"Never better!" said he, "alas! Meg, alas! it pitieth me to think into what misery, poor soul, she will shortly come. These dances of hers will prove such dances that she will spurn our heads off like foot-balls, but it will not be long ere her head will dance the like dance." Her tragical end proves the truth of that poet's prophetic words.
When that great and good man was executed, the announcement of it was made to Henry while he happened to be playing cards with Anne. "Thou art the cause of this man's death," he cried, looking at her angrily, and rising from the table. He then shut himself up in his room, deeply grieved.
A.D. 1533. In 1533 Anne had a little daughter born, who afterwards became the renowned Queen Elizabeth. The opposition her marriage had met with from Rome caused Anne to side with the Reformation party, though she always continued a Catholic at heart, and observed all the ceremonies of that church. It is probable that she took no part in the cruelty that Henry exercised over the pious reformers, but it is certain that she made no effort to prevent it; for had she done so, she was still powerful enough to have succeeded. She had enjoyed one triumph.
Probably this change was due to the influence of the reformer, Hugh Latimer, whom she rescued from prison, where he had been sent by the bishop of London; for it was after he preached to her and pointed out her duty that she so generously distributed alms and even paid for the education of promising lads who were likely to devote themselves to the church. She must often have felt that after another, but when she reached the very summit of her greatness, no doubt she found that her path had been more thickly strewn with thorns than roses, and that in reading the Scriptures she felt the force of the text, which says: "What is a man profited if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" She became grave and serious, and spent more time at needlework with her ladies, whom she assisted in making clothing which she distributed among the poor.
[Original]
her position on the throne of England was not very secure, for as her capricious husband had behaved towards his first wife might he not behave towards her also?
When the news of Katharine's death was brought to her she exclaimed: "Now I am indeed a queen!" But it was not long before she was suffering all the bitter pangs that the good queen over whose death she rejoiced had endured.
Henry had grown tired of her, and was carrying on a flirtation with the beautiful Jane Seymour, one of her attendants. And so, under one pretext or another, her friends were either beheaded or locked up in the Tower.