These latter arguments, being more agreeable to ecclesiastical governments, would probably have prevailed in the convocation, had it not been for the authority of Cranmer, Latimer, and some other bishops, who were supposed to speak the king’s sense of the matter. A vote was passed for publishing a new translation of the Scriptures; and in three years’ time the work was finished, and printed at Paris. This was deemed a great point gained by the reformers, and a considerable advancement of their cause. Further progress was soon expected, after such important successes. But while the retainers to the new religion were exulting in their prosperity, they met with a mortification which seemed to blast all their hopes: their patroness, Anne Boleyn, possessed no longer the king’s favor; and soon after lost her life by the rage of that furious monarch. Henry had persevered in his love to this lady during six years that his prosecution of the divorce lasted; and the more obstacles he met with to the gratification of his passion, the more determined zeal did he exert in pursuing his purpose. But the affection which had subsisted, and still increased under difficulties, had not long attained secure possession of its object, when it languished from satiety; and the king’s heart was apparently estranged from his consort. Anne’s enemies soon perceived the fatal change; and they were forward to widen the breach, when they found that they incurred no danger by interposing in those delicate concerns. She had been delivered of a dead son; and Henry’s extreme fondness for male issue being thus for the present disappointed, his temper, equally violent and superstitious, was disposed to make the innocent mother answerable for the misfortune.[*] But the chief means which Anne’s enemies employed to inflame the king against her, was his jealousy. * Burnet, vol. i. p. 196.