r, he
does advert to it as a disorder which has prevailed for some time, and on
which he makes some observations.

Between this letter, probably written in the month of July, and the sixth
(17), in which the king speaks of the arrival of the legate in Paris, and
which must have been written about the end of September, there are two
letters (1 and 5) certainly written within a few days of each other. In
the second of these two, _viz._, the fifth of this series, the king
expresses his extreme satisfaction which he has received from the lady's
answer to his request. In the effusion of his gratitude, he pays a visit
to his mistress, and both address a letter (8) to Cardinal Wolsey, in
which Henry manifests his astonishment at not having yet heard of the
arrival of Campeggio, the legate, in Paris. The date of this letter may
thus be fixed in the month of September.

The fourth (1), apparently written in August, is the most interesting of
the whole collection, inasmuch as it fixes the period of the commencement
of the king's affection for Anne Boleyn. He complains of "having been
above a whole year struck with the dart of love," and that he is not yet
certain whether he shall succeed in finding a place in the heart and
affections of her whom he loves.

The last letter (18), which makes mention of the illness of the legate as
the cause of the delay in the affair of the divorce, shows that this
correspondence ended in May, 1529, at which time the court of legates was
open for the final decision of that point.

Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, subsequently created Earl of
Wiltshire, after passing many years at the court of Claude, queen of
Francis I of France, returned to England about the end of the year 1525,
at the age of eighteen. Here she was soon appointed maid of honour to
Queen Katherine, and attracted the particular attentions of Henry VIII,
who was then engaged in soliciting a divorce from the Pope. The marked
preference shown by the king for Anne Boleyn raised so much jealousy and
slander that it was thought advisable by her family to remove the new
favourite from the court; and it was during this retirement at Hever, a
seat of her father's in Kent, that these letters were addressed to her by
her royal lover. It was no doubt to render them the more agreeable that he
wrote some of them in French. They breathe a fondness and an ardour which
could scarcely leave room to doubt the sincerity of his love.

***

W