CHAPTER THE FIFTH. HENRY THE EIGHTH (CONCLUDED).

HOUGH Henry the Eighth had already married Anne Boleyn, the little affair of the divorce from Catherine had not been quite settled, and, as it was just possible that his two wives might clash, he resolved to hurry on his legal separation from her, whom we may call, by way of distinction, the "old original." Cranmer, who was a very spaniel in his sneaking subservience to his royal master, was instantly set on to worry, as a cur worries a cat, the unhappy Catherine. A Court was immediately constituted, under the presidentship of Cranmer, to decide on the legality of her marriage, and the lady was cited to appear; but she did not attend, and, though summoned by her judges fifteen times, the more they kept on calling the more she kept on not coming. Difficult as it is in general to anticipate what a judicial decision will be, the judgment in the case of the King ex parte Anne Boleyn versus Catherine of Aragon might be foreseen very easily. The marriage was, of course, pronounced illegal, and Cranmer wrote to Henry on the 12th of May, 1533, to say that he had just had the pleasure of pronouncing the "old lady" vere et manifesté contumax. The Court declared she had never been married to Henry, but was the widow of the Prince of Wales, to whose title she must in future restrict herself. When the news was brought to her, she exclaimed indignantly, "Not married to the king? Marry come up, indeed!" and the wretchedness of the pun speaks volumes for the misery to which she had been reduced by her enemies.

Henry, wishing to make the work complete, and aware that finis coronat opus, determined that a coronation should be the finishing touch of his recent matrimonial manoeuvring. The ceremony was performed with great pomp on the 1st of June, 1533, when, though the regular crown was used, the weak head of Anne was too feeble to bear it, and it was replaced by a smaller diadem, which had been purposely prepared as a substitute. When Clement heard of what had been passing in England, he sent forth a bull, expecting that Henry would be immediately cowed by it. The pontiff ordered the monarch to take back his original wife, but the latter refused to listen to any motion for returns, observing that those who are at Rome may do as Rome does, but that he should entirely repudiate the papal jurisdiction. A Parliament which was held soon after seconded the sovereign's views, and, by way of paying off the pope, he was deprived of all fees, rights, and privileges which he had hitherto enjoyed as head of the Church of England. The ecclesiastical party in England had been subservient to the whim of Henry, and had assisted in nullifying its own supremacy over the State by cutting off its own head; so that the experiment of amputating one's own nose to be revenged upon one's face was somewhat more than realised.

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On the 7th of September, 1533, Anne Boleyn became the mother of a little girl, who was named Elizabeth, and the courtiers of the day already offered to lay heavy bets on the future greatness of Betsy. The king, who had buoyed himself up with the hopes of a boy, was a little angry at the unfavourable issue, and he vented his ill-humour in further insults towards the unfortunate Catherine. Everyone who continued, either by design or accident, to call her queen was thrown into prison, and even a slip of the tongue, occasioned by absence of mind, was followed by absence of body, for the luckless offender was dragged off to gaol, from the bosom or his family.

Henry having lopped off Catherine as a branch of the royal tree, and grafted Anne Boleyn on the trunk, began to think about the successional crops, in the treatment of which he was assisted by a servile Parliament. Little Mary, Catherine's daughter, was rooted out like a worthless marigold, and Elizabeth was declared to be the rising flower of the royal family. Among the atrocities committed by Parliament on account of its miserable subserviency to the will of the king, was the bill of attainder of high treason, passed against a female fanatic called the Maid of Kent, and some of her accomplices. This person, whose name was Elizabeth Barton, and who resided at Aldington in Kent, was subject to hysterical fits, as well as to talking like a fool, which in those days—as in these—was often mistaken for a symptom of superior sagacity. Extremes are said to meet, and the mental imbecility of Miss E. Barton was thought by many to border on an amount of wisdom which only inspiration could impart, and the semi-natural got credit for the possession of supernatural attributes. Some of her idiotic and incoherent talk having been heard by her ignorant companions, was declared by them to be inspired, because it was something they did not understand; and as knavery is always ready to turn to profit the idea that folly sets on foot, persons were soon found willing to take the Maid of Kent under their patronage for political purposes.

Richard Maister or Masters, the vicar of the place, whom Hume calls "a designing fellow" behind his back, whatever the historian might have said to the reverend gentleman's face, was the first to take an interest in Elizabeth Barton, and introduced her to public notice as a sort of mesmeric prodigy; in which capacity she brought out a bundle of Sybiline leaves, with the intention, probably, of making a regular business of telling fortunes. Anxious for the recommendation of being able to announce herself as "Prophetess in Ordinary to the King," Miss Barton began predicting all sorts of things with reference to Henry; but unfortunately she had not the tact to make his majesty the subject of happy auguries. She hoped, perhaps, that if she went to work boldly, he would buy her off; for it has sometimes proved a good speculation to establish a nuisance in a respectable neighbourhood, which will often pay the annoyance to remove itself to some other locality. Miss Burton did not, however, manage so well, for instead of getting literally bought up, she was destined to be put down very speedily. Making a bold bid for royal patronage, she prophesied that if Henry put away Catherine he would die a violent death within seven months; and Elizabeth Barton thus made sure that if the king declined treating with her for the stoppage of her mouth, the ex-queen would at least make her some compliment in return for her complimentary prophecy. Henry, who had no objection to her dealing out death either wholesale, retail, or even for exportation, to some of his popish enemies abroad, could not allow such a liberty to be taken with his own name; and accordingly the fortuneteller, who professed to hold consultation with the stars, was brought up before the Star Chamber. She soon found in the president a Great Bear more terrible than the Ursa Major to whom she had been accustomed; and perceiving by the rough manner of the assembled stars of the Star Chamber that theirs was anything but a Milky Way, she was glad to own herself an impostor, for she saw that it would have been useless to plead not guilty before judges who, according to her own conviction, were resolved on convicting her. She was committed to prison on her own confession; and as the seven months within which Henry would have become due, according to her prediction of his death, had expired, it was to be hoped that he, at least, would have been satisfied without subjecting Miss Barton to further punishment. He however seemed to have become positively irritated at the falsehood of her prophecy; and because he had not died in the proper course, he subjected the maid and six accomplices to a bill of attainder of treason, in pursuance of which they were all executed on the 21st of April, 1534, at Tyburn.

We will not dwell on the disgusting subject of Henry's cruelties towards such excellent men as Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, both of whom fell victims to the ferocity of their royal master. Their conscientious refusal to recognise Henry as the head of the Church had excited his rage, which increased to the height of savageness when the pope offered to send to poor Fisher the hat of a cardinal. The king at first attempted to put a prohibition on the importation of all hats; but anticipating that the chapeau intended for Fisher might be smuggled into England, Henry contented himself with the barbarous joke, that the hat would be useless without a head to wear it on. The monarch soon carried out his threat, and then turned his fury upon the unfortunate Sir Thomas More, who had retired into private life in the hope of escaping Henry's tyranny. This, however, was impossible; for though conscience must often have whispered "Can't you leave the man alone?" some evil genius kept ever and anon murmuring the words, "At him again," into the ears of the despot.

Among the petty persecutions to which More was exposed, was the taking away of all writing implements from the good old man, who, deprived of pens and ink, took a coal as a substitute. He at length learned to write with a piece of Wallsend as rapidly as he could use a pen, and, with a coalscuttle for an inkstand, he never wanted the material to keep alive the fire of his genius. Considering how famous he was for the use of "words that burn," we do not see how he could have found a better instrument than a piece of coal for transcribing his sentiments. A pretext was soon found for taking the life of this excellent man, whose facetious bearing at his own execution shall not mislead us into unseemly levity in alluding to it. He made jokes upon the scaffold; but we must admit that they are of so sad and melancholy a description, as to be scarcely considered inappropriate to his very serious position. So much has been said of the wit of More, that we may perhaps be excused for hazarding a word or two concerning it. Judging by some of the bon mots that have been preserved, they seem to us hardly worth the expense of their keep; for as horses are said to have eaten off their own heads, so the witticisms of More appear in many instances to have consumed all their own point, or, at all events, the rust of ages has a good deal dimmed their brilliancy. His wife had but little respect for his waggery, and would sometimes ask him "how he could play the fool in a close, filthy prison?" and she evidently thought it was carrying a joke a little too far, when she found her husband would not "drop it" even in the Tower. His allusion to his being obliged to write with coals instead of pens, which caused him to say that "he was but a wreck of his former self, and had better be scuttled at once," seems to us equally deficient in point and dignity. He was executed on the 6th of July, 1535, after a quantity of badinage with the headsman, which makes us regret, for the sake of More, that any reporters were allowed to be present.

Henry had now come to open war with the Church of Rome, and, under the advice of Cromwell, he determined to make a profit as well as a pleasure of the recent rupture.

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While the pope let loose his bulls upon the king, the latter turned out his bull-dogs, in the shape of emissaries, empowered to pillage the rich monasteries in England. Cromwell acted as whipper-in to this cruel sport, and hounded on the servile dogs at his command, in pursuit of those monastic herds, which had been luxuriating in the rich pastures the church had hitherto afforded.

It is true that many impositions on the public were discovered by the emissaries of Henry; but one fault does not justify another, and the frauds of the monks afforded no excuse for the robbery committed by the monarch. We may feel indignant at the showman who exhibits on his delusive canvas "more, much more," than his caravan can hold, but we have no right to appropriate to ourselves the whole of his stock because he has been guilty of trickery. Henry did not pocket the whole of the proceeds thus unscrupulously obtained, but gave a few slices to the church, by creating half-a-dozen new bishoprics and establishing a professorship of two in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and he threw them a few crumbs of the good things he had seized, more with the hope of stopping the mouths than satisfying the appetites of the hungry claimants.

Poor Catherine of Aragon died at Kimbolton on the 8th of January, 1536, after writing a letter to the king, which it is said extracted one tear from the sovereign's heart—a circumstance which must have raised hopes at the time, that the process of extracting blood from a stone might not be found impossible.

The year 1536 was marked by a voyage of discovery under the patronage of the king, for the purpose of sending some emigrants on a wild-goose chase to the north-west coast of America. Thirty of the adventurers were gentlemen from the Temple and Chancery Lane, who, thinking anything better than nothing, had probably dashed their wigs to the ground, and thrown themselves on the mercy of that motion of course which the sea was certain to supply them with. It is said, though we know not with how much truth, that the learned wanderers being short of provisions, made each other their prey—a result to be expected when clients were not accessible. It is added that none of the party returned but a learned gentleman of the name of Ruts, who was so changed that his father and mother did not know him until he pointed to a wart which had not been washed away by the water.

Henry continued his hostility to the pope, absurdly declaring that he would not be bullied, and in defiance of the papal see caused Anne Boleyn, who is said to have exulted over the death of Catherine, to drain the cup of sorrow, or rather to lap it up: for she one day found Jane Seymour, a maid of honour, sitting on the knee of Henry. It was in vain that the monarch and his new favourite endeavoured to laugh the matter off as a mere lapsus, for Anne declared that the king must have begun to nurse a new passion.

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As they who are convicted of a fault themselves are anxious to pick holes in the conduct of others, Henry having been proved to see more in Seymour than became him as a married man, commenced harbouring suspicions against Anne Boleyn. On May-day, 1536, there had been a royal party at Greenwich—in fact, a regular fair—when suddenly, in the midst of the sports, Henry started up exceedingly indignant at something he had witnessed. The queen did the same, and her husband pretended that he had seen her either winking at one Norris, a groom, or clown to the ring, in which the jousts were going forward, or making signals to Mark Smeaton, a musician in the clerical orchestra. Several persons were seized at once, and sent to the Tower, including poor Smeaton, the member of the band who was accused of acting in concert with men of higher note, to whom he was charged with playing second fiddle.

Poor Anne was taken to the Tower, where a number of scandalous old women were sent about her to talk her into admissions against herself, and to talk her out of anything that they could manage to extract from her simplicity. She wrote what may justly be called "a very pretty letter" to the king, dated the 6th of May, 1536; but if any answer was received it must have come from Echo, who is the general respondent to all communications which receive no attention from the parties to whom they are directed. On the 12th of the same month Norris, Weston, Brereton, and Smeaton were tried and executed, all denying their guilt but the musician, who changed his key note a little before he died, and modulated off from a fortissimo declaration of innocence to a most pianissimo confession. There is every reason to believe that this composition of Smeaton was a piece of thorough base, which is only to be accounted for on the score of treachery.

On the 15th of May, a building as trumpery as the charge against her having been knocked together in the Tower, Anne Boleyn was brought up for trial before a court of twenty-six barons, one of whom was her own father, while her uncle the Duke of Norfolk sat as president. It would be imagined that a jury comprising two relatives would have given a positive advantage to Anne; but her uncle being a rogue, and her father a fool, the former was too venal, and the latter too timid, to be of any use to her. She pleaded her own cause with such earnestness, that everyone who heard how she had acquitted herself, thought that her judges must have acquitted her. They, however, found her guilty, to the intense bewilderment of the Lord Mayor, who had heard her defence, and could only go about exclaiming, "Well, I never! did you ever?" for the remainder of his existence.

It would seem that there was something in the mere prospect of the axe, which imparted its sharpness to the intellects of those upon whose heads the instrument was on the point of falling. We have already alluded to the mots of More when he was positively moribund, and the quips of the queen became very numerous and sparkling as the prospect of the scaffold opened out to her. She made a sad joke upon the little span of her own neck—in reference, no doubt, to the small span of human existence—and paid a compliment to foreign talent by requesting that she might have the benefit of the services of that sharp blade that had just come from Calais—alluding to the recent arrival of the French executioner.

Henry was on a hunting party in Epping Forest, and was breakfasting on Epping sausages, when the execution took place, the announcement of which he had ordered should be made to him by the firing of a gun as a distant signal. During the déjeûner Henry kept continually exclaiming "hush," and entreating "silence," with all the energy of an usher in a court of law, until a loud bang boomed over the breakfast-table. Henry instantly started up, exclaiming, "Ha, ha! 'tis done!" and ordering the dogs to be let slip while his breakfast-cup was still at his lip, he resumed his sport with even more than his wonted gaiety. On the very next day, he was married to Jane Seymour, there having been a very short lapse of time since she was discovered on the lap of Henry.

A Parliament having been speedily assembled, that servile body passed every act that Henry desired, and began by cancelling, in one batch, the entire issue of his former marriages. The princesses Mary and Elizabeth were declared illegitimate, while the condemnation of Anne Boleyn was legalised by statute; a measure which was a little tardy, considering that she had already lost her head in pursuance, or rather in anticipation of the confirmation of her sentence.

The destruction of monasteries was now carried on with a most brutal rapacity, and a mixture of barbarism and barbarity that disgusted a great portion of the community. Not satisfied with robbing the inmates of the monasteries, Henry's myrmidons destroyed the buildings themselves with the most wanton violence, and it was remarked that they were never contented with emptying a cellar of all its wine, but must always remain to take shots at the bottles. This unprovoked and tasteless taste for mere mischief roused the discontent of the people in many places, and the Lincolnshire fens assumed the offensive with one Mackrel, an odd fish, as the leader of the insurgents. This Mackrel soon got himself into a sad pickle, for he was executed at a very early period of the insurrectionary movement.

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On the 12th of October, 1537, her majesty Queen Seymour gave birth to a son, an event which made Henry as happy as a king, or at least as happy as such a king, with such a conscience as Henry carried about with him, could possibly make himself. He dandled the royal infant in his arms with all a parent's pride, and sang snatches of nursery ballads in the ear of the baby. The child was called Edward, which Henry fondly translated into Teddy Peddy; and three little coronets—the size of first caps—were instantly made for the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cornwall, and the Earl of Chester, for such was the tria juncta in uno formed by the birth of the illustrious little stranger. The queen died in twelve days after giving birth to an heir; but this circumstance did not seem to affect the spirits of Henry, who perhaps felt that there was one more wife out of the way, without the trouble and expense of getting rid of her.

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The arbitrary monarch now experienced a good deal of trouble from one Pole, whom the tyrant made several attempts to bring to the scaffold. This Pole was remarkable for standing erect, and for his firmness, after once taking his ground, in keeping his position.

He was the son of Sir Richard Pole and Margaret Countess of Salisbury, for the first Pole was a kind of leaping Pole, with a strong tendency to raise not only himself, but all those that belonged to him. Reginald, for such was the name of the Pole that had stirred up the rage of Henry, had received from the pope a cardinal's hat, with the assurance that such a Pole ought not to be bare, but deserved the most honourable covering. Being himself resident abroad, he was as much out of the English tyrant's power as if he had been the old original North Pole, of whom we have all heard; but his brothers and relatives at home were seized upon, and either executed or burnt like so much firewood. Parliament aided the despotism of the king, by passing a suicidal act, declaring that a royal proclamation should have the force of law; a resolution equivalent to an act of self-destruction; for if the king could do everything by himself, there was, of course, no occasion for Lords and Commons to help him in the task of government.

Henry having become disembarrassed of no less than three wives, began to think so little of the encumbrance of matrimony, that he contemplated a fourth engagement. It was indeed natural enough that he should be fearless of that which might make bolder men afraid, for he had given evidence of a facility in making an escape, and he consequently risked little by braving danger. He advertised, as it were, for a wife, in all the markets of European royalty, and he continued popping a series of questions; but his—to revive a mot (we cannot call it a bon mot) of the period—was of all pops the most unpopular. "Nobody will have me, by Jingo," he would sometimes mutter to himself; and at length the wily Cromwell proposed to act as matrimonial agent to his majesty.

The Duchess Dowager of Milan was treated with for her hand, but she wrote back to say that if she had a couple of heads, she might listen to Henry's proposal, for he would certainly cut off one, and it would be awkward not having another head to fall back upon. He next sent an offer to the Duchess of Guise, saying that wedlock, coming to him in such a Guise, would be the height of happiness; but this lady politely excused herself, on the ground of a "previous engagement." Somewhat hurt by these repeated rebuffs, he requested Francis the king of France to "trot out" his two sisters for Henry to take his choice; but Frank said frankly that he would have nothing to do with the humiliating business. We have it on the authority of a letter among Cromwell's correspondence, that Henry was rather taken with Madame de Montreuil, a French lady, who having come from France to Scotland in the suite of Magdalen, first queen of James the Fifth of Scotland, was now on her way back again. Henry appears to have gone to Dover for the purpose of meeting her on the pier or the parade; but he must have found her passé as he surveyed her through his glass, for nothing came of their meeting. The lady lingered in England to give him every chance, but Henry could only shake his head, observing "No! by Jove it won't do;" and Madame de Montreuil, pitying his want of taste, was compelled to return to her own country.

At length Cromwell came running one morning to Henry, exclaiming, "I think I've found something to suit your majesty at last," and placed in the king's hand the card of "Anne, second daughter of John Duke of Cleves, one of the princes of the Germanic Confederacy." Henry was not possibly averse to the match, but was wavering, when Cromwell produced a lovely portrait as that of the candidate for the hand of the English sovereign. The king examined the picture with the eye of a connoisseur, and being pleased with the sample, ordered the lot to be sent over to him with as little delay as possible. The picture was by Holbein, who had utterly concealed the plain fact, and bestowed upon the German princess such handsome treatment, that he had imparted the lustre of the brilliant to an object which was as inferior to the copy, as German paste is worthless by the side of the diamond. Henry hastened, on her arrival in England, to compare the original with the picture; and having disguised himself, sent forward Sir Anthony Brown to say that a gentleman was coming on to see her, with a new year's present. Poor Brown was fearfully taken aback at seeing a lady so thoroughly laide as Anne of Cleves, but gave no opinion to his royal master. * Henry went tripping into the apartment with all the ardour of a youthful lover; but the first glance was enough, and he shrunk back, muttering to himself, that the princess instead of looking like the picture of Holbein, reminded him rather of the picture of misery. He nevertheless summoned up all his resolution to give her a kiss; but it was clear to all who witnessed the scene, that Henry repented a bargain in which he found himself mixed up with such a decidedly ugly customer. After a few minutes passed in small-talk—the smallness of which limited it to twenty words—Henry went away in deep dudgeon, but he made up his mind to the marriage, lest he might be involved with any of the German powers in an action for a breach of promise.

The evening before the nuptials were solemnised, Henry sat with Cromwell, bewailing—probably over some nocturnal grog—the "alarming sacrifice," that had become unavoidable. The statesman, who had recommended the match, tried hard to soften down some of the most repulsive features of Anne; but Henry coarsely described her as "a great Flanders mare," and Holbein as a "humbug" for having so grossly flattered such a coarse clumsy animal. "By my troth," he exclaimed—for his indignation rose as the liquor in his glass became lower—"you got me into this scrape and you must get me out of it. I shall expect you to find some means of abating for me this frightful nuisance."

Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, the head of the popish party in the church, was, of course, an opponent of Cromwell, and took advantage of the recent matrimonial mistake, to damage him still further in the opinion of his royal master. Gardiner flattered himself that the train had been already laid, and that the awfully bad match which Cromwell himself had provided, would certainly hasten the explosion that there was good reason to anticipate. The wily Bishop of Winchester introduced Catherine Howard, the lovely niece of his friend the Duke of Norfolk, to the king, who was instantly struck by her beauty, and said warmly, "Ha! the man who has discovered this charming Kate knows how to cater for his sovereign." *

* Strype—who certainly deserves a hundred stripes for
recording such an atrocity.

Cromwell's doom was now sealed, and the Duke of Norfolk, on the 10th of June, 1540, had the luxury of taking into custody his political antagonist. A charge of having one day pulled out a dagger, and declared he would stick to the cause of the Reformation, even against the king, was speedily got up, and, by the 28th of July, he was disposed of, at Tower Hill, in the customary manner. While in prison, he wrote a pitiful letter to Henry, with the word "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy!" reiterated thrice as a P.S.; the meanness and tautology of which evinced a poverty in the spirit as well as in the letter.

The king had now determined to marry Catherine Howard, but the old difficulty—another wife living—stood in the way of the desired arrangement. Having consulted his attorney, it was proposed to search for some previous marriage contract in which Anne of Cleves had been concerned; and as everybody is engaged, on an average, at least half-a-dozen times before being married once, there would have appeared little difficulty in accomplishing Henry's wishes.

The excessive ugliness of Anne of Cleves, however, placed great obstacles in the way, for she had clearly been a drug in the matrimonial market, and neither by hook nor by crook could an old offer for her be fished up until something of the kind from the young Prince of Lorraine—entered into before he was old enough to know better—was happily hit upon. A commission was at once issued, the matter tried, and of course decided in Henry's favour. By way of strengthening the king's case, it was urged by his learned counsel that he had married against his will, and therefore ought to be released from his contract. The Court, however, held that the establishment of such a principle would be almost equivalent to the passing of a general divorce act for half the couples in Christendom, and on that point at least the rule for a new trial of Henry's luck was refused accordingly. His suit for a nullification of his contract with Anne of Cleves succeeded on the other point, and both parties were equally gratified by the result which set them both at liberty. The lady felt she had much rather lose her husband's hand than her own head, and Henry began to think he might be wearing out the axe upon his wives before he had half done with it, and if he could find any other means for severing the marriage tie he much preferred doing so. He offered to make her his sister, with three thousand a year, an arrangement with which she expressed herself perfectly satisfied. Both parties were permitted to enter into wedlock again, if they pleased, and the king of course availed himself of the option with his accustomed celerity. The Bill was brought into Parliament on the 12th of July, and the 8th of August found Catherine Howard already publicly acknowledged as the fifth Mrs. Henry Tudor.

It had now become the boast of Henry that he held the balance with an even hand between the Catholics and the Reformers; but his impartiality was shown in a manner most inconvenient to both of them. He used to deal out what he called equal justice to both, by submitting a few on each side of the question to equal cruelty. He would forward three Catholics at a time to Smithfield, to be hanged as traitors, and by the same hurdle he would send three Lutherans to be burned as heretics.

As we are unwilling to turn our history into a Newgate Calendar, for the sake of recording the atrocities of a sanguinary king, we shall, in our account of the remainder of this odious reign, preserve the heads, and avoid the executions. The murder of the Countess of Salisbury, an old woman upwards of seventy, and the mother of Cardinal Pole, stands out perhaps from some other sanguinary deeds by its peculiar atrocity. The venerable lady, at the last moment, defied the executioner to come on, and a combat of the fiercest character took place upon the scaffold.

Henry, who had frequently tried to inoculate his nephew, James the Fifth of Scotland, with his own predatory propensities, became at length angry that the latter declined turning thief in the name of religion, and plundering the church under the pretext of simply reforming it. A conference had been agreed upon between the English and the Scotch kings; but the latter, at the instigation of Cardinal Beaton, whose olfactory nerves had detected a rat, broke his appointment with his imperious uncle. This ungentlemanly proceeding gave such offence to the English tyrant, that he threatened, with an awful oath, to let the weight of old Henry be felt in Scotland; and the expression that So-and-So purposes "playing old Harry," no doubt took its rise from the incident to whicn we have alluded.

The Duke of Norfolk was sent, as a low fellow of that period hath it, "to take the shine out of that Jem," who was completely defeated at Solway Moss, through his own troops turning their backs—not upon him, as it is said by some, but upon the enemy. James was so overwhelmed with shame and despair, that he drew his helmet over his eyes, assumed a stoop—a sure sign that he was stupefied—and never raised his head again, but fell a victim to that very vulgar malady, a low fever. He left his kingdom to his daughter, then only eight days old, who came to the throne on the ninth; but as she was not a nine days' wonder, she evinced no miraculous aptitude for the task of government.

Henry had in the meantime been made very uncomfortable by the rumours that his wife, familiarly known as Miss Kate Howard, had not been acting properly. When the king heard the news, he was deeply affected, for he was one of those persons who make up, in feeling for themselves, for their deficiency of feeling with regard to others. He sat down and had a good crocodilian cry, which irrigated his hands to such an extent that he was compelled to wring them to get them dry again. Cranmer and Norfolk were appointed to examine into the truth of the charges against the queen, who, when her guilt was proved beyond doubt, made a virtue of necessity—the only virtue of which she could boast—by boldly confessing it.

This unfortunate young woman had been promised a pardon on condition of her revealing the extent of her transgression; but when she had admitted not only a great deal she had done, but had thrown into the bargain a great deal she had never done at all, Henry, regardless of his pledge, thought that the best way to get rid of an annoyance was to break the neck of it. Catherine Howard was accordingly beheaded at the Tower, on the 15th of February, 1542, and finding her confession had done her no good, she retracted the greater part of it. "It was not to be supposed," says Mullins, "that a person who had shown himself so double as Henry, could long remain single," and he accordingly threw himself once more upon the matrimonial market. There he was of course no longer at a premium, and he was pretty soon at Parr; and it is a strange fact that he would have commanded a better price had it been certain that he could be had without the coupon, which had distinguished the settling days of two of the wives of this shocking bad sovereign. Catherine Parr was a corpulent old lady, fortified by at least forty summers, but she readily listened to the proposals of Henry. Henry entered her at once on his share or chère list, and in allusion to her bulk, placed opposite to her name the words "commands a very heavy figure." She was the widow of Neville, Lord Latimer; but, thought Henry, "What care I, if she has even killed her man?—it will not be the first time that I shall have killed my woman."

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The English king courted her at once, and made much of her; but to have made more of her than there really was, would have been rather difficult. He married her on the 10th of July, 1543, and it is a curious fact that she outlived him, which we can only attribute to the lady partaking the longevity of her namesake old Parr, for there must have been a vigorous adhesion to life in any one who could marry and survive the wife-exterminating tyrant. For some time she humoured Henry, but having a touch of Lutherism, she began meddling with matters of Church and State, which embroiled her with a bishop or two, who ran and told the king what she had been impudent enough to talk about. "Marry come up!" roared Henry, in allusion to his having elevated Catherine Parr by marrying her; "so you are a doctor, are you, Kate?" But having had a hint that her mixing in politics was not agreeable, she only replied, meekly, "No, no, your Kate is no caitiff." This speech had the effect of diverting Henry's wrath, almost as much as it will divert posterity by its delightful quaintness. Gardiner, who had justified his name—allowing of course for the difference of spelling—by sowing the seeds of dissension between the king and queen, had arranged with the sovereign that her majesty was to be seized next morning by forty guards, headed by Chancellor Wriothesley. This person was not a little astonished at finding himself called "an arrant knave, a foole, and a beastlie foole," * by the king, when he came to execute his mission. He was, in fact, dismissed with an entire earful of fleas, of which Henry had always an abundance on hand for unwelcome visitors.

* Lord Herbert.

Henry had now become, literally, the greatest monarch that ever sat upon the throne, for he had increased awfully in size, and become irritable at the same time, so that the task of getting round him was, in every sense, extremely difficult. Had there been a prize monarch show, open to the whole world, he must have carried off the palm, for he was too fat to lie down, lest no power should be able to get him up again. It was true he had been born to greatness, but he also had greatness thrust upon him—some say by over-feeding—to such an extent that he was obliged to be wheeled about, on account of his very unwieldiness. It might haye been supposed that Henry would have begun to soften under all these circumstances; but he exhibited no tendency to melt, for he continued his cruelties in burning those whom he chose to denounce as heretics. It is disgraceful to the ecclesiastical character of the age, that the church party that happened to be in power sanctioned the cruelties practised towards the party that happened to be out, and it was said, at the time, that the fires at Smith-field were always being stirred by some high clerical dignitary, who might be considered the "holy poker" of the period.

The prospect of a speedy vacancy on the throne created a rush of candidates, who commenced literally cutting each others' throats—a desperate game, in which the Howards and Hertfords made themselves very conspicuous. Young Howard, Earl of Surrey, used to sneer at Hertford, who had been recently ennobled, as a "new man," and Hertford would retort unfeelingly upon Howard's father, the Duke of Norfolk, by saying "it was better to be a new man than an old sinner." The Norfolk family got the worst of it, for Norfolk and Suffolk were taken to the Tower on the 12th of December, 1546, on the frivolous charge of having quartered with their own arms the arms of Edward the Confessor. Had they gone so far as to use these arms upon a seal, it ought not to have sealed their doom, nor stamped them as traitors; but the frivolousness of the charge marks the tyrannical character of the period. Commissioners were sent to their country seat at Kuming Hall, to ransack the drawers, pillage the plate chest, and send the proceeds to the king; but the people intrusted with the job either found or pretended to find scarcely anything. They wrote to the king, telling him that the jewels were all either sold or in pawn; but as the tickets never came to hand, it is possible that the searchers were practising a sort of duplicate rascality. They forwarded to the king a box of beads and buttons; but though every bead was glass, Henry does not appear to have seen through it. Surrey was tried at Guildhall for having quartered the royal arms with his own, and on his defence he observed, "By my troth, mine enemies will not allow me any quarter whatever." He was found guilty, of course, and beheaded on the 19th of January, 1547, and his father's execution had been set down on the peremptory paper for the 28th of the same month, when the proceedings were suddenly stayed just before execution, by the death of Henry.

The tyrant, who had been getting physically as well as morally worse and worse, clung to life with that desperate tenacity that is a sure sign of there being good reason for dreading death in those among whom, after a certain age, such a cowardly fear is manifest. He would often impiously threaten that "he would outlive all the younger people about him yet;" and though his time was evidently not far off, he would not bear to be told of his true condition. Instead of repenting of his past life, he devoted the wretched remnant of his existence to doing all the mischief he could, and venting his malice to the fullest extent that his now failing strength would admit of. Nobody dared muster resolution to tell the unhappy old brute that he must very speedily die, until Sir Anthony Denny, a knight who shared our friend Drummond's * aversion to humbug of any description, boldly told old Harry that he was on the point of visiting his redoubtable namesake.

* "Drummond is so averse to humbug of any description."—
Vide Tijou.

Finding all chance of escape cut off, he began confessing his sins; but it was rather too late, for, had his repentance been sincere, the catalogue of his crimes was far too voluminous to allow of his getting through one half of it before his dissolution. He had been in the habit of adjourning that court of conscience existing in his as well as in every man's breast, and he always postponed it sine die; but when the time to die actually came, or the die was really cast, it was rather late to move for a new trial. Henry died on the 29th of January, 1547, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, the thirty-eighth of his reign, and at least the forty-first of his selfishness, baseness and brutality.

He had been married six times, having divorced two of his wives, beheaded two more, and left one a widow. This leaves one more—Jane Seymour—still unaccounted for; and indeed her death was the most wonderful of all, because it was natural. He left behind him three children: but he did not care a pin's head, or even—to name an article of smaller importance to him—a wife's head, for any one of them. Such a very bad man was sure to be a very bad father, and he had declared two of his children illegitimate, for it was the delight of this monster to depreciate his own offspring in the eyes of the world as much as possible. His religious reforms, however wholesome in their results, were brutal in their execution and base in their origin. His insincerity may be gathered from the fact that he appointed masses to be said for his own soul, though he had burnt many persons for popery; and he seemed to think that, by taking up two creeds at once on his death-bed, he could make up for the utter irreligion of his last existence. He is said to have contributed to the cause of enlightenment, and so perhaps he did with all his blackness, as the coal contributes to the gas; and never was a bit of Wallsend half so hard, or a tenth part so black, as the heart of this despicable sovereign. He never had a friend; but he was surrounded by sycophants, whom, one after the other, he atrociously sacrificed.

Cranmer being a man of superior mind, exercised an influence over him, and was sent for to his death-bed, when he pressed the prelate's hand; but whether the pressure arose from cramp or conscience, rheumatism or remorse, penitence or "pins and needles," must be considered a question to which we will not hazard an answer. We regret that we have been unable to adhere to the excellent motto, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, in this case; but Henry was such a decided malum in se, that mischief was bred in the bone, and the nil nisi bonum becomes impossible.

Learning certainly advanced in this reign, and Henry himself affected authorship; but every literary man, from the highest flyer in the realms of fancy to the humblest historian of last night's fire or yesterday's police, will be honestly ashamed of his royal fellow-craftsman.

Several colleges and schools were founded in this reign, among the principal of which were Christ Church at Oxford, Trinity at Cambridge, and St. Paul's in London. Here it was that the lowly Lily, of Lily's grammar notoriety, first raised his humble head as the head master of the school; and, though there is something lack-a-daisy-cal in Lily's style, his grammar was at one time the first round of the ladder by which every lad climed the heights of classical instruction.

It may be interesting to the gastronomic reader to be informed that salads and turnips now first came into use, with other roots, towards which the people had shown until then a rooted antipathy. They swallowed spinach without any gammon, and even the carrot, that had formerly stuck in their throat as if they feared it would injure the carotid artery, was consumed with alacrity; and those who had disdained the most delicious of green food, by courageously exclaiming, "Come, let us try it," are supposed by some—though we disclaim the monstrous idea—to have given its name to the lettuce. The cultivation of hops came as if with a hop, skip, and jump across from Flanders, and the trade in wool was brought, under the fostering patronage of Wolsey, to a state of some prosperity.

With the exception of the burning of monasteries and the murder of his wives, there was little to render the reign of Henry remarkable, beyond, perhaps, the invention of beef-eaters. The word beef-eater is known to be a corruption of buffetier, and indeed there was corruption, to a certain extent, in everything connected with this detestable tyrant. It is said they were called buffetiers from attending at the buffets, or sideboard of plate, but it is far more likely that they got the name from the buffeting to which every servant of the royal ruffian must have been occasionally liable. The neck was so often in danger, that any menial of the malignant monarch might be expected to ruff it in the best way he could, and hence the enormous ruffs, which are conspicuous to this day, round the chins of the beef-eaters. The looseness of their habits may be considered characteristic of the Court to which these functionaries were attached, though it has been said by some authorities that the beef-eaters were puffed and padded out to an enormous extent, in order that the monster Henry might not appear conspicuous.

The reign of Henry was also remarkable for the invention of pins, to which somebody had given his own head with intense earnestness. The sharpness of the English had not yet reached so fine a point as to have led to the discovery of the needle, which was doubtless suggested by the pin, to some one who had an eye for improvement. The thimble is a still later introduction, the merit of which is considerable; for though at the present day every sempstress has the thimble at her finger ends, there was a time when no one had thought of this very simple but necessary appendage to the ladies' work-table. If the reign of Henry had never been devoted to anything more objectionable than the discovery of pins and needles we should have had little reason to complain, for a few pricks of conscience, no matter whence they emanated, would have done him good; but the scissors for cutting the thread of existence formed the instruments chiefly in use during this cruel and most disastrous reign.