[41] _Comprehensive History of England._ Macfarlane and Thompson. So perished poor Queen Anne Boleyn, niece to Sir Thomas. A fortnight or so before her death, on her arrival at the Tower, she agonizedly asked of Cromwell, "I pray you tell me where my Lord Rochford ys? and I told her I saw hym afore dyner in the Cort. O wher is my swete brother? I said I left hym at York Place: and so I dyd." Never to see him again--he was beheaded on Tower Hill two days previous to her own execution. This fresh marriage of the king with Jane Seymour, the sister of the man with whom Sir Thomas was eventually implicated and suffered, continues incidentally, pertinent interest to our little story. Queen Jane Seymour, although she escaped the wretched fate of her immediate predecessor and successor in the royal preference, fell a victim to an even more painful death, at the birth of her son, which took place 12 October, 1537. At the ceremonial of the christening of the infant prince Sir Thomas was present, and also, as a matter of course, the child's uncle, Sir Edward Seymour (afterward Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector), on that occasion one of the most honoured guests. Little wot these men as they gazed on, and took part in the splendid ceremony, that those helpless, motherless, baby hands were destined at some future and not very distant day to sign their death warrants, which consigned them to the scaffold, and both for alleged participation in the same offence. Henry VIII. having become tired of, and also got divorced from Anne of Cleves, and Cromwell, the promoter of the distasteful marriage, having been summarily disposed of by the usual method of the axe, another event in the king's matrimonial projects was about to happen, which brought Sir Thomas into still closer relationship with him. Henry had this time set his eyes on Katharine Howard, a daughter of Lord Edmund Howard, cousin to the unfortunate Anne Boleyn, and sister to Elizabeth, wife of Sir Thomas Arundell. She was proclaimed Queen 8 August, 1540, but the king had been privately married to her some time before. Thus the knight now stood in the double capacity of being by marriage both cousin and brother-in-law to his most august and cruelly inclined sovereign, by whom Sir Thomas was made 'Chancellor' to the new Queen. This relationship to Henry must have given him great influence, and as the spoliation of the Abbeys and Monastic institutions was then busily going forward, he would have good opportunity of advancing his suit, or claims for a portion of the large landed possessions of these institutions then being distributed with lavish hand. In this distribution Sir Thomas appears at different times to have acquired by grant and purchase a considerable share. Concerning this a short notice presently.