done more than enough in resisting the advice of his Council to take stronger measures.
After despatching the letter describing the interview at Greenwich, the Ambassador started with his suite for Kimbolton, and with a gentleman of Cromwell’s household in attendance. Immediately on his arrival Catherine sent for him to her bedside, and desired that this gentleman should be present also, to hear what passed between them. She thanked Chapuys for coming. She said, if God was to take her, it would be a consolation to her to die in his arms and not like a wild animal. She said she had been taken seriously ill at the end of November with pain in the stomach and nausea; a second and worse attack of the same kind had followed on Christmas Day; she could eat nothing, and believed that she was sinking. Chapuys encouraged her—expressed his hopes for her recovery—said that he was commissioned to tell her that she might choose a residence for herself at any one of the royal manors, that the King would give her money, and was sorry to hear of her illness. He himself entreated her to keep up her spirits, as on her recovery and life the peace of Christendom depended. The visit excited her, she was soon exhausted, and they then left her to rest. After an interval she sent for the Ambassador again, and talked for two hours with him alone. She had brightened up; the next morning she was better; he remained four days at Kimbolton, which were spent in private conversation. She was the same Catherine which she had always been—courageous, resolute, and inflexible to the end. She spoke incessantly of the Emperor, and of her own and her daughter’s situation. She struck perpetually on the old note: the delay of the “remedy” which was causing infinite evil, and destroying the souls and bodies of all honest and worthy people.