ENGLAND.]

ANNE OF CLEVES.

part with her. The House of Peers and the Commons, well apprised of the King's intention, petitioned that he would allow his marriage to be examined; and orders were immediately given to lay the whole proceedings before the convocation. Anne had formerly been contracted, by her father, to the Duke of Lorrain, but she, as well as the Duke, were at that time under age, and the contract had been afterwards annulled by consent of both parties. Henry, however, pleaded the pre-contract as a ground of divorce, and he added two reasons more, which may seem a little extraordinary, that when he espoused Anne, he had not inwardly given his consentand that he had not thought proper to consummate the marriage. The convocation was satisfied with these reasons, and solemnly annulled it. The parliament ratified the decision of the clergy, and the sentence was soon after notified to the Queen.

The King had, already, under the pretence that the country air would better agree with her, removed her to Richmond, and there she received, with the utmost calmness, the notification of her divorce. She was, perhaps, not displeased to be released from an union which gave her so little satisfaction, or the impenetrable serenity of her temper was proof even against the dissolution of her marriage, and the loss of a crown. She readily consented to terms of accommodation with the King, and when he offered to adopt her as his sister, to give her precedence next to the Queen and his daughter, with a settlement of 3000l. a-year, she accepted of the conditions, and gave her consent to the divorce. The only instance of pride which she betrayed, was in refusing to return to her own country, and display the sin

gular circumstance of a Princess returning to Flanders in a private condition, after having left it as Queen of England. She continued in England till her death, which happened July 16, 1557, at her house at Chelsea, —and was interred, with great solemnity, on the south side of the choir, in Westminster Abbey.

ANNE BOLEYN.

It has been often said, by those who delight in assigning trifling causes to the greatest events, that the reformation which separated these kingdoms from the communion of Rome, and spread so wide a schism in the religious opinions of mankind, was principally, if not altogether, occasioned by the love of Henry the Eighth for this celebrated woman. Voltaire, whose light and often ludicrous style would be alone sufficient to discredit many parts of his general history, were it not already well known that he wrote with too much rapidity to be always certain of his facts, has asserted, that England owes its deliverance from popish thraldom to an unexpected opposition to the King's desires, and that this mighty change, which could not be brought about by a slavery of five hundred years, nor by the continual murmurs of the people against the St. PETER'S PENCE, reserves, provisions, annats, collections, sale of indulgences, and other exactions of the church, was at length effected by the interested virtue of Boleyn. He has heedlessly numbered her among the mistresses of Henry; and, with singular inconsistency, afterwards declares, that his passion being further irritated by her resistance, he was compelled to make her his wife. But it has been already hinted, that his scruples respecting the legality of his former marriage, had preceded his acquaintance with Anne; or, at least, any