far, of the policy by which he had thus made a protégée of his own the wife of his sovereign, proved his ruin. Other minor causes concurred in strengthening the fury of the storm that overtook him; but it was the disgust on Henry's part by which this marriage was immediately followed that lost him the royal favour, and left him to destruction. So sagacious a man had not been unvisited by occasional apprehensions that the airy fabric of his fortunes might some time or other be blown down still more suddenly than it had arisen; but the catastrophe came at last with an instantaneousness for which he probably had not been prepared. On the morning of the 10th of June, 1540, he appeared in his place in the House of Lords as usual; at three o'clock in the afternoon he was arrested by the Duke of Norfolk, as he sat at the council table, on a charge of high treason. The particular acts of which he was accused were acts of excess in the exercise of his various high powers, of many of which he was no doubt guilty; he was besides charged with having protected heretics and heretical opinions, which there is no question that he had also done to a considerable extent; but when it was affirmed that on one occasion he had declared his readiness to strike a dagger into the heart of any man who should oppose the Reformation, were it the king himself, it is probable that words were imputed to him which he had never used. The means, or pretences, however, were of little consequence; his destruction, in whatever way it might be brought about, was resolved upon. The worst stain upon Cromwell's memory is his having about a year before his fall induced parliament to pass a bill of attainder for high treason against Margaret Countess of Salisbury (the mother of Cardinal Pole), upon which she was eventually executed without ever having been brought to trial. This iniquitous precedent was now applied in his own case: the bill of attainder was quickly and without difficulty carried through the two houses-no member of either, so far as is known, venturing to speak in vindication of the accused, except only his chief friend Cranmer, who uttered a few timid

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words in his behalf on the first reading of the bill, but
voted for it on the second and the third readings.
lay for about six weeks in the Tower, during which he
in vain repeatedly importuned the capricious and hard-
hearted tyrant whom he had so long and zealously served.
Consider," he concludes one of his letters preserved by
Burnet," that I [am] a most woeful prisoner, ready to take
the death when it shall please God and your majesty; and
yet the frail flesh inciteth me continually to call to your
Grace for mercy and grace for mine offences. And thus
Christ save, preserve, and keep you. Written at the
Tower, this Wednesday the last of June, with the heavy
heart and trembling hand of your Highness's most heavy
and most miserable prisoner, and poor slave, THOMAS
CROMWELL. Most gracious prince, I cry for mercy,
mercy, mercy!" Another, which he appears to have
written when he was first committed to the Tower, is in
a strain still more imploring. "Most gracious king and
most merciful sovereign," it begins, "Your most humble,
most obeysand, and most bounden subject, and most
lamentable servant and prisoner, prostrate at the feet of
your most excellent majesty, have heard your pleasure
by the mouth of your comptroller, that I should write to
your most excellent Highness such things as I thought
meet to be written, considering my most miserable state
and condition. For the which your most abundant
goodness, benignity, and licence, the immortal God,
three and one, reward your majesty." He then goes on
to protest his innocence of the charge of high treason
with extraordinary vehemence. "As I ever," he says,
"have had love to your majesty's person, life, prosperity,
health, wealth, joy, and comfort, God so help
me in this mine adversity, and confound me if ever I
thought the contrary. . . If it were in my power, as
it is in God's, to make your majesty to live ever young
and prosperous, God knoweth I would. . . . Should any
faction, or any affection to any point, make me a traitor to
your majesty, then all the devils in hell confound me,
and the vengeance of God light upon me if I should once
have thought it. . . . I would to Christ I had obeyed

your often most gracious, grave counsels and advertisements, then it had not been with me as now it is. Yet our Lord, if it be his will, can do with me as he did with Susan, who was falsely accused. . . . If I would not. . . . willingly die for your comfort, I would I were in hell, and I would I should receive a thousand deaths." All this may not be thought very dignified; but it seems to betray strength of conviction if not strength of character, and rather an excessive ardour of temperament than that cold Machiavelism and absence of all principle which is imputed to Cromwell by the Romish writers. He went to his death in that perplexing manner of which we have several other examples in this reign, leaving the true character and meaning of his whole life and conduct uncertain and disputable if we were to attempt to make it out only from his dying words. He was beheaded on Tower Hill on the 28th of July, and in a speech which he made on the scaffold, after thanking God for having appointed him such a death for his offences, and remarking that he had been a great traveller in the world, and, being but of a base degree, had been called to great estate, and since coming thereunto had offended his prince, for which he heartily asked him forgiveness, he added, “And now I pray you that be here to bear me record, I die in the Catholic faith, not doubting in any article of my faith, no, nor doubting in any sacrament of the Church. Many hath slandered me, and reported that I have been a bearer of such as have maintained evil opinions, which is untrue; but I confess, that, like as God by his holy spirit doth instruct us in the truth, so the devil is ready to seduce us, and I have been seduced; but bear me witness that I die in the Catholic faith of the Holy Church." It seems hardly possible to interpret these expressions as meaning any thing else than that he had at one time held certain heretical opinions which he now renounced; if not this, what did he mean by saying that he had been seduced, but that he now died in the Catholic faith? Nevertheless Burnet, although he confesses that, "by what he spoke at his death, he left it much doubted of what religion he died,"

insists that it is certain he was a Lutheran. "The term Catholic faith," Burnet goes on, "used by him in his last speech, seemed to make it doubtful; but that was then used in England in its true sense, in opposition to the novelties of the see of Rome. So that his profession of the Catholic faith was strangely perverted, when some from thence concluded that he died in the

communion of the Church of Rome. But his praying in English, and that only to God through Christ, without any of those tricks that were used when those of that church died, showed he was none of theirs."

JOHN HOWARD, Duke of Norfolk, perished at Bosworth Field in the year 1485, bravely fighting for Richard III. Being attainted by the first parliament of Henry VII., all his great estates and property of every kind were forfeited to the crown. His son Thomas, who had been created Earl of Surrey during his father's life-time (in the year 1483, and by Richard III.), was also in the battle of Bosworth Field; and, after fighting valiantly, and being severely wounded, he was taken prisoner. The earl was also attainted; he was thrown into the Tower, and was for some time thought to be in imminent danger of losing his head. He lay in close prison more than three years, but was liberated and restored to the earldom of Surrey in 1489. He had conciliated Henry VII. by his prudent and cautious behaviour. When re-admitted at court, he rapidly rose in the good graces of the politic sovereign. His son, Lord Thomas Howard, was allowed to marry, about the year 1495, the

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