ing the succession by the King's
marriage with a French princess, of restoring universal peace; to this
he added the project, as he once actually said in confidential
discourse, of reforming the English laws, doubtless in an
ecclesiastical and monarchic sense; if he had once accomplished all
this, he would retire, to serve God during the rest of his life.

But he had already (and a sense of it seems almost to be expressed in
these last words so unlike his usual mode of thought) ceased to be in
agreement with his King. Henry VIII wished for the divorce, the
establishment of his succession by male offspring, friendship with
France, and Peace: but he did not care for the French marriage. He was
some years younger than his wife, who inclined to the Spanish forms of
strict devotion, and regarded as wasted the hours which she spent at
her dressing table. Henry VIII was addicted to knightly exercises of
arms, he loved pleasant company, music, and art; we cannot call him a
gross voluptuary, but he was not faithful to his wife: he already had
a natural son; he was ever entangled in new connexions of this kind.
Many letters of his survive, in which a tincture of fancy and even of
tenderness is coupled with a thorough sensuousness; just in the
fashion of the romances of chivalry which were then being first
printed and were much read. At that time Anne Boleyn, a lady who had
lately returned from France, and appeared from time to time at Court,
saw him at her feet; she was not exactly of ravishing beauty, but full
of spirit and grace and with a certain reserve. While she resisted the
King, she held him all the faster.[96]

The reasons of home and foreign policy mentioned above, and even the
religious scruples, have their weight; but we cannot shut our eyes to
the fact that this new passion, nourished on the expectation of the
divorce which was not unconditionally refused by the spiritual power,
gave the strongest personal impulse to carry the affair through.

The position of parties in the State also influenced it. Wolsey who
had diminished the consequence of the great lords, and kept them down,
and offended them by his pride, was heartily hated by them. Adorned
though he was with the most brilliant honours of the Church, yet for
the great men of the realm he was nothing but an upstart: they had
never quite given up the hope of living to see his fall. But if he
brought the French marriage to pass, as he designed, he would have won