Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/244

230 she exclaimed, "Oh, Father! oh, Creator! Thou, the way, the life, and the truth, knowest whether I have deserved this death!" She then said, "My lords, I will not say that your sentence is unjust, nor presume that my reasons can prevail against your convictions. I am willing to believe that you have sufficient reasons for what you have done; but then they must be other than those which have been produced in this court, for I am clear of all the offences which you there laid to my charge. I have ever been a faithful wife to the king; though I do not say I have always shown him that humility which his goodness to me, and the honour to which he raised me, merited. I confess I have had jealous fancies and suspicions of him, which I had not discretion and wisdom enough to conceal at all times; but God knows, and is my witness, that I never sinned against him any other way. Think not I say this in hope to prolong my life: God hath taught me how to die, and he will strengthen my faith. Think not that I am so bewildered in my mind as not to lay the honour of my chastity to heart now in mine extremity, when I have maintained it all my life long, as much as ever queen did. I know these last words will avail me nothing, but for the justification of my chastity and honour. As for my brother, and those others who are unjustly condemned, I would willingly suffer many deaths to deliver them; but since I see it so pleaseth the king, I shall willingly accompany them in death, with this assurance, that I shall lead an endless life with them in peace." She then arose with a composed air, made an obeisance to the judges, and quitted the court.

Of the few spectators who were present, the universal feeling was that Anne was perfectly innocent, but borne down by a predetermining power. The Lord Mayor, who was one of them, and who was accustomed to try prisoners and decide on evidence, declared that "he could not observe anything in the proceedings against her, but that they were resolved to make an occasion to get rid of her."

And, indeed, Henry lost no time in getting rid of the woman, to obtain whom he had moved heaven and earth for years—threatening the peace of kingdoms, and rending the ancient bonds of the Church. The very day on which she was condemned, he signed her death-warrant, and sent Cranmer to confess her. There is something rather hinted at than proved in this part of these strange proceedings. Anne, when she was conveyed from Greenwich to the Tower, told her enemies proudly that nothing could prevent her dying their queen; and now, when she had seen Cranmer, she was in high spirits, and said to her attendants that she believed she should be spared after all, and that she understood that she was to be sent to Antwerp. The meaning of this the event of the next day sufficiently explained. In the morning, on a summons from the Archbishop Cranmer, she was conveyed privately from the Tower to Lambeth, where she voluntarily submitted to a judgment that her marriage with the king had been invalid, and was, therefore, from the first null and void. Thus she consented to dethrone herself, to unwife herself, and to bastardise her only child. For what? Undoubtedly from the promise of life, and from fear of the horrid death by fire. As she had received the confident idea of escape with life from the visit of Cranmer, there can be no rational doubt that he had been employed by the king to tamper with her fears of death and the stake, to draw this concession from her. Does any one think this impossible or improbable in the great Reformer of the Church—Cranmer? Let him weigh his very next proceeding.

Cranmer had formerly examined the marriage of Henry and Anne carefully by the canon law, and had pronounced it good and valid. He now proceeded to contradict every one of his former arguments and decisions, and pronounced the same marriage null and void. A solemn mockery of everything true, serious, and Divine was now gone through. Henry appointed Dr. Sampson his proctor in the case; Anne had assigned her the Drs. Wotton and Barbour. The objections to the marriage were read over to them in the presence of the queen. The king's proctor could not dispute them; the queen's were, with pretended reluctance, obliged to admit them, and both united in demanding a judgment. Then the great archbishop and Reformer, "having previously invoked the name of Christ, and having God alone before his eyes," pronounced definitively that the marriage formally contracted, solemnised, and consummated betwixt Henry and Anne was from the first illegal, and, therefore, no marriage at all; and the poor woman, who had been induced to submit to this deed of shame and of shameful deception, was sent back, not to life—not to exile at Antwerp, but to the block!

Taking these facts as they stand, without reference to persons, parties, or countries, we must say that in no portion of the world's history, in no age however dark and degraded, do we find deeds more stamped with infamy. Here is a king who sets all laws of heaven or earth, of justice and honour, all sentiments of decorum, affection, and humanity, at defiance; who binds and unbinds, contracts the most sacred unions and breaks them; who plays with lives and souls, with all their rights and feelings, as he would with bowls. And here is a primate of England, a man professedly aiming to reform the Church, to restore corrupted religion, to break the power of the Pope, to establish independence of spirit and opinion, who crouches before this monster, this incarnation of cruelty, lust, and libertinism, and seems to lick the very dust of dishonour and dishonesty from beneath his feet. There is not a more revolting spectacle than that of Henry at this period—there is not a more humiliating and melancholy one than that of Cranmer.

And what strange consequences flowed directly from this judgment. If Anne never were legally married to Henry, then she could not have committed adultery against him. Then the sentence which condemned her for this was altogether an unrighteous sentence. If this judgment were valid, then all the treasons based upon the validity of the marriage were done away with; and the men now condemned, were condemned, even if guilty with Anne, yet without any guilt against the king or crown. But if the act of settlement remained good, spite of the judgment, then the judgment itself was a treason, for it had "slandered and impugned the marriage," a circumstance which the act of settlement pronounced to be most treasonable. But the law in this gloomy time was merely what the tyrant decreed, and all classes were alike paralysed by this terrific despotism. The