After the death of Edward she attached herself to Lord Hastings, and when Richard III. cut off that nobleman as an obstacle to his schemes, she was arrested as an accomplice on the ridiculous charge of witchcraft. This accusation, however, terminated in a public penance, with the loss of whatever little property she possessed. Notwithstanding the severities exercised against her, it is certain that she was alive in the reign of Henry VIII., when Sir Thomas More mentions having seen her, poor and shriveled, without the least trace of her former beauty. Mr. Rowe, in his tragedy of "Jane Shore," has adopted the popular story related in the old ballad, of her perishing from hunger in a ditch where Shoreditch now stands, but Stow assures us that that street was thus named previous to the time of Jane Shore. The example of none of the English kings had a greater influence in bringing the marriage tie into disrepute than that of Henry VIII. An effort has been made by Mr. Fronde, in his new history of England, to redeem the character of this monarch from some portion of the obloquy with which it is covered, but there is no doubt that he was an unmitigated monster. Curious to say, during his youth and early manhood he betrayed no evidence of the brutal passions which afterward moved him. He was the husband of Catharine for seventeen years before his domestic conduct incurred reproach. At that late period of his career he conceived a violent passion for Anne Boleyn, and, in order to get her to share his bed, sought to divorce his wife. From this period he seemed to become the prey of a restless concupiscence, which sought gratification in new objects of indulgence, and his passion for the women he married and beheaded was as short-lived as it was violent. There is reason to believe that his marriage with Anne Boleyn was more than adulterous. It is said Anne's mother had been more complaisant to Henry than her duty to her husband or the laws of morality would have sanctioned, and we have the authority of Bishop Fisher for concluding that Anne was the result of this illicit connection, and that, when the king expressed an intention of marrying her, Lady Boleyn exhorted him to abandon his design, as Anne was his own daughter. Henry was not to be deterred by an obstacle of this sort. He had great difficulty in procuring a divorce, and in the mean while he and Anne had become so intimate that she began to exhibit proofs of the connection which could not be concealed. A private marriage was resorted to, considerations of state rendering it prudent to keep the union secret.