condemnation. The King was graciously pleased to comply with this
request, which was probably made in compliance with suggestions from
himself,--the marriage with Jane Seymour having been resolved upon
long before it took place, and the desire to effect it being the cause
of the legal assassination of Anne Boleyn, which could be brought about
only through the "cooking" of a series of charges that could have
originated nowhere out of her husband's vile mind, and which led to the
deaths of six innocent persons. "The indecent haste" of the King's
marriage with the Seymour, Mr. Froude says, "is usually considered a
proof entirely conclusive of the cause of Anne Boleyn's ruin. To
myself the haste is an evidence of something very different. Henry, who
waited seven years for Anne Boleyn, was not without some control over
his passions; and if appetite had been the moving influence with him,
he would scarcely, with the eyes of all the world fixed upon his
conduct, have passed so extravagant an insult upon the nation of which
he was the sovereign. The precipitancy with which he acted is to me a
proof that he looked on matrimony as an indifferent official act which
his duty required at the moment. This was the interpretation which
was given to his conduct by the Lords and Commons of England. In the
absence of any evidence, or shadow of evidence, that among
contemporaries who had means of knowing the truth another judgment was
passed upon it, the deliberate assertion of an Act of Parliament must
be considered a safer guide than modern unsupported conjecture."
[Footnote: Mr. Froude mentions that a request that the King would
marry, similar to that which he received after the fall of Anne
Boleyn, was urged by the Council on the death of Jane Seymour; but, as
he allowed more than two years to elapse between the date of Jane's
death and the date of his marriage with Anne of Cleves, which marriage
he refused to consummate, is not the inference unavoidable that he
wedded Jane Seymour so hurriedly merely to gratify his desire to