Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/428

408 laws of economic and social moment. At length, on the 1st of July, in a crowded house, composed, of fourteen bishops, eighteen abbots, and thirty-nine lay peers, a bill was read a first time of such importance that I must quote at length its own most noticeable words.

The preamble commenced with reciting those provisions of the late Acts which were no longer to remain in force. It then proceeded, in the form of an address to the King, to adopt and endorse the divorce and the execution. 'Albeit,' it ran, 'most dread Sovereign Lord, that these Acts were made, as it was then thought, upon a pure, perfect, and clear foundation; your Majesty's nobles and commons, thinking the said marriage then had between your Highness and the Lady Anne in their consciences to have been pure, sincere, perfect, and good, and so was reputed and taken in the realm; [yet] now of late God, of his infinite goodness, from whom no secret things can be hid, hath caused to be brought to light evident and open knowledge of certain just, true, and lawful impediments, unknown at the making of the said Acts; and since that time confessed by the Lady Anne, before the Most Reverend Father in God, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, sitting judicially for the same; by the which it plainly appeareth that the said marriage was never good, nor consonant to the laws, but utterly void and of none effect; by reason whereof your Highness was and is lawfully divorced from the bonds of the said marriage in the life of the said Lady Anne: