The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [160]
“Mark 220;That is because he is no gentleman,” said Anne, callously. She looked about. “They shall make ballads of me now,” she said dreamily. “But there is none but my brother to do so. Shall he die?” she asked Kingston.
At his refusal to answer, she descended to threats. “We shall have no rain until I am delivered out of the Tower!” she cried.
Kingston shrugged, unmoved. “I pray it may be shortly because of the fair weather,” he replied.
In the meantime the King stormed and screamed. He was wilder than Anne. The night after Anne had been taken to the Tower, his natural son, Henry Fitzroy, had come to call upon him and bid him good night. The distracted, sorrowing King fell on his thin shoulders and cried, “God be praised you are safe from that cursed and venomous whore, who was determined to poison you!”
The bewildered, coughing Fitzroy merely held him fast: son comforting father.
Then an eerie silence descended. The Queen and all her accused paramours and conspirators were held behind the stone walls of the Tower. Juries were being assembled, and formal accusations drawn up. Parliament was prorogued, not to meet again for a month. The King forbade any mail or ships to leave England. The outside world wondered what was happening there. They knew it must be something terrible and momentous.
HENRY VIII:
I started receiving letters. First Cranmer wrote me, in amazement and condolence:
And I am in such a perplexity, that my mind is clean amazed; for I never had better opinion in woman than I had in her; which maketh me to think she should not be culpable. And again, I think that Your Highness would not have gone so far, except she had surely been culpable.
Now I think that Your Grace best knoweth, that next unto Your Grace I was most bound unto her of all creatures living. Wheretofore I most humbly beseech Your Grace to suffer me in that which both God’s law, nature, and also her kindness, bindeth me unto; that is that I may with Your Grace’s favour wish and pray for her, that she may declare herself inculpable and innocent. And if she be found culpable, I repute him not Your Grace’s faithful servant and subject, that would not desire the offence without mercy to be punished.
Then Anne took pen in hand to persuade me. But the letter venomously accused me of shortcomings rather than addressing her own:
Your Grace’s displeasure and my imprisonment are things so strange unto me, that what to write, or what to excuse, I am altogether ignorant. Whereas you send to me such a one, whom you know to be mine ancient professed enemy; I no sooner received this message by him, than I rightly conceived your meaning; and if as you say, confessing a truth indeed may procure my safety, I shall, with all willingness and duty, perform your command.
But let not Your Grace ever imagine your poor wife will ever be brought to acknowledge a fault, where not so much as a thought ever proceeded. And to speak a truth, never a prince had wife more loyal in all duty, and in all true affection, than you have ever found in Anne Boleyn-with which name and place I could uld become her adulterers and concubines... contrary to the duty of their allegiance ... she most falsely and treacherously procured them by foul talk and kisses, touchings, gifts and various other unspeakable instigations and incitements ... in accordance as her most damnable propensity to crime drove her on: that, moreover, for the perpetration of that most wicked and treacherous crime of adultery by the Queen certain servants of the said lord King, through the most vile provocation and incitement day after day by the said Queen, were given over and attached to the said Queen in treacherous fashion, and that from here and from other sources this is the account, as here follows of the treacherous deeds and words.
The list of actual acts and adulteries began:
On 6 October 1533 at the palace of Westminster ... and on various other days, before and after, by sweet words, kissings, touchings and other illicit means, she did procure and incite Henry Norris, a gentleman of