in observation to some one who had congratulated him on the King's having walked up and down with his arm around his neck, he said that he would have that neck cut in two next day, if the head belonging to it opposed his will. He not only took back without scruple all that he had given to Wolsey, but he went to live in the houses of his fallen friend and servant, — places which a man of any feeling and kindly remembrance would have avoided. He was very near picking a murderous quarrel with his last wife, Catherine Parr, on one of his theological questions. And how did he conduct himself to the memory of poor Anne Bullen, even on the day of her execution? Hear Lingard, who, though no partizan of his, thinks he must have had some heinous cause of provocation, to induce him to behave so roughly: "Thus fell," says the historian, "this unfortunate Queen within four months after the death of Catherine. To have expressed a doubt of her guilt during the reign of Henry, or of her innocence during that of Elizabeth, would have been deemed a proof of disaffection. The question soon became one of religious feeling, rather than of historical disquisition. Though she had departed no farther than her husband from the ancient doctrine, yet, as her marriage with Henry led to the separation from the communion of Rome, the Catholic writers were eager to condemn, the Protestant to exculpate her memory. In the absence of those documents which alone could enable us to decide with truth, I will only observe that the King must have been impelled by some powerful motive to exercise against her such extraordinary, and, in one supposition, such superfluous vigour. Had his object been (we are sometimes told that it was) to place Jane Seymour by his side on the throne, the divorce of Anne without execution, or the execution without the divorce, would have effected his purpose. But he seemed to have pursued her with insatiable hatred. Not content with taking her life, he made her feel in every way in which a wife and a mother could feel. He stamped on her character the infamy of adultery and incest; he deprived her of the name and right of wife and Queen; and he even bastardized her daughter, though he acknowledged that daughter to be his own. If then he were not assured of her guilt, he must have discovered in her conduct some most heinous cause of provocation, which he never disclosed. He had wept at the death of Catherine (of Arragon); but, as if he sought to display his contempt for the character of Anne, he dressed himself in white on the day of her execution, and was married to Jane Seymour the next morning."* Now, nothing could be more indecent and unmanly than such conduct as this, let Anne have been guilty as she might; and nothing, in such a man, but mortified selflove could account for it. Probably he had discovered, that in some of her moments of levity she had laughed at him. But not to love him would have been offence enough. It would have been the first time he had discovered the possibility of such an impiety towards his barbarous divinityship: and his rage must needs have been unbounded. What Providence may intend by such instruments, is one thing: what we are constituted to think of them, is another; charitably, no doubt, when we think our utmost; but still with a discrimination, for fear of consequences. As to what was thought of Henry in his own time or afterwards, we must not rely on the opinion of Baker, Holinshed, and other servile chroniclers, of mean understanding and time-serving habits, who were the least honourable kind of "waiters upon providence," taking the commonest appearances of adversity and prosperity (so to speak) for vice and virtue, and flattering every arbitrary and conventional opinion, as though it were not to perish in its turn. We are to recollect what More said of him (as above) in his confidential * Lingard, vol. iv. p. 246. (Quarto Edit.) moments and Wolsey in his agony, and Pole and others, when, having got to a safe distance, they returned him. foul language for his own bullying, and blustered out what was thought of him by those who knew him thoroughly. Observe also the manifest allusions in what was written upon the court of those days, by one of the wisest and best of its ornaments, Sir Thomas Wyat, -a friend of Anne Bullen's. The verses are entitled, 'Of a Courtier's Life,' and it may be observed, by the way, that they furnish the second example, in the English language, of the use of the Italian rime terzette, or triplets, in which Dante's poem is written, and which had been first introduced among us by Sir Thomas's friend, the Earl of Surrey (another of Henry's victims): Mine owne John Poynes, sins ye delight to know Of lordly lookes, wrapped within my cloke, It is not, that because I storme or mocke The power of those whom fortune here hath lent Less to esteeme them, than the common sort My Poynes, I cannot frame my tong to fayn, With Venus and with Bacchus their life long, TO WORSHIP THEM LIKE GOD ON EARTH ALONE, (Here was a sigh perhaps to the memory of his poor friend Anne): I cannot wrest the law to fyll the coffer With innocent blood to feed myselfe fat, And do most hurt where that most help I offer I am not he that can allow the state Of hye Cæsar, and damn Cato to die; (an allusion probably to Sir Thomas More). ; Affirm that favill (fable-lying) hathe a goodly grace Zeale of justice, and change in time and place; This is the cause that I could never yet Hang on their sleeves, that weigh, as thou maist see, Towards the conclusion, he says he does not spend his time among those who have their wits taken away with Flanders cheer and "beastliness :" Nor I am not, where truth is given in prey Among the poems of Surrey, is a sonnet in reproach of Sardanapalus,' which probably came to the knowledge of Henry, and may have been intended to do so. 66 It was in Whitehall that Henry made his ill-assorted marriage with Anne Bullen; Dr. Lingard says in a garret;" Stowe says in the royal "closet." It is likely enough that the ceremony was hurried and sudden fit of will, perhaps, during his wine; and if the closet was not ready, the garret was. The clergyman who officiated was shortly afterwards made a bishop. ; a Henry died in Whitehall; so fat, that he was lifted in and out his chamber and sitting-room by means of machinery. He was "somewhat gross, or, as we tearme it, bourlie," says time-serving Holinshed.* "He laboured under the burden of an extreme fat and unwieldy body," says noble Herbert of Cherbury. † "The king," says Lingard, "had long indulged without restraint in the pleasures of the table. At last he grew so enormously corpulent, that he could neither support the weight of his own body, nor remove without the aid of machinery into the different apartments of his palace. Even the fatigue of subscribing his name to the writings which required his signature, was more than he could bear; and to relieve him from this duty, three commissioners were appointed, of whom two had authority to apply to the paper a dry stamp, bearing the letters of the king's name, and the third to draw a pen furnished with ink over the blank impression. An inveterate ulcer in the thigh, which had more than once threatened his life, and which now seemed to baffle all the skill of the surgeons, added to the irascibility of his temper."‡ * Vol. iii. p. 862. Edit. 1808. † Folio edit. Ut supra, p. 347. Henry had been afflicted with this ulcer a long while. He was in danger from it during his marriage with Anne Bullen. It should be allowed him among his excuses of temperament; but then it should also have made him more considerate towards his wives. It |