one time
he heard the music of the royal barge as it passed Lambeth, and hurried
to the waterside to greet the King. "I have news for you my chaplain!"
Henry broke out with his rough laugh as he drew Cranmer on board: "I
know now who is the greatest heretic in Kent!" and pulling a paper from
his sleeve he showed him his denunciation by the prebendaries of his own
cathedral. At another time he was summoned from his bed, and crossed the
river to find Henry pacing the gallery at Whitehall and to hear that on
the petition of the Council the King had consented to his committal to
the Tower. The law of the Six Articles parted him from wife and child.
"Happy man that you are" Cranmer groaned to Alexander Ales, whom with
his wonted consideration for others he had summoned to Lambeth to warn
him of his danger as a married priest; "happy man that you are that you
can escape! I would that I could do the same. Truly my see would be no
hindrance to me."

The bitter words must have recalled to Ales words of hardly less
bitterness which he had listened to on a visit to Lambeth years before.
If there was one person upon earth whom Cranmer loved it was Anne
Boleyn. When the royal summons had called him to Lambeth to wait till
the time arrived when his part was to be played in the murder of the
Queen his affection found vent in words of a strange pathos. "I loved
her not a little," he wrote to Henry in fruitless intercession, "for the
love which I judged her to bear towards God and His Gospel. I was most
bound to her of all creatures living." So he wrote, knowing there was
wrong to be done towards the woman he loved, wrong which he alone could
do, and knowing too that he would stoop to do it. The large garden
stretched away northward from his house then as now, but then thick, no
doubt, with the elm rows that vanished some thirty years back as the
great city's smoke drifted over them, and herein the early morning (it
was but four o'clock) Ales, who had found sleep impossible and had
crossed the river in a boat to seek calm in the fresh air and stillness
of the place, met Cranmer walking. On the preceding day Anne had gone
through the mockery of her trial, but to the world outside the little
circle of the court nothing was known, and it was in utter
unconsciousness of this that Ales told the Archbishop he had been roused
by a dream of her beheading. Cranmer was startled out of his usual calm.
"Don't you know then," he asked after a momen