at she would never suit the
King's fastidious taste.

But he who had most to lose and most to fear was Cromwell. It was he who
had drawn and driven his master into the Protestant friendship against the
Emperor and the Pope, of which the marriage was to be the pledge, and he
had repeated eagerly for months the inflated praises of Anne's beauty sent
by his agents and friends in order to pique Henry to the union. He knew
that vigilant enemies of himself and his policy were around him, watching
for their opportunity, Norfolk and the older nobles, the Pope's bishops,
and, above all, able, ambitious Stephen Gardiner, now sulking at
Winchester, determined to supplant him if he could. When, on Friday the
2nd January, Henry entered his working closet at Greenwich after his water
journey from Rochester, Cromwell asked him "how he liked the Lady Anne."
The King answered gloomily, "Nothing so well as she was spoken of," adding
that if he had known before as much as he knew then, she should never have
come within his realm. In the grievous self-pity usual with him in his
perplexity, he turned to Cromwell, the man hitherto so fertile in
expedients, and wailed, "What is the remedy?"[200] Cromwell, for once at
a loss, could only express his grief, and say he knew of none. In very
truth it was too late now to stop the state reception; for preparations
had been ordered for such a pageant as had rarely been seen in England.
Cromwell had intended it for his own triumph, and as marking the
completeness of his victory over his opponents. Once more ambition
o'erleaped itself, and the day that was to establish Cromwell's supremacy
sealed his doom.

What Anne thought of the situation is not on record. She had seen little
of the world, outside the coarse boorishness of a petty low-German court;
she was neither educated nor naturally refined, and she probably looked
upon the lumpishness of her lover as an ordinary thing. In any case, she
bated none of her state and apparent contentment, as she rode gorgeously
bedight with her great train towards Greenwich. At the foot of Shooter's
Hill there had been erected an imposing pavilion of cloth of gold, and
divers other tents warmed with fires of perfumed wood; and here a company
of ladies awaited the coming of the Queen on Saturday, 3rd January 1540. A
broad way was cleared from the pavilion, across Woolwich Common and
Blackheath, for over two miles, to the gates of Greenwich Park; and the
merchants a