Now, then, the Archbishop of Canterbury is married!" "Married!" cried the king, his visage glowing with rage.

"Ah, I will chastise him, this transgressor of my holy laws! A minister of the Church, a priest, whose whole life should be naught but an exhibition of holiness, an endless communion with God, and whose high calling it is to renounce fleshly lusts and earthly desires! And he is married! I will make him feel the whole weight of my royal anger! He shall learn from his own experience that the king's justice is inexorable, and that in every case he smites the head of the sinner, be he who he may!" "Your majesty is the embodiment of wisdom and justice," said Douglas, "and your faithful servants well know, if the royal justice is sometimes tardy in smiting guilty offenders, this happens not through your will, but through your servants who venture to stay the arm of justice." "When and where has this happened ?" asked Henry; and his face flushed with rage and excitement.

"Where is the offender whom I have not punished?
Where in my realm lives a being who has sinned against God or his king, and whom I have not dashed to atoms ?" "Sire," said Gardiner solemnly, "Anne Askew is yet alive." "She lives to mock at your wisdom and to scoff at your holy creed!" cried Wriothesley.
"She lives, because Bishop Cranmer wills that she should not die," said Douglas, shrugging his shoulders.

The king broke out into a short, dry laugh.

"Ah, Cranmer wills not that Anne Askew die!" said he, sneering.
"He wills not that this girl, who has so fearfully offended against her king, and against God, should be punished!" "Yes, she has offended fearfully, and yet two years have passed away since her offence," cried Gardiner--"two years which she has spent in deriding God and mocking the king!" "Ah," said the king, "we have still hoped to turn this young, misguided creature from the ways of sin and error to the path of wisdom and repentance.