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During these horrid transactions Henry was resolved to take another queen; and, after some negotiation upon the continent, he contracted a marriage with Anne of Cleves, his aim being by her means to fortify his alliances with the princes of Germany. Nor was he led into this match without a most scrupulous examination, on his side, of the lady's personal accomplishments. He was assured by his envoy that she was of a very large person; which was the more pleasing to him, as he was at that time become very corpulent, and consequently required a similar figure in a wife. He was still farther allured by her picture, in which Holbein, who drew it, was, it seems, more a friend to his art than to truth; for he greatly flattered her. The king, upon her landing, went privately to meet her at Rochester, where he was very much damped in his amorous ardour. He found her big indeed, and tall as he could wish, but utterly devoid of grace and beauty: she could also speak but one language, her native German; so that her conversation could never recompense the defects of her person. He swore she was a great Flanders mare; and added, that he could never settle his affections upon her. However, sensible that he would greatly disoblige her brother the duke, and consequently all the German princes in his alliance, he resolved to marry her; and he told Cromwell, who was chiefly instrumental in this affair, that, since he had gone so far, he would put his neck into the yoke, whatever it cost him. The marriage was accordingly celebrated, but the king's disgust was only increased by it; he told Cromwell the next morning that he hated her more than ever; and even suspected her not to be a true maid, a circumstance in which he thought himself extremely skilful. Cromwell saw the danger he incurred by having been instrumental in forming this union; but he endeavoured, by

his assiduity and humble adulation, to keep the king from coming to extremities with him.

But he should have known that a tyrant once offend-ed is implacable. Henry's aversion to the queen secretly increased every day; and he at length resolved to get rid of her and his prime minister together. The fall of this favourite was long and ardently wished for by a great part of the nation. The nobility hated a man who, from such mean beginnings, was placed before the first persons in the kingdom; for, besides being made vicar-general, which gave him almost absolute authority over the clergy, he was lord privy-seal, lord chamberlain, and master of the rolls. He had also obtained the order of the Garter, a dignity which had hitherto been conferred on only the most illustrious families; and to carry his exaltation still higher, he had been made earl of Essex. The protestants disliked him for his concurrence with the king's will in their persecution; and the papists detested him as the inveterate enemy of their religion. It only remained, therefore, with the king to hasten or retard the punishment of a man who had scarcely a partisan in the nation except himself. But he had a strong cause of dislike to him for his late unpropitious alliance; and a new motive was soon added for increasing his displeasure. He had fixed his affection on Catharine Howard, niece to the duke of Norfolk ; and the only method of gratifying this new passion was, as in former cases, discarding the present queen to make room for a new one. The duke of Norfolk had long been Cromwell's mortal enemy, and eagerly embraced this opportunity to destroy a man whom he considered as his rival. He therefore made use of all his niece's arts to ruin the favourite; and when his project was ripe for execution, he obtained a commission from the king to arrest Cromwell for high-treason. His disgrace

was no sooner known than all his friends forsook him, except Cranmer, who wrote such a letter to Henry in his behalf as no other man in the kingdom would have presumed to offer. However, he was accused in parliament of heresy and treason, and, without being heard in his own defence, was condemned to suffer the pains of death, as the king should think proper to direct. Cromwell's fortitude seemed to forsake him in this dreadful exigency. He wrote to the king for pardon; said that the frail flesh incited him continually to apply to his grace for mercy; and subscribed his epistle with a heavy heart and a trembling hand, "from the king's most miserable prisoner and poor slave at the Tower, Thomas Cromwell. Mercy, mercy, mercy!"

Cromwell's letter touched the hard heart of the monarch; he ordered it to be read to him three times; and then, as if willing to gain a victory over all his softer feelings, he signed the warrant for beheading him upon Tower-hill. When Cromwell was brought to the scaffold, his regard for his son hindered him from expatiating upon his own innocence; he thanked God for bringing him to that death for his transgressions; confessed he had often been seduced, but that he now died in the catholic faith. It was thus that Henry, not satisfied with the death of those whom he chose to punish, repressed their complaints also, and terrified the unhappy sufferers from the last consolation of the wretched, the satisfaction of upbraiding their persecutors. In this manner the unhappy sufferer, having spent some time in his private devotions, submitted his neck to the executioner, who mangled him in a most terrible manner A few days after his death a number of people were executed together upon very different accusations; some for having denied the king's supremacy, and others for having maintained the doctrines of Luther.

About a month after the death of Cromwell, the king declared his marriage with Catharine Howard, whom he had some time before privately espoused. This was regarded as a very favourable incident by the catholic party; and the subsequent events for a while turned out to their wish. The king's counsels being now entirely directed by Norfolk and Gardiner, a furious persecution commenced against, the protestants, and the law of the six articles was executed with rigour; so that a foreigner, who then resided in England, had reason to say, that those who were against the pope were burned, and those who were for him were hanged. The king, with an ostentatious impartiality, reduced both parties to an equal share of subordination, and infused terror into every breast.

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But the measure of his severities was not yet filled up. He had thought himself very happy in his new marriage. He was so captivated with the queen's accomplishments, that he gave public thanks for his felicity, and desired his confessor to join with him in the same thanksgiving. This joy, however, was of very short duration. While the king was at York, upon an A. D. intended conference with the king of Scotland, a 1541. man of the name of Lascelles had waited upon Cranıner at London; and from the information of this man's sister, who had been servant to the duchess dowager of Norfolk, he gave a very surprising account of the queen's incontinence. He averred that she led a very lewd life before her marriage, and had carried on a scandalous correspondence with two men, called Derham and Mannock; and that she continued to indulge herself in the same criminal pleasures since she had been raised to her present greatness. Cranmer was equally surprised and embarrassed at this intelligence, which he communicated to the chancellor, and some other mem

bers of the privy-council, who advised him to make the king acquainted with the whole affair on his return to London. The archbishop knew the hazard he ran by intermeddling in such delicate points; but he also knew the danger he incurred by suppressing his information. He therefore resolved to communicate what he had heard, by writing, in the form of a memorial; and this he shortly after delivered into the king's own hand, desiring his majesty to read it in private. Henry at first disbelieved, or pretended to disbelieve, the report; he ordered the keeper of the privy-seal to examine Lascelles, who persisted in his former narrative, and even produced his sister to confirm his account. Upon this Derham and Mannock were arrested; and they quickly confessed their own guilt, and the queen's incontinence. They went still farther, by impeaching lady Rochford, who had formerly been so instrumental in procuring the death of Anne Boleyn. They alleged that this lady had. introduced one Culpepper into the queen's bedchamber, who staid with her from eleven at night till four in the morning. When the queen was first examined, she de-` nied the charge; but afterwards, finding that her accomplices were her accusers, she confessed her incontinence before marriage, but denied her having dishonoured the king's bed since their union. But three maids of honour, who were admitted to her secrets, still farther alleged her guilt; and some of them confessed having passed the night in the same bed with her and her lovers. The king was so affected at this discovery, that he burst into a flood of tears, and bitterly lamented his misfortune. Derham and Culpepper were convicted and executed ; but he was resolved to throw the odium of the queen's death upon the parliament, who had always shown themselves the ready ministers of all his severities. These servile creatures, upon being informed of the queen's

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