A.D. 1539. ANNE OF CLEVES. 205 aucy,-was not to be diverted from his determination to marry his master to this daughter of one of the princes of the German confederacy, by vague statements that there was no great praise of her person. In March, 1539, Cromwell wrote to the king:-"Every man praiseth the beauty of the same lady, as well for the face as for the whole body, above all other ladies excellent." In this affair the politic Cromwell was too eager. Nicholas Wotton and Richard Berde were sent to negotiate the marriage with Anne of Cleves. On the 12th of December, the lady Anne was at Calais, about to embark for England. She came from Dusseldorf, with a train of two hundred and sixty-three persons; and was received with the greatest state by Fitz-William, then the earl of Southampton, and four hundred noblemen and gentlemen, in coats of satin damask and velvet. When Henry first met his intended bride, he was "marvellously astonished and abashed." He embraced her, but scarcely spoke twenty words, and did not offer the present he had prepared for her. Sir Anthony Brown, the master of the horse, had gone before the king, and "was never so much dismayed in his life to see the lady so far unlike what was reported." * After Anne's public entry at Greenwich, the king called a Council; and the agents of the duke of Cleves were questioned about covenants, and touching a pre-contract of marriage between the duke of Lorraine's son and the princess. The deputies offered to remain prisoners till ample satisfaction was given upon both points. Anne was called upon to make a protestation that there was no pre-contract; which she readily made; and which Cromwell reported to Henry; who then asked, "Is there none other remedy, but that I must needs, against my will, put my neck in the yoke?" There was no instant remedy; and the marriage ceremony was gone through. The king, whilst waiting for the bride in the presence chamber, said to Cromwell, "My lord, if it were not to satisfy the world and my realm, I would not do that I must do this day, for none earthly thing." In this temper, Henry sulked and lamented: he "should surely never have any more children for the comfort of this realm" if this marriage should continue. A second experiment of the Calais executioner's sword might have been dangerous with a foreign princess. There was a "remedy," of a less serious nature. Anne of Cleves made no resistance to a separation, with an adequate provision. A convocation was called, exactly six months after the marriage, which was empowered to determine its validity. On the 10th of July the marriage was declared invalid; the chief pretence being a doubtful pre-contract; and the unblushing argument, "that the king having married her against his will, he had not given a pure inward and complete consent."+ On the 17th of April, 1540, the fortune of Cromwell seemed at its culminating point, for he was created earl of Essex. On the 12th of April a parliament had been assembled, which Cromwell had addressed as the king's vicegerent, and had carried a bill for a great subsidy to be raised upon the laity and the clergy. The promises that the necessities of the state should be provided for out of the spoils of the church, were violated Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials." Burnet, vol. i., p. 280. without the slightest apology. The odium of this taxation was solely laid upon the vicegerent. The sky began to grow dark for Cromwell at the very moment when parliament was to be prorogued, after the subsidy had been carried. On the 10th of June, he was arrested by the duke of Norfolk, while at the council table. The divorce of Anne of Cleves had not yet been mooted. Had Cromwell imprudently pressed upon Henry to cleave to a Protestant queen? Had Norfolk as resolutely urged upon his master, who now hated heretics more than papists, to consider the charms of his niece, Catherine Howard? There is no solution of these questions, beyond the fact that Cromwell was attainted for treason and heresy, by act of parliament, on the 29th of June. He was charged to have been "the most corrupt traitor and deceiver of the king and the crown that had ever been known in his whole reign." It was alleged that "he, being also a heretic, had dispersed many erroneous books among the king's subjects, particularly some that were contrary to the belief of the sacrament ;" and that when some complained to him of the new preachers-such as Barnes and others--he said that their preaching was good; and that if the king would turn from it, yet he would not turn. And if the king did turn, and all his people with him, he would fight in the field in his own person, with his sword in his hand against him, and all others." That he was an oppressor; that he received bribes; that he had made a great estate for himself by extortion, were no doubt true; but Cranmer said with truth, though not with firmness, "that he thought no king of England had ever such a servant but if he was a traitor, he was glad it was discovered." Cromwell perished by attainder; having in vain written to his remorseless master-who, however, sent him a little money while in prison-"Most gracious prince, I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy." The servant of twelve years was executed on the 28th of July. The divorce or Anne of Cleves had been completed four days before; and on the day when Cromwell was beheaded, king Henry married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard. CHAPTER XVI. THE record of Cromwell's fate by the chronicler of the Greyfriars is followed by this entry: "And the 30th of the same month was Dr. Barnes, Jerome, and Garrard drawn from the Tower into Smithfield, and there burned for their heresies." The heretics were clergymen. The record then continues: "And that same day also was drawn from the Tower, with them, Doctor Powell, with two other priests; and there was a gallows set up at Saint Bartholomew's gate, and there were hanged, headed, and quartered." The traitors were condemned for affirming the legality of the marriage with Catherine of Arragon; one of them named Abel having been her chaplain. These sufferers-three reformers, the A.D. 1541. CATHERINE HOWARD AND CATHERINE PARR. 207 stedfast opponents of the pope; and three devoted adherents to the supremacy of the pope-rode out of the Tower in sorrowful companionship, one of each being placed upon the same hurdle, by express desire of the king, that his impartiality might be duly exhibited. Dr. Cook, the prior of Doncaster, with six others, was executed at Tyburn, on the 4th of August, for denying the royal supremacy. Queen Catherine Howard appeared in public on the 8th of August. When the beautiful girl and her somewhat unwieldy lord were travelling in the north in 1541, Henry solemnly offered thanksgiving for the happiness he found in her society. On their return to London, Cranmer had a private audience at which the king exhibited a paper, which purported to be the examination of a servant of the duchess of Norfolk, setting forth the profligacy of the queen before her marriage, and alleging that her paramour formed one of her regal establishment. In a letter to the king Cranmer gave a touching exhibition of the unhappy woman's despair, which amounted almost to frenzy. The archbishop solemnly assured her "of your grace's mercy extended unto her." Cranmer thought that he should be able to establish a pre-contract with Francis Derham which would have rendered the marriage of Henry invalid. The matter was not clear; and the promise of mercy was a mere breath of idle words. The act of Parliament for the attainder of queen Catherine Howard includes the lady Rochford as an accomplice. Derham, and another man involved in the accusation against the queen, had previously been hanged. The Parliament, desirous that condign punishment should not be delayed, requested the king not to trouble himself personally to give the royal assent to the bill of attainder against the queen and lady Rochfort, but to agree to the same by letters patent. So the letters patent were granted; and the unhappy women were executed on the 12th of February. In the statute there is a remarkable clause, that any single woman of impure life who, before marriage with the king, should not confess the same, should be declared guilty of high treason. Henry wisely rejected the chance of a fatal termination of another union, under this new law of treason, by obtaining the hand of a discreet widow, who had been twice before married. The maiden name of this lady was Catherine Parr. She became the queen of Henry in July, 1543. The minority of James V. of Scotland was a disastrous period for his country. The regency was a constant object of contention between the factious nobles. A fresh element of discord was introduced by the progress of the new opinions in religion. But though the reformers were dreaded for their singleness of purpose, the old ecclesiastical power was completely in the ascendant. The fatal day of Flodden had cut off the most influentia. of the nobles; and those who remained were inferior in wealth, and therefore in authority, to a body which possessed half the land of the kingdom. The spiritual and temporal dominion appeared consolidated when David Beaton was appointed lord privy seal. Patrick Hamilton, the first Scottish reformer, was burnt by this persecuting prelate at St. Andrew's, in 1528. Beaton soon obtained the complete control of the young king. He negotiated his marriage with Mary of Guise, after James had lost his first wife, the princess Magdalen of France. Mary of Guise was a powerful instru ment in confirming the devotion of the Scottish king to the ancient church; and Henry of England in vain endeavoured to tempt him to follow his example in seizing the monastic property. James appears to have set up pretensions to the title of "Defender of the Faith," and to have "added thereto the Christian Faith, as though there should be any other than the Christian Faith; which seemeth to have another meaning in it than one good prince can think of another, much less a friend of his friend, or a nephew of his uncle, if he would show himself to esteem his friendship." Beaton, now a cardinal, had been to Rome in 1541, on a secret embassy. Henry determined to try the effect of a personal interview with his nephew, James; and it was agreed that they should meet at York in the autumn. Thither the king of England went, accompanied by Catherine Howard. But the king of Scotland was induced by the wily cardinal not to hold the appointment. Henry was furious, and determined upon war. He resolved upon renewing the old claim of the English kings to the crown of Scotland; and the privy council directed the archbishop of York to search in "ancient charters and monuments" for a "clearer declaration to the world of his majesty's title to that realm." The duke of Norfolk entered Scotland with a large army in 1542; after the English warden of the east marches had sustained a defeat in Teviotdale. Having accomplished the usual destruction, Norfolk retreated to Berwick, for James was assembling an army in his front. The feudal chiefs gathered round the royal standard on the Borough Muir, and marched onward for the invasion of England. There was division amongst the host. The rebellious Douglasses were on the side of England. Many of the nobles were favourable to the principles of the Reformation, which their king opposed. The catastrophe came, without any real contest between the two armies. James was deserted by his nobles, and, in grief and indignation, returned to Edinburgh. An army of ten thousand men was, however, got together, under lord Maxwell; with which he proposed to enter England by the western marches. Maxwell crossed the border. But the spirit of jealousy destroyed any chance of success, even in burning and plunder; for one who is termed the king's minion, Oliver Sinclair, produced a commission giving him supreme command. The nobles refused to serve under him, and the clans mutinied. A body of English horse came up, who were believed to be the vanguard of the great army; and in a panic the Scots fled, with the loss of a large number of prisoners-some willing prisoners, as it has been asserted. The king gave himself up to despair. He immured himself in his palace of Falkland; would speak to no one; sickened; and sank under a slow fever, heart-broken, on the 14th of December. A week before, his queen had borne him a daughter. The lords who were taken at Solway Moss were first harshly treated by Henry, and then propitiated by indulgences. His first object was to negotiate a marriage between his son, Edward, and the daughter of James V., and thus to effect a natural union between the two countries. His second design was to demand the government of Scotland, as the guardian of the * Letter from Wriothesley to some person in the Scottish Court, 1541. State Papers, vol. v., p. 191. A.D. 1544. WAR WITH SCOTLAND. 209 infant queen. The imprisoned nobles concluded a treaty with him, that they would deliver up Mary, and acknowledge him as their sovereign lord. They were released, and returned to Scotland to carry out their plan. But cardinal Beaton produced a will of James V., appointing the cardinal governor of the realm, and guardian of the queen. The earl of Arran was presumptive heir to the throne; and he possessed sufficient power to obtain the regency, and drive Beaton from his usurped authority, the will being affirmed to be a forgery. But Arran belonged to the reforming party; and the church was as yet too strong to allow a dominion that placed its dignities and possessions in imminent peril. Arran was, after some time, during which Beaton had been imprisoned, gained over to the party of the church; and he became an instrument in the hands of the cardinal and the queenmother. In December, 1543, Beaton became chancellor, and in the following January was constituted the pope's legate à latere in Scotland. He was now supreme in church and state; the friendship and alliance of the excommunicated king of England was renounced; and a treaty which gave Henry some of his demands, was set aside. Scotland was again invaded in May, 1544. The earl of Hertford arrived in the Forth with a powerful fleet, carrying a force of ten thousand men. He demanded that the infant queen should be immediately surrendered. The regent refused; and Hertford, with an additional force from Berwick, marched upon Edinburgh. One of the gates was battered down, and the city was entered and given up to conflagration and plunder. The castle held out; and some who had been willing to sell Scotland to England, appear to have felt that their duty was now to resist pretensions that were enforced by an invading army. Troops under the command of faithful Scots, and of those who had deserted the English cause, were marching upon Edinburgh in considerable numbers; and Hertford, after burning Leith, retired to Berwick. For two years the war was continued with the usual terrible inflictions upon the peaceful cultivators of the soil. On the 5th of September, Hertford moved with his army out of Newcastle. He then took the abbey of Kelso by assault, and razed and defaced that nobie work of the ancient churchmen. From Kelso the main body of the army marched upon Jedburgh; and a detachment of fifteen hundred light horsemen advanced six or seven miles beyond, "brenning and devasting the country." The abbey of Jedburgh, still glorious in ruin, met the same fate as that of Kelso, though the demolition was not so complete. Whilst the earl of Hertford was carrying forward this ignoble work in Scotland, king Henry and his Council were busy in negotiations far more disgraceful than the most barbarous open warfare. Cardinal Beaton was calling forth every means of resisting and annoying Henry; and Henry had commanded Hertford to spare no one in Scotland, who was allied in blood, or associated in friendship, with Beaton. There is a letter from the Privy Council to Hertford, in 1545, informing him that the king had seen some letters from the earl of Cassilis to Mr. Sadler, "one containing an offer for the killing of the cardinal, if his majesty would have it done, and would promise, when it were done, a reward." This letter, which is signed by Wriothesley, the chancellor; the duke of Suffolk; the bishop of Winchester; and four other councillors, proceeds to say that, though Henry P |