"Ah, I will
chastise him, this transgressor of my holy laws! A minister of the
Church, a priest, whose whole life should be naught but an
exhibition of holiness, an endless communion with God, and whose
high calling it is to renounce fleshly lusts and earthly desires!
And he is married! I will make him feel the whole weight of my royal
anger! He shall learn from his own experience that the king's
justice is inexorable, and that in every case he smites the head of
the sinner, be he who he may!"
"Your majesty is the embodiment of wisdom and justice," said
Douglas, "and your faithful servants well know, if the royal justice
is sometimes tardy in smiting guilty offenders, this happens not
through your will, but through your servants who venture to stay the
arm of justice."
"When and where has this happened?" asked Henry; and his face
flushed with rage and excitement. "Where is the offender whom I have
not punished? Where in my realm lives a being who has sinned against
God or his king, and whom I have not dashed to atoms?"
"Sire," said Gardiner solemnly, "Anne Askew is yet alive."
"She lives to mock at your wisdom and to scoff at your holy creed!"
cried Wriothesley.
"She lives, because Bishop Cranmer wills that she should not die,"
said Douglas, shrugging his shoulders. The king broke out into a
short, dry laugh. "Ah, Cranmer wills not that Anne Askew die!" said
he, sneering. "He wills not that this girl, who has so fearfully
offended against her king, and against God, should he punished!"
"Yes, she has offended fearfully, and yet two years have passed away
since her offence," cried Gardiner--"two years which she has spent
in deriding God and mocking the king!"
"Ah," said the king, "we have still hoped to turn this young,
misguided creature from the ways of sin and error to the path of
wisdom and repentance.
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