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Claude. Meantime, a treatise on the unlawfulness of his sent marriage was compounded by the king and some of his favourite divines. How painfully and laboriously the royal theologian toiled in this literary labyrinth, is evidenced by a letter written by himself to the fair lady whose bright eyes had afflicted him with such unwonted qualms of conscience, that he had been fain to add the pains and penalties of authorship to the cares of government for her sake. This curious letter must have been written in the summer of 1527, during one of those temporary absences with which Anne Boleyn occasionally tantalized him :

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MINE OWN SWEET HEART,

"This shall be to advertise you of the great loneness that I find since your departing, for, I assure you, me-thinketh the time longer since your departing now last, than I was wont to do a whole fortnight. I think your kindness and my fervency of love causeth it, for otherwise I would not have thought it possible that for so little awhile it should have grieved me. But now that I am coming towards you, me-thinketh my pains be half relieved, and also I am right well comforted, insomuch that my book maketh substantially for my matter. In token whereof I have spent above four hours this day upon it, which has caused me to write the shorter letter to you at this time, because of some pain in my head." I

Henry's impatience for the accomplishment of his wishes made him dissatisfied with Wolsey's diplomatic caution with regard to "his matter;" and, having hitherto found the cardinal subservient to all his wishes, he recalled him to England, and confided to him his desire of making Anne Boleyn his wife. Thunderstruck at this disclosure, the minister threw himself at the feet of his royal master, and remained several hours on his knees reasoning with him on the infatuation of his conduct, but without effect. Henry's passion was again quickened by the stimulus of jealousy, for about this time we find Anne coquetting with sir Thomas Wyatt, her early friend and devoted admirer. Wyatt, Surrey, George Boleyn, and Anne Boleyn were the most accomplished quartette

1 Dr. Lingard considers the expressions with which this letter concludes too coarse to be transcribed. Sharon Turner, on the contrary, who quotes the whole letter, regards it as one of the proofs of Henry's respect for Anne Boleyn's virtue. "It requires no great correctness of taste," says Turner, "to feel that those letters are written in very decorous, affectionate, and earnest terms, and with the feelings and phrase that men use to honourable and modest women." It is, nevertheless, difficult to imagine any woman of honourable principles receiving and treasuring such letters from a married man. * Cavendish. Lingard.

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in the court of Henry VIII. The ties of blood which united the two Boleyns with their cousin Surrey were not so powerfully felt, as the attraction which a sympathy of tastes and pursuits created between them and Wyatt. Anne Boleyn might, perhaps, have consoled herself for the loss of Percy by marrying Wyatt; but, unfortunately, his hand was pledged to another before her contract with the heir of Northumber land was broken. Her French education had, however, taught her to regard adulation as a welcome tribute to her charms, and she permitted his attentions.

A very curious incident occurred during this perilous flirtation, as it would be called in modern parlance, which throws some light on the progress of Henry's courtship at this time. "One day, while Anne Boleyn was very earnest on her embroidery, Wyatt was hovering about her, talking and compli menting her, (for which their relative employments about the king and queen gave him good opportunity,) he twitched for her a jewelled tablet, which hung by a lace or chain out of her pocket. This he thrust into his bosom, and, notwithstanding her earnest entreaties, never would restore it to her, but wore it about his neck under his cassock. Now and then he showed it to her, in order to persuade her to let him retain it as a mark of her favour, or at all events to prove a subject of conversation with her, in which he had great delight. Anne Boleyn, perceiving his drift, permitted him to keep it with out further comment, as a trifle not worth further contest. Henry VIII. watched them both with anxious jealousy, and quickly perceived, that the more sir Thomas Wyatt hovered about the lady, the more she avoided him. . . . Well pleased at her conduct, the king," says sir Thomas Wyatt, "fell to win her by treaty of marriage, and in his talk on that matter took from her a ring, which he ever wore upon little finger."

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Anne Boleyn had gained some little wisdom by her disap pointment in regard to Percy, for Wyatt declares "that all this she carried with great secrecy." Far different was the conduct of the king, who was extremely anxious to display his triumph over Wyatt. Within a few days after, he was play

ing at bowls with Wyatt, the duke of Suffolk, and sir Francis Bryan. Henry was in high good humour, but affirmed that in the cast of the bowl he had surpassed his competitor Wyatt. Both Wyatt and his partner declared, " By his leave, it was not so." The king, however, continued pointing with his finger on which he had Anne Boleyn's ring, and, smiling significantly, said, "Wyatt, I tell thee it is mine." The ring, which was well known to him, at last caught the eye of sir Thomas Wyatt, who paused a little to rally his spirits. Then taking from his bosom the chain to which hung the tablet, which the king likewise remembered well, and had noted it when worn by Anne Boleyn, he said, "And if it may like your majesty to give me leave to measure the cast with this, I have good hopes yet it will be mine." Wyatt then busied himself with measuring the space between the bowls with the chain of the tablet, and boldly pronounced the game to be his. "It may

be so," exclaimed the monarch, haughtily spurning from him the disputed bowl; "but then I am deceived!" and, with an angry brow, he broke up the sport. This double-meaning dialogue was understood by few or none but themselves; but the king retired to his chamber with his countenance expressive of the resentment he felt. He soon took an opportunity of reproaching Anne Boleyn with giving love-tokens to Wyatt, when the lady clearly proved, to the great satisfaction of her royal lover, that her tablet had been snatched from her and kept by superior strength.'

No one who dispassionately reflects on these passages in Anne's conduct can reconcile it either with her duty to her royal mistress, or those feelings of feminine delicacy which would make a young and beautiful woman tremble at the impropriety of becoming an object of contention between two married men. Wyatt prudently resigned the fair prize to his royal rival, and if Anne abstained from compliance with the

1 On this circumstance, related by Wyatt himself, has been founded the calumny repeated by Sanders and many French and Spanish writers, and by the Catholic historians in general, that Wyatt had confessed to Henry an intrigue with Anne Boleyn; but the high favour in which he continued with both, plainly proves that Wyatt's passion was not permitted by the lady to transgress farther than he describes in the above narration.

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unhallowed solicitations of the king, it must, we fear, be ascribed rather to her caution than her virtue, for she had overstepped the restraints of moral rectitude when she firstpermitted herself to encourage his attentions. In the hour that Anne Boleyn did this, she took her first step towards a scaffold, and prepared for herself a doom which fully exempli fies the warning, "Those who sow the whirlwind, must expect to reap the storm." Ambition had now entered her head; she saw that the admiration of the sovereign had rendered her the centre of attraction to all who sought his favour, and she felt the fatal charms of power,-not merely the power which beauty, wit, and fascination had given her, but that of political influence. In a word, she swayed the will of the arbiter of Europe, and she had determined to share his throne as soon as her royal mistress could be dispossessed. The Christmas festival was celebrated with more than usual splendour at Greenwich that year, and Anne Boleyn, not the queen, was the prima donna at all the tourneys, masques, banquets, and balls with which the king endeavoured to beguile the lingering torments of suspense occasioned by the obstacles which Wolsey's diplomatic craft continued to interpose in the proceedings for the divorce.

When Henry's treatise on the illegality of his present marriage was completed, in the pride of authorship he ordered it to be shown to the greatest literary genius of his court, sir Thomas More, with a demand of his opinion. Too honest to flatter, and too wise to criticise the work of the royal pedant, More extricated himself from the dilemma by pleading his ignorance of theology. The treatise was, however, presented to pope Clement; and Stephen Gardiner (then known by the humble name of Mr. Stephen) was, with Edmund Fox, the king's almoner, deputed to wring from that pontiff a declaration in unison with the prohibition in Scripture against marriage with a brother's widow. This, and some other equivocal concessions, having been obtained, Fox returned to England, and proceeding to Greenwich, communicated the progress that had been made to the king, who received him in Anne Boleyn's apartments. Anne, whose sanguine temper, combined

with feminine inexperience in ecclesiastical law, made her fancy that the papal sanction to the divorce was implied in the instruments exhibited to the king, was agitated with transports of exultation, and bestowed more liberal promises of patronage on the bearer of these unmeaning documents than became her. Wolsey was included in a commission with cardinal Campeggio to try the validity of the king's marriage, and, under the influence of his enamoured master, had written a letter to the pope, describing Anne Boleyn as a model of female excellence, in order to controvert the scandals that were already current at Rome respecting her connexion with the king.

In this position were affairs when the noted epidemic called 'the sweating sickness' broke out, June 1st, in the court. Henry, in his first alarm, yielded to the persuasions of Wolsey and his spiritual directors, and sent the fair Boleyn home to her father at Hever-castle, while he effected a temporary reconciliation with his injured queen. His penitentiary exercises with Katharine did not, however, deter him from pursuing his amatory correspondence with her absent rival. Here is one of the letters which appears to have been addressed to Anne while at Hever-castle:'

"MY MISTRESS AND MY FRIEND,

"My heart and I surrender ourselves into your hands, and we supplicate to be commended to your good graces, and that by absence your affections may not be diminished to us. For that would be to augment our pain, which would be a great pity, since absence gives enough, and more than I ever thought could be felt. This brings to my mind a fact in astronomy, which is, that the further the poles are from the sun, notwithstanding, the more scorching is his heat. Thus is it with our love; absence has placed distance between us, nevertheless fervour increases at least on my part. I hope the same from you, assuring you that in my case the anguish of absence is so great, that it would be intolerable were it not for the firm hope I have of your indissoluble affection towards me. In order to remind you of it, and because I cannot in person be in your presence, I send you the thing which comes nearest that is possible; that is to say, my picture, and the whole device, which you already know of, set in bracelets, wishing myself in their place when it pleases you. This is from the hand of

"Your servant and friend,

"H. R."

Fears for the health of his absent favourite certainly dictated the following letter from Henry to Anne:

1 Printed at the end of Robert of Avesbury.

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