On the 29th April, Mark Smeaton was standing sulkily in the deep embrasure of a window in Anne’s chamber in the palace of Greenwich. The Queen asked him why he was so out of humour. He replied that it was nothing that mattered. She evidently knew the real reason for his gloom, for she reminded him that he could not expect her to speak to him as if he were a nobleman. “No, no!” said Mark, “a look sufficeth for me, and so fare you well.”[149] Sir Thomas Percy seems to have heard this little speech, and have conveyed it, with many hints of Mark’s sudden prosperity, to Cromwell. “It is hardly three months since Mark came to Court, and though he has only a hundred pounds a year from the King, and has received no more than a third, he has just bought three horses that have cost him 500 ducats, as well as very rich arms and fine liveries for his servants for the May-day ridings, such as no gentleman at Court has been able to buy, and many are wondering where he gets the money.”[150] Mark Smeaton was a safe quarry, for he had no influential friends, and it suited Cromwell’s turn to begin with him to build up his case against Anne.
There was to be a May-day jousting in the tilt-yard at Greenwich, at which Anne’s brother, Lord Rochford, was the challenger, and Sir Henry Norreys was the principal defender. Early in the morning of the day, Cromwell, who of course took no part in such shows, went to London, and asked Smeaton to accompany him and dine,[151] returning in the afternoon to Greenwich in time for the ridings. Mark accepted the invitation, and was taken ostensibly for dinner to a house at Stepney, that probably being a convenient half-way place between Greenwich and Westminster by water. No sooner had the unsuspecting youth entered the chamber than he saw the trap into which he had fallen. Six armed men closed around him, and Cromwell’s face grew grave, as the Secretary warned the terrified lad to confess where he obtained so much money. Smeaton prevaricated, and “then two stout young fellows were called, and the Secretary asked for a rope and a cudgel. The rope, which was filled with knots, was put around Mark’s head and twisted with the cudgel until Mark cried, ‘Sir Secretary, no more! I will tell the truth. The Queen gave me the money.’”[152] Then, bit by bit, by threats of torture, some sort of confession incriminating Anne was wrung out of the poor wretch: though exactly what he confessed is not on record. Later, when the affair was made public, the quidnuncs of London could tell the most private details of his adultery with the Queen;[153] for Cromwell took care that such gossip should be well circulated.
Whatever confession was extorted from Smeaton, it implicated not only himself but the various gentlemen who shared with him the Queen’s smiles, and was quite sufficient for Cromwell’s purpose. Hurrying the unfortunate musician to the Tower in the strictest secrecy, Cromwell sent his nephew Richard post haste to Greenwich with a letter divulging Smeaton’s story to the King. Richard Cromwell arrived at the tiltyard as the tournament was in progress, the King and Anne witnessing the bouts from a glazed gallery. Several versions of what then happened are given; but the most probable is that as soon as Henry had glanced at the contents of the letter and knew that Cromwell had succeeded, he abruptly rose and left the sports; starting almost immediately afterwards for London without the knowledge of Anne. With him went a great favourite of his, Sir Henry Norreys, Keeper of the Privy Purse, who was engaged to be married to Madge Shelton, Anne’s cousin, who had at one time been put forward by the Boleyn interest as the King’s mistress. Norreys had, no doubt, flirted platonically with the Queen, who had openly bidden for his admiration, but there is not an atom of evidence that their connection was a guilty one.[154] On the way to London the King taxed him with undue familiarity with Anne. Horror-stricken, Norreys could only protest his innocence, and resist all the temptations held out to him to make a clean breast of the Queen’s immorality. One of the party of Anne’s enemies, Sir William Fitzwilliam, was also in attendance on the King; and to him was given the order to convey Norreys to the Tower. After the King’s departure from Greenwich, Anne learnt that he had gone without a word of farewell, and that Smeaton was absent from the joust, detained in London.
The poor woman’s heart must have sunk with fear, for the portents of her doom were all around her. She could not cry for mercy to the flabby coward her husband, who, as usual, slunk from bearing the responsibility of his own acts, and ran away from the danger of personal appeal from those whom he wronged. Late at night the dread news was whispered to her that Smeaton and Norreys were both in the Tower; and early in the morning she herself was summoned to appear before a quorum of the Royal Commissioners, presided over by her uncle and enemy, the Duke of Norfolk. She was rudely told that she was accused of committing adultery with Smeaton and Norreys, both of whom had confessed. She cried and protested in vain that it was untrue. She was told to hold her peace, and was placed under arrest until her barge was ready and the tide served to bear her up stream to the Tower. With her went a large guard of halberdiers and the Duke of Norfolk. Thinking that she was being carried to her husband at Westminster, she was composed and tranquil on the way; but when she found that the Traitors’ Gate of the Tower was her destination, her presence of mind deserted her. Sir William Kingston, one of the chief conspirators in Mary’s favour, and governor of the fortress, stood upon the steps under the gloomy archway to receive her, and in sign of custody took her by the arm as she ascended. “I was received with greater ceremony the last time I entered here,” she cried indignantly; and as the heavy gates clanged behind her and the portcullis dropped, she fell upon her knees and burst into a storm of hysterical tears. Kingston and his wife did their best to tranquillise her; but her passionate protestations of innocence made no impression upon them.
Her brother, Lord Rochford, had, unknown to her, been a few hours before lodged in the same fortress on the hideous and utterly unsupported charge of incest with his sister; and Cromwell’s drag-net was cast awide to bring in all those whose names were connected, however loosely, with that of the Queen by her servants, all of whom were tumbling over each other in their haste to denounce their fallen mistress. Sir Thomas Weston and William Brereton, with both of whom Anne had been fond of bandying questionable compliments, were arrested on the 4th May; and on the 5th Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet, and a great friend of the King, was put under guard on similar accusations. With regard to Wyatt there seems to have been no doubt, as has been shown in an earlier chapter, that some love passages had passed between him and Anne before her marriage; and there is contemporary assertion to support the belief that their connection had not been an innocent one;[155] but the case against him was finally dropped and he was again taken into Henry’s favour; a proof that there was no evidence of any guilt on his part since Anne was Queen. He is asserted to have begged Henry not to contract the marriage, and subsequently to have reminded him that he had done so, confessing after her arrest that Anne had been his mistress before she married the King.
The wretched woman babbled hysterically without cessation in her chamber in the Tower; all her distraught ravings being carefully noted and repeated by the ladies, mostly her personal enemies, who watched her night and day; artful leading questions being put to her to tempt her to talk the more. She was imprudent in her speech at the best of times, but now, in a condition of acute hysteria, she served the interests of her enemies to the full, dragging into her discourse the names of the gentlemen who were accused and repeating their risky conversations with her, which were now twisted to their worst meaning.[156] At one time she would only desire death; then she would make merry with a good dinner or supper, chatting and jesting, only to break down into hysterical laughter and tears in the midst of her merriment. Anon she would affect to believe that her husband was but trying her constancy, and pleaded with all her heart to be allowed to see him again.[157] But he, once having broken the shackles, was gaily amusing himself in gallant guise with Mistress Seymour, who was lodged, for appearance’ sake, in the house of her mentor, Sir Nicholas Carew, a few miles from London, but within easy reach of a horseman. Anne in her sober moments must have known that she was doomed. She hoped much from Cranmer, almost the only friend of hers not now in prison; but Cranmer, however strong in counsel, was a weak reed in combat; and hastened to save himself at the cost of the woman upon whose shoulders he had climbed to greatness. The day after Anne’s arrest, Cranmer wrote to the King “a letter of consolation; yet wisely making no apology for her, but acknowledging how divers of the lords had told him of certain of her faults, which, he said, he was sorry to hear, and concluded desiring that the King would continue his love to the gospel, lest it should be thought that it was for her sake only that he had favoured it.”[158] Before he had time to despatch the letter, the timorous archbishop was summoned across the river to Westminster to answer certain disquieting questions of the Commissioners, who informed him of the evidence against the Queen; and in growing alarm for himself and his cause, he hurried back to Lambeth without uttering a word in favour of the accused, whose guilt he accepted without question.
Thenceforward Anne’s enemies worked their way unchecked, even her father being silenced by fear for himself. For Cromwell’s safety it was necessary that none of the accused should escape who later might do him injury; and now that he and his imperialistic policy had been buttressed by the “discovery” of Anne’s infidelity, not even the nobles of the French faction dared to oppose it by seeming to side with the unhappy woman. The Secretary did his work thoroughly. The indictments were laid before the grand juries of Middlesex and Kent, as the offences were asserted to have been committed over a long period both at Greenwich and Whitehall or Hampton Court. To the charges against Anne of adultery with Smeaton, who it was asserted had confessed, Norreys, Weston, Brereton, and Lord Rochford, was added that of having conspired with them to kill the King. There was not an atom of evidence worth the name to support any of the charges except the doubtful confession of Smeaton, wrung from him by torture; and it is certain that at the period in question the death of Henry would have been fatal to the interests of Anne. But a State prosecution in the then condition of the law almost invariably meant a condemnation of the accused; and when Smeaton, Weston, Norreys, and Brereton were arraigned in Westminster Hall on the 12th May, their doom was practically sealed before the trial. Smeaton simply pleaded guilty of adultery only, and prayed for mercy: the rest of the accused strenuously denied their guilt on the whole of the charges; but all were condemned to the terrible death awarded to traitors, though on what detailed evidence, if any, does not now appear.[159] Every effort was made to tempt Norreys to confess, but he replied that he would rather die a thousand deaths than confess a lie, for he verily believed the Queen innocent.[160]
In the meanwhile Anne in the Tower continued her strange behaviour, at times arrogantly claiming all her royal prerogatives, at times reduced to hysterical self-abasement and despair. On the 15th May she and her brother were brought to the great hall of the Tower before a large panel of peers under the presidency of the Duke of Norfolk. All that could add ignominy to the accused was done. The lieges were crowded into the space behind barriers at the end of the hall, the city fathers under the Lord Mayor were bidden to attend, and with bated breath the subjects saw the woman they had always scorned publicly branded as an incestuous adulteress. The charges, as usual at the time, were made in a way and upon grounds that now would not be permitted in any court of justice. Scraps of overheard conversation with Norreys and others were twisted into sinister significance, allegations unsupported, and not included in the indictment, were dragged in to prejudice the accused; and loose statements incapable of proof or disproof were liberally introduced for the same purpose. The charge of incest with Rochford depended entirely upon the assertion that he once remained in his sister’s room a long time; and in his case also loose gossip was alleged as a proof of crime: that Anne had said that the King was impotent,[161] that Rochford had thrown doubts upon the King being the father of Anne’s child, and similar hearsay ribaldry. Both Anne and her brother defended themselves, unaided, with ability and dignity. They pointed out the absence of evidence against them, and the inherent improbability of the charges. But it was of no avail, for her death had already been settled between Henry and Cromwell: and the Duke of Norfolk, with his sinister squint, condemned his niece, Anne Queen of England, to be burnt or beheaded at the King’s pleasure; and Viscount Rochford to a similar death. Both denied their guilt after sentence, but acknowledged, as was the custom of the time, that they deserved death, this being the only way in which mercy might be gained, so far as forfeiture of property was concerned.
Anne had been cordially hated by the people. Her rise had meant the destruction of the ancient religious foundations, the shaking of the ecclesiastical bases of English society; but the sense of justice was not dead, and the procedure at the trial shocked the public conscience. Already men and women murmured that the King’s goings on with Mistress Seymour whilst his wife was under trial for adultery were a scandal, and Anne in her death had more friends than in her life. On all sides in London now, from the Lord Mayor downwards, it was said that Anne had been condemned, not because she was guilty, but because the King was tired of her: at all events, wrote Chapuys to Granvelle, there was surely never a man who wore the horns so gaily as he.[162] On the 17th May the five condemned men were led to their death upon Tower Hill, all of them, including Smeaton, being beheaded.[163] As usual in such cases, they acknowledged general guilt, but not one (except perhaps Smeaton) admitted the particular crimes for which they died, for their kin might have suffered in property, if not in person, if the King’s justice had been too strongly impugned.
Anne, in alternate hope and despair, still remained in the Tower, but mostly longing for the rapid death she felt in her heart must come. Little knew she, however, why her sacrifice was deferred yet from day to day. In one of her excited, nervous outbursts she had cried that, no matter what they did, no one could prevent her from dying Queen of England. She had reckoned without Henry’s meanness, Cromwell’s cunning, and Cranmer’s suppleness. Her death warrant had been signed by the King on the 16th May, and Cranmer was sent to receive her last confession. The coming of the archbishop—her archbishop, as she called him—gave her fresh hope. She was not to be killed after all, but to be banished, and Cranmer was to bring her the good news. Alas! poor soul, she little knew her Cranmer even yet. He had been primed by Cromwell for a very different purpose, that of worming out of Anne some admission that would give him a pretext for pronouncing her marriage with the King invalid from the first. The task was a repulsive one for the Primate, whose act alone had made the marriage possible; but Cranmer was—Cranmer. The position was a complicated one. Henry, as he invariably did, wished to save his face and seem in the right before the world, consequently he could not confess that he had been mistaken in the divorce from Katharine, and get rid of Anne’s marriage in that way, nor did he wish to restore Mary to the position of heiress to the crown. What he needed Cranmer’s help for was to render Elizabeth also illegitimate, but still his daughter, in order that any child he might have by Jane Seymour, or failing that, his natural son, the Duke of Richmond, might be acknowledged his successor.