Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/164

150 Rome. This finesse occasioned the fall of Wolsey, to whom both the king and Anne Boleyn imputed the failure of their expectations.

Amidst the anxieties which agitated Henry, he was often tempted to break off all connexion with Rome; and Ann Boleyn used every insinuation, in order to make him proceed to extremities with the pope, both as the readiest and surest means of her exaltation to the royal dignity, and of spreading the new doctrines, in which she had been initiated under the duchess of Alençon, a warm friend to the reformation. But Henry had been educated in a superstitious veneration for the holy see, abhorred all alliance with the Lutherans, and dreaded the reproach of heresy.

While he was thus fluctuating between contrary opinions. Dr. Thomas Cranmer, a man distinguished for his learning and candour, in a casual discourse with two of his courtiers, observed, that the best way either to quiet the king's conscience or obtain the pope's consent, would be to consult all the universities in Europe, with regard to that controverted point. Henry was delighted with this proposal. Cranmer was immediately sent for and taken into favour; the universities were consulted, according to his advice; and all of them declared the king's marriage invalid.

Wolsey's death, who had been some time disgraced, freed the king from a person whom he considered as an obstacle in the way of his inclinations, and supported by the opinion of the learned in the step he intended to take, Henry resolved to administer ecclesiastical affairs without having farther recourse to Rome, and abide all consequences; he privately celebrated his marriage with Anne, 1532, whom he had previously created Marchioness of Pembroke.

Cranmer,