BOLEYN.
On the Trial of Anne Boleyn.

Sanders says, that Anne’s own father was one of those that condemned her. Dr Burnet had related the same thing on the credit of Dr Heylin, but retracted it in the additions. He discovered the records of the trial, but among the judges found not the name of the earl of Wiltshire, her father. It is remarkable, that this queen was indicted for high treason, for that she had procured her brother and four other persons to lie with her, which they

had done often; that she had said to them, that the king never had her heart, and had declared to every one of them by himself, that she loved him better than any person whatsoever, which was to the slander of the issue that was begotten between the king and her. This was treason according to the statute made in the twenty-sixth year of this reign, so that the law that was enacted for her and the issue of her marriage, was afterwards made use of to destroy her.

The bishop of Amelia goes farther than Sanders , for he says that Thomas Boleynpresided at the trial of his daughter. Pœnæ ministrum filiæ fortuna patrem dedit, qui forte capitalium rerum judex adversus earn capitis sententiam tulit. What he says, that all those who were accused of having lain with her, confessed it on the rack, is contradicted by Dr. Burnet, who says, that but one confessed it. He was a musician, whose name was Smeton; he owned that he had lain three times with the queen. It is observable, that in the long reign of queen Elizabeth, no endeavours were used to justify her mother. The catholics have taken advantage of this omission; but they are answered, that they should rather praise and admire the prudence of Elizabeth, who would have weakened her right, by endeavouring to defend it, and certain things must have been owned, which would have been very prejudicial.

Dr. Burnet, in his History of the Reformation in England, informs us that the lord Percy had told cardinal Wolsey that he had given his word to Anne Boleyn before witnesses, and that his conscience would not suffer him to call it in. That when that lord was pressed during the queen’s trial to declare that there had been a contract between him and Anne Boleyn, he took an oath in the presence of two archbishops, that there never

was any contract or promise of marriage between him and that lady, and to make that oath more solemn, he received the communion in the presence of divers councillors; and wished that the receiving of that sacrament might be his damnation if he had been in any engagement of that nature. That the queen owned nothing during her trial concerning her pretended engagement with that lord; but when she was condemned, she confessed that there had been a contract between her and Percy; and being brought before the ecclesiastical court, the 17th of May, she declared that there had been a just impediment to her marriage with the king, and that, therefore, the marriage could not be valid.—That upon her confession, the sentence of divorce was pronounced.—That the ori-ginal of that sentence was burnt; but what has now been said of it, is repeated in a law made by the parliament a little after, to regulate the succession—That the two sentences which were pronounced against the queen for adultery, and a pre-contract, are so opposite to each other, that at least one of them must have been unjust. For if that princess’s marriage from the beginning was null, she was noways guilty of adultery, since that invalidity hindered her from being Henry’s lawful wife. If the marriage were lawful, it was unjust to make it void; and if it were not lawful, the queen’s condemnation is plainly contrary to equity; and it cannot be maintained that that princess failed in her duty to the king, since she was not then obliged to keep her faith to him.

Many remarks might be made on this statement, but I shall be content with three. 1. The lord that denied with an oath, and with the sacrament in his hand, that there had been any engagement between him and Anne, was either a great impostor at that time, or when he declared he had

given his faith to that maid. If his oath were preferred before the other declaration, the queen, when ready to die, deposed falsely, that she had been engaged to that lord; if she were capable of deception at that juncture, it cannot be said in her justification, that she always protested her innocence, even on the scaffold; for a woman who, being ready to appear before God, does not scruple to tell a falsity, which makes her children illegitimate, may full as well deny a truth that loads her with dishonour. We have here a choice fact among divers others of the same kind, which shows that historical pyrrhonism may be proof against the oaths and protestations of dying persons.— 2. The art of historians is remarkable; they make use of a fact when they can draw any advantage from it, and they deny it when they find themselves incommoded by it. When it is to be proved, that Anne Boleyn did not press Henry VIII. to divorce queen Catherine, it is of use to show, that she intended, in good earnest, to be married to lord Percy. It is then requisite to own her engagement. But if on the other side, somebody should tell us, that by that engagement her marriage with Henry VIII. became void, and that therefore, queen Elizabeth was illegitimate, even though Catherine’s divorce had been just, then it is said that this engagement is a mere story, and Percy’s oaths and communion must be insisted upon.— 3. No arbitrary power ever went beyond that which the parliament of England exercised in the sixteenth century. All that the nation could do in the most authentic manner to annul the marriage of Henry VIII. with Catherine of Arragon, was done; their daughter Mary was declared illegitimate, and yet she was acknowledged for queen, as a legitimate child of Henry VIII. All that was necessary to annul the marriage of the same prince with Anne, was likewise done; and Elizabeth, their daughter, declared illegitimate, and yet she was acknowledged for their queen, as legitimate child of Henry. The original of the sentence of the divorce was also burnt, because they were not willing that a piece so disadvantageous to queen Elizabeth should be preserved.

Her Deportment during her Imprisonment.

In the time of her imprisonment she acted very different parts; sometimes she seemed devout, and shed abundance of tears, and then all on a sudden would break out into a loud laughter. As soon as the judges who came to examine her were gone, she fell on her knees, and melting in tears, cried many times, “ Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me and at the same time broke out into a laugh» Some hours before her death, she said, that the executioner was very handy, and besides, that she had a very small neck. At the same time she felt it with her hands and laughed heartily. Though Gratiani is not favourable to her, yet he owns that she died with great resolution, and that she took care to spread her gown about her feet, that she might not fall indecently. Postremo genibus positis, ultimos quoque pedes quo honestius procum-beret, veste contexit. The poets say the same of Polyxena; and the historians of Julius Cæsar.

Slanders of certain Catholic Writers. Some very bold performances of a similar nature, having been very recently published, in reference to this queen, we think a specimen of the unblushing inventions occasionally produced by theodium theologicum, may not be wholly unamusing.—Ed. ⁶¹

Nothing is more easy to be confuted than the story which so many persons have copied from Sanders, viz. that Anne was Henry ⅤⅢth’s daughter, that her

mother brought her into the world two years after the departure of Sir Thomas Boleyn on his embassy to France, to which the king nominated him, only that he might enjoy his wife more freely in the absence of her husband; that Thomas Boleyn at his return into England, hearing of his wife’s ill conduct, summoned her before the official of Canterbury for adultery, and sued for a separation; that the king ordered him to stop all his proceedings, and to take his wife into favour again; that he obeyed, but not till she had owned to him that the king was the father of the last daughter of which she was brought to bed; that at fifteen years of age Anne Boleyn was debauched by her father’s steward, and his chaplain; that she was sent afterwards into France to a lord, who educated her as a maid of great quality; that she behaved herself at the court of France with so little modesty that she was called the English hackney, and that because Francis I. had a share in her favour, she was called the king’s mule; that, during the love of Henry VIII. for that lady, Thomas Wyat, one of the chief lords of the court, came before the council to depose that he had lain with her, at a time when he did not believe that the king thought of honouring her so far as to marry her; that Henry not believing that deposition, Wyat offered to make the king an eye-witness of the favours he should receive from that lewd woman, but that he was called an impudent fellow, and forbade the court.

Dr. Burnet disposes of these inventions by three arguments. 1. Sanders reported them only on the credit of a work which nobody ever saw;— that is, The Life of Sir Thomas More, by Rastal. 2. These inventions were quite unknown when they might have been at once set aside. 3. That there are utter impossibilities in the whole ac-

count. To give the second of these reasons at length; “ if things were as Sanders reports them, how comes it, that at the death of Anne Boleyn, nobody was ever complaisant enough to the king, or enemy enough to that unhappy princess, to publish her infamy, which, on other accounts, could not be unknown? The facts of such a woman as Anne Boleyn’s mother being with child two years after her husband’s departure, who was sent on a considerable embassy; and of her husband’s suing for a divorce in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s court, and causing her to be summoned there, are such circumstances as the world do not readily forget. On the other hand, Anne Boleyn’s being in so ill repute, her suffering herself to be debauched in her father’s house; her ill life afterwards, and her being kept by two kings, are also circumstances which cannot be very secret. Besides, • when the records of the Archbishop’s court were yet extant, it was offered to the public to make it appear, that there was nothing in these records like the prosecutions which Sanders Speaks of. Lastly, all the writers on those times, as well those on the pope’s as on the emperor’s side, keep a profound silence about those things; which they had never failed to publish, if they had been true, or if they had come to their knowledge. But eight years after, a bigot takes it into his head to forge a history full of impostures; or at least published it, because it was then more safe to tell lies, all those who might have been able to discover the truth being dead.”

As for the third reason, I only relate it in short. Thomas Boleyn could not be sent ambassador to France by Henry. VIII., before the year 1509. Anne must therefore have been born in the year 1511, and debauched in her house in the year 1526. Where shall we then find the time when

she was with a great lord in France, and after-wards at court? Where shall we find that licentious life which got her the name of the English hackney? Where shall we find that time, since which she had returned into England in the year 1526? Sanders can never be justified. His best apologist, M. le Grand, forsakes him here: “As I do not pretend to palliate his faults,” says he, “I confess plainly, that he is too passionate against Anne Boleyn; that no author that I know, besides himself, has said that she was daughter of Henry VIII., or that she had led so disorderly a life.” Sanders affirms, that she was beloved by the king in the year 1526. Now, before she was beloved by that king, she had been debauched at her supposed father’s, at fifteen years of age; she had lived in France; she had returned into England, and she was taken in as maid of honour to queen Catherine. She was therefore at least, nearly twenty years of age in 1526, so that she was born in 1506, three years before King Henry VIII. ascended the throne, and five years before any of that king’s ambassadors could have been two years in his embassy. It has been found that Anne was born in the year 1507, and therefore, according to Sanders, Henry VIII. must have sent Thomas Boleyn ambassador in the year 1505; and he must have been, at that time, deeply engaged in an adultery. Now the first of these two tacts is false; for Henry was not yet king; and the other is not to be believed of a youth who was but fourteen years of age. Add to this, that Thomas Boleyn was not sent on his embassy till 1515. I ought not to pass over in silence what concerns Wyat. Dr. Burnet quotes an original piece, wherein the son of that cousin attests, that his father was a gentleman of the bed-chamber to king Henry all the time that the marriage with Anne Boleyn lasted; yet neither did he in discretion retire out of the court, nor did the king seem jealous, or the queen offended at him. Moreover» that his father was afterwards ambassador for several years to Charles V. So much for the malignant calumnies produced by religious hate.—Art.Boleyn.