op to the disgrace of suing for her
favour. The inference is reasonable, therefore, that the King took the
step which in the event was to produce such momentous consequences when
the Cardinal was not at hand to dissuade him. He was not encouraged even
by her own family. Her father, as will be seen hereafter, was from the
first opposed to his daughter's advancement. He probably knew her
character too well. But Henry, when he had taken an idea into his head,
was not to be moved from it. The lady was not beautiful: she was rather
short than tall, her complexion was dark, her neck long, her mouth broad,
her figure not particularly good. The fascinating features were her long
flowing brown hair, a pair of effective dark eyes, and a boldness of
character which might have put him on his guard, and did not.

The immediate effect was to cool Wolsey's ardour for the divorce. His
mission in France, which opened so splendidly, eventuated in little. The
French cardinals held no meeting at Avignon. They had signed the address
to Clement, but they had not made the Cardinal of York into their
patriarch. Rouen was not added to his other preferments. Could he but have
proposed a marriage for his sovereign with the Princess of Alencon, all
might have been different, but it had fared with him as it fared with the
Earl of Warwick, whom Henry's grandfather had sent to France to woo a
bride for him, and in his absence married Elizabeth Grey. He perhaps
regretted the munificent offers of the Emperor which he had hastily
rejected, and he returned to England in the autumn to feel the
consequences of the change in his situation. Mr. Brewer labours in vain to
prove that Wolsey was unfavourable to the divorce from the beginning.
Catherine believed that he was the instigator of it. Mendoza was of the
same opinion. Unquestionably he promoted it with all his power, and made
it a part of a great policy. To maintain that he was acting thus against
his conscience and to please the King is more dishonouring to him than to
suppose that he was either the originator or the willing instrument. All,
however, was altered when Anne Boleyn came upon the stage, and she made
haste to make him feel the change. "The Legate has returned from France,"
wrote Mendoza on the 26th of October. He went to visit the King at
Richmond, and sent to ask where he could see him. The King was in his
chamber. It happened that the lady, who seemed to entertain no great
affection for th