grave and obvious. She must marry, either at home or abroad: if
at home, the country faced the risk of being plunged into civil war
through jealousy of her husband's power; if abroad, of being con-
verted into a province of another realm. The law on the subject
might leave room for argument, but prudence was certainly flat
against a woman ruler.

This it was which set Henry forth in quest of a son. He had
borne with Catherine of Aragon as long as there was any hope of
a prince, and in all probability would have borne with her till
death if she had produced his heir. But in 1527 she was forty-two
years old, six years older than her husband; stout, without charm,
and aged with disappointment. She had been tragically unfortu-
nate in childbed. Five children--three of them boys--had been
stillborn, or, in one instance, had died within a few weeks of
birth. The last was born dead in November, 1518. In an age ac-
customed to see the visitation of God in plague or dearth or in
the collapse of a flimsy floor under a conventicle of heretics, it
was neither hypocrisy nor undue sensitiveness in Henry to asso-
ciate his wife's misfortunes with the wrath of God. Had He not
spoken clearly in Leviticus? "And if a man shall take his brother's
wife, it is an unclean thing . . .; they shall be childless." The di-
vine hand, as emphatically as reasons of State, pointed to the King
to put away Catherine of Aragon.

Thus the famous divorce began, bringing in its train the incal-
culable results of the breach with Rome. Deep as was Henry's in-
fatuation for Anne Boleyn--she was his great folly--her place in
the revolution was none other than prospective mother of the heir
to the throne. In the autumn of 1532, after the divorce suit had
dragged on for six years and Henry had drawn nearer and nearer
to the last act of defiance against Rome, he and Anne began to
live together. By January she was with child, and as the political
object of the divorce now seemed assured, further delay was point-
less. On January 25th Henry married her in secrecy and haste, and
once Cranmer had obtained the Pope's recognition of his election
to the see of Canterbury, the breach with Rome was completed.

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