£ i t'ho King's secret matter," as his desire to cast off his Queen and wed Anne Boleyn, was named, came to the knowledge of Katherine, who, although in the height of rage she upbraided the King, made no change in her conduct towards hcrmaidof honour. Only on one occasion, and then by a sort of caustic pleasantry, did she advert to their mutual situation. They were playing at cards En the royal presence, when Katherine observing Anne Boleyn to stop more than once on turning up a king, said, " My Lady Anne, you have good luck to stop at a king, but you are not like others, you will have all or none.'* Cardinal Wolsey, little suspecting the King's real purpose in desiring to fid himself of his consort, offered his aid, and even ventured to predict success. In truth, Wolscy looked only to the political consequences of the divorce, and to perpetuate the alliance between England and France, actually went to France and entered into negotiations for a marriage between Henry and llenee, the daughter of Louis the Twelfth. In this state of ignorance the Cardinal was not long suifered to remain, His slow, cautious mode of proceeding offended the King, who recalled him, and communicated to him his firm determination to marry Anne Boloyn. This announcement overwhelmed Wolsey with astonishment. For several hours, he on his knees implored the King to desist from bis purpose ; but finding all efforts vain, he resolved, rather than give mortal offence to his sovereign, to urge forward the divorce, and trust the issues to the events of time. As to Anne, she already swayed the will of the English monarch, and she resolved to share his throne immediately his marriage with Katherine was lawfully annulled. Meanwhile a treatise was composed by Henry and several of his prelates, in which his case was supported by all the authority which law or custom had. sanctioned since the world commenced, and by all the arguments which erudition or ingenuity could supply. A copy of this treatise was sent to the Pope, and. Stephen Gardiner and Edmund Fox, the King's almonor, were commissioned to obtain a favourable opinion of it, and to procuro a decretal bull and a dispensation for the marriage of Henry and Anne from the Sovereign Pontiff. Having obtained the dispensation and some other unimportant concessions, Fox returned to England; and Anne Boleyn mistaking the papal instruments "for the Pope's sanction for the divorce, vented her feelings in a tumult of joy, and overwhelmed Fox with promises of place and patronage, in gratitude for Iris services. Wolscy and Campeggio were appointed to try the validity of the King's marriage ; but before Campeggio arrived,public business was suspended by the sudden appearance and rapid spread of that alarming epidemic, the sweating sickness. A desire to shun the contagion induced most of the nobles to shut themselves up in retirement ; Henry caught the alarm, and sent Anne home to her parents at Ilevcr ; but although he rejoined his Queen, and took part with her in lier daily devotions, Anne was more than ever the object of his affection. In one of his letters to her at this period, he says, "As touching your abode at Hover, you know what aire doth best suit you, but I wrould it were come to that, thereto if it please God that neither of us need care for that, for I assure you I think it long." In the following letter his fears for her health are rendered apparent. " The uneasiness my doubts about your health gave me, disturbed and frightened me exceedingly, and 1 should not have had any quiet, without hearing a certain account. But nowsince you have yet felt nothing, I hopo it is witli you as with us; for when we were at Walton, two ushers, two valets de chambre, and your brother, master treasurer, fell ill, and are now quite well ; and since we havereturnedtoyourhouseat Hunsdon,* we have been perfectly well, God be praised, and have not at present one sick person in the family; and I think if you could retire from the Surrey side, as we did, you would escape all danger. There is another thing that may comfort you, which is, that in truth few or no women have been seized with this distemper, * In F-ssex, purchased by tho King of Sis Thainas lioleyn in 1512.