Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/440

 offices from the crown, and like favours continued to be bestowed upon him during the three following years, in the last of which (1525) he was created a peer by the title of Viscount Rochford. That this steady flow of honours marks the beginning of the king's attachment to his second daughter there can be little doubt; but the secret of Henry's intentions was well kept, and it was not till the year 1527 that he was known to contemplate so serious a step as a divorce from his first wife, Katharine of Arragon. Some of the love-letters that he addressed to Anne Boleyn during this period (which have by some unexplained means found their way into the Vatican at Rome, and have more than once been printed) give an extraordinary notion of the progress of this intrigue. In one or two the royal lover expresses himself like a young gallant languishing in despair, complaining that he has been wounded for more than a year with the dart of love, and is unable to bear her absence. In others he has grown bolder and more familiar, even passing the bounds of modesty and indulging in gross allusions. It is evident that though the lady at first gave him little encouragement in his suit, it was from no particular sense of delicacy on her part; and that as soon as the king had committed himself to the course of seeking a divorce in order to marry her, she allowed him to address her in a style which would have been an insult to a really modest woman.

In May 1527 certain secret proceedings were commenced before Wolsey as legate, the king being summoned (of course by his own desire) to defend himself on a charge of cohabiting with the wife of his deceased brother Arthur. By this shameful device was it at first proposed to set aside a marriage of eighteen years' standing. The object, however, was not found practicable after such a fashion, and the proceedings were discontinued. The affair was kept a profound secret, and nothing whatever was known of it till our own day, when the original record of the proceedings was discovered in the Record Office. But though this particular step was effectually concealed, Katharine immediately afterwards gained some knowledge of the king's intentions, and the rumour soon became pretty general that Henry was seeking a divorce. Next year Cardinal Campeggio was sent by the pope to England to try the cause along with Wolsey, and both the king and Anne Boleyn seem to have been sanguine of a favourable issue. Splendid apartments were fitted up for Anne at Greenwich, close by those of the king, and courtiers repaired to her every day in crowds, while the queen was comparatively neglected. It was evidently intended to accustom the people by degrees to her future position; but the people looked on in sullen silence ( Hist. du Divorce, iii. 231–2). A few months later, in June 1529, the French ambassador strongly suspected that the couple had already anticipated marriage while the case was still before the legates (ib. 325). But the expected sentence was not pronounced, the cause was revoked to Rome, and four years more passed away before the king dared to take that step which, according to his own contention, he had all along been free to take on his own responsibility. During those four years, or at all events during some of them, the relations which subsisted between the king and Anne Boleyn could scarcely be matter of doubt. After Henry had finally parted with his wife in 1531, Anne went about with him from place to place, reviled and hated by the people. At Rome she was distinctly spoken of as the king's mistress, and even Simon Grynæus, who visited England in the year just mentioned and had every wish to cultivate Henry's good will, was not certain that she had not borne him children (Original Letters relating to the Reformation, Parker Society, ii. 552). In fact Henry's conduct in cohabiting with her, as well as in repudiating his lawful wife, is reproved in more than one papal brief issued in the year 1532; and it does not appear that the imputation was disavowed even by the king himself.

All this while the king's suit for a divorce was before the courts at Rome, but various subordinate issues had been raised by Henry's agents, really with the view of removing the cause once more and preventing an impartial decision. At length, at Easter in the year 1533, it was made known that the king had actually married Anne Boleyn on or about St. Paul's day (25 Jan.) preceding. No sentence had yet been given declaring the king's former marriage invalid; but some nuptial rite, it seems, had been performed in the strictest secrecy, and when the fact was announced Anne was already some months advanced in pregnancy. A sentence, however, was soon after obtained from Archbishop Cranmer pronouncing the marriage with Katharine null, and another sentence declaring Anne Boleyn the king's lawful wife, immediately after which Anne was crowned on Whitsunday at Westminster Hall with great magnificence.

She had now attained the summit of her ambition; but never was woman in exalted station less to be envied, even in the moment of her triumph. Her coronation excited no