The New World (Complete Edition). Winston Churchill

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СКАЧАТЬ courtiers, Henry Norris and Sir Francis Weston, were seen to enter the Queen’s room, and were, it was said, overheard making love to her. Next day a parchment was laid before the King empowering a strong panel of counsellors and judges, headed by the Lord Chancellor, or any four of them, to investigate and try every kind of treason. The King signed. On Tuesday the Council sat all day and late into the night, but as yet there was not sufficient evidence. The following Sunday a certain Smeaton, a gentleman of the King’s chamber, who played with great skill on the lute, was arrested as the Queen’s lover. Smeaton subsequently under torture confessed to the charge. On Monday Norris was among the challengers at the May Day tournament at Greenwich, and as the King rode to London after the jousting he called Norris to his side and told him what was suspected. Although Norris denied everything he also was arrested and taken to the Tower.

      That night Anne learned that Smeaton and Norris were in the Tower. The following morning she was requested to come before the Council. Although her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, presided at the examination, no Queen of England, Anne complained afterwards, could have been treated with such brutality. At the conclusion of the proceedings she was placed under arrest, and kept under guard until the tide turned to take her up-river to the Tower. So quickly had the news spread that large crowds collected along the river-bank, and were in time to watch her barge rowing rapidly up-stream with a detachment of the guard, her uncle Norfolk, and the two Chamberlains, Lord Oxford and Lord Sandys, on board. At the Traitor’s Gate she was handed over to the Constable of the Tower, Sir William Kingston. The same evening, at York Place, when the Duke of Richmond, the King’s bastard son, came as usual to say good-night to his father, the King burst into tears. “By God’s great mercy”, he said, “you and your sister Mary have escaped the hands of that damned poisonous strumpet. She was plotting to poison you both.” Henry tried to forget his shame and disgrace in a ceaseless round of feasting. “His Majesty”, wrote the Imperial Ambassador, who however may well be suspected of malicious bias, “has been gayer since the arrest than ever before. He is going out to dinner here, there, and everywhere with the ladies. Sometimes he returns along the river after midnight to the sound of many instruments or the voices of the singers of his chamber, who do their utmost to interpret his delight at being rid of that thin old woman.” (In fact she was aged twenty-nine.) “He went to dinner recently with the Bishop of Carlisle and some ladies, and next day the Bishop told me that he had behaved with almost desperate gaiety.”

      On Friday morning the special commissioners of treason appointed the previous week, including Anne Boleyn’s father, the Earl of Wiltshire, and the entire bench of judges except one, formed the court for the trial of Anne’s lovers. A special jury consisting of twelve knights had been summoned, and found the prisoners guilty. They were sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, but execution was deferred until after the trial of the Queen. This opened the following Monday in the Great Hall of the Tower. Twenty-six peers—half the existing peerage—sat on a raised dais under the presidency of the Duke of Norfolk, named Lord High Steward of England for the occasion. The Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas Audley, who as a commoner by birth was not entitled to judge a Queen, sat next to the Duke to give legal advice. The Lord Mayor and a deputation of aldermen attended, with members of the public, by the King’s command, in the well of the hall. The Queen was brought in by Sir Edmund Walsingham, the Lieutenant of the Tower, to listen to the indictment by the Attorney-General. She was charged with being unfaithful to the King; promising to marry Norris after the King was dead; giving Norris poisoned lockets for the purpose of poisoning Catherine and Mary; and other offences, including incest with her brother. The Queen denied the charges vigorously, and replied to each one in detail. The peers retired, and soon returned with a verdict of guilty. Norfolk pronounced sentence: the Queen was to be burnt or beheaded, at the King’s pleasure.

      Anne received the sentence with calm and courage. She declared that if the King would allow it she would like to be beheaded like the French nobility, with a sword, and not, like the English nobility, with an axe. Her wish was granted; but no executioner could be found in the King’s dominions to carry out the sentence with a sword, and it was found necessary to postpone the execution from Thursday to Friday while an expert was borrowed from St Omer, in the Emperor’s dominions. During Thursday night she slept little. Distant hammering could be heard from the courtyard of the Tower, as a low scaffold, about five feet high, was erected for the execution. In the morning the public were admitted to the courtyard; and the Lord Chancellor entered soon afterwards, with Henry’s son, the Duke of Richmond, Cromwell, and the Lord Mayor and aldermen.

      On May 19, 1536, the headsman was already waiting, leaning on his heavy two-handed sword, when the Constable of the Tower appeared, followed by Anne in a beautiful night robe of heavy grey damask trimmed with fur, showing a crimson kirtle beneath. She had chosen this garment in order to leave her neck bare. A large sum had been given to her to distribute in alms among the crowd. “I am not here,” she said to them simply, “to preach to you, but to die. Pray for the King, for he is a good man and has treated me as well as could be. I do not accuse anyone of causing my death, neither the judges nor anyone else, for I am condemned by the law of the land and die willingly.” Then she took off her pearl-covered headdress, revealing that her hair had been carefully bound up to avoid impeding the executioner. “Pray for me,” she said, and knelt down while one of the ladies-in-waiting bandaged her eyes. Before there was time to say a Paternoster she bowed her head, murmuring in a low voice, “God have pity on my soul.” “God have mercy on my soul” she repeated, as the executioner stepped forward and slowly took his aim. Then the great blade hissed through the air, and with a single stroke his work was done.

      As soon as the execution was known Henry appeared in yellow, with a feather in his cap, and ten days later was privately married to Jane Seymour at York Place. Jane proved to be the submissive wife for whom Henry had always longed. Anne had been too dominating and too impulsive. “When that woman desires anything,” one of the ambassadors had written of Anne two years before her execution, “there is no one who dares oppose her, or could do so if he dared, not even the King himself. They say that he is incredibly subject to her, so that when he does not wish her to do what she wishes she does it in spite of him and pretends to fly into a terrible rage.” Jane was the opposite, gentle though proud; and Henry spent a happy eighteen months with her. She was the only Queen whom Henry regretted and mourned, and when she died, still aged only twenty-two, immediately after the birth of her first child, the future Edward VI, Henry had her buried with royal honours in St George’s Chapel at Windsor. He himself lies near her.

      Chapter VI: The End of the Monasteries

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      Though all had been bliss at Court while Jane was Queen rural England was heavy with discontents. Henry was increasingly short of revenue and Church properties offered a tempting prize. Just before Anne’s trial he had gone down to the House of Lords in person to recommend a Bill suppressing those smaller monasteries which contained fewer than twelve monks. There were nearly four hundred of them, and the combined rent of their lands amounted to a considerable sum. The religious orders had for some time been in decline, and parents were becoming more and more averse to handing over their sons to the cloisters. Monks turned to the land in search of recruits, and often waived the old social distinctions, taking the sons of poor tenant farmers. But the number of novices was rarely sufficient. At some houses the monks had given up all hope of carrying on, and squandered the endowments, cutting down woods, pawning the plate, and letting the buildings fall into disrepair or ruin. Grave irregularities had been discovered by the ecclesiastical Visitors over many years. The idea of suppression was not altogether new: Wolsey had suppressed several small houses to finance his college at Oxford, and the King had since suppressed over twenty more for his own benefit. Parliament made little difficulty about winding up the smaller houses, when satisfied that their inmates were either to be transferred to large houses or pensioned off. During the summer of 1536 royal commissioners toured the country, completing the dissolution as swiftly as possible.

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