costly fashion of ancient hospitality, kept open house at their common charge, and feasted the king and queen, the members of both houses, and the lord-mayor and aldermen with their wives. But scenes of pomp and festivity had no power to divert the thoughts of the king from his domestic grievance—a wife whom he regarded with disgust : on the contrary, it is probable that this season of courtly revelry increased his disquiet, by giving him opportunities of beholding under the most attractive circumstances the charms of a young lady, whom he was soon seized with the most violent desire of elevating to the throne which he judged her worthy to adorn.

No considerations either of rectitude or policy could longer restrain the impetuous monarch from casting off the yoke of a detested marriage: and as a first step towards emancipation, he determined to give way to the ruin of its original adviser; that vigorous and serviceable instrument of arbitrary power, whom he had hitherto defended with pertinacity against the popular odium.

No sooner was the decline of his favour perceived,-and what so quickly perceived at courts?—than the ill-fated Cromwell found himself assailed on every side. His active agency in the suppression of monasteries had brought upon him, with the imputation of sacrilege, the hatred of all the catholics ;—the coldness, or timidity, which he had manifested in the cause of religious reformation in other respects, and particularly the enactment of the Six Articles during his administration, had rendered him an object of suspicion or dislike to the protestants;— in his new and undefined office of royal vicegerent for the exercise of the supremacy, he had offended the whole body of the clergy;-and he had just filled up the measure of his offences against the nobility by procuring a grant of the place of lord high-steward, long hereditary in the great house of the Veres earls of Oxford. The only voice raised for him was that of Cranmer, who interceded with Henry in his behalf in a letter eloquent, touching, and even courageous, times and persons considered. Gardiner and the duke of Norfolk urged on his accusation: the parliament, with its accustomed subserviency, proceeded against him by attainder; and having voted him guilty of heresy and treason, left it in the choice of the king to bring him either to the block for one of these offences, or to the stake for the other; while neither of them was proved against him by evidence, or even supported by reasonable probabilities. But against this violation in his person of the chartered rights of Englishmen, however flagrant, the unfortunate earl of Essex had forfeited all right to appeal, since it was himself who had first advised the same arbitrary mode of proceeding in the cases of the marchioness of Exeter, of the countess of Salisbury, and of several persons of inferior rank connected with them; on whom capital punishment had already been inflicted.

With many private virtues, Essex, like his great master Wolsey, and

36 DIVORCE OF ANNE-ELEVATION OF CATHERINE HOWARD.

like the disgraced ministers of despotic princes in general, fell unpitied: and the king and the faction of Gardiner and of the Howards seemed equally to rejoice in the free course opened by his removal to their further projects. The parliament was immediately ordered to afford its sanction to a certain frivolous pretext of a prior contract, on which the monarch was pleased to demand a divorce from Anne of Cleves; and the marriage was unanimously declared null, without any opportunity afforded to the queen of bringing evidence in its support.

The fortitude, or indifference, with which the lady Anne endured her unmerited degradation, affords a curious trait of character, either national or individual. There is indeed a tradition that she fainted on first receiving the information that her marriage was likely to be set aside; but the shock once over, she gave to the divorce, without hesitation or visible reluctance, the assent which was required of her. Taking in good part the pension of three thousand pounds per annum, and the title of his sister which her ex-husband was graciously pleased to offer her, she wrote to her brother the elector to entreat him still to live in amity with the king of England, against whom she had no ground of complaint; and she continued, till the day of her death, to make this country her abode. Through the whole affair she gave no indication of wounded pride; unless her refusal to return, in the character of a discarded and rejected damsel, to the home which she had so lately quitted in all the pomp and triumph of a royal bride, is to be regarded as such. But even for this part of her conduct a different motive is with great plausibility assigned by a writer who supposes her to have been swayed by the prudent consideration, that the regular payment of her pension would better be secured by her remaining under the eyes and within the protection of the English nation.

A very few weeks after this apparently formidable business had been thus readily and amicably arranged, Catherine Howard, niece to the duke of Norfolk and first cousin to Anne Boleyn, was declared queen. This lady, beautiful, insinuating, and more fondly beloved by the king than any of her predecessors, was a catholic, and almost all the members of the council who now possessed office or influence were attached, more or less openly, to the same communion. In consequence, the penalties of the Six Articles were enforced with great cruelty against the reformers; but this did not exempt from punishment such as, offending on the other side, ventured to deny the royal supremacy; the only difference was, that the former class of culprits were burned as heretics, the latter hanged as traitors.

The king soon after seized the occasion of a trifling insurrection in Yorkshire, of which sir John Nevil was the leader, to complete his vengeance against Cardinal Pole, by bringing to a cruel and ignominious end the days of his mother, who had been unfortunate enough thus long to survive the ruin of her family. The strange and shocking

scene exhibited on the scaffold by the desperation of this illustrious and injured lady, is detailed by all our historians: it seems astonishing that the surrounding crowd were not urged by an unanimous impulse of horror and compassion to rush in and rescue from the murderous hands of the executioner the last miserable representative of such a line of princes. But the eyes of Henry's subjects were habituated to these scenes of blood; and they were viewed by some with indifference, and by the rest with emotions of terror which effectually repressed the generous movements of a just and manly indignation.

In public causes, to be accused and to suffer death were now the same thing; and another eminent victim of the policy of the English Tiberius displayed, in a novel and portentous manner, his utter despair of the justice of the country and the mercy of his sovereign.

Lord Leonard Grey, late deputy of Ireland, was accused of favouring the escape of that persecuted child, his nephew Gerald Fitzgerald, of corresponding with cardinal Pole, and of various other offences called treasonable. Being brought before a jury of knights, 'he saved them,' says lord Herbert, 'the labour of condemning him, and without more ado, confessed all. Which, whether this lord, who was of great courage, did out of desperation or guilt, some circumstances make doubtful; and the rather, that the articles being so many, he neither denied nor extenuated any of them, though his continual fighting with the king's enemies, where occasion was, pleaded much on his part. Howsoever, he had his head cut off.'*

The queen and her party were daily extending their influence over the mind of the king; and Cranmer himself, notwithstanding the high esteem entertained for him by Henry, had begun to be endangered by their machinations, when an unexpected discovery put into his hands the means of baffling all their designs, and producing a total revolution in the face of the court.

It was towards the close of the year 1541 that private information was conveyed to the primate of disorders in the conduct of the queen before her marriage such as could not fail to plunge her in infamy and ruin. Cranmer, if not exceedingly grieved, was at least greatly perplexed by the incident :-At first sight there appeared to be equal danger in concealing or disclosing circumstances of so delicate a nature, and the archbishop was timid by nature, and cautious from the experience of a court. At length, all things well weighed, he judiciously preferred the hazard of making the communication at once, without reserve, and directly to the person most interested; and forming into a written narrative facts which his tongue dared not utter to the face of a prince whose anger was deadly, he presented it to him, and entreated him to peruse it in secret.

Many years after, the earl of Kildare solemnly assured the author of the Chronicles of Ireland' in Holinshed, that lord Leonard Grey had no concern whatever in his escape.

38

INFIDELITY AND EXECUTION OF CATHERINE HOWARD.

Love and pride conspired to persuade the king that his Catharine was incapable of having imposed upon him thus grossly, and he at once pronounced the whole story a malicious fabrication; but the strict inquiry which he caused to be instituted for the purpose of punishing its authors, not only established the truth of the accusation already brought, but served also to throw the strongest suspicions on the conjugal fidelity of the queen.

The anguish of Henry on this occasion was such as in any other husband would have merited the deepest compassion; it was quickly succeeded by violent rage; and his cry for vengeance was, as usual, echoed with alacrity by a loyal and sympathizing parliament. Party animosity profited by the occasion, and gave an additional impulse to their proceedings. After convicting by attainder the queen and her paramours, who were soon after put to death, the two houses proceeded also to attaint her uncle, aunt, grandmother, and about ten other persons, male and female, accused of being accessory or privy to her disorders before marriage, and of not revealing them to the king when they became acquainted with his intention of making her his consort; an offence declared to be misprison of treason by an ex post facto law. But this was an excess of barbarity of which Henry himself was ashamed the infamous lady Rochford was the only confidant who suffered capitally; the rest were released after imprisonments of longer or shorter duration; yet a reserve of bitterness appears to have remained stored up in the heart of the king against the whole race of Howard, which the enemies of that illustrious house well knew how to foster against a future day.

CHAP. III. 1542 TO 1547.

Rout of Solway and death of James V. of Scotland.-Birth of Queen Mary.-Henry projects to marry her to his son.-Offers the hana of Elizabeth to the earl of Arran.-Earl of Lennox marries lady M. Douglas.-Marriage of the king to Catherine Parr.-Her person and acquirements.-Influence of her conduct on Elizabeth.-Henry joins the Emperor against Francis I.—His campaign in France.-Princess Mary replaced in order of succession, and Elizabeth also.-Probosals for a marriage between Elizabeth and Philip of Spain.-The duke of Norfolk and earl of Hertford heads of the catholic and protestant parties. Circumstances which give a preponderance to the latter.Disgrace of the duke.—Trial of the earl of Surrey.-His death and character. Sentence against the duke of Norfolk.-Death of Henry. IN the month of December 1542, shortly after the rout of Solway, in which the English made prisoners the flower of the Scottish nobility, the same messenger brought to Henry VIII. the tidings that the grief

and shame of this defeat had broken the heart of king James V., and that his queen had brought into the world a daughter, who had received the name of Mary, and who was now queen of Scotland. Without stopping to deplore the melancholy fate of a nephew whom he had himself brought to destruction, Henry instantly formed the project of uniting the whole island under one crown, by the marriage of this infant sovereign with the prince his son. The liberty of returning to their own country was immediately offered to all the Scottish prisoners of rank then in London on the condition, to which they acceded with apparent alacrity, of promoting this union with all their interest; and so confident was the English monarch in the success of his measures, that previously to their departure, several of them were carried to the palace of Enfield, where young Edward then resided, that they might tender homage to the future husband of their queen.

The regency of Scotland at this critical juncture was claimed by the earl of Arran, who was generally regarded as next heir to the crown, though his legitimacy had been disputed; and to this nobleman,—but whether for himself or his son seems doubtful,-Henry, as a further means of securing the important object which he had in view, offered the hand of his daughter Elizabeth. Thus early were the concerns and interest blended, of these two princesses, whose celebrated rivalry was destined to endure until the life of one of them had become its sacrifice! Thus remarkably, in this first transaction, the pre-eminence from which the Scottish princess was destined to hurl herself by her own misconduct was contrasted with the abasement and comparative insignificance out of which her genius and her good fortune were to elevate the future sovereign of England!

Mary was born in the purple of her hereditary kingdom, and the monarchs of France and England already made it an object of eager contention which of them should succeed in encircling her baby brows with a second and more splendid diadem, while the hand of Elizabeth was tossed as a trivial boon to a Scottish earl of equivocal birth, despicable abilities, and feeble character. So little too was even this person flattered by the honour, or aware of the advantages of such a connexion, that he soon after renounced it by quitting the English for the French party. Elizabeth in consequence remained unbetrothed, and her father soon afterwards secured to himself a more strenuous ally of the blood-royal of Scotland, by bestowing upon the earl of Lennox the hand, not of his daughter, but of his niece, the lady Margaret Douglas.

Undeterred by his late severe disappointment, Henry was bent on entering once more into the marriage state; and his choice now fell on Catherine Parr, sprung from a knightly family possessed of large estates in Westmoreland, and widow of lord Latimer, a member of the great house of Nevil.