Lady Anne of Cleves was not only 'fair and portly,' but comely in face and feature, an error in which Henry was confirmed by a very flattering portrait from the pencil of Holbein. So the Princess was sent for to come over to England, and a magnificent cortége was despatched, with the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, to bring her on her way to London; and Henry conceived the romantic idea of riding down to Rochester in disguise to waylay his bride. Alas! for the eager glance which his Grace cast into the travelling coach, where sat a lady tall and portly indeed, but coarse and ugly in face and feature! Henry, we are told, was 'alarmed and abashed,' but he also was furious. He felt he had been deceived, and he sent for Cromwell and bade him devise some means for the prevention of the marriage. It was too late; matters had gone too far, and the ceremony was performed.
It would appear that at the time the King did not realise the idea that Cromwell was the principal instigator of the hated union, for it was after the marriage that he was raised to the Earldom of Essex, and made Lord Chamberlain, and his son granted a separate peerage. We know from the pages of history how the King's horror of 'the Flanders mare' increased day by day, and he never rested till he had obtained a divorce, soon followed by the downfall of the newly created Earl of Essex, whose ruin was resolved on.
The Duke of Norfolk was intrusted with the task of arresting his enemy at the Council Board on the opening of Parliament in June 1540, and despatching him to the Tower, nor was he loth to carry out the royal command. Essex claimed a trial by his Peers, but the privilege was denied him. He was condemned, says Dr. Hook, by the iniquitous statute, admitting of attainder without trial, a measure of which he was not the actual founder, as affirmed by some writers, but the reviver
