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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.