After the fall of Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell had by his astute policy succeeded in bringing about a religious state of things in England that approached very nearly to Lutheranism. Taking advantage of Henry's pique and anger at the Pope's refusal to grant him a divorce from Katharine of Arragon, Cromwell set about widening the breach between England and Rome. After weakening the power of the bishops and lower clergy, he was able to force the oath of supremacy upon the nation, and having thus satisfied his master's pride and vanity, his next step was by the dissolution of the monasteries to pander to Henry's greed, while at the same time he filled his own pockets.
In pursuit of these ends he had covered the land with gibbets, and caused the noblest heads in England to fall upon the block. He had branded the king's own daughter with the stigma of infamy, and to obtain her consent thereto had kept the axe suspended over her. He had been able to accomplish all this because thus far he had taken Henry's measure correctly, working upon his worst passions, and suggesting ever fresh means of satisfying them. Then came a point at which his interests and those of the king diverged.
Cromwell was deeply pledged to the Lutheran cause, and his plan was to throw Henry into the arms of the Lutheran princes of Germany. He had already flooded the country with foreign heretics, using them as his tools to protestantise the Church in England.
Jane Seymour died in 1537, and Cromwell at once negotiated a marriage between Henry and Anne, daughter of the Duke of Cleves, Henry consenting for the reason that it behoved him to fortify himself by an alliance that would enable him to make a stand against a possible combination of forces between the Pope, the Emperor, and the French King. But at the very moment when Cromwell, believing himself to be at the point of realising all his desires, was pledging his master to marry Anne of Cleves, a reaction had set in which he so completely disregarded as to seem in utter ignorance of it.
Nothing annoyed Henry more than to be twitted with being a heretic, and whenever Henry was annoyed a blow might be expected. The loathed epithet was now very frequently used in reference to him by the emperor and others, and he was bent on showing Europe that he could be a very good Catholic without the Pope. It irritated him to think that Cromwell had laid him open to retort in this contention by a formal alliance with the Lutherans, who were undeniably heretics. It served his purpose very well to play them off against the emperor and even Francis I., but it was not his will to be bound irrevocably by any contract. When Cromwell thought to put the finishing touch to his triumphant scheme, he only effected his own doom. He boasted to the Lutherans that he would soon bring England over to their forms of faith, and on this promise the match between Henry and Anne was concluded; but he failed to rouse the German princes to a contest with the emperor, which was all that Henry, apart from his minister's policy, had aimed at from the beginning. With Henry the whole scheme was tentative, and the proposed marriage but a detail of that scheme. When it fell through, he desired to turn his back upon Cleves and the rest of the German princes; moreover, he had no further need of Cromwell himself, who was rather in the way of his new plans, unless the minister could find a means to disentangle the imbroglio he had created with regard to Anne.
Like a child with a new toy, Henry was now engrossed in the fun of being Pope in his own dominions; and as Head of the Church of England whom it behoved to reprobate heresy in every shape and form, he conducted a trial against one John Nicholson, who, refusing to recant his heretical opinions, was burned at Smithfield. After this he felt confident of being as Catholic as the real Pope, and safe from opprobrium. He proceeded to bring forward deliberations in Parliament on the subject of religion, with the result that the famous Act of the Six Articles was passed. This Act, nicknamed by the Lutherans "the whip with six cords," brought in a reaction in favour of the old religion, which lasted till Henry's death, but matters between England and Rome remained as they were.
Meanwhile, the lady Anne of Cleves had made her unwelcome appearance. One of the most curious and indeed incomprehensible facts concerning Henry VIII., is the admiring awe and grovelling gratitude with which he was adored by most of the women whom he had the privilege of ill-treating. After the year 1527, when he first conceived the desire of raising Anne Boleyn to the throne, and of divorcing Katharine, except for the short period during which he was married to Jane Seymour, there were always two rival claimants for his hand. Not only was Katharine ever generously ready to forget past insults if he would graciously extend his clemency towards her, and send Anne away, but every other woman with whom he came in contact, addressed him in words more suited to a divinity than to an earthly king. His daughter Mary, after having been spurned as the most degraded and abject creature of the realm, longed for nothing more ardently than "to attain the fruition of his most desired presence."
Although the personal appearance of Anne of Cleves did not bear out the exaggerated reports of the German agent Mont, who had told Henry that her beauty exceeded that of the Duchess of Milan "as the sun outshines the silver moon," she was found on her arrival in England to be "tall, bright, and graceful," her liveliness making amends for any defect as to regularity of feature. Comparing her claim to beauty with that of the other wives of Henry VIII., it does not appear that she contrasted unfavourably with any, not even with Katharine Howard, who was very generally admired. The king himself observed to Cromwell that Anne was "well and seemly, and had a queenly manner," but that he found it difficult to converse with her as she knew no word of any language but German.
He had first met her privately at Rochester, and had dined with her, their public meeting taking place about half a mile from the foot of Shooter's Hill, where she rested in a gorgeous pavilion prepared for the occasion. Henry came marching through Greenwich Park with a brilliant escort, and the bride and bridegroom met full merrily. The king embraced the lady ceremoniously, and the chronicler Hall, some time afterwards, in describing their entry into Greenwich, breaks out into one of his eulogistic periods:
"O what a sight was this, to see so goodly a Prince and so noble a King to ride with so fair a lady, of so goodly a stature, and so womanly a countenance, and in especial of so good qualities. I think no creature could see them but his heart rejoiced!"