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Old Merry England
by
Then there came the news that Anne herself had been seized by the sickness. The King had lost his chamberlain, and now wrote letter after letter. Then he fled again to Hatfield and Tittenhanger.
But Anne recovered, the pestilence ceased, and Henry resumed the divorce proceedings. The Cardinal and the Nuncio wavered, and in the seventh year the King lost patience. He had now found the man he sought for. Sir Thomas More would not declare Katherine’s marriage null. The new man was Thomas Cranmer, who hated the Pope and the monks, and dreamt of a free England–free, that is, from Rome. The King and his new friend worked in secret at something which Cardinal Wolsey did not know, and one day the preliminaries were settled, the papers were in order, and the mine exploded.
* * * * *
The King’s galley pushed off from the Tower. It did not look so brilliant as the Cardinal’s had once been. Cranmer sat by the King.
“I shall not sleep in the Tower any more,” said the King. “I am leaving it now, Thomas; this is my removal. I move to Whitehall, for that will be the name of York Palace; because I, as a Lancastrian, hate York, and because my white rose shall dwell in my castle. Now, you will sit in the Tower, my hell-dog! To think that this Satan of a Cardinal has deceived me for six years. What troubles his plotting has caused me! Six years! I have always hated the man, but I needed him, for he was clever.”
The King glanced at the north side of the Thames. “And I have lived in the city which has not been my own; Rome possesses a third of it. I have lived like a beggar, but now–London is mine. The Temple, St. James’s, Whitehall, Westminster to begin with; then the rest.”
The galley reached York Palace, and the King hastened in with his body-guard, without giving the password or answering the chamberlain’s questions. He went straight to the Cardinal’s room, and laid some letters before him: “Read! you snake! your lying letters behind my back.”
The Cardinal’s face seemed to shrink to half its size, and resembled a death’s-head. He did not, however, fall on his knees, but raised his head for the last time: “I appeal to the Pope.”
“There is no Pope in England! Nay, I am the Pope, and therefore you are no longer Cardinal! Accordingly, I have granted myself a dispensation, and married Anne Boleyn yesterday! In a few days I shall have her crowned. And then we will dwell here! Here! But you will live in the Tower. Go, or I throw you out.”
Thus England became free; a third part of London, which had belonged to the monks, reverted to the Crown, and afterwards the whole country followed.
The King had obtained his beloved Anne, but after three years she was beheaded, for having dishonoured the King by adultery. After that the King married four times. Cardinal Wolsey died before he came to the scaffold; Sir Thomas More was beheaded; and Cromwell, who at first defended Wolsey, but afterwards became a “malleus monachorum,” was also beheaded. All this seems very confused and tragic, but from this confusion a free, independent, and powerful England emerged. When the Germans were preparing to cast off the yoke of Rome in the Thirty Years’ War, England had already completed her task.