Flanders mare,’ tell how he endeavoured to put off the wedding, alleging as his excuse the previous engagement of Anne and the Duke of Lorraine’s son, and finally quote a conversation of Henry and Cromwell, the day after the marriage, in which the King appears to have informed his minister that consummation had not followed. The truth of this last statement is apparently corroborated by a letter which Anne sent to her brother a few days later[723]. Experience of the very unscrupulous methods of Henry VIII., especially when matrimonial issues were at stake, leads the reader, however, at least to recognize the possibility that Anne may have written this letter under compulsion and the threat of death if she refused. The testimony with which the King had armed himself for the struggle he anticipated over gaining a divorce from his fourth wife, was thus all of it obtained under circumstances that certainly cast grave suspicions on its veracity; and the modern student may well be excused for refusing to accept it with that pleasingly implicit faith which the Convocations and Parliaments of this period almost invariably placed in the statements of the sovereign[724]. Certainly there was little cause for Henry to doubt his own ability to wrest a decision of the nullity of his marriage from clergy, Lords, and Commons. Ten years of Cromwell’s masterfulness had been enough to convince them of the absolute futility of opposing the King in any matter on which he had set his heart. The evidence wrung from the fallen minister almost under the shadow of the scaffold, and the confirmatory letter elicited from Anne, coupled with a ‘breve trew and parfaict declarac_i_on’ from the King himself[725], were quite sufficient to cause Convocation after three days of debate finally to agree on the judgement that the union was unlawful, and to send their decision to Parliament on July 12. An Act to proclaim the marriage null and void from the beginning was hurried through the Houses with all possible speed, and on the 14th it was passed[726]. From that time onward the ‘lady Anne was treated as a sister by the King’; she was suffered to live in retirement, adequate lands and money were apportioned to her, and she remained in England, contented and happy that execution had not been substituted for divorce[727]. The Duke of Cleves was naturally enraged at the treatment of his sister, and resolutely refused to acknowledge that she had been honourably dealt with; but he knew that he was too weak to avenge the insult, and coldly promised that the nullification of the marriage would not cause him to ‘departe from his devotion leage and amytie’ with the King of England[728].