forced to leave the fortress; there were scarcely thirty men left in the Tower, and the majority of them without arms. A domestic of the ambassador of Charles V. could not obtain permission to be present at the execution. Anne ascended tho scaffold with a firm step, accompanied by four female attendents, and the lieutenant of the Tower. Then, turning towards the spectators, whom the jealous precaution of the monarch had appointed to witness the sacrifice, she said: “Good Christian people, 1 have come hither to die, that the law may be satisfied; I accuse no one, not even my judges. May God preserve the king, and grant him a long reign; he is a noble prince, the most generous of men; he has always treated me with the greatest kindness and tenderness; I am quite resigned to my fate, and may God pardon me."(a) Refusing the aid of the executioner, (b) she then took off her head-dress and collar, which might impede the action of the axe, covered her hair with a linen cap, and addressing herself to her maids, said: "I thank you for your kindness, which I should like to be able to reward; you will not forget me; you will be faithful to the king, and to her who will soon be your queen and your mistress. Value your honour more than your lives, and forget not in your prayers to the Lord Jesus to intercede for my soul."(c) Mary Wyatt was on the scaffold, holding in her hand a Prayer-book which had just been given to her by the prisoner as a token of her gratitude,(d) and received Anne Boleyn's last kiss. The queen knelt

(a) From an account by Constantyne, an eye-witness.-Archæologia, Brit. XXIII. (b) Gratianus, de Casibus virorum illustrium. (c) Constantyne.

(d) Wyatt's Life, in Strawberry Hill, MSS.

down, modestly adjusted her dress about her feet, allowed her eyes to be bandaged, and placing her head on the block, (e) repeated: "Lord Jesus, have mercy on me"-the axe fell.

At that very moment, a hunter of large stature, seated under the branches of an oak in Epping Forest, and surrounded by a pack of hounds and numerous huntsmen, was hanging his head and listening to every sound that was wafted by the breeze, when the air was shaken by the report of a cannon fired at a distance. "To horse," said he, making an effort to rise, "it is all over; tie up the dogs, and let us depart.”’(f) At Wolf Hall in Wiltshire, a woman was preparing her white dress, her bonnet, her veil and her bouquet, for she was to be married on the morrow. The hunter was Henry; the woman, Jane Seymour. On the 20th of May, the day after Anne Boleyn's execution, Henry led the lovely Jane Seymour to the hymeneal altar, in presence of some of the members of his Privy Council, and among others of Sir John Russell, who lauded the charms of the bride and the grace of the royal bridegroom.(g) The happy couple, after the celebration of the nuptial ceremony at Tottingham Church, set out for Marwell, stayed a few days at Winchester, and returned to London on the 29th of May.(h›

(e) Gratianus -The axe that was used for the beheading of Anne Boleyn is still to be seen at the Tower of London. In the British Mus. (MSS. Harl., No. 2252) are the MS. verses of her brother, Viscount Rochford.Hawkins. Hist. of Music.

(f) Nott's Life of Surrey.

(g) The king was the goodliest person there. (h) Britton's Wiltshire. Milner's Winchester.

THE body of Queen Anne Boleyn was taken up by the pious women who accompanied her to the scaffold, washed, wrapped in a white shroud, placed in a coffin of elm wood, which awaited it at the foot of the scaffold, and buried in the chapel of St. Peter ad vincula.(a) No tapers burned on the altar; no black was hung round the walls of the chapel; no priest was in the Church; no prayers were offered up for her who, three years before, had had placed on her head, by the hands of an archbishop, the crown of St. Edward. Bishop Shaxton took the liberty of insulting the remains, while they were still warm, of her whose chaplain he had been. letter to Cromwell, bearing date 23rd May, he had the audacity to say: "She hath exceedingly deceived me. That vice that she was found-Lord have mercy on her soul."(b)

In a

Lady Kingston delivered the message which she had received from the queen. She went to Hundson, and threw herself on her knees before Mary with her hands joined, just as she had promised. Mary, from her solitude thus wrote immediately to Cromwell: "No one ventured to speak a word in my favour so long as that woman was living, whom may God pardon. Now that she is no more, I beg of you to intercede for me with his majesty. My writing is very bad, but it is owing to my not having been allowed to trace a single line for the last two years."(c) In her

(a) Sir John Spelman's notes in Burnet. (b) MSS. Othō, C. X., 260.

letter to the king, which she submitted to

the perusal of the Vicar-general, she declared herself ready to resign herself, her rank and her existence to the king's mercy, in everything that was not displeasing to God. Cromwell did not like this truly Christian reserve, and erasing certain expressions, he returned the letter to Mary, who replied that she was in the habit, whether in speaking or writing, to refer everything to the will of God, but that she would submit without a murmur to the advice of her protector, and faithfully copy any letter that he might think proper to dictate.(d)

Henry required a blind submission: he consented to restore the princess to favour, if she would acknowledge her father as Supreme Head of the Anglican church, consider the Pope merely as the bishop of Rome, and Katharine as an incestuous wife. (e) These conditions being complied with, he promised to embrace his child. On reading the first words of this formulary, Mary could neither conceal her tears nor her indignation. Alone, without friends, without advice, her only resource was in Cromwell, whom she endeavoured to interest in her favour. But to whom was she applying? To that iron-hearted creature, who had said not long before, that he would rather see his son die than deny the supremacy of

(c) Hearne, Sylloge epistolarum à variis Angliæ scriptorum principibus.-Appended to Titi Livii Foro Juliensis Vita Henrici V.

(d) Sylloge epist.

(e) State Papers, t. I., 455-59.

Henry! She expected from the secretary some words of consolation, some gentle remonstrances, perhaps a few tears of sympathy, but she received only threats and insults. Cromwell called her an obstinate, hard-hearted, (a) and wicked woman, who merited condign chastisement. Should she persist in her fatal obstinacy, he threatened to abandon her for ever, and treat her as an unnatural child, disobedient to her God and to her father. The mis

creant condescends for a time to adopt a language familiar to the young princess; he holds up that church, of which Henry was the head, as the church of Christ; he even goes so far as to swear most blasphemously, that he would for ever renounce the mercy of God, if that church was not the true one.(b) Intimidated, reduced to a state of desperation, and more to be pitied than blamed, Mary consents to sign the confession which had been drawn up at Greenwich. She acknowledged Henry as her lord and king, and submitted to the laws and ordinances of the kingdom. She agreed to recognize the king as Supremo Head of the Anglican church, under Jesus Christ, and to reject the jurisdiction which the bishops of Rome had formerly usurped in the kingdom. She swore that the marriage between the king and the late queen dowager, her mother, was incestuous and illegitimate, and in opposition to laws human and divine.(c)

Katharine must have cried to God in heaven: "Have pity on my child, for she knows not what she is doing!"(d) Let it

(a) Wherefore, madame, to be plain with you, as God is my witness, like as I think you the most obstinate and obdurate woman, all things considered, that ever was.

83

State Papers, t. I., 445-9.-Burnet.

The confession is in the Sylloge of Hearne, and is signed Marye.

(d) Katharine of Arragon requested Ludovico Vivès, who was styled the second Quintillian, to compose a treatise on education for the use of Mary. Vivès wrote it in Latin; he would not allow his pupil to read L'Amadis des Gaules, Tyran le Blanc, Lancelot du Lac, Pierre de Provence, La Fée Melusine, and other romances of chivalry. He allowed her to read the Acts of the Apostles, fragments of the Old Testament, the works of SS. Cyprian Jerome, and Augustin, Plato, Cicero, Seneca

not be imagined that Henry, proud of his victory, left his daughter in peace. He insisted upon her revealing to him the names of those persons who, until then, had encouraged her in her obstinacy; but the princess, aware of his bloodthirsty propensity, indignantly replied that she was ready to suffer a thousand deaths rather than denounce any of her friends to him. (e) The king yielded to his better feelings and recalled Mary, who, in the person of Jane Seymour, found a sister and almost a mother.(1) The queen's trial, and the events which naturally must have resulted from it, determined the king to convoke a fresh Parliament. He opened the session in person, and in his speech to the Houses, he made a merit of his having been so unfortunate in his two first marriages, and stated his intention of contracting a third for the benefit of his well-beloved subjects. The speaker received this declaration with all the marks of the most sincere gratitude, and congratulated the murderer of More and Fisher, the bloated hunter who could not get on horseback, the leper suffering from a loathsome ulcer, on the physical and moral gifts with which it had pleased God to endow him; he compared him to Solomon on account of his wisdom and justice; to Sampson on account of his strength and courage; to Absalom on account of his grace and beauty.(g)

The king made a modest reply through his Chancellor, Audley, in which he rejected these encomiums, since, if it were true that he was possessed of all these external gifts and Christian virtues, the homage was due to God alone.(h) After this sentence, Audley turned towards Henry to compliment him on the new object of his choice, the Lady Jane, whose youth, beauty, and purity of flesh and blood, promised numerous heirs to her husband (i) This Parliament seemed decided on crawling

through a slough of servitude, and one of its first acts was the ratification of the divorce of the monarch from Anne Boleyn. The queen and her accomplices were declared to be for ever branded with infamy. and Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate. The throne was secured to the children of Jane Seymour, or to those of any other wife that Henry might subsequently marry. In the case of his dying without issue, the Parliament authorized the prince to dispose of the crown according to his good pleasure, either by his will or by letters patent, sealed with the great seal. Thus, by a strange inversion of the simplest laws of logic, the Parliament destroyed the work, however iniquitous, which it had just completed, by empowering the king to nominate Elizabeth or Mary to the throne, although they had been declared illegitimate. But this outrage on common sense was a proof of servility; it was well known that, in the event of Jane proving barren, the king's intention was to bequeath the crown to the Duke of Richmond, whose death, however, occurring some time after, defeated the plans arranged in his favour.(a)

By this statute, the English penal code which, from the reign of Henry VII. had increased daily in extent, by the accession of new crimes which the law was bound to pursue unto death, it was declared an act of treason to print, publish, or say, a single word against the person of the king or his heirs; to attempt to defeat any acts or proceedings that the king might adopt in consequence of the bill: to call in question the legality of the new marriage, or of any other that the king might contract; to maintain, either by writing or by word of mouth, the validity of his two first marriages; to acknowledge Mary and Elizabeth as legitimate; to refuse, no matter under what pretext, to reply on oath to questions relative to the clauses, sentences, or single words contained in the statute; to refuse the oath of obedience to the act; to marry, without the consent of the king, any princess allied to the crown within the first degree of affinity.(b) And what was perhaps still more monstrous, the Parliament added

fresh privileges to the already exhorbitant prerogatives of the crown. It granted to Henry and his successors, the power of annulling any legislative act that should have been passed before the reigning sovereign had attained his twenty-fourth year. The Parliament thus riveted its future proUnder ceedings to a lasting servility.

these circumstances, Henry would have been able to dispense with soliciting a divorce from Katherine, for, to prove its invalidity, he would only have had to show the certificate of his birth. Thenceforth, the word or the signature of a king of England, given before he had attained his twenty-fourth year, although sanctioned by Parliament, would only be considered as a bauble, should such be the prince's fancy.

As it was essential to show that Parliament did not in vain threaten with its anger any citizen who should be found daring enough to brave it, Lord Howard, the brother of the Duke of Norfolk, was found guilty of high treason, by a bill which was read and passed three times through both houses, for having contracted a secret marriage with Margaret Douglas, Henry's niece, by his sister the Queen of Scotland and the Earl of Angus; this act being considered a sufficient proof that he aspired to the throne. Howard and the young princess were imprisoned in the Tower, but the latter was released through the influence of the Dowager Queen of Scotland, and because of her sex. Howard is said to have been poisoned in prison.(c) Henry viewed him in the light of a pretender, at least, and he wished to sleep in peace in the arins of his new wife; but while seeking, in the society of his young queen, to drive away the ghosts of his two wives, which were continually haunting him in his sleep, he was unexpectedly alarmed by an insurrection in the north. During the religious revolutions of the sixteenth century, it not unfrequently happened that the signal of relief to a people oppressed in their faith and liberties, made its first appearance in the mountains.

Let us briefly sketch the history and miserable failure of the northern peasants () Hume.

who rose in rebellion against the tyrant's oppression. Their revolt, widely different from that of the German peasants, was wholly religious. Attached to the ancient faith of Alfred, these men from the distant counties saw with dread, the introduction into the king's Privy Council of Cromwell and Rich, the secret enemies of Catholicism; the elevation of a married priest to the highest dignity in England; the nomination of Shaxton to the see of Salisbury, a man who had adopted the views of Zuinglius on the Eucharist. The execution of More and Fisher had excited painful emotions in Lincolnshire, where they were revered as martyrs. The dissatisfaction increased in the country parts after the spoliation of the religious houses, which the peasant had been taught to revere from his childhood; for they were his inn when travelling, his hospital when sick, his workhouse when he had fallen into indigence; under all his difficulties the peasant had recourse to the monks; and hence, in the remonstrance which they humbly addressed to their lord and master, they laid great stress upon the condition of the poor of his kingdom, who were left without aid, deprived of the means of subsistence, and abandoned without pity on the high road. The peasants were about to furnish Henry VIII., whose pen had so long remained idle, with an opportunity of showing that he had lost none of his juvenile vigour since his contest with Luther; but on this occasion, he does not refute the Saxon, he copies hin. Luther, addressing himself to the rebels of Thuringen, said to them: "For the ass, thistles, a packsaddle, and a whip; for you, oat straw."(a) Henry is less laconic, although equally insulting: "How presumptuous are ye, the rude coinmons of one shire, and that one of the most brute and beastly of the whole realm, to find fault with your prince for the electing of his counsellors and prelates, and to take upon you, contrary to God's law and man's law, to rule your prince whom you are bound by all laws to obey and serve, with both your lives, lands, and goods."(b)

De Witte. State Papers.

On the same day, he observed to Wriothesly, one of his secretaries: "That he would rather sell all his plate than that these traitors should not be put down as an example to others." Cromwell was, in fact, ordered to go to the Treasury of the Tower, and take from it whatever plate he required and send it to the Mint.(c)

We need not,

find the Arch

The insurrection progressed, for not only were the peasants in arms, but also the landlords, who, as the former patrons of the monasteries now dissolved, complained of having been deprived of certain reversions, reserved by the charter of their foundations, and asserted that the lands of a suppressed community ought not to be forfeited to the crown, but should return to the representatives of the original donors ; by the spoliation and secularization of a monastery, they, the protectors and heirs of the institution, were deprived of their rights and privileges. (d) What reply could be made to them? therefore, be astonished to bishop of York, the Lords Nevil, Darcy, Lumley, Latimer, and a great number of the tenants and landholders making common cause with the insurgents, Had the rebellion been triumphant, they would have been considered patriots, and their names would have been venerated; but the insurrection having failed, they were confounded with the rebels, and pleaded in their justification, that they had been compelled by circumstances to enter the ranks of the malcontents. The rebellion originated in Lincolnshire, instigated by Dr. Mackrel, Prior of Backlings, disguised as an artizan, and Dr. Melton, under the name of the cobbler Captain.(e) They were soon joined by a body of 20,000 malcontents. The Cobbler, an eloquent speaker, was commissioned to draw up their manifesto. The peasants, in the first place, swore fidelity to God, to the king, and to the state. If they took up arms, it was solely to obtain redress for certain grievances which they enumerated in an humble petition to their lord and master, the glorious Henry. They complained of the enactment of certain