This sequence of events sounds all very haphazard and circumstantial, and twice the Poles had exercised their credit with the King to slide the family circle away from trouble. Yet it was part of a gathering storm of little incidents and conflicts all tending in the same direction. The troubles at Calais involving the Lisles were part of that pattern. The result was only accidental in the sense that the fall of Anne Boleyn was accidental; both convulsions were triggered by happenstance, no single incident of which would have proved fatal without the vigilance and helping hand of a man looking
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