When this great change was thus going on,the King began to show himself in his truest and worst colours.Anne Boleyn,the pretty little girl who had gone abroad to France with his sister,was by this time grown up to be very beautiful,and was one of the ladies in attendance on Queen Catherine.Now,Queen Catherine was no longer young or handsome,and it is likely that she was not particularly good-tempered;having been always rather melancholy,and having been made more so by the deaths of four of her children when they were very young.So,the King fell in love with the fair Anne Boleyn,and said to himself,'How can I be best rid of my own troublesome wife whom I am tired of,and marry Anne?'
You recollect that Queen Catherine had been the wife of Henry's brother.What does the King do,after thinking it over,but calls his favourite priests about him,and says,O!his mind is in such a dreadful state,and he is so frightfully uneasy,because he is afraid it was not lawful for him to marry the Queen!Not one of those priests had the courage to hint that it was rather curious he had never thought of that before,and that his mind seemed to have been in a tolerably jolly condition during a great many years,in which he certainly had not fretted himself thin;but,they all said,Ah!that was very true,and it was a serious business;and perhaps the best way to make it right,would be for his Majesty to be divorced!The King replied,Yes,he thought that would be the best way,certainly;so they all went to work.
If I were to relate to you the intrigues and plots that took place in the endeavour to get this divorce,you would think the History of England the most tiresome book in the world.So I shall say no more,than that after a vast deal of negotiation and evasion,the Pope issued a commission to Cardinal Wolsey and CARDINAL CAMPEGGIO(whom he sent over from Italy for the purpose),to try the whole case in England.It is supposed-and I think with reason-that Wolsey was the Queen's enemy,because she had reproved him for his proud and gorgeous manner of life.But,he did not at first know that the King wanted to marry Anne Boleyn;and when he did know it,he even went down on his knees,in the endeavour to dissuade him.
The Cardinals opened their court in the Convent of the Black Friars,near to where the bridge of that name in London now stands;and the King and Queen,that they might be near it,took up their lodgings at the adjoining palace of Bridewell,of which nothing now remains but a bad prison.On the opening of the court,when the King and Queen were called on to appear,that poor ill-used lady,with a dignity and firmness and yet with a womanly affection worthy to be always admired,went and kneeled at the King's feet,and said that she had come,a stranger,to his dominions;that she had been a good and true wife to him for twenty years;and that she could acknowledge no power in those Cardinals to try whether she should be considered his wife after all that time,or should be put away.
With that,she got up and left the court,and would never afterwards come back to it.
The King pretended to be very much overcome,and said,O!my lords and gentlemen,what a good woman she was to be sure,and how delighted he would be to live with her unto death,but for that terrible uneasiness in his mind which was quite wearing him away!
So,the case went on,and there was nothing but talk for two months.Then Cardinal Campeggio,who,on behalf of the Pope,wanted nothing so much as delay,adjourned it for two more months;
and before that time was elapsed,the Pope himself adjourned it indefinitely,by requiring the King and Queen to come to Rome and have it tried there.But by good luck for the King,word was brought to him by some of his people,that they had happened to meet at supper,THOMAS CRANMER,a learned Doctor of Cambridge,who had proposed to urge the Pope on,by referring the case to all the learned doctors and bishops,here and there and everywhere,and getting their opinions that the King's marriage was unlawful.The King,who was now in a hurry to marry Anne Boleyn,thought this such a good idea,that he sent for Cranmer,post haste,and said to LORD ROCHFORT,Anne Boleyn's father,'Take this learned Doctor down to your country-house,and there let him have a good room for a study,and no end of books out of which to prove that I may marry your daughter.'Lord Rochfort,not at all reluctant,made the learned Doctor as comfortable as he could;and the learned Doctor went to work to prove his case.All this time,the King and Anne Boleyn were writing letters to one another almost daily,full of impatience to have the case settled;and Anne Boleyn was showing herself (as I think)very worthy of the fate which afterwards befel her.