Mayflowers for November: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn

Mayflowers for November: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn by Malyn Bromfield Page B

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silence. They look to gain access into the homes of common folk while the husband is about his business.’
    ‘They won’t come here again, master,’ White Boy says, ‘for the younger one was clearly afeared when he knew the master be a waterman.’
    ‘Sooner or later they will find an English Bible,’ I say,’ They were easy to come by when Edward was King.’
    ‘Even young men and women who were born after King Henry banished the Pope, are going to the stake,’ my husband says. ‘These papists make heretics of simple folk who have grown up knowing only the new religion and know nothing of the old ways which have returned with Queen Mary. They have never known the miracle of the Mass. They need to be taught to understand, not sent to their deaths denying the true faith.’
    I never thought to hear my husband speak so harshly of the Catholic religion, for he was sorry for the banishing of the Pope from English churches in Henry’s reign and when Edward became king and made England Protestant he grumbled that our bare church with its plain communion cup and the simple covering for the altar table was an insult to God. When Mary’s reign began we ate Lenten food for months. We gave our meat money to the priest towards the refurbishing of the parish church. Yet, these days, the high altar and the reredos with its carvings of saints and martyrs bring him little peace.
    ‘Never fear, White Boy,’ he says to our servant who hangs his head drowsily, for his potion is taking effect, ‘I will attend Mass each Sunday from this day on and of an afternoon go to the butts to practice my archery, as I am bidden by the Queen’s laws.’
    *
    I think of mother’s advice when Anne Boleyn became Queen and the old religious ways began to be destroyed: we must keep our beliefs to ourselves and to God and let the masters see what we want them to see.
    There have been so many changes in the churches these twenty-five years; I don’t know what to believe any more. When I was a girl praying at my bedside, the Spirit of God was real. It was a warm cloak around me and a guiding voice within me. Sometimes I felt His presence so terrifyingly heavy upon my shoulders that I thought I would be struck down, like Saul on the road to Damascus. Each time I knelt at Mass to receive the host, something wonderful happened: the bread became Christ’s body and the wine became his blood. In Edward’s reign there was no transubstantiation: the miracle of the Mass was gone. I heard the priest recite the liturgy in English and was saddened that the sonorous beauty of the Latin language was gone.
    Now Mary is our queen and the priest elevates the host to receive the body and the blood of Christ yet there is still for me an emptiness, as if something marvellous has departed never to return. Since my husband has taught me to read, it gives me such pride and pleasure to pick up my English New Testament and study awhile and it grieves me greatly that I must do this furtively.
    ‘I suppose I am a heretic, but I don’t feel wicked or sinful, just confused,’ I say.
    ‘When you were a child the old religion was simple. The priest told you what to believe and how to worship. It is men’s thinking that has brought about these troubled times. Aye, it is the fancy of kings and queens who presume to tell us what to believe when once the Pope in Rome instructed the whole of Christendom. The blame lies with Anne Boleyn.’
    Always, my husband blames Anne Boleyn. Always. Every evil in London Town, in England, is the fault of King Henry’s concubine. Today, I do not argue with him.
    ‘She would have her crown,’ he says, ‘so King Henry had to have his divorce, and for this he must break with Rome. She would have her English New Testament and encourage the King to read the Bible in layman’s tongue.’
    ‘You have encouraged me to read God’s word for myself in English.’
    ‘I saw no harm when it was safe to do so. I will not forbid you now, despite the

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