Already my Lord Cromwell had been filled with the fruit of his own devices, and now, within six short months after he had been created Earl of Essex (that title which hath proved almost as unlucky to its possessor as the famous horse Sejanus), he lay in the Tower, attainted of treason, and waiting for the very block and as to which he himself had sent so many. His real offense lay in purveying to the king a wife who did not please him—the Lady Anne of Cleves, already divorced and living in her own house, treated by the king as his sister, happy in her endless tapestry work and in munching the suckets and comfits her Flemish ladies-in-waiting purveyed for her. She was not one to take any thing very much to heart which did not interfere with her bodily comfort. The king had already turned his dangerous fancy toward the ill-fated Katherine Howard, but I don't believe the Lady Anne felt one pang of jealousy thereat. She was, with all reverence, like a gentle, fat cow, perfectly content so long as she had food and drink, and the flies were not too troublesome. But it was not the alterations in state matters and the rise and fall of one great man or another which troubled our peace. It was the dreadful uncertainty in matters of religion. Just now, the bloody statute of the Six Articles was law, but it was enforced rigidly or not, as the king's humor was, or the influence of Archbishop Cranmer or of Bonner and Gardiner came uppermost. These two last were the moving and ruling spirits in all persecutions at this time, as they were afterward in the more bloody days of Queen Mary. They had consented to the suppression of the convents, and were even most forward in the matter, being willing, I suppose, to swim with the current so far if but they might have their way as to the reading of the Scriptures and some other matters. They were wise enough to know that all was naught with their cause if the Bible came to be generally read; but they were not far-seeing enough to understand that the same Bible, having once been given to the people, they could no more take it back than they could bring back again the day that is past. They could not imprison or burn every one who read it, and who thought out conclusions for himself, else must they have put the whole city of London under sentence of death, as King Philip the Second of Spain did to the Netherlands. But they picked up one here and another there, and nobody felt any security, or knew but some spy was observing his movements in order to betray him. One week the king hanged six monks, with their prior at their head, for defending a monastic life; the next, he threatened with a like fate any monk or nun who, having taken the vows of that life, should presume to marry. As his infirmities increased, his temper grew more uncertain, till at last any man seemed to take his life in his hand who had to do with the king.