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Show HENRY VIII'S LAST WORDS. The reign of Henry VIII extended to thirty-seven thirty-seven years, nine months and fifteen days. Of .he closing scenes of his life little is known, but that he was confined to his bed for several weeks at the old palace of Westminster, where he died on ihe 31st of January, 1"47. The day before his death the King held a long conversation with Lord Hertford, Hert-ford, Sir William Paget and Master Benny. Tht-re is no official record of what took place, for if such documents had been penned they were destroyed by Paget. Edward Denny. Dr. Wliyte and some domestics do-mestics closely connected with the King affirm that his Highness expressed the most terrible anxiety about the altered condition of religion; he wi sliced the new heresy to be crushed out of the state; that, and the fact of both receiving Holy Communion he closely questioned the members of his council as to, their attachment to the Catholic Church; "that they all swore on bended knees, that they would never desert the faith of their fathers."' Yet Dean Hook assures his readers that all the religious changes which took place in Edward's reign were privately arranged and agreed upon during the lifetime life-time of Henry. Hertford and Paget attended Mass in the dying monarch's room the morning before his death. ''Their presence that morning, with the King," gave him some comfort as to their sincerity in those terrible intervals of remorse with which he was visited that last day of his existence. ex-istence. Cranmer, however, was absent on that day. Was his absence caused by scruples as to making fresh oaths and new protestations, as to the maintenance of the old faith in England if Or did he shrink from the scene in which, Lord Hertford performed so characteristically the primal part in deception and falsehood? Xever was human being so deceived as Henry Tudor at this closing point of his existence. Let the reader ponder on the words of Dean Hook, and then contemplate the conduct of Lord Hertford -the pre-deiermined maker of the Reformation on his knees nt the couch of his dying brother-in-law, swearing eternal eter-nal fealty to the principles of the Catholic Church, with the said Henry Tudor as its pontiff. The last day of Henry Tudor had now passed, and the night of dying agony commenced.. It was a con-'"".j con-'"".j . c I'pf. rfnl -bodily snffprino- to the King, broken by ' intervals of remorse and prayer. Had human pride vanished? Had mercy returned to the roval breast? Was the King at peace with all the world? Xo; another act of vengeance, vas to be consummated. For a year or so before Henry's death the warrants for executions were signed by commission in consequence of the King's health. But. in this case, the moribund tyrant expressed hi? determination and pleasure to sign Norfolk's death-warrant with his own hand. Dean Hook justly remarks that nothing more terrible than this scene can be imagined. ''At ten of the clock, when the cold sweat of death covered his face, the prostrated pros-trated monarch was making a faint effort to sign , the fatal document." The action manifested the mastery of a ruthless spirit, and evinced the domination dom-ination of a final impenitence. In the very arms of death he would destroy the living; on the threshold of the grave he would turn from the presence of his God to make one more sacrifice to the enemy of mankind. Yet even that thirst for the blood of an illustrious subject, whose age he had left nearly childless, might not have been the worst, if it hail not been the last of the crimes of this unforgiving-prince. unforgiving-prince. A few hours more elapsed, and the shadow of death was casting 'a deep and solemn gloom upon the royal chamber The end now came! The final contest was brief; and in a pulse's throb the spirit of the dreaded King Henry was wafted to the presence of that Omnipotent Tribunal where so many of his iniquitous judgments deserved to be reversed. A death-bed has been described as the altar of forgiveness, whose charity and tears commingle com-mingle as the spirit of prayer communes. These attributes were absent from the dying couch of Henry Tudor, whose last despairing words, chronicled chron-icled by Anthony Denny, "perdidimus onmia," "all is lost," express an awful consciousness of the retribution ret-ribution due to a wicked and truculent career. The foregoing narrative is taken from "Historical "Histor-ical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty and the Reformation Ref-ormation Period." by S. Hubert Burke, author of. ''The Men and Women of the Reformation." In a letter to Mr. Burke the late Mr. Gladstone wrote "I have read every page of the work with great interest, and. I subscribe without hesitation to the eulogy passed upon it by the Daily Chronicle, Chron-icle, as making, as far as I know, a distinct and valuable addition to our knowledge of a remarkable remarka-ble period." |