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1540.] thus, on the principle that he had himself established, he was condemned without trial, even Cranmer voting in favour of the attainder. His fate was delayed for more than a month, during which time he continued to protest his innocence, with a violence which stood in strong contrast to his callousness to the protestations of others, wishing that God might confound him, that the vengeance of God might light upon him, that all the devils in hell might confront him, if he were guilty. He drew the most lamentable picture of his forlorn and miserable condition, and offered to make any disclosures demanded of him; but though nothing would have saved him, unluckily for him, Henry discovered amongst his papers his secret correspondence with the princes of Germany. He gave the royal assent to the bill of attainder, and in five days, being the 28th of July, he was led to the scaffold, where he confessed that he had been in error, but had now returned to the truth, and died a good Catholic. He fell detested by every man of his own party, exulted over by the Papist section of the community, and unregretted by the people, who were just then smarting under the enormous subsidy he had imposed. As if to render his execution the more degrading, Lord Hungerford, a nobleman charged with revolting crimes, was beheaded with him.

Two days after Cromwell's execution, a most singular proof was given of the way in which Henry exorcised his dearly beloved prerogative of the supremacy of the Church, in the execution of six individuals, three Roman Catholics and three Reformers. The former were hanged as traitors, because, though they held all the doctrines of Henry himself, they denied that he was head of the Church; and the latter, because they denied his Six Articles. With him, to admit the Papal supremacy was treason; to deny the Papal creed was heresy. Henry was as bigoted a Papist as any that ever existed, except in one little particular—he thought himself the only man who ought to possess power. The six victims of his arbitrary will were drawn to the scaffold on the same hurdles, a Romanist and a Protestant bound together. Barnes and his companions, Garret and Jerome, were the three sent to the flames; Powell, Abel, and Featherstone were the deniers of the supremacy, and were hanged and quartered. A Frenchman witnessing this monstrous sight, exclaimed, "How do people manage to live here! where Papists are hanged, and anti-Papists are burnt!"

The death of Cromwell was quickly followed by the divorce of Anne of Cleves. The queen was ordered to retire to Richmond, on pretence that the plague was in London. Marillac, the French ambassador, writing to Francis I., said that the reason assigned was not the true one, for if there had been the slightest rumour of the plague, nothing would have induced Henry to remain; "for the king is the most timid person in the world in such cases." It was the preliminary step to the divorce, and as soon as she was gone, Henry put in motion all his established machinery for getting rid of wives. The lord chancellor, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Duke of Norfolk, and others of the king's ministers, procured a petition to be got up and presented to His Majesty, stating that the House had doubts of the validity of the king's marriage, and consequently were uneasy as to the succession, and prayed the king to submit the question to Convocation. Of course, Henry could refuse nothing to his faithful peers, and Convocation, accordingly, took the matter into consideration.

There the old stock arguments were again introduced, and the settlement of the question was referred by Convocation to a committee of the two archbishops, four bishops, and eight divines. It is clear that all the topics were prepared for them; for in the short space of two days they had decided the whole question on these grounds:—That there was no proof that the pre-contract between Anne and the Duke of Lorraine had been legally revoked: consequently, the marriage with Henry was null; that Henry, before marriage had demanded the removal of this difficulty—not being removed, that was another evidence that the subsequent marriage was void; that the king had been deceived by exaggerated representations of Anne's beauty, and, consequently, had only consented to the marriage from reasons of state; therefore, as his inward mind did not go with it, it was no legal marriage.

These were reasons which would not be listened to for a moment in any other court of sane men—except a court of the slaves of a despot. As to all the arguments about the pre-contract, the ambassadors of Cleves had offered to remain as hostages till the proofs of the abrogation of that contract were brought; but Henry did not avail himself of the offer, and therefore had no right to plead the non-production of such proofs now that Anne had solemnly sworn, as well as the ambassadors, that the contract was annulled; and as to the nonsense of his inward mind not going with it, and therefore its being no marriage, once admit that precious logic, and it would annul no trivial amount of marriages in general. "But the Convocation," says Lingard, "like the Lords and Commons, were the obsequious slaves of their master." The marriage was declared—like his two former ones with Catherine and Anne Boleyn—to be utterly null and void; and the same judgment of high treason was pronounced on any one who should say or write to the contrary. The queen, being a stranger to the English laws and customs, was not called upon to appear personally, or even by her advocates, before Convocation.

All this being settled, the Duke of Suffolk, the Earl of Southampton, and Wriothesley proceeded to Richmond, to announce the decision to the queen. On the sight of these ministers, and on hearing their communication, that the marriage was annulled by Parliament, the poor woman, supposing that she was going to be treated like Anne Boleyn, fainted, and fell on the floor. On her return to consciousness, the messengers hastened to assure her that there was no cause of alarm; that the king had the kindest and best intentions towards her; that, if she would consent to resign the title of queen, he proposed to give her the title of his sister; to give her precedence of every lady, except the future queen and his daughters, and to endow her with estates to the value of £3,000 per annum.

On hearing all this, Anne's terrors vanished, and she consented with the utmost alacrity to all that the king wished; nay, such was her evident pleasure in it, that the vain king was astonished, and a good deal piqued at it. The tenacity with which Catherine had held him fast—