The divorce was pronounced, and Henry was free. Many persons gave way to feelings of alarm: they thought that all Europe would combine against England. ‘The pope will excommunicate the English,’ said some; ‘and then the emperor will destroy them.’ But, on the other hand, the majority of the nation desired to have done with a subject which had been agitating their minds during the last seven years. England, getting out of a labyrinth from which she had never expected to find an issue, began to breathe again. Catherine’s marriage was declared to be null: it only remained now to recognize Anne Boleyn’s. On the 28th of May, an archiepiscopal court held at Lambeth, in the primate’s palace, officially declared that Henry and Anne had been lawfully wedded, and the king had now no thought but how to seal his union by the pomp of a coronation. It would certainly have been preferable had the new queen taken her seat quietly on the throne; but slanderous reports made it necessary for the king to present his wife to the people in all the splendor of royalty. [Sidenote: Anne Presented To The People.] At three o’clock in the afternoon of Thursday before Whitsuntide, a magnificent procession started from Greenwich. Fifty barges, adorned with rich banners, conveyed the representatives of the different city companies, and the metropolis joyfully hailed a union that promised to inaugurate a future of light and faith: it was almost a religious festival. On the banner of the Fishmongers was the inscription, _All worship belongs to God alone_; on that of the Haberdashers, _My trust is in God only_; on that of the Grocers, _God gives grace_; and on that of the Goldsmiths, _To God alone be all the glory_. The city of London thus asserted, in the presence of the immense crowd, the principles of the Reformation. The lord mayor’s barge immediately preceded the galley, all hung with cloth of gold, in which Anne was seated. Near it floated another gay barge, on which a little mountain was contrived, planted with red and white roses, in the midst of which sat a number of young maidens singing to the accompaniment of sweet music. A hundred richly ornamented barques, carrying the nobility of England, brought up the magnificent procession, and a countless number of boats and skiffs covered the river. The moment Anne set her foot on shore at the Tower, a thousand trumpets sounded points of triumph, and all the guns of the fortress fired such a peal as had seldom been heard before.[283] Henry, who liked the sound of cannon, met Anne at the gate and kissed her, and the new queen entered in triumph that vast fortress from which, three years later, she was to issue, by order of the same prince, to mount, an innocent victim, the cruel scaffold. She smiled courteously on all around; and yet, seized with a sudden emotion, she sometimes trembled, as if, instead of the joyous flowers on which she trod with light and graceful foot, she saw a deep gulf yawning beneath her.