eld to it for a time, to stop the proceedings, and to
banish Anna Bullen from the court.

Cardinal Campeggio, called by Shakspeare Campeius, arrived in England in
October, 1528. He at first endeavored to persuade Katherine to avoid the
disgrace and danger of contesting her marriage, by entering a religious
house; but she rejected his advice with strong expressions of disdain.
"I am," said she, "the king's true wife, and to him married; and if all
doctors were dead, or law or learning far out of men's minds at the time
of our marriage, yet I cannot think that the court of Rome, and the
whole church of England, would have consented to a thing unlawful and
detestable as you call it. Still I say I am his wife, and for him will I
pray."

About two years afterwards, Wolsey died, (in November, 1530;)--the king
and queen met for the last time on the 14th of July, 1531. Until that
period, some outward show of respect and kindness had been maintained
between them; but the king then ordered her to repair to a private
residence, and no longer to consider herself as his lawful wife. "To
which the virtuous and mourning queen replied no more than this, that to
whatever place she removed, nothing could remove her from being the
king's wife. And so they bid each other farewell; and from this time the
king never saw her more."[100] He married Anna Bullen in 1532, while the
decision relating to his former marriage was still pending. The sentence
of divorce to which Katherine never would submit, was finally pronounced
by Cranmer in 1533; and the unhappy queen, whose health had been
gradually declining through these troubles of heart, died January 29,
1536, in the fiftieth year of her age.

Thus the action of the play of Henry VIII. includes events which
occurred from the impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham in 1521, to the
death of Katherine in 1536. In making the death of Katherine precede the
birth of Queen Elizabeth, Shakspeare has committed an anachronism, not
only pardonable, but necessary. We must remember that the construction
of the play required a happy termination; and that the birth of
Elizabeth, before or after the death of Katherine, involved the question
of her legitimacy. By this slight deviation from the real course of
events, Shakspeare has not perverted historic facts, but merely
sacrificed them to a higher principle; and in doing so has not only
preserved dramatic propriety, and heightened the poetical interest, but