Henry’s first retreat was Waltham in Essex, from which however he was speedily driven, by the seizure of the treasurer, two of the court ushers, and two of his valets de chambre. He immediately retired to Hunsdon in Hertfordshire, where he arrived on the 21st of June. News here reached him that Anne Boleyn, who had already become the object of his passion, was attacked by the disease. The occasion of this illness produced one of that remarkable series of love-letters, which have since become so celebrated, and the originals of which are preserved at Rome. In it he deplores her illness, states he would gladly bear half of it to have her cured, and regrets that he cannot send her his first physician, who was absent, but that in default of him he sends the second, “and the only one left, praying God that he may soon make you well, and then I shall love him more than ever.” Happy indeed would it have been for the ill-fated Anne had the dart penetrated more deeply. The scene enacted in the “doleful prison in the Tower”, on the 19th of May, 1536, would not then have disgraced the history of the English monarchy, and the escutcheon of the Tudor would have been spared one of its deepest stains! The next document of any importance, in which we find reference to our subject, is a letter written by Brian (afterwards Sir Brian Tuke) to Cardinal Wolsey; and, risking the charge of prolixity, we cannot refrain from extracting from it a passage or two, as it exhibited bluff King Hal in the novel character of a medical adviser. Tuke dates from Hunsdon, June 23rd, 1528; and, in relating to Wolsey the particulars of a private interview he had with the King, respecting a letter he had received from the Cardinal, he thus writes:--“I red forthe til it camme to the latter ende, mencionyng Your Graces good comfort and counsail geven to His Highnes, for avoiding this infeccion, for the whiche the same, with a most cordial maner, thanked Your Grace: and shewing me, firste, a great proces of the maner of that infeccion; howe folkes wer taken; howe litel dangeir was in it, if good ordre be observed; howe fewe wer ded of it; howe Mastres Anne, and my Lorde of Rocheforde, bothe have had it; what jeopardie they have ben in, by retournyng in of the swet bifore the tyme; of the endevour of Mr. Buttes who hathe ben with them, and is retourned; with many other thinges touching those matiers, and finally of their perfite recovery; His Highnes willed me to write unto Your Grace, most hertily desiring the same, above al other thinges, to kepe Your Grace oute of al ayre, where any of that infeccion is, and that if, in on place any on fal sike thereof, that Your Grace incontinently do remove to a clene place; and so, in like cace, from that place to an other, and with a small and clene company: saying, that this is the thing, whereby His Highnes hathe pourged his house, having the same nowe, thanked be God, clene. And over that, His