Cromwell was perhaps the only man at the Court who, in the early days of his ministry, had the least suspicion that Anne Boleyn might sometime lose the royal favour. He was able to comprehend the King’s love for her better than anyone else, and to discern that when the royal passion had been satisfied, Henry’s affection for his second wife would be a thing of the past. The King’s chagrin that Anne had not brought him a male child, and the rage awakened by her subsequent miscarriage could not have escaped him. From thenceforth he must have become convinced that her ruin was ultimately certain, and he began to throw out hints that he no longer wished to be reckoned among her adherents. In April, 1536, it was notorious that there was a marked coolness between them, and a month later a very unexpected turn in foreign affairs brought matters to a head and forced him to take active measures against her, in order to save his own reputation with the King[264]. There is reason to think that he was the prime mover in the plot which led to her arrest. He certainly worked against her at her trial, and was present at her execution; in fact he took every possible step to forestall all chances of being included in her fall. His sudden abandonment of one whom a few years before he had done so much to support, should be enough to confute those who have seen in his previous devotion to the cause of Anne Boleyn an evidence that he favoured the Reformed faith. Anne was certainly a professed Protestant; she possessed the English Bible and read it; but it was only because her Protestantism was temporarily useful to Cromwell’s designs, which were to obtain for his master a divorce from Katherine, that he identified himself with her party during the first years of his ministry. When the divorce had been secured, and Henry had been declared Supreme Head of the Church of England; when the love which Anne had once enjoyed had been transferred to Jane Seymour, and Cromwell saw that to favour the cause of the unhappy Queen in opposition to the King might mean ruin and disgrace, he deserted her at once.