to a private station in May, 1532, with the utmost gaiety and contentment, though his family were extremely averse to what they deemed a needless and mortifying sacrifice. The king accepted his resignation with great reluctance, and transferred the great seal to Sir Thomas Audley. Henry, under the guidance of Cromwell, made progressive steps towards this separation which More feared. He now procured an act to be passed by Parliament, abolishing the annats, or first-fruits, which furnished a considerable annual income to the Pope, and another abrogating the authority of the clergy in convocation, and attaching that authority to the Crown. Feeling that in this struggle he should need the friendship of Francis, he proposed a new treaty with France, which was signed in London on the 23rd of June; and, the more to strengthen the alliance, the two monarchs proposed a meeting between Calais and Boulogne. Great preparations were made on both sides, and Henry begged Francis to bring his favourite mistress with him. This was as an excuse for Henry to bring Anne Boleyn, who was now created the Marchioness of Pembroke, and without whom he could go nowhere. Francis did not bring his fair friend to the royal meeting, but Henry paraded his new marchioness in great state before the world. He issued orders for a great train of noblemen, prelates, and gentlemen to assemble at Canterbury on the 26th of September, to attend him to the Continent, and he embarked at Dover on the 11th of October, and landed at Calais the same afternoon. The two kings met in a valley near the marches, on the 21st, and proceeded to Boulogne, where Francis entertained the king and Court of England in the most magnificent manner for four days; and on the fifth the two kings, with their attendants, set out for Calais, where Henry entertained the king and Court of France with equally royal hospitality for the same period of time. On the Sunday evening, Anne got up a masque for the pleasure of the French guests. She came in after supper with seven ladies in masking apparel of strange fashion, made of cloth of gold, slashed with crimson tinsel satin, with tabards of fine cypress. Then the lady marchioness took the French king, the Countess of Derby the King of Navarre, and every lady took a lord. In dancing, King Henry removed the ladies' visors, so that their beauties were shown. The French king then discovered that he had been dancing with an old acquaintance, the lovely English maid of honour to his first queen. He conversed with her awhile apart, and the next morning sent her a jewel worth 15,000 crowns. On the 30th of the month, the two kings mounted their horses, and Henry conducted the French king to the border of his dominions, where they took leave of each other with many protestations of perpetual friendship, as they had done at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
The two monarchs had proclaimed with great diligence that the object of their meeting was to concert an expedition against the Turks, but it is more probable that Henry sought to induce Francis to co-operate with him, and withdraw from the Court of Rome—a circumstance which would have been equally detrimental to the Pope and the emperor; but Francis was not prepared for so violent a measure—in fact, he had no stubborn desire to spur him on to it. It is said that Francis, during the interview, had urged Henry to wait no longer for the permission of the Pope, but to marry the Marchioness of Pembroke without further delay; but it is quite certain that another counsellor was more urgent, and that was—Time. It was high time, indeed, that the marriage should take place, if they meant to legitimate his child, for Anne Boleyn was far advanced in her pregnancy. Accordingly, the marriage took place some time about now, but there are various accounts of the time and place of this event. Some authors affirm that she was privately married to the king at Dover, the same day as they returned from France; others that the nuptials were secretly performed in the presence of her father and mother, and of the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, in the chapel of Sopewell Nunnery. To that nunnery, Anne, indeed, retired for some purpose immediately on her return from France, and Henry, who could not visit her in the nunnery, is said by tradition to have met her, occasionally, at a yew-tree, about a mile from that convent. There is also a tradition that she was married at Blickling Hall, in Norfolk; but Wyatt, her great admirer, as well as Stowe and Godwin, with far more probability, assert that this event took place in the following manner and place, on St. Paul's day, January 25th, 1533.
"On the morning of that day," says a contemporary, "at a very early hour. Dr. Rowland Lee, one of the royal chaplains, received the unwonted order to celebrate mass in an unfrequented attic in the west turret of Whitehall. There he found the king, attended by Norris and Heneage, two of the grooms of the chamber, and the Marchioness of Pembroke, attended by her train-bearer, Anne Saville, afterwards Lady Berkeley. On being requested to perform the nuptial rite between his sovereign and the marchioness in the presence of the three witnesses assembled, the chaplain hesitated; but Henry is said to have assured him that the Pope had pronounced in favour of the divorce, and that he had the dispensation for a second marriage in his possession. As soon as the marriage ceremony had been performed, the parties separated in silence before it was light; and Viscount Rochford, the brother of the bride, was dispatched to announce the event in confidence to Francis I."
This marriage was kept so secret that it was not even communicated to Cranmer, who had just returned from Germany, and taken up his abode in the family of Anne Boleyn. Cranmer whilst in Germany had married, Catholic priest as he was, the niece of Osiander, the Protestant minister of Nuremberg. This lady he had brought secretly to England, and was now living a married priest, in direct violation of the Church that he belonged to. Archbishop Warham was now dead, and Henry nominated Cranmer to the vacant primacy. He was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury on the 30th of March, 1533, and he was immediately ordered to proceed with the divorces. The new primate, therefore, wrote on the 11th of April, a formal letter to the king, soliciting the issue of a commission to try that cause, and pronounce a definite sentence. This was immediately done; and Cranmer, as the head of this commission, accompanied by Gardiner, now Bishop of Winchester, the Bishops of London, Lincoln, Bath and Wells, with many other divines and canonists, opened their court at Dunstable,
