So I forced her to sit and I knelt before her. I asked her, as in the presence of God and His angels, to go from me to the Princess Mary and to kneel before her as I now knelt before her, and ask her forgiveness for the wrongs I had done her.
“Until that is done, my conscience cannot be stilled,” I told her.
She promised me she would do this, and I knew she would, for Lady Kingston was a good woman.
This is my last day on Earth. Tomorrow I shall be gone. I am twenty-nine years of age. It is young to die.
I have lost my beloved brother. I shall never see my child again. I pray for her and I have exhorted Lady Bryan to care for her. She will know what to say when Elizabeth asks why I do not come to her.
A sword has arrived, especially for me. It comes from France. I did not want the ax. It is a last concession from the King.
Kingston came to see me.
I said to him: “I hear I shall die before noon tomorrow. I am sorry. I had hoped to be dead by this time and past my pain.”
“The pain is very little, Madam,” he told me. “It is over in an instant. The executioner is very good.”
I put my hands about my neck and laughed. “And I have a little neck,” I said.
He turned away. I think he was moved by my calm acceptance of death.
I wondered whether I should request to see Elizabeth. Would that request be granted? I wondered. Henry would have decided.
What should I say to her? How does one say goodbye to a child? “My darling, I shall not see you again. Tomorrow they are going to cut off my head. Your father, in the great goodness of his heart, has allowed me to escape the terrible death by fire. He will be content to have my head removed by a very fine sword which has been sent from France for the purpose.”
Now I was getting hysterical.
I must not see Elizabeth. I could trust Lady Bryan.
I wrote a letter—not to the King but to be shown to him. I would ask Mary to give it to one of the gentlemen of the Privy Chamber.
“Commend me to His Majesty and tell him that he hath been ever constant in his career of advancing me; from private gentlewoman he made me a marquess; from a marquess to a queen; and now he hath no higher honor of degree, he gives my innocency the crown of martyrdom.”
I hoped these words would make a mark on that conscience of his. I hoped they would be so telling that he would not be able to shrug them aside. I hoped he would be haunted by them for a long time to come.
There were moments when I longed to see him, that I might say to him what was in my mind, tell him that I saw clearly behind the mask of geniality—though that had been used less and less as time passed. Bluff King Hal was Henry the all-powerful, the selfish monster, the murderer.
I did not so much hate as despise him. He would be remembered throughout the ages to come as the King who, because of his carnal desires, had discarded the wife of twenty years on a trumped-up charge; and having succeeded in that he murdered his second. I wondered what would be the fate of the next… and the next… and the next…
But I must calm myself. I must prepare myself for departure.
I would dress with care. I should be elegant to the end. I should wear a robe of black damask with a white cape, and my hat with ornamental coifs under it.
I would calm myself. Indeed—but for leaving Elizabeth—I should have gone gratefully to my death. I would not want to live again through the last year of my life.
Perhaps I shall not be forgotten, but remembered as the Queen who was murdered because she stood in the way of one who had the power, cruelly and most unjustly, to murder those who were an encumbrance to him.
I did not retire that night. What use? Tomorrow I should no longer need sleep.
I was inspired to express my feelings in verse.
Oh, death rock me to sleep [I wrote]
Bring on my quiet rest,
Let pass my very guiltless ghost
Out of my careful breast.
The clocks have struck midnight. The new day has come.
Very soon now they will be leading me out to the Green. Before this day is over, my life will be no more.
Bibliography
Aubrey, William Hickman Smith, The National and Domestic History of England
Bagley, J.J., Henry VIII
Barrington, E., Anne Boleyn
Batiffol, Louis (translated by Elsie Finnimore Buckley), National History of France
Bigland, Eileen (editor), Henry VIII
Bowle, John, Henry VIII
Bruce, Marie Louise, The Making of Henry VIII
———, Anne Boleyn
Castries, Duc de (translated by Anne Dobell), Lives of the Kings and Queens of France
Cavendish, George, The Life of Cardinal Wolsey
Chamberlin, Frederick, The Private Character of Henry VIII
Chambers, R.W., Thomas More
Fisher, H.A.L., Political History of England
Froude, James Anthony, The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon
———, History of England
Gairdner, James (editor), Memorials of Henry VII
Green, Mary Anne Everett, Lives of the Princesses of England
———, Letters of Royal Illustrious Ladies
Guizot, M. (translated by Robert Black), The History of France
Hackett, Francis, Henry VIII
———, Francis the First
Herbert, Edward, Lord of Cherbury, The History of England under Henry VII
Hudson, Henry William, France
Hume, Martin, The Wives of Henry VIII
Jackson, Catherine Charlotte, Lady, The Court of France in the Sixteenth Century
Lingard, John, History of England
Luke, Mary, Catherine of Aragon
Mattingly, Garrett, Catherine of Aragon
Pollard A.F., Henry VIII
Prescott, H.F.M., Mary Tudor
Roper, William, The Life of Sir Thomas More
Sergeant, Philip W., The Life of Anne Boleyn
Scarisbrick, J.J., Henry VIII
Smith, Lacy Baldwin, Henry VIII
Salzman, F., England in Tudor Times
Stephens, Sir Leslie and Lee, Sir Sidney (editors), Dictionary of National Biography
Strickland, Agnes, Lives of the Queens of England
Trevelyan, G.M., History of England
Wade, John, British History