accepting the alliance as he had been a few months before in refusing it. He perhaps forgot that though his zeal for the national welfare had never been hampered by religion or conscience, he had not yet put his patriotism to the more practical test of a sacrifice of matrimonial bliss. So the preliminaries of the match were hurried through with a speed quite as remarkable as the delays in the previous negotiations with the Lutherans. The ambassadors departed on October 6 to return to Cleves and conduct Anne to Calais, where a noble company assembled to welcome her, Gregory Cromwell being among the number[651]. Such were the delays of travelling in those times (Wotton wrote to Cromwell that the lady’s party could only make five miles a day[652]) that Anne of Cleves did not arrive at Calais until December 11, and there she waited till the 27th, for weather sufficiently favourable for her crossing[653]. Having landed, she proceeded to Canterbury, where Cranmer welcomed her with due pomp and ceremony. He had received from Cromwell fifty sovereigns to be presented to her on her arrival, and promised to do his best to induce the townspeople to give her fifty angels more[654]. From Canterbury Anne journeyed on to Sittingbourne and Rochester, where she was received on December 31 by the Duke of Norfolk, with a great company of nobles[655]. When Henry heard of her arrival there he determined to visit her in disguise, and, accompanied by eight persons of his Privy Chamber, he rode down to Rochester on New Year’s Day and saw for the first time his intended bride[656]. It is unfortunate that we possess no trustworthy information concerning the impression which Anne made on Henry at this first meeting. A letter which Cromwell wrote to the King, six months later, from the Tower states that when Henry, on his return from Rochester, was asked how he liked the Queen, he had answered ‘hevelye And not plesantlye “nothing so well as She was spokyn of”,’ and had added that had he known as much as he then knew ‘she shold not haue Commen w_i_t_h_in this Realme[657].’ It will be seen in a later chapter, however, that Cromwell wrote this letter under circumstances which rendered it very improbable that he told the exact truth: there is every reason to think that he greatly exaggerated the aversion which Henry first conceived for Anne of Cleves. In any case if Henry felt any such disgust as Cromwell described, he succeeded admirably in dissembling his feelings. Two days after the meeting at Rochester, he rode in state to meet his bride at Greenwich, and on January 6 he married her. ‘The sonday after,’ Hall adds, ‘there were kepte solempne Justes, ... on whiche daie she was appareiled after the Englishe fassion, with a Frenche whode, whiche so set furth her beautie and good visage, that euery creature reioysed to behold her[658].’