from Court, and, like her Royal mother, confined in different houses in the country. This rigour was made the more bitter, because Mary, feeling for the unmerited treatment of her mother, would never renounce the title of princess, or give that title to the infant Elizabeth, whom she only called sister.
In her last illness Catherine earnestly implored that she might be permitted to see her daughter, but it was refused her. Death was about, however, to release this much-abused woman from the power of this ruthless tyrant, and, perceiving its approach, she called one of her maids to her bed-side, and dictated the following letter to Henry:—
"My Lord and dear Husband,
"I commend me unto you. The hour of my death draweth fast on, and my case being such, the tender love I owe you forceth me with a few words to put you in remembrance of the health and safeguard of your soul, which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and tendering of your own cares. For my part, I do pardon you all; yea, I do wish and devoutly pray God that he will also pardon you.
"For the rest, I commend unto you Mary, our daughter, beseeching you to be a good father to her, as I heretofore desired. I entreat you also on behalf of my maids to give them marriage portions, which is not much, they being but three. For all my other servants I solicit a year's pay more than their due lest they should be unprovided for.
"Lastly, I do vow that mine eyes do desire you above all things."
On the receipt of this letter it is said that even the stony heart of Henry was touched, and that he shed a tear, and desired the ambassador of Spain, Eustace Capucius, to bear a kind message to her, but she died before receiving it, on the 8th of January, 1536, and was buried, by order of the king, in the Cathedral of Peterborough, though she had expressly desired by her will to be buried in a convent of Observant Friars. Thus died Catherine of Arragon, a woman who had suffered more afflictions and indignities than any princess, or perhaps any woman of her time, and who had borne them with a dignity, a firmness, a wisdom, and a gentleness, which won her universal respect and admiration.
Anne Boleyn, on hearing of Catherine's death, was so rejoiced that she could not help crying out, "Now I am indeed a queen!" She is said to have been in the act of washing her hands in a costly basin when Sir Richard Southwell brought her the news; and, in her joy, she presented him with the basin and its cover. She bade her parents rejoice with her, her face radiant with pleasure, saying now she felt the crown firm on her head. The king had ordered his servants to wear mourning on the day of Catherine's funeral, for he did not forget that she was a princess of Spain; but Anne refused to do so, and arrayed herself in bright yellow, and made her ladies do the same. The whole of Anne's conduct on this occasion speaks little either for her head or her heart. She said she was grieved, not that Catherine was dead, but for the vaunting there was of the good end she made; for numberless books and pamphlets were written in her praise, which were, therefore, so many severe censures on Henry and on Anne. Indeed, her open rejoicing on this occasion, and the haughty carriage which she now assumed, disgusted and offended every one.
And yet, in truth, never had she less cause for triumph. Already the lecherous eye of her worthless husband had fallen on one of her maids, as it had formerly fallen on one of Catherine's in her own person. This was Jane Seymour, a daughter of a knight of Wiltshire, who was not only of great beauty, but was distinguished for a gentle and sportive manner, equally removed from the Spanish gravity of Catherine and the French levity of Anne Boleyn. Before the death of Catherine, this fresh amour of Henry's was well-known in the palace to all but the reigning queen; and, according to Wyatt, Anne only became aware of it by entering a room one day, and beholding Jane Seymour seated on Henry's knee, in a manner the most familiar, and as if accustomed to that indulgence. She saw at once that not only was Henry ready to bestow his regards on another, but that other was still more willing to step into her place than she had been to usurp that of Catherine. Anne was far advanced in pregnancy, and was in great hopes of riveting the king's affections to her by the birth of a prince; but the shock which she now received threw her into such agitation that she was prematurely delivered—of a boy, indeed, but dead. Henry, the moment that he heard of this unlucky accident, rushed into the queen's chamber, and upbraided her savagely "with the loss of his boy." Anne, stung by this cruelty, replied that he had to thank himself and "that wench, Jane Seymour," for it. The fell tyrant retired, muttering his vengeance, and the die was now cast irrevocably for Anne Boleyn, if it were not before.
The unhappy queen recovered her health, but not her spirits. She now felt the hour of retribution for her dishonourable conduct to her mistress Catherine was come. Every step she took only the more forced upon her that conviction. She ordered the dismissal of her rival from the Court; a higher authority countermanded it. It is impossible to conceive a more awful and alarming situation than Anne's at this moment. From the hour that her enraged husband had quitted her chamber in wrath, he had abandoned her society. Her little daughter, Elizabeth, was kept apart from her, as Catherine's daughter had been from her. The gaieties of the Court went on as if there were no such person as this formerly flattered and worshipped woman. She was left alone, with a few servants, at the palace of Greenwich; and is said to have sat, gloomy and spiritless, for hours in the quadrangle of Greenwich Palace, or wandering solitary in the most secluded spots of the park. What an awful feeling of desertion—what a still more awful feeling of approaching fate—must have lain on her in those days, knowing so well the man she had to deal with her! Instead of having made friends, she had made enemies. Her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, was wholly alienated from her, and Brandon, Henry's chief favourite, was her mortal enemy.
It was a great misfortune for Anne that she had never been able to lay aside that levity of manner which she had acquired by spending her juvenile years at the French Court. After her elevation to the throne, she was too apt to forget, with those about her, the sober dignity which belonged to the queen, and to converse with the officers
