For three months the baby was left with her mother at Greenwich, under
the care of her godmother, the duchess of Norfolk, and lady Bryan,
kinswoman to Anne Boleyn, who had brought up princess Mary. After that
she was taken to Hatfield, in Hertfordshire, and then moved to the
country palace of the bishop of Winchester, in the little village of
Chelsea. The bishop's consent does not seem to have been asked, for the
king never troubled himself to inquire whether the owners of these
houses cared to be invaded by a vast number of strangers. If _he_ wished
it, that was enough, and the poor bishop had to give up his own
business, and spend all his time in making arrangements for the heiress
of England—for so she was now declared to be—the rights of Mary being
set aside. Right glad must he have been when the king's restless temper
removed the baby again into Hertfordshire, to a house at Langley, and
sought to provide her with a husband. The prince chosen, first of a long
line of suitors, was Charles duke of Orleans, the third son of Francis
I. of France. The match was in some ways a good one; but Henry wanted so
many things which the French king could not grant that the plan had to
be given up. In any case it could hardly have come to pass, as the boy
died before his bride had reached her twelfth birthday.
---------------------
Having contrived to get rid of one wife when he was tired of her, Henry
saw no reason why he should not dispose of his second for the same
cause. Therefore, when he took a fancy to wed Jane Seymour, maid of
honour to Anne, he thought no shame to accuse the queen of all sorts of
crimes. One day the booming of the Tower guns told that the Traitors'
gate leading down to the Thames had been opened, and Anne, whose life
had been passed in pleasure and gaiety, stepped out of the barge; the
laughter had died out of her eyes and the colour from her face. Well she
knew the fate that awaited her, and in her heart she felt it was just.
Had she not in like manner supplanted queen Katharine, and thrust her
and her daughter from their rightful place? Thus she may have thought as
her guards led her to her cell, from which she walked on May 19 to the
scaffold on Tower Hill.
---------------------
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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