The Nun of Kent, as we remember, had declared that if Henry persisted in his resolution of marrying Anne, she was commissioned by God to tell him that he should lose his power and authority.  She had not specified the manner in which the sentence would be carried into effect against him.  The form of her threats had been also varied occasionally; she said that he should die, but whether by the hands of his subjects, or by a providential judgment, she left to conjecture;[641] and the period within which his punishment was to fall upon him was stated variously at one month or at six.[642] She had attempted no secresy with these prophecies; she had confined herself in appearance to words; and the publicity which she courted having prevented suspicion of secret conspiracy, Henry quietly accepted the issue, and left the truth of the prophecy to be confuted by the event.  He married.  The one month passed; the six months passed; eight—­nine months.  His child was born and was baptised, and no divine thunder had interposed; only a mere harmless verbal thunder, from a poor old man at Rome.  The illusion, as he imagined, had been lived down, and had expired of its own vanity.

But the Nun and her friar advisers were counting on other methods of securing the fulfilment of the prophecy than supernatural assistance.  It is remarkable that hypocrites and impostors as they knew themselves to be, they were not without a half belief that some supernatural intervention was imminent; but the career on which they had entered was too fascinating to allow them to forsake it when their expectation failed them.  They were swept into the stream which was swelling to resist the Reformation, and allowed themselves to be hurried forward either to victory or to destruction.

The first revelation being apparently confuted by facts, a second was produced as an interpretation of it; which, however, was not published like the other, but whispered in secret to persons whose dispositions were known.[643]

“When the King’s Grace,” says the report of the commissioners, “had continued in good health, honour, and prosperity more than a month, Dr. Bocking shewed the said Nun, that as King Saul, abjected from his kingdom by God, yet continued king in the sight of the world, so her said revelations might be taken.  And therefore the said Nun, upon this information, forged another revelation, that her words should be understanded to mean that the King’s Grace should not be king in the reputation or acceptation of God, not one month or one hour after that he married the Queen’s Grace that now is.  The first revelation had moved a great number of the king’s subjects, both high and low, to grudge against the said marriage before it was concluded and perfected; and also induced such as were stiffly bent against that marriage, daily to look for the destruction of the King’s Grace within a month after he married the Queen’s Grace that now is.  And when they were deluded in that expectation,