hands of that accursed and venomous harlot who
had intended to poison them." That Anne may have planned the assassination
of Mary is quite probable, even if she had no hand in the shortening of
Katharine's days, and this may have been the real hidden pretext of her
death acting upon Henry's fears for himself.[168] But if such were the
case, Henry, at least, was deserving of no pity, for when it was only
Katharine's life that was in danger he was, as we have seen, brutally
callous, and only awoke to the enormity of the "venomous harlot" when
Cromwell made him believe that his own safety was jeopardised. Then no
fate was too cruel for the woman he once had loved.

On the day preceding Anne's trial, Jane Seymour was brought from Sir
Nicholas Carew's house to another residence on the river bank, only a mile
from Whitehall Stairs, to be ready for her intended elevation as soon as
the Queen was disposed of. Here Jane was served for the few days she
stayed "very splendidly by the cooks and certain officers of the King, and
very richly adorned."[169] So certain was Henry that nothing would now
stand in the way of his new marriage that Jane was informed beforehand
that on the 15th, by three in the afternoon, she would hear of her
predecessor's condemnation; and Anne's cousin and enemy, Sir Francis
Brian, eagerly brought the news to the expectant lady at the hour
anticipated. The next day, when the sword of the French headsman had made
Henry indeed a widower, the King only awaited receipt of the intelligence
to enter his barge and seek the consolation of Jane Seymour. At six
o'clock in the morning of the 20th May, when the headless body of Anne,
barely cold, still awaited sepulture huddled in an old arrow-box in the
Church of St. Peter within the Tower, Jane was secretly carried by water
from her residence to Hampton Court; and before nine o'clock she had been
privately married to the King,[170] by virtue of a dispensation issued the
day previously by the accommodating Cranmer.[171] It would seem probable
that the day after the private espousals Jane travelled to her home in
Wiltshire, where she stayed for several days whilst preparations were
being made in the King's abodes for her reception as Queen: for all the
A's had to be changed to J's in the royal ciphers, and traces of Anne's
former presence abolished wherever possible. Whether Henry accompanied his
new wife to Wiltshire on this occasion is not quite certain, though from