l after some time formed the plan of
strengthening his own side by the King's marriage with a German
princess; he chose for this purpose Anne of Cleves, a lady nearly
related to the Elector of Saxony, and whose brother as possessor of
Guelders was a powerful opponent of the Emperor. This was at the time
when the Emperor on his way to the Netherlands paid a visit to King
Francis, and an alliance of these sovereigns was again feared. But by
the time his new wife arrived all anxiety had already gone by, and
with it the motive for a Protestant alliance for the King had ceased.
Anne had not quite such disadvantages of nature as has been asserted:
she was accounted amiable:[135] but she could not enchain a man like
Henry; he had no scruple in dissolving the marriage already concluded;
Anne made no opposition: the King preferred to her a Catholic lady of
the house of Howard. But the consequent alteration was not limited to
the change of a wife. The hopes the Protestants had cherished now
completely dwindled away: it was the hardest blow they could receive.
Cromwell, the person who had been the main instrument in carrying out
the schism by law, and who had then placed himself at the head of the
reformers, was devoted to destruction by the now dominant party. He
was even more violently overthrown than Wolsey had been. In the middle
of business one day at a meeting of the Privy Council he was informed
that he was a prisoner; two of his colleagues there tore the orders
which he wore from his person, since he was no longer worthy of
them;[136] that which had been the ruin of so many under his rule, a
careless word, was now his own.

Now began the persecution of those who infringed the Six Articles, on
very slight grounds of fact, and with an absence of legal form in
proving the cases, that held a drawn sword over innocent and guilty
alike. Bishops like Latimer and Shaxton had to go to the Tower. But
how many others atoned for their faith with their life! Robert Barnes,
one of the founders of the higher studies at Cambridge, well known and
universally beloved in Germany, who avowed the doctrines imbibed there
without reserve, lost his life at the stake. For what the peasants
had once demanded now again came to pass;--the heretics perished by
fire according to the old statutes.

After some time a check was given to extreme acts of violence. Legal
forms were supplied for the bloody laws, which softened their
severity. To Archbishop