or "Treason." Sir Thomas More, one of the wisest and best of men, would
not say he thought the marriage with Katharine had been unlawful, and
paid his head as the price of his fearless honesty.

Jane Seymour, whom Henry married the day after Anne Boleyn's execution,
died within a year at the birth of a son (Edward VI.). In 1540 Cromwell
arranged another union with the plainest woman in Europe, Anne of
Cleves; which proved so distasteful to Henry that he speedily divorced
her, and in resentment at Cromwell's having entrapped him, by a
flattering portrait drawn by Holbein, the Minister came under his
displeasure, which at that time meant death. He was beheaded in 1540,
and in that same year occurred the King's marriage with Katharine
Howard, who one year later met same fate as Anne Boleyn.

[Sidenote: Katherine Howard's Death 1541. Death of Henry VIII., 1547.]

Katharine Parr, the fifth and last wife, and an ardent Protestant and
reformer, also narrowly escaped, and would undoubtedly at last have
gone to the block. But Henry, who at fifty-six was infirm and wrecked
in health, died in the year 1547, the signing of death-warrants being
his occupation to the very end.

Whatever his motive, Henry VIII. had in making her Protestant, placed
England firmly in the line of the world's highest progress; and strange
to say, that Kingdom is most indebted to two of her worst Kings.

[Sidenote: Edward VI 1547-1555. Lady Jane Grey's Death, 1553.]

The crown passed to the son of Jane Seymour, Edward VI., a feeble boy
of sixteen, and upon his death six years later (1553), by the King's