Lord and Lady Exeter were not trustworthy authorities—on this occasion even Chapuys did not believe them—but stories of the kind were in the wind. It was notorious that everything was not well between the King and Lady Anne. A curious light is thrown on the state of Anne’s mind by a letter which she wrote to her aunt, Mrs. Shelton, after Mary’s rejection of her advances. Mrs. Shelton left it lying open on a table. Mary found it, copied it, and replaced it, and the transcript, in Mary’s handwriting, is now at Vienna.
“Mrs. Shelton,—My pleasure is that you seek to go no further to move the Lady Mary towards the King’s grace, other than as he himself directed in his own words to her. What I have done myself has been more for charity than because the King or I care what course she takes, or whether she will change or not change her purpose. When I shall have a son, as soon I look to have, I know what then will come to her. Remembering the word of God, that we should do good to our enemies, I have wished to give her notice before the time, because by my daily experience I know the wisdom of the King to be such that he will not value her repentance or the cessation of her madness and unnatural obstinacy when she has no longer power to choose. She would acknowledge her errors and evil conscience by the law of God and the King if blind affection had not so sealed her eyes that she will not see but what she pleases.
“Mrs. Shelton, I beseech you, trouble not yourself to turn her from any of her wilful ways, for to me she can do neither good nor ill. Do your own duty towards her, following the King’s commandment, as I am assured that you do and will do, and you shall find me your good lady, whatever comes.
“Your good Mistress,
“Anne R.”
CHAPTER XXI.
Funeral of Catherine—Miscarriage of Anne—The Princess Mary and the Act of Supremacy—Her continued desire to escape—Effect of Catherine’s death on Spanish policy—Desire of the Emperor to recover the English alliance—Chapuys and Cromwell—Conditions of the treaty—Efforts of the Emperor to recover Henry to the Church—Matrimonial schemes—Likelihood of a separation of the King from Anne—Jane Seymour—Anne’s conduct—The Imperial treaty—Easter at Greenwich—Debate in Council—The French alliance or the Imperial—The alternative advantages—Letter of the King to his Ambassador in Spain.
Catherine was buried with some state in Peterborough Cathedral, on the 29th of January. In the ceremonial she was described as the widow of Prince Arthur, not as the Queen of England, and the Spanish Ambassador, therefore, declined to be present. On the same day Anne Boleyn again miscarried, and this time of a male infant. She laid the blame of her misfortune on the Duke of Norfolk. The King had been thrown from his horse; Norfolk, she said, had alarmed her, by telling her of the accident too suddenly. This Chapuys maliciously said that the King knew to be untrue, having been informed she had heard the news with much composure. The disappointment worked upon his mind; he said he saw plainly God would give him no male children by that woman; he went once to her bedside, spoke a few cold words, and left her with an intimation that he would speak to her again when she was recovered. Some concluded that there was a defect in her constitution; others whispered that she had been irritated at attentions which the King had been paying to Jane Seymour, who in earlier days had been a lady-in-waiting to Catherine. Anne herself, according to a not very credible story of Chapuys’s, was little disturbed; her ladies were lamenting; she consoled them by saying that it was all for the best; the child that had been lost had been conceived in the Queen’s lifetime, and the legitimacy of it might have been doubtful; no uncertainty would attach to the next.[378] It is not likely that Anne felt uncertain on such a point, or would have avowed it if she had. She might have reasons of her own for her hopes of another chance. Henry seemed to have no hope at all; he sent Chapuys a message through Cromwell that Mary’s situation was now changed; her train should be increased, and her treatment improved—subject, however, of course, to her submission.
Mary had made up her mind, under Chapuys’s advice, that if a prince was born, she would acknowledge the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Succession with a secret protest, as the Emperor had recommended her. She had no intention, however, of parting with her pretensions, and alienating her friends, as long as there was no brother whose claims she could not dispute. Chapuys had imagined, and Mary had believed, that the Emperor would have resented the alleged poisoning of Catherine; that, instead of her death removing the danger of war, as Henry supposed, war had now become more certain than ever. With this impression, the Princess still kept her mind fixed on escaping out of the country, and continued to press Chapuys to take her away. She had infinite courage; a Flemish ship was hovering about the mouth of the Thames ready to come up, on receiving notice, within two or three miles of Gravesend. The house to which she had been removed was forty miles from the place where she would have to embark; it was inconvenient for the intended enterprise, and was, perhaps, guarded, though she did not know it. She thought, however, that, if Chapuys would send her something to drug her women with, she could make her way into the garden, and the gate could be broken open. “She was so eager,” Chapuys said, “that, if he had told her to cross the Channel in a sieve, she would venture it;” the distance from Gravesend was the difficulty: the Flemish shipmaster was afraid to go higher up the river: a forty miles’ ride would require relays of horses, and the country through which she had to pass was thickly inhabited. Means, however, might be found to take her down in a boat, and if she was once out of England, and under the Emperor’s protection, Chapuys was convinced that the King would no longer kick against the pricks.