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ry VIII._, vol. 4, part 2. [51] Several long speeches stated to have been uttered by her to Henry when he sought her illicit love are given in the Sloane MSS., 2495, in the British Museum, but they are stilted expressions of exalted virtue quite foreign to Anne's character and manner. [52] Although it was said to have been suggested by Dr. Barlow, Lord Rochford's chaplain. [53] The dispensation asked for was to permit Henry to marry a woman, even if she stood in the first degree of affinity, "either by reason of licit or illicit connection," provided she was not the widow of his deceased brother. This could only refer to the fact that Mary Boleyn, Anne's sister, had been his mistress, and that Henry desired to provide against all risk of a disputed succession arising out of the invalidity of the proposed marriage. By the canon law previous to 1533 no difference had been made between legitimate and illegitimate intercourse so far as concerned the forbidden degrees of affinity between husband and wife. In that year (1533) when Henry's marriage with Anne had just been celebrated, an Act of Parliament was passed setting forth a list of forbidden degrees for husband and wife, and in this the affinities by reason of illicit intercourse were omitted. In 1536, when Anne was doomed, another Act was passed ordering every man who had married the sister of a former mistress to separate from her and forbidding such marriages in future. Before Henry's marriage with Anne, Sir George Throgmorton mentioned to him the common belief that Henry had carried on a _liaison_ with both the stepmother and the sister of Anne. "_Never with the mother_," replied the King; "nor with the sister either," added Cromwell. But most people will conclude that the King's remark was an admission that Mary Boleyn was his mistress. (Friedmann's "Anne Boleyn," Appendix B.) [54] It would not be fair to accept as gospel the unsupported assertions of the enemies of Anne with regard to her light behaviour before marriage, though they are numerous and circumstantial, but Wyatt's own story of his snatching a locket from her and wearing it under his doublet, by which Henry's jealousy was aroused, gives us the clue to the meaning of another contemporary statement (_Chronicle of Henry VIII._, edited by the writer), to the effect that Wyatt, who was a great friend of the King, and was one of those accused at the time of Anne's fall, when confronted with Cromwell,
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