‘Pleas it your Grace to write that M. Wiat of his goodnes sent unto me for a present certaine cramp ringges, which I distributed and gave to sondery myne acquaintaunce at Edinburghe, amonges other to M. Adame Otterbourne, who, with oone of thayme, releved a mann lying in the falling sekenes, in the sight of myche people: sethenne which tyme many requestes have been made unto me for cramp ringges, at my departing there, and also sethenne my comyng from thennes. May it pleas your Grace therefore to show your gracious pleasure to the said M. Wyat, that some ringges may be kept and sent into Scottelande; whiche after my poore oppyniyoun shulde be a good dede, remembering the power and operacion of thaym is knowne and proved in Edinburgh, and that they be gretly required for the same cause both by grete personnages and other.’
When Bishop Gardiner was in Rome in A.D. 1529, Anne Boleyn wrote him the following letter:[245]
Master Stephyns,
I thank you for my letter, wherein I perceive the willing and faithful mind that you have to do me pleasure, not doubting, but as much as is possible for man’s wit to imagine, you will do. I pray God to send you well to speed in all your matters, so that you would put me to the study, how to reward your high service: I do trust in God you shall not repent it, and that the end of this journey shall be more pleasant to me than your first, for that was but a rejoicing hope, which causing the like of it, does put me to the more pain, and they that are partakers with me, as you do know: and therefore I do trust that this hard beginning shall make the better ending.
Master Stephyns, I send you here cramp-rings for you and Master Gregory, and Mr. Peter, praying you to distribute them as you think best. And have me kindly recommended to them both, as she that you may assure them, will be glad to do them any pleasure, which shall be in my power. And thus I make an end, praying God send you good health.
Written at Grenwiche, the 4th day of April,
By your assured friend,
Anne Boleyn.
[To Master Stephyns this be delivered.]
Burnet[246] refers to this letter, as follows:
‘When he [Gardiner] went to Rome, in the year 1529, Anne Boleyn writ a very kind letter to him, which I have put in the Collection (Records No. 24). By it, the reader will clearly perceive that he was then in the secret of the King’s designing to marry her as soon as the divorce was obtained. There is another particular in that letter, which corrects a conjecture which I had set down in the beginning of the former book concerning the cramp rings that were blessed by King Henry, which I thought might have been done by him after he was declared head of the Church.[247] That part was printed before I saw this letter: but this letter shows they were used to be blessed before the separation from Rome: for Anne Boleyn sent them as great presents thither. This use of them had been (it seems) discontinued in King Edward’s time: but now, under Queen Mary, it was designed to be revived, and the office for it was written out in a fair MS. yet extant, of which I have put a copy in the Collection (No. 25). But the silence in the writers of that time makes me think it was seldom if ever practised.’