e real presence, as a terror to the reformers;
whilst at the same time he showed his resolution to quell the adherents
of popery, by causing bishop Fisher and sir Thomas More to be attainted
of treason, for refusing such part of the oath of succession as implied
the invalidity of the king's first marriage, and thus, in effect,
disallowed the authority of the papal dispensation in virtue of which it
had been celebrated.

Thus were opened those dismal scenes of religious persecution and
political cruelty from which the mind of Elizabeth was to receive its
early and indelible impressions.

The year 1536, which proved even more fertile than its predecessor in
melancholy incidents and tragical catastrophes, opened with the death of
Catherine of Arragon; an event equally welcome, in all probability, both
to the sufferer herself, whom tedious years of trouble and mortification
must have rendered weary of a world which had no longer a hope to
flatter her; and to the ungenerous woman who still beheld her, discarded
as she was, with the sentiments of an enemy and a rival. It is
impossible to contemplate the life and character of this royal lady,
without feelings of the deepest commiseration. As a wife, the bitter
humiliations which she was doomed to undergo were entirely unmerited;
for not only was her modesty unquestioned, but her whole conduct towards
the king was a perfect model of conjugal love and duty. As a queen and a
mother, her firmness, her dignity, and her tenderness, deserved a far
other recompense than to see herself degraded, on the infamous plea of
incest, from the rank of royalty, and her daughter, so long heiress to
the English throne, branded with illegitimacy, and cast out alike from
the inheritance and the affections of her father. But the memory of this
unhappy princess has been embalmed by the genius of Shakespeare, in the
noble drama of which he has made her the touching and majestic heroine;
and let not the praise of magnanimity be denied to the daughter of Anne
Boleyn, in permitting those wrongs and those sufferings which were the
price of her glory, nay of her very existence, to be thus impressively
offered to the compassion of her people.

Henry was moved to tears on reading the tender and pious letter
addressed to him by the dying hand of Catherine; and he marked by
several small but expressive acts, the respect, or rather the
compunction, with which the recollection of her could not fail to
inspire