" Anne answered coldly, but her love to Percy was nipt in
the bud by a marriage being arranged for him. After all the learned
authorities had been consulted, and much controversy had taken place
regarding the third and the fifth books of Moses, the Pope sent a
Nuncio with secret instructions to get rid of the whole matter by
postponing it. But Henry did not yield, though his feelings for
Katherine, whom he respected, cost him a terrible struggle. The
trial began in the chapter-house of Blackfriars in the presence of
the King and Queen. But Katherine stood up, threw herself at the
King's feet, and found words which touched the tyrant. She
challenged the right of the court to try her, appealed to the Pope,
and returned to Bridewell. It is there that we find her in
Shakespeare's _Henry VIII_, singing sorrowfully a beautiful song:
"Orpheus with his lute made trees
And the mountain tops that freeze
Bow themselves when he did sing."
The divorce proceedings had gone on for some years; people had sided
alternately with the King and with the Queen, and often sympathised
with both, when suddenly rumour announced the outbreak of a
pestilence.
It was not the Black Death or the boil-pest, but the English
"sweating-sickness." This hitherto unknown disease had first broken
out in the same year when the wars of the Roses ended on the field
of Bosworth; but it was entirely confined to England, passing
neither to Scotland nor Ireland.
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