“HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION,” 383 
True it is, that the evidence of the connexion between Mary and 
Henry rests solely on the authority of Pole, whose disposition to ca- 
lumniate the king, and to heap the most ignominious terms on the 
two sisters, were equally manifest, and which his exiled condition 
permitted him to do with impunity. But still, as Pole’s character 
has descended to posterity, if not endowed with the highest virtues, 
free, at least, from the suspicion of knowingly publishing any false- 
hood ; we should almost be led to infer, from this fact alone, that 
there are very sufficient reasons for believing his assertions+? that 
Henry first seduced Mary, and afterwards retained her as his mis- 
tress, ignorant as we may be of the precise time of this connexion. 
There are, likewise, other circumstances of such strong collateral 
evidence, as incline us to admit the trust-worthiness of the cardinal’s 
testimony on this occasion. Mary had a striking proof before her, 
in the person of the Lady Elizabeth Tailboys—who was afterwards 
married to Edward Lord Clinton—that to be the mistress of the 
king had no other ill effect but to encourage the growth of ambi- 
tious feelings. The issue of this unlawful amour was a son, whom 
his royal parent made a knight of the garter, and called him Lord 
Henry Fitzroy, when little more than six years old, and afterwards, 
successively created him Earl of Nottingham, and Duke of Richmond 
and Somerset. “ Nor were these all the favours,” says Heylin, “ in- 
tended to him, the crown itself being designed him by the king, in 
default of lawful issue, to be procreated and begotten of his royal 
body.” To imagine that these splendid results of a licentious pas- 
sion had no tendency to impress Mary with the conviction that un- 
limited obedience to the wishes of her handsome sovereign+3 was the 
duty of the subject, is to forget the frailty of female nature, and to 
forget also that the period the least favourable to domestic virtue is 
the reign of a king “ whose brutal lusts spare no woman that is the 
object of it.” 
** Dr. Lingard observes, in a note, “that the reluctance of Burnett to 
acknowledge Mary as one of the king’s mistresses must yield to the repeated 
assertions of Pole, in his private letter to Henry, written in 1535.” In the 
latter part of this assertion, the doctor has committed a great mistake. It 
was not in a private letter, but in his work on the unity of the church, ad- 
dressed to Henry himself, and penned by his express command, that he made 
the charge against him of having debauched Mary Boleyn. 
** “ Asall recommendable parts concurred in his person,” says Lord Her- 
bert, “and they again were exalted in his high dignity and valour, so it must 
seem less strange if, amid the many fair ladies which lived in his court, he 
both gave and received temptation.” — Hist. of Henry VIII, p- 175. 
