The Works of William Harrison Ainsworth

by William Harrison Ainsworth

  All were in their places except the Duke of Norfolk, and Henry well knew why he was absent.

  Right and left of the throne were the Duke of Suffolk, the Lord Chancellor Audley, Sir Thomas Wriothesley, and the Earl of Southampton.

  Not far from the King, on a chair apart from the rest, sat Cromwell. He was unconscious of the peril in which he stood, yet his countenance was troubled. On the King’s entrance into the council-chamber he had endeavoured to catch his eye, but Henry would not notice him.

  The principal matter before the Council on that day was the King’s intended divorce from Anne of Cleves. The pretext on which Henry demanded a release from his matrimonial bonds were Anne’s precontract with the Prince of Lorraine, and his own espousal of her against his will.

  Cromwell maintained the validity of the marriage. The first objection, he declared, had been discussed before the solemnization of the nuptials, and the difficulty was then got over. As to the second objection, he contended it had no weight whatever. No contract could subsist, if one of the parties was enabled to declare that he had given no inward consent to it.

  All his arguments were vain. No other voice, except his own, was raised against the divorce, and his useless opposition only rendered the King more determined on his destruction.

  At the close of the deliberation, which was entirely favourable to the King’s wishes, the doors of the council-chamber were thrown open, and Henry descended from the throne.

  As he passed Cromwell, he paused for a moment, and looking at him sternly, said, “The fetters you have placed upon me are broken. The divorce will he solemnly pronounced to-morrow, and confirmed next day by Parliament.”

  “And your Majesty will be free to wed Catherine Howard,” rejoined Cromwell. “Yet I beseech you pause. ‘Twill be well to avoid another divorce.”

  “Ha! dost dare to insinuate aught?” cried Henry, furiously.

  “I insinuate nothing, sire,” replied Cromwell. “I have spoken as freely as you will allow me — too freely, perhaps, for my own safety. It has ever been my anxious care to preserve you from all danger. And were these my last words to you, I would counsel you not to take a step which I consider fraught with peril.”

  “They cure thy last words to me!” said Henry.

  And with this terrible rejoinder he quitted the council-chamber.

  IV. How Cromwell was arrested, and taken to the Tower.

  CROMWELL, who took precedence of the other lords of the Council, was preparing slowly to follow, when the Duke of Norfolk, with his sword drawn, and attended by a guard, entered, and marched up to him.

  On beholding the Duke, Cromwell understood his purpose, but he maintained a firm demeanour.

  “My lord, I arrest you of high treason!” said Norfolk. “Behold the royal warrant for your committal to the Tower.”

  “I am no traitor!” cried Cromwell. “How could I be a traitor to the Sovereign to whom I owe everything? I have preserved the King from many treasons; and few plots have been so secretly conceived, but that I have detected them. Heaven is my witness that I ever served his Majesty faithfully. My zeal, indeed, has made me many enemies among your lordships, as ye show by your rejoicing at my disgrace. But I shall yet clear myself, and obtain the King’s pardon.”

  “Think it not,” said Norfolk.

  “At least, I shall not be condemned unheard,” rejoined Cromwell. “I demand a public trial before my peers. I can produce orders from the King that cannot be disavowed, and that will entirely exculpate me.”

  “Such consideration as you have shown others will be shown you, my lord,” said Norfolk, sternly. “You have established a precedent that a person accused of treason can be attainted without previous trial or confession. The weapon you employed against the Marchioness of Exeter and the Countess of Salisbury will be used against yourself. You will be proceeded against by bill of attainder.”

  All Cromwell’s courage forsook him. “’Tis retribution!” he groaned.

  Presently he added, in a supplicating tone, “I pray you, my lord, that I may be taken, in the first instance, to my own house. This heavy calamity has fallen upon me suddenly. I have most important papers—”

  “Do not concern yourself about them, my lord,” interrupted Norfolk. “Your papers have already been seized, and your secret correspondence with the princes of Germany has been discovered.”

  “That seals your doom!” said the Duke of Suffolk, who was standing near. “The King will never forgive the betrayal of his confidence.”

  Cromwell’s head fell upon his breast. He was surrounded by the guard, and taken to the privy stairs of the palace, where a barge was waiting to convey him to the Tower.

  It being incumbent upon the Duke of Norfolk to deliver the prisoner into the custody of the Lieutenant of the Tower, he accompanied him in his passage down the river, and sat with him in the cabin.

  For some time, not a word passed between them. At length, the Duke broke silence.

  “Have you heard what has befallen your follower, Francis Dereham?” he remarked.

  “Has he expired upon the rack?” said Cromwell, raising his head.

  “He has not even been put to the question,” replied the Duke. “By a culpable arrangement, he was taken by night from Greenwich to the Tower, and contrived to escape by plunging overboard from the boat. The guard fired at him, and I believe hit him, but the body has not been found.”

  “He is a bold fellow!” said Cromwell. And he muttered to himself, “Perchance, he has not perished; and if I fall, he may avenge me!”

  He then relapsed into silence, nor did the Duke disturb him further.

  Awful thoughts possessed him as the terrible state-prison in which he was to be confined came in sight.

  Numbers had been sent to the Tower by his orders, and he had turned a deaf ear to their supplications, and hurried them recklessly to the scaffold. Now their sufferings were brought home to him. He would have to endure like agonies, and could expect no more pity than he himself had shown.

  Already, he had experienced that a fallen minister has no friends. When he was arrested in the council-chamber, all his flatterers abandoned him, and seemed to rejoice in his disgrace. Having accomplished his ruin, his implacable enemies would never rest till they had brought him to the block. Yet he had still hopes in the King’s mercy, and persuaded himself he could move that obdurate heart.

  Norfolk, whose cold gaze was fixed upon him, could read what was passing in his breast, and enjoyed his agony. He noticed the shudder that passed over the prisoner’s frame as he glanced at the sombre pile. He saw the deadly pallor that overspread his countenance, and the damps that gathered thickly on his brow.

  The illustrious prisoner’s approach had been signalled by the sentinels on St. Thomas’s Tower. Drums were beat in the lower ward, and Sir William Kingston, Lieutenant of the Tower, attended by a guard of halberdiers, proceeded to Traitors’ Gate.

  Meanwhile, the ponderous wooden gates had been thrown open to admit the barge, and closed again as it passed beneath the low-browed archway.

  At that trying moment Cromwell’s heart sank within him, and the groan he could not suppress was music in Norfolk’s ears.

  At the head of the steps stood the Lieutenant of the Tower, with some of his officers, while the halberdiers were drawn up in the rear.

  The guard having quitted the barge, the Duke of Norfolk offered his hand to Cromwell to assist him to disembark, but he haughtily refused the aid, and mounted the steps alone.

  The Duke then formally delivered his prisoner to the lieutenant, who received him with an expression of concern that greatly touched the unhappy man.

  “I never thought to see your lordship here in this guise,” said the lieutenant, in a tone of profound commiseration.

  “Nor I to visit you thus, good Sir William,” replied Cromwell. “Where will you lodge me?”

  “There are many prisoners of importance in the Tower, as you wot, my lord,” replied Kingston. “The Bisho
p of Chichester and Doctor Wilson, whom you sent here only a week ago, for refusing the oath of supremacy, are in the Bowyer Tower, where I could have given you a good lodging.”

  “Can you not remove the Bishop?” observed Norfolk. “He ought to make way for the Vicar-General.”

  “You might have spared me that cruel taunt, my lord,” said Cromwell.

  “I now bethink me that the chief room in the Beauchamp Tower is vacant,” observed Kingston.

  “Why, that was occupied by the Lord Montague, one of your latest victims,” remarked the Duke to Cromwell.

  “The dead will not disturb me: ’tis the living I fear,” rejoined the fallen minister. “Let me have that chamber, good Master Lieutenant.”

  “I will conduct your lordship thither at once,” said Kingston.

  “I will see him safely bestowed,” observed Norfolk.

  They then proceeded to the inner ward, in which the Beauchamp Tower is situated. Half-a-dozen halberdiers marched in front of the prisoner, and a like number followed him.

  Cromwell walked slowly, and paused, after mounting the ascent from the Bloody Tower. Several persons were collected on the green to see him pass.

  Conspicuous among them, from the position he had chosen, as well as from his peculiar garb, was an ill-favoured individual, who, with his brawny arms folded upon his chest, kept his eye fixed upon the prisoner. His muscular frame was displayed in a tight-fitting buff jerkin, darkly-stained in many places. Black elf-locks descending from beneath his cap added to the sinister expression of his countenance. He was lame, it appeared, for when the prisoner halted, he limped towards him, and reverently doffed his cap.

  “Who art thou, fellow?” demanded Cromwell, looking at him. “Methinks I know thee.”

  “I am Mauger, the headsman, my lord,” replied the fellow, with a detestable grin. “I thank you for the constant work you have given me.”

  “Back, caitiff,” cried the Duke of Norfolk, thrusting him aside. “Thou art not wanted yet.”

  V. The Prison Chamber in the Beauchamp Tower.

  THE prison-lodging to which Cromwell was conducted was accounted the best and most commodious in the Tower.

  The Beauchamp Tower is the central fortification on the west side of the inner ballium wall; and the room assigned to the fallen minister is on the upper story, and reached by a circular stone staircase.

  Its walls are of immense thickness, as is shown by the great depth of the embrasures. Connected with it are a couple of cells, in which the prisoners were secured at night. The door is of massive oak, studded with hammer-headed nails.

  Throughout the latter part of Henry the Eighth’s terrible reign, all the fortifications of the Tower were converted into prisons. All the underground dungeons were filled. Constant employment was found for the gaolers, and for the executioner and their aids, and if the latter had not been called frequently into play, the prisons would have been over-crowded.

  Cromwell was alone in the chamber we have described in the Beauchamp Tower. The Duke of Norfolk, Kingston, and the gaoler were gone. The stout oak door was locked upon him, and the heavy bolts shot into their sockets.

  Alone, and a prisoner. That morn he had been lodged in a sumptuous apartment, with grooms and pages to wait upon him; now he was entombed within stone walls, and had not a single attendant. Ushers, gentlemen pensioners, all his glittering retinue, had disappeared.

  With him, it had but been a single step from a palace to a prison. The transition was too sudden — the shock too great. He hoped he was in a frightful dream, from which he should speedily awake, and find himself reposing on a damask couch and on a pillow of down.

  Alas! it was hard reality. He was no longer clothed with power. He had no longer a princely retinue. His enemies had defeated him. He was overthrown and disgraced — irretrievably ruined.

  The Romish clergy, who abhorred him for his spoliations and exactions; the nobles, who hated him for his mean origin and his pride; the common people, to whom he was odious; all were eager for his blood.

  Deprived of the means of defence, he should he attainted and convicted, and either burnt as a heretic at the stake, or decapitated as a traitor on Tower Hill, at the King’s pleasure.

  So overcome was he with these afflicting thoughts, that, fancying himself in the presence of the King, he fell on his knees, and, clasping his hands, exclaimed, in heart piercing accents, “Shut not your ears to your suppliant, most gracious prince! I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy!”

  VI. The repudiated Queen.

  THE ill-fated Anne of Cleves, as we have already mentioned, had been compelled to remove from Greenwich, and take up her residence in the palace of Richmond.

  The comparative privacy in which she lived suited her better than the splendour of the Court she had quitted; and however she might feel the King’s neglect, she uttered no complaint.

  Richmond was one of the most beautiful of the royal palaces, as will be easily understood by those acquainted with the charming situation which it occupied on the banks of the Thames.

  A magnificent specimen of Tudor architecture, it was erected by Henry the Seventh, on the site of the ancient Palace of Shene, which had been destroyed by fire. Thenceforward its designation was changed, by royal command, to Richmond.

  When Cardinal Wolsey occupied the palace, at a later date, the servants of the old King used to say to each other, “So a butcher’s dog doth dwell at the manor of Richmond.”

  On his accession to the throne, Henry the Eighth kept his Christmas at Richmond, and subsequently held a grand tournament there, at which he splintered many lances.

  Among the most illustrious guests at the palace was the Emperor Charles the Fifth, who was enchanted with the spot. But when Henry obtained Hampton Court from Wolsey, he rarely visited Richmond.

  The river facade of Richmond Palace, with its immense bay windows and countless turrets, was most picturesque and striking, and the loftiness of the edifice rendered it conspicuous for miles around.

  Its internal arrangements corresponded with its magnificent exterior. It possessed a great hall, one hundred feet in length and forty wide, at the lower end of which was a superbly carved oak screen. The chapel was nearly as large as the hall, and had a choir and canopied stalls like a cathedral. Here Henry the Seventh heard mass twice a-day. The privy lodgings amply sufficed for a regal household.

  Overlooking the gardens was a long, open gallery, in which the repudiated Queen took constant exercise.

  Let it not be imagined that she was moped at Richmond — on the contrary, she was far more cheerful than she had been at Greenwich or York House. Though treated in all respects like a queen, she was not allowed to leave the palace. But she did not appear to feel the constraint, and expressed no desire to stray beyond the gardens, being content to gaze upon the silver river, and the lovely region beyond it, Cromwell’s disgrace was a heavy blow to Anne, inasmuch as it deprived her of her best friend.

  On the third day after this event, the Duke of Suffolk, Grand Master, the Earl of Southampton, Lord Privy Seal, and Sir Thomas Wriothesley, the King’s Secretary, arrived at Richmond Palace.

  Not knowing what was to be her fate, the poor Queen, who had been kept in a state of dreadful suspense, sank to the ground in a swoon.

  When she recovered she received them in her private apartments, and was inexpressibly relieved when Suffolk explained that all they required was her assent to the divorce.

  “His Majesty has the most gracious intentions towards you, madam,” said the Duke; “and I hope you will not thwart him by any useless opposition.”

  “Fear me not, my lord,” she replied, humbly; “I will entirely conform myself to his Majesty’s pleasure.”

  “I am glad to find you have come to so wise a determination, madam. If you are willing to relinquish the title of Queen — to which you have no longer any claim, since the sentence of divorce has been solemnly pronounced, and both yourself and the King are free to marry again — his Majesty graci
ously designs to adopt you as a sister.”

  “Does he propose to adopt me as his sister?” exclaimed Anne, joyfully; “I desire nothing better. I would rather be his sister than his consort.”

  Suffolk had some difficulty in preserving his gravity, but he continued, “You will take precedence over every dame at Court, except the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, and his Majesty’s intended consort.”

  “Then he is about to wed the Lady Catherine Howard?” cried Anne.

  “Ay, madam,” replied the Duke.

  “I do not envy her,” murmured Anne.

  “Madam,” said Southampton, “I rejoice to find you so conformable to the King’s wishes. Anticipating nothing less, his Majesty has authorized me to state that this palace will be granted to you as a residence, with an endowment of twelve thousand crowns a-year.”

  “Am I not, then, permitted to return to Cleves?” inquired Anne, uneasily.

  “His Majesty is unwilling to part with you,” said Southampton. “And he hopes you will write to your brother, the Duke of Cleves, in such terms as will prevent all misunderstanding.”

  “I will obey his Majesty’s behests,” replied Anne. “My brother shall learn from me that I have been most honourably treated, and that, with heaven’s grace, I purpose to spend my life in this realm.”

  Then taking off her wedding-ring, she presented it to Southampton, saying, in moving accents, “On this ring, as you see, is inscribed, ‘God send me well to keep.’ God hath not permitted me to wear it long; but He has preserved me from peril. His will be done! I will charge you with a letter to the King — now my most benign and good brother, — in which I will strive to thank him adequately for his great goodness and liberality towards me. I will also write to my brother, the Duke of Cleves.”

  “The King must see the letter,” observed Southampton.