The fact is that the King's very cruelty to this poor girl--torn from her mother's side and her Protestant home in Duerren to be the pawn of an unscrupulous diplomacy--was based on grounds, at least, less infamous than that of a slave-buyer. After both Cromwell and Holbein had been well rewarded for their services, the former lost his head and the Queen her crown on considerations that took no more account of her looks than her feelings. The Catholic glass had risen; the King himself was not ashamed to avow it; and the Protestant alliance was therefore an incubus. After some two months of a queen's and wife's estate, poor Anne of Cleves was bid to pack her belongings and take up a separate establishment as an unmarried woman. No wonder she fainted when first informed of such an infamy. But there was no law in England save the _fiat_ of Henry VIII. The marriage was pronounced "null and void," and Anne retired into private life, on the rigid condition that she would make no attempt to ever quit England, with an allowance of L3,000 a year, and the formal title of the King's "sister." There was no help for her. Never again for her would there be the austere joys of Duerren--her mother's side, her own timid dreams of other companionship, and never the price at which she had lost them. At the head of the triumphant anti-Protestant, anti-Cromwell party stood Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, whose portrait, in the Royal Collection at Windsor, Holbein painted about this time (Plate 36). The lean face and the figure clothed in red stand out strikingly from the plain green background, although the painting has suffered not a little injury. The robe is lined and trimmed with ermine, and over it is the collar and badge of the Order of the Garter. In his right hand he holds the gold baton of his office as Earl Marshal, and in his left the White Staff of the Lord Chamberlain. Illustration: PLATE 36 THOMAS HOWARD, THIRD DUKE OF NORFOLK _Oils. Windsor Castle_ According to Roper, Norfolk, then Earl of Surrey, was a great friend of Sir Thomas More. But it would be hard to imagine a greater contrast than the records of the two men. The latter a pattern of personal purity and lofty ideals; the former as venal as the King's Parliaments, and as unscrupulous in pursuit of his passions as the King himself.