and worst colours. Anne Boleyn, the pretty
little girl who had gone abroad to France
with his sister, was by this time grown up to
be very beautiful, and was one of the ladies
in attendance on Queen Catherine, Now,
Queen Catherine was no longer young or
handsome, and it is likely that she was
not particularly good-tempered, having been
always rather melancholy, and having been
made more so by the deaths of four of her
children when they were very young. So, the
King fell in love with the fair Anne Boleyn,
and said to himself, " How can I best get rid
of my own troublesome wife whom I am tired
of, and marry Anne?"

You recollect that Queen Catherine had
been the wife of Henry's young brother.
What does the King do, after thinking it
over, but calls his favorite priests about him,
and says, O, his mind is in such a dreadful
state, and he is so frightfully uneasy, because
he is afraid it was not lawful for him to
marry the Queen! Not one of those priests
had the courage to hint that it was rather
curious he had never thought of that before,
and that his mind seemed to have been in a
tolerably jolly condition during a great many
years, in which he certainly had not fretted
himself thin; but, they all said, Ah! that was
very true, and it was a serious business; and
perhaps the best way to make it right, would
be for His Majesty to be divorced! The King
replied, Yes, he thought that would be the
best way, certainly; so they all went to
work.

If I were to relate to you the intrigues
and plots that took place in the endeavour to
get this divorce, you would think the History
of England the most tiresome book in the
world. So I shall say no more, than that
after a vast deal of negociation and evasion,
the Pope issued a commission to Cardinal
Wolsey and CARDINAL CAMPEGGIO, (whom he
sent over from Italy for the purpose) to try
the whole case in England. It is supposed—
and I think with reason—that Wolsey was
the Queen's enemy, because she had reproved
him for his proud and gorgeous manner of
life. But, he did not at first know that the
King wanted to marry Anne Boleyn; and
when he did know it, he even went down
on his knees, in the endeavour to dissuade
him.

The Cardinals opened their court in the
Convent of the Black Friars, near to where
the bridge of that name in London now
stands; and the King and Queen, that they
might be near it, took up their lodgings at the
adjoining palace of Bridewell, of which nothing
now remains but a bad prison. On the opening
of the court, when the King and Queen
were called on to appear, that poor ill-used
lady, with a dignity and firmness and yet
with a womanly affection worthy to be always
admired, went and kneeled at the King's
feet, and said that she had come, a stranger,
to his dominions; that she had been a good
and true wife to him for twenty years; and
that she could acknowledge no power in those
Cardinals to try whether she should be considered
his wife after all that time, or should
be put away. With that, she got up and left
the court, and would never afterwards come
back to it.

The King pretended to be very much overcome,
and said, O! my lords and gentlemen,
what a good woman she was to be sure,
and how delighted he would be to live with
her unto death, but for that terrible uneasiness
in his mind which was quite wearing
him away! So, the case went on, and there
was nothing but talk for two months. Then
Cardinal Campeggio who, on behalf of the Pope,
wanted nothing so much as delay, adjourned
it for two more; and before that time was
elapsed, the Pope himself adjourned it indefinitely,
by requiring the King and Queen to
come to Rome and have it tried there. But by
good luck for the King, word was brought
to him by some of his people, that they had
happened to meet at supper THOMAS.CRANMER,
a learned Doctor of Cambridge, who had proposed
to urge the Pope on, by referring the
case to all the learned doctors and bishops,
here and there and everywhere, and getting
their opinions that the King's marriage
was unlawful. The King, who was now
getting into a hurry to marry Anne Boleyn,
thought this such a good idea, that he sent
for Cranmer, post haste, and said to LORD
ROCHFORT, Anne Boleyn's father, " Take this
learned Doctor down to your country-house,
and there let him have a good room for a
study, and no end of books out of which to
prove that I may marry your daughter."
Lord Rochfort, not at all reluctant, made
the learned Doctor as comfortable as he could,
and the learned Doctor went to work to
prove his case. All this time, the King and
Anne Boleyn were writing letters to one
another almost daily, full of impatience to
have the case settled; and Anne Boleyn was
showing herself (as I think) very worthy of
the fate which afterwards befell her.

It was bad for Cardinal Wolsey that he
had left Cranmer to render this help. It was
worse for him that he had tried to dissuade
the King from marrying Anne Boleyn. Such
a servant as he, to such a master as Henry,
would probably have fallen in any case; but,
between the hatred of the party of the Queen
that was, and the hatred of the party of the
Queen that was to be, he fell suddenly and
heavily. Going down one day to the Court
of Chancery, where he now presided, he was
waited upon by the Dukes of Norfolk and
Suffolk, who told him that they brought an
order to him to resign that office, and to
withdraw quietly to a house he had at Esher,
in Surrey. The Cardinal refusing, they rode
off to the King, and next day came back
with a letter from him, on reading which, the
Cardinal submitted. An inventory was made
out of all the riches in his palace at York