As a forlorn hope of escape, the bride was asked to make a declaration that she was free from all precontracts, which she did without the least hesitation, and there was nothing to be done but for Henry “to put his head into the yoke,” and to make an insignificant political alliance, which would thenceforth serve no political end.  As a Catholic king, Head of the Church and Defender of the Faith, there was no room in his plans for a Lutheran queen.  However, he no longer regarded the marriage tie as a knot that could not be undone at a pinch.  Cranmer could be counted on to be pliable in that matter, and if Cromwell made difficulties, a sword was hanging over him that could be made to fall at any moment, and Henry knew that the death of the man who had been the terror of England for ten years would be hailed with enthusiasm by the whole nation.  Henry’s foreign policy had always been a non-committal one, and Cromwell’s daring intrigues had carried his master further than he intended to go.  As the chancellor could find no means of getting him out of the mess, he lost his life, and Anne of Cleves her barely assumed dignity.

The disgusting letters which Cromwell wrote from the Tower, in the hope that his tardy playing into the king’s hands would obtain him a pardon, were of immense use to Henry in confusing the public mind as to the real reason for his repudiation of Anne, for he was anxious in breaking off from Protestant Germany not to turn the Duke of Cleves into an enemy.  The want of decency and the unchivalrous sacrifice of Anne’s honour and dignity are perhaps not surprising between such men as Henry and Cromwell, but it is startling to find the lady’s brother swallowing the insult calmly.  Nevertheless, Henry’s diplomatic insight had correctly gauged the coarsening effect of Luther’s moral code on a mind that could see less offence in a stain of this kind than in a frank rupture of the marriage-treaty before Anne had been allowed to set foot in England.  There is this, however, to be said, that the possession of the lady gave Henry a decided advantage over her brother.

A few weeks after the marriage, or what passed for such, Anne was sent to Richmond on the pretext of being out of reach of the plague, but there was no talk at that time of any plague, and if there had been, Henry would certainly have gone away also, for no one feared the epidemic more than he.  On her departure, a commission was appointed under the Great Seal to inquire into the validity of her marriage, and in an incredibly short space of time it was declared null, by reason of a pre-contract with the son of the Duke of Lorraine.  Henry then endowed his ex-queen with lands to the value of 4000 pounds annually, with a house at Richmond, and another at Bletchingly.