Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [59]
Finally, on June 7, 1546, French and English commissioners signed a peace treaty in which it was agreed that Boulogne would be returned to France in eight years’ time on payment of 2 million crowns. In the hope of exploiting the new accord, the pope sent an envoy to England, Gurone Bertano, to propose terms for Henry’s reconciliation to Rome. Pope Paul had hoped that the prodigal son might now submit to papal primacy, but Bertano’s overtures were firmly rebuffed.15
CHAPTER 25
DEPARTED THIS LIFE
Sir, I am confused and apprehensive to have to inform your Majesty that there are rumours here of a new Queen, although I do not know why, or how true it may [be].1
AMBASSADOR FRANÇOIS VAN DER DELFT TO THE EMPEROR, FEBRUARY 27, 1546
IN FEBRUARY 1546, A PLOT WAS HATCHED TO DESTROY THE QUEEN. Her evangelical beliefs and her growing influence over the king had made her enemies among the religious conservatives at court. With Henry’s deteriorating health, and his temper growing ever shorter, he became increasingly irritated by Katherine’s debates with him over religion. “A good hearing it is,” he retorted to Bishop Gardiner, “when women become such clerks; and a thing much to my comfort, to come in mine old days to be taught by my wife.”2 Seeing an opportunity to gain the ascendancy at court and halt the progress of religious reform, Gardiner and his fellow conservatives moved to convince Henry that Katherine was to be feared.3 Gardiner murmured to the king that the queen’s views were heretical under the law and that he,
with others of his faithful councillors, could, within a short time, disclose such treasons cloaked with this heresy that His Majesty would easily perceive how perilous a matter it is to cherish a serpent within his own bosom.4
Gardiner secured Henry’s agreement for Katherine to be investigated for heresy and for treason. Her chief intimates, the ladies Herbert, Lane, and Tyrwhitt, were to be questioned and their closets searched for anything that might incriminate the queen.5
In the spring, Anne Askew, a young Lincolnshire gentlewoman who held evangelical opinions and who associated with Lady Hertford and Lady Denny, both high-ranking women at court, was taken to the Tower. There she was interrogated in an attempt to extract information that could be used against Katherine. Did not the ladies of the court share her opinion? Could she not name “a great number of my sect”? She conceded nothing. She was put on the rack and tortured and, refusing to implicate anyone, was revived and racked again. The lieutenant of the Tower would not perform the second torture, so her interrogators, the chancellor of the Court of Augmentations and the lord chancellor of England, “threw off their gowns” and became “tormentors themselves.” As a gentlewoman, Askew should have been protected against torture, and the Council was “not a little displeased” when news of the racking spread. So desperate were the conservatives to implicate the queen that the lord chancellor of England himself had broken the law.
On July 16, 1546, Askew’s broken body was carried on a wooden chair and she was bound to the stake, together with Nicholas Belenian, a priest from Shropshire, and John Adams, a tailor. All were accused of heresy for refusing to accept the Real Presence in the Eucharist, as the Act of Six Articles had decreed.
Although Askew failed to incriminate Katherine, Gardiner managed to procure evidence regarding the discovery of forbidden religious books and a warrant of arrest was issued. Katherine was warned by her physician, Thomas Wendy, of the action to be taken against her and advised to submit before Henry; she should “somewhat … frame and conform herself to the King’s mind.” If she would do so and “show her humble submission unto him … she should find him gracious and favourable unto her.”
Fearing that she faced the same fate as her predecessor, Katherine took Wendy’s advice and acquiesced to the king, protesting her weakness as a woman and the God-given