.

INTRIGUES.
For a few days past the king's gout had grown worse, and, to his wrath and grief, it confined him as a prisoner to his rolling chair.
The king was, therefore, very naturally gloomy and dejected, and hurled the lightnings of his wrath on all those who enjoyed the melancholy prerogative of being in his presence.

His pains, instead of softening his disposition, seemed only to heighten still more his natural ferocity; and often might be heard through the palace of Whitehall the king's angry growl, and his loud, thundering invectives, which no longer spared any one, nor showed respect for any rank or dignity.
Earl Douglas, Gardiner, and Wriothesley very well knew how to take advantage of this wrathful humor of the king for their purposes, and to afford the cruel monarch, tortured with pain, one satisfaction at least--the satisfaction of making others suffer also.
Never had there been seen in England so many burnt at the stake as in those days of the king's sickness; never had the prisons been so crowded; never had so much blood flowed as King Henry now caused to be shed.

[Footnote: During the king's reign, and at the instigation of the clergy, twenty-eight hundred persons were burnt and executed, because they would not recognize the religious institutions established by the king as the only right and true ones .-- Leti, vol.i, p.

34.] But all this did not yet suffice to appease the blood-thirstiness of the king, and his friends and counsellors, and his priests.
Still there remained untouched two mighty pillars of Protestantism that Gardiner and Wriothesley had to overthrow.