Page:The Queens of England.djvu/376

336 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. Heavy days had now fallen on the king, who bore them not more patiently because increasing infirmity had long heralded their approach. The great obesity, which had for a consid- erable period rendered exercise a painful if not an imprac- ticable exertion, now turned to a dropsy, which precluded even a change of posture without aid, while the torture inflicted by the ulceration in one of his legs left him no repose. It was now that Henry learned truly to appreciate the obedient wife and gentle nurse, who watched by his couch, and soothed, if she could not mitigate, his sufferings. Her delicate hand alone applied the remedies recommended by the medical attendants, and dressed the disgusting wound, a task at which even a menial might have shuddered. Her mild and cheerful temper suggested and her sweet voice whispered words of hope and comfort, when the past had assumed the power of stinging her husband with remorse, the present had become insupportable, and the dread future appalled him. The selfishness of Henry led to his according an increased and increasing favor to the tender nurse on whom he now de- pended for all the ease and earthly consolation he could still hope for; and this growing favor alarmed the jealousy of those who wished to confine all influence over their sovereign to themselves. To destroy this sole blessing left to Henry in his infirmities was the fixed aim of these ambitious men ; but how to accomplish this object against one so blameless as Kath- arine puzzled even them, although their brains were fertile in schemes for mischief. The adoption and firm adherence of the queen to the reformation furnished the only chance for the success of their project to injure her. Henry, when he abjured the supremacy of the pope, did it to carry out his own views, and was much more influenced by worldly than spiritual mo- tives. He wished that his subjects should transfer to him the implicit devotion they had previously yielded to the pope, and was disposed to resent, as little short of treason, and to punish with the utmost severity, any dissent from his own creed, which, while it rejected certain portions of the dogmas of the ancient faith, retained all its bigotry and fanaticism. Hence, urged on no less by his own aversion to the slightest appeal from his opinion on religious as well as on other subjects, than by those who were inimical to the queen, he declared his intention of visiting with the heaviest penalties all those who presumed to entertain opinions at all differing from his own in points of faith. How far the grievous state of his body might have in-