Wolsey entering Leicester Abbey.
He determined to get some of those people who are always willing to do as their king pleases, instead of being honest and doing only what is right, to find out some excuses for sending away good Queen Catherine, for indeed she was very good, and loved the king very dearly. So at last they found some, which you could not understand if I told you; and they divorced Queen Catherine, that is, they sent her away from the king, and said he might marry anybody else that he pleased.
The good queen lived about three years afterwards, sometimes at Ampthill, sometimes at other country places, and died at Kimbolton.
The second wife of Henry was the beautiful young lady, Anne Boleyn, whose daughter, Elizabeth, became Queen of England after her sister Mary. But now King Henry, who had found out that he could make excuses for sending away one wife, began to wish for another change.
I told you Anne Boleyn was young and beautiful. She was also clever and pleasant and I believe really good. But the king and some of his wicked friends pretended that she had done several bad things; and, as Henry had become very cruel as well as changeable, he ordered poor Anne’s head to be cut off.
On the day she was to suffer death she sent to beg the king to be kind to her little daughter Elizabeth. She said to the last moment that she was innocent; she prayed God to bless the king and the people, and then she knelt down, and her head was cut off.
I ought to have told you, that, before she was brought out of her room to be beheaded, she said to the gentleman who went to call her, “I hear the executioner is very skilful; my neck is very small;” and she put her hands round it and smiled, and made ready to die.
The cruel king married another very pretty young woman the very next day. Her name was Jane Seymour, and she had a son, who was afterwards King Edward the Sixth. She died twelve days after the little prince was born, or perhaps Henry might have used her as ill as he did poor Anne Boleyn.
The king’s fourth wife was found for him by his minister, Thomas Cromwell. She was the Princess Anne of Cleves, a German lady. But Henry took a dislike to her looks, so he put her away as he did Queen Catherine, and gave her a house to live in, and a good deal of money to spend, and thought no more about her.
Next he married the Lady Catherine Howard; but a very few months afterwards he accused her of some bad actions; and he had her beheaded. So he had put away two of his wives, he had cut off the heads of two others, and only one had died a natural death.