Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/265

A.D. 1540.] was received with all the respect due to the Queen of England by Sir Thomas Cheney, lord warden of the port, and conducted to a castle newly built, supposed to have been Walmer Castle. There she was waited upon by the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk, the Bishop of Chichester, and a great number of the nobility, gentry, and ladies of Kent. By them she was conducted to Dover, where she remained till Monday, and then, on a very stormy day, set out on her progress to Canterbury. On Barham Downs she was met by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of Ely, St. Asaph, St. David's, and Dover, and a great company of gentlemen, who attended her to St. Augustine's, outside of Canterbury. On reaching Sittingbourne, the Duke of Norfolk, the Lord Dacre of the south, Lord Mountjoy, and a great company of knights and gentlemen of Norfolk and Suffolk, with the barons of the exchequer, all clad in coats of velvet, waited upon her, and conducted her to Rochester. So far all was grand and imposing; but it is impossible to suppose that any woman, going to meet such a Bluebeard of a husband, must not have inwardly trembled. And, in truth, she had great cause. She was a woman of the plainest education—scarcely of any education at all; totally destitute of these accomplishments so necessary to take the fancy of Henry, and to preside in the English Court; where, amid all its blood and savagery, music, dancing, and many courtly sports and practices prevailed. She was a thorough Protestant, going into the midst of as thoroughly Papist a faction, and to consort with a monarch the most fickle and dogmatic in the world. She could speak no language but German, and of that Henry did not understand a word. It would have required a world of charms to have reconciled all this to Henry, even for a time, and of these poor Anne of Cleves was destitute. That she was not ugly, many contemporaries testify; but she was at least plain in person, and still plainer in manners. Both she and her maidens, of whom she brought a great train, are said to have been as homely and as awkward a bevy as ever came to England in the cause of royal matrimony.

The impatient though unwieldy lover, accompanied by eight gentlemen of his privy chamber, rode to Rochester to meet the bride. They were all clad alike, in coats "of marble colour," whatever that was; for Henry, with a spice of his old romance, was going incognito, to get a peep at his queen without her being aware which was he, as if that huge and remarkable figure, and that lion's face, could be passed for a moment as belonging to any one else. He told Cromwell that "he intended to visit her privily, to nourish love." On his arrival, he sent Sir Anthony Browne, his master of the horse, to inform Anne that he had brought her a new year's gift, if she would please to accept it. Sir Anthony, on being introduced to the lady who was to occupy the place of the two most celebrated beauties of the day, the Boleyn and the Seymour, was, he afterwards confessed, "never so much dismayed in his life," but, of course, said nothing. So now the enamoured king, whose eyes were dazzled with the recollection of what his queens had been, and what Holbein and his ambassadors had promised him should again be, entered the presence of Anne of Cleves, and was thunderstruck at the first sight of the reality. Lord John Russell, who was present, declared "that he had never seen his highness so marvellously astonished and abashed as on that occasion."

He had made it a point that his present queen should be of largo and tall stature, as he was himself now become of ample proportions; and his bride was as tall and large as heart could wish, but her features, though, not irregular, wanted softness, her bearing was ungraceful, and her figure ill-proportioned. The wrathful monarch felt that he was taken in, and after a very cold reception, he hastened back to his lodgings, and, sending for the lords who had attended her, thus addressed Fitzwilliam, the lord admiral, who had received her at Calais: "How like you this woman? Do you find her so personable, fair, and beautiful, as report has been made unto me? I pray you tell me true." They dared not venture to praise her, now that he had seen her, and the chagrined tyrant exclaimed, "Alas! whom shall men trust? I promise you I see no such thing as hath been shown me of her by pictures or report. I am ashamed that men have praised her as they have done; and I love her not."

Instead of presenting himself the new year's gift which, he had brought—a muff and tippet of rich sables—he sent them to her with a very cold message, and rode back to Greenwich in great dudgeon. There, the moment that he saw Cromwell, he burst out upon him for being the means of bringing him, not a wife, but "a great Flanders mare." Cromwell excused himself by not having seen her, and threw the blame on Fitzwilliam, the lord admiral, who, he said, when he found the princess at Calais so different from the pictures and reports, should have detained her there till he knew the king's pleasure; but the admiral replied brusquely that he had not had the choosing of her, but had simply executed his commission; and if he had in his despatches spoken of her beauty, it was because she was reckoned beautiful, and it was not for him to judge of his queen.

This altercation did not tend to pacify the king by any means, and he abruptly broke into it by demanding that some plan should be hit upon to rid him of her. But this was a most formidable matter. They had now no simple subject to deal with, whose head might be lopped off with little ceremony: but the lady had the whole of the princes of the Smalcaldic League and the Protestant interest of Germany at her back; and to insult them as he had insulted the Catholics and the emperor in the person of Catherine of Arragon was no indifferent matter. He called a council suddenly to devise the best mode of extricating him from this difficulty, and Anne was detained at Dartford till it was settled. Henry fell at once on his old stratagem. The pre-contract with the Duke of Lorraine, at which he would not even look when it was pressed upon him while he was fascinated by Holbein's unlucky miniature, was next pleaded as a sufficient obstacle to the marriage. But the German ambassadors who accompanied Anne treated the idea of the pre-contract with contempt, and offered to remain as hostages for the arrival of ample proofs of the revocation of that contract; and Cranmer and the Bishop of Durham, who trembled for the Protestant interest, declared that there was no just impediment to the marriage. On hearing this he exclaimed fiercely, "Is there, then, no remedy, but I must needs put my neck into this yoke?"