FIFTH. QUEEN OF HENRY ΤΠΕ EIGHTH. vices were, gave ne undue sway to a love of dress, and neither spent large sums nn costly robes or jewels, nor lavished profuse gifts on her favourites. The King's presence being required in London, be, on the seventh of February, 1540, came thither without tbe Queen, who, it appears, did not join him till the eighth of March, when she removed with the court to Westminster, and there remained till the nineteenth, when the King conducted her to Greenwich. Her sojourn at Greenwich was but short, as she and her royal husband passed the spring and part of tbe summer in quiet progresses through Essex, Kent, and other counties. Hitherto Katherine had been viewed as the political puppet of the Catholics, ììurnet asserts that she even prevailed upon Henry to sign Cromwell's deathwarrant ; and although this assertion is without foundation or authority, and, therefore, in all probability, false, the Catholics, with Gardiner, and her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, at their head, certainly gained a triumph in her alliance to their sovereign. By the reform party her influence was greatly dreaded, and her fall as much desired as had been that of her equally ill-starred cousin, Anne Boleyn, by the Catholics. As to herself, she had neither the desire nor the ability to dabble in politics; and such was her want of tact and discretion, such her weakness, that immediately on her obtaining the ascendancy over the mind of her husband, she fell out with her powerful uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. Of the cause of the quarrel nothing is known ; but as the ungallant Norfolk was at this period on terms of disaffection with several of the ladies of his family, including bis wife, his daughter, and hie stepmother, the Duchess Dowager of Norfolk, it is probable that Katherine took part with her grandmother, or some other of these ladies, against him. This breach gave hope to the reform party; and as Katherine's early follies, or rather crimes, were known to too many to be buried in oblivion, no sooner had she ascended the throne than many of her former wicked satellites, whom she had lost sight of, as she had fondly hoped, for ever, pestered her for place and preferment, and her fears or weakness prevented her from putting a stern negative on their audacious demands, and thus completed the consummation of her folly. Although, on the twentyeighth of August, a priest and several other persons were imprisoned, by order of the council, for speaking scandal against the Queen's grace, yet Katherine, perhaps forced by the circumstances of the case, shortly afterwards admitted Manox, Jane Bulmer, and others who were cognizant of her former ill life, into her service—a fatal error, which she was afterwards unable to retrieve. From the moment of his marriage with Katherine Howard, Henry had leaned towards the Catholics, but as the strength of both the theological parties were about equal, no one was spared who dared to deny his supremacy. "Those who were against the Pope," remarks a foreigner, at that time in England, 4 1 were burned, and those who were for him were hanged ; and the King displayed this tyrannical impartiality with such alarming ostentation, as to reduce both parties to subjection, and enforce terror into every breast " However, in the spring of 1541, aCatholic insurrection, headed by Sir John Neville, burst forth in Yorkshire ; and as Henry attributed the rising to Cardinal Pole, he instantly ordered the decapitation of the Cardinal's aged mother, the Countess of Salisbury, a prisoner in the Tower, who, a twelvemonth previously, had been unjustly sentenced to death, but whose execution bad been deferred, probably at the intercession of Katherine Howard. The venerable Duchess was the last in a direct line of the Plantagenets—a family who, with great glory, but stili greater crimes and misfortunes, had governed England for the space of three hundred years. When brought to the scaffold, and told to lay her head upon the block, she, with a courage and dignity worthy of her race, replied: "No ; my head never committed treason ; and if you will have it, you must take it as you can." She was dragged to tho block by the hair of her