deceitful appearances: his aversion
to the queen secretly increased every day; and having at last broken all
restraint, it prompted him at once to seek the dissolution of a marriage
so odious to him, and to involve his minister in ruin, who had been
the innocent author of it. The fall of Cromwell was hastened by other
causes. All the nobility hated a man who, being of such low extraction,
had not only mounted above them by his station of vicar-general, but had
engrossed many of the other considerable offices of the crown: besides
enjoying that commission, which gave him a high and almost absolute
authority over the clergy, and even over the laity, he was privy seal,
chamberlain, and master of the wards: he had also obtained the order
of the garter, a dignity which had ever been conferred only on men
of illustrious families, and which seemed to be profaned by its being
communicated to so mean a person. The people were averse to him, as the
supposed author of the violence on the monasteries; establishments which
were still revered and beloved by the commonalty. The Catholics regarded
him as the concealed enemy of their religion: the Protestants, observing
his exterior concurrence with all the persecutions exercised against
them, were inclined to bear him as little favor; and reproached him with
the timidity, if not treachery, of his conduct. And the king, who found
that great clamors had on all hands arisen against the administration,
was not displeased to throw on Cromwell the load of public hatred; and
he hoped, by making so easy a sacrifice, to regain the affections of his
subjects.

But there was another cause which suddenly set all these motives in
action, and brought about an unexpected revolution in the ministry. The
king had fixed his affection on Catharine Howard, niece to the duke of
Norfolk; and being determined to gratify this new passion, he could find
no expedient, but by procuring a divorce from his present consort,
to raise Catharine to his bed and throne. The duke, who had long been
engaged in enmity with Cromwell, made the same use of her insinuations
to ruin this minister, that he had formerly done of Anne Boleyn's
against Wolsey; and when all engines were prepared, he obtained a
commission from the king to arrest Cromwell at the council table, on an
accusation of high treason, and to commit him to the Tower. Immediately
after a bill of attainder was framed against him; and the house of peers
thought p