with Francis's ally, James V., the young king of Scotland, on condition of giving James in marriage his daughter the princess Mary (afterwards queen), who had been already promised to the emperor. In August he concluded a treaty of peace and alliance with France; and after the release of Francis, in March, 1526, Henry was declared protector of the league styled 'Most Clement and Most Holy,' which was formed under the auspices of the pope for the renewal of the war against Charles.

Before this date two domestic occurrences took place that especially deserve to be noted. The first of these was the execution, in 1513, immediately before Henry proceeded on his expedition to France, of Edmund de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, whose mother was Elizabeth Plantagenet, sister of Edward IV.; he had lain a prisoner in the Tower ever since a short time before the death of the late king, who had contrived to obtain possession of his person after he had fled to the Continent, and, it is said, had in his last hours recommended that he should not be suffered to live. He was now put to death without any form of trial or other legal proceeding, his crime, there can be no doubt, being merely his connexion with the House of York. Lord Herbert tells us that Henry's going to the Continent at this time was deemed dangerous and inexpedient, on the ground that if the king should die without issue, however the succession were undoubted in his sister Margaret, yet the people were so affected to the House of York, as they might take Edmund de la Pole out of the Tower and set him up.' Wolsey was perhaps as yet too new in office to be fairly made answerable for this act of bloodshed; in the next case the unfortunate victim is generally believed to have been sacrificed to his resentment and thirst of vengeance. In 1521 Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham, son of the duke beheaded by Richard III., was apprehended on some information furnished to Wolsey by a discarded servant, and being brought to trial was found guilty and executed as a traitor. The acts with which he was charged did not according to law amount to treason, even if they had been proved; but the duke is said by certain indiscretions of speech and demeanor to have wounded the pride of the all-powerful minister; and, besides, he was also of dangerous pedigree, being not only maternally of the stock of John of Gaunt, but likewise a Plantagenet by his descent from Anne, the daughter of Edward the Third's youngest son Thomas, duke of Gloucester. With this nobleman came to an end the great office of hereditary lord high constable.

What may be called the second part of Henry's reign begins in the year 1527, from which date our attention is called to a busy scene of domestic transactions beside which the foreign politics of the kingdom become of little interest or importance. It is no longer the ambition and intrigue of the minister, but the wilfulness and furious passions of the king himself, that move all things. In 1527 Henry cast his eyes upon Anne Boleyn, and appears to have very soon formed the design of ridding himself of Catherine, and making the object of this new attachment his queen. Anne was understood to be favourably disposed towards those new views on the subject of religion and ecclesiastical affairs which had been agitating all Europe ever since Luther had begun his intrepid career by publicly opposing indulgences at Wittemberg ten years before. Queen Catherine on the other hand was a good Catholic; and, besides, the circumstances in which she was placed made it her interest to take her stand by the church, as on the other hand her adversaries were driven in like manner by their interests and the course of events into dissent and opposition. This one consideration sufficiently explains all that followed. The friends of the old religion generally considered Catherine's cause as their own; the reformers as naturally arrayed themselves on the side of her rival.

Heury himself again, though he had been till now resolutely opposed to the new opinions, was carried over by his passion towards the same side; the consequence of which was the loss of the royal favour by those who had hitherto monopolized it, and its transference in great part to other men, to be employed by them in the promotion of entirely opposite purposes and politics. The proceedings for the divorce were commenced by an application to the court of Rome, in August, 1527. For two years the affair lingered on through a succession of legal proceedings, but without any decisive result. From the autumn of 1529 are to be dated both the fali of Wolsey and the rise of Cranmer. The death of the great cardinal took place 29th November, 1530. In January following the first blow was struck at the church by an indictment being brought into the King's Bench against all the clergy of the kingdom for supporting Wolsey in the exercise of his legatine powers without the royal licence, as required by the old statutes of provisors and premunire; and it was in an act passed immediately after by the Convocation of the province of Canterbury, for granting to the king a sum of money to exempt them from the penalties of their conviction on this indictment, that the first movement was made towards a revolt against the see of Rome, by the titles given to Henry of 'the one protector of the English church, its only and supreme lord, and, as far as might be by the law of Christ, its supreme head.' Shortly after, the convocation declared the king's marriage with Catherine to be contrary to the law of God. The same year Henry went the length of openly countenancing Protestantism abroad by remitting a subsidy to the confederacy of the Elector of Brandenburg and other German princes, called the League of Smalcald. In August, 1532, Cranmer was appointed to the archbishopric of Canterbury. In the beginning of the year 1533 Henry was privately married to Anne Boleyn; and on the 23rd of May following archbishop Cranmer pronounced the former marriage with Catherine void. In the meantime the parliament had passed an act forbidding all appeals to the see of Rome. Pope Clement VII. met this by annulling the sentence of Cranmer in the matter of the marriage; on which the separation from Rome became complete. Acts were passed by the parliament the next year declaring that the clergy should in future be assembled in convocation only by the king's writ, that no constitutions enacted by them should be of force without the king's assent, and that no first fruits or Peter's pence, or money for dispensations, should be any longer paid to the pope. The clergy of the province of York themselves in convocation declared that the pope had no more power in England than any other bishop. A new and most efficient supporter of the Reformation now also becomes conspicuous on the scene, Thomas Cromwell (afterwards lord Cromwell and earl of Essex), who was this year made first secretary of state, and then master of the rolls. In the next session, the parliament, which re-assembled in the end of this same year, passed acts declaring the king's highness to be supreme head of the church of England, and to have authority to redress all errors, heresies, and abuses in the church; and ordering first-fruits and tenths of all spiritual benefices to be paid to the king. After this various persons were executed for refusing to acknowledge the king's supremacy; among others, two illustrious victims, the learned Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and the admirable Sir Thomas More. In 1535 began the dissolution of the monasteries, under the zealous superintendance of Cromwell, constituted for that purpose visitor-general of these establishments. Latimer and other friends of Cranmer and the Reformation were now also promoted to bishoprics; so that not only in matters of discipline and polity, but even of doctrine, the church might be said to have separated itself from Rome. One of the last acts of the parliament under which all these great innovations had been made was to petition the king

that a new translation of the Scriptures might be made by authority and set up in churches. It was dissolved on the 18th of July, 1536, after having sat for the then unprecedented period of six years.

Events now set in a new current. The month of May of this year witnessed the trial and execution of Queen Anne-in less than six months after the death of her predecessor, Catherine of Aragon-and the marriage of the brutal king, the very next morning, to Jane Seymour, the new beauty, his passion for whom must be regarded as the true motive that had impelled him to the deed of blood. Queen Jane dying on the 14th of October, 1537, a few days after giving birth to a son, was succeeded by Anne, sister of the duke of Cleves, whom Henry married in January, 1540, and put away in six months after-the subservient parliament, and the not less subservient convocation of the clergy, on his mere request, pronouncing the marriage to be null, and the former body making it high treason by word or deed to accept, take, judge, or believe the said marriage to be good.'

ever.

Meanwhile the ecclesiastical changes continued to proceed at as rapid a rate as In 1536 Cromwell was constituted a sort of lord-lieutenant over the church, by the title of vicar-general, which was held to invest him with all the king's authority over the spiritualty. The dissolution of the monasteries in this and the following year, as carried forward under the direction of this energetic minister, produced a succession of popular insurrections in different parts of the kingdom, which were not put down without great destruction of life, both in the field and afterwards by the executioner. In 1538 all incumbents were ordered to set up in their churches copies of the newly-published English translation of the Bible, and to teach the people the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, in English; the famous image of our Lady at Walsingham, and other similar objects of the popular veneration, were also under Cromwell's order removed from their shrines and burnt. In 1539 the parliament, after enacting (by the 31 Henry VIII., c. 8) that the proclamation of the king in council should henceforth have the same authority as a statute, passed the famous act (the 31 Henry VIII., c. 14) known by the name of the Six Articles, or the Bloody Statute, by which burning or hanging was made the punishment of all who should deny that the bread and wine of the sacrament was the natural body and blood of the Saviour—or that communion in both kinds was not necessary to salvation-or that priests may not marry-or that vows of chastity ought to be observed-or that the mass was agreeable to God's law-or that auricular confession is expedient and necessary. This statute, the cause of numerous executions, proceeded from a new influence which had now gained an ascendancy over the fickle king, that of Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, the able leader of the party in church and state opposed to Cranmer and Cromwell. This new favourite was not long in effecting the ruin of the rival that was most in his way; Cromwell, who had just been created earl of Essex, and made lord chamberlain of England, was in the beginning of June, 1540, committed to the Tower on a charge of treason, and beheaded in a few weeks after.

On the 8th of August this year Henry married his fifth wife, the Lady Catherine Howard, whom he beheaded, 13th February, 1542. During this interval he also rid himself by the axe of the executioner of a noble lady whom he had attainted and consigned to a prison two years before on a charge of treason, Margaret, countess dowager of Salisbury, the daughter of the late duke of Clarence, and the last of the York Plantagenets. Her real crime was that she was the mother of cardinal Pole, who had offended the tyrant, and who was himself beyond his reach.

In the latter part of the year 1542 war was declared by Henry against Scotland, with a revival of the old claim to the sovereignty of that kingdom. An incursion made by the duke of Norfolk into Scotland, in October, was followed the next

month by the advance of a Scottish army into England; but this force was completely defeated and dispersed at Solway Moss, a disaster which is believed to have killed king James, who died a few weeks after, leaving his crown to a daughter, the unfortunate Mary Stuart, then only an infant seven days old. The failure of the efforts of the English king to obtain possession of the government and of the young queen, owing to the successful resistance of cardinal Beaton and the Catholic party, led to a renewal of hostilities in the spring of 1544, when Scotland was invaded by a great army under the earl of Hertford, which penetrated as far as Edinburgh, and burned that capital with many other towns and villages. In the preceding year also Henry had concluded a new alliance with the emperor against the French king; and in July, 1544, he passed over with an army to France, with which he succeeded in taking the town of Boulogne. On this however the emperor made a separate peace with Francis; and on the 7th of June, 1546, Henry also signed a treaty with that king, in which he agreed to restore Boulogne and its dependencies in consideration of a payment of two millions of crowns.

He had some years before found a sixth wife, Catherine Parr, the widow of the Lord Latimer, whom he married 10th July, 1543. As the infirmities of age and disease grew upon him, the suspiciousness and impetuosity of his temper acquired additional violence, and the closing years of his reign were as deeply stained with blood as any that had preceded them. One of his last butcheries was that of the amiable and accomplished Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, who, being convicted, after the usual process, of treason, was executed on the 19th (other accounts say the 21st) of January, 1547. Already Henry, says Holinshed, 'was lying in the agonies of death.' Surrey's father, the duke of Norfolk, was also to have suffered on the 28th; but was saved by the death of the king at two o'clock on the morning of that day.

The children of Henry VIII. were: 1. and 2. by Catherine of Aragon, two sons who died in infancy; 3. Mary, afterwards queen of England; 4. by Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth, afterwards queen; 5. a son still-born, 29th February, 1535; 6. by Jane Seymour Edward, by whom he was succeeded on the throne.

154. THE FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD.

HALL'S CHRONICLE.

The 10th day of October the king came to Dover, and on the 11th day in the morning, being Friday, at three of the clock, he took shipping in Dover road, and before ten of the clock the same day, he, with the lady marchioness of Pembroke, landed at Calais, where he was honourably received with procession, and brought to Saint Nicholas Church, where he heard mass, and so to his place called the Exchequer, where he lodged. And on the Sunday after came to Calais, the Lord Roche Baron, and Monsieur de Mountpesat, messengers from the French king, advertising the king of England, that the French king would repair to Abbeville the same night, marching towards Boulogne, of which tidings the king was very glad, but suddenly came a messenger, and reported that the Great Master of France, and the Archbishop of Rouen, with divers noblemen of France, were come to Sandifeld, intending to come to Calais, to salute the king, from the king their master. He being thereof advertised, sent in great haste the 15th day of October, the Duke of Norfolk, the Marquis of Exeter, the Earls of Oxford, Derby, and Rutland, the Lord Sands, and the Lord Fitzwater, with three hundred gentlemen, which honourably received the French lords, at the English pale, and so brought them to the king's

presence in Calais, which stood under a rich cloth of estate of such value that they much mused of the riches. The King (as he that knew all honour and nature) received the French lords very lovingly and amiably, and with them took a day and place of meeting: these lords were highly feasted, and after dinner departed to Boulogne.

While the king lay thus in Calais, he viewed the walls, towers, and bulwarks, and devised certain new fortifications, for the maintenance and defence of the town. The town of Calais had at this season twenty-four hundred beds, and stabling for two thousand horses, beside the villages adjacent.

The 20th day of this month, the king being advertised that the French king was come to a village called Marguison, nigh to the English pale, marched out of Calais the next day after, accompanied with the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, and with the Marquises of Dorset and Exeter, the Earls of Arundel, Oxford, Surrey, Essex, Derby, Rutland, Huntingdon, and Sussex, and divers viscounts, barons, knights of the Garter, and gentlemen, freshly appareled and richly trimmed, and so passed toward the place appointed for the interview, leaving behind them the greatest part of the yeomen in Calais, because that Boulogne was too little for both the trains. For the Frenchmen said their train was twenty thousand horse, which caused the Englishmen to cast many perils, and especially because it was bruited abroad, that the French king should say, the king of England was once his enemy, and maintained the Emperor and the Duke of Bourbon against him, and now he was become his most friend. The rehearsing of these old grudges, many Englishmen suspected, and very loath that the king should go to Boulogne, but the king continued still in his journey, and came to Sandingfeld, and a little from that place in a valley, was the French king nobly accompanied, with three hundred horse, and not much more. The king's train waved on the left hand, to give the French king and his train the right hand likewise did the French part, to give the Englishmen the right hand; so the two kings with all lovely honour met with bare heads, and embraced other in such fashion, that all that beheld them rejoiced. The king of England was appareled in a coat of great riches, in braids of gold laid loose on russet velvet, and set with trefoiles, full of pearl and stone. The French king was in a coat of crimson velvet, all to cut, lined with slender cloth of gold plucked out through the cuts. The noblemen on both parties were richly appareled; and, as was reported, the French king said openly to the king of England: Sir, you be the same person that I am most bound to in the world, and sith it hath pleased you in person to visit me, I am bound in person to seek you, and for the very friendship that I have found in you, I am yours and will be, and so I require you to take me, and with that put off his bonnet: the king of England soberly answered, If ever I did any thing to your liking I am glad, and as touching the pain to come hither to see you, I assure you it is my great comfort, yea, and I had come farther to have visited you. Then the kings embraced the lords and estates, as the French king the lords of England, and the king of England the lords of France, and that done they set forward toward Boulogne, and in riding they cast of hawks called sakers to the kites, which made to them great sport, and in a valley beyond Sandingfeld the king of Navarre met the kings, and there they alighted and drank, and after that they mounted on horseback, and with hawking and other princely pastime, they came near to Boulogne, where on a hill stood ranged in a fair band, the number of five hundred men on horseback, of whom the chief were, the French king's three sons, the Dauphin, the Duke of Orleans, and the Duke of Angouleme, and on them gave attendance, the Admiral of France, and three Cardinals, with divers other nobles of France: these three princes marched forward, and welcomed the king of England, which them well beheld, and lovingly them received, as he that could as