end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century who wrote in the Roman interest, and who have been ignored simply because they were Roman Catholics. Sanders and Harpesfield are better worth reading than Foxe and Burnet; yet no one reads them, partly perhaps because they wrote in Latin and no one has translated them, probably because they did not wish their account of transactions to be the true version of them. But every additional light thrown upon the history of the reign of Henry the Eighth serves to show that the Catholic is upon the whole the correct view of the period, and the Protestant the wrong one. We do not of course mean to imply anything as to the right or wrong of the Reformation itself, but only that Catholic writers have put out a view which is consistent with historical facts, and that Protestants have defended their theories by allegations which cannot be supported by documentary evidence. Catholics, for instance, may be wrong in attributing the decline of character and the final abandonment of principle in Henry to his defection from the Pope and his stubbornly persisting in his opposition when subsequent opportunities occurred for his reconciliation. But the fact that he degenerated from what in his youth seemed a nobility and generosity of temper to a state of utter selfishness and hardness of heart, and that this decline began with his first acquaintance with Anne Boleyn, and proceeded with rapidly accelerating velocity to the end of his reign, can no longer be called in question. The same observation applies to all the formerly disputed facts of the period. The fact that Catharine's marriage with Arthur was not consummated has been established from Campeggio's diary; the connexion of Henry with Mary Boleyn, another most important element in the history of the divorce, has only very lately been placed beyond all doubt; and these, like every other additional fact of late discovered, all point in the same direction. They show that Protestantism in this country, whether it has upon the whole been productive of a greater amount of good or of evil, has nothing to boast of in its origin.

The first reformation that took place in the reign of Henry, which consisted, speaking roughly and in the general, in the substitution of the Royal for the Papal Supremacy, however it may be to be rejoiced in as a matter of result, was compassed and brought about by unscrupulous mendacity and barefaced misrepresentations on the King's part, and the most abject servility on the part of his agents. In fact, whatever eventual good is destined to arise out of the great schism of the sixteenth century, will certainly illustrate the wonderful way in which man proposes and God disposes, and will prove how very little historical results can at any given moment be predicted or conjectured.

We have been led into these reflections by a perusal of the Report on the Archives of Venice, issued now more than a year ago by the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records. This Report shows most plainly, as indeed we suppose it was designed to show, that the libraries at Venice contain MS. treasures which are unknown to the English world, but which it will be worth the while of any future historian of the sixteenth, seventeenth, or eighteenth centuries to consult, if they would avoid the mistakes into which the historians of these centuries have for the most part fallen. The Report itself is somewhat tantalizing. It tells us so much about so great a variety of subjects of interest that we are tempted to wish for a detailed account of all the papers alluded to in it. But we are obliged to content ourselves with the prospect that Mr. Rawdon Brown, who is employed by the Government at Venice, will in due course publish an analysis of all the more important documents. We have no time to waste over a description of the Report itself, or its Appendix, interesting and full of information as they are. Our present subject is connected with only one of the ten subjects treated in the Appendix, that which occupies the first place and is called Appendix A, consisting of a list of documents relative to the divorce of Henry the Eighth.

Neither, again, do we propose entering upon the whole history of the complicated case of the divorce of Henry and Catharine, from the time when the first whispers of his dissatisfaction with his first wife and his preference for another began to circulate, down to the time when the Gordian knot was cut by the appointment of Cranmer to the see of Canterbury for the express purpose of pronouncing the divorce from Catharine and asserting the legality of the marriage with Anne Boleyn. That story has all to be told over again from the beginning to the end before people will understand anything of the rights of the case, but it is too long a story for a Review, and we address ourselves only to the elucidation of one part of it, upon which scarcely any historian has thrown any light, viz. the mission of Croke to Italy in the winter of 1529 and 1530 to collect the opinions of foreign divines and lawyers and to obtain the decision of the Universities upon the great question of the legality of the Papal dispensation to marry the widow of a brother who had died childless. There is no transaction in the whole course of the suit which has been so utterly mistaken both as to the motive which prompted it and the circumstances under which it was conducted. Collier has made a mistake as to the whole business, merely because he found the determination of the University of Orleans dated a year too early; Burnet, in his usual haste, has referred to letters of Croke which prove the exact contradiction of what he states; Lingard

alone has seen the true drift of the whole proceeding, and has made no mistake as far as he goes. But then he of course could not be expected to have read through all the dispatches which still exist in MS., some originals and some copies, only two of which have ever yet been printed. As to the French historian of this reign, M. Audin, he has indeed made a pretty little story, which he appears to have extracted from Foxe, and embellished in his own peculiar style by inventing dialogues where the Protestant martyrologist only suggested them, and by representing things, as is his wont, as favourably to the Catholic side as circumstances will allow.

For the sake of the unlearned, we hope our better-informed readers will allow us briefly to recapitulate the circumstances which led to the embarrassment in which Henry and his minister, Wolsey, found themselves in the autumn of the year 1529.

The death of Arthur, prince of Wales, the eldest son of Henry the Seventh, took place on the 2d of April, 1502. Out of it arose the whole course of events which, from their importance, deserve to be considered as the first act in the great drama of the English Reformation. At about the age of fifteen he had married Catharine, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, who was about a year older than himself. The marriage ceremony took place at S. Paul's Cathedral, on the 14th of November. During the five months of the prince's life they had slept in the same bed for only seven nights, and the marriage had never been consummated, and Henry, the second son, had taken the title of Prince of Wales within a few weeks of his brother Arthur's death, if not immediately. Early in May, the Spanish sovereigns sent over Ferdinand, duke of Estrada, with powers to settle the terms of the marriage between Henry and the virgin widow of his brother. The arrangement was a matter of convenience on both sides. Half of the princess' dowry had been paid, and difficulties arose between the parties as to whether the remaining half was due to Henry, or whether the portion already paid should revert to the parents of the bride. Each party did its best to outwit the other, and more than seven years had elapsed before the marriage of Henry and Catharine actually took place. During the interval, Henry had once been made by his father to protest before witnesses that he did not intend to be bound by his contract, and to repudiate his engagement with the Princess of Wales; but in April 1509 the King died, and within a few weeks afterwards Catharine became the wife of the new king. And it was noticed by the spectators of the ceremony that Catharine was attired as a virgin in a white veil, in accordance with the current belief of all the English people, that the previous

marriage had been nothing more than a formal ceremony. The infamous Hadrian de Castello, the Cardinal Bishop of Bath and Wells, had been employed by Henry the Seventh in negotiating the dispensation which it was considered on all hands was necessary to enable the marriage to take place between two parties who were related to each other in the first degree of affinity; and the bull of Julius II. was at length issued, alleging that for various causes he deemed it advisable to dispense with the law of the Church which prohibited marriage within that degree. The bull, to cover all possible exceptions, included a dispensation for the marriage, implying that it had been consummated; but the concurrent testimony of the Simancas records and the recently published diary of Campeggio, prove beyond all doubt that this was not the case. The marriage seems to have been a happy one, and little arose to disturb its harmony for nearly eighteen years. Henry had not been altogether faithful to his wife, for we know of at least two illicit connexions which he formed, the one with the widow of Sir Gilbert Talboys, by whom he had a son whom he created Duke of Richmond, and the other with Mary Boleyn, the elder sister of the more celebrated Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn. It would not be easy to say at what time the charms of Anne Boleyn made their first impression upon Henry. She had been in attendance on the Queen for some time before the beginning of the year 1527. It was in the month of May this year that the public became partially acquainted with the state of affairs, by a sort of mock trial, which took place before Wolsey, at Westminster. An imperfect and very mutilated account of this trial exists in a bound volume in the Record Office, amongst the State Papers of the reign. And it may be gathered from this document, which, as far as we know, has never been noticed by any historian, that the investigation was somewhat in this form: The Cardinal of York informs the King that, after having taken counsel with Warham, archbishop of Canterbury, at Greenwich, he was of opinion that the marriage of the King with his brother's widow, the previous marriage having been consummated, was incestuous, and opposed to the positive precept of the Levitical law. Accordingly he requests the King's leave to try the case, calling his attention to the facts under which he, a subject, was about to sit in judgment on his sovereign. The King, who was present by previous concert, replies that he accepts him for his judge, and orders him to make the Archbishop of Canterbury his assessor. Warham, who is also present, accepts the office. Wolsey then chooses Gardiner and Claiburgh as his scribes, and Alan, Bennett, and Croke as

witnesses. He then proceeds to state the case as against the King, laying stress upon the fact that the previous marriage had been consummated. The King answers, and appoints Bell as his proctor, and Wolman as promoter of the suit, and the court was adjourned till May 26. On that day the court again sat, and the original bull of dispensation, with the expression foran consummavissetis, was read; after which, Wolman rose to ask for time to be given him to allege what could be said against it. Accordingly, on the 31st of May, Wolman brings forward all the objections which could be urged, which were exactly the same as those which appear over and over again in the course of the correspondence which took place, and in the allegations which were made both at the legatine court in England and before Clement and the cardinals at Rome. Amongst them are, the matter being of Divine obligation and therefore indispensable by the Pope's authority, the insufficiency of the reasons alleged in the bull, the death of the Spanish king and queen before the bull was executed, and the protestation against the marriage which Henry, then Prince of Wales, had been obliged to make at the age of fourteen. The document, which consists of twenty-two folios, is imperfect, and appears never to have been completed, as it ends on the middle of a page and in the middle of a sentence, and apparently in the middle of Bell's reply. This is the earliest intimation of the divorce that is to be met with in the State Papers now existing, and it is much to be regretted that its mutilated and imperfect state leaves us much in the dark as to what the object of the trial was. It can only be conjectured that the purpose was to determine that there was a prima facie case to be referred to the Pope, with the view of inducing him to pronounce against the validity of Pope Julius' dispensation. And Wolsey had probably little doubt, in the spring of 1527, that Clement VII. would consent to his own view of the case. Wolsey was at first a most sincere favourer of the divorce, for he little imagined how the matter would issue, though he must have been fully aware of his master's passion for Anne Boleyn. There were doubts and difficulties enough in the matter to make a very plausible case for a divorce; and as a dispensation for this particular class of affinity was almost unprecedented, it is possible even Wolsey may have persuaded himself that such a method of proceeding exceeded even the powers of the Supreme Pontiff. He most likely thought that the fancy for Anne Boleyn would pass away when, as was almost certain to be the case, she had, like her elder sister, fallen a victim to the King's lust, and been discarded, her guilty compliance with the King's desires being