Catherine in Exile
In the thirty months after More's death, Henry lost three of his six queens. Catherine of Aragon, who still held herself Henry's only lawful wife and England's rightful queen, was left to be forgotten in the north of the country. Her loyal servants called her Queen of England until the day she died. In 1535 she moved to Kimbolton Castle near Huntingdon and withdrew to a single room that she left only to attend Mass. There she received her friends and made the most of them. Mary, now nineteen, was kept at Hatfield, only about thirty kilometers from her mother's residence. Mother and daughter were not allowed to meet or communicate; even so, the letters Catherine wrote to Mary are counted among the most moving in the world. Henry was willing to give them a suitable residence if they would recognize the new queen of England, but both refused. Anne Boleyn put her aunt in charge of Mary and ordered her to keep "this bastard" under strict watch and to discipline her harshly.
In December 1535 Catherine fell ill, wrote her will, asked the emperor to look after her daughter, and in a moving letter bade farewell to Henry VIII as "my most dear lord, king and husband." Her love, she wrote, bade her advise him to put the health of his soul above worldly and bodily concerns, which had brought her so much misery and him so many troubles; she forgave all his faults and asked God to forgive him too. She commended their daughter Mary to him and begged him to be a kind father to her, and she ended by swearing that her eyes desired him above all things. When Henry received the letter he wept bitterly. After Catherine died at fifty (7 January 1536) he ordered his courtiers to go into mourning, but Anne refused to obey.
The Fall of Anne Boleyn
Anne did not know that five months later she herself would leave the world, but she had understood that the king was no longer hers. Wearied by her temper, her commanding speech and her insistent demands, he now longed for the gentleness, patience and mildness of Catherine. On the day Catherine was buried Anne bore a stillborn child, and Henry, who had never given up his wish for a son, again thought of divorcing his wife or of declaring his marriage void on his own claim. It is said that he had come to regard his second marriage as the fruit of deceit and so of no force. From October one of Anne's ladies-in-waiting, Jane Seymour, drew the king's attention to herself. When Anne rebuked him for it, Henry ordered her to hold her tongue. Perhaps in keeping with earlier devices, Henry accused Anne of treason and infidelity.
It is hard to believe that even a woman of loose habits would risk the king's wife's high place for a moment's pleasure, but Henry evidently held firmly to her guilt. He shared with his counselors the rumors of her immorality, and after inquiry they reported that Anne had had improper relations with five men of the court: Sir William Brereton, Sir Henry Norris, Sir Francis Weston, Mark Smeaton and her own brother, Lord Rochford. The five were imprisoned, and on 2 May 1536 Anne followed them to prison.
Henry wrote to Anne that if she told the truth she might hope for his forgiveness. Anne answered that she had committed no sin to confess. Her jailers said she admitted that Norris and Weston had made advances to her but claimed she had rejected them. On 11 May a Middlesex grand jury, which had been charged to examine her improper relations in that county, reported, with dates and names, that Anne had been unfaithful with all five accused. Four of the accused were tried on 12 May at Westminster before a body that included Anne's own father, the Earl of Wiltshire. Smeaton confessed his guilt, but the others declared themselves innocent. The court voted to convict all four. On 15 May Anne and her brother were tried before twenty-six peers presided over by the Duke of Norfolk, her uncle and bitter enemy. Brother and sister both declared themselves innocent, but the members unanimously announced they had no doubt of the accused's treason, and sentenced them, at the king's pleasure, "to be burned or beheaded." On 17 May Smeaton was hanged (so the book) and the other four were beheaded according to their rank. That same day the king's agents asked Archbishop Cranmer to declare Henry's marriage to Anne unlawful and Elizabeth illegitimate, and the archbishop agreed. It is not known on what authority he found the marriage unlawful, but it is thought he took as his pretext rumors of Anne's earlier betrothal to Lord Northumberland.
On the night before her death Anne fell on her knees before Lady Kingston, the wife of her keeper, and asked her to go to the king's daughter Mary, kneel before her and beg forgiveness for the wrong Anne had done her through pride and thoughtlessness. On 19 May she asked to be executed as soon as possible. She seems to have found comfort in the thought, "I hear the executioner is a good man, and I have a little neck." At midday she was taken to the place of execution. Before her death she asked the onlookers to pray for the king, of whom she said England had never had a kinder and more merciful ruler, and who had been very good to her and was her gracious and noble lord. Although it was hard for the people to think her a traitor, few grieved at her fall.
Jane Seymour and the Heir
On the day of Anne's execution Cranmer gave the king, who had still not rid himself of the longing for a son, leave to marry again. The next day Henry was secretly betrothed to Jane Seymour; on 30 May 1536 he married her; and on 4 June he formally made her queen of England. Jane came of a noble family and was descended from Edward III. Her line met Henry's three or four generations back, and this kinship obliged the compliant Cranmer to issue another ruling on the legitimacy of their marriage. Jane had little beauty of face, but her intelligence, kindness and modesty won hearts. Cardinal Pole, Henry's most stubborn enemy, called her "the sum of all virtues." As long as Anne lived she had pushed away the king's hand, refused his gifts, sent back his letters unopened, and asked him not to speak to her except in the presence of others.
One of Jane's first acts was to mend the quarrel between Henry and his daughter Mary. But Henry made peace with Mary on his own terms, having Cromwell send her a paper entitled the "Confession of Lady Mary," in which Henry was named head of the Church of England, the claim of the pope of Rome to supremacy over it was rejected, and Henry's marriage to Catherine was declared unlawful. Mary was asked to sign every article. She signed, but never forgave herself. Three weeks later the king and queen visited her and gave her presents, among them a thousand crowns in cash. Mary was again called a princess and went to court at Christmas 1536. Henry and his daughter, the future "Bloody Mary," must have shared some traits, for in the last years of his life Mary loved her father.
When Parliament reopened (8 June 1536) it passed, at Henry's request, a new Act of Succession declaring Elizabeth and Mary illegitimate and recognizing the future child of Jane Seymour as heir to the throne. In July Henry lost his illegitimate son, the Duke of Richmond and Somerset, and set his hopes on Jane's child. When Jane bore a son (12 October 1537), later Edward VI, the English people were as delighted as Henry. But poor Jane, to whom Henry had by now become deeply attached, died twelve days after Edward's birth. Her death grieved him sharply. Although he married three more times, he left word before his death that he should be buried beside the grave of the woman who gave him life by bearing him a son.
English Opinion and Reginald Pole
How the people of England regarded the events of Henry's stormy reign is hard to say, for the accounts we have are biased, murky and scattered. In 1533 Chapuys wrote in his report that the English "hate this king more than Richard III." All understood Henry's wish for a male heir, but they condemned his harshness to Catherine and Mary; they shed no tears at Anne's death, but they were angered by the executions of Fisher and More. The great majority of the English were still Catholic, and the clergy, whose income the state had taken for itself, waited for the day when England would make peace with Rome. Yet no one dared speak ill of the king. The only Englishman who denounced Henry lived across the Channel.
Reginald Pole was the son of Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury (niece of Edward IV and Richard III). He was educated at Henry's expense, received a pension of 500 crowns from the king, and seemed destined one day to hold the highest office in the English Church. He studied in Paris and Padua, and when he returned to England he was a firm supporter of Henry. But when Henry pressed him for his view on the divorce of Catherine, Reginald frankly answered that he would not agree to it without the pope's approval. Henry, without cutting off his pension, sent him back to Europe. Pole stayed in Europe twenty-two years, became one of the renowned scholars and theologians of the Catholic Church, and at thirty-six was raised to the cardinalate (1536). That same year he wrote a bitter Latin treatise defending the unity of the Church, in which he attacked Henry fiercely. Pole argued that by taking the headship of the Church of England, Henry was dividing Christianity into different national religions and so spreading social and political disorder across Europe. He accused Henry of selfishness and despotism, blamed the English bishops for the Church's servitude to the state, called Henry's marriage to Anne adultery, and predicted (not wisely) that England's nobles would always regard Elizabeth as a "bastard." He urged Charles V, instead of wasting the empire's strength and skill against the Turks, to send the imperial army against the impious king of England. The vanity of youth overshadowed the author's eloquence. Cardinal Contarini advised Pole to give up publishing the treatise, but he insisted and printed it, sending a copy to England. After Pope Paul III raised Pole to cardinal, Henry took the pope's act as hostility. From then on the king of England gave up every thought of compromise with Rome and agreed with Cromwell on the need to dissolve all the monasteries of England and take their property for himself.