s of religious affinities; but submission to the
Papacy in future might mean that the most powerful people in England would
be deprived of the fat spoils of the Church with which Cromwell had bought
them, and that the vainest king on earth must humbly confess himself in
the wrong. Anne herself was a mere straw upon a whirlpool, though her
abilities, as Cromwell confessed, were not to be despised. She did not
plan or make the Reformation, though she was forced by her circumstances
to patronise it. The real author of the great schism of England was not
Anne or Cranmer, but Luther's enemy, Charles V., the champion of
Catholicism. But for the pressure he put upon the Pope to refuse Henry's
divorce, in order to prevent a coalition of England and France, Cranmer's
defiance of the Papacy would not have been needed, and Henry might have
come back to Rome again easily. But with Cranmer to provide him with
plausible pretexts for the repeated indulgence of his self-will, and
Cromwell to feed his pride and cupidity by the plunder of the Church,
Henry had already been drawn too far to go back. Greed and vanity of the
ruling powers thus conspired to make permanent in England the influence of
evanescent Anne Boleyn.

[Illustration: _JANE SEYMOUR_

_From a painting by_ HOLBEIN _in the Imperial Collection at Vienna_]

CHAPTER VII

1536-1540

PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT--JANE SEYMOUR AND ANNE OF CLEVES

From the moment that Henry abruptly left the lists at May-day on the
receipt of Cromwell's letter detailing the admissions of Smeaton, he saw
Anne no more. No pang of remorse, no wave of compassion passed over him.
He easily believed what he wished to believe, and Anne was left to the
tender mercies of Cromwell, to be done to death. Again Henry was a prey to
profound self-pity for ever having fallen under the enchantment of such a
wicked woman. He, of course, was not to blame for anything. He never was.
He was always the clement, just man whose unsuspecting goodness of heart
had been abused by others, and who tried to find distraction and to forget
the evil done him. On the very night of the day that Anne was arrested the
Duke of Richmond, Henry's son, now a grown youth, went, as was his custom,
into his father's room at Whitehall to bid him good night and ask his
blessing. The King, we are told,[167] fell a-weeping as he blessed his
son, "saying that he and his sister (Mary) might well be grateful to God
for saving them from the