he
Commons is nothing but 'Down with the church,' and all this meseemeth
is for lack of faith only."

[Sidenote: Marriage with Anne Boleyn]

It had taken Henry several years to prepare the way for his chief
object, the divorce. His hand was at last forced by the knowledge that
Anne was pregnant; he married her on January 25, 1533, without waiting
for final sentence of annulment of marriage with Catharine. In so
doing he might seem, at first glance, to have followed the advice so
freely tendered him to discharge his conscience by committing bigamy;
but doubtless he regarded his first marriage as illegal all the time
and merely waited for the opportunity to get a court that would so
pronounce it. The vacancy of the archbishopric of Canterbury enabled
him to appoint to it Thomas Cranmer, [Sidenote: Cranmer] the obsequious
divine who had first suggested his present plan. Cranmer was a
Lutheran, so far committed to the new faith that he had married; he was
intelligent, learned, a wonderful master of language, and capable at
last of dying for his belief. But that he showed himself pliable to
his master's wishes beyond all bounds of decency is a fact made all the
more glaring by the firm and honorable conduct of More and Fisher. His
worst act was possibly on the occasion of his nomination to the
province of Canterbury; wishing to be confirmed by the pope he
concealed his real views and took an oath of obedience to the Holy See,
having previously signed {291} a protest that he considered the oath a
mere form and not a reality.

The first use he made of his position was to pronounce sentence that
Henry and Catharine had never been legally married, though at the same
time asserting that this did not affect the legitimacy of Mary because
her parents had believed themselves married. Immediately afterwards it
was declared that Anne was a lawful wife, and she was crowned queen,
[Sidenote: 1533] amid the smothered execrations of the populace, on
June 1. On September 7, the Princess Elizabeth was born. Catharine's
cause was taken up at Rome; Clement's brief forbidding the king to
remarry was followed by final sentence in Catharine's favor. Her last
years were rendered miserable by humiliation and acts of petty spite.
When she died her late husband, with characteristic indecency,
[Sidenote: January 1536] celebrated the joyous event by giving a ball
at which he and Anne appeared dressed in yellow.

[Sidenote: March 1534]