ANNE BOLEYN. 281 on the death of the Queen Claud in 1524, she must have been in her twenty-third year, for she appears, by the most probable ac- count, to have been born in 1501 ; and such a fascinating person as Anne is represented to have been must have proved a danger- ous temptation to a monarch who was not prone to resist the attractions of youth and beauty, as witness his love for the fair wife of Sir Gilbert Talbois, governor of Calais. If, however, she only returned to England in 1527 with her father, who was sent to France in September of that year, to conclude the treaty agreed on the previous April, then was she blameless of the ac- cusation of being the cause of first suggesting the divorce, as it is well known that Henry had adopted the resolution of seeking it before Anne's father had brought her back to England. The 1 true time of her first return to England, it will, however, be seen, was late in 1521, or early in 1522, as the order for her re- call by Henry was signed in November, 1521. It was now that Henry saw her, and made his advances to her. But, as sug- gested by Burnet, there is every reason to believe that she again went to France, entered the service of Margaret, Duchess of Alencon, and returned finally to England with her father, when recalled from a diplomatic mission to the French court, in 1527. This, in fact, reconciles the conflicting dates of different writers. One thing, however, is clear, which is, that if Henry's passion for Anne Boleyn was not the cause of his first desiring a divorce from Queen Katharine, it is quite certain that it urged him to pursue it with a zeal and obstinacy that he might never have employed, had he not loved her. As to his alleged excuse for repudiating Katharine, namely, scruples of conscience, his after conduct furnished too many and too positive examples that his was not a conscience to be troubled by scruples. Henry was probably led. to desire a divorce because he was tired of a wife whose gravity reminded him that she was some years his senior, and by whom he despaired of having a male heir to his crown, long the object of his anxious desire. It is probable that had the two sons whom Katharine presented him with lived, he would have contented himself with being an unfaithful husband, with- out breaking the bond that united him to the mother of his children. The descriptions of Anne Boleyn, handed down to posterity by her contemporaries, prove that she must have been indeed a very attractive person ; and although the well-known passion entertained for her by Wyatt may lead us to suppose that his
