ANNE OF CLEVES,

FOURTH QUEEN OF HENRY VIII.

Henry VIII.'s difficulties in finding a fourth wife-Motives for choosing Anne of Cleves-Her birth and family-Want of accomplishments-Beauty exagge rated-Her virtues-Portrait by Hans Holbein-Marriage treaty concludedFrench ambassador's reports-Anne called queen of England-Progress thither -Detained at Calais by adverse winds-Keeps Christmas there-Sails for England-King's incognito visit at Rochester-His disappointment-His newyear's gift-Reluctance to the marriage-Anne's public meeting with himHer dress and person-Royal procession to Greenwich-Discontent of the king -Nuptials of Henry VIII. and Anne-Her costly dresses-Bridal pageantsInjurious conduct of the king-Agitates a divorce-Queen Anne sent to Richmond-Cranmer dissolves her marriage-Anne's alarm at visit of Henry's council-She consents to divorce-Interview with privy council-King Henry visits her-Friendly demeanour of each-Reports of Anne's restoration as queen-Scandals investigated by council-Proposal for reunion with the king -Life of retirement-Informed of the king's death-Friendship with his children-Her letter-Attends queen Mary's coronation-Death of her brotherHer letter to queen Mary-Her housekeeping-Death-Will-Funeral-Her tomb in Westminster Abbey-An impostor assumes her name.

Ir the name of this ill-treated princess has not always excited the sympathy to which her gentle virtues ought to have entitled her, it can only be attributed to the contempt in which her coarse-minded consort held her person. She was certainly deserving of a better fate than becoming the wife of a prince so devoid of the feelings of a gentleman as Henry VIII. He had, as we have seen, disposed of three queens, before he sought the hand of Anne of Cleves; and, though historians have said much of his devotion to the memory of Jane Seymour, she had not been dead a month ere he made a bold attempt to provide himself with another wife. Francis I., when Henry requested to be permitted to choose a lady of the royal blood of France for his queen, replied, "That there was not a damsel of any degree in his dominions who should not be at his disposal." Henry took this compliment so literally that he required the French monarch to bring the fairest ladies of his court to Calais for him to take his choice. The gallantry of Francis was shocked at such an idea, and he replied, "that it was impossible to bring ladies of noble blood to market as horses were trotted out at a fair."

Chatillon, the French ambassador, gives Francis a lively account of the pertinacious manner in which Henry insisted on marrying the beautiful Marie of Lorraine, duchess dowager of Longueville, who was the betrothed of his nephew, James V. of Scotland, February 11, 1537. "He is," says his excellency, "so in love with madame de Longueville, that he is always recurring to it. I have told him she is engaged to the

king of Scotland, but he does not give credit to it. I asked him if he would marry the wife of another, and he said, he knew that she had not passed her word yet, and that he will do twice as much for you as the king of Scots can.' He says, "Your daughter is too young, and as to mademoiselle Vendome, he will not take the refusings of that king." Chatillon describes Henry as still harping on the fair Longueville some days after, but, at the same time, talking of four other marriages, in which he projected disposing of himself and his three children as follows: "Himself to a daughter of Portugal, or the duchess of Milan; his son, then four months old, to the daughter of the emperor; madame Mary, to the infant of Portugal; and his youngest girl, to the king of Hungary. In the succeeding month he still importuned for madame Longueville." The ambassador proposed her handsome sister or mademoiselle Vendome. Henry demanded that "they should be brought to Calais for his inspection." Chatillon said, "that would not be possible, but his majesty could send some one to look at them." "Pardie," replied Henry, "how can I depend upon any one but myself?" He was also very desirous of hearing the ladies sing, and seeing how they looked while singing. "I must see them myself, and see them sing," he said. After alternately wheedling and bullying the poor diplomat for nearly a year on this subject, Henry reluctantly resigned his sultan-like project of choosing a bride from the beauties of the French court, and turned his attention elsewhere. But as it was universally reported that his three queens had all come by their deaths unfairly, Katharine of Arragon by poison, Anne Boleyn by the axe, and Jane Seymour for want of proper care in childbed, he found himself so greatly at discount among such princesses as he deemed worthy of the honour of his hand, that, despairing of entering a fourth time into the wedded state, he concealed his mortification by assuming the airs of a disconsolate widower, and remained queenless and forlorn for upwards of two years.

Reasons of a political nature, combined with his earnest wish of obtaining a fair and gentle helpmate for his old age, induced him to lend an ear to Cromwell's flattering commendation of the princesses of the house of Cleves.

The father of these ladies, John III., surnamed the Pacificator, was duke of Cleves, count of Mark, and lord of Ravenstein. By his marriage with Marie, the heiress of William duke of Juliers, Berg, and Ravensburgh, he added those possessions to his patrimony, when he succeeded to the dominions of his father, John the Clement, in 1521. Anne was the second daughter of this noble pair. She was born the 22d of September, 1516, and was brought up a Lutheran, her father having established those doctrines in his dominions.

The device of Anne, as princess of Cleves, was two white swans, emblems of candour and innocence. They were derived from the fairy legend, celebrated in the lays of the Rhine, her native river, of the knight

Dépêches de Chatillon. Bibliothèque du Roi. 'Chatillon's despatches. Bibliothèque du Roi.

Ibid.

'Anderson's Genealogies, table cccxlvii. p. 586; l'Art de Vérifier les Dates, tom. iii. p. 165.

of the Swan, her immediate ancestor, who came and departed so myste riously to the heiress of Cleves, in a boat, guided down the noble river by two white swans. From this legend the princely house of Cleves took the swans as supporters. Their family motto was Candida nostra fides,-"Our faith is spotless."

Anne's elder sister, Sybilla, was married in 1527 to John Frederick duke of Saxony, who became the head of the protestant confederation in Germany, known in history by the term of the Smalcaldic League. He was the champion of the Reformation, and for his invincible adherence to his principles, and his courage in adversity, was surnamed the Lion-hearted Elector.

Sybilla was in every respect worthy of her illustrious consort; she was famed for her talents, virtues, and conjugal tenderness, as well as for her winning manners and great beauty, and was generally esteemed as one of the most distinguished ladies of the era in which she lived.

Cromwell must have calculated on the probability of the younger sisters of Sybilla resembling her in their general characteristics, when he recommended those ladies to the attention of his fastidious sovereign. Much, indeed, might the influence of a queen like Sybilla have done for the infant Reformation in England, but never were two ladies of the same parentage so dissimilar as the beautiful and energetic electress of Saxony and her passive sister, Anne of Cleves. It was, however, mentioned as a peculiar recommendation for Anne, and her younger sister, the lady Amelia, that they had both been educated by the same prudent and sensible mother, who had formed the mind of Sybilla, and it was supposed their acquirements were of a solid kind, since accomplishments they had none, with the exception of needle work.'

Henry certainly had the choice of these two princesses, Anne and Amelia, for both their portraits were painted for his consideration by Holbein; but previously to that painter receiving the royal commission for that purpose, Cromwell and his agents at the courts of Saxony and Cleves, had written the most tempting reports of the charms and amiable qualities of lady Anne. Christopher Mount, who was employed to negotiate the treaty of alliance with the duke of Cleves, must have thought highly of Anne's personal attractions, since he was urgent with the duke to employ his own painter to execute her portrait for Henry's inspection. The duke, it seems, knew better, but here is what Cromwell states in his letter to the king, to be Christopher Mount's report on the subject:

"The said Christopher instantly sueth every day, that the picture may be sent. Whereunto the duke answered, that he should find some occasion to send it, but that his painter, Lucas, was left sick behind him at home. Every man praiseth the beauty of the said lady, as well for her face as for her person, above other ladies excellent. One among others said to them of late, that she as far excelleth the duchess of Saxony, as the golden sun excelleth the silver moon. Every man praiseth

1 Ellis, Royal Letters.

the good virtues and honesty with shamefacedness, which plainly ap peareth in the gravity (serenity) of her countenance."1

The noble mind of John Frederick of Saxony revolted at the proposal of linking his amiable sister-in-law to a prince so notoriously deficient in conjugal virtue as Henry VIII. Christopher Mount, however, assured him, "that the cause of protestantism in Europe would be greatly advanced by the influence of a Lutheran queen of England, for Henry was so uxorious, that the best way of managing him was through his wives." The other princes of the Smalcaldic League looked only to political expediency, and the conscientious scruples of the heroic Saxon were disregarded.

The death of the duke of Cleves, Anne's father, which occurred February 6th, 1539, occasioned a temporary delay in an early stage of the proceedings, but her mother, as well as her brother, duke William (who succeeded to the duchy), were eager to secure so powerful an ally to the protestant cause as the king of England, and to see Anne elevated to the rank of a queen.

According to Burnet, Dr. Barnes was the most active agent employed by Cromwell, in the negotiations for the matrimonial treaty, and was never forgiven by Henry for the pains he took in concluding the alli

ance.

Henry's commissioner for the marriage, Nicholas Wotton, gives his sovereign the following particulars of Anne of Cleves; after stating the assurance of the council of the duke her brother, that she is not bounden by any contract made by her father to the duke of Lorraine, but perfectly free to marry where she will, he says:—

As for the education of my said ladye, she hath from her childhood been like as the lady Sybille was till she married, and the ladye Amelye hath been, and now is brought up with the lady duchess her mother, and in manner never from her elbow. The lady duchess being a very wise lady, and one that very straightly looketh to her children. All the gentlemen of the court, and other that I have asked, report her to be of very lowly and gentle conditions, by which she hath so much won her mother's favour, that she is very loth to suffer her to depart from her. She occupieth her time much with the needle. She can read and write her own [language], but French and Latin, or other language she knoweth not; nor yet can sing or play on any instrument, for they take it here in Germany for a rebuke and an occasion of lightness, that great ladies should be learned or have any knowledge of musick. Her wit is so good, that no doubt she will, in a short space, learn the English tongue, whenever she putteth her mind to it. I could never hear that she is inclined to the good cheer of this country, and marvel it were if she should, seeing that her brother, in whom it were somewhat more tolerable, doth so well abstain from it. Your grace's servant, Hans Holbein, hath taken the effigies of my ladye Anne and the ladye Amelie, and hath expressed their images very lively."

(This letter is dated at Duren, the 11th of August, 1539.)❜

The grave manner in which the matrimonial commissioner reports the favourable replies to his secret inquiries as to the gentle and amiable temper of the princess, and above all, her sobriety, is sufficiently amusing.

'State Papers, 605.

'MS. Cotton., Vitel. B. xxi. fol. 186.

L'Art de Vérifier des Dates.

The choice of a queen for Henry had been the grand desideratum for which catholics and protestants had contended, ever since the death of Jane Seymour. Cromwell, in matching his sovereign with the sister-inlaw of Frederick of Saxony, appeared to have gained a mighty victory over Gardiner, Norfolk, and his other rivals, in Henry's privy council The magic pencil of Hans Holbein was the instrument by which Cromwell, for his own confusion, achieved this great political triumph.

Marillac, the French ambassador, in his despatches to the king his master, notices the receipt of this portrait on the 1st of September; he says, "King Henry had sent a painter, who is very excellent in his art, to Germany, to take a portrait to the life of the sister of the duke of Cleves; to-day it arrived, and shortly after a courier with tidings to the said king, which are as yet secret, but the ambassadors on the part of the duke are come to treat with the king about this lady."'

The miniature executed by Holbein was exquisite as a work of art, and the box in which it came over "worthy the jewel it contained;" it was in the form of a white rose, delicately carved in ivory, which unscrewed, and showed the miniature at the bottom. This miniature with the box itself was, when Horace Walpole wrote, still to be seen in perfect preservation in the cabinet of Mr. Barrett of Lee. Altogether it appeared so charming in Henry's eyes, that it decided him on concluding the treaty which was to put him in possession of the original.

The matrimonial treaty was finally concluded at Windsor early in the same month in which arrived Holbein's flattering portrait. The contract of marriage was signed at Dusseldorf, September the 4th, 1539. The chancellor of the duke of Cleves was the plenipotentiary on the part of the lady's brother, and as soon as the preliminaries were arranged, great preparations were made in anticipation of her coming.

Though the leaders of the catholic party were greatly averse to Henry's marriage with a Lutheran princess, the idea of a Flemish queen was agreeable to the people in general, for the illustrious Philippa of Hainault, the best and greatest of all the queens consort of England, was still remembered.

Marillac gave his sovereign the following little sketch of what was going on in England at this crisis :

"On the 5th of November, the king told his lords, that he expected the arrival of his spouse in about twenty days, and that he proposed to go to Canterbury to

1 Despatches of Marillac, in the Royal Library at Paris.

2 Anecdotes of Painters.

MSS. Cotton., Vespasian, F. 5104.

'Excerpta Historica.

Marillac was ambassador from France to England in the years 1539 and 1540; and the letters from whence these extracts are selected were written to Francis L. and to the constable Anne de Montmorenci, preserved in the Royal Library at Paris, No. 8481.

Marillac was afterwards bishop of Vienne, and minister of state in his own country, under both Francis I. and Henry II. He speaks of Henry VIII. as a prince very humane and benignant, after his first interview with him at Greenwich, which indicates that Henry possessed the art of pleasing, when he considered it desirable to make an agreeable impression. Marillac considers Hampton Court as the most beautiful place in the king's dominions.