In the 1563 edition of Foxe’s Martyrs there is a most curious engraving, probably after an original drawing, representing the burning of Anne Askew and her companions. The spectators are kept back by a ring fence within which we see the stake, and a quaint pulpit, from which Dr. Nicholas Shaxton, duly restored to grace, preached a sermon, supporting the very dogma for denying which he had been prosecuted but a few days previously. Anne is shown dressed in white; one side of the pyre is entirely devoted to her, while the three men, apparently naked to the waist, are bound together, on the side opposite the pulpit. The concourse of people appears enormous; the mob seems to seethe round the scaffold, loll out of the surrounding windows, and even swarm on the opposite roofs. On a raised bench, under a canopy, sit Wriothesley, Rich, the Dukes of Norfolk, Surrey, “Swearing Russell,” and the Lord Mayor. These worthies, it appears, were sorely perturbed by a rumour that there was an unusual amount of gunpowder on the spot, and were very much afraid of a dangerous explosion. Their terrors were swiftly allayed when Bedford informed the company that the explosive in question was merely a number of small bags of gunpowder concealed about the persons of the victims with the object of shortening their sufferings.
At the very last moment Mrs. Askew was offered a pardon on condition that she recanted and gave up the names of her high-born friends. She refused: the Lord Mayor shouted Fiat justitia, and the faggots were lighted. Presently the fire crackled. A quick succession of explosions followed, the smoke concealing the wretched victims from sight. When the flames and smoke died down only the charred and blackened remains of four human beings could be descried. Clouds had been gathering; a peal of thunder rolled, and heavy drops of rain soon dispersed the throng. The show was over, and the home-returning spectators chatted as they went, blaming or praising the deed, according to their individual view. The horror of it does not seem to have affected them much, although among the Reformers and the better classes of all creeds expressions of hearty indignation were not lacking. But the masses were accustomed to such sights of horror, and so, indeed, were our own immediate forbears, until public executions ceased and the death sentence was carried out in the courtyards of the prisons. We have indeed progressed in these matters since 1546 and even since 1868.
A few days after the burning of the unfortunate Lincolnshire lady, Foxe tells us, Wriothesley, Gardiner, and Rich waited on the King, and so persuaded him that Anne had made damaging revelations concerning the Queen’s intercourse with heretics that Henry “proposed to burn her also.” His Majesty, in his rage, actually signed a warrant for the arrest of his offending Consort and handed it to Wriothesley. That worthy let the paper drop in a corridor or gallery close to the Queen’s apartment. One of her servants picked it up and carried it to Her Majesty, who was so terrified by its contents that she fell into violent hysterics. Her apartments were close to the King’s, and Henry, overhearing the outcry, and probably disturbed by the noise, sent to inquire what was amiss. The Queen’s physician, Wendy, informed the messenger that Her Majesty was dangerously ill, and her sickness, to his reckoning, caused by sudden and extreme distress of mind. Whereupon the King sent word that she was not to trouble herself further, as no ill was intended to her. Greatly comforted by this reassuring message, Katherine presently felt herself sufficiently recovered to receive a visit from her husband, who, at great personal inconvenience, caused himself to be conveyed into her apartment in his chair. Nothing could have been better calculated to revive the drooping spirits of the scared Consort than the sight of her august spouse in a good humour. The following evening she was well enough to return the King’s visit. She was accompanied by the Lady Tyrwhitt, her sister the Lady Herbert, by the King’s niece the Lady Jane Grey, and by the Lady Lane, who bore the candles before Her Majesty. The King welcomed the Queen and her company very courteously, and, bidding her be seated, in a cheerful tone entered into a controversial conversation with her. He possibly wished to “draw” his Consort upon certain theological questions; but she shrewdly observed that “since God had appointed him Supreme Head of the Church it was not for her to teach him theology, but to learn it from him.” “Not so, by St. Mary,” said the King, “you are become a doctor, Kate, to instruct us, and not to be instructed of us, as oftentimes we have seen.” “Indeed, indeed, Sire,” quoth the Queen, “if your Majesty so conceive, my meaning has been mistaken, for I have always held it preposterous for a woman to instruct her lord.” “If,” she continued, “I have occasionally ventured to differ with your Highness on religious matters, it was partly to obtain information, and also to pass away the pain and weariness of your present infirmity with arguments that interested you.” “And is it so, sweetheart?” replied His Majesty, “then we are perfect friends,” and thereupon he kissed her and gave her leave to depart.
The day appointed by her foes for the Queen’s arrest chanced to be fine and the sun shone brightly. The King sent for her to take the early air with him on the garden terrace overlooking the Thames. Katherine came, attended as before by her sister, the Lady Herbert, the Lady Lane, the Lady Tyrwhitt, and the little Lady Jane Grey. They had not been long walking up and down in the sunshine before the Lord Chancellor, with forty of the guard, entered the garden, expecting to carry off the Queen to the Tower—for no intimation of the change in the King’s intentions had reached him. Henry received his minister with a burst of furious invective. Bidding the Queen and her ladies stand apart, he called up Wriothesley and cast every evil name he could think of at him, commanding him, finally, to “avaunt from his presence and never show his face again till he was summoned.” Wriothesley, crestfallen and humbled, was about to withdraw, when the Queen advanced and interceded for him: “Poor soul, poor soul!” quoth the King; “thou little knowest, Kate, how ill he deserveth this grace at thy hands. On my hand, sweetheart, he hath been to thee a very knave!” So the disappointed minister departed, and Henry walked up and down the terrace again, leaning on his Queen and followed by her escort of ladies. Although Wriothesley’s part in this tragi-comedy seems to have been overlooked, the King is said never to have forgiven Gardiner his share in the matter. A little later, notwithstanding the royal prohibition, both conspirators presented themselves with their colleagues. The King forthwith reminded Wriothesley in his most forcible manner that he had ordered him never to show his face again, and above all never, on any pretext whatever, to bring “that beast Gardiner” along with him. “My Lord of Winchester,” replied the cunning Wriothesley, “has come to wait upon your Highness with an offer of benevolence from his clergy.” The King being as usual in great need of money, began to listen more benignly, allowed Gardiner to present the address, and finally accepted the bribe.[60] But he took no further notice of the Bishop, and is said to have struck his name off the list of his executors within the next few days. He also cancelled that of Thirlby, Bishop of Westminster, because, said he, “he is too much under the influence of Gardiner.”[61] Queen Katherine may have had a hand in this affair, and after the revelation of the treachery which would fain have destroyed her she very likely took the opportunity of letting the King know more concerning the machinations of Gardiner and Wriothesley than was good for their credit or likely to serve their influence.
The details of this formidable but abortive plot against Katherine Parr rest mainly on the authority of Foxe. But it must be remembered, by those inclined to doubt the “Martyrologist,” that at this time he had attained his thirtieth year, he was in touch with most of the personages named, and was consequently in a position to obtain the information which he wove into his famous narrative—not, we admit, without considerable embellishment and exaggeration, introduced to suit the taste of his readers—from living witnesses. Foxe also made liberal use of Paget’s statement during the proceedings for Gardiner’s deprivation, which took place early in Edward’s reign. All the Elizabethan and Jacobean historians of Henry VIII—Herbert, Parsons, Holinshed, Strype, Speed, Oldmixon, and others—reproduce the story with slight emendations and additions from Foxe. No direct confirmation of it is to be found indeed in the State Papers, but this is not surprising, for such matters were not usually set down in writing. Nevertheless, it is hinted at.[62] Nor do the Ambassadors seem to have known anything about it. Father Parsons, who, like Foxe, obtained much of his information at first hand, introduces the incident in his Three Conversions of England, a book written to refute some of Foxe’s errors, and adds that although Foxe lays “all the cause of the Queen’s trouble upon Bishop Gardiner and others, and though the King did kindly and lovingly pardon her, the truth is that the King’s sickness and death were the chief causes of her escape, for had the King found her guilty he would have commanded her also to be burned.”
Speed, possibly mistaking Lady Lane for Lady Jane, introduces the King’s little niece on this occasion, not only as a witness of the reconciliation of the royal couple, but in the character of a candle-bearer before the Queen. Jane Grey, being a Princess of the Blood, could never have been in attendance upon the Queen, and she was too small a child to be laden with a pair of heavy branch candlesticks. Lady Lane, on the other hand, was certainly in the Queen’s Household at this particular juncture. She was Her Majesty’s cousin-german, being the daughter of her uncle, Lord Parr of Horton, and wife of Sir Ralph Lane of Orlingby, Nottinghamshire. Still, since the fact of her being present is mentioned by so many almost contemporary writers, we may conclude that Lady Jane was a witness of the dramatic scenes that took place between King Henry and his terrified Consort, and may herself, in after life, have narrated the incident to some friend of Foxe or immediate forbear of Parson’s informant. Gardiner’s disgrace does not seem to have been quite as complete as Foxe has been pleased to represent it, and he was in close enough contact with those in power to be selected as chief celebrant at the King’s Requiem.
That the King was completely reconciled to his wife is proved by the conspicuous part he assigned her in the splendid series of festivities in honour of the French Envoy, who arrived in August, when the Court had removed to Hampton Court. Not only was her apartment refurnished with sumptuous tapestries, but her wardrobe was renewed, and the King presented her with a quantity of magnificent jewellery, which, after his death, gave rise to considerable misunderstanding and trouble.
These festivities in honour of Monsieur d’Annebault, Francis I’s special Envoy, were the last flicker of the pageantry of Henry VIII’s reign, and revived for a week something of the brilliance of the Court of England in the great days of Wolsey. For the first and only time, Prince Edward, as heir-apparent, played a conspicuous part. On Monday, 23rd August, the boy-prince rode out towards London to meet the Ambassador, attended by the Archbishop of York and the Earls of Hertford and Huntingdon, and by a retinue of “five hundred and forty persons in velvet coats, and the Prince’s liveries wore sleeves of cloth of gold, and half the coats embroidered also with gold, and there were the number of eight hundred, royally apparelled.” D’Annebault, who came to ratify the peace recently concluded between the sovereigns of France and England, was accompanied by a suite of two hundred gentlemen, who were all lodged at the King’s expense and entertained in the most hospitable manner. His Majesty was not well enough to receive the Ambassador on his arrival, but he received him in audience on the following day, after which monarch and Ambassador proceeded to the Chapel Royal, where, during Mass, they solemnly received the Host together.[63] Then followed six days of banqueting, hunting, and merry-making, masques, and mummeries, “with divers and sundry changes, inasmuch that the torch-bearers were clothed with gold cloth, and such like honourable entertainments, it were much to utter and hard to believe.” On these occasions the Marchioness of Dorset and her daughter, the Lady Jane Grey, were present, and Prince Edward danced with his little cousin, who also tripped it with young Lord Edward Seymour, the Lord Hertford’s eldest boy. When the Ambassador took his leave, Henry made him a present of silver plate to the value of £1200. After his departure the dying King seems to have led a very quiet life at Hampton Court and Whitehall. The end was visibly approaching. His feet and hands were abnormally swollen; dropsy had set in, and he was probably also suffering from an internal tumour. Even his most fervent admirers were obliged to confess that in appearance, at least, he had assumed somewhat of the aspect of a monster; but music still charmed the suffering monarch, and the last Household Books of his reign contain various items of payments to musicians and madrigal singers.
Note.—Dr. Gairdner makes the following comments on this subject in his Preface to vol. 21, part i. of the Calendar of State Papers for 1546 (published in 1908): “But one word may be permitted here about that dreadful incident, the racking in the Tower. It took place after her (Anne’s) condemnation, the object being to elicit from her information about persons at the Court who it was suspected had been her allies in promoting heresy. Besides others whose names are given, against whom she positively refused to utter a word, she was probably expected to accuse Queen Katherine Parr herself; for Parsons (Three Conversions of England, ii. 493) is no doubt perfectly correct in saying that the well-known incident related by Foxe, about this Queen, when she stood in real danger from a charge of heresy, was connected with the affair of Anne Askew. But Parsons is certainly wrong in saying that the King would have burned Katherine Parr also if he had lived. For though her heretical propensities were no secret, she survived the King, and he himself for fully six months survived Anne Askew. More probably the Queen was saved by Anne’s refusal to commit anyone except herself.”