He married yet once more. Yes, strange to say, he found in England another woman who would become his wife, and she was Catherine Parr, widow of Lord Latimer. She leaned towards the reformed religion; and it is some comfort to know, that she tormented the King considerably by arguing a variety of doctrinal points with him on all possible occasions. She had very nearly done this to her own destruction. After one of these conversations the King in a very black mood actually instructed Gardiner, one of his Bishops who favoured the Popish opinions, to draw [write out] a bill of accusation against her, which would have inevitably brought her to the scaffold where her predecessors had died, but that one of her friends picked up the paper of instructions which had been dropped in the palace, and gave her timely notice. She fell ill with terror; but managed the King so well when he came to entrap her into further statements - by saying that she had only spoken on such points to divert his mind and to get some information from his extraordinary wisdom - that he gave her a kiss and called her his sweetheart. And, when the Chancellor came next day actually to take her to the Tower, the King sent him about his business, and honoured him with the epithets of a beast, a knave [步名譽的人], and a fool. So near was Catherine Parr to the block, and so narrow was her escape!

epithet: a word or short phrase used to describe sb, esp when praising them or saying sth unpleasant about them

There was war with Scotland in this reign, and a short clumsy [無策略的] war with France for favouring [support] Scotland; but, the events at home were so dreadful, and leave such an enduring stain on the country, that I need say no more of what happened abroad.

A few more horrors, and this reign is over. There was a lady, Anne Askew, in Lincolnshire, who inclined to the Protestant opinions, and whose husband being a fierce Catholic, turned her out [把她趕了出來] of his house. She came to London, and was considered as offending against the six articles, and was taken to the Tower, and put upon the rack [拉肢刑架] - probably because it was hoped that she might, in her agony, criminate some obnoxious persons; if falsely, so much the better. She was tortured without uttering a cry, until the Lieutenant of the Tower would suffer [tolerate; stand] his men to torture her no more; and then two priests who were present actually pulled off their robes, and turned the wheels of the rack with their own hands, so rending [rend:撕裂] and twisting and breaking her that she was afterwards carried to the fire in a chair. She was burned with three others, a gentleman, a clergyman, and a tailor; and so the world went on.

criminate =incriminate : make sb seem guilty of a crime
so much the better: that's even better
until the Lieutenant would no more suffer his men to torture her

Either the King became afraid of the power of the Duke of Norfolk, and his son the Earl of Surrey, or they gave him some offence, but he resolved to pull them down, to follow all the rest who were gone. The son was tried first - of course for nothing - and defended himself bravely; but of course he was found guilty, and of course he was executed. Then his father was laid hold of, and left for death too.

lay hold of: grasp; gain custody of

But the King himself was left for death by a Greater King, and the earth was to be rid of him at last. He was now a swollen, hideous spectacle, with a great hole in his leg, and so odious [disgusting] to every sense [感官] that it was dreadful to approach him. When he was found to be dying, Cranmer was sent for from his palace at Croydon, and came with all speed, but found him speechless. Happily, in that hour he perished. He was in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and the thirty-eighth of his reign.

Henry the Eighth has been favoured by some Protestant writers, because the Reformation was achieved in his time. But the mighty [great] merit of it lies with other men and not with him; and it can be rendered [caused] none the worse by this monster's crimes, and none the better by any defence of them [some Protestant writers的辯護]. The plain truth is, that he was a most intolerable ruffian, a disgrace to human nature, and a blot of blood and grease upon the History of England.

六級/考研單詞: widow, lean, reform, doctrine, converse, mood, instruct, bishop, inevitable, successor, notify, terror, farther, divert, chancellor, beast, praise, reign, clumsy, dread, endure, stain, incline, fierce, catholic, offend, rack, probable, agony, torture, utter, lieutenant, priest, twist, clergy, tailor, guilt, resolve, execute, grasp, custody, swell, spectacle, perish, merit, render, monster, grease