Henry remains in seclusion while mourning the queen's death, an opportunity that enemies of the crown seize to murder several friends of the court; Cromwell is disturbed when Henry does not resist his new church's similarities to Catholicism. Meanwhile Henry ends his depression by having sex with Ursula one more time before she returns to her hometown.

War looms with France and Spain aligning against England with backing from Rome, so Henry agrees to a politically fortuitous marriage with Anne of Cleves, a plain and unsophisticated German aristocrat he has never met.