I can get wives enough.' [Footnote: Burnet.] Ah, my daughter, I hope you may not die such a natural death as Jane Seymour did, for whom, as you say, the king mourned two years.

But after that period, something new, something altogether extraordinary happened to the king.

He fell in love with a picture, and because, in his proud self-conceit, he was convinced that the fine picture which Holbein had made of him, was not at all flattered, but entirely true to nature, it did not occur to him that Holbein's likeness of the Princess Anne of Cleves might be somewhat flattered, and not altogether faithful.

So the king fell in love with a picture, and sent ambassadors to Germany to bring the original of the portrait to England as his bride.

He himself went to meet her at Rochester, where she was to land.