pricked my conscience, upon certain words spoken by the bishop of Bayonne, the French ambassador, who had been hither sent upon the debating of a marriage between our daughter the lady Mary and the duke of Orleans. Upon the resolution and determination whereof, he desired respite to advertise the king his master, whether our daughter Mary should be legitimate, in respect of my marriage with this woman, being sometime my brother's wife. Which words within the secret bottom of my conscience engendered such a scrupulous doubt, whereby I thought myself to be greatly in danger of God's indignation; which appeared the rather, for that He sent us no issue male, and all such issue male as my wife had by me died incontinent after they came into the world.

"Thus my conscience being tossed in the waves of a scrupulous mind, it behooved me further to consider the state of this realm, and the danger it stood in for lack of a prince to succeed me. I thought it good in release of the weighty burden of my conscience to attempt the law therein, whether I may take another wife more lawfully, by whom God may send me more issue, and not for any misliking of the queen's person and age, with whom I would be as well contented, if our marriage may stand with the laws of God, as with any woman alive. In this point consisteth all that we now go about to try, by the wisdom of you, our prelates and pastors, to whose conscience and learning I have committed the charge and judgment. After that I perceived my conscience so doubtful, I moved it in confession to you, my lord of Lincoln, then ghostly father. And forasmuch as you were in some doubt, you moved me to ask the counsel of all these lords: whereupon I moved you, my lord of Canterbury, first to have your license to put this matter in question; and so I did of all you, my lords, which you granted under your seals. After that, the king rose up, and the court was adjourned till another day. The legates sat weekly, and every day were arguments brought in on both parts, and still they assayed if they could procure the

queen to call back her appeal, which she utterly refused to do. The king would gladly have had an end in the matter; but when the legates drove time, and determined no point, he conceived a suspicion, that this was of purpose that their doings might draw to no conclusion.

"Thus the court passed from session to session, till the king sent the two cardinals to the queen, who was then in Bridewell, to advise her to surrender the whole matter into the king's hands, which should be much better to her honor, than to stand to the trial of law. The cardinals being in the queen's chamber of presence, the gentlemanusher advertised the queen that they were come to speak with her. With that she rose up, and, with a skein of white thread about her neck, came into her chamber where they were attending. Quoth she, What is your pleasure with me? If it please your grace, quoth Cardinal Wolsey, to go into your privy chamber, we will show you the cause of our coming. My lord, quoth she, if ye have any thing to say, speak it openly before all these folk; for I fear nothing that ye can say against me, but I would all the world should hear and see it. Then began the cardinal to speak to her in Latin. Nay, good my lord, quoth she, speak to me in English. Forsooth, good madam, quoth the cardinal, we come to know your mind in this matter between the king and you, and to declare secretly our opinions and counsel unto you; which we do only for very zeal and obedience we bear unto your grace. My lord, quoth she, I thank you for your good will; but to make answer in your request I cannot so suddenly; for I was set among my maids at work, thinking full little of any such matter; wherein there needeth a longer deliberation, and a better head than mine: I need counsel in this case which toucheth me so near; and for any counsel or friendship that I can find in England, they are not for my profit. What think you, my lords, will any Englishman counsel me, or be friend to me against the king's pleasure? Nay, forsooth; as for my counsel, in whom I will put my trust, they be not here, they be in Spain, in my own coun

try. My lords, I am a poor woman, lacking wit to answer to any such noble persons of wisdom as you be, in so weighty a matter: therefore, I pray you, be good to me, destitute of friends here in a foreign region; and your counsel also I will be glad to hear. And therewith she took the cardinal by the hand, and led him into her privy chamber with the other cardinal; where they tarried a season, talking with the queen: which communication ended, they departed to the king, making to him relation of her talk."

All men now looked for a conclusion of the case the next day; but, when the time came, Campeius, instead of giving judgment, dissolved the court, saying that, as the defendant had appealed her cause to Rome, he could take no further action, but would lay all their proceedings before the pope, and abide by his decision; which delay was highly offensive to the king. Meanwhile Wolsey had been apprised that the king had set his heart upon Anne Boleyn, the queen's maid of honor. Foreseeing that if the divorce were granted the king would marry her, he set himself to defeat that match, which he thought was most of all to be avoided. The queen's appeal to Rome still pending, he sent letters and secret messengers, requesting the pope to defer judgment in the case till he could mold the king to his purpose. But his doings were not so secret but that the king got knowledge of them, and thereupon took so great displeasure that he resolved to abase the cardinal; which when the nobles perceived, they began to accuse him of such offenses as they knew could be proved, and, having drawn up certain articles, got divers of the king's council to set their hands to them. The king was now informed that what the cardinal had done in virtue of his legantine power fell under the statute of pramunire, and, a parliament being called, he caused his attorney to make out a writ to that effect. On November 17, 1529, he sent the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, requiring him to surrender the great seal, and retire to Asher, a house near Hampton-court, belonging to the bishopric of Winchester.

Wolsey refused to give up the seal without further proof of their authority, saying that the king had entrusted it to him for the term of his life, and confirmed the gift with letters-patent. After a great many words between them, the dukes went off without it, and returned the next day with a written order from the king; whereupon the cardinal yielded, made over his whole personal estate to the king, and threw himself entirely on his mercy.

So big was this great man's grief, that about Christmas he was taken down with a threatening fever. On hearing of his danger, the king exclaimed, "God forbid that he should die! I would not lose him for twenty thousand pounds." He then forthwith sent three physicians to Asher, assured the sick man of his unabated attachment, and persuaded Anne Boleyn to send him a tablet of gold as a token of reconciliation. In the course of the winter Wolsey retired to his office as archbishop of York, the king having arrested the pramunire so far as to reserve him the revenues of that see and of Winchester. At this time many of his servants, the chief of whom was Thomas Cromwell, left his service, and entered the king's. It is said that he kept Easter at Peterborough, with a train of a hundred and sixty persons; and that "upon. MaundyThursday he there had nine-and-fifty poor men, whose feet he washed, and gave every one twelve pence in money, three ells of good canvas, a pair of shoes, a cast of red herrings and three white herrings, and one of them had two shillings." By his great thoughts, gentle acts, and liberal and gracious deportment, he was winning the hearts of all about him; on which account his enemies, fearing he might yet reinstate himself, spared no efforts to complete his undoing. Accordingly, the following November, at his manor of Cawood, he was arrested for high treason by the earl of Northumberland. On his way to London he

spent several days at Sheffield park with the earl of Shrewsbury, where he was taken very ill with a fever and a flux which greatly reduced his strength. There he was met by Kingston, constable of the Tower, to whom it had

been given in charge to conduct him to London. On first coming into his presence Kingston kneeled down; but he said, "I pray you, stand up; kneel not to me; I am but a wretch replete with misery, utterly cast away." From thence he rode onward three days, by short and easy journeys, the flux continuing with great violence, till at length on the third day "he waxed so sick that he was almost fallen from his mule." After night-fall he came to Leicester abbey, where, at his coming, the abbot and all the convent went out to meet him with lighted torches, and received him with great honor; and he said, "Father abbot, I am come hither to lay my bones among you." Having alighted, he immediately took his chamber and went to bed, where his sickness still increased. Three days after, “on Tuesday even, master Kingston came to him, and bade him good-morrow, for it was about six of the clock, and asked him how he did. Sir, quoth he, I tarry but the pleasure of God, to render up my poor soul into His hands. Not so, sir, quoth master Kingston; with the grace of God, ye shall live, and do very well, if ye will be of good cheer. Nay, in good sooth, master Kingston; my disease is such that I cannot live. Sir, quoth master Kingston, you be in much pensiveness, doubting that thing that in good faith ye need not. Well, well, master Kingston, quoth the cardinal; I see the matter how it is framed: but if I had served God as diligently as I have done the king, He would not have given me over in my gray hairs. But it is the just reward that I must receive for the pains and study I have had, to do him service, not regarding my service to God. When the clock struck eight he gave up the ghost, and departed this life; which caused some to call to remembrance how he said the day before, that at eight of the clock they should lose their master."

This was on November 29, 1530. The Poet, with fine dramatic effect, and without any prejudice to the essential truth of history, represents the death of Katharine as occurring shortly after, though in fact it did not occur till