Cranmer, then, being fortified with this permission, and taking with him the Bishops of London, Winchester, Lincoln, and Bath and Wells (the latter perhaps having been chosen in consequence of his late conduct in the convocation, to give show of fairness to the proceeding), went down to Dunstable and opened his court there.  The queen was at Ampthill, six miles distant, having entered on her sad tenancy, it would seem, as soon as the place had been evacuated by the gaudy hunting party of the preceding summer.  The cause being undecided, and her title being therefore uncertain, she was called by the safe name of “the Lady Catherine,” and under this designation she was served with a citation from the archbishop to appear before him on Saturday, the 10th of May.  The bearers of the summons were Sir Francis Bryan (an unfortunate choice, for he was cousin of the new queen, and insolent in his manner and bearing), Sir Thomas Gage, and Lord Vaux.  She received them like herself with imperial sorrow.  They delivered their message; she announced that she refused utterly to acknowledge the competency of the tribunal before which she was called; the court was a mockery; the archbishop was a shadow.[432] She would neither appear before him in person, nor commission any one to appear on her behalf.

The court had but one course before it—­she was pronounced contumacious, and the trial went forward.  None of her household were tempted even by curiosity to be present.  “There came not so much as a servant of hers to Dunstable, save such as were brought in as witnesses;” some of them having been required to give evidence in the re-examination which was thought necessary, as to the nature of the relation of their mistress with her first boy husband.  As soon as this disgusting question had been sufficiently investigated, nothing remained but to pronounce judgment.  The marriage with the king was declared to have been null and void from the beginning, and on the 23rd of May, the archbishop sent to London the welcome news that the long matter was at an end.[433]

It was over;—­over at last; yet so over, that the conclusion could but appear to the losing party a fresh injustice.  To those who were concerned in bringing it to pass, to the king himself, to the nation, to Europe, to every one who heard of it at the time, it must have appeared, as it appears now to us who read the story of it, if a necessity, yet a most unwelcome and unsatisfying one.  That the king remained uneasy is evident from the efforts which he continued to make, or which he allowed to be made, notwithstanding the brief of the 23rd of December, to gain the sanction of the pope.  That the nation was uneasy, we should not require the evidence of history to tell us.  “There was much murmuring in England,” says Hall, “and it was thought by the unwise that the Bishop of Rome would curse all Englishmen; that the emperor and he would destroy all the people.”  And those who had no such