Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/305

 Catherine archbishop felt some anxiety lest the 'contumacious' woman should change her mind and put in an appearance at the last.

On 3 July Lord Mountjoy, Catherine's chamberlain, accompanied by four other gentlemen of her household, waited on Catherine at Ampthill by the king's command to remonstrate with her on having used the name of queen after having orders to the contrary. They found her lying on a pallet, having hurt her foot with a pin, and troubled with a severe cough. On addressing her as princess dowager and showing their instructions, she at once took exception to the title. They in vain hinted that her obstinacy might even make the king withdraw his favour from her daughter Mary. They came again next day and showed her the report of their interview which they were going to send to the king, and she with her own hand struck out the words 'princess dowager' wherever they occurred. She declared she would accept no decision in her cause except that of the pope, and demanded a copy of the instructions that she might have them translated into Spanish and sent to Rome.

On being told of her reply, as Chapuys's despatches inform us, the king caused a proclamation to be printed and published in London by sound of trumpet. We know from a letter of the Earl of Derby on 10 Aug. following that it must have been to forbid people calling Catherine queen; for it appears that a priest named James Harrison, on hearing it read, declared defiantly 'that Queen Catherine was queen, and that Nan Bullen should not be queen,' for which he was brought before the earl and examined. Soon afterwards Catherine was removed to Buckden in Huntingdonshire, a seat of the Bishop of Lincoln. She was saluted as queen all the way along. The king and his council next took into consideration the reduction of her household, and of the allowance originally assigned for her dower by express treaty with Ferdinand. The severity of her treatment was so much increased that she became anxious for the utmost pressure to be put upon the pope, whose authority, she believed, might still avail to do her justice; but she was so surrounded by spies, that she hardly found it possible to write.

The indignities to which she had to submit were most galling. In July Anne Boleyn, looking forward to her own confinement, was eager to possess a very rich cloth brought by Catherine from Spain, and used by her at the baptism of her children. She was not ashamed to urge Henry to ask Catherine for it, and Henry was not ashamed to comply; but Catherine positively refused to give up her property for a use so scandalous. Aft the birth of Elizabeth, Mary was told that she must give up the name of princess, just as her mother had been warned to give up that of queen. When she refused, the whole of her servants were dismissed, and she herself was compelled to dislodge and become a sort of waiting-woman attached to the train of her infant sister. Then, as it drew near Christmas, it was determined to make Catherine herself dislodge from Buckden and place her with a reduced household at Somersham in the Isle of Ely. The commissioners only failed to satisfy the king because they had not sufficient inhumanity or firmness to overcome Catherine's resistance by force. Buckden was by no means a healthy situation, but Somersham was worse, and it was hardly possible to avoid a suspicion that the king and Anne Boleyn were seeking to hasten her death. The commissioners dismissed a number of Catherine's servants who declined to be sworn to her anew as princess of Wales; but they failed with all the menaces they could use to get her to consent to her own removal. For six days they remained hoping to conquer her obstinacy; but she locked herself up in her own chamber, and told them through a hole in the wall that if they meant to remove her they must break open the doors and carry her off by force. They at length returned to the king with a confession that they had only been able to execute one part of their charge. Henry was very angry at their want of thoroughness!

It seems to have been about the beginning of November 1533 that the king saw fit to imprison Elizabeth Barton [see Barton, Elizabeth (DNB00)], Nothing whatever was found in her evidence to implicate Catherine.

The life which she was then leading at Buckden was passed, as we are informed by Harpsfield, 'in much prayer, great alms, and abstinence. And when she was not in this way occupied then was she and her gentlewomen working with their own hands something wrought in needlework, costly and artificially, which she intended to the honour of God to bestow upon some churches. There was in the said house of Buckden a chamber with a window that had a prospect into the chapel, out of which she might hear divine service. In this chamber she enclosed herself, sequestered from all other company, a great part of the day and night, and upon her knees used to pray at the said window leaning upon the stones of the same. There was some of her gentlewomen that did curiously mark and observe all her doings, who reported that oftentimes they found the said stones so wet after her departure as