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AND THEIR REFUTATION. 15
13. Within a week Henry was married to Catherine
Howard, who soon met the same fate as Anna Boleyn. She was
charged before Parliament with dissolute conduct with two indi
viduals, before her marriage, and with adultery since, and was
condemned to be beheaded (42). Henry then got a law passed,
the like of which was never before heard of, enacting it high
treason for any lady to marry the
ever offended against chastity (43).
if King, previously she had
He then married Catherine
Parr, sister to the Earl of Essex (44) ; she survived him, but
having married the brother of the Regent Somerset, Thomas
Seymour, Lord High Admiral of England, who suffered death
by the sentence of his own brother, she died of a broken heart.
14. Death, at last, was about to put an end to Henry s
crimes ;
he was now fifty-seven years of age, and had grown to
such an enormous size that he could not almost pass through the
doorway of his palace, and was obliged to be carried by servants
up and down stairs (45). A deep-rooted sadness and remorse
now seized him ; all his crimes, sacrileges, and scandals stared
him in the face. To establish the sacrilegious doctrine of his
primacy over the English Church he had put
to death two Car
dinals, three Archbishops, eighteen Bishops and Archdeacons,
five hundred priests, sixty Superiors of religious houses, fifty
Canons, twenty-nine peers, three hundred and sixty-six knights,
and an immense number both of the gentry and people. Ulcers
in one of his
legs, together with fever, now plainly told him that
his end was nigh, and some writers assert that he then spoke to
some of the Bishops of his intention of being again reconciled
to the Church, but not one among them had the courage to tell
him plainly the course he should take. All dreaded his anger ;
and none were willing to brave the danger of death, by plainly
telling him that his only chance of salvation was to repent of his
evil deeds to repair the scandal he had given and humbly re
turn to the Church he had abandoned. No one was courageous
enough to tell him this; one alone suggested to him that he
ought to convoke parliament, as he had done when about to make
the changes, to set things again to rights. He ordered, it is
(42) Gotti, s. 2, n. 29; Hcrmant, t. 2, (44) Varill. t. 2, I 13, . 575; Nat.
c. 2G6 ; Nat. Alex. loc. cit. n. 7. AJex. a. 3, n. 7.
(43) Varill. loc. cit. p. 575. (45) Varill. t. 2,1. Ifi, />, 08.