LXXXVII. The fame that befel Alexander the Sixth, and just in the same way, happened to Henry the Eighth of England, and his wife, or rather concubine, Anna Bolene. Both these personages were guilty of great crimes, and the dishonesty of Anna Bolene, was as notorious as the incontinence of Henry. The king, hurried away by a criminal passion for that lady, in order to possess her, repudiated unjustly his virtuous queen Catherine; and Ann was not only an accomplice in the unjust divorce, but was afterwards proved guilty of adultery. This was sufficient with respect to their incontinence, to render their fame odious to posterity. But Nicholas Saunders, urged by his indiscreet zeal, being desirous of heightening to the utmost the turpitude of them both, confounded the certain with the incredible; from whence it followed, that many of the vulgar among the Catholics, believed the incredible as certain facts. LXXXVIII. Saunders says, that the love of Henry for Ann was not only illicit, but most enormously incestuous; because, that long before he knew her, he had had criminal conversation, not only with her mother, but also with a sister of her’s, named Mary. He adds, that Anna Bolene, according to the testimony of her own mother, was the daughter of the said Henry. To strengthen the foregoing assertion, he says, this unhappy woman, was born two years after Thomas Bolene the husband of her mother, had been absent from his wife at the court of France, whither he had been sent on an embassy by Henry: that, upon his return to England, he was desirous of repudiating his wife, but the king interposed to prevent it; and the adultress confessed to her husband, that the child he found in his house was the daughter of the king. According to this relation, the correspondence between Henry the Eighth and Anna Bolene, was shocking and incestuous in three particulars.