efore any of the
victims had become cold in their graves. And the probability is--that,
when the blunder was first perceived, the dreadful consequences of
that blunder, and the legal relations of those consequences, were not
immediately discerned. What convinces us of this is, that the first
impulse of the king and his advisers, upon discovering through a
secret communication made by Anne the existence of a precontract, and
the consequent vitiation of her marriage with the king, had been, to
charge upon Anne a new and scandalous offence. Not until they had
taken time to review the case, did they become aware of the injustice
that had been perpetrated by their own precipitance: and as this was
past all reparation, probably it was agreed amongst the few who were
parties to the fatal oversight, that the safest course was to lock up
the secret in darkness. But it is singular to watch the fatality of
error which pursued this ill-starred marriage. Every successive
critic, in exposing the errors of his predecessor, has himself
committed some fresh blunder. Bishop Burnet, for instance, first of
all in a Protestant age indicated the bloody mistakes of papal lawyers
in 1536; not meaning at all to describe these mistakes as undetected
by those who were answerable for them. Though hushed up, they were
evidently known to their unhappy authors. Next upon Burnet, down comes
Mr. Froude. Burnet had shaped his criticism thus: 'If,' he says, 'the
queen was not married to the king, there was no adultery.' Certainly
not. But, says Mr. Froude, Burnet forgets that she was condemned for
conspiracy and incest, as well as for adultery. Then thirdly come we,
and reverting to this charge of forgetfulness upon Burnet, we say,
Forgets! but how was he bound to remember? The conspiracy, the incest,
the adultery, all alike vanish from the record exactly as the
character of wife vanishes from Anne. With any or all of these crimes
Henry had no right to intermeddle. They were the crimes of one who
never had borne any legal relation to him; crimes, therefore, against
her own conscience, but not against the king in any character that he
was himself willing permanently to assume.

On this particular section of Henry's reign, the unhappy episode of
his second wife, Mr. Froude has erred by insufficient rigour of
justice. Inclined to do more justice than is usually done to the king,
and not blind to the dissolute character of Anne, he has yet been
carried, by