_Duke of Norfolk._--The Duke of Norfolk had been, throughout Henry's reign, one of his most confidential ministers. But as the king approached his end, an inordinate jealousy of great men, rather than mere caprice, appears to have prompted the resolution of destroying the most conspicuous family in England. Norfolk's son, too, the Earl of Surrey, though long a favourite with the king, possessed more talents and renown, as well as a more haughty spirit, than was compatible with his safety. A strong party at court had always been hostile to the Duke of Norfolk; and his ruin was attributed especially to the influence of the two Seymours. No accusations could be more futile than those who sufficed to take away the life of the noblest and most accomplished man in England. Surrey's treason seems to have consisted chiefly in quartering the royal arms in his escutcheon; and this false heraldry, if such it were, must have been considered as evidence of meditating the king's death. His father ignominiously confessed the charges against himself, in a vain hope of mercy from one who knew not what it meant. An act of attainder (for both houses of parliament were commonly made accessary to the legal murders of this reign) was passed with much haste, and perhaps irregularly; but Henry's demise ensuing at the instant, prevented the execution of Norfolk. Continuing in prison during Edward's reign, he just survived to be released and restored in blood under Mary. _Anne Boleyn._--Among the victims of this monarch's ferocity, as we bestow most of our admiration on Sir Thomas More, so we reserve our greatest pity for Anne Boleyn. Few, very few, have in any age hesitated to admit her innocence.[37] But her discretion was by no means sufficient to preserve her steps on that dizzy height, which she had ascended with more eager ambition than feminine delicacy could approve. Henry was probably quick-sighted enough to perceive that he did not possess her affections; and his own were soon transferred to another object. Nothing in this detestable reign is worse than her trial. She was indicted, partly upon the statute of Edward III., which, by a just though rather technical construction, has been held to extend the guilt of treason to an adulterous queen as well as to her paramour, and partly on the recent law for preservation of the succession, which attached the same penalties to anything done or said in slander of the king's issue. Her levities in discourse were brought within this strange act by a still more strange interpretation. Nor was the wounded pride of the king content with her death. Under the fear, as is most likely, of a more cruel punishment, which the law affixed to her offence, Anne was induced to confess a pre-contract with Lord Percy, on which her marriage with the king was annulled by an ecclesiastical sentence, without awaiting its certain dissolution by the axe.[38] Henry seems to have thought his