e prospect had, from the very opening of the Reformation
Parliament, been dangled before the eyes of the new nobles, the
members of Parliament, the justices of the peace, the rich merchants
who thirsted for lands wherewith to make themselves gentlemen. Chapuys
again and again mentions a scheme for distributing the lands of the
Church among the laity as a project for the ensuing session; but their
time was not yet; not until their work was done were the labourers to
reap their reward.[958] The dissolution of the monasteries harmonised
well with the secular principles of these predominant classes. The
monastic ideal of going out of the world to seek something, which
cannot be valued in terms of pounds, shillings and pence, is abhorrent
to a busy, industrial age; and every principle is hated most at the
time when it most is needed.

[Footnote 957: _The Complaynt of Roderick Mors_
(Early Eng. Text Soc.), pp. 47-52. The author,
Henry Brinkelow (see _D.N.B._, vi., 346), also
suggested that both Houses of Parliament should sit
together as one assembly "for it is not rytches or
autoryte that bringeth wisdome" (_Complaynt_, p.
8). Some of the political literature of the later
part of Henry's reign is curiously modern in its
ideas.]

* * * * *

Intimately associated as they were in their lives, Catherine of Aragon
and Anne Boleyn were not long divided by death; and, piteous as is the
story of the last years of Catherine, it pales before the hideous
tragedy of the ruin of Anne Boleyn. "If I have a son, as I hope shortly,
I know what will become of her," wrote Anne of the Princess Mary.[959]
On 29th January, 1536, the day of her rival's funeral, Anne Boleyn was
prematurely delivered of a dead child, and the result was fatal to
Anne herself. This was not her first miscarriage,[960] and Henry's (p. 343)
old conscience began to work again. In Catherine's case the path of
his conscience was that of a slow and laborious pioneer; now it moved
easily on its royal road to divorce. On 29th January, Chapuys, ignorant
of Anne's miscarriage, was retailing to his master a court rumour that
Henry intended to marry again. The King was reported to have said that
he had been seduced by witchcraft when he married his second queen,
and that the marr