hout control over his passions; and if appetite had been the
moving influence with him, he would scarcely, with the eyes of all the
world upon him, have passed so extravagant an insult upon the nation of
which he was the sovereign. If Jane Seymour had really been the object
of a previous unlawful attachment, her conduct in accepting so
instantly a position so frightfully made vacant, can scarcely be painted
in too revolting colours. Yet Jane Seymour's name, at home and abroad,
by Catholic and Protestant, was alike honoured and respected. Among all
Henry's wives she stands out distinguished by a stainless name,
untarnished with the breath of reproach.

If we could conceive the English nation so tongue-tied that they dared
not whisper their feelings, there were Brussels, Paris, Rome, where the
truth could be told; yet, with the exception of a single passage in a
letter of Mary of Hungary,[613] there is no hint in the correspondence,
either in Paris, Simancas, or Brussels, that there was a suspicion of
foul play. If Charles or Francis had believed Henry really capable of so
deep atrocity, no political temptation would have induced either of them
to commit their cousins or nieces to the embrace of a monster, yet no
sooner was Jane Seymour dead, than we shall find them competing eagerly
with each other to secure his hand.

It is quite possible that when Anne Boleyn was growing licentious, the
king may have distinguished a lady of acknowledged excellence by some in
no way improper preference, and that when desired by the council to
choose a wife immediately, he should have taken a person as unlike as
possible to the one who had disgraced him. 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.[614]

[Sidenote: June 8. Parliament meets.]

This matter having been accomplished, the king returned to London to
meet parliament. The Houses assembled on the 8th of June; the peers had
hastened up in unusual numbers, as if sensible of the greatness of the
occasion. The Commons were untried and unknown; and if Anne Boleyn was
an innocent victim, no king of England was ever in so terrible a
position as Henry VIII. when he en