Rome, and Charles V and Francis I being now at amity, the pope at length fulminated, or at all events signed, the sentence of excommunication against him, which had been three years suspended. Henry, however, had already taken measures in anticipation of this blow to secure himself against such of his own subjects as might possibly be put in his place if he were deprived of the kingdom. Henry Pole, lord Montague, was grandson and eldest representative of George, duke of Clarence. Henry Courtenay, marquis of Exeter [q. v.], was a grandson of Edward IV. They were both arrested; found guilty of treason by a jury of their peers for having corresponded with Montague's brother, Cardinal Reginald Pole [q. v.], and were beheaded (9 Dec. 1538). Sir Geoffrey Pole, another brother of Montague's, also thrown into prison, bought his pardon by a confession which involved his family. The Countess of Salisbury, Lord Montague's mother, was thrown into the Tower, to undergo two years later a barbarous execution. Sir Nicholas Carew [q. v.] was also arrested, and was executed on 3 March 1539. Parliament, which met on 28 April, soon followed up these cruelties by a sweeping act of attainder against many other persons.
The king still felt far from secure, and ordered all possible precautionary measures against invasion. The people, on the other hand, were assured that old principles of religion stood in little danger, when parliament to maintain them passed the severe penal statute of the Six Articles, which caused Latimer and Shaxton to resign their bishoprics. But Cromwell was already planning a new way to secure the king, not by the preservation of old principles of religion, but by Henry's marriage to Anne of Cleves [q. v.] Although a theological agreement with the German protestants had not been established, a political alliance between them and the king of England promised advantage to both sides as a means of holding the emperor in check, and the match with Anne of Cleves was by Henry's own confession accepted by him simply and solely to defeat the threatened combination against him.
The treaty for this marriage was signed at Windsor 24 Sept. 1539. The last strongholds of papal authority within the realm were a few of the remaining monasteries, and their suppression was nearly completed. During 1538 and 1539 almost all the great abbeys surrendered, and early in 1540 not a single monastery remained. Anne of Cleves landed at Deal on 27 Dec. 1539, and Henry with five of his privy chamber came to see her at Rochester on New-year's day, 1540. They were all in disguise, but the king showed her a token from himself and took a first embrace. He remained with her that day and till the following afternoon, when he returned by Gravesend and the river to Greenwich, where the marriage took place on 6 Jan. Charles V was at that very time the guest of Francis I at Paris, but the emperor stood now quite as much in fear of a protestant alliance against him as Henry had done of a catholic alliance against England. Nor would Henry perhaps have done much to disturb the relations between Charles and Francis by a mission of the Duke of Norfolk to France immediately after, but that the emperor, having reached his own countries, repudiated some important pledges to his ally and won the friendship of the Duke of Cleves by offering him the Duchess of Milan in marriage. Thus Henry's great object of keeping the two rivals on the continent at variance was attained once more, the policy of Cromwell was no longer serviceable, and within England itself a catholic reaction grew stronger every day.
The final results were the arrest and execution of Thomas Cromwell and the king's divorce from Anne of Cleves. Both events took place in July. On the 30th also Robert Barnes, D.D. [q. v.], Jerome, and Garrard were burned as heretics at Smithfield for their Lutheran tendencies, while Thomas Abell [q. v.], Richard Fetherstone [q. v.], and Powell were hanged, disembowelled, and quartered in the same place for the old offence of maintaining the validity of the king's first marriage. The parliament which sat, after prorogation from last year, from 12 April to 24 July, had attainted all the six. Its chief business besides was to grant the king, notwithstanding all the confiscations of monastic property, a very heavy subsidy, which it did with much reluctance.
Henry then married Catherine Howard [q. v.], who was shown as queen on 8 Aug. 1540. He was now free from serious anxieties, and his buoyant spirits returned. He adopted a new rule of life, rising even in winter between five and six, hearing mass at seven, and riding about on horseback till ten, by which he found himself much benefited in health. In the beginning of March following (1541) he was seized with a tertian fever, and the old fistula in his leg caused him some trouble, but he soon grew better and appeared as robust as usual. His spirits, however, were depressed by the discovery of a conspiracy for a new insurrection in the north, organised by Sir John Nevill. He declared that he had an unhappy people to govern, whom if he could he would reduce to such poverty that they should not be able to rebel. Some of the con-
